Rome 4: The Art of War

by M C Scott

  We were a subdued group who gathered at the hill’s foot. Even the lady Jocasta was white and drawn and had no clever comment to make.

  ‘Where?’ she asked, as we reached flat ground. ‘Where is safe?’

  Horus said, ‘The House of the Lyre.’

  But Pantera said, at the same time, ‘The Inn of the Crossed Spears.’

  Given the choice, where would you have gone?

  We all turned south, towards the House, but Pantera was in charge; he pulled us north, towards the Quirinal hill and the slums that run along the side. We were a sorry lot, slinking along the back alleys towards the inn.

  The night was greying into dawn by the time we reached a hut three blocks from the inn. It was a ramshackle thing, with a goat-hide for a door that wouldn’t have withstood even one Guardsman, but there was at least a bed, and water and food stored in a rat-proof barrel in the corner, and after the hole on the hill it felt like a palace. Domitian and Horus seemed to know it, and walked in as if it were home.

  We drank and ate and laid Caenis down on the bed for rest, and then Pantera said to me, ‘The next twelve hours are critical. Antonius Primus must be told what has happened. Will you come with me? Trabo can keep this place safe, with the help of the silver-boys. Trabo, if they whistle three short notes, rising, it means the Guards are coming and you need to get everyone out. Marcus will show you where to go. Follow him without question and do it fast.’

  Trabo was as exhausted as everyone else, but he was more shattered by Jocasta’s rejection of him than by the climb or the trek or the wait while the temple burned above us. He had gone down that ladder like a child expecting a gift and she had turned away from him, spurning him as clearly as if she had slapped him in the face.

  I thought she might love Pantera, if any of us; certainly she never took her eyes off him and she had that look that women get sometimes, when they want to unscrew your head and lift out your brains and sift through them for all the hidden thoughts.

  Anyway, Trabo was both desperately relieved not to be called away and desperately unhappy at being left with Jocasta. But he was a Guard at heart, for all he had tried to be a bandit, or a gladiator’s cook. He needed people to protect and Pantera had just given him two women and the emperor’s son to take care of. He didn’t care about Matthias and could happily have lived without Horus, but it was clear that Horus and Pantera went back a long way and that to the spy the whore was as important in his way as Caenis or Domitian.

  So Trabo sulked like a whipped child and stuffed his mouth with cheese and chomped on it miserably and, like that, we left them; a family flung together by fortune, and making the best of it.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  Rome, 20 December AD 69

  Trabo

  ONCE WE WERE safe in the hut, exhaustion overtook us.

  Caenis was asleep on the only bed, blue prints of exhaustion layered under her eyes. Horus and Domitian sat with their backs to the far wall, propped on each other’s shoulders, and they, too, were sound asleep. Matthias lay flat beside his mistress’s bed and snored.

  Jocasta and I were the only ones awake. If there had been another room, I would have gone to it: I couldn’t bear the flat slide of her stare, the way it passed over me as if I didn’t exist; worse, as if I were a slave who had let rip a particularly loud and noxious fart while serving dinner and was awaiting shipment to the circus.

  I began to envy Domitian his ease in Horus’ company. A whore is never going to cut you dead, even a highly paid one from the House of the Lyre. I took out my blade and began to scour it with the hem of my tunic; it wasn’t useful, but it was something to do. I felt Jocasta move across the room and come to rest beside me.

  ‘Trabo?’ She sounded doubtful. I kept my head down. She sat next to me; close. Her fingers caught my chin and turned my head so that I had to look at her. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What?’ Honestly, if Otho had come back from the grave, I couldn’t have been more surprised. ‘What for?’

  She laughed, sadly. ‘Everything. For the past days. For not being yours, or not obviously so.’ She looped her arm through mine. I could feel the heat of her body, the rock of her breathing. I thought I had fallen asleep and was dreaming and didn’t want to wake.

