A hush fell. All eyes were on the imperial box. Gallienus raised his arms. He swayed a little. Pippa, his Alamann mistress, steadied him. Gallienus just laughed.
‘Two tokens to go.’ The emperor’s voice carried well. He had made himself heard on parade ground and battlefield. Here it was slightly slurred. ‘From our boundless generosity, the holders of this one can claim’ – Gallienus paused for effect – ‘a dead dog!’
The crowd groaned and laughed. They pelted each other with the worthless tokens. Senators might frown, but the plebs adored this rough humour. A pound of lead or a pound of gold – you could never tell what you might get.
Gallienus raised a huge flagon of wine. Unsteadily, he whirled the pitcher, and sloshed out a libation. The wine went everywhere, spattering the snowy-white togas of the good and the great seated around the emperor. The plebs howled their approval. There was nothing they liked better than seeing their betters humiliated. Nothing except, perhaps, gold – and that might still be coming.
The emperor drained the flagon in one. Again the crowd cheered. As he went to put it down, he almost overbalanced. The emperor was very drunk.
Was Gallienus worth saving? Ballista looked at the reeling figure, at the emperor’s inebriated grin and dyed hair. A king is a king because he has virtue. If he chooses vice, he becomes a tyrant. Was Gallienus still fit to rule the empire? He had always been changeable. With him, everything was out of season: green figs in the depths of winter, gemstones on the soles of his boots, the senate treated like servants, buffoons and prostitutes as honoured companions. Now – while pretenders were dismembering the empire – he squandered money on colossal statues and porticos, founded cities of philosophers in remote mountain valleys. Was it true he reclined at banquets dressed as a woman?
True or not, none of it could make any difference to Ballista. He had sworn an oath to the emperor. Gallienus was his friend. Ballista owed Gallienus his life. More important – far more important – if Gallienus died, so did Ballista’s family. To save his Julia and his sons, Gallienus must live.
‘The one but last token,’ Gallienus shouted.
Infernal gods, where were Caecilius and that centurion? One more gift, and Gallienus would leave. The last hour had almost run its course.
‘Ten pounds of silver!’
The throng bellowed its delight. Gallienus was so close. Ballista could shout, but he would never make himself heard over the pandemonium. One last effort. Desperately, Ballista readied himself, measured the distances, planned his moves: rush the four praetorians, take them by surprise, knock them aside, then a few steps, ignore the door – there may be guards on the other side – leap for the railing, swing himself into the imperial box, and scramble over the seats, before the German guard at the rear could get to the emperor. All it would take was a few words.
‘Is that you?’ The Master of Admissions was peering at the battered, shaven-headed figure.
‘Caecilius.’
‘Ballista?’ The functionary was puzzled. ‘Have you shaved your head?’
‘What?’ The centurion started. ‘Ballista, you say? Guards, arrest this man!’
‘Not now!’ Caecilius waved the centurion away. ‘What has happened?’
Ballista knew this was the final roll of the dice. There was no more time for subterfuge. If the Master of Admissions had joined the conspirators, it was over.
‘Gallienus will be assassinated as he leaves the Colosseum. Scarpio of the City Watch is part of the plot, so was Rufinus of the frumentarii. There are others, at least two. I don’t know who they are.’
‘You are certain?’
‘I could not be more certain.’
‘You had better come with me.’ Caecilius gestured to the centurion. ‘Bring your men.’
‘No,’ Ballista said. ‘Trust no one but the German Guard. They will keep their sword-oath.’
The Master of Admissions hesitated, then made a decision. ‘Centurion, stay here. Let no one else into the sacred presence. Gallienus departs after the final throw. We have only moments.’
*
‘Marcus Clodius Ballista!’
As he was announced, Ballista saw every head turn towards him. The emperor looked over, eyes a trifle unfocused. Gallienus smiled.
‘My old school friend, you have missed all the presents.’ A look of utter bewilderment crossed the emperor’s face. ‘Your lovely hair!’
A senator jumped to his feet. He was portly, bald as a baby. He blundered towards the front of the box.
