Rome 4: The Art of War

by M C Scott

  He was Vespasian’s son; his word was enough to get the huddled refugees to make a stand, but it took Pantera and me and, surprisingly, Horus to arrange them into coherent groups, ten to wrap ropes around each statue to topple it, with another three dozen strong men ready to take it as soon as it lay flat and carry it to the gates.

  There, Jocasta directed the laying out, as in state, of each vast figure: Jupiter lay on his back, then Juno was set across him, head to toe, to prevent any uncivil, possibly sacrilegious suggestions of fornication.

  These two blocked the main gates. Minerva blocked the smaller postern gate at the side, all alone.

  There was a vantage point on the temple roof where it reared high enough to give a good view out across the hill; already two or three ragged ladders leaned against the walls leading up to it. With nothing left to do at the gates but pray to the gods who held us, we three climbed up and were in time to see Juvens lead his men from the barricades and across the Asylum from the Arx to the final hill.

  They came as a storm-pushed wave; dark shadows of men in the darkening night, with fire all along their right side, casting their helmets in red, their faces in amber, their raised blades in gold.

  Locked together, arm in arm, shoulder on shoulder, they ran at the smoke-blackened gates.

  The force of their impact was a thunderclap loud enough to wake the dead, or the slumbering gods. Their shouts ripped through the throats of us who watched, leaving our chests shaking, our hands bunched tight.

  The gods held. Under Juvens’ shouted commands, the Guards took thirty good paces back and came again. And again. And again.

  They were demons, dragged from the underworld, come to assault the citadel of the gods; and they failed.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Rome, 19 December AD 69

  Geminus

  ‘STOP,’ JUVENS SHOUTED, and then again, because nobody was listening, ‘Stop! Fall back. This is pointless. We could run at those gates all night; they’re not going to fall.’

  ‘We could burn them?’

  The voice came from the dark and could have been anybody’s. Already the priests’ houses had fallen in on themselves, the flames dancing to nothing. The glowing embers were bright, but not bright enough to identify a man in a crowd.

  It didn’t matter who had spoken; it wasn’t a good idea.

  Irritably, Juvens shook his head. ‘Can you not smell the damp? They’ve soaked the wood. It won’t burn unless we pile half the city in front of it and I’m not going to destroy Rome just to get to an ageing fool and an adolescent boy. We’re going back down the hill. There are other ways up to that temple.’

  Juvens had time to plan his new strategy on the long run down the north face of the Capitol. At the foot, he divided his men into three groups.

  ‘Right, Sextilius, you’re leading a feint back up the hill. Go up by the Gemonian steps so it looks as if you’re trying to sneak up. At the top, start gathering wood to burn down the front gates. I don’t think you’ll succeed, but no harm in trying. Let them see you, but make it look as if you’re trying to hide. Got that?

  ‘Priscus, you’ll take thirty men and go round to the Hundred Steps on the south side. See if you can emulate the Gauls, but if they start pouring down hot oil or sand, pull away. This is not about getting through, it’s about splitting their attention.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ Priscus was young and ardent and too curious for his own good.

  ‘We’re going up through the tenement towers on the northwest face. There are one or two that stretch nearly to the height of the walls and they’re in complete darkness, shaded by the temple walls. If we can get up there with a few ropes and some planks, we can build a bridge across to the temple and get over the wall in force. All we need to do is open the gates from the inside and Sextilius will be there, ready to run in.’

  Sextilius was a year from retiring; Juvens and I both knew he had bought an inn and a girl and was looking forward to a long and profitable old age, which was why he had spent all summer avoiding the lotteries that sent men out to die on the streets, and we had let him. He owed both of us now and Juvens was calling in the favour.

  Sextilius gave a sour smile. ‘I and my men will be there.’

  If there was ever a place Nero’s building programme should have reached, the northwest foot of the Capitoline was it. Here, the tenements sprouted up along crooked alleys that smelled sourly of pig ordure and human urine; row upon row of unstable, old-wood, up to eighteen-storey blocks that leaned and leaked and loomed up into the night in a fire-fighter’s nightmare of brisk inflammability.

