by M C Scott
Attack has always been my best form of defence. Brows raised, at my most acid, I set my fists on my hips and stared him straight in the eye.
‘Do you really think that the emperor’s son— Hades! Who is that?’
It was impossible to continue an argument in the face of what had just arrived: a litter extraordinary for its vast size and the weight of the fabric that draped it.
In my head, I was performing the additions of cost upon cost. Sixteen men carried it, four at each corner, and as a result it moved swift as a sail ship with a following wind. Until it was set down in front of us, trapping us in the alley, but also blocking us from the view of the forum.
From within, a melodious voice said, ‘You may join me.’
It was Jocasta, of course, the Poet who had taken all that Seneca had built and moulded it to her own use. I helped her to do it, since she is neither a natural forger nor a good reader of ciphers. She needed me to help her understand her Teacher’s encoded notes, written over decades, and then to write to those who needed letters.
But here, now, in the midst of Saturnalia, she looked neither at me nor at the fool Trabo who mooned after her so; her gaze was all for Pantera, and his for her.
I had not seen them in the same place before, but you could feel the air warp around them. They were rivals, of course. It was like seeing two gladiators who, after beating all others sent against them, finally meet their match and don’t know whether to fight to the death or to clasp arms and walk together out of the arena.
Pantera solved his immediate dilemma by bowing extravagantly low, ‘My lady, we are at your service.’
‘I know.’
The flap was thrown back on the litter and I saw her, Jocasta, a woman whose beauty was only surpassed by the sense of power that flowed from her.
Her hair was black as polished slate, with the blue-black hue of a newly preened raven’s wing. Her brows were the same, small wings that only served to accent her eyes. I had taught her, once, how to paint them to best effect and I am pleased to say she had used my tuition to great effect. Her eyes were like a panther’s, glowing. Her skin was flawless, her neck slim and erect, like a swan’s.
The interior of her litter – and I have slept in bedrooms that were smaller – was draped with lemony silk that transformed the weak winter sunlight into the sunburst bright of a summer’s noon. Then I caught the scent of freshly baked oatcakes, of warm cheeses, hams and olives, and my mouth ached with wanting.
But I was not invited within. To Pantera alone, Jocasta said, ‘Get in. Sabinus is taking the oath from the Urban cohorts and the Watch, after which, I strongly suspect, he will dismiss them. You will travel faster with me, and you can bathe and change into clothes that smell less of horse and sweat. The emperor’s brother will expect you at least to be clean.’
Pantera wanted to refuse, every line of his body said so, but she had presented unassailable arguments and so, in tones of deepest irony, he said, ‘My lady,’ and then, to me, ‘Not you.
You may be happy to see the emperor’s son, but he may need some time before he sees you, and then not in the company of men who may one day take his orders. Gudrun and Scopius will provide a safe place until you can return to the House. Borros, take Horus to the Inn of the Crossed Spears. Meet us at the prefect’s house, or at the Capitol if we’ve already got there.’
He was lying, and I knew it. He didn’t think Domitian was ashamed of me or me of him; this was Pantera’s punishment for my treachery with Lucius. He didn’t know, or didn’t care, what they had threatened me with: the long death, the destruction of all I cared for, the letters they would have sent to Mucianus telling of infidelities that were never important. He just knew that I had sold him, and was taking his revenge.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Rome, 18 December AD 69
Caenis
I ROSE EARLY on the eighteenth of December: this day was like none other.
Pantera and his men had not carried my litter for some time by then, but Matthias had hired me another team for the day and I was transported to Sabinus’ house before the first dunghill cocks announced the dawn. Matthias himself I left behind in case Domitian came; I wish now that I hadn’t.
At the top of the hill, men were already gathering, stamping their feet, blowing into their hands against the December frosts, watching Sabinus’ door in the torchlight, just as they would have watched the emperor’s, wanting to be among the first to hail him as he emerged.