Ballista shoved Caecilius out of the way.
‘Guards! Stop him! Guards!’ No one was moving, but everyone was shouting at once.
Ballista pushed aside two seated senators.
The Germans were rushing down from the back of the box. ‘Protect the emperor!’ Ballista heard Freki, their commander, shouting.
Ballista hurdled a row of seats.
‘Protect the emperor! Then capture them both alive!’
The senator had a blade.
Ballista dived, caught the senator around the thighs. Together they crashed onto the unforgiving marble floor. Entangled, they rolled against the side wall. Ballista cracked his head. His vision swam. The senator was on top of Ballista. His weight was crushing. One of Ballista’s arms was trapped under his own body.
‘Two bald men fighting.’ Ballista heard Gallienus giggle. The deadly seriousness had not penetrated through the fog of drink.
A flash of steel. Someone was screaming. The knife jabbing down. With his free hand, Ballista caught the senator’s wrist. The tip of the blade a handbreadth from his eye.
The sound of heavy footfalls. Two sets of boots at the edge of Ballista’s vision. A voice of command ordering the Germans back.
The senator grunted, thrust down again, all his weight behind the blow. Ballista could not hold him. He twisted his head aside. The knife sliced past his ear, gouged into the marble.
Scarpio was standing over them. The point of his sword wavered as he sought an opening.
The senator reared up, ready to strike again. Ballista got his other arm free, grabbed his assailant’s wrist with both hands.
Scarpio shifted his stance.
Ballista’s arms were trembling with the effort. The knife was descending, inexorable. If that did not kill him, Scarpio would.
Scarpio was bundled to one side.
The thwack of a sword striking. Ballista felt the impact through the body pinioning him. The senator jerked back. The knife fell from his hand.
Out of sight, the sound of boots running.
Kneeling now, the senator was tugging at a ring on his finger.
‘No need, Sempronius,’ the Praetorian Prefect said.
‘Don’t kill him!’ Ballista croaked.
Too late. Volusianus’ blade took off the top of the senator’s skull.
The dead weight toppled sideways.
The ruddy face of Volusianus loomed over Ballista. He reached down, gripped a hand, and helped Ballista to his feet. The floor was slick with blood. Gallienus was covered by a wall of overlapping German shields.
Ballista fought to get breath back into his crushed chest. ‘Scarpio, where is he?’
‘Hades!’ The Praetorian Prefect looked around wildly. ‘The little bastard must have scuttled off down the passage to the Palatine. No matter, I will get my men from outside. They will hunt him down soon enough.’
‘No time.’ Ballista staggered towards the curtain that screened the tunnel. ‘Tell them to follow. We must take him alive.’
The passageway was broad, tall and vaulted. Its painted walls were lit by scented lamps. The gods forbid that an emperor should ever have to set foot anywhere squalid.
The weight of the senator had come down on Ballista’s injured ribs. Each breath brought a white hot pain. Clutching his chest, Ballista ran as best he could.
It was said the tunnel had been built so the Emperor Commodus could walk untroubled from the Palace to the arena. Commodus had been obse
ssed by the Games.
From somewhere ahead echoed a shout, and the sound of something breaking. Ignoring the agony, Ballista ran faster.
Around a corner, two slaves were looking disconsolately at a broken jar of oil. A pool of liquid was spreading across the flagstones.
‘He just came out of nowhere,’ one said. ‘It wasn’t our fault.’
Ballista’s ribs hurt too much to talk. Avoiding the oil, he ran past.
Another turning, and the tunnel branched in two. Of course, in his insanity, Commodus had fought as a gladiator. The narrower passage must run down to the cells under the floor of the arena. Which way would Scarpio have gone? The Palace offered a better hope of escape than the substructures of the Colosseum. By their nature – the need to contain wild beasts, and condemned criminals – the exits from the latter would be heavily guarded. Ballista staggered on. Now the ankle he had twisted was hurting. He was nearly finished, only willpower keeping him moving.
