Otacilius conferred with him in a low voice. I heard my name spoken. The man looked towards me. His eyebrows registered surprise, then shock. He shoved Otacilius roughly aside and strode towards us, casting aside his helmet and drawing his short sword from its scabbard. He grabbed my shoulder and put the blade to my neck. I sucked in a breath and closed my eyes.
An instant later, his bearish arms were around me, crushing me to his barrel chest. The tether that had been around my throat lay on the ground, cut in two.
‘Gordianus!’ he bellowed, pulling back to give me the full effect of his homely features at close quarters.
‘Marc Antony,’ I whispered, and fainted to the ground.
I heard voices, and gradually realized that I was in an enclosed space – not a room exactly, but a shelter of some sort, full of soft light.
‘A citizen his age, led by his neck on a forced march!’
‘The prisoners had to be bound, Tribune. Standard procedure for suspected insurgents and spies.’
‘It’s a wonder you didn’t kill him! That wouldn’t mark an auspicious beginning for you in Caesar’s army, Cohort Commander – killing Gordianus Meto’s father.’
‘I only followed regulations, Tribune.’
I realized I was in a large tent, and remembered the tent in the meadow from which Antony had emerged. I lay on a hard pallet with a thin blanket over me.
‘He’s waking up.’
‘A good thing for you! You’re dismissed, Marcus Otacilius. Go back and rejoin your cohort.’
‘But –’
‘The sight of you is likely to send him straight to Hades! You’ve made your report. Get out.’
There was a rustling noise, a flicker of light from a parted tent flap, and then the face of Marc Antony abruptly loomed over me. ‘Gordianus, are you all right?’
‘Thirsty. Hungry. My feet hurt.’
Antony laughed. ‘You sound like any soldier at the end of a hard march.’
I managed to sit up. My head whirled. ‘I fainted?’
‘It happens. A forced march, no food or water – and from the marks on your neck, it looks like that fool Otacilius half-strangled you.’
I felt my throat. The flesh was tender and bruised, but not bleeding. ‘For a moment, up at the pass, I thought he was going to execute me.’
‘He’s not that big a fool. We’ll talk about it later, after you’ve had something to eat and drink. Don’t get up. Sit on the cot. I’ll have something brought to you. But eat quickly. The tent needs to come down. I intend to set out within the hour.’
‘What about me?’
‘You’ll come with me, of course.’
I groaned. ‘Not back up the mountain!’
‘No. To Brundisium. Caesar needs me, to close in for the kill.’
Antony’s company consisted of a hundred mounted soldiers. He had been dispatched by Caesar to escort the troops bound for Sicily as far as the foot of the Apennines, then to rejoin the main force. His contingent was kept small so that he could move swiftly. Every man was a battle-hardened veteran of the Gallic Wars. Antony boasted that his hand-picked century was the equal of any two cohorts.
He invited me to ride alongside him at the head of the company. The slaves were allowed to ride in the baggage wagon. Fortex he presumed to be my personal bodyguard. Tiro he failed to recognize, even at close quarters. This surprised me, because there was no man in Rome whom Antony hated more than Cicero, and I feared that he might recognize Cicero’s secretary even disguised, but Antony accepted the explanation that Tiro was Meto’s old tutor Soscarides with hardly a glance. ‘Antony isn’t simple,’ Meto had once told me, ‘but he’s as clear and plain to read as Caesar’s Latin.’ Apparently he expected others to be equally transparent.
As for the wagon driver, the poor slave had arrived at the meadow exhausted and feverish from his shoulder wound, too delirious to answer questions or to speak for himself. He was loaded into the baggage wagon along with Tiro and Fortex. I found it convenient to pretend that his delirium preceded our encounter with Otacilius. ‘The wretched slave caught a fever coming over the mountains,’ I told Antony as we rode out. ‘I think he must have been out of his wits from the moment he woke up this morning. All that nonsense he told the cohort commander – he was raving.’
‘Still, he was right about that courier’s passport, wasn’t he?’ Antony looked ahead, showing me his fierce boxer’s profile.