  She said, ‘What do you think Pantera is doing now?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Nor did I care. She did, though, so I tried to concentrate. ‘I’d say he’s got out of Rome in some noxious garbage cart and is even as we speak relaying the details of Sabinus’ death to Antonius Primus. He’ll need to attack now, or we’ve lost all the momentum.’

  ‘Pantera left you with Domitian?’

  ‘Is that a problem?’ I looked across at the sleeping boy. He looked like a child, and Horus the man.

  ‘Only that you’ll be blamed if Lucius were to find him.’

  ‘Lucius is in the south. Pantera lured him down to Tarracina.’

  ‘And you were taken there to prove it. And then brought back. Even so, Lucius still has agents here who do his bidding and he sends messages four times a day to Rome. What price do you think he would give for the chance to take alive Vespasian’s son and his mistress? And, if not Pantera, then to take the spymaster who has worked against him from the start?’

  Understanding snapped into place in my head. I should have known this. Why hadn’t I? ‘Are you the spymaster?’ I asked.

  ‘They call me the Poet.’ She stared down at her fingernails. They were broken in places. I thought them beautiful. ‘And Lucius knows it now.’

  There was an accusation in her eyes that spoke more than her words. ‘Pantera?’ I couldn’t believe it. ‘Pantera has betrayed you to Lucius? You can’t be serious. They loathe each other. They’ve been prosecuting a proxy war with Rome as their battleground since he got off the boat last summer.’

  ‘That’s what everyone thinks, yes.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘From the beginning, from the day we met in Caenis’ house, Lucius has been one step – one very small step – behind Pantera. All the way along, he knew where he was going and who he was going to see. Still, he didn’t arrest him, or even have him killed, he—’

  ‘Amoricus was captured alive. If Pantera hadn’t killed him—’

  ‘But he did. And we could all see how badly he was affected by it. Didn’t we all grieve with him, didn’t we all secretly want to take his arm, pat his shoulder, say don’t worry, it wasn’t really your fault; you did everything you could? Didn’t we?’

  ‘But why would he betray us? Why now, when he has been with us all summer?’

  ‘Because there is no other time. If he waits a day longer, Vespasian might be emperor, Vitellius might be dead and Lucius with him, or exiled. And doubly now, because if you want truly to defeat your enemy, you have to let him extend himself to his – or her – fullest. He wanted to see what I knew, how much I could do, what lengths I would go to to get the right man on the throne. He thought he was going to be Seneca’s successor. If he’s going to kill me and take the network for himself, he needs to know as much about me as he can. Now, though, he has to act. What is the greatest prize in Rome just now?’

  I was beginning to understand the way her mind worked. I looked across the room at the sleeping boy and the woman on the cot beside him. ‘Them,’ I said. ‘Caenis and Domitian. If either or both is taken prisoner, Vespasian will offer any terms to get them back alive.’

  ‘Well done.’ She stood, held out her hand, lifted me up, kissed me, drily, lightly on the lips in a way that made my skin tingle. ‘So let’s get them out of here before someone comes to arrest us all. And don’t imagine the silver-boys are on our side. I thought they were, but I have come to understand that their hearts belong to Pantera, and always have done.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  Rome, 20 December AD 69

  Geminus

  THE BURNING OF the temple was bad enough. We were all heart-sick at the sight of the blaze on the hill, smelling smoke in
the air, tasting ash on everything we ate, wondering if the empire was coming to an end because of it.

  Then Juvens came back in the dark time before dawn and brought with him news of Sabinus’ appalling death and it seemed an omen too far: if the prefect of Rome could be slaughtered by a group of Guards running out of control, against the explicit order of their commanding officer, then truly the world had changed beyond all understanding.

  I waited until after Vitellius had broken his fast to tell him.

  He took it badly, as you’d expect. He also understood the extent to which his own life was even more precarious now: no chance of abdicating when his men had just slaughtered his rival’s brother.

