Praetorian: The Great Game

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘You can speak freely in front of him, young man.’

  As the servant began to mix a draught of pain-killing drugs for the dog, Rufinus stroked its head soothingly. ‘I did as we discussed and sold out Fastus.’

  Pompeianus nodded. ‘I’ve heard about the man and his unexpected peaceful demise. Lucky devil, I’d say.’

  Rufinus pursed his lips. ‘Nothing lucky about it. Fastus was certainly undercover here in the villa, but he was working for the Frumentarii.’

  The general’s eyes jerked sharply upwards. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Dis, of course. He took a bit of an exception to my interference with his courier, so he sent me back to Rome. Problem is: while he was in the villa trying to identify possible traitors flocking to your wife, Perennis and Paternus are both convinced of a plot brewing, so they sent me straight back.’

  ‘And Dis?’

  Rufinus took a deep, angry breath. ‘Paternus sent a cavalry detachment out and removed him from the picture, leaving evidence of his imperial connections. The damn prefect is losing his mind, murdering the emperor’s own men.’

  Pompeianus nodded. ‘You will now understand, perhaps, why I have not been too pro-active on behalf of Perennis. I’m not comfortable being a piece in the game, regardless of the player. In a way, he’s done you a favour though, as you’ll be almost untouchable now, trustworthy to the hilt as far as Phaestor’s concerned. Make the most of it while your freedom lasts. Given this turn of events, security on the villa will now clamp shut like the jaws on your canine friend there.’

  Rufinus felt the dog flinch beneath his fingers as the servant cleaned the wound. He resumed his soothing strokes.

  ‘What will they do, d’you think?’

  ‘Phaestor will seek permission to double the guard numbers. The empress will refuse the financial outlay and, after a brief argument, they’ll compromise on the hiring of a dozen new guards and increased shifts.’

  He leaned forward. ‘Phaestor will also want to interview all existing guards and servants to convince himself of their loyalty. I suspect the number of guards with duties in the core of the villa will drop sharply, while the perimeter will be almost permanently under observation. Chances are that you’ll be on the inside, and despite your misgivings, you might want to thank Paternus for that.’

  Rufinus sighed and leaned over to comfort Acheron as he shuddered once again at the medicus nervously beginning to stitch the wound. ‘What of Saoterus? He’s still here, I presume?’

  ‘Yes, and with the patience of a vestal, it appears. My beloved wife has not yet granted him an audience. Two days of sitting around in almost total seclusion in the water villa. I know how he feels.’ Pompeianus gave a small smile. ‘I think that after the coming shake-up, she’ll want to see him and get him out of the way as fast as possible.’

  Rufinus nodded and clutched Acheron tightly as the medicus tugged sharply on the last stitch. ‘It seems Paternus has his eye on those who surround the emperor, including master Saoterus. I fear that he is in no less danger back in the palace than he is here. After all, if the prefect will set his men on murdering the emperor’s agents, a mere freedman would make an easy target. Perhaps you could speak to him?’

  Pompeianus shook his head gently. ‘Two men both in virtual solitary confinement within the same prison have little chance of meeting.’

  The pair fell silent, a quiet broken suddenly as Acheron yelped in pain and issued a low growl at the man padding and binding his back end.

  The servant leaned back and held up both hands.

  ‘There, we’re done.’

  XIX – Resolution

  AS the morning sunlight burned away the last of the white frost, Rufinus strode across the triangular court and to the office of Vettius. Somehow, the events of the morning had eased his return, not because of the lack of Dis as an obstacle, but because of the change in his attitude it had wrought. Walking along that access drive this morning, he had been cold, tired and sore from his wounds, unsure as to his future, his nerves making him shiver uncontrollably.

  Such problems were gone. His fear had been pushed down, buried and squashed by anger; anger aimed at all those who would play games with peoples’ lives. It was becoming more apparent the longer he served in the guard, that there were precious few people with even a hint of power who were deserving of trust and respect.

