Rome 4: The Art of War

by M C Scott

  The breeze lifted the horses’ manes, fluttered the ends of the coiled flags. Men stood in silence, scanning the horizon, but it was the cavalry, mounted on the higher ground, with the double advantage of height, who first saw the advancing cohorts and called out.

  We waited until the mass of moving men marching north up the Appian Way was obvious to us all. Even this close, perhaps a dozen spear-casts away, they showed no particular sign of having seen us. We had the advantage of the sun behind us, and the folds of the land to protect us.

  I waited until they had closed to half the distance before I gave the command for the companies to raise their banners aloft.

  Then they noticed us.

  It must have been a spectacular sight; the horizon suddenly forested with standards. A shudder rippled down the oncoming cohorts, of recognition, disbelief, despair. Lucius might have known already that Rome was lost, but from the look of things he hadn’t told his troops; they had believed they were marching back to victory, or at least to fight for a city that might still be taken.

  Silence spread across them as they stamped to a halt, five spear-casts away. Their faces were a pale blur, but it was possible to see the images of Vitellius that remained on their standards, the only ones left anywhere near Rome.

  Lucius rode a big bay horse that was already patched black with sweat as he paced it forward from the front ranks. Three figures followed him; one was an officer: Geminus, the second his prisoner – that must have been Domitian. There was a chain from his neck to Geminus’ saddle. The third wore a silk robe that blew in the breeze; a priest, perhaps, or an oracle.

  ‘Will he fight?’ I asked. My mouth was dry.

  ‘I hope not.’ Pantera was as grimly white as he had been in the morning. ‘Geminus was given help to escape from the city last night after he witnessed Vitellius’ death. He will have been the most credible of witnesses: not even Lucius could accuse him of lying. My hope is that, knowing his brother is dead, and seeing by how much he is outnumbered, he’ll realize that the only choice is surrender. Unfortunately, being Lucius, we can’t depend on his reason. We should go forward to meet him. Tell the men to hold.’

  I did and they did and we nudged our horses forward across the close-cropped winter turf. The robed priest lifted his head and Pantera’s horse napped savagely, as if jerked hard in the mouth.

  ‘If I die,’ Pantera said, without warning, ‘tell Caenis … tell her that Seneca’s network is hers, that she knows all she needs to make it work, and that Horus will have the answers to any questions she may have.’

  ‘Seneca’s network? But it is Jocasta’s.’

  ‘It was,’ said Pantera, tight-voiced. ‘Not any more. If I am dead, it will be because Jocasta has killed me. And you are going to have to kill her.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Trabo, look!’ The word stung like a slap. ‘The robed rider with Lucius – it’s Jocasta.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

  Rome, 21 December AD 69

  Jocasta

  IF TRABO DIDN’T recognize me before Pantera pointed me out, he was deceiving himself.

  I didn’t care at the time, either way. Trabo was only a small part, a counter to be discarded for the wider game. Pantera was the one who mattered, the one for whom all this had been played out. Since Seneca’s death, we had been manoeuvring around each other. Now, finally, we could be open.

  I smiled at him, as I had at that first meeting, back in Seneca’s house, with the old man recently dead and the ink newly dry on the forged letter that made me leader of the entire Senecan network.

  Horus wrote it for me, yes. Few men in Rome could have reproduced Seneca’s hand so accurately, or his voice.

  Horus is not as straightforward as he would have you believe. His first loyalty is to Mucianus and then himself. Everything else depends on who pays and I have always had deeper pockets than Pantera, even when he had Vespasian’s backing. Vespasian, as I’m sure you know, has never been what you might consider wealthy. It will be different now, of course.

  So Pantera was never sure who wrote that letter. It might have been real, you see. It was very close to the original, and he had that strange mix of certainty and insecurity that made him a good spy: he didn’t know if it was his own arrogance that said he should have been named leader over me.

  And I was not a bad spymaster. Given free rein, I could have been the best.