‘Ah. Yes. That’s a bit embarrassing. I told my man Soscarides to hide it until the troops passed. Foolish of me, perhaps, but I thought I might save myself some trouble. Instead, I was caught lying. I can’t blame the cohort commander for being suspicious of me after that.’
‘But Gordianus, how in Hades did you ever get your hands on such a document? Signed by Pompey himself!’
I decided to evade, rather than lie. ‘I don’t know how else I could have obtained fresh horses at every stop along the way. I was able to take advantage of it . . . thanks to Cicero.’ That was not a lie, exactly. ‘I stayed at his villa at Formiae for a couple of nights.’
‘That piece of cow dung!’ Antony turned to face me. His features straight on had grown as fearsome as his profile. ‘Do you know what I’d most like to see come out of all this? Cicero’s head on a stake! Ever since the bastard murdered my stepfather, putting down Catilina’s so-called conspiracy, he’s made a career of slandering me. I don’t know how a fine fellow like yourself can stay friends with such a creature.’
‘Cicero and I aren’t exactly friends, Tribune . . .’
‘You needn’t explain. Caesar is the same. Every time the subject of Cicero comes up, we argue. He tells me to stop ranting. I ask why he coddles such a scorpion. “Useful,” he says, as if that won the argument. “Some day, Cicero may prove useful.” ’ Antony laughed. ‘Well, he proved useful to you, I suppose, if he gave you that courier’s passport from Pompey! But it landed you in trouble in the end, didn’t it? You rode up one side of Italy, but you had to walk down the other! You’re lucky Marcus Otacilius brought you straight to me, or you might very well have lost your head. But you’ve always been lucky, to live as long as you have. Imagine, the father of Gordianus Meto suspected of spying for Pompey! The world has become a strange place.’
‘Perhaps stranger than you think,’ I said under my breath.
‘Well, we shall sort everything out when we reach Brundisium.’ He seemed relieved to be done with the subject, but his words left me unsettled. What remained to be sorted out, if Antony had accepted my story?
There was the problem of the wagon driver, of course. What would happen when his delirium receded? And what if Tiro were recognized? How could I explain my complicity in his masquerade as Soscarides? Betraying Tiro now was out of the question. He could not possibly fall into worse hands. I could all too easily imagine Antony taking out his hatred of Cicero against Cicero’s right-hand man.
‘You look pensive, Gordianus.’ Antony reached over and squeezed my leg. ‘Don’t worry, you shall see Meto soon enough! After tonight, we’ll have three days of hard riding to reach Brundisium. If your luck holds, we should arrive just in time to witness Pompey’s last stand!’
We camped that night half a mile off the road, in a shallow valley amid low hills. Antony pointed out the site’s defensibility.
‘Is there really any danger of attack, Tribune?’ I asked. ‘The mountains are to our right, the sea to our left. Behind us is Corfinium, securely garrisoned by Caesar’s men. Before us is Brundisium, which I presume to be surrounded by Caesar’s main force. I should think we’re as safe as a spider on a roof.’
‘Of course we are. It’s all my years in Gaul. I can never pitch camp without thinking something unseen might be lurking in plain sight.’
‘In that case, could I have my dagger back? The one that Otacilius confiscated? He took daggers from my slaves, as well.’
‘Certainly. As soon as we’ve made camp.’
The men shucked off their armour and set to wo
rk pitching tents, digging a pit for the latrine, kindling a fire. I went in search of the baggage wagon. A small knot of men surrounded it, looking down at something on the ground, talking.
‘The fever must have taken him.’
‘It can happen that quickly, with a wound like that. I’ve seen stronger men bleed less and die faster.’
‘He was just an old slave, anyway. And from what I heard, a troublemaker.’
‘Ah, here’s the tribune’s friend. Let him through!’
The crowd parted for me. I stepped closer and saw the body of the wagon driver on the ground. Someone had crossed his arms over his chest and closed his eyes.
‘He must have died during the day,’ explained a soldier who stood over the body. ‘He was dead when we came to unload the wagon.’