  Pompeianus, for all his self-depreciating statements, was one such. Saoterus may be another, though that remained to be seen. The emperor himself, of course. But Paternus and Perennis were busy jostling for position at the expense of their sworn duty, and every politician in Rome and even the emperor’s family seemed to be at it.

  Not Rufinus. He was here to uncover information that could save the emperor’s life and that was what he would do. Anger and determination had become the cage for fear and weaknesses. With a brief knock, he opened the major domo’s door and walked in, closing it with his good arm.

  The villa’s chief servant looked up in surprise, the flash of anger at being interrupted so rudely shoved from his face by a mixture of disbelief and curiosity.

  ‘Marcius? But Dis said you’d be in Rome for an indefinite time… and your arm?’ He pointed wordlessly at the sling and the bound fingers.

  Rufinus strode across the room and dropped into the seat. ‘You’d do well, master Vettius, to forget what Dis said. Captain Phaestor will be coming to see you shortly and he’ll no doubt explain it all. I suspect he’s with the Empress already. Suffice it to say I’m back and ready for duty. Do you still need me?’

  Vettius, his eyes wide at this sudden change in attitude, nodded uncertainly. ‘We’re short-staffed, what with our unwelcome visitor.’

  ‘Then assign me and I’ll get to work.’

  The major domo sat for another moment, eyes staring, and suddenly burst into activity, rummaging around his desktop until he found the wax tablet he was looking for and, opening it, ran his finger down the list.

  ‘Do you know where the libraries are?’

  Rufinus frowned for a moment, running through the villa’s plan in his memory. ‘On the northern edge of the palace?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve had to pull a man off duty there. Patrol the libraries, terrace and the courtyard that lies between them and the palace. I’ll try and find you relief at sundown. I’ll speak to Phaestor when he visits and see who he has.’

  Rufinus nodded. It seemed odd to be taking assignments from the small servant rather than the guard captain, but the authority within the villa was rigidly defined. All security, hiring, training and equipping might lie in Phaestor’s hands, but his authority stopped at the threshold of Lucilla’s residence, where Vettius was the master.

  ‘Still here, Marcius?’ the major domo said. Rufinus nodded and turned. The guard on duty at the door to the palace nodded recognition and swung the door open. A moment along the corridor beyond, out into a colonnaded walkway along the side of the library courtyard, and he headed toward the mis-matched twin buildings that stood at the northern corners above the terrace.

  One library for Latin works and one for Greek, the former visited rarely, the latter never; a carryover from the days when the learned Greek-loving Hadrianus had lived here. Rufinus studied the layout of the buildings for a moment. He’d been hoping for assignment either to the central section of the palace, or to the water villa where Saoterus luxuriated in prison, but the chances of such a random assignment had been small. At least here he was on the periphery of the important structures. More chance of learning something useful there than trawling through the undergrowth on the edge of the estate and hiding from the rain in the arcades of the abandoned theatre.

  He would be tantalisingly close to the water villa, too. The high, curved exterior wall of the strange impressive structure was visible from the windows of the Greek library, and the main vestibule to the circular enclosure led off the library terrace.

  The next six hours melted into a routine of pacing. While patrolling the edge of the esta
te had been cold and dull, there was such a vast swathe of land around the villa that it was possible to vary the routes enough that one could take a different way every day for a week without ever covering quite the same ground.

  The libraries, their terrace and courtyard, were a different matter. After the first hour, he had explored every nook, walked every corridor and room, and peered from every window. The knowledge that there would be another five hours of the same before the sun sank was a mind-numbing prospect. Even the possibility of meeting another person would have lent some small variation to the routine, but the simple truth was that the only human he was likely to bump into out here was an interloper. No one visited the libraries, for all the knowledge they held, and no one would take a stroll on the terrace with the chill wind blowing the fresh threat of frost from the mountainous north.

  So he began to devise games to keep himself occupied.

