‘With your permission, sir, I will see to the camp.’
‘But not your affairs, Legate.’
The older man flushed.
‘No, Caesar. Not my affairs. Not today.’
PART TWO
CHAPTER TEN
Mark Antony arrived at Brundisium after sunset, seeing the gleam of thousands of lamps and watchfires against the black horizon. He had known the numbers of men waiting there. Caesar had discussed the plans with him the previous winter, as they prepared the campaign against Parthia. The horsemen of that eastern empire had been a thorn in Roman skin for many years and Caesar had not forgotten the old enemy. There were debts to be paid, but that massive undertaking had been ruined by assassins’ blades, like so much else.
That forewarning had not prepared Mark Antony for the reality of six full legions of veterans camped around the city – and the navigation lamps of the fleet like fireflies on the dark sea. As the consul and his guards reached the outskirts of one Roman camp, they were challenged by alert legionaries. His consular ring allowed him to pass, though he was stopped and questioned again and again as they crossed the territory of the different legions. Any hope of travelling incognito was lost, so that by the time the sun rose, the entire city had been told the consul was coming and the wrath of the Senate was finally at hand. They had waited for a long time to know what would follow the chaos in Rome and the usual bustle of the city scraped to a halt in the face of potential disaster.
Mark Antony found lodgings in the town by the simple expedient of ordering every other patron out of their rooms. Some of them were senior officers in the legions, but not a word was raised in complaint and they hurried back to the main camps as fast and as unobtrusively as possible.
The consul ate a silent breakfast of porridge sweetened with honey and some fresh melon and slices of orange. Mark Antony had ridden hard for three nights and was weary enough to call for a tisane of heated wine and herbs to restore him. The tavern-keeper was nervously obsequious as he brought the tall cups, bowing and retreating at the same time. The consul had the power to order thousands of men dead by the end of the day and the people of Brundisium whispered of nothing else as he finished his food and sat back.
On impulse, Mark Antony rose and walked out to the seafront, taking a path to the rocky crags that overlooked the deep waters. He took pleasure in the sharp air, away from the smell of too many people crammed into too small a space. It cleared his head to stare out across the sea.
The sight of the fleet and the rising sun improved his spirits, a floating symbol of Roman power. He only wished he had somewhere to send them, but his objectives lay with the soldiers of the legions. For the time being, he was the Senate in transit, their plenipotentiary, with all their authority lodged in him. He made a mental note to tell his wife Fulvia how it felt when she arrived.
As he walked back into the streets, Mark Antony spotted two of his men dogtrotting along the road towards him. They drew up and saluted.
‘Where are the legates?’ he demanded.
‘They have gathered in the main square to wait for you, sir.’
‘Very well,’ he said, striding on. ‘Lead the way, I haven’t been here for years.’
He could hear the noise and voices filtering back through the side roads long before he reached the central square. It was the Roman forum in miniature, with too many soldiers in it for comfort. The consul had an unpleasant memory of the last crowd he’d addressed.
A shout went up when he was spotted and centurions with vine sticks cleared a path for him, shoving men back with curses and oaths so that the consul could walk forward. Mark Antony did not have to feign a grim countenance. He had expected to find soldiers terrified of senatorial justice. Instead, he saw only anger as he walked through them. Any commander knew he occasionally had to be deaf when he walked through his men, but this was more than cheerful mockery from the safety of a crowd. The legions heaved and struggled against their officers and the insults were obscene.
It was customary for a consul to be greeted with cheers and applause as he stepped up to a platform to address a legion. Mark Antony left his guards at the base, but as he climbed the steps, the noise fell away, leaving only the six legates clapping him on. In such a packed space, it was a pitiful sound, followed quickly by hard laughter. The legates were sweating as he stood at the oak rostrum. Mark Antony had a fine voice and he drew himself up to make it echo back from the buildings around the square.