I looked about. ‘Where are the others? The two slaves who were in the wagon with him?’
Tiro and Fortex stepped into sight. Neither said a word.
The soldiers were summoned to another duty and dispersed. I knelt beside the body. In death, the slave’s face was even more haggard than in life, his cheeks sunken around his toothless mouth. I had never even asked his name. When I wanted something from him, I had simply called him ‘driver’.
I rolled him over. Besides the wound at the shoulder, there were several others, where he had been poked and prodded during the march, but they appeared to be superficial. His shoes were thin, his feet blistered and bloody. The tether had worn the skin around his ankles. There appeared to be faint bruises around his throat as well; in the fading light it was hard to tell. Instinctively, I felt my own throat, where the tether had chafed it. But there had been no tether around the slave’s throat.
Tiro and Fortex stood over me. I looked up at them. I spoke in a low voice. ‘He was strangled, wasn’t he?’
Tiro raised an eyebrow. ‘You heard the soldiers. He died of fever, from his wound. He was old and weak. The march down the mountain killed him. That was his own fault.’
‘These discolourations at his throat —’
‘Liver spots?’ said Tiro.
I stood and looked him in the eye. ‘I think he was strangled. By your hand, Tiro?’
‘Of course not. Fortex is trained for that type of thing.’
I glanced at Fortex. He wouldn’t meet my gaze.
‘It had to be done, Gordianus,’ whispered Tiro. ‘What if he had recovered, and started talking again?’
I stared at him.
‘Don’t judge me, Gordianus! In times like these, a man has to do things against his own nature. Can you say that you wouldn’t have done the same?’
I turned away and walked towards the campfire.
XVI
Antony never questioned the untimely death of the wagon driver. He was used to seeing men die suddenly, from wounds that did not appear fatal. He had other things on his mind.
The next morning, the soldiers threw the body into the latrine pit and covered it. The death of a slave merited no more ceremony than that.
As we rode out, Antony’s only comment was that I might contact the slave’s owner when I had the chance, to let him know what had become of his wagon and driver. ‘If you suspect he’s the litigious type, you could offer him a token settlement; the slave obviously wasn’t worth much. And since the owner was honouring your courier’s passport, technically you don’t owe him anything. Let him sue Pompey!’ Antony laughed, then shook his head. ‘Civilians always suffer losses in wartime – property ruined, slaves running off. In a place like Gaul, the locals have to patch things up for themselves. Here in Italy it’ll be different. Once things get back to normal, there’ll be a flood of litigation – suits for damages, pleas for reparations, petitions for tax relief. The courts will be jammed. Caesar will have his hands full.’
‘So will advocates like Cicero,’ I said.
‘If Cicero still has his hands,’ said Antony.
The coastal road was mostly straight and flat, but not in the best condition. Winter storms had damaged some sections, dislodging stones and washing out the foundation. Normally, such damage would have been repaired promptly by gangs of slaves working under a local magistrate, but the chaos in the region had prevented that. The recent passage of so many men, vehicles, and horses – first Pompey’s army, then Caesar’s – had aggravated the situation. But despite the mud and the muck, we travelled well over forty miles that day, and did the same the next day and the next.
I had travelled with Antony a few years before, from Ravenna to Rome, and again found his company enjoyable. He was a notorious carouser, whether the arena was a battlefield in Gaul, a wild party on the Palatine, or the floor of the Roman Senate. He had plenty of stones to tell, and he enjoyed hearing mine, as long as they involved scandalous women, political chicanery, or trials for murder, or best, all three together. I hardly saw Tiro, who travelled in the baggage wagon and stayed out of Antony’s sight.
It was in the hour before twilight of the third day – one day after the Ides of March, one day before the feast of the Liberalia – that we arrived in the vicinity of Brundisium. We were spotted by lookouts posted atop a low hill east of the road. A centurion rode out to greet Antony. The man was flushed with excitement.
‘Tribune, you’ve arrived just in time!’
‘For what?’
‘I’m not sure, but the men posted on the other side of the hill are whooping and cheering. Something’s happening down in the harbour.’