Yet another corner – this place was like something out of a myth – and the passage began to slope upwards. A slave was lighting the lamps, ready for the imperial party.
‘Has a man been this way?’
The slave did not reply.
‘Just now – a man running?’
The slave just stared at the blood-soaked apparition.
‘Answer!’
‘No, master.’
Through panic or cunning, Scarpio must have gone down under the Colosseum. Ballista turned back.
As he took the path that led down to the cells, Ballista heard the rattle of armed men coming down from the imperial box.
Pain was an irrelevance. So all the Stoics claimed. Each breath burning, Ballista disagreed. Pain had its own existence. Its insidious voice was in his head: just stop, let others catch him, Scarpio is nothing to you. Ballista knew that he had to go on. Only he could finish this.
Guttering torches lit the underworld. The black mouths of cages, iron-barred, were set in the outer wall. The air was thick with the odour of animal droppings, urine-soaked straw, the fetid stench of rotten meat. The roar of a lion made him start. It seemed to resound inside his chest.
Animal keepers were going about their tasks, putting things away, bedding everything down after the show. Ballista gazed up and down the curved corridor. There! Off to the right, four slaves not working, just standing, all looking at something. A glimpse of movement. A man dashing through one of the tall, thin openings into the next corridor.
Ballista ran through the nearest opening. There he was again. Scarpio vanished through an arch in the next wall. The corridors ran in concentric circles, arches opened in towards the centre. On every side were pulleys operating the lifts and ramps that brought men and beasts to the surface of the arena.
Three, perhaps four more corridors, and Ballista came out into the central aisle. Scarpio was nowhere in sight. At the eastern end was the tunnel that ran underground to the Great School of the gladiators. Its doors were bolted. Not that way. Allfather, where had Scarpio gone? Taking as deep a breath as he could, Ballista limped to the other side.
Scarpio was not in the next corridor. Some atavistic instinct, the feeling a hunter has for his prey, made Ballista stop. He knew Scarpio was behind him. Ballista retraced his steps.
Back in the central aisle, Ballista heard the praetorians who had followed him down. Only glimpses of them, but the sounds of their beating through the area were loud. The chink of metal armour. Staccato commands: Keep the line! Don’t let him slip through! He is armed, take no chances! Kill him on sight!
Another sound. Discordant at this time. The clank-clank of a pulley being turned feverishly. Away to Ballista’s left. The games were over. Nothing needed to go to the surface. Ballista started running. Gods, the pain in his chest.
A thump as a ramp came down. A waft of fresh air. Daylight around the next pillar.
The ramp stretched up to the sand. Boots thundered on the boards. Ballista saw the boots, the pounding legs. He ran up after them.
Ballista had never stood in the arena. For a moment he felt light headed. In the last light of the day, the smooth sand seemed almost infinite. Then he registered the great curve of the stands, wrapping around, drawing the eye. The sheer impossibility of escape.
A small, solitary figure was running towards the perimeter, black in the shadows, like a rodent seeking its hole. Ballista walked now. If he kept between Scarpio and the open ramp, there was nowhere the fugitive could go.
The fleeing man stopped. Ballista could see him looking up at the net. With its rollers and spikes, it could not be climbed.
A murmur, like surf on a shore. The spectators had not yet left. They gazed down in their thousands, wondering what last entertainment the day held.
‘It is over,’ Ballista said.
Scarpio turned.
‘Give yourself up.’
‘To the mercies of the pincers and the claws in the Palace cellars?’
‘Name your accomplices, and you might be spared.’
Scarpio spat on the sand. ‘You don’t believe that any more than I do.’
‘Gallienus is merciful.’
‘To a barbarian like you, maybe. To honourable Romans he is nothing but a tyrant.’
Scarpio started to walk towards Ballista. The prefect still held the sword. Ballista stood still, and waited.
‘I will fall on my sword. Death is nothing; a return to peace and sleep.’ Scarpio swung the blade, as if trying it out for the first time, unaccustomed to its balance and weight. ‘But I will have company as I go down into the darkness.’
‘Why?’ Ballista glanced over his shoulder.