  Approaching, Pantera’s eyes fastened on my face, searching for some sign as to the depth to which I had deceived him. Even then, I think, he hoped for less, or more, than the truth.

  I gave Trabo barely a glance, and oh, how that wounded him. He had been relaxed, riding towards us, slightly melancholy, as men are after the killing is over, but now he was spear-stiff and bristling with righteous anger. He had been in love; probably he still was – is – which was what made it all so very dangerous.

  They stopped at a sensible distance. Close enough to speak without having to shout, not quite within sword reach. Geminus had been given clear orders. He brought Domitian up to stand on my left, with Geminus on his left and Lucius on his left. We made a line, with me at the far right of it.

  ‘Jocasta.’ Pantera made a bow, palm to breast, as the Alexandrians do. ‘You honour us with your presence.’

  ‘Do I?’ I gestured to the boy at my side. He sat stiffly, not only for the chain at his neck that fixed him to Geminus’ saddle. ‘My blade has on it a different poison from that used on Felix. If scratched, Vespasian’s son will fall into near-death, but will continue to breathe. I can, of course, provide an antidote which will ensure his recovery, but only at great cost. It would be better for all of us if he were never touched.’

  Pantera bowed his understanding. Seneca had taught him well; never speak when you don’t have to. Never give the enemy words to work with.

  We studied each other in silence. If I hadn’t slept much, neither had he. I recognized the signs in him by then; nothing so dramatic as dark smudges under his eyes, but a shortness of temper signalled by tension in the lines at his mouth, at the corners of his eyes. I wanted more than that. I wanted him to know how soundly he had been deceived.

  ‘When did you know?’ I asked.

  He shrugged, loosely. ‘As soon as Sabinus died. While he was alive, there was always a chance it could have been him. My lord Domitian, of course, has always been blameless.’

  That was a lie. He had suspected Domitian from the start; too much gold, too many contacts with the silver-boys. I tried to catch his eye, to show him I knew that, but he was watching my hands, not my face. He was clever, always. And right.

  ‘Jocasta?’ At his side, Trabo’s horse was stuttering backwards, held on too-tight reins. He kicked it forward, savagely. A bruise on the side of his face was colouring deeply in purple and black. ‘What could Sabinus have been?’

  ‘My informant in Pantera’s group,’ Lucius said coldly from my left. ‘They are congratulating each other on their cleverness. It was obvious from the summer that Pantera and I each had someone who was privy to the other’s most secret thoughts, but neither of us knew the identity of the other’s informant. Much of the past half year has revolved around us each protecting our source, while trying to find the name of the one sent against us.’

  ‘And we succeeded,’ Pantera said. ‘Was it worth the cost?’

  I had posed that same question to Lucius not long before. He said now what he had said to me in the tent in that last, long night of intimacy.

  ‘I let Caecina defect to protect Jocasta; I allowed her to poison Valens; I let her give gold to Domitian and encourage him to the House of the Lyre, so that it might seem as if he was selling stories for sex. I have no doubt you did things that were likewise dangerous. You let me kill a hound, although in retrospect I should have killed its master. Who betrayed me? Was it Geminus?’ He looked sideways at Geminus, who had come to us in the night and was still as doggedly loyal as ever. ‘Should I have killed him when he came to us last night wit
h news of my brother’s death?’

  ‘I shouldn’t, if I were you,’ Pantera said. ‘Geminus is as loyal to you as he has always been.’

  That was clever. From the little I know of him, Geminus’ first oath was to Vitellius and he cleaved to Lucius only because he was the emperor’s brother. Now that another man had been named emperor …

  ‘It was Drusus,’ Pantera said.

  ‘Drusus?’ Lucius laughed. ‘The German masseur? I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You should; he did his utmost to kill your brother yesterday.’

  ‘We knew that.’ Lucius’ jaw clamped shut. ‘At your order?’

  ‘No. Your brother was not a monster; he could have lived, and at worst deserved a decent death. Drusus had his own oath to fulfil and thought others might get in ahead of him.’

  ‘And you let him?’

  ‘I couldn’t stop him.’

