by M C Scott
‘Hades, is he?’
That was news, and there was little enough of that from Rome just then. I was like a starving man shown a roast goose, desperate to rip it apart with my bare hands.
‘He’s taking risks, isn’t he? The men of the Macedonica are raised from the barbarian tribes around the Rhine. They may be citizens, but only because their grandfathers fought for Caesar and their fathers for Tiberius. The Germanica are worse. If you’re going to pay your Guard twice what you pay everyone else, you’d have thought you’d take care to choose them wisely; at least pick real Romans. In any case, Rome has nine cohorts of the Guard already; how many does a man need to make himself feel safe?’
Pantera smiled, just a little. Have you ever seen him with a smile on his face? He was a different man, suddenly; younger, with a spark like a street urchin.
He cocked one brow and said, ‘He’s made sixteen new cohorts of the Guard and four Urban cohorts, each of a thousand men.’
‘That’s twenty thousand men!’ You could have heard that shout in Syria. ‘Is he insane? Rome will burn, those parts that have not been pillaged!’ And then, ‘What’s he doing with the old Praetorians, the ones who supported Otho?’
‘He decommissioned them; paid their pensions and ordered them out of Rome. Also the astrologers: they have to be gone by the first of October, on pain of death.’
I wanted to sit down, to call for wine, to bank up the brazier and pepper Pantera with questions about Rome and her new emperor. What was Vitellius doing with his power? Was it true that he was driven by his brother, that Lucius was the real power behind the throne?
But outside, a man gave a single, quiet order and another voice was choked off in the kind of noise that only animals make, or men in great pain.
I stood and Pantera handed me my belt and made me presentable, as Demalion would have done.
‘I suppose,’ I said, ‘we’d better learn what we can from our nocturnal visitor and then kill him before half the camp tries to tear him apart with their bare hands.’
CHAPTER THREE
Judaea, June, AD 69
Vespasian
‘SAY IT.’
It was only just after dawn. The day was milk-white cool, a faint mist draped along the horizon waiting for the sun to burn it off.
The Syrian assassin hung by his wrists from the whipping post that had become both more and less than that.
Pantera stood nearby, his face and tunic mottled with blood. I saw his hands make a small, sharp movement and there was a pained, inaudible mumble that ended in a grunt.
‘Louder. Who sent you?’
‘Lucius Vitellius!’
The name bounced off the silence. Half the camp had heard what had happened and had come to watch. They were standing in lines, armour bright, glaring hatred at this man who had been their friend.
There was nothing more to be learned. My mouth was dry and my spit had the iron-sweet taste of another man’s blood. How many men had I killed in battle, without pause for thought? How few had I killed like this, hanging by their wrists from a high hook, drained of all that made them men?
It could have been worse. Fundanius might have been a traitor and a failed murderer, but he had not lost his eyes to hot irons, or his fingers to a dull, serrated knife; his skin had not been peeled slowly from his back, nor his limb bones crushed and wrenched from his torso.
In honesty, there had been no need for more than a cursory beating and even that had been as much to satisfy his pride as to appease the rage of the men.
He had nothing to gain by lying and all he could tell us was what we already knew: that a successful general on the eastern borders of the empire was deemed a mortal threat to the men who now ruled in Rome.
I was not safe in Judaea.
Pantera knew it, had known it from the moment Vitellius had taken the throne.
Like Corbulo, I had been too successful. I had subdued the rebels in Judaea as I had been ordered to do and now I commanded the absolute loyalty of three victorious legions plus the goodwill of at least five others.
Vitellius, by contrast, was an indolent hedonist who had happened to find himself at the head of four Germanic legions at a time when their generals needed a figurehead to put on the throne, and even then they’d offered it to someone else first, and been turned down: Vitellius was everyone’s second choice, and the world knew it.
And so now that world was looking to the east, to the eight legions of Judaea, Syria and Egypt, to see if they, too, would choose to name their own emperor.