The mouth of the ramp was empty. No sign of the praetorians.
‘It is your fault.’ Scarpio sounded insanely composed, as if discussing a point of logic in the philosophical schools. ‘You corrupted Gallienus.’
‘My fault? It must be ten years since I was last at court.’
Still no one on the ramp.
‘Your sort.’ Scarpio had stopped, Ballista almost within reach of his sword.
‘My sort?’
How much longer could the praetorians take? Ballista had to keep him talking.
‘Savage, irrational barbarians – beasts with voices. You should be on the slave blocks. Why else does Gallienus drink and whore, grovel to the applause of the plebs? You, that barbarian bitch defiling the imperial box. Gallienus panders to you, while honest Romans are treated with contempt, reduced to waiting at the back, hoping for the leftover crumbs.’
The philosophic calm had gone. Scarpio was working himself into a fury of outrage. The attack would come at any moment.
‘You, Gallienus praises; me – a loyal officer – he does not even notice.’
They were too close now for Ballista to look back. Still there was no sound from the ramp. What was keeping the praetorians?’
‘I might have failed to kill Gallienus, but I will take you with me.’
Scarpio took a step, and slashed two handed with the sword. The initial movement gave Ballista warning. He leapt back, hollowing his body, letting the steel arc across in front of his belly. Scarpio cut backhanded. Again Ballista retreated, feet close together, balanced, ready to move in any direction.
Scarpio staggered a couple of paces forward, regaining his stability. Not yet, Ballista thought. Watch the steel, wait for the opportunity, get in close, grapple him to the ground. Watch the steel: all Ballista’s being was concentrated on the sword.
‘Aren’t you going to beg, barbarian? Please, master, don’t hurt me.’
Ballista said nothing. Scarpio talking was good. It ate up time.
‘A slave should not wait for his master’s hand. Get down on your knees and grovel.’
‘Why?’ Ballista spread his arms wide, inviting a blow. ‘You haven’t touched me yet.’
The provocation was too much. Scarpio lunged, the sword straight out. Ballista sidestepped. Blocking the blow forearm to forearm, he went forward, driving the h
eel of his hand into Scarpio’s chin. His assailant’s head snapped back, but he did not drop the sword. With his free arm, Scarpio grabbed Ballista around the neck. They grappled, staggering this way and that, like brawling drunkards.
A high pitched whine of ropes being run out too fast, and an echoing boom like a door opening in a cavernous building.
Ballista had both hands on Scarpio’s sword arm. The fingers of Scarpio’s other hand were scratching at his face, hooking towards his eyes.
A deep rumbling, like an avalanche; it reverberated deep inside Ballista’s body. Both men stopped struggling. They stood, in an awkward embrace. Scarpio whimpered. Ballista turned his head, and saw why.
At the top of a second open ramp stood a lion. He was a male, big, heavy-shouldered. His great yellow eyes, blank yet cunning, regarded them. The lion was not young, perhaps past his prime. Most likely he was some old favourite of the crowd. That was bad. The beast was a man-killer, long versed in the ways of the arena.
Gently, Ballista disengaged himself from Scarpio.
The lion padded forward, then halted and roared again. The crowd roared back. The beast preened, as if accustomed to the applause.
‘Dear gods, no!’ Scarpio whispered.
The lion was to the left. The other ramp lay to the right. It was twenty or more paces – too far. Now a line of praetorians, armoured, shields locked, stood in its opening. They were not moving.
‘Give me the sword,’ Ballista said.
‘No!’ Scarpio was trembling like a leaf in a high wind.
The lion watched them, taking its time, confident in its prey. Ballista could smell its feral stench, the foulness of its breath.
‘Don’t move. Give me the sword!’
‘No!’ Scarpio screamed.
At the sound the lion tensed, its muscles twitching with pleasurable memory.
More praetorians had appeared, behind the lion, shoulder to shoulder across the entrance to the ramp through which it had emerged.
The Last Hour: Relentless, brutal, brilliant. 24 hours in Ancient Rome Page 28