Blood and Steel

by Harry Sidebottom

  ‘Let good auspices and joyful fortune attend the people of Rome.’ On the tribunal, Fulvius Pius had begun the injunction which proceeded a proposal.

  Menophilus stepped forward. Romulus and his slaves would provide the answer. With only a hint of irritation at this late intervention, he was granted permission to address the House.

  ‘Conscript Fathers, everything that has been proposed will gladden the hearts of our noble Augusti. Another fast ship will take the news to Carthage.’ No point in not reminding them where real power would soon reside, and his proximity to it. ‘Although I am but a Quaestor, my respect for the traditions and procedure of this House could not be more profound. As such, I hope my elders will forgive my temerity in reminding them of the date. There is only one mark against the Nones of March, and that is the letter N. On this day Romulus consecrated the Temple of Veiovis. Whoever you are, he said, take refuge here, and you will be safe. From that small beginning Rome took its rise. Our ancestors believed that no meeting of the Senate or people should be held on a day that is marked Nefastus. While fully supporting the proposal of Domitius Gallicanus, the amendment of Caelius Balbinus, and the call from Clodius Pupienus for the election of new Suffect Consuls, I move for a postponement to a more auspicious day.’

  As he resumed his seat, every Senator present fell over himself to support his motion. Again, Menophilus tasted the bile of contempt. Nothing could be more urgent than restoring order to the city, and guarding Italy against Maximinus. Yet all the Conscript Fathers rushed to embrace the opportunity of a few days’ clandestine manoeuvring. Not one put the safety of the Res Publica before factional interest. Of course, much of Menophilus’ contempt was reserved for himself.

  ‘Conscript Fathers, we detain you no longer.’ The Consul spoke, the doors were opened, and the Senators began to depart.

  Outside the rain fell, and the mob jeered.

  Menophilus sat very still. The safety of the Res Publica must come above everything. He did not like to think about the previous morning, about Vitalianus. All that mattered was the safety of the Res Publica. Stern measures were necessary to secure the city. Sabinus had left Rome to the mob. Sabinus commanded six thousand soldiers, and was a friend of Maximinus. Something must be done about the Prefect of the City.

  Chapter 9

  The Northern Frontier

  The Town of Sirmium,

  Eight Days before the Ides of March, AD238

  Iunia Fadilla kissed her nurse for the last time. She closed the eyes of the dear old woman, and said her name. ‘Eunomia.’

  Rain spattered on the window. Through the glass the world was dark and distorted. The rain had come down across the Danube the day before, melting the ice on the eaves and turning the snow in the streets to slush. It had come too late for Eunomia. The cold of the North had killed her. It gave Iunia Fadilla another reason to hate her husband.

  Eunomia’s decline had been sudden, but there had been time to summon those who prepared the dead from their quarters outside the town. Now, the Pollinctores stepped forward in their colourful and sinister caps. They lifted Eunomia from the bed and placed her on the bare floor. They said the ritual words.

  The end is to the beginning as the beginning is to the end.

  Eunomia had been with Iunia Fadilla since the beginning. A happy childhood, peripatetic yet peaceful; the big house on the Caelian in Rome, the villa in Sicily overlooking the Bay of Naxos, the retreat in the hills of Apulia. Iunia Fadilla’s mother had been the granddaughter of Marcus Aurelius. Her father also was rich, and had had the good sense to keep out of politics. Eunomia had gone with her when she married old Nummius. If her nurse had been shocked by the couple’s life in their luxurious home on the Esquiline, she had voiced no disapproval. Eumonia had liked Iunia Fadilla’s lover Gordian. Sometimes, when she had taken a drink, she had said what woman would not be happy taking an agreeable husband and a vigorous younger man to her bed, separately or together.

  If Gordian had proposed when Nummius died, things might have been different. Iunia Fadilla had thought he would, but he had claimed it was against his Epicurean principles, and by then he was more often abroad, in Syria then Achaea. As far as she knew he had not returned to Rome once in the three years since he went to Africa.

  Widowed at eighteen, she had enjoyed her independence. Nummius had left her well provided for. She had the house on the Esquiline, and her tutor, her cousin Fadillus, was not the type of man to go against her wishes. In the round of parties and recitals, of visits to the baths and harmless flirtations, of quiet nights reading, she had grown close to Eunomia again.