Out there on the parade ground, with the milk-dawn sun just colouring our flesh, I was surrounded by the men of those legions, who knew exactly the power they held.
The ones nearest to me shifted and shuffled when I looked at them. Demalion caught my eye and didn’t look away. He thought his face was closed, when in fact expectation was written all across it, and he was hardly alone; the same look was printed on the face of every officer I could see.
A centurion had been sent against them, Roman against Roman, and it offended their sense of the world even as it churned their blood to battle froth. They wanted vengeance and restitution and action; before all of these, they wanted blood.
The assassin sensed their mood. He lifted his bruised head and spat a few spiteful words at Pantera. Even at this distance, half a dozen paces away, I could hear the venom in his voice, if not the detail.
I thought it a last foul defamation, ‘Fuck you all and may you rot for ever,’ the kind of thing condemned men the world over say to their executioners before sentence is carried out.
But Pantera was interested, suddenly, in ways he hadn’t been before. His face grew still. He asked a question and got another spit-thick answer which was clearly not enough. With barely a nod, he reached back to the brazier, selected an iron and slid it into the fire’s red heart.
He pumped the bellows himself. The heat sent the nearest men back a pace. Everyone was still now; this was more than just the routine questioning of an assassin.
With a look of weary distaste, the spy slid his right hand into a leather glove and lifted the iron from the fire. The tip was white hot.
The assassin’s skin blistered along his cheekbone in a line towards his eye. The smell of singed flesh tickled the air. Pantera’s lips moved, but it was impossible to hear his question over the high shriek of his victim. The iron moved away. The question came again, and this time Fundanius drew breath to answer.
I think I stepped forward. Certainly I leaned closer to listen, to ask my own question.
‘What did he—’
‘Lord!’
Pantera and Demalion dived at me together. They collided in a crack of bone and flesh and brought me down, held within the solid shield of their bodies.
Above, a flash of silver caught the sun. I heard a grunt tinged with triumph and then, amid the sudden uproar, a howl of defeat that sent bile shooting sour up my throat.
I know the sound of a cohort shocked into fury. There were only two possible reasons to hear it now and I wasn’t dead, which meant …
I shoved myself free, rolled to my feet, spun round to the whipping post.
Publius Fundanius, failed assassin, hung limp from his wrists, a squat-bladed throw-knife lodged in his throat. Blood traced a faltering arc from the wound; even as I watched, it slowed to a dribble.
He was gone beyond reach: dead; slain to secure his silence.
‘Who did this? Hold him! Bring him to me now!’
Rarely have my men seen me angry. They fell back before the force of it.
‘Now!’
It is not hard to find a traitor who throws a knife when he stands in a row with loyal men on either side, before and behind. Before the echoes of the last word had become dust in the sand, the crowd parted and two centurions dragged a third between them.
‘Albinius?’
I would not have believed it, and yet could not do otherwise, for a wide, scarlet gash marked his throat, still leaki
ng blood, and his own right hand was scarlet to the wrist.
‘Albinius?’ I said again.
I knew this man. True, he was a Syrian, but he wasn’t some new conscript, brought in under duress and hating us for it; he was a volunteer of fifteen years’ service, a cohort commander. He had fought at my side for the past two years. He had led, come to think of it, the third cohort of the Xth legion, into which Fundanius had so recently been promoted.
He was not dead yet; he had killed his co-conspirator cleanly enough, but, as with many others, his courage had failed him when it came to killing himself.
I took his ruined face by the chin, ungently lifted it. His eyes were losing focus, but they came to rest on my face. He smiled, and there was in it no shame, or apology, but a tinge of triumph and such loathing as I have only before seen on a battlefield, and then rarely.
‘Albinius, why?’
He shook his head and tried to speak, but the words whistled shapeless from the cut edge of his windpipe.
He could not have told us anything even if we could have kept him alive long enough to force from him a name, or what he had been paid, how much and in what coin, to persuade him to betray his general so completely. By his own hand, he was beyond revenge, or use.