  Across from me, perhaps a dozen paces away, Trabo was still coming to terms with reality. He wouldn’t look me in the eye and his head was clearly addled from the blow that had knocked him flat the day before.

  Unexpectedly, he looked up. ‘Jocasta, why?’ So much pain in his voice.

  ‘Yes, why?’ Pantera’s horse took an uneasy step sideways. ‘You could have thrown the whole of Seneca’s network behind Vespasian and I would have gladly followed your lead. Why did you not? You can’t have thought Vitellius would have made the better emperor?’

  ‘Vitellius was never emperor.’ I heard the acid in my own voice, but was too shaken to make it mellow; we were beyond that.

  My gaze skidded over Pantera’s face. I was studying his hands, just as he was still studying mine, trying to see where the knife was hidden. Like lovers lately parted, we knew each other too well. He was up to something … I just couldn’t tell what.

  I said, ‘Lucius has ruled since before his brother reached Rome. If you hadn’t tried to impose your provincial soldier on us, Vitellius would have died by now of a surfeit of eels or bloody flux, or something equally certain.’

  ‘But then his son would have taken the throne,’ Trabo said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ I snapped, I admit it. ‘The boy was far too young to rule. After Nero, nobody is ever again going to let a child take the throne of Rome. He would have been dead within days of his father.’

  ‘And what of the men who had been loyal to Vitellius? What of Geminus and his Guards? Were you expecting them to transfer their oaths to Lucius without demur?’

  ‘When one emperor dies, their oaths are given to the new one,’ Lucius said. ‘It has always been so.’

  ‘And is so now, with Vespasian.’ It was the middle of winter and the wind was cold, but still, I saw Pantera wipe a trickle of sweat from the side of his face. He kept one hand on the reins; the other fell to his side.

  He said, ‘You can’t fight on. We have three legions, you have a handful of cohorts and your men must know that Vitellius is dead. They won’t fight, even if you ask them to. My “provincial soldier” has won, and not yet set foot on Roman land.’

  Carefully, carefully … this last was a taunt, thrown in my face, but I didn’t have to rise to it.

  I smiled, and made no comment. He thought he had won, but I knew that victory could be pulled from defeat more certain than this. An emperor who was locked in Alexandria was not a real emperor.

  Pantera pushed on, needling at what he thought were sore points.

  ‘That’s the truth of it, isn’t it? You couldn’t bear the idea that a rustic provincial, with only one generation in the senate, could take the throne?’

  ‘No.’ I gave him a look to freeze his blood. ‘I don’t care about that. I’m sure Vespasian will make a perfectly good emperor, I never disagreed with you on that. But he wasn’t my emperor and never would have been. He was yours. You made him. I made Lucius. I brought Seneca’s network to him. You tried to give it to Vespasian instead. And that I could not bear.’

  The last words were flung at him, and my knife behind them, and however much he was expecting it, he could never have been completely ready.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

  Rome, 21 December AD 69

  Geminus

  ‘PANTERA!’

  Domitian shouted, but the spy was already moving, launching himself left, because she threw right-handed and he must have known how the knife would fly. He soared out in an arc from his horse, tucked his head in, pulled his arm in, ready to roll.

  His horse was not trained for this. It shied and kicked him in the chest, a glancing blow, but it drove the wind from his lungs and he messed up the roll and landed awkwardly and we all heard something snap, high up, by his shoulder, while over his head Trabo was proving that it had been right to bring him along, that he could think and act properly even when his heart was so clearly broken.

  There was a lick of winter sun across a blade and the slam-sigh of iron on bone. Somewhere, a man called out. It might have been Trabo, I don’t know, because Jocasta was not my problem, and never had been: Lucius was mine to deal with; my pleasure, my duty.

  You see, Pantera might have been goading Jocasta, but his gaze had held mine when Lucius spoke: When one emperor dies, their oaths are given to the new one. It has always been so.

