‘You have my oath,’ Julius replied, watching as the man signalled and heavy coils came thumping down to the ground at the foot of the gate. He saw archers covering him from the gate towers and nodded to himself. Pompey was no one’s fool.
As he dismounted and took hold of the rope, Julius looked back at the extraordinarii.
‘Return to the old Primigenia barracks with the others. Brutus is in command until my return.’
Without another word, he began to climb hand over hand.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A light rain began to fall as Julius walked through the empty city. With dawn on the horizon, the streets should have been filled with workers, servants and slaves, bustling along on a thousand errands. The cries of vendors should have been heard, coupled with the din of a thousand trades. Instead, it was eerily quiet.
Julius hunched his shoulders against the rain, hearing his own footsteps echo back from the houses on either side. He saw faces at the high windows of the tenements, but no one called down to him and he hurried on towards the forum.
Pompey’s men stood at every corner in small groups, ready to enforce the curfew. One of them gripped his hilt as he caught sight of the lonely figure. Julius threw back his riding cloak to reveal the armour underneath and they let him pass. The whole city was nervous and Julius felt a prickling anger at the part Crassus had played in it.
He strode quickly along the Alta Semita, following the Quirinal hill down into the forum. The great flat crossing stones kept him clear of the sluggish filth of the roadbed below his feet. The rain had begun to wash the city clean, but it would take more than a brief shower to finish the task.
In all his life, he had never seen the vast space of the forum so empty. A wind that had been blocked by the rows of houses hit him as he passed into it, making his cloak snap out behind. There were soldiers at the entrances to the temples and the senate house itself, but no lights showed within. The temple priests had lit flickering torches for those who prayed inside, but Julius had no business with them. As he passed the temple to Minerva, he muttered under his breath to her, that he might have the wisdom to see his way through the tangle Crassus had made.
The iron studs of his sandals clacked on the flagstones of the great space as he approached the senate building. Two legionaries held station there, absolutely still despite the rain and wind that bit at their exposed skin. As Julius set his foot on the first step, both men drew their swords and Julius frowned at them. They were both young. More experienced men would not have drawn with so little provocation.
‘By order of Consul Pompey, no one may enter until the Senate is called again,’ one of them said to Julius, filled with the importance of his duty.
‘I need to see the consuls before that meeting,’ Julius replied. ‘Where are they?’
The two soldiers glanced at each other for a moment, trying to decide whether it would be right for them to volunteer the information. Soaked to the skin by then, Julius felt his temper rising.
‘I was told to report as soon as I returned to Rome. I am here. Where is your commander?’
‘The prison house, sir,’ the soldier answered. He opened his mouth to continue, then thought better of it, resuming his position as before and sheathing his gladius. Once again they were like twin statues in the rain.
There were dark clouds over the city by then and the wind was growing in strength, beginning to howl as it rushed across the empty forum. Julius resisted the urge to run for cover and stalked over to the prison that adjoined the senate house. It was a small building, with only two cells below ground. Those who were to be executed were held there on the night before their death. There were no other prisons in the city: execution and banishment prevented the need to build them. The very fact that Pompey was there told Julius what he would find and he prepared to face it without flinching.
Another pair of Pompey’s men guarded the outer door. As Julius approached, they nodded to him as if he were expected and threw open the locking bars.
The armour he wore was marked with the insignia of the Tenth and he was not questioned until he reached the steps leading down to the cells. Three men moved subtly apart as he announced himself and another went down the steps behind them. Julius waited patiently as he heard his name spoken somewhere below and Pompey’s answering rumble. The men who watched him were stiff with tension and so he leaned against the wall in the most relaxed fashion he could, brushing some of the surface water from his armour and squeezing it from his hair. The actions helped him to relax under their silent stares and he was able to smile as Pompey came up with the soldier.
‘That is Caesar,’ Pompey confirmed. His eyes were hard and there was no answering smile. At the confirmation from their general, the men in the room took their hands from their sword hilts and moved away, leaving the entrance to the steps open.
