‘Well, we...’
Constans shook both his finger and his head. ‘For the love of Minerva don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Anything you tell me is a secret I have to keep, and I already have plenty of them. The simple fact is that you’ll not get to the city. Not unless you have some sort of senatorial papers that will get you past road blocks. And if you did get into the city, the streets there are patrolled even more, since the level of tension in Rome is running extremely high right now and trouble bubbles under the surface everywhere.’
‘Where is Perennis,’ Mercator asked, rubbing his neck wearily.
‘He’s being held somewhere on the Palatine in the imperial palace complex. Much as I applaud your wanting to get to him, and even more your opposition of that sewer rat Cleander, you have to recognise the impossibility of seeing Perennis. You simply can’t.’
‘We will,’ replied Rufinus stubbornly. ‘Somehow we will.’
‘On the Palatine, where Cleander holds as much sway as the emperor now?’ Constans sighed. ‘At the heart of a city full of patrols all warned against you? A city that you can’t even get to unless somehow you can fly over them.’
Rufinus chewed on his lip. ‘We could take a raft down the Anio. There’s no waterfall between here and the city.’
‘The Anio will be watched too. Hades, even the port at Ostia is garrisoned for Cleander now. He more or less makes the law at the moment, what with Perennis being held pending trial. And even that might have changed now. That was the situation this morning, and a day can make a lot of difference at court. Perennis could be dead by now.’
Rufinus fretted at the scab on his hand, finally healing properly from the Pannonian girl’s bite.
‘He’s still alive. I know it. If he wasn’t, I don’t think Cleander would be so worried about us. I don’t think there would be all this effort to stop us. We’d be too late. No. Perennis is alive and there must be a way to get to him. Couldn’t you and your fellow frumentarii do something?’
Constans narrowed his eyes. ‘I find it hard to believe that Vibius Cestius would trust you with such information about me, since you seem unable to stop your lips flapping. I would take it as a personal favour if you forgot about any connection between the grain men and me. That way I wouldn’t have to make sure you wake up dead in an alley tomorrow to assure your silence. Am I clear?’
Rufinus gulped nervously. ‘Very clear. But my question stands.’
‘No, is the answer. I am not an active frumentarius. I was pensioned out after a chest injury years ago. I don’t even know their commander now. I’m just in touch with a few old friends and I do them favours. And if Cestius had a way in do you think he’d be sending you to see me?’
Rufinus went back to his fretting, picking away a piece of the scab and hissing at the pain. He stopped and looked up.
‘Senatorial papers?’
‘What?’
Rufinus leaned forward. ‘You said we could get past them with senatorial papers?’
Constans shrugged. ‘Even Cleander’s Praetorians would baulk at the idea of inconveniencing a senator without specific orders to do so. Mind you, most of the senators owe him their fealty now, and those that don’t will be watched closely. Rome is a place of nerves and betrayals these days. I try not to go there except to make quick deliveries.’
‘But you could get to the outskirts easily enough?’
‘I suppose so,’ Constans mused. ‘Why?’
Rufinus smiled. ‘Because there’s a villa outside the city on the Via Praenestina. And everyone in that villa I trust with my life, from my brother to its owner, Gordianus, and to his house guest, the senator and former general, Pompeianus. If anyone can get into the city from here without being questioned it should be them.’
Mercator was nodding now. ‘Gordianus is a good man, and so is Pompeianus. We can’t get to them, so they would have to come to us. And Tibur is too dangerous to meet in, with all these patrols.’
‘The villa of Hadrianus,’ Rufinus breathed. ‘It’s a couple of miles away down on the plain. From what I hear it’s now unoccupied. It’s shunned after Lucilla’s betrayal, falling to wrack and ruin, and I know the place well. We can hide out there and meet Pompeianus at the villa.’ He turned to Constans. ‘Can you get a message to Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus at the Villa Gordiani?’
