‘Don’t tell me any more,’ she begged, and bit her lip. Flaminius looked at her in surprise. What was wrong?
They stepped out into the sunlight of the garden, and strolled along a gravel path lined with box hedges. ‘We rode back to the Villa to find everyone had gone,’ he told her. ‘I was worried that my cover might have blown.’
‘The empress was angry,’ Medea said, ‘and Septicius Clarus declared it was a sign you really were guilty of Messalus’ murder, and were fleeing justice. I knew you weren’t, of course.’
‘Thanks,’ said Flaminius. ‘But do they suspect I’m an agent?’
Medea stared at him then looked away. ‘Why would they think that?’
Flaminius studied her. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘the fact I went off with Probus, I suppose.’
‘The empress hasn’t said she thinks you’re an agent.’
‘What about Septicius Clarus?’
Medea turned her gaze on him. ‘Stop worrying,’ she said. ‘Carry on with your investigation. I’m sure you’ll get to the bottom of this conspiracy.’
Flaminius gazed at her. Then he nodded. ‘Yes, I’m sure I will,’ he said, but he lacked conviction.
‘What’s going to be your next move?’ she asked, as they continued walking.
Flaminius said nothing for a moment. What would Probus do? ‘I suppose I should make a few more inquiries,’ he said. ‘Do you know what’s happened to Messalus’ body?’
‘I think it was taken to the Praetorian graveyard,’ Medea said, ‘for cremation. Why? What did you want it for?’
Flaminius scratched his head. ‘To confirm that everything Erichtho said was right, I suppose. I want to talk to her again.’ He halted. ‘Then there’s Suetonius Tranquillus,’ he added.
‘The secretary?’ Medea asked. ‘What about him?’
‘Probus seemed to think talking to him would be useful,’ he said. ‘I’d like to know about that argument he had with the prefect.’ He glanced at Medea. ‘We think Septicius Clarus may have something to do with it.’
‘He does have an alibi,’ Medea reminded him.
‘True,’ said Flaminius, ‘so he didn’t poison Messalus’ wine himself. But maybe he had an accomplice who did.’
Medea said nothing. They walked in silence for a while. Then she said, ‘Be careful, Gaius.’
He looked at her. She seemed troubled, but he wasn’t sure what was worrying her. He scowled. He was getting nowhere here. The moment he could get away he would go back to Probus find out what the centurion thought. He mentioned this to Medea, but she made no reply.
‘I really appreciate you helping me,’ he said, waiting for a response.
‘I must be going,’ she told him, and walked away.
He stood looking after her, puzzled. Something had happened, he could see. In the Villa? Or back here in Rome? Or had he done something wrong? For the life of him, he couldn’t think what. But she had changed.
He strolled the corridors of the palace, greeting freedmen and senators, checking on his patrols. He called into the palace library, but found no one who could tell him where Suetonius Tranquillus had gone.
Soon it was evening, and he went to oversee the changing of the Guard. The Night Watch arrived from the camp and the Praetorians who had been on duty in the day were ready to return to barracks. He gave the new men their briefing and led the day watch from the palace.
Halfway across the torchlit Roman Forum, he said to First Spear Junius Italicus, ‘You take the men to the Praetorian camp, centurion. I have business elsewhere.’
‘Sir,’ said the centurion, and Flaminius hurried away.
He glanced back to see the centurion watching him sidelong as he led the guards north from the Roman Forum, towards the distant camp.
Passing the looming mass of the Colosseum, he made his way up the Caelian Hill. A narrow, winding street led him to the Castra Peregrina. As he followed it he thought he heard footsteps behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw someone dodge back into the cover of a doorway.
Uneasy, he slipped his hand under his toga and felt the comforting solidity of his sword hilt. He waited for a few minutes, but saw nothing else.
He shrugged, and continued on his way to the Castra Peregrina. Here he gave the password to the men on duty and hurried down the drab passageway to Probus’ office.
‘Come,’ the centurion said after Flaminius knocked on the door. Probus looked up to greet him. His desk was scattered with wax tablets and scraps of papyrus, scrawled with incomprehensible strings of letters.
‘Still working on that cipher?’ Flaminius said. He took a seat without waiting to be asked, picked up one scrap of papyrus and tried to read it.
Probus snatched it irritably from him.
‘Yes I have been, as a matter of fact,’ he snapped. ‘I’ve worked out that it’s certainly not the conventional Caesar cipher, but I’m sure that it’s something of that kind. It’s just a case of working at it. And you? What have you been doing? It’s a bit early for you to come back to report. I can’t imagine you’ve got much done this afternoon.’
‘Well,’ said Flaminius, ‘I’ve established that I’m in the clear.’ He told Probus what Medea had said. ‘I’m a bit worried about her, though,’ he added. ‘She seems… I don’t know, scared.’
Probus grunted. ‘Think she’s been got at? Been turned?’