‘I am consul of Rome, the Senate-in-transit. In my person the authority of Rome resides, that I may judge others for their offences against the state.’
The laughter and calls died away. He let the silence stretch, choosing how he would proceed. He had intended to show mercy and so win them to his side, but somehow they had been turned against him.
‘What of your offences?’ a voice yelled suddenly from somewhere in the crowd. ‘What of Caesar?’
Mark Antony gripped the rostrum with his big hands, leaning forward. He realised they saw him only as a representative of the Senate. He was lucky they had not rushed the platform where he stood.
‘You talk of Caesar?’ he snapped. ‘I am the man who gave his funeral oration, who stood with his body as it was consumed in fire. I was his friend. When Rome called on me, I did not hesitate. I followed the lawful path. None of you can say the same.’
He was about to continue, but more and more voices shouted out angrily against him, individual complaints lost in the raucous bawling. When it did not die down, he saw some of them were actually leaving, walking off in all directions from the square as if he could say nothing they wanted to hear. He turned in frustration to the legates at his back.
‘Bring out the troublemakers, gentlemen. I will make an example of them to the rest.’
The closest legate blanched.
‘Consul, we have the men ready, as you ordered, but the legions know that you proposed the Senate amnesty. If I give that command, they could tear us apart.’
Mark Antony’s chest swelled as he took a step towards the man, looming over him.
‘I am weary of being told the dangers of crowds. Is this a mob? No, I see Roman legionaries, who will remember their discipline.’ He spoke more for the benefit of those listening than the legate himself. ‘Take pride in that discipline. I tell you, it is all you have left.’
The legate gave the order and a line of bound men were brought out from a nearby building. Centurions forced their way through the packed crowd, dragging the men into position so that they faced the rest. In any legion, there were always a few offenders who fell asleep on watch, or raped local women, or stole from their tent-mates. Optios and centurions kicked and cuffed the chosen hundred to their knees.
Mark Antony could feel the rage sweeping through the rest. As the grumbling roar swelled, the legate appealed to him once again, keeping his voice low.
‘Consul, if they mutiny now, we are all dead. Let me dismiss them.’
‘Step away from me,’ Mark Antony said in disgust. ‘Whoever you are, resign your commission and return to Rome. I have no place for cowards.’
He stepped back to the rostrum and his voice was a harsh roar.
‘Rome has moved on while you sat here and mourned the death of a great man,’ he bellowed. ‘Has grief stolen your honour? Has it torn away your ranks and traditions? Remember you are men of Rome, no, soldiers of Rome. Men of iron will, who know the value of life and death. Men who can go on, even in the face of disaster.’
He looked down at the miserable legionaries on their knees. It had not been hard for them to guess their fate when they were rounded up and left in darkness to await the consul’s punishment. Many of them struggled against their ropes, but if they tried to stand, they were kicked back down by the watchful centurions.
‘It was mutiny when you refused orders,’ Mark Antony told them all. ‘Mutiny must be washed in blood. You have known that, from the first moments the orders came from Rome. This is the stone th
at began to fall that day. Centurions! Carry out your duty.’
With grim faces, the centurions removed hatchets from their packs, smacking the blunt ends into their palms over the heads of the kneeling soldiers. In swift, cracking blows, they broke skulls, raising their arms high again and again, then moving on to the next.
Spatters of blood and brains were flung up with the raised weapons, reaching the faces of the closest ranks. The legionaries there began to growl and their officers roared at them. They stood, with chests heaving and expressions feral, repelled yet fascinated as the men died.
As the last body was released to spill the pale contents of its skull onto the ground, Mark Antony breathed hard, facing them again. Slowly the dipped heads came up. The gazes were still hostile, but no longer filled with his imminent destruction. They had held. Most of them realised the worst was past.
‘And the stone has fallen. There is an end,’ Mark Antony said. ‘Now I will tell you something of Caesar.’ If he had promised them gold, he could not have achieved a more perfect silence as the noise fell away.