  Juvens had marked in his mind the tallest of the blocks, but standing at the foot, peering up, it was impossible to tell which one had the pale roof that had shown so clearly from the level top of the hill. He made a guess and prayed aloud to Jupiter that it might be right, and changed his prayer half made and sent it instead to Mars, who was more likely to listen than the god whose temple he was assaulting.

  He kicked in a door and found an entrance hall where the smell of urine was so strong it made his eyes water. His men piled in behind him, coughing. It was the third night of Saturnalia; the only souls left in the tenements were the very young, the very old, or the very pregnant.

  ‘Who are you?’

  Standing in the nearest doorway was a dark-haired, wide-faced woman with a belly so ripe it looked ready to split apart. She stood with her hands on her hips, her spine arched back, her face fierce.

  Juvens bowed. ‘My lady …’ She was almost certainly a whore, but he had been trained in manners from infancy and would not lower his standards now. ‘We are Guards in the service of the emperor. We need to ascend to the roof of this building, that we might prevent the enemies of the empire from bringing their war to Rome.’

  ‘Real Guards? Not bandits?’ She didn’t believe him, and why should she have done when the Guard had never penetrated that deep into the slums? She nodded over her shoulder. ‘The roof’s that way.’

  The stairs were narrow and uneven. In places rats or rot had taken away a tread entirely and Juvens, running up, had to lengthen his stride mid-leap to avoid the gap. His men followed in train behind and the instructions filtered back down, level by level, to those still waiting to ascend. ‘Mind out! That one! Jump!’

  Juvens counted seventeen landings before the last. Breathless, he stepped into darkness. He carried no torch, but Gaius Halotus, three men behind, was carrying a smoking pitch-pine torch that sweetened the air and shed just enough light to see how tiny was this place, how close the walls, how fragile.

  ‘No windows?’ Halotus was a big man, huge on this claustrophobic landing. Doors led off, but were locked; Juvens tried them as soon as there was light enough to negotiate the old, dried turds and smears of vomit. He shook his head. Halotus pulled a face, looked around at the walls, picked a place where the mortar looked most rotten, leaned back and kicked.

  Three bone-jarring, teeth-rattling strikes later the wall had a window, or a door, or whatever you might like to term the jagged opening that let in the clean night air and showed that they were two blocks too far north.

  ‘Fuck.’ Juvens leaned out. The temple was tantalizingly close, a wall not more than a few feet higher than where they stood, but just too far to reach.

  The adjacent building was a bare five feet away, but the slope of its roof was tilted towards them, and without the ability to take a run there was a real risk of falling eighteen storeys to the ground below. His stomach swooned at the thought.

  ‘Do we have planks?’

  ‘Not enough, but we can make some.’ Halotus had only a passing relationship with his civic duty of care for the city. Before Juvens could stop him, he had ripped a door from its hinges and was thrusting it through the newly made hole in the wall. It bridged the gap with a hand’s span on either side; still terrifying, but workable.

  Juvens, of course, had to lead the way across. Someone in the early ranks up on the landing had a
rope. They tied it round Halotus to act as an anchor and Juvens crawled across the rough wood, feeling paint flake off under his hands; he had no idea what colour it was, only that it was leaving raw wood that drove splinters into his knees.

  But he made it across and stood and set his foot on the edge to hold it better for the next man, who took his place, and the third, who had brought a torch, but covered it at Juvens’ whispered oath. ‘If Sabinus sees us, we’re finished.’

  Unwilling to leave themselves lightless, the men clustered round it so that the light could not leak up to the temple on the Capitol. And they prayed that neither Sabinus nor any of his men looked their way.

  They had reason to hope that they wouldn’t; from the fires glowing bright again on the Asylum, it seemed that Sextilius was making good progress with his feint from that direction. What Priscus was doing round the south side was anybody’s guess, but there were no screams coming from there, so Juvens allowed himself a measure of optimism.