‘Is there still a threat to the city?’ Pompey asked.
‘It is ended,’ Julius replied. ‘Catiline did not survive the battle.’
Pompey swore softly. ‘That is unfortunate. Come down with me, Caesar. You should be part of this,’ Pompey said.
As he spoke, he wiped sweat from his hairline and Julius saw a smear of blood on his hand. He followed Pompey down the steps with his heart thumping in anticipation.
Crassus was there in the cells. The blood seemed to have drained from his face, so that under the lamplight he looked like a figure of wax. He looked up as Julius entered the low room and his eyes glittered unhealthily. There was a sickly smell in the air and Julius tried not to look at the figures bound to chairs in the centre of it. There were four of them and the smell of fresh blood was one he knew well.
‘Catiline? Did you bring him back?’ Crassus asked, putting a hand on Julius’ arm.
‘He was killed in the first charge, Consul,’ Julius replied, watching the man’s eyes. He saw the fear go out of them as he had expected. Catiline’s secrets had died with him.
Pompey grunted, motioning to the torturers who stood by the broken bodies of the conspirators.
‘A pity. These creatures named him as their leader, but they know nothing of the details I wanted. They would have told us by now.’
Julius looked at the men and repressed a shudder at what had been done to them. Pompey had been thorough and he too doubted the men could have held anything back. Three of them lay as still as the dead, but the last rolled his head towards them with a sudden jerk. One of his eyes had been pierced and wept a shining stream of liquid down his cheek, but the other peered around aimlessly, lighting up as he saw Julius.
‘You! I accuse you!’ he spat, then cackled weakly, dribbling blood over his chin.
Julius fought against a rising gorge as he caught sight of white shards on the stone floor. Some of them still had the roots attached.
‘He has lost his mind,’ he said softly and, to his relief, Pompey nodded.
‘Yes, though he held out the longest. They will live long enough to be executed and that will be the end of it. I must thank you both for bringing this to the Senate in time. It was a noble deed and worthy of your ranks.’ Pompey looked at the man who would stand for the position of consul in only two months.
‘When my curfew is over, I suppose the people will rejoice at being saved from bloody insurrection. They will elect you, don’t you think? How can they not?’
His eyes belied the light tone and Julius did not look at him as he felt the man’s gaze. He felt shamed by all of it.
‘Perhaps they will,’ Crassus said softly. ‘We three will have to work together for Rome. A triumvirate will bring its own problems, I am sure. Perhaps we should …’
‘Another time, Crassus,’ Pompey snapped. ‘Not now, with the stink of this place in my lungs. We still have a senate meeting at sunrise and I want to visit the bath-house before that.’
‘Dawn is here now,’ Julius said.
Pompey swore softly, using a rag to wipe his hands clean. ‘It’s always night down in this place. I am fi
nished with these.’
He gave orders to the torturers to have the men cleaned and made presentable before turning back to Crassus. As Julius watched, dark sponges were dipped in buckets and the worst of the blood began to be sluiced away, running in stone gutters along the floor between his legs.
‘I will set the execution for noon,’ Pompey promised, leading them up the stairs to the cool rooms above.
The grey light had taken on a reddish tint as Julius and Crassus stepped out into the forum. The rain pounded on the stones, rebounding in thousands of tiny spatters that drummed in the emptiness. Though Julius called his name, Crassus walked quickly away into the downpour. No doubt a bath and a change of clothes would remove some of the sickly pallor from his skin, Julius thought. He hurried to catch up with the consul.
‘Something occurred to me when I was destroying the rebels gathered in your name,’ Julius called, his voice echoing.
The consul stopped dead at that, looking around. There was no one close.
‘In my name, Julius? Catiline led them. Did his followers not murder your soldiers in the street?’
‘Perhaps, but the house you showed me was a modest one, Crassus. Where would Catiline have gathered enough gold to pay ten thousand men? Very few in this city could have paid for such an army, don’t you think? I wonder what would happen if I sent men to investigate his accounts. Would I find a traitor with huge reserves of hidden wealth, or should I look for another, a paymaster?’