It was still dark when Sabinus walked out amongst them. He didn’t yet accept their homage, but progressed through the growing crowd, greeting each by name. All eighteen senators who had attended the meeting at my house the day before were there, and each had brought along a dozen friends at least.
In their hundreds, therefore, they filled the street, a slow river of white togas and greying heads. Of the two consuls, one had gone to be with Vitellius to take his abdication, while the other – Quinctillius Atticus, famed for his fish-pool – remained here, and moved through the crowd, distributing pamphlets.
He pressed one into my hand. It bore an image of Vespasian that underdid his nose and overstated his chin, with, beneath:
THE SUPERIORITY OF VESPASIAN AS EMPEROR
There followed a rambling list of reasons why Vespasian was the only rational choice for emperor. I’m sure they were perfectly valid, but I couldn’t bring myself to read them. In any case, Sabinus was there.
‘Caenis!’ He embraced me, his gaze sliding over my face as he glanced over my shoulder at more important men. He pulled himself back and looked me in the eye. ‘Where’s Domitian?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t come home last night.’
‘Is that unusual?’
‘Not really. He’s free to do what he wants.’ It was immensely unusual, actually, and on the first night of Saturnalia doubly so, but it was not out of character for how he had been behaving recently, and in any case I didn’t feel that Sabinus needed to know all the boy’s secrets.
I said, ‘He’ll be home by noon. He won’t miss Dino’s poppy-seed cakes.’ I believed this to be true, and had no way of knowing that by noon I would have no home for him to return to.
Sabinus was still looking at me, frowning. I pointed behind him, saying, ‘The Watch is here,’ and Sabinus strode off to meet the commanders of the Watch and the Urban cohorts who had brought their men in their entirety to offer their oath of fealty to Vespasian. Within moments, their standard-bearers lined the street and Sabinus was standing at their head in his brother’s place.
He needed no written copy of the oath: he had been enough of a soldier to know it by heart and to know that he must be seen to be competent for his brother’s sake.
‘Men of the empire: in the name of Jupiter, Best and Greatest, do you now take the oath to honour and to serve, as long as you may live, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, to give your lives in his defence and that of the empire?’
They did. All of them. Unanimously and with enthusiasm.
It was done swiftly enough and the men were sent back to their barracks to await orders: Sabinus did not wish to be seen to have taken Rome by force.
That, at least, was what he told Pantera some short while later, when the spy turned up, clean, calm, damp-haired, with the rosemary scent of a man who had recently bathed, or at least seen the attentions of a sponge.
‘You let them go?’ Pantera clearly thought Sabinus insane.
Sabinus, for his part, was brother to the man just named emperor by three Urban cohorts and the entire city Watch. He had no interest in Pantera’s opinion.
‘Vitellius has abdicated. What need have I of the cohorts?’
‘Nothing, if that were true, but it is not. Vitellius has not abdicated. The Guard refused to let him. He has returned to the palace, and has sent his wife and son to safety. These are not the actions of a man planning to leave office in the immediate future.’
‘But he gave his word!’ Sabinus flushed an unmanly purple.
‘He swore before the altar in the temple of Apollo …’
‘He has reneged on that oath.’
It’s amazing how fast a single sentence can spread. Within four breaths, the crowd was buzzing like a kicked hive.
Pantera took Sabinus’ elbow. ‘Geminus and his Guards know exactly how much they have to lose when Vitellius goes. Having put him on the throne, they are not inclined to let him give it up. You need to call back the cohorts and march on the palace.’
‘And begin a war of my own? I think not!’
Sabinus drew himself up to his tallest; he was not impressive, but he was the centre of attention and that conferred its own authority.
‘We shall walk to the forum ourselves and explain to the people of this city how matters stand. The Guard are only three thousand. In a city of a million souls, they do not make the majority.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Rome, 18 December AD 69
Trabo
I DIDN’T EXPECT to see Jocasta in that gigantic litter; truth be told, I hadn’t thought of her since we got back to Rome. When your friends are dying, thoughts of women fade away like morning mist and Julius Claudianus and the rest had become friends, that summer.