  To the Latin library, where he would scan the shelves until he found a work by an author that began with ‘A’. Aemilius Asper the first time. Apuleius took almost quarter of an hour to locate. Aurelius’ writings hadn’t been added yet. Unable to recall another ‘A’ at short notice, he’d taken to counting the number of steps between the two libraries (fifty one paces) and the length of the terrace from the servant’s corridor to the water villa enclosure (seventy six paces), the entire distance of the colonnade around the courtyard (two hundred and thirty paces, tested three times for an average), and even the number of scroll compartments in the Latin library. That last had seen the end of the counting games when he’d become unutterably bored somewhere around the three-hundred-and-fifty mark.

  Further games involved tossing pebbles into the huge fountain that ran most of the length of the terrace, or trying to skim them along the surface of the water.

  Slowly, the sun had disappeared behind the vestibule of the water villa, casting the courtyard and terrace into deep shadow and plunging their temperature to bone-chilling depths. Consequently his wanderings became more focussed on the interior, spending more time in the Greek library than the Latin, partially due to its extra floor, giving it more complexity and interest, but mostly due to the fact that, through some curiosity of design, it had been given heating on the uppermost level that was still kept warm. Rufinus held a private theory that the building was heated on the order of Phaestor so that the guards had somewhere to shelter from the cold.

  It became increasingly apparent as the sun’s rays faded, plunging the place into gloom, that he was not likely to be replaced. Resigned to a long shift, he hurried around the Greek library in deep shadow, striking flint and steel, lighting the oil lamps spaced periodically around the building and cursing the last guard for not replacing them as more than half of the lamps stuttered and failed for lack of fuel.

  Searching for the oil that surely must be stored somewhere, Rufinus hurried around the half-lit, flickering gold-black interior of the library, opening and closing the numerous half- or full-sized doors that marked cupboards, most of which were empty. Up the stairs he climbed, to the second level, where the cupboard doors were fewer and further between, receiving the fright of his life as he opened one particular door to display an artistic composition in marble that would make a whore blush.

  Up again, to the top floor where he intended to spend most of the remaining shift, staying warm and making occasional forays out into the night. At the top of the staircase which ran up the outer edge of the building, he spotted another full-sized miscellaneous door ahead of him. Nodding at this obvious location for a store of oil - one would hardly store such a flammable material within the walls of a library - he reached out and swung the door open, stepping back in surprise.

  A flight of stairs descended into the darkness, a faint glow at the far end, two storeys down. His brow furrowed at this discovery which had escaped his earlier searches due to its mundane, cupboard-like appearance, and he padded slowly and quietly down the stairs, keeping to a side wall.

  His frown melted away with wide eyes as he reached the bottom of the stairs, turned a corner and discovered the source of the light. He was in the colonnaded walkway surrounding the water villa!

  Frowning again, he looked back up the stairs. He’d seen this doorway on his first visit to the amazing structure, no doubt, but the stairs were offset round a bend, and it would not be obvious that the entrance led up to the library.

  It made sense. Hadrianus was a lover of Greek things. He’d paid special attention to the size and comforts of the Greek library, and had apparently set aside the water villa for his more personal amusements. To find that the two were so simply linked should hardly be a surprise.

  His gaze danced around the circle of the huge enclosure. No guards were visible. Listening carefully, he could hear footsteps pacing somewhere at the far side. Someone was on night duty.

  His eyes focused with a start of surprise on the figure standing directly in front of him. From within the comfort of the well-lit villa on the island, Saoterus had stepped out of the strange and convex columned portico and was standing on the odd little half-moon garden and watching him with his head tilted to one side. Rufinus stepped back in surprise.

  ‘A timely appearance, jailor’ the young man said with a smile. ‘I feel the need of a leg stretch.’

  Rufinus panicked as the sound of bored pacing at the far side of the circle became that of fast running.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted a voice.

  Rufinus stood rooted to the spot, wondering what to do for a moment before his senses kicked in again.

  ‘It’s only me: Marcius. I think they’ve forgotten about my relief, so I’m looking for oil. It’s damn dark in the libraries!’