‘It is true that there has been no vengeance for the Ides of March. I called the amnesty myself, knowing that if I did, his killers would see no danger from me. I wanted to speak to the people of Rome and not have myself exiled or slaughtered in turn as a friend of Caesar. That is the nest of snakes that politics has become in Rome.’
They were no longer drifting away at the edges. Instead, they were pressing back in, thirsty for news from a man who had been present. Brundisium was far away from Rome, Mark Antony reminded himself. At best, they would have only third-hand gossip about what had gone on there. No doubt the Senate had its spies to report his words, but by the time they did, he would have moved again. He had made his choice when he left Rome with his wife and children. There was no taking it back.
‘Some of those responsible have fled the country already. Men like Cassius and Brutus are beyond our reach, at least for now. Yet one of the men who murdered Caesar on the steps of Pompey’s theatre is still in Italy, in the north. Decimus Junius believes he has moved far enough from Rome to be safe from any vengeance.’
He paused, watching the expressions change as they began to believe in him.
‘I see the men of six legions before me. Decimus Junius has a region near the Alps with barely a few thousand soldiers to keep the peace. Is he safe from us? No, he is not.’ He showed his teeth as his voice grew in strength. ‘You called for vengeance for Caesar. I am here to give it to you.’
They responded with cheering as wild as their anger had been only moments before. Mark Antony stood back, satisfied. The Senate had intended him to lose face in decimating the legions. Instead, for the lives of a hundred criminals, he had won them to him. He smiled at the thought of Bibilus and Suetonius hearing the news.
He turned to the legates, his expression changing to a frown at the sight of the man he had ordered to resign, still present and pale as wax.
‘What legion do you lead?’ Mark Antony demanded.
‘Fourth Ferrata, sir.’ For an instant, desperate hope of a reprieve shone in the legate’s eyes.
‘And who is your second in command?’
The man’s expression was sickly with fear, his career in ruins.
‘Tribune Liburnius, Consul.’
‘Tell him to see me, that I may judge his fitness for command.’
The legate chewed his lip, summoning his dignity.
‘I believe that is a Senate appointment, sir,’ he said.
‘And I have told you. Today, I am the Senate, with all their powers to appoint or dismiss. Now leave. If I see you again, I will have you killed.’
The man could only stand back and salute with a shaking right hand before walking away. Mark Antony transferred his attention to the other legates.
‘All of you, with me. We have a campaign to plan.’ A thought stopped him as he was on the steps down to the square. ‘Where is the war chest for Parthia?’
‘In Rome, sir. We had it here, but Caesar gave orders for it to be sent to the Campus Martius and Seventh Victrix.’
Mark Antony closed his eyes for a moment. The riches of Caesar had been within his grasp and he had let them slip. The gods gave him legions and then took away his ability to pay them in the same breath.
‘Never mind. Come, gentlemen, walk with me.’
Agrippa rubbed weariness and sweat from his eyes. He had found a spot to take the weight off his feet, against a pile of oat bags under a temporary wooden shelter. He needed just a few moments, then he would go on, he told himself. Octavian was like a winter gale blowing through the Campus Martius. Before his arrival, the legions had been adrift. To an observer, they might have seemed the same as before, with guards exchanging watchwords, and food lines and the forges of smiths working all hours to keep the legion in a high state of readiness. Agrippa tried to stifle a yawn and his jaw cracked painfully.
He had once seen a sailor struck on the head with a falling mast in a storm. The rain had washed the blood away and the man continued to work, fastening down sails and tying off loose ropes while the wind howled. Some hours later, when the storm had passed, the sailor was walking back from the prow when he gave a great cry and fell unconscious to the deck. He had never woken and they had put his body over the side a day later. In a similar way, the legions had been stunned by the death of Caesar. They had continued with their duty but had been just as glassy-eyed and mute as the sailor. Octavian’s arrival had changed all that, Agrippa thought. He had given them a purpose once more. Agrippa saw it in the cheerful greetings of strangers as they recognised him as one of Caesar’s friends. He saw it in the bustle that revealed what had gone before as listlessness and despair.