Anyway, her appearing out of the blue like that was a shock. I was so happy, just for a moment, until she cut me dead. The flat edge of her gaze hit me in the guts as if she’d jabbed me with the dull end of a spear.
Then she invited Pantera to join her inside, and I was left with the choice of following the painted catamite back to the inn or following behind the litter like a whipped hound. I followed the litter and heard the sounds of Pantera’s ablutions as he transformed himself from renegade into respectable citizen. I learned nothing of Jocasta’s motives, or her plans.
At Sabinus’ house, I stood back while she and Pantera paid their respects and joined the slow-moving avalanche of nobility that was making ready to slide down the hill towards the forum.
It was a stratified crowd, each layer determined by class and station: every Roman knows where his place is, or hers, and they segregate by instinct, the way great flocks of birds mesh in flight.
Jocasta was somewhere in the middle while Sabinus and Caenis were the almost-royal almost-couple at the fore, although I knew by then that all was not well with them. Right at the start, just before they set off, Caenis had signalled to Pantera, calling him over.
‘Domitian is gone.’ She was small amongst all these big, overweight men. Her nose was blue with cold, her hands white about the fingers. She pushed them up her sleeves as much to hide them from view as to keep them warm. For all that, she looked proud until he asked her where she thought the boy was. She looked worried, then. ‘I don’t know. He went out last night and didn’t come home.’
Pantera, of course, couldn’t tell her what he knew; she was worldly wise, but Domitian was as a son to her, and nobody wants to learn that their son has spent the night with Mucianus’ catamite.
I could see now why Pantera had sent Horus away. If the boy had been there, you’d have known, wouldn’t you, what they’d done? A boy doesn’t know how to hide these things. And this was Caenis’ big day. You wouldn’t want some filthy Alexandrian whore spoiling it.
So Pantera bit his lip and said, ‘We’ll find him. Stay with Sabinus. There’s no point in hiding now and you’re as safe with him as anywhere.’
He caught Borros’ eye and nodded and the big Briton vanished into the shadows. As far as I could tell, he’d spent half the summer following Domitian and knew his habits. If he hadn’t had to go south the previous night, he would have been waiting outside the House of the Lyre and would have seen to it that the boy returned home in the morning.
Pantera fell back beside me, the only one left of the small band he had led out of Tarracina in the night. We walked along near the back of the group.
‘How many, do you think?’ Pantera asked.
I had been doing a head count while he was speaking to Caenis. ‘More than four hundred,’ I said. ‘Most of them old men, beyond fighting age.’
‘That’s what I thought. If we meet trouble, they’ll have to head to the Capitol. Be ready.’
It was that kind of morning: nothing was certain. We kept to the back of the group that surged down the Quirinal hill towards the Basilica Julia and the forum. They were not all men: I had counted a number of women besides Caenis and Jocasta, perhaps one tenth of the whole.
Neither Pantera nor I had any status and we could not be seen anywhere near the front of this column, but nor could we safely let Sabinus out of our sight: Pantera’s word to Vespasian still held, and in any case Sabinus was now the key to the bloodless coup we had always planned.
He wasn’t hard to follow: we stayed to one side and kept parallel to the group, ranging along alleyways, rooftops, walls, scaffolding, anything to give a clear view of the route ahead.
We saw the smoke as we came over the brow of the hill on to the long incline; a thin thread, dark against the morning’s haze, rising from the foot of the hill.
‘Fuck!’
Pantera leapt into a run and I was with him. No one who had lived through the fire in Rome could have done anything different: the memories will be with us for life, vivid and appalling. Without effort, I imagined Jocasta roasted, burning, dying slowly. It gave speed to my feet.
We turned a corner and saw a small, stilted figure running up the hill towards us. It was Matthias from Caenis’ house, with Toma and Dino close on his heels.
