Rome 4: The Art of War

by M C Scott

  As a former legionary commander, he knew, he said, exactly what qualities were required in a fighting man, which were not always the qualities of a gladiator, and he might not have enough at his own school, but if the emperor’s brother could offer gold then Julius Claudianus could bring together a century or more of the best fighting men in Rome.

  Lucius offered an unlimited amount of gold. The deal was struck.

  They clapped each other on the shoulder like sworn brothers and Lucius came over to taste the goat’s cream and chicory sauce I was cooking. He deemed it fit for an emperor and ordered some for his brother for that night.

  Later, in the tavern, Julius Claudianus bought me a drink, sat me down in a corner, took a pair of dice out of his pocket and asked me for a game. When we finished, one of his dice had become mine. It was about the size of my thumbnail, beautiful, and well weighted.

  Julius rose, and patted my arm. ‘Give it to Pantera,’ he said, although neither of us had spoken his name before then. ‘To him and nobody else.’

  I did. It took me about eight days to set up a meeting; I had to find Borros and tell him and then we had to take care that it wasn’t just a way to trap both of us in incriminating circumstances.

  We met in a tavern on the far side of town with Felix and Borros standing guard. I gave Pantera the die and watched him slide his knife under the six face and lift it free. There was a note inside. Opened, it read, The gladiators will be raised for Lucius.

  It wasn’t news, I had already told him that, but what it told me was that Julius Claudianus was Pantera’s man.

  I didn’t mention any of this to Jocasta when next I saw her. Pantera told me to put it out of my head and I did. If I’m honest, I thought she knew and it would have seemed like gossiping.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Rome, November, AD 69

  Geminus

  I HAD HEARD about the gladiators in October when Lucius first commissioned them, but hadn’t paid them much attention. We were busy planning for Juvens’ triumphal exit from Rome and I didn’t have time to think about anything else.

  On the ides of November, I watched him leave just as I had watched Caecina leave two months before; in fact they looked much the same. Juvens had had his usual mount taken away and had been forced on to a grey parade gelding all done up with white plumes, and he wasn’t happy about it. His men had been polished till they shone and they marched after him, looking almost as unhappy.

  Fourteen cohorts of the Guard plus all the cavalry wings at our disposal went with him. The city cheered much as it had cheered Caecina, which didn’t feel like a good omen. Realizing this, Vitellius issued an edict to the effect that Caecina’s name was no longer to be mentioned, and that all talk of treachery was to be met with the greatest severity.

  Given that there were only two cohorts of the Guard left behind, plus the Urban cohorts and the Watch, both of whom were loyal to Sabinus, who was looking increasingly like brother to next year’s emperor, that kind of order was always going to be difficult to enforce.

  I had been left in charge of the Guard, with responsibility for discipline and order, and so found myself arranging the men into groups big enough to take care of themselves and sending them to those parts of the city least likely to harbour dissent. The problem, of course, was working out which those areas might be from an ever-dwindling pool of possible options.

  We managed like this for half a month, and then we had word from Juvens that he required the emperor’s presence.

  It was late November by then and Juvens had marched his cohorts a mere seventy-two miles up the Flaminian Way; he should have made that in half the time. He had dug in at Mevania, a small and insignificant town on the western edge of a flat plain, opposite the Apennines.

  It was a good, defensible place with hills at his back and open country around and if all he had had to worry about was the enemy army that was currently marching through steep mountain passes in foul winter weather to get to him, he would have been fine.

  But it wasn’t all. Far more damaging was the constant flow of letters sent to his men from their friends in the opposing army, letters that spent pages telling of the wonders of Antonius Primus, how Vespasian was by far the better emperor, and how good was life on their side of the line, where the men feasted on exotic food sent by shipload from the east, revelling in the endless supply of women, enjoying the fruits of their victories.