  Everything, except Eunomia, had changed when Vitalianus had come to the house. The deputy Praetorian Prefect had announced that she was to marry Maximus the son of Maximinus. Refusal was not an option when the man seeking your hand was the son of the Emperor. On the long journey north, Eunomia had consoled her with reports of her betrothed. The Caesar was tall, good looking. He was cultured, wrote poetry that rivalled Catullus. Rumour had it he was an attentive lover of women and girls; no danger he would be one of those husbands who preferred page boys, or was held back by stern Stoic principles. When he saw her beauty, he would not desert her bed for concubines or the wives of other men.

  There was no denying the beauty of Maximus. At their wedding, he smelt of cinnamon and roses as he leant close to whisper. They say you have sucked off half the men in Rome; at least you should be good at it. He had first beaten her that night. She had fought, but he was stronger. If I have to marry a whore, I will treat her like one. Since then, he slapped and punched her thighs, her buttocks and her breasts. This new year she had had to wear a veil at the ceremony renewing the oath of loyalty. The night before he had claimed he could smell wine on her breath. When a woman drinks without her husband, she closes the door on all virtues, and opens her legs for all-comers.

  Iunia Fadilla would have given anything for her husband to desert her bed. And now Maximus was coming back. Laurelled letters had arrived. The Emperor had won another great victory. The Sarmatian Iazyges were routed. The army had recrossed the Danube, and would be in Sirmium tomorrow. Doubtless, Maximus would demand his conjugal rights. No tender kiss of greeting, but a flurry of blows as he took her. No words of endearment, but insults. Bitch! What man could kiss a mouth which had sucked so many pricks. Bitch!

  The Pollinctores were busy with cloths and bowls of warm water, washing the body. Was Gordian right? Did everything return to peace and sleep, just atoms swirling back into the cosmos, without consciousness? Or were the poets right; the ferry across the river to Hades, murky and sunless? Eunomia had been devout. On the journey north, she had poured a libation at every wayside shrine, added a stone to each of Mercury’s cairns. If the dead were judged, there was no question of torments. Yet it was hard to imagine her old nurse disporting herself with the heroes and the virtuous in the Elysian Fields or the Isles of the Blessed. Perhaps she would wander like a shadow among the dark meadows overgrown with asphodel, until she drank the waters of oblivion. At least she was free of pain, her back unbent, her joints no longer stiff, her hand no longer trembling.

  Iunia Fadilla was passed the sheers. She hacked off a clump of her hair. She took a pinch of dust from a bowl. I am what five fingers might gather and carry. She sprinkled the dirt over her head.

  When the corpse was anointed and dressed, it would be carried to the atrium. There, feet towards the door, it would be displayed. A fitting welcome for Maximus: the mournful music of flutes, and the women, filthy in dishevelled black, wailing, beating their breasts, tearing their cheeks.

  Eunomia had known her herbs and remedies. She had taught Iunia Fadilla. Seventeen months of marriage, seventeen months of unwelcome and painful visits to her bed, and still no children. And there would be none. Iunia Fadilla would mix the old olive oil with the honey, cedar resin and white lead, and push the mixture inside herself.

  Eunomia had served her well, but she had died leaving one service undone. The
imperial household was closely watched, spies everywhere. It had been impossible to obtain the necessary poisons. There was no hope in the world. No Sarmatian arrow had found Maximus. No revolt threatened the rule of his father. Every plot had been uncovered and crushed. There was nothing else for it – Iunia Fadilla would have to kill her husband herself.

  Everything was ready. Iunia Fadilla put a coin in Eunomia’s mouth. The handlers of the dead bound her nurse’s jaws shut.