Flaminius shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. Why would she have been? They don’t suspect me. I’m still their hero, even if they did accuse me of murdering Messalus at one point. What bothers me is the fact that someone in the imperial household murdered Messalus, and whoever it was must be part of the conspiracy that murdered Rufinus Crassus to conceal his connection with them. Someone is still working against the emperor, even if the original coup was foiled by us.’
‘Someone is indeed still working against the emperor,’ Probus said, ‘and if we can root them out, then the emperor will be protected, Rome too. Trajan overstretched the empire, but his aggressive policies were intended to unite people against a common foe. Things had begun to turn inwards, resulting in conspiracies and division at the heart of things. Now Hadrian is turning things in another direction, building up the defences, drawing lines in the sand.
‘That’s fine, much better than pursuing absurd military adventures in Mesopotamia, but the danger is that here at the heart of things, idle hands will work against him. If we can root them out, we’ll be doing him a service. Otherwise one day he’ll turn round from his wall building and border defending and he’ll have a revolt on his hands. And the Praetorians have always been at the spearhead of revolt.’
‘Right,’ said Flaminius. He was accustomed to these impromptu speeches from Probus. The centurion had never made any formal study of rhetoric, but he didn’t allow that to deter him from expressing his opinions at length.
‘When I crack this code,’ Probus added, waving a piece of papyrus about, ‘I should think we’ll be able to learn more about the plot. Not just who is in it, but what they’re planning to achieve.’
‘You think they intend to do more than murder a few inconvenient co-conspirators?’ Flaminius asked.
‘Don’t make the mistake of thinking they’ve given up,’ Probus warned him, ‘just because we caused them a few difficulties. They won’t give up until they’re all exposed and the emperor has had a chance to judge them.’
Flaminius sat back. Probus scowled at the papyrus. Then he rose, stretched, and produced an amphora and poured them both beakers of rough wine. They sipped it in silence.
‘What you need to do,’ Probus said, ‘is keep your ears open, and talk to people. Officially you’re investigating the centurion’s murder. This Medea—does she provide regular reports?’
Probus had problems seeing things in terms other than those of military intelligence. ‘Informal reports,’ Flaminius told him. ‘Verbal, not written.’
‘Wise,’ said Probus approvingly. ‘Written reports can get you in a lot of trou
ble, unless they’re in code of course.’ He glowered at the papyrus. ‘But you say she’s proving unreliable.’
‘Cranky,’ Flaminius agreed. ‘Maybe she feels that she’s getting in too deep. It’s not as if she’s on the payroll.’
‘Talk to Suetonius Tranquillus,’ said Probus. ‘He’s a clever fellow. Writes books, you know. I wanted to chat with him, but maybe I’d better keep myself scarce for the moment. I can’t imagine he’s in the conspiracy, and he’s quarrelled with Septicius Clarus recently. Maybe you could turn him. Get him to tell you what he knows.’
‘But if he is in the conspiracy,’ Flaminius argued, ‘won’t he go running to the chief conspirator?—unless he is the chief conspirator!’
‘Sounds him out,’ Probus advised. ‘Be circumspect, as you say. But he knows something. You have to find out what. He may well prove more useful than that Greek girl.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Flaminius. ‘We needn’t put Medea through any more. I’ll see if I can sound out Suetonius Tranquillus, like you say.’
‘Very well,’ said Probus. ‘Now you’d better return to duty.’
‘I’m off duty now,’ Flaminius explained, ‘since the Night Watch has taken over, but I suppose I’d better get back to the camp.’
Tomorrow he’d speak with Suetonius Tranquillus.
He strode from the Castra Peregrina and began making his way down the alleyway that was a short cut down to the Roman Forum. It was night now, since the sun had set while he was talking to Probus.
As he walked, he went over everything in his mind. This was a completely different situation from the one he had known when he was up in Caledonia. There the enemy had been easily identified, or at least it had seemed so. Now he didn’t know who to trust or who to be wary of.
So that was the difference between barbarian country and Roman civilisation. Both could be terrifying, in his profession. Or perhaps it was just the nature of his profession. He felt a pang of nostalgia for the old days when he had been a tribune of auxiliary horse…
Hearing a footstep behind him, he turned quickly. Was that a figure dodging back into cover? Frowning, he watched for a while. Why would anyone be following him? Probably it was someone as scared as he was, if not more so. Dismissing his fears, he turned round to continue.
He halted as two tall, bulky figures detached themselves from the shadows, blocking out the distant light from the street. He couldn’t see their faces, but in the little light that was left, two sword blades glinted.
He drew his own sword from beneath his toga and gripped it firmly in his right hand. ‘Alright, lads,’ he said, deliberately coarsening his voice, ‘what’s all this about? You realise you’re messing with a Praetorian?’
The figure on the left laughed harshly, then lunged.
—11—
Flaminius brought up his sword to parry the lunge. Steel rang in that narrow, stinking alley, and a cat sped, spitting and yowling, over a crumbling wall. Flaminius felt the force of the blow run up his arm.