The men were restless, needing blood, and, now, I could give them what they wanted. My gladius floated to my grip, light as a wheat stalk. With barely another thought, I drove it into Albinius’ chest, striking just below the left nipple, aiming up and in and back towards the point of the right shoulder, as I had been taught too many years ago to remember.
As it always does, my blade jammed between the ribs and I had to use both hands to wrench it free. Blood bloomed bright about the wound in his throat, foaming on the final breath.
The traitor’s eyes glared their last light, and grew dull.
I said, ‘Leave the carcasses outside the gates for the jackals. No honours.’
The men about me saluted in silence, but they didn’t rush to do my bidding. Instead, the expectation I had read earlier on the faces of the officers was multiplied right along the row.
If I didn’t act swiftly, they’d hail me imperator, there, on the spot, and I’d have to execute them all for treason, or lead them into civil war.
I turned back to Pantera. He was waiting a pace or two behind us, apart from the centurions, the tribunes and the legates.
In that short time, he had rinsed his face, his hands. Only his tunic was bloodstained. His expression was bland. It was over a year since he had sat in my tent and told me I could be emperor. Then, I had laughed in his face.
‘We need to talk,’ I said. ‘Find Titus and Mucianus and tell them—’
‘They’re in the command tent, lord, awaiting your presence.’
‘Oh, Hades, do you never stop? Bring Demalion then. He can guard the door.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Judaea, June, AD 69
Vespasian
THE SUN WAS up by then, not far enough to broil the day, just a cherried orb on the eastern horizon that stained the light in the tent to blood.
Not counting Demalion, who stood within the door flap, we were four who gathered around the table inside to talk treason, taking watered wine in our campaign mugs, eating brown olives, and small silvery fish, caught by their millions on the coast and dried on rocks in the sun.
I was the oldest, the greyest, the one who, seemingly, must carry the conscience for this treachery we planned.
The youngest, not yet thirty years old, was Titus, my elder son, the light of my life, my legacy to the world. I wouldn’t say that in his brother’s hearing, of course. Domitian knows, but he doesn’t need to hear it said aloud.
Unlike his younger brother, Titus has been gifted an honest, open face, an athlete’s never-ending grace, buoyant chestnut hair and a lively eye. If he is not beautiful – and let us be honest, he is too short to be beautiful, his face too round – he has the glorious vivacity of youth that sets lovers trailing after him by the score.
Already a legionary legate, commander of the XVth Apollinaris, with the path to senator and then consul laid wide before him, my son, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, had most to lose.
Mucianus, former consul and now governor of neighbouring Syria, might be a decade younger than I am – it’s hard to tell his age with any accuracy any more than one can tell his exact parentage – but he was one of the few competent generals left alive after Nero’s predations on the senate.
Unmarried, childless, he was quite evidently lost to Titus’ smile, though I would wager my entire estate that the boy had not lain with him, and never will: Titus is made for women to exactly the same degree that Mucianus is not.
Even so, lust and ambition make for a heady wine and they had combined to transform this lean, driven man from the rival he once was to the kingmaker he wanted to become.
He had commanded the three Syrian legions during the recent Judaean war: the IVth Scythians, the VIth, and the newly reformed XIIth. They loved him just as my legions loved me and would have marched into Hades if he’d asked it of them. Just then, Mucianus was minded to ask them to propel me to the throne in Rome if only I would stop being obstinate and accept his offer.
And then there was Pantera, who was playing the role of secretary, a fiction that was laughable. Pantera was the one who had first suggested this path, nearly two years ago. Pantera was the one who had induced the Hebrew prophet to hail me the inheritor of their Star Prophecy that said a man would arise in the east and become lord of the whole world.
But it was Pantera who was so carefully not speaking now, leaving Mucianus to make his points for him, which he was doing, I have to say, with the zeal of the newly converted.
‘Vitellius is an incompetent idiot who excels only at eating and drinking, usually at others’ expense. He wouldn’t be emperor if the Rhine legions hadn’t put him on the throne and even then they wanted Rufus first. He’s a profligate wastrel who makes Nero look restrained in his spending. He’ll bankrupt the empire, and reduce the senate to a bunch of drooling fools.’