He smiled at the sight of Maecenas jogging through the camp with two horses on long leads behind him. The Roman noble was flushed and sweating and they exchanged an amused look of mutual suffering as they passed.
‘Resting those heavy bones, are we?’ Maecenas called over his shoulder.
Agrippa chuckled, though he did not move from the spot. He had never appreciated his choice of a naval life as much as he did then. A centurion captain was master of his vessel and he rarely had to walk far or move the mountains of supplies and equipment that these men took everywhere with them. There had been no news of fresh orders for the fleet. Maecenas had been right about that. Yet he too had been swept up in Octavian’s progress, dragged along despite his misgivings. There had hardly been time to reflect on what they had achieved before Octavian was off again, driven by some source of manic energy Agrippa could only envy.
Even a fleet officer like Agrippa had to admit to being slightly impressed at the way the legion formed up to march. The routines and lines of command were so deeply entrenched that they could go from apparent chaos to shining ranks of sword and shield in no time at all. Yet this was more than a sudden rush to battle formations. Octavian had given orders for the entire camp to be packed up, and as the morning progressed, the soldiers finished their tasks and stood in silence, facing the city. Agrippa looked into the distance, his eyesight sharp for detail after years of peering at horizons. Like Maecenas, he had been staggered at Octavian’s ambitions. It felt like madness and treachery to consider a march into the centre of the city in the teeth of the will of the Senate. He shook his head, smiling wryly to himself. Yet he did not follow Octavian. He followed Caesar. If Caesar sent his men into Hades, they would follow without hesitation.
Agrippa moved when a dozen workmen came to shift the sacks onto carts. The Campus was bare as far as he could see in all directions: toilets filled in and raked, wooden buildings taken down beam by beam and packed. He walked to the front, where a legion servant waited patiently with a helmet and horse.
Maecenas and Octavian were already there, with the constant shadow of Gracchus watching everything with bright eyes. Legates Silva and Paulinius were splendid in the sunshine, their armour burnished to a fine glow. They looked almost younger since the first mo
ments he had seen them. Agrippa mounted up, ignoring the protest from his sore muscles.
As the sun reached its highest point, noon-bells began to sound across the city, rung in temples and markets and workshops to mark the change of shift. Agrippa looked back at ten thousand legionaries and another four thousand camp followers in their wake. They shone, the greatest fighting men of the greatest nation. It was not often that he recognised a moment as important in his life. As a rule, the decisions that mattered could only be understood months or even years later. Yet for once he knew. He took slow breaths as he savoured the sight of so many. The name of Caesar would not have been enough on its own. Octavian had found the words to call them. Agrippa pulled down his helmet and tied the leather strap under his chin.
Octavian looked left and right at Agrippa and Maecenas, his eyes bright with humour and possibility.
‘Will you ride with me, gentlemen?’ he said.
‘Why not, Caesar?’ Maecenas said. He shook his head in wonder. ‘I would not miss a moment.’
Octavian smiled. ‘Give the signal to march, Legate Silva. Let us remind the Senate they are not the only force in Rome.’
Horns blared across the Campus Martius and behind them the Seventh Victrix and Eighth Gemina legions began to march in step towards the city.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The gates of Rome were open to the legions as they came in from the Campus Martius. Beyond the shadow of the walls, citizens were gathering, the news spreading across the city far faster than men could march. The name of Caesar flew before them and the people came out in droves to see the heir to Rome and the world.
At first, Octavian and the legates rode with stiff backs and hands tight on the reins, but they were greeted with cheering and the crowds only grew with each street. There had been many processions before in the city. Marius had demanded a Triumph from the Senate of his day and Julius Caesar had enjoyed no fewer than four of them, celebrating his victories and scattering coins as he went.
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