  Juvens could, and did, intercept and destroy letters to the ordinary serving men, but he couldn’t stop the officers from reading letters that came in the wood piles, in secret compartments in the bottoms of wine barrels, in the hats of the men who treated the horses, in any of the dozen different ways that men used to communicate from one side of this civil war to the other. In the days since his army had come to a halt, he had lost a dozen senior officers to the enemy and the leak threatened to become a flood. And so he called for the emperor Vitellius to visit them to stiffen their resolve.

  And Vitellius went.

  And the flood became a deluge.

  Truly, Vitellius was his own worst enemy. To put heart into his men a man must have heart himself, and as anyone who had known him closely could tell you, Vitellius hovered daily on the brink of abdication.

  Lucius was the one who kept him steady, but Lucius was not prepared to go north himself, not when he had evidence that Pantera was busy trying to force him there.

  And so Vitellius went alone, if by ‘alone’ you mean only in the company of every senator who wanted to make an impression on him, plus their mistresses, plus his tyrant of a mother. And yes, I went too: I was told to.

  We knew Vitellius was not a natural orator, but it went far beyond that.

  On his first day, he was giving an adequate enough address to the assembled troops, raising his voice at least sufficiently to be heard by the front ranks, when a flock of vultures flew overhead, so vast and so dark as to blot out the sun. Three of them came down low and knocked our emperor from his podium. Either that or he fell, recoiling in his terrified belief that they had come to lift him up to the heavens. Either way, it didn’t look good; the men held their silence, but it had a dull, flat feel to it.

  The next day, a bull being led to the altar for sacrifice was spooked by a runaway mule, gored its handlers and joined the mule in an orgy of escape. The gods, quite clearly, had rejected the offering. That’s when the muttering started.

  We might have survived both of these; it was the wine that sealed his fate. Vitellius was weak, and he looked it. He was uncertain, and it showed. He knew nothing of strategy and now, thanks to his idiocy in asking questions in public that should only ever have been asked in the privacy of his tent, if at all, his entire garrison had experienced his ignorance first-hand. And he drank from first light to last and was rarely seen sober among men who prided themselves on their ability to drink hard and fight hard and march on an aching head.

  Any one of these three they could have tolerated, two perhaps; all three together, they most assuredly could not. A dozen officers were gone by the end of the first day and more each day after that.

  When news came from Lucius that the Misene fleet had, in fact, defected to Vespasian, Juvens took the opportunity to suggest to the emperor that perhaps he was needed urgently in Rome. He was better gone, but when he – and I – left, we took seven of Juvens’ fourteen Praetorian cohorts with us, and virtually all of the officers followed us back to Rome.

  The only good thing about being away was that Lucius had stayed behind in Rome and for eight days I had been free of him. The worst thing about coming back was that Lucius was there to greet us.

  He was hopping mad – quite literally springing from one foot to the other, although whether in rage or delight was impossible to tell.

  He didn’t seem overly moved by the desperate news from the front, and as soon as he could get me away from the emperor he virtually dragged me into a corner and gave me a lecture about his bloody gladiators.

  So it was
delight, not rage, that was moving him. The gladiators, by his account, were his secret weapon in his personal war against Pantera: one thousand hand-picked, hard-trained men who were going to carve through the marines at Misene like a knife through soft leather and restore the good name of Vitellius while simultaneously blocking the western port to Vespasian’s incoming ships.

  He dragged me down into the city to see them: one thousand men crammed into an arena barely big enough for half that number, oiled, semi-naked, a landscape of rigid muscles and shaved cheeks. If I hadn’t known him always to favour women, I would have suspected Lucius of setting up a male harem on a grand scale.

  While we were there, their leader, Julius Claudianus, took us to one side and said that Pantera had been seen heading for a particular brothel on the side of the Capitoline.

  Actually, he said he had heard a half-baked rumour that the spy might have been there, but Lucius treated it as golden fact. I have never seen him move so fast.

  He spat orders like a fishwife and within moments we had horses to ride – I was on an ugly chestnut beast that showed the white of its eye and resisted the bit – and two dozen men fully armed to go with us.