  ‘We need to stop Antonius Primus.’ He was pacing up and down the small audience room that had become his study, his dining room and his conference chamber, although he only conferred with me, Juvens and Drusus now. ‘We need to take the heat out of this, for the sake of Rome. Who can we send to Antonius Primus? Who will he listen to? Not you,’ he said to me and Juvens before we could answer. ‘I need you here.’

  ‘The Vestals?’ I offered. ‘No one will touch them, and it would not be the first time they’ve sued for peace in the name of Rome.’

  He stared at me, frowning, with a look unnervingly like one Lucius might have given. Then he broke into a broad smile.

  ‘Brilliant!’ He clapped my shoulder. ‘Arrange it in my name.’

  He was direct now, succinct; the man he could have been if his mother and brother had not spent fifty years telling him how weak he was. ‘And find Vespasian’s kin; Caenis and the boy, Domitian. They’ll be in the city somewhere, I feel it in my water. With Sabinus gone, they’re our best chance of getting out of here alive.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  Rome, 20 December AD 69

  Borros

  THE EARLY HOURS of the morning found Pantera and me in a side alley about three streets away from the hut where we’d left Trabo and the others; in essence, we’d run round a couple of corners and stopped.

  Pantera had left me standing at the street’s end with orders to keep a lookout, and then hopped on to a wall, and from there up on the rooftops where he dropped out of sight into some hidden hollow.

  He returned some short time later, looking satisfied, and we walked on through the waking city, with every street lit by the burning temple, every house smeared with soot and ash.

  We passed slaves and freedmen in the street, vendors and craftsmen, setting up for the day. None of them paid us any attention, nor we them until we came at last to a particular bakery where the ovens were already fierce and the scents warm, crisp and mouthwatering.

  In the store room to one side we found Marcus eating newly baked cake; that was the blond-haired Marcus who led the silver-boys and had so discomfited Trabo earlier in the year.

  I didn’t listen to their conversation, but I can tell you it was short and swift and Pantera came out of this one, too, looking as if what he planned was going well.

  ‘Do you suppose Cavernus is awake at this hour?’ he asked.

  ‘The entire staff of the White Hare was required to be up with the sun when I was there,’ I said. ‘On the day the temple burned down, I’d be surprised if they weren’t up all night.’

  ‘Then with luck we can go there and eat, and perhaps sleep. It’s going to be a long day.’

  ‘Antonius Primus … ?’

  ‘Will hear what has happened from a dozen mouths. We don’t need to speak to him personally.’

  Pantera didn’t look tired. He looked like a man whose life had suddenly sharpened, but I was exhausted and I wasn’t going to turn down the offer of sleep. So we went to the tavern that had been my home for eighteen years and Cavernus greeted us like royalty – discreet royalty, which must be hidden, but royalty none the less – and gave us food and a little wine and a bed to sleep in and there would have been a girl to warm it if either of us had wanted.

  For myself, unconsciousness came as I fell on the bed. Pantera, I think, made himself lie down and close his eyes as an act of will, but he was too vibrant to slip into sleep.

  Marcus tapped on our door a couple of hours later, with news that Domitian, Caenis and the others had moved from the hut near the Crossed Spears and were believed to be heading in the direction of the Aventine.

  Our task, I learned, was to find them and then follow them, discreetly. The silver-boys guided us with occasional whistles and many gestures, but our progress and theirs was hampered by the crowds who had emerged with the dawn. Some had come to stare at the fire, but most had gathered to watch the procession of Vestal Virgins make their way down from the emperor’s palace on the Palatine, through the forum and down toward the Tiber. Rumour said they were going to meet Antonius Primus on the far side of the bridge on the Flaminian Way; he had come that close to the city.

  We were near the forum when we first saw them: a column of women, dressed and veiled all in white, with white and red ribbons in their hair and criss-crossed on their bodices. They seemed to float, so slowly did they move, and in utter silence; they were attended by none of the horns and drums and pomp that customarily announced Roman ceremony.