‘Show us the way!’ barked Antony. I hesitated to follow, uncertain of my place now that we had reached the theatre of battle. Antony peered back at me. Aren’t you coming, Gordianus?’
We rode to the top of the low hill, where several tents had been pitched and a sizable contingent of soldiers had been posted as lookouts. Towards the north, in the direction we had come, the site commanded a sweeping view of the beach and the coastal road for miles. The centurion had seen us approaching for hours.
Toward the south, the site overlooked the city, the harbour, and the sea. The centurion led us to a vantage point with an unobstructed view. ‘They say this was the very spot where Caesar stood, when he planned the siege,’ he said proudly.
The walled city of Brundisium is situated on a peninsula surrounded by a semicircular harbour. A narrow strait links this protected harbour to the Adriatic Sea. The easiest way to visualize the city, as it might appear on a map, is to hold up your right hand and form a reverse letter C. The space enclosed by your forefinger and thumb represents the peninsula upon which the city is built. Your forefinger and thumb represent the northern and southern channels of the harbour. Your wrist represents the strait through which ships must sail to reach the sea.
From our vantage point, the city on the peninsula appeared as a cluster of tenements, warehouses, and temples crowded within high walls. Pompey’s soldiers were clearly visible on the towers and parapets, their helmets and spears glinting in the westering sun. Along the landward western wall, which ran between the north and south channels of the inner harbour, the besieging army of Caesar was encamped. The force appeared to my eye enormous. Row upon row of catapults and ballistic machines had been assembled, along with several siege towers on wheels, which rose even higher than the city walls.
But I saw nothing to cause a commotion among the watchers on the hillside. The siege towers and war machines were unengaged. No smoke rose from the city, and I saw no sign of fighting along the wall.
‘There!’ Antony pointed away from the city, towards the entrance to the harbour and beyond. A fleet of large ships was approaching from the open sea. Several had already reached the harbour entrance and appeared to be manoeuvring to sail through in single file. I found this curious, as I had sailed in and out of Brundisium myself in the past, and knew that the harbour entrance was deep and wide enough for several ships to sail abreast, yet these were apparently endeavouring to enter one at a time, keeping as close to the centre as possible.
As the first ship entered the straits, I saw the re
ason for such a course. The sight was so strange, I had trouble believing my eyes. At the narrowest part of the entrance to the harbour, great piers of some sort had been built out from both promontories, extending far into the water. This breakwater very nearly met in the middle, or so it appeared at a distance, almost closing off the entrance to the harbour. Short towers had been built at intervals along both arms of the structure, and these were equipped with catapults and ballistic machines.
‘By my ancestor Hercules, what are we seeing?’ muttered Antony, as puzzled by the sight as I was. He turned his head and scanned the other soldiers watching along the hillside. A bearded little fellow was standing atop a boulder nearby, viewing the scene intently with his arms crossed, mumbling to himself. Antony called out to him. ‘Engineer Vitruvius!’
The man blinked and looked in our direction.
‘Engineer Vitruvius! Report!’
The man scrambled down from the rock and came running. He saluted Antony. ‘Tribune, you’ve rejoined us!’
‘You state the obvious, Marcus Vitruvius. What’s not so obvious is what we’re witnessing down there. What in Hades is going on?’
‘Ah!’ Vitruvius looked towards the harbour, but was so short that the tops of some trees down the hillside blocked his view. ‘If we may retire to higher ground, Tribune . . .’
We followed him back to the boulder. He scrambled atop it, crossed his arms, and gazed down at the harbour. ‘Now, Tribune, if I may explain the situation . . .’ His tone was typical of the condescending manner of builders and engineers even when dealing with superiors, if those superiors know less than they do of construction and mathematics.
Vitruvius cleared his throat. ‘Seven days ago we arrived outside Brundisium. Caesar moved at once to encircle the city and the harbour, placing the greatest part of his six legions before the city wall but also securing the promontories north and south of the harbour entrance. Our commander hoped to trap not only Pompey but also the two consuls and the many senators with him, so as to force immediate negotiations and a settlement of the crisis.’
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