  We rode as hard then as anyone has ever ridden in Rome’s streets, heading flat out towards the Capitoline. Nearing the slums, I leaned over to Lucius. ‘May I ask where we’re going?’

  ‘To a brothel. We were going anyway, but this just confirms— Oh, for fuck’s sake, man, don’t be such a prude! Wipe that scowl off your face and listen! Pantera’s been there seven times in the past two months but I’ve never had word in time to take him. Now there’s a chance, if we move fast enough. Bring those men and come on!’

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Rome, November, AD 69

  Trabo

  I DIDN’T MUCH like Pantera, and I certainly didn’t trust him, but he had courage, you have to give him that. He led Lucius a merry dance into the ghetto, using himself as bait, and given what Lucius had planned for him, I’m not sure I could have done that.

  It happened the day the emperor rode back into the city. Pantera came to us in the middle of the morning, out of the blue, dressed as a slave-buyer with his three personal ‘slaves’ in tow. The story was that he had bought Borros and wanted to see if he could become a gladiator. You know what he’s like; everyone was right for their part.

  Borros himself could easily have been a fighter. He was washed and oiled and had some bull’s-leather armour of a kind that went out of use in Rome when I was about three years old, but was probably still worn in the provinces. He had a great-sword that looked as if it might have genuinely been British, and a small round shield.

  Julius fussed around the big oaf like a bear round a cub, insisted he wrapped his blade in thick, soft leather and his fists likewise, that he wear greaves to protect his shins, that kind of rubbish. He had pitted him against the Drake, a little Thessalyan with blue-black hair who was wickedly fast with a trident and a net, a retiarius who had survived the tendency for all of his kind to die fast in the arena.

  Years ago, Claudius passed a law that any retiarius who was beaten in his bout should be slaughtered on the spot and never given a second chance, but then Claudius, more than any other emperor, liked the sight of other men’s pain. Nero, who was easily the most squeamish of his family, revoked the ruling, but still, the retiarii had a noticeably short lifespan and the Drake was one of the few who had beaten the odds.

  We had a good crowd for the audience: all one thousand of Lucius’ fighting men, sworn to the emperor; men who had seen the chance to escape from the arena and get into the legions. They couldn’t believe their luck, I tell you. Claudianus had had a dozen volunteers trying for every place. He’d had the luxury of weeding out the weak, the soft, the unintelligent, or the too-intelligent, and by the time he’d finished he had a thousand near-fanatics who would follow his commands to the letter.

  They had all gathered to watch the bout between Borros and the Drake, which was fine, until a runner came panting from the palace and it turned out that the new ‘cohort’ was required to put on a parade for Lucius.

  Pantera made his excuses and left, but not before he’d had a quiet word with Claudianus. He couldn’t afford to be seen, of course; Geminus was one of the few men in the tight little clique around Lucius who could actually identify him, but I watched him leave and he didn’t go far, just ducked into the ironsmith’s down the road where they made the weapons for the arena. I doubt very much if he’d gone in to order a sword.

  I was called inside to make a midday meal for Lucius, but he didn’t eat it. I didn’t see what made him leave, but he was gone as if a thousand harpies were on his tail, dragging an unhappy Geminus along for the ride: I hadn’t let Geminus see me, you needn’t think that. I’m not stupid.

  What exactly happened to Pantera? I’ve no idea. You’d have to ask one of the others.

  I do know that when Julius’ cohort of gladiators marched out a few days later, I marched with them. Nobody asked me, but nobody told me not to. Jocasta hadn’t been to see me in half a month and I was sick of wondering what she was doing. I thought it would be easier to live without her if I was away from Rome.

  Of course it wasn’t, but a man can dream, can’t he?

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Rome, November, AD 69

  Horus

  PANTERA ARRIVED BREATHLESS at the House of the Lyre, and was ushered swiftly to the room on the top floor by Marcus-on-the-door. Mounting the stairs, Pantera took time to ask, ‘Has Domitian been again?’