  Chapter 10

  Rome

  The Carinae,

  Eight Days before the Ides of March, AD238

  The door was shut. No doubt it was locked and barred. The same would be true of the only other entrance at the rear of the house. It was not yet mid-morning, the second hour of the day, still the time of negotium, when public business was done. Normally the front door would be open, and the Senator Tiberius Pollienus Armenius Peregrinus would be receiving his friends and clients. The times were far from normal. The plebs were out on the streets. The rain had not checked them. There was nothing else to stop them running riot. Neither Sabinus, the Prefect of the City, nor Potens, the Prefect of the vigiles, had been seen in the two days since Vitalianus had been murdered. The men of the Urban Cohorts and the Watch had remained in their barracks. Robbery and murder stalked the Seven Hills. All the luxurious houses in the Carinae district of the Esquiline were tightly shuttered. If Armenius thought it would keep him safe, he was much mistaken.

  Timesitheus watched from a recessed doorway, across and down the street. Two bulky men, also hooded and cloaked, stood at his back. It reminded Timesitheus of another time and place. Mogontiacum on the northern frontier, three years before, standing with Maximinus, waiting to burst into the house of Petronius Magnus, and arrest him and his fellow Senators. It had been raining then too.

  Some men would say the cases were entirely different. Magnus and the others had been traitors. This thing with Armenius was a personal vendetta. Those men would be wrong. Like everything, both were about self-interest.

  Timesitheus despised the hypocrisy of men who clothed their actions in fine-sounding words, even to themselves. Justice was all very well, if it fitted with advantage. Step by step, with infinite care, Timesitheus had led Magnus and his friends into conspiracy. But if they had not been treacherous, they would have denounced him. As Tranquillina had said, best he, rather than another, reap the rewards of exposing their true nature. No one had clearer sight than his wife.

  It was the same with Armenius. From obscure equestrian origins on a backwater Greek island, Timesitheus had risen high, the governor of provinces, the councillor of Emperors. He had drawn handsome profits from a succession of military and civil offices, but he had taken no more than was his due. When one of the great patrons of his youth had died, he had left Timesitheus a substantial inheritance. But, on his deathbed, Pollienus Auspex had adopted Armenius. Now the senatorial legacy hunter was contesting the bequest to Timesitheus. Given his connections, Armenius was likely to win the court case.

  Timesitheus would not be robbed of what was his by right. Just as Magnus and the others had died because their souls were tainted by treachery, so Armenius would suffer for his avarice.

  A squall gusted up the empty street, fat raindrops spattering the pavement. It was near time. Timesitheus hoped that the young cutpurse would be as good as his word. The oaths taken meant nothing, but Castricius had been well paid, and the promise of plunder should outweigh the inclement weather.

  Timesitheus thought about that morning in Mogontiacum; the rain falling in sheets, the door splintering, the torchlight glinting on steel. Maximinus could fight, but he had done nothing right since he had become Emperor. The elite hated and feared him for his executions and confiscations. He had never travelled to Rome to attempt to conciliate the Senate. The plebs loathed him for curtailing the games and stealing the treasures from the temples. He had doubled the pay of the troops, but the expense was unsupportable, and soldiers alone could never keep an Emperor on the throne. Maximinus would not survive long. But would this be the revolt that toppled him? Gordian the Elder was an old man, and Africa held no legions. The Senators were better at talking than fighting. They had neither won over Sabinus and Potens, and thus the troops in their charge, nor liquidated them. The Senators commanded no troops in Rome.

  Tranquillina was right. In a revolution, you had to choose your side early. Quietism and procrastination won no thanks with the victors. Either Timesitheus must ingratiate himself with those leading the revolt, find something to offer their cause, or he must declare for Maximinus, ride to join him in the north, or perform some open deed on his behalf here in Rome. Timesitheus had never cared for Maximinus; a big, ugly, stupid and violent barbarian. His blood had boiled every time Maximinus called him Little Greek. How dare a hulking Thracian call a true Hellene a Graeculus? Yet the very stupidity of Maximinus was an asset. Timesitheus had convinced him of the guilt of Magnus, and been awarded the province of Bithynia-Pontus. He had done the same with Valerius Apollinaris, and received his province of Asia. Here in Rome, the incompetence and venality of the previous incumbent had made it easy as Prefect of the Grain Supply to increase the dole while cutting the cost to the treasury. Another reward could be expected.

  It was a difficult choice. Either he had to reaffirm his allegiance to a doomed regime, or throw in his lot with a revolution that showed scant chance of success. And Tranquillina was right, he had to make that decision soon. Still, clarity of thought demanded one thing at a time. Timesitheus packed the problem away down in the hold of his mind. Today he would settle his account with Armenius, and perhaps there might be opportunity enough to deal with the surviving son of Valerius Apollinaris as well. If you plan one murder, you might as well commit two.