Crassus could know nothing of the burnt papers Brutus had found at the house and the spark of worry Julius saw was all he needed to confirm his suspicions.
‘It strikes me that such a large force of mercenaries, coupled with riots and fires in the city could well have worked with only Pompey’s legion to guard Rome. It was not an empty offer they made you, Crassus, do you realise? The city could well have been yours. I am surprised you were not tempted. You would have been left standing on the heap of corpses, and Rome might have been ready for Dictatorship.’
As Crassus began to reply, Julius’ expression changed and his mocking tone became hard.
‘But without warning, another legion is brought home from Spain and then …? Then you must have been in a very difficult position. The forces are set, the conspiracy is in place, but Rome is guarded by ten thousand and victory is no longer guaranteed. A gambling man might have risked it, but not you. You are a man who knows when the game is over. I wonder when you decided it was better to betray Catiline than see it through? Was it when you came to my home and planned my campaign with me?’
Crassus put a hand on Julius’ shoulder.
‘I have said I am a friend to your house, Julius, and so I will ignore your words – for your own good, I will.’ He paused for an instant. ‘The conspirators are dead and Rome is safe. An excellent outcome, in fact. Let that be enough for you. There is nothing else that should trouble your thoughts. Let it go.’
Ducking his head against the rain, Crassus walked away, leaving Julius staring after him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Cold grey clouds hung low in the sky over the vast crowd waiting in the Campus Martius. The ground was sodden underfoot, but thousands had left their houses and work to walk to the great field and witness the executions. Pompey’s soldiers waited in perfect, shining ranks, showing no sign of the labour that had gone into constructing the prisoners’ platform, or laying out a host of wooden benches for the Senate. Even the ground had been covered with dry rushes that crackled underfoot.
Children were held aloft by their parents to get a glimpse of the four men waiting miserably on the wooden platform and the crowd talked quietly amongst themselves, feeling something of the solemnity of the moment.
As noon had approached, the Senate had left their deliberations in the Curia and walked together to the Campus. Soldiers of the Tenth had joined Pompey’s men in closing the city, pressing wax seals against the gates and raising the flag on the Janiculum hill. With the Senate absent, the city was kept in a state of armed siege until their return. Many of the senators glanced idly at the distant flag on the hill to the west. It would remain as long as the city was safe and even the execution of traitors would be halted if the flag was pulled down to warn of an enemy approach.
Julius stood with the damp folds of his best cloak wrapped tightly around him. Even with the tunic and heavy toga underneath it, he shivered as he watched the miserable men his actions had brought to that place of death.
The prisoners had no protection from the biting wind. Only two could stand and they were hunched in pain, their chained hands pressed in mute misery against the wounds of the night. Perhaps because death was so close, those two gulped at the cold air, filling their lungs and ignoring the sting of their exposed skin.
The tallest of the pair had long dark hair that whipped and veiled his face. His eyes were swollen, but Julius could see a glint almost hidden by the bruised flesh, the feverish brightness of a trapped animal.
The one who had raved at Julius in the prison house was sobbing, his head wrapped in a cloth. A dark coin of blood had appeared in the material, marking the place his eye had been. Julius shuddered at the memory and took a tighter grip on his cloak, feeling the icy metal of one of Alexandria’s clasps touch his neck. He glanced at Pompey and Crassus, standing on the bed of rushes laid over the mud. The two consuls were talking quietly and the crowd waited for them, their eyes bright with anticipation.
Finally, the two men stood apart. Pompey caught the eye of a magistrate from the city and the crowd shuffled and chattered as the man ascended the platform and faced them.
‘These four have been found guilty of treason against the city. By order of consuls Crassus and Pompey and by order of the Senate, they will be executed. Their bodies will be cut apart and their flesh scattered for the fowls of the air. Their heads will be placed on four gates as a warning to those who threaten Rome. This is the will of our consuls, who speak as Rome.’