  ‘Three times. Always to the same woman. He pays one gold coin to her and another to whoever is on the door. He watches her. He touches her. He has not yet taken her.’ For this information: silver.

  They arrived outside my door. A brazier warmed the landing against November’s chill.

  Marcus melted away. Cerberus greeted Pantera with a slow-thumping tail; the spy had come eight times in all, and the last seven, he had brought meat for the dog. Now he had only a handful of dates, but the hound slobbered them out of his hand and lay with a lazy grin on his great-jowled face.

  I was not as easily charmed. It wasn’t a good time for Pantera to visit. My eyes were patched by last night’s kohl, my silk tunic creased. There had been no time to change. I opened the door fast, flustered, and let him think that the change in the weather had left me thus; I never did like winters.

  ‘What are you doing here? I thought we had protocols. Arrangements. You’re meant to send word before you come.’

  Pantera still hadn’t caught his breath. He spoke between gasps that came from more than just climbing the stairs. ‘I couldn’t. There wasn’t time. Lucius is too close and the negotiations with the marines at Misene in the south are too delicate; I need to be there. I’ll be away from Rome for some time and you need to know enough to keep going. May I come in?’

  He didn’t wait, but pushed past me into the room. Cerberus, well bribed, let him do it.

  Inside, I paced the length of the bead curtain, brushing it with my shoulder, drawing out soft discordant music. There was a new vase on a stand by the far wall; tall as one of the silver-boys, and as wide. All around its belly were depictions of men in various acts of sex. It looked Greek. And very old. And very, very expensive. It was; I should have hidden it.

  ‘You can’t stay.’ I stopped beneath the frieze of Dionysus on the near wall. In my nervous state, my fingers picked at the plaster. I wound them together to make them stop.

  Pantera smiled. ‘I don’t need to stay. I need to send a message to Vespasian, telling him that the fleet at Misene will be his by December, but that I have urgent need of more gold to secure it. You have two birds left?’

  ‘One.’

  ‘I thought—’

  ‘You are not the only one sending messages to Vespasian. How do you think Caecina was able to ensure that his defection would be accepted?’

  ‘Then have you the coding sheets and we can send—’

  Sharpl
y: ‘No.’

  Our eyes met. With evident care, Pantera said, ‘If you need me to stop coming …’

  ‘If I need anything from you, I’ll tell you. And just now, I need you to get out of— Oh, fuck!’

  Down at the door, where the giant Belgian controlled the entrance, the silver bell rang, twice.

  My nerves! I spun on the spot. ‘You have to go. No, there isn’t time. You have to hide. Out on to the balcony. Now!’

  I grabbed Pantera’s shoulders and shoved him through a shatter of pearls, past the vast, satined bed, and on to the balcony. Grey November cloud draped spider-like about the city, muting all the colours. The balcony garden was still beautiful, though. No flowers bloomed now, but many-shaded leaves gave it colour.

  The opposite balcony was a good fifteen feet away and the iron railing was much the same as ours, not a safe place to leave from, or to land on. I watched Pantera judge the distance.

  ‘You want me to jump?’

  ‘If I thought you wouldn’t die, I’d say yes. But you would, and he’d hear you.’

  ‘Who, Horus? Who is coming?’

  I couldn’t meet his eye, and just from that, it was obvious: Lucius was coming, and not for the first time.

  Pantera looked stricken. I hadn’t told him. Marcus hadn’t told him. The Belgian on the door hadn’t told him. All his careful arrangements had fallen apart. I could have wept.

  Dully, he said, ‘How long?’ but we were beyond that. My hands were on his shoulders, my fingers digging tight.

  Urgently: ‘If he catches you here, we’re both dead. There isn’t time to get you out, you have to hide. Get over the balcony.’

  He knew me well enough to act without asking. I talked as he clambered gingerly over the iron railings. ‘Go down – there, on the left, underneath. Can you see the ledge? It’s like a second floor, hidden under the first. There’s room for a man to lie in there. You’ll be safe. Nobody can see you from above or below.’