Constans mused for a moment. ‘I have a cart load of lamps to deliver to a merchant on the Esquiline, with all appropriate paperwork. I will go in the morning, but I cannot guarantee you that I will get into the villa. If there are Praetorians or urban cohorts watching the place I shall ride right on by and go about my business. But if the place is clear I will pass on a message.’
‘I’ll scribble you one now,’ Rufinus smiled. ‘Do you have a stylus and some parchment?’
‘I’m not carrying documentary evidence, you idiot. Verbal message only.’
The young Praetorian nodded, chewing on his lip. ‘Short and to the point. Ask him to bring his entourage to his old palace at the villa of Hadrianus. Nothing more. That and my name.’
As Constans nodded, Rufinus leaned back and smiled at Mercator.
‘He’ll get us into the Palatine, I’m sure.’
‘You might be right. Or we’ll just be dragging him into our mess and getting him killed along with us.’
‘We have to try, Merc. Perennis is depending on us. Do you want Cleander to be our next commander?’
‘Shit, no.’
‘Precisely. We’re close now, Merc. Very close. We can save him. I know it.’
A clunk of a door latch announced the arrival of Icarion and Cestius. As Acheron, who’d been dozing on a rug by the fire, uncurled and watched the door warily, the frumentarius entered the room with a serious face.
‘This place is crawling with men in white. We need to move while it’s still dark and find somewhere else.’
Mercator craned his neck to see the newly-arrived pair.
‘Our young friend here might just have solved that problem.’
Rufinus’ mind filled with unwanted images of the villa in which he’d spent over a year of tense, miserable service. If the ghosts of his past were as intent on visiting him as they seemed this year, then he’d better be prepared to face them en masse, for he was about to walk into their very domain. Perhaps, he thought with an element of hope, it would be a catharsis – would put those ghosts to rest once and for all…
XVI – Old haunts, new ghosts
January 21st 185AD
Rufinus sighed and looked down at his old bed. The passage of so many months of dereliction had not been kind. Some sort of animal, or family thereof, seemed to have been living in it. His blankets were half-eaten and mouldy. A clay cup sat on the table next to his bed, the stained interior still bearing signs of that well-watered wine he’d had the morning before his capture…
…his torture.
Coming back to the villa had been odd and difficult. He had travelled so far since the last time he’d been here, on such a dangerous and troubling journey. The villa, and his assignment here, had led to pain the likes of which he could never have guessed existed. That pain had led to endless poppy juice. The poppy juice had led to lapses in judgement and a general wasting of his inner spirit. But then the attention of his friends – and a healthy dose of being dragged kicking and screaming back into the world – had started him up the slopes from Hades and he’d emerged once again, blinking, into the light of day. And now, for the first time in years, he felt alive. Truly alive.
It was a shame in a way that his rebirth had come at a time when the whole world seemed to be swirling down the plughole of life, with plots and conspiracies, treachery and murder around every corner. He’d finished with it all when the emperor was safe those few years ago. He’d finished with the great game. Sadly, just as Pompeianus had predicted, the game was clearly not finished with him. And just as the old general had intimated all those months ago, if he would not play the game then he would become a
piece in it. That was exactly what had happened. Perennis had used him to secure his family’s survival and Cleander had used him to help bring down Perennis. And now that he was a piece on the board it was going to be very hard to return to playing the game himself. This particular match would have to end first and he needed to make sure that he was one of the surviving pieces on the board when that happened.
He was done with being used.
Time to arm up and take control.
On top of the mouldy blanket sat his new kit, and it was not a heart-warming sight. A mail shirt he had found in the old praetorium of the villa. Almost all the armour he’d found had rusted beyond hope, though luckily some hapless individual had been cleaning his mail shirt the usual way, by sealing it into a barrel of sand and rolling it around, and had never had the chance to retrieve it. And the combination of the closed barrel and the desiccating sand had preserved the mail in good order. It was not a good quality shirt, but it was free of rust and quite serviceable. A helmet had turned up in a box. It had succumbed to the damp conditions a little but was still far better than the rest of the stores’ contents. Once he had scrubbed out the pits of rust it had polished up presentably, though in the right light it had a spotty, blotchy pattern reminiscent of a leopard. He still had his own belt, sword and dagger, but was missing a cingulum – the apron of leather and plates that hung from the belt’s front to protect the groin – a cloak – the ones here were more hole than material – and a shield, though he would have been uncomfortable now anyway bearing one that didn’t display the scorpion emblem of the Guard.
It would do. If they were to get through Cleander’s men and to the heart of the city, they would have to be unobtrusive anyway. Going in with shining armour and blazing white tunics with scorpion shields might not be the best idea.
‘This is where you lived?’
He turned to see Mercator leaning on the doorframe.
‘This was my bunk. There was a man called Glaucus above me. Fartiest arsehole you will ever meet. And I mean the sort of farts that stained the brickwork. I wonder what happened to Glaucus. The day of the games, when we saved the emperor, I gave Glaucus a solid clout on the head and left him unconscious.’
‘Should have killed the traitorous bastard.’
Rufinus shook his head, a curious far-away expression on his face. ‘Glaucus was alright. Just a soldier doing his job, not a fanatic or a conspirator. Nice fellow, really.’
‘You sentimental turd,’ muttered Mercator, rolling his eyes.
‘I’m not sure whether I like being back here, Merc. I thought it would be cathartic, but I think it’s just dredging everything up again.’
‘Don’t start getting bogged down in your troubles again. We lost you for more than a year. Took a lot of work to get our daft, clumsy, dangerous friend back and I don’t want to lose him again. Poppy juice Rufinus is a miserable bastard at best. Anyway, we’re out of time, so you’ll have to stop moping. There’s carriages and an escort coming down the access drive.’
‘You think it’s them?’
‘Who else would it be?’ Merc shrugged. ‘In a full day here all we’ve seen is wildlife. No one comes here. It’s considered cursed and unlucky. Some say the empress haunts the place, you know?’
‘She did that when she was alive.’
‘Come on.’
Rufinus nodded. ‘Right. Time to go back. He’ll know where to meet us.’
Mercator nodded and, gathering up Rufinus’ replacement kit, the pair wandered out of the old barracks and across the grass, through the door opposite and into the complex that had been Pompeianus’ virtual prison when he lived here with his wife, luxurious incarceration though it had been. The palatial structure had not been occupied for two years or more and had been damp and bone-chillingly cold when they arrived. Some work last night had produced a fire which, burning continuously for hours, had finally made one large room habitable. The four men had slept there and kept the fire alight through the cold morning and afternoon that followed. Soon enough it would be spring, but for now winter still sank its icy talons into the land.
Acheron was nowhere to be seen as the two men re-entered the main room, but that was hardly a surprise. Since their arrival at the villa, the big Sarmatian hound had been out and about at every opportunity, reacquainting himself with his old haunts, investigating every corner and running about. Then, some time this morning, the dog had returned with a rather different feel about him, somehow deflated and hollow. He was still gone most of the time, investigating, but now with a blanket of wretchedness over him. Rufinus had been puzzled until it struck him that the poor boy had been searching for the brother he had lost so long ago, a quest destined to prove fruitless. Acheron was clearly as haunted by the ghosts of his time here as Rufinus.
Heaving in a breath that was supposed to be cleansing but did little more than make him colder, he strode over to that great window with its view of the plains toward Rome. Off to the right he could see the old slave quarters around which the access road curved, and to the left he could make out the cavalcade lined up outside the villa’s grand vestibule on the bare, weed-strewn gravel. Three carriages were in evidence, as well as eight horses. Pompeianus would have been in a carriage, probably with Gordianus and… and hopefully others, too. The horses had born guards for the journey, two of whom were tending the beasts in the absence of their master, who was somewhere within the villa now, on the way to this very room.