  The mob could be heard coming up from the Subura before it could be seen. A menacing roar, the individual shouts and chants indeterminate, torn away by the wind and rain. The bolder spirits, or the more rapacious, ran ahead up the steps. Then the street was filled with a bedraggled phalanx of the impecunious.

  Castricius had done well. There were at least a hundred, perhaps many more, scoured from the drinking dens and brothels of the slums. Some carried firebrands, sawing in the wind. Most had knives. A knot of men near the front hefted a large beam of hardwood.

  Enemies, enemies! Nail the friends of Maximinus on a cross!

  Under his hood, Timesitheus smiled. Armenius had been a Praetor under Maximinus, but was no more his friend than most of the dozens who had held office during his reign.

  Hostes, hostes! Nail them, drag them, burn them alive!

  Young Castricius had shown admirable resource. Even the sordid plebs fought better if they believed they had a motive beyond mere gain. As if summoned by the thought, like an evil daemon conjured by an incautious word, Castricius was in front of Timesitheus.

  ‘The back gate?’

  ‘There are men there,’ Castricius said.

  ‘Then get to work.’

  Castricius smiled – a look of pure delight on his little pointed, angular face – and skipped away.

  Timesitheus wondered if he had met his equal in decisive amorality. He was seized by a transient curiosity. Where had the knife-boy come from? What had brought him to the Subura? He was intelligent, spoke good Greek, had educated manners and no lack of courage. Of course, none of it would do him any good. He was destined for the mines, the arena, or the cross.

  Ineptly swung, the makeshift battering-ram struck the door. It did no more than rattle the boards.

  In an instant, Castricius was there; darting about, pulling men into place, gesturing, shouting – one, two, three. The door jumped on its hinges, groaned. One, two, three. On the third blow, the leaves cracked open.

  The mob surged through, momentarily choking the throat of the house with their numbers.

  Timesitheus turned to the men behind him. It was important to have friends. Alcimus Felicianus was the Procurator in charge of the Flavian Amphitheatre and t
he Ludus Magnus, the largest gladiatorial school in Rome. Given the unrest, he had been unsurprised when Timesitheus had requested the loan of a couple of gladiators, not demurring when it was stressed that they should be men of discretion, not the sort who would baulk at any order. All Romans had debts to settle.

  The gladiator called Narcissus handed Timesitheus the pantomime mask. The silvered leather depicted a young girl, impossibly beautiful, cold, with narrow slits for eyes and mouth. When Timesitheus put it on, his world narrowed, like a horse in blinkers.

  The last of the mob were disappearing into the house. Timesitheus went after them, Narcissus and the other gladia-tor Iaculator following. Toughs from the Subura were fine for looting, spontaneous murder – but calculated killing called for professionals.

  The battering-ram lay among the wreckage of the door. Timesitheus stepped over it. The passage into the house was dark, the atrium beyond light. As he emerged into the open space, the noise hit him. Behind the mask, he could not tell its direction. Through the eye holes he saw Castricius’ men hard at work in the surrounding rooms. Portable ornaments were thrust into bags, larger ones wantonly smashed. Furniture was broken, mosaics defaced. A man defecated in a corner. In one chamber a girl had been stripped naked, and was held down ready to be gang raped. Everything was going well.

  Timesitheus hurried through the open-sided room that connected the atrium to the peristyle garden. Not many of the mob had penetrated so far yet. A few domestic servants flitted through the columns on the far side, seeking some illusory safety. A handful prostrated themselves before the lararium, beseeching the domestic deities. Fools, there were no gods to hear their prayers.

  The set of rooms favoured by Armenius were to the left. A suborned slave had drawn a plan. Timesitheus had memo-rized the entire thing. The outer door was locked. The gladia-tors put their heavy shoulders to the painted panels. It was their diet, all those beans they ate, that made them so bulky. When the door gave, Timesitheus sprang through, sword in hand. The reception room was empty. A Corinthian bronze of an athlete, sheened with age, stood in the centre.