The second attacker, a smaller, burlier fellow, came at him from his left, slashing at his ribcage with his sword. Backhanded, Flaminius brought his sword back to parry the blow, but as he did so, his first attacker lunged again and he felt a white hot flame lick his side; the man’s point had sliced through the thick wool of his toga and ploughed through an inch or two of chest. He cursed out loud, rammed his right foot down on the man’s instep, and smashed his elbow into his opponent’s sternum, hoping to send the man staggering back into the wall. But the man stood as firm as the Tarpeian rock, and the other one stabbed at Flaminius again. Flaminius stepped backwards to avoid the attack, his legs constrained by the wrapping of his toga, and he collided heavily with the far wall of the alleyway.
Fighting in a heavy woollen toga proved to be clumsy work, so he shrugged it from his shoulders and stood before them clad only in his tunic. He flung his toga at the bigger attacker then lunged at the smaller, who parried the attack clumsily, although Flaminius managed to get in a cut at his upper thigh. Struggling out of the toga’s folds, the bigger man leapt forward, catlike in his agility, and struck at Flaminius’ helmetless head. Flaminius ducked the blow, then came up again, sword raised, but the smaller man lunged forward, striking the blade with his own and almost knocking it from Flaminius’ grip.
The tribune saw that both wielded the longer cavalry sword of the kind he had used in Britain. The shorter sword he carried as a Praetorian, the Spanish model, were little more than daggers in comparison.
In a sudden flurry of blades, his two opponents attacked in concert, and Flaminius’ sandaled feet splashed in the noxious puddles of the alley as he leapt back and forth to parry their blows. The bigger man stepped back panting and Flaminius tried to stab him, but the smaller one thrust his sword at his side. Flaminius managed to twist away in the last second but again the blade sank into his flesh, gashing his thigh. The bigger man swung wildly at his head, and he brought his sword up to parry.
He was panting for breath and his head swam. He could feel warm, sticky blood running down his leg. Apart from the other night, when he had escaped from the lion in the amphitheatre with Medea’s aid, he had seen no real action since he rescuing the emperor from the assassin’s blade. But his two opponents were fighting fit, thieves who had no doubt plied their trade in the alleys of Rome whenever the Watch was unavailable to deter them.
And where was the Watch? Never there when you needed them…
The smaller attacker sprang forward again, cutting in low. Gasping hoarsely, Flaminius leapt backwards, to find the wall at his back again. Now the bigger man came in from the side. Flaminius swung to defend himself but too late as a sword point gouged into his left arm. He staggered back, almost dropping his sword as he tried to push himself up with his sword arm. The smaller man stuck out a foot and he tripped over it, falling flat into a stinking puddle. His sword fell with him but went clattering off across the cobbles.
Flaminius rolled over at once, gasping for breath, to see the two men silhouetted against the night sky high above, swords lifted for the final strike.
A blade glinted in the dim light. One of the men, the bigger one, groaned piteously, and slumped to one side. The other spun round, turning his back on Flaminius. The sound of swordplay rang out in the alley a second time. Flaminius crawled on his hands and knees to the puddle where his sword lay.
He grabbed it, got up, turned, and was bowled over by the smaller of his two attackers, who forced his way past and sprinted down the alleyway. He was running from the dark figure who stood over the bigger attacker’s slumped form. Giving his rescuer a curious glance, Flaminius gave chase.
He came out onto the street. It was empty.
He looked up and down. It wound up the side of the Caelian Hill; in the distance, he could hear the muted sounds of revelry. Closer, came the angry scream of a cat—perhaps the one they had disturbed earlier. It seemed like that had happened in another aeon, but the entire fight could only have taken a couple of minutes. Otherwise, nothing.
He turned and made his way back up the alleyway. Someone had come to his rescue, and he wanted to thank them, whoever it was. Returning to the spot where he had left him, Flaminius found only the prone form of the big man. He knelt beside the body, reaching out to pull back the hood that covered his face. As he did so, he heard running feet from further up the alley. He looked up but saw no one.
Examining the body, he saw that it was a bearded man with a military haircut. He wore a tunic and over it a hooded cloak. In his hand was a sword of the kind used by auxiliary cavalrymen. The man was quite dead.
And his mysterious saviour had fled the scene without waiting for thanks. How noble. How mysterious.
Flaminius inspected his wounds. None of them were serious, but they all needed cleaning and binding. Although the Castra Peregrina was much closer, he decided he would return to the Praetorian camp before he had them tended to. Something stopped him from wanting to return to Probus in this
state. For the moment he bound his wounds with strips torn off the dead man’s cloak, then covered it all with his toga, though it was mud stained from having been trampled on throughout the fight.
He limped through the streets, keeping away from any shortcuts that might result in further attacks. Had his assailants been the robbers that plagued Rome’s night streets, despite the efforts of the Watch? The one he had examined had looked like a Gaul or even a German, despite his civilian clothes. A deserter from an auxiliary troop? Or would one of the Imