And like the Praetorians the man now commanded, Rufinus could see the bulk of a gladius beneath the folds of the toga. Did Cleander know how to use one? He’d no military training or experience, and yet Rufinus couldn’t see this man bothering wearing one if he didn’t know what to do with it.
Rufinus seethed with utter hatred, but he did it silently, motionless.
How different the world could have been had this man been killed in Pannonia before all this nightmare began. And Paternus, too. If the old prefect had been removed before he could have Saoterus – the emperor’s favourite – executed. But no... if Paternus had not lived to perpetrate his acts, he’d never have sent Rufinus to the Villa of Lucilla, and consequently the emperor would have been assassinated and usurped. It was never worth looking back – he’d learned that well. In the same way he was a Praetorian now and there was simply no returning to the legions, the past was unchangeable. There was nothing Rufinus could do about it, and he was determined not to chew it over again and again. That was partially what had led him down such a dark path these last two years – an inability to let go of what had happened to him. But that was what he’d done now. By standing here as though a loyal servant of his new prefect and not leaping forward to throttle the life from him, he had made his choice to draw a veil over the nightmares of the past and look instead to the future.
For the future could be changed.
Had to be changed, for the sake of his brother Publius, of Senova, Merc and Icarion, and of young Caelus Perennis…
‘It’s him,’ said the Ghost – the senior tribune of the Guard, Marcius Quartus – rubbing his hairless head with a pale, almost translucent hand. Rufinus shivered to look at the second most powerful Praetorian in Rome. He was so pale as to be almost white, his skin stretched taut and almost see-through. There was not a hair on him – no beard, no eyebrows. Not even eyelashes when you looked up close, which few could do without their eyes watering. And he was cold, officious and humourless. He was not Cleander’s man per se, but as his second in command, the chain of authority made him so automatically.
Rufinus kept his head rigid, but his eyes followed those of Quartus.
The body on the table was a mess. To the untrained eye it could be anyone. It could certainly be Caelus Perennis.
‘Perhaps,’ Cleander murmured with narrowed eyes.
‘I’ve seen the boy with his father several times,’ the Ghost replied. ‘It is him. The size and build are right…’
That had been an eye-opener for Rufinus.
Back in the mansio during the night, Rufinus, Cestius, Perennis and the other frumentarius – whose name was never given – had set to work speedily under the odd-eyed officer’s direction. They had searched the bodies. Clearly, Cleander was going to require proof that Caelus Perennis was dead, so while the lad was to be saved, someone had to be delivered to the chamberlain.
None of the Praetorians lying in swathes of blood on the mansio floor would do. Caelus was young, thin, short and bookish. The killers that the animal Glabrio had brought with him had been burly, wiry soldiers with hard muscles, and were generally tall, reaching that minimum requirement which most recruiters still held dear.
‘What do we do?’ Rufinus had said. ‘There’s no one here we can pass off as Perennis. No one would fall for it.’
Cestius had nodded. ‘I’d feared that would be the case. But if you remember, I sent a message to the Castra Peregrina the night we arrived. A fall-back.’
Rufinus had remembered that night well enough, and a moment later the frumentarius was leading him out into the dark, across the courtyard and past the stable. Grabbing a torch from the wall, he lit it with some difficulty in the damp air and held it aloft to illuminate the corner behind the stable.
Rufinus had gaped.
There, in the chilly night behind the stable wall stood a small one-horse cart, atop which lay a humanoid shape under a thin blanket. When Cestius had twitched aside the cover, Rufinus had almost recoiled. The body was the same shape as young Perennis, in height, weight and build, and even hair length and colour. His face was unfamiliar, though peaceful, serene and smiling rather oddly.
‘What in Hades?’
‘The fall-back,’ Cestius had murmured. ‘I doubted we’d find a match for Perennis by chance, so I sent a list of criteria back to the Castra Peregrina and colleagues of mine acquired this body for me.’
‘Acquired?’ he’d asked archly, trying not to look in the open eyes.
‘No, Rufinus, they did not kill a man to order. But there is little the frumentarii cannot get their hands on when required.’
Taking hold of the cart, they had wheeled it out into the light of the courtyard.
‘Now, young Rufinus, take this.’
Rufinus had boggled as Cestius handed him a log twice the size of his forearm in each dimension.
‘What for?’
‘To disguise his face. Can’t have him looking so happy and so clearly not Perennis. Smash the face and perhaps a few extra broken bones here and there to simulate a nasty end. But leave the left side of the ribcage clear and try and avoid the lower jaw..’
‘What?’
‘Do you want a body for Cleander?’ Cestius had muttered.
‘But why me?’
The frumentarius had smiled. ‘We play to our strengths. Yours revolve around beating men to a pulp. I have other duties to attend to.
‘He might well be the same shape,’ Cleander mused, walking slowly round the body with an expression of distrust and disbelief, ‘but I suspect there are a number of others that size, across the breadth of the empire. Proof, Quartus. Proof.’
The body was not only the right shape, and a close copy in every way, but he was even wearing a legate’s tunic and boots, albeit tattered and bloodied ones.
‘His teeth,’ the tribune muttered, running his finger down the notes on the wax tablet in his hand.
Cleander frowned and gestured to one of the guardsmen standing around the room’s periphery. ‘Open his mouth.’
The soldier, a sour look of distaste on his face, approached the table and leaned over. The face of the corpse was broken, mashed and flat, a smush of bone fragments, blood, muscle, flesh and fluids. It could have been anyone. The upper portion of the mouth had gone in the destruction. His face paling, the guardsman put his fingers through the mess of stuff that had once been lips and nose, found what felt like teeth and prised them apart.
‘Hold the lips back, man,’ Cleander snapped, and the soldier, looking for all the world as though he were about to throw up, did just that. Cleander leaned closer, as did the Ghost.
‘One iron tooth, left of centre, lower jaw. Result of a chariot accident two years ago.’
Cleander nodded. ‘Good.’
‘Did you have to do such a thorough job on his face?’ Quartus grunted.
‘It was not my initial intention, sir,’ Rufinus said quietly. ‘But in a fight, sometimes you have to resort to the desperate. Perennis encountered the door jamb a number of times to prevent him doing the same to me.’
The mess, and the tooth…
Rufinus had shuddered as the others returned from a sojourn indoors to find the young Praetorian standing next to the cart in the courtyard, covered in blood and brains and holding the soaking, sticky log, staring in horror at what he had done to the poor dead boy.
‘Good. Excellent work.’
It hadn’t felt like excellent work.
Perennis had followed the two frumentarii from the mansio, and whatever he had seen or heard had made him pale to the same colour as the body on the cart.
‘I need you to hold the young legate here,’ Cestius had said.
‘What?’
‘Both of you. Hold him very, very tight.’
Rufinus, his brow furrowed in incomprehension, had taken up position at the lad’s left side, grasping his arm and shoulder and putting all his weight into keeping young Perennis still against the cart, just as the unnamed frumentarius
braced the other side.
‘Open wide,’ Cestius had said quietly.
Rufinus would not forget the next quarter hour as long as he lived. It had been every bit as unpleasant as what the sweaty, burly evil men did to traitors in the cellars of the Palatine – what the Syrian had done to him, in fact, at the villa.
Cestius had located the young man’s false tooth and extracted it.
The iron tooth had broken bone coming out and created sheets of blood like a cattle butcher’s shop. It was, of course, a perfect metal match for the tooth the boy had lost in his accident. The dentist responsible, as was common for those who could afford such work, had made a mould from the damaged tooth and cast an iron one to match, roots and all. The tooth had then been hammered into the young legate’s jaw in place of the lost one, roots into perfect-fitting cavities. Rufinus had known a man who had the same thing done once in Tarraco, and who had described it as the most excruciating pain imaginable.
It seemed that Caelus Perennis disagreed. Through a mouthful of pouring blood and tiny bone fragments, young Perennis had pointed out that having it removed again was, in fact, more painful. He had then passed out in their arms as Cestius held up the iron tooth and examined it with an air of satisfaction.
Hammering it into place in the corpse’s jaw was a bile-rising experience, too.
Awful.
‘Is there anything else?’ Cleander muttered, though his posture had relaxed slightly.
‘Birthmark, above left hip.’
Cleander pointed at the pale guardsman who had prised open the mouth. ‘Lift his tunic.’
The Praetorian did so and the two officers walked around the body to peer closely. The soldier had to take one of the wet rags from the table and wipe the flesh.
The dark red mark was there in all its glory.
‘It’s the right shape, in the right place,’ the Ghost confirmed. ‘It is him, sir.’
The birthmark had been the only part of the fake body preparation that had not sickened and chilled Rufinus. In fact, it had come as something of a relief to know that the odd tasks to which Rufinus had been set those few days at the mansio had had a purpose beyond merely keeping him busy.
Cestius had lifted the young body’s tunic at the appropriate side and had produced the Italia-shaped wooden lump he had spent more than a day carving, as well as a bowl of the mushed-up out-of-season blackberries. Dipping the wood into the dark mulch, he had moved it around, thoroughly soaking it, then, telling young Perennis to lift his tunic for reference, he used the stamp to press a new birthmark in exactly the right place on the body.
‘Won’t it wash off?’ Rufinus had asked, breathlessly, staring at the perfect facsimile.
‘Have you ever eaten blackberries with your bare hands?’ Cestius had replied. ‘The stain lasts for days, no matter how hard you scrub. Especially if you just let it soak in and embed. It will have faded away a week from now, but the body will have been burned long before then. It need only stay a day or two for Cleander to be sure.’
And he was. Rufinus could see it in the man’s gradual relaxing of tension.
‘The line of Perennis is ended. You have done your duty to Rome and a personal favour to me, Rustius Rufinus. Well done.’
Rufinus had promised himself he would stay silent, but the pressure building in him was too much.
‘About my brother…’
Cleander gave him a smile that would have sent crocodiles scurrying for cover.
‘Ah yes. Publius is in the best of care. I have him in the emperor’s court. He is well-attended with slaves, girls, books and anything his heart desires.’
‘Except freedom, of course.’
‘Be careful what tone you take here, Rufinus. Insubordination in the ranks can lead to a flogging, as I seem to remember you know quite well.’ He smiled again, and Rufinus shuddered at the sight. ‘Publius is young and impressionable,’ Cleander sighed. ‘He needs guidance. I have arranged a small circle of scholars to help give him direction, and we will try to find him a small public role. Perhaps as the new curator aquarum? I have recently had cause to remove the overseer of aqueducts from his role due to failure to make his bridges fully secure.’
Rufinus ground his teeth. Cestius had warned him not to push matters, and it was only through superhuman effort that he straightened and nodded his head politely.
‘Good. A number of my associates have suggested that you would be best removed from the game entirely, young man. However, I can see past the next few moves, and am loath to remove a potentially useful piece so early in the game. That is, of course, the reason I have also not bowed to their alternate suggestion that you receive an early pension and retire back to Hispania. No. There are plenty of things that I can find for you to do.’
‘I won’t continue to kill for you,’ Rufinus said flatly. ‘Even for my brother, you won’t get me to do that. I’m no assassin.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it, young Rufinus,’ Cleander smiled. Metaphorical crocodiles hid in their reeds, shaking at the sight. ‘Perennis was an exception that required a friendly face, and remember that he was a legally-mandated execution, and not a murder as you seem to think. But no… no more killing. But there are many other things you can do. In fact, I have a job for you already in mind.’
‘You cannot trust him,’ the Ghost said quietly. ‘Think about Glabrio.’
Rufinus tried to remain perfectly still and stop his heart racing.
‘Glabrio will turn up,’ Cleander said dismissively.
Yes, Rufinus thought, but only with a lot of digging in the woods behind the Narnia mansio…
‘Rufinus killed him. It’s plain. The timing is too suspicious,’ tribune Quartus hissed.
‘Him?’ Cleander barked out a laugh. ‘He’s strong, that’s true. And he’s luckier than most. But Glabrio travels with a dozen veterans at his side. A dozen, Quartus. Do you think this boy strong enough and lucky enough for that?’
The Ghost said nothing, His expression was still suspicious… accusatory.
‘No,’ Cleander said finally. ‘Glabrio is hardly a trained hound. He is at best a wild animal we have had on a loose leash. He is out there somewhere on one of his many personal feuds. He’ll turn up sooner or later demanding that I give him Rufinus.’
Still, the Ghost stood silent.
‘Very well. Quartus, have the records taken care of. This business is done with. Have Perennis burned and the ashes interred with the rest of his kin. Personally I would as soon throw him in the Tiber and let the current and Neptune have him, but the emperor is still soft on Perennis and greatly regrets what has happened. He wants them to be honoured even in death, though the world will remember only Perennis the usurper.’
He turned to Rufinus.
‘Clean yourself up, Gnaeus Marcius Rustius Rufinus. You are a mess. I will overlook the fact this time, given the need for you to bring the traitor’s body for examination, but I expect you to uphold the dignity of the Praetorian Guard no matter where you are or what you do, even at the fringes of the empire…’
Rufinus felt a chill. His mind took him back months to the prefect’s office. To Perennis tapping a finger on a map, telling him of a place called Habitancum at the far northern edge of the world. No, surely not…’
‘You will understand, Rufinus, if I find it uncomfortable having you in Rome. You may be a soldier of the Praetorian Guard, but with you being the man who brought down the Praetorian prefect Paternus and who was also instrumental in the downfall of the Praetorian prefect Perennis, as their direct successor, it might be seen as a little unwise to keep you too close to my side. Praetorian commanders have a nasty habit of dying around you, and I have too many plans for Rome to let that happen.’
Rufinus remained still, silent.
Inside he raged. Inside, he promised the twisted man before him – vowed even to divine Nemesis, who nurtured righteous vengeance – that he would see a third Praetorian prefect fall yet. Cleander would topple from his per
ch soon, and he would come down hard.
Just not yet, though. Cestius had drilled into him the need to be slow and methodical, lest he get his brother and his friends killed through precipitous action.
‘So I am having the orders drawn up,’ Cleander went on. ‘You will be departing Rome at first light tomorrow on detached duty. The twin commanders of the legions in Dacia have been rather outspoken in their criticism of both the emperor and myself. Such lack of care and potential treason should be investigated.’
Dacia? Wasn’t there a tribal revolt or something going on there?
‘You will be attached to the combined forces of the legates Pescennius Niger and Clodius Albinus in Dacia. You will report to the legionary fortress of Viminiacum on the south bank of the Danuvius in Moesia within the month and attach yourself to their staff. By the time you depart I will have all the appropriate documentation sent to you.’
‘They won’t like having a Praetorian foisted upon them,’ the Ghost said quietly. ‘He’ll be nearly as unpopular as the frumentarii.’
‘As long as he does his job and roots out any dissent among the legions and their masters, I care not. And if he causes as much of a stir with Albinus and Niger as he habitually does here, then I will merely consider it a bonus.’
Rufinus kept perfectly still until Cleander was apparently finished with him and dismissed him with a wave. ‘Report to my office in the morning for your orders.’
Dacia…
Another gods-forsaken land of barbarians at the periphery of the civilised world.
XXIV – New horizons
January 27th 185AD
Rufinus knocked twice and stood calmly, awaiting the patter of footsteps from within. A moment later one of the villa’s house slaves opened the door and, recognising the young guardsman, ushered him in, leading him to one of the smaller rooms off the left side of the atrium.
Praetorian: The Price of Treason Page 36