  The figure of the other guard appeared and he realised with a tiny touch of relief that it was Atracus the Gaul, one of the few men who seemed to consider him an equal. The big, blond man with the braided beard slowed with a relieved smile, his hand leaving the hilt of the longsword at his side.

  ‘Marcius! I thought we’d had a break-in.’

  Rufinus smiled. ‘I’ve only got enough oil for half the lamps in the library. It’s going to be a dark shift if I can’t find spare.’

  Atracus snorted. ‘At least you’ve got light and heat. I’ve been walking around this pissing circle for four hours without a break. No heating or light for me!’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  The pair turned to look at Saoterus, still standing on the flagged path before the villa. ‘Yes, master Saoterus.’

  ‘I’m not sure what your orders are with regards to my ‘accommodation’, but I have been allowed to visit the baths on occasions and once to walk on the sunlit terrace, all under the watchful eye of one of your stalwart staff. Is it permissible that I visit the libraries? Under escort, of course, lest I steal Lucilla’s collection of Aristophanes comedies.’

  His smile was knowing and friendly, and Rufinus found himself immediately warming to this young man who was so important, powerful and feared. Rufinus and the Gaul exchanged glances and the former shrugged uncertainly. Atracus nodded. ‘The libraries are no trouble. You alright with this one, Marcius?’

  Rufinus nodded wearily, trying to hide his growing excitement.

  ‘Good’ the Gaul grinned. ‘Try and be at least an hour, ‘cause I need a crap and a drink, alright?’

  Rufinus nodded and glanced across to their ‘guest’. Saoterus smiled. ‘I think I can safely occupy myself in a library for an hour.’

  Atracus grinned at them and hurried off with the gait of a man who has been dreaming urgently of the latrines for some time. It took Rufinus only a moment to locate one of the removable wooden bridges, leaning against the outer wall. With a great deal of difficulty, given only one working arm, Rufinus half-walked, half-dragged the bridge across to the water opposite the guest. With a grunt, a heave and a quiet curse at Atracus for hurrying off so quickly, he dropped the bridge into the guide slots and manoeuvred it into position.

  Saoterus waited patiently until Rufinus stepp
ed back and gestured for him to cross.

  ‘You have been in the wars, my friend’ he said quietly, eyeing Rufinus up and down.

  ‘A disagreement with bandits.’

  ‘I trust they regret their actions’ the man said with a smile as he crossed the bridge and stepped into the colonnade. His toga was crisp and clean and warm, yet he issued a shiver in the cold night air. Rufinus gestured to the door through which he had arrived.

  ‘This way, sir.’

  Rufinus led the way, pausing at the corner and halfway up the stairs to make sure his charge was following. His mind raced. He would never have a better opportunity to speak with Saoterus. They were alone and with very little chance of discovery, and shortly they would be in a warm, secluded room.

  ‘The Gaul is not a great talker’ the slight man said. ‘I fear you have been instructed not to speak to me unless it is unavoidable, but I have the impression he is not even talkative with his friends. Still, he seems friendlier than a number of the others.’

  Rufinus paused and turned to find Saoterus smiling engagingly at him.

  ‘Are you also taciturn, or someone from whom I might squeeze a pleasantry or two?’

  Rufinus bit his lip and stepped out onto the landing, gesturing toward the library interior.

  ‘Please…’

  Saoterus, that enigmatic smile still on his face, bowed and swept past into the room. ‘This is magnificent. Hadrianus had the most wondrous tastes and designers and was a lover of all things cultured. I would like to have met the man. Our current emperor has the makings of a great man himself, would you not say?’

  Rufinus closed the door behind them and turned to see narrowed eyes assessing him in a single glance. ‘You’re testing me, master Saoterus? Sounding me out?’

  The man laughed out loud. ‘Thank Jove. Someone with a brain.’ His eyes narrowed again. ‘And a sense of humour?’

  Rufinus sighed. ‘I used to have one. Long ago, before the world slipped into Hades around me.’