  His men were all across on to the middle tenement. Halotus came last, picked up the door and carried it under his arm to the far edge of the roof.

  Here, the gods smiled on them; the adjacent tenement had leaned in towards the one they were on, cosily, like a gossiping neighbour. The gap between was a mere three feet and the men had room to take a run at it. Like boys winning a dare, they ran and jumped and tumbled and soon they were betting on it as a long jump that threatened to send some men out across the other side into oblivion.

  ‘Steady!’ Juvens’ voice was a whip cracked across them. They gathered in the centre, laughing, and the moment was swiftly forgotten. They stood on the roof and gazed into the temple compound and then it was only a matter of readying themselves to cross the gap.

  They were waiting for Halotus to bring the door when they saw the barrel of burning pitch fly out over the temple walls.

  I still have no idea why that happened. You’d have to ask those who were inside if you want to know that, but there’s no doubt it contributed to the disaster that came afterwards.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Rome, 19 December AD 69

  Caenis

  INSIDE THE TEMPLE, relief at the day’s early success had dissolved in the dark. Braziers had been lit, casting everything in a feral, ruddy glow, but they brought no cheer; there was not enough food, few blankets and no wine.

  Sabinus was a bent shape, moving amongst the comfortless groups, offering words of encouragement to the fearful, exchanging memories or words of hope with the stalwart.

  I saw the best in him that night. The politician who was used to the back-stabbing, double-dealing, word-twisting of the senate became another man here, offering true comfort to those who needed it. He should have been a priest; it would have suited him.

  Domitian was more erratic. For a while, he had been elated by his first taste of battle. When the Guards left, he stood on the wall and screamed invective at them. Later, when they were obviously returning in greater numbers, he turned his fury on Antonius Primus, who had not yet come to save him.

  ‘He leaves us to die so that later he can claim Rome for himself. We should never have come up here. It’s a death trap.’

  When he tired of repeating that, he came to find Matthias and me and we retired to join Quinctillius Atticus in the law library, where Domitian passed the time rifling through the bronze tablets, reading old decrees passed centuries before he was born.

  A knock rattled the door. Matthias ran to open it. Pantera stood on the threshold, with Sabinus a little behind him, and then Trabo. The brazier’s red light showed them filthy, coated in ash and mud, scratched on arms and hands and face.

  ‘My lord Domitian, my lady Caenis, Consul Atticus …’ He nodded to each of us in precise succession although nobody made any pretence that any of us was in control of our defences: Pantera ruled us now. ‘The Guards are mounting a diversionary assault on the front gate, but it appears they are also climbing up the Hundred Steps at the north side of the hill which, as we know, give access to the northern gates. We believe they may also be endeavouring to scale the tenements that lie against the temple walls on the forum side. Your lives are in danger. I know I argued that you should stay, but I believed Antonius Primus would be with us before this. If he comes now, he may well be too late. Accordingly, I would urge you to leave. We have found a way out over the wall behind the library, but those who are leaving must go now.’

  ‘All of us?’ I asked. ‘You can get a thousand people out of here?’

  ‘Not all. The emperor’s family and immediate servants, and the consul. No more. And there is no time to waste.’

  ‘I will not leave.’ Sabinus was cloaked in calm. His words fell like the pronouncements of an Oracle. ‘I will not abandon those who have placed their faith in my brother. Consul Atticus and I shall remain together and endeavour to negotiate with the Guard when they enter. If nothing else, it will give you time to get clear.’

  ‘Sabinus!’ Quinctillius Atticus fell on his knees. He has always been prone to over-dramatization and this was a splendid performance. ‘We have to leave! If we go now, we can save our families. We can—’

  ‘We are old men, Quinctillius. We will slow down the younger ones.’ Sabinus’ smile was peaceful, generous. ‘Caenis of course must go. My brother would never forgive me if I kept her in danger.’