‘There are those,’ said Titus idly, studying the tilted surface of his wine, ‘who will say Nero accomplished that many years ago.’
Mucianus stopped. He tapped his long finger to his lips. His thoughts were so clear, and so graphic, that I didn’t know whether to laugh aloud or drag him outside and flog him.
I could do neither, obviously. Addressing them both, I said, ‘I am the second son of a tax farmer. My brother was the first senator in our family and he makes it universally known that I only followed him into public service at our mother’s insistence. Since Octavian became Augustus, there has never yet been an emperor who was not of solid senatorial stock. Drooling idiots or not, the blue-blooded men of the senate won’t have me.’
‘If you’ll forgive my saying so,’ Pantera said, quietly, from the farthest end of the table, ‘there have been three emperors in the past twelve months and the premium on ancestry has fallen noticeably with each one. If we delay, it is not Vitellius we must fear – incompetent and indolent as he is – but his brother Lucius. He is twenty years younger, more ambitious, more intelligent and more ruthless than any of his recent predecessors. If Lucius gains open control, there’ll be more than two assassins sent against you; there will be dozens. With respect, you can’t afford that, and if you won’t fight on your own behalf, then do so for the people and the senate of Rome. They want – and deserve – a leader who can set the empire back on its feet, who will rule with compassion, not caprice or cruelty, and who can count higher than ten without having to take off his boots to number his toes.’
Delivered of this speech, Pantera looked me clear in the eye. ‘My lord, you have six legions here, and two more waiting under Julius Tiberius in Alexandria. He will have them swear their oath to you the day we give him the word. With all that help, you can be emperor. The question is, do you want to be?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
It was a genuine q
uestion; I still thought I might wriggle out of it.
Mucianus answered. ‘Not if you want to live, no. If those two are the only ones in your army in Lucius’ pay, I’ll eat my belt. We can hunt for traitors, but they won’t give themselves away easily, and all we can be sure of is that Lucius will know soon that his men have failed. He will send others, or Vitellius will send orders for you to fall on your sword. Either way, you will die. The only chance to live is to take the field against them both. The choice, such as exists, lies in how this may be done. There is a way without bloodshed. Or there is the havoc of civil war.’
‘Without bloodshed? Are you insane?’ I slammed both palms on the table, and to hell with who might be listening outside. ‘Vitellius may be an idiot, but his brother and his generals are not. They have four legions camped in Rome, eating at the city’s heart like so many locusts. You told me yourself that they have sixteen thousand newly made Praetorian Guards. They have the massed naval fleets at Ravenna and Misene with their men in dock over winter and nothing better to do than pick their noses and fuck the local whores. They’ll march when they’re called to and be glad of it, particularly if Vitellius offers to make them into full legions. On top of that, he has legions scattered through the Balkans and the Germanies, any or all of which could block our route to Rome and may well do so. How, exactly, do you plan to take them on without bloodshed?’
‘With minimal bloodshed, then.’ Mucianus gave a merchant’s shrug. ‘Vitellius will have to relocate some of his legions before winter. Rome can’t sustain those numbers for long: the people will revolt against feeding so many mouths.’
‘He won’t send them far.’
‘He won’t, but then we don’t want him to. If you go to Egypt, you can threaten to choke off the grain supply to Rome. Shortages would be blamed on Vitellius and there would be riots. That’ll maintain pressure on him, whatever else is going on. I, meanwhile, will march at the head of as many men as Judaea can spare – I think probably five legions – while your son Titus’ – Mucianus flicked his long lashes at the boy, who had the grace to smile – ‘Titus will remain here with command of those legions left behind. He will prevent a renewed insurgency and then complete the defeat of Jerusalem when you are safely made emperor. Thus you and he will be kept safe from harm and guilt while the war is prosecuted, and you can return to Rome bringing peace with you when the war has burned itself out.’