  Their bodyguards were vast men bearing bundles of rods and axes with which to deter the inappropriate attentions of lesser mortals, but even they kept a seemly distance from the white apparitions. The only people permitted to approach the Virgins were their hand-matrons; former Vestals who remained to serve their younger, still-chaste sisters. They, too, were dressed in white, but their ribbons were blue to show that they no longer tended the sacred flame.

  They moved to and from the Vestals to the gathering crowd dispensing favours: dates and apples in accordance with the Saturnalia; small denomination coins; slips of paper with exhortations and prophecies: Fortune favours you; Honour those who support you; Begin each day gladly, and it will end so.

  Simply to be gazed upon by a Vestal could free a condemned man from his execution. On the day after the temple burned, with the smoke still billowing up from the top of the Capitol hill, everyone wanted to fall under their stare. They were the nearest thing Rome had to living gods and we all needed their goodwill.

  The mood of the crowd was strangely erratic. There wasn’t a man, woman or child there who didn’t think Rome was on the road to certain ruin; the temple had gone and their emperor had all but abdicated, both things unheard of in the city’s history. On the other hand, it seemed as if the gods had simply taken the inversions of Saturnalia and pushed them to their natural limit. The emperor was no longer ruler. The people were no longer safe. Anything was possible.

  So the crush of the crowd grew denser with every passing heartbeat and we were caught up in it, helpless as a pair of corks in the ocean; for a while, it was all Pantera and I could do to keep sight of each other, never mind follow anyone else.

  No one gave us any favours and we broke out eventually, but we had lost touch with Marcus in the chaos and when we found him again his cocky know-everything air had gone.

  ‘We lost them.’

  ‘What?’ Pantera could make a single word sting like a sword cut. ‘Where?’

  ‘In the crowd. Not ten paces away. They were there, all of them, and then they were gone.’

  Pantera’s gaze cut us both equally. I had never been afraid of him, but I was then. ‘Find them,’ he said. ‘Our lives and the future of the empire rest on it.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Rome, 20 December AD 69

  Trabo

  IN A CITY layered with a fine mist of ash, the silver-boys were everywhere; I’d never known the streets of Rome so infested with small boys. Every rooftop had one, every side alley had two and their whistles meshed us in a net of sound just as the falling ash from the temple fire meshed us in filth.

  We thought the Vestals had been sent by the gods to protect us from Pantera. The crowd around them was like an army, the front row solid as a shield wall.

  I was set to break through, with my sho
ulder angled down and to the fore as we did in the Guards. Domitian was with me; he must have read of the tactic, or seen his father show it off, or his brother.

  But Jocasta dodged into a side shop and came out with cloaks and hoods – she must have paid for them, but the bargaining was very brief – and said instead, ‘The best place to hide is in a crowd. All we have to do is change how we look and we can get in amongst the people, become one of them. Do it quickly. The silver-boys are everywhere.’

  I caught Domitian’s eye and gave the nod, and together we pushed the crowd open a little to let us all in. As soon as the pressure was off, the mass of men and women closed again behind us, solid as a dungeon door, trapping us in, but trapping out Marcus and his light-footed spies.

  We kept close in our pairs, me and Jocasta, Horus and Domitian, Caenis and Matthias. Of them all, Caenis and Matthias had been hardest to persuade into coming; Caenis would not have it that Pantera intended anything other than the best for her and Vespasian and, by inclusion, Vespasian’s son. It took Domitian himself to point out that her house had been burned to the ground because Pantera had been seen going into it and that no decent man would have allowed that.

  Bunched together, keeping watch each for the other, we were swept up by the crowd that surged in the Vestals’ wake down the Palatine, and across the open space of the forum.

  It was there, or close to it, that I saw Pantera standing on the margins with blond-Marcus to his one side and Borros to the other. He looked as thunderously angry as I’ve ever seen him, and he was clearly searching for us. I tipped my head down, let the hood of my cloak fall further over my face.