  Pantera looked no happier than the consul. ‘And your brother will never forgive me if I don’t take you away now,’ he said. ‘I was sent to Rome with two tasks: the first was to take Rome bloodlessly, which I have manifestly failed to do. The second, and by far the more important, was to preserve Vespasian’s family from harm.’

  He quoted my love from memory, his eyes half shut, remembering. ‘“For if I am emperor and any one of them has come to harm, all the power in the world will not repair their loss.” You are one of the three he holds most dear; you, his son and Caenis. Your safety is my first priority.’

  ‘And yet if you tell him I ordered you to leave, and that I resisted all attempts to take me, he will understand.’ Sabinus took Pantera by the arm, gently turned him round. ‘We can stand here and argue, losing time, or you can accept what I say: that I will stay here with the consul and will negotiate with the officers of the Guard. If you have discovered – or created – a way out, you must use it now to take Domitian and Caenis to safety. I am the emperor’s brother and I so order you.’

  ‘They’ll kill you.’

  ‘They may not. Vitellius is a civilized man and he does still hold some sway with this rabble.’

  Pantera’s face was drained of colour, even in that place, where the braziers turned everything red. He might have gone on arguing, but I said, ‘Sabinus, are you sure?’

  ‘I have never been more certain of anything. Go now. I will hold here. I served in Britain and that did not go altogether badly. We shall not give up without a fight and when we do, we shall demand our rights as civilized Romans.’

  His brother had a stubborn streak and there was a painful familiarity in the man I saw before me now; never had he looked so much like Vespasian.

  As Sabinus had done, I touched Pantera’s arm. ‘You’ll have to take him by force if you want him to go and I think that may not be possible, if I understand how you plan us to leave?’

  ‘No, my lady, it would not be possible.’ Pantera swept his hands over his face. When they dropped again, the decision was made.

  ‘My lord … Your brother will almost certainly crucify me, but I believe you are right. I honour your courage.’

  ‘My dear.’ Sabinus took my hand, drew me to him. ‘We should have longer for this. Know that you have brought the light to my brother’s life, and to mine, knowing him so happy. I would have liked to see you as his right hand on the throne, but you’ll get there without me.’

  ‘Sabinus …’ I had known him since I was seventeen; the shy and distant boy of a not-quite-senatorial family who had become slowly, over decades, the big brother I never had.


  We were too formal, too public. There should have been words, and there were so few, and all stuck.

  ‘Brother …’ My fingers cramped over his. ‘He will know of this, and all else you have done for his cause.’

  ‘I could ask for nothing more.’ He pulled me into a quick, gruff embrace, a brief warmth and scents of smoke and sweat and home. I wanted to weep, but the moment was too great for that; it was not my place to spoil it.

  ‘Go now,’ he said. ‘They are waiting.’

  He gave a half-salute, such as men give on going to battle, and before I could say aught else I was being led at a half-run out of a side door in the library and we – Matthias, Domitian and I – were following Pantera westwards, to the wall that stood atop the precipitous eastern face of the Capitol.

  We reached it swiftly, and without anyone seeing us. Trabo was there, and Borros, the big Briton. He stood wide-footed with his back braced against the wall and had made a stirrup of his looped hands.

  Pantera said, ‘Let me go up first.’ He did so, and then sat astride with his legs dangling and leaned down.

  ‘Caenis first. If it please you, my lady, Borros will lift you up until you can reach my hand.’

  It didn’t please me, but there was really no choice. The wall was ten feet high, if not more. Borros knotted his fingers into a platform and I took the same step Pantera had done and, stretching, was able to reach his hand. He gripped my wrist and hauled me up as if I were a sack of lamb. Scrambling, I made it up on to the curved top of the wall.

  ‘If you sit on it, lady, you will be safest.’ His eyes signalled an apology, but he was obviously right. I slid along to where he showed me and sat astraddle, in a way that would have scandalized the widows who were my neighbours and given them food for gossip for months. They were not the ones looking down the eastern face of the hill, at the sheer drop that fell away and away and away into the night. If we had tumbled then …