The executioner was a master butcher by trade, a powerfully built man with close-cropped grey hair. He wore a toga of rough brown wool, belted to hold in his swelling waist. He did not rush, enjoying the gaze of the crowd as it focused on him. The silver coins he would receive for the work were nothing to the satisfaction he took from it.
Julius watched as the man made a show of checking his knife, running a stone down its length one last time. It was a vicious-looking blade, a narrow cleaver as long as his forearm with the tang set in a sturdy wooden handle. The spine was almost a finger wide. A child laughed nervously and was shushed by her parents. The long-haired prisoner began to pray aloud, his eyes glassy. Perhaps it was his noise, or just a sense of showmanship, but the butcher came to him first, laying the cleaver alongside his neck.
The man flinched and his voice grew sharper, the air hissing in and out of his lungs in sharp jerks. His hands shook and his pale skin was wax-white. The crowd watched fascinated as the butcher took a handful of his hair in his hand and bent the head slowly to one side, exposing the clean line of the neck.
The man’s voice was deep and low. ‘No, no … no,’ he muttered, the crowd straining to hear his last words.
There was no fanfare or warning. The butcher adjusted his grip in the man’s hair and began to cut slowly into the flesh. Blood sprayed out, drenching them both, and the condemned man raised his hands to scrabble weakly at the blade as it ate at him, back and forth with terrible precision. He made a soft sound, an ugly cry that lasted only a moment. His legs collapsed, but the butcher was strong and held him up until his cleaver scraped against bone. He pulled it back then and with two quick chops he was through and the head tore clear, the body falling loose. Muscles still fluttered in the cheeks and the eyes remained open in a parody of life.
In the crowd, hands covered mouths in shuddering pleasure as the body slipped bonelessly from the platform onto the rushes below. They stood on tiptoes and jostled for a view as the butcher held the head to show them, blood running down his arm and stai
ning his toga almost black. The jaw flopped open with the movement, revealing the teeth and tongue.
One of the other prisoners vomited over himself then cried out. As if at a signal, the other two joined him, wailing and pleading. The crowd were roused by the noise, jeering them and laughing wildly with the break in tension. The butcher shoved the head into a cloth bag and turned slowly to reach down to the man nearest him. He closed his heavy fist on an ear and dragged the screaming figure to his feet.
Julius looked away until it was finished. As he did so, he saw Crassus turn his head, but ignored the gaze. The crowd cheered each head as it was held up to them and Julius watched them curiously. He wondered if the events Crassus paid for gripped them half as much as this day’s entertainment.
They were his people, this crowd stretching darkly over the wet ground of the Campus Martius. The nominal masters of the city, sated with vicarious terror and cleansed by it. As it ended, he saw the faces ease as if some great weight had been lifted. Husbands and wives joked together, relaxing, and he knew there would be little work in the city that day. They would pass through the great gates and head for wineshops and inns to discuss what they had seen. The problems of their own lives would become less important for a few hours. The city would slip into the evening with none of the usual rush and hurry of the streets. They would sleep well and wake refreshed.
The lines of Pompey’s men opened to let the Senate through. Julius rose with the others and made his way back to the gates, watching as the seals were cracked and a bar of light appeared between them. He had two cases to prepare for the forum court and his sword tournament was only days away, but like the crowd of citizens, he felt strangely at peace when he thought of the work to come. There could be no striving on such a day and the damp air tasted clean and fresh in his lungs.
That evening, Julius stood and rapped his knuckles on the long table in the campaign house. The noise fell as quickly as good red wine would allow and he waited, looking around at those who had come with him in the race for consul. Every person at the table had risked a great deal in their public support of him. If he lost, they would all be made to suffer in some way. Alexandria could find her clients disappearing with a single word from Pompey, her business ruined. If Julius were allowed to take the Tenth to some distant post, those who went with him would be giving up their careers, forgotten men who would be lucky to see the city again before retirement.
The Emperor Series: Books 1-5 Page 102