He fell at Caenis’ feet, bringing the whole great mass of men and women and senators to a halt.
In front of them all, he panted out the news that an entire century of the Guard had been to the Street of the Bay Trees and assaulted Caenis’ house, battering down the door with a ram.
They had not found whom they sought, but they had torched it anyway and now they were moving on to every place in the city where Pantera had been seen: to the White Hare, to the House of the Lyre, to—
‘To the Crossed Spears?’ Pantera’s very bad at hiding his worry when he thinks he’s been responsible for someone else’s death.
It was then that I realized how close he was with the dream-teller and his Nordic wife, how much they meant to him. Or, perhaps, how much their welfare weighed on him. He had already caused the bad deaths of his little gelded priest and then the men in Tarracina; he wasn’t the kind who could bear much more of that.
Matthias shook his head. ‘Not there, not yet. Maybe not ever. It wasn’t mentioned and they did a lot of talking. I think Gudrun and Scopius will be safe for now; the silver-boys will tell them if the Guards come close.’
Pantera wasn’t listening. He had seen something and the look on his face made me turn so fast I nearly fell over.
Four hundred men turned with me, and saw, flowing up the hill from the forum, far faster than winter snow, a column of the Guard.
The day was soft with the promise of rain, but their naked blades were shafts of brilliant light, bouncing to the rhythm of their feet.
Sabinus raised his hand for the halt, which was entirely unnecessary given that not one of the men behind him was armed. Even if they had been, none was of the mettle to give fight to a century or more of angry Praetorian Guards.
‘To the Capitol!’ Pantera vaulted on to a nearby wall so they could see better where he pointed. ‘Turn right and get up on to the Capitol now! If you can reach the Asylum, you’ll be safe.’
This last was something of an exaggeration but the heart of Sabinus’ crowd was easily swayed and the thought of safety drew the mass of men and women up the steep slopes of the Capitol as fast as their indignation had previously swept them down toward the forum. Watery sunlight seeped through the heavy sky as they ran, sending their shadows as long, lean fingers ahead.
If the Palatine was palatial, the Capitol was holy, at least at its heights, which is to say the houses on it were far older and in greater need of repair; and that the temples commanded all the best positions, set higher than
the towering tenement slums which leaned against each other at such alarming angles on the slopes leading up to them.
We passed many of those. Standing amongst the small, much-patched dwellings were crumbling temples of minor deities and flat, paved areas used for the reading of augurs and auspices. A smell of fear and old blood clung to the damp December air. A light rain began to fall. If it was a comment from the gods, nobody knew what it said.
Climbing ever upward, the procession, or perhaps by now it was a scrum of refugees, slowed as it reached the steepest part of the hill. Pantera and I moved back among them, selecting men from the throng, choosing those with hair not yet silvered, who looked as if they might have seen at least some recent military service.
‘Block the path,’ we told them. ‘Don’t let the Guards past. They’ll put a cordon at the foot of the hill, but we need to hold the heights until Antonius Primus gets here. It won’t be more than two days.’
They didn’t listen; they didn’t know who we were, and they weren’t the kind of men to take orders from strangers: I would have been the same.
Eventually, exasperated, Jocasta seized planks from a nearby scaffold and, helped by three other women, began to erect a barricade across the route. My heart exploded with pride, but still she wouldn’t look at me. She achieved more than we had done, though. Shamed, the men we had picked out formed into groups and the single barricade soon became a wall, blocking the way up.
The greater mass of Sabinus’ refugees forged on past the head of the Gemonian steps, across the saddle of the Asylum and past the teetering row of priest’s houses to the temple proper.
This was the beating heart of Rome. In ancient times, when the Gauls assaulted the city and nearly took it, Marcus Manlius had held out on the Capitol for months, acquiring as he did so the name Capitolinus. From our point of view, the old tale was a reminder that he who holds the heights holds the city. We were there now, but we had to get into the temple and then hold it and neither of those was a trivial task.