Rufinus peered out across the gently rolling plains of Latium, convinced he could see a pall hanging over the distant capital like a cloud of danger and misery. The creaking of a door and the soft pad of paws announced the return of Acheron, who wandered over to Vibius Cestius for some reason. The frumentarius scratched between the dog’s ears as they waited, Icarion and Mercator sharing a jar of wine from the long-abandoned stores.
Time passed in cold, slow heartbeats until finally there came the sounds of an exterior door opening and of booted footsteps on marble. A moment later, the door to this room opened and a man in mail with a warm wool cloak stepped inside, a drawn sword in his hand. A second guard with an equally hard, emotionless face walked in and took position, armed, at the other side.
Finally, between these two implacable sentinels, a familiar figure appeared. Pompeianus had not changed in the month they had been away, but then why should he have? Just because Rufinus’ entire world and life had flipped over and changed again and again, why should he expect others to have experienced the same?
The old general’s face was serious and… haunted? Not surprising, really. This place would have as bleak memories for the old man as it had for Rufinus and Acheron.
‘For the record, I am not thrilled to return,’ Pompeianus said. ‘In recompense, one of you can find me a cup of wine and cut it with so little water you can’t see the volume change.’
Icarion filled an extra cup – a nice, patterned one – and, splashing a few drops of water into it, walked over and placed it in the general’s hand. As Pompeianus nodded his thanks and strode over to the nearest seat, another familiar face appeared in the doorway.
Senova was clearly even less pleased to return to the villa than either Rufinus or the general. Her time here had been one of perilous enslavement to an evil woman with a fiery temper. Slaves in the villa had been treated far worse than the norm, and even high-class house slaves like Senova had fallen foul of the tyrannical reign of the would-be usurper Lucilla. Her face wavered uncertainly for a moment, almost cracking a smile at the sight of Rufinus but not enough to break through the icy dismay at being back here.
Rufinus felt his cheeks redden, and other… effects… at the return of the intoxicating girl to whom he had more or less pledged his future. He’d not been sure she would come, but against that very possibility he had shaved well this morning when he’d bathed, had trimmed the most tangled and creeping of his locks and had dressed in freshly washed and pressed tunic. His nose was still shaped like a staircase, if not
quite as noticeably as it had been a week or two back, but at least the bruising on his forehead had gone now, leaving just a triangular mark between his eyes that seemed destined to be forever a part of him. He was suddenly grateful that he’d made an effort.
Senova glided across the marble floor and hovered near the general until he motioned for her to sit. Then a third figure appeared in the doorway, four guards bringing up the rear.
Publius Marcius Rustius Rufinus did look different. He looked older, certainly. It had been a month or so at most, and yet somehow he seemed to have matured into a grown man in that time. Not surprising really, given his company. If anyone could guide Rufinus’ younger brother through the twisted maze of life in Rome it was the great Pompeianus, who had made an art form out of survival.
Publius had a short, neat beard and his hair was slightly curlier than his natural style, indicating that a city barber had inflicted upon him the currently fashionable look. But more than that, Publius had discarded his colourful, expensive tunic and the toga that had looked so ill-fitting on him. Instead he wore a decorative subarmalis – the leather garment worn under armour and with the leather pteruge straps hanging from shoulders and waist. This particular garment had been made to measure by one of the best armourers in Rome, stitched and wood-burned with delicate images of gods and heroes. His tunic beneath it was plain and almost military. Though he wore no armour and carried no sword at his side, Publius’ image quite clearly proclaimed him to be a soldier. Rufinus chewed his lip as he nodded in approval. Publius was starting to look a lot like Lucius had back in Hispania before that dreadful hunt when he’d passed to Elysium. His father would have a fit when he saw Publius like this, and that alone would make the change worthwhile. He broke into an easy smile. The three most important people to him in the whole world had arrived and completed the group. His brother, his love, and the man who had almost been a father to him.
Praetorian: The Price of Treason Page 25