  And about Pantera’s wrist, revealed beneath his sleeve as he had raised his hand to wipe imaginary sweat from his cheek, was a silver wristband with the sign of the house of Vespasian engraved on it.

  His thumb had pointed back to his legions and my eye had followed the line. Every single horse I could see, every banner, had the livery of the oak branch in fruit and leaf. Some of those men were mine; I knew their cohort colours.

  They had sworn to the new emperor; it’s what we do and the gesture said, as clearly as if Pantera had spoken, Vespasian is your emperor now. All other oaths are void.

  They didn’t have to be. I could have carried on serving Lucius, but really, what sane man would want to serve him? In that one single, liberating moment, I was free and my soul sang.

  So when the moment came and Jocasta made her move – really, it wasn’t a surprise to any of us – I unclipped the chain holding Domitian, left Jocasta to Trabo, and spinning my horse let my blade sing out and slice hard, fast, horizontal, across the place where Lucius’ neck had been.

  And still was.

  His throat came apart cleanly, in a wash of blood. He fell like a stone and I did not do him the honour of bending to hold his hand or to hear his last words. In the heart of my mind, I heard Juvens say, ‘Nicely done!’ I had already turned back, to signal to the cohorts behind not to move, that we had surrendered to Vespasian’s men. In truth, they were relieved, let no one tell you otherwise; they were outnumbered ten to one and they had heard of the slaughter in Rome. What point in fighting for a dead man? Vespasian was their emperor too now, one we could all respect.

  And so I turned again, to see Jocasta not dead, but unconscious, lying flat, with a great gash on her forehead where Trabo’s sword hilt had taken her, and him on the ground, holding Pantera’s head, saying his name, hitting his face.

  ‘Pantera … Pantera. Don’t die on me now, you bastard. You’ve got too much explaining to do. Wake up, man! You are not going to fucking die now …’

  I came to kneel behind him, to find out where the wound was, for I saw only a scratch across the back of his hand where he had thrown up his arm to protect his face. There was no other blood. Nor was his neck at a false angle, as it might have been if he had broken it.

  I knelt and reached for her blade, which lay a short distance away.

  ‘Don’t!’ It was Domitian whose hand clamped on my arm. ‘Don’t touch it. The bitch has used poison. She killed Felix like this.’

  I had hardly known Pantera, and yet his name had dominated my life since July. I felt his loss as keenly as I felt Juvens’. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Oh, no. Not yet. You heard her. She’s far cleverer than that. When she comes round, she’ll be ready to bargain with us; his life for he
rs.’

  The new emperor’s son lifted his head. Already there was a gravitas to him, a dignity that only royalty can confer. ‘It would please me, and so my father, if you and Trabo together could take care of her interrogation. I wish this man to live. I owe him my life, many times over.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

  Rome, January, AD 70

  Hypatia, Chosen of Isis

  This concludes the witness statements of the events leading to the death of Vitellius, the burning of the temple and the death of the emperor’s brother, Titus Flavius Sabinus.

  From these, we may conclude that, by his actions, Juvens caused Sabinus’ death and the fire that accompanied it. As to who killed Vitellius, that was the mob, spurred to it by the actions of Drusus, a German.

  Both of these men are dead, as is Lucius, who may fairly be said to have engineered both his brother’s rise to fame and his downfall.

  The woman Jocasta remains in custody awaiting your decision. She acknowledges that she used poison on the knife that struck the spy Pantera, and she has offered to trade: in exchange for her safety she can supply us with that which will give him life, instead of the endless sleep that now afflicts him.

  There are those in your service, Domitian amongst them, who suggest that there are means by which such a curative may be drawn from her by force, but Caenis has pointed out that if she gives another, lethal, recipe first, under duress, we may lose him altogether.

  Thus we await your decision in this as in many other affairs of state. Geminus serves as tribune of the Guard. Trabo is your Master of Horse. My lord Mucianus has order of Rome and your son Domitian is a willing pupil, ably learning the reins of state from one who understands what must be done. Those who need to die are dead, save for the woman Jocasta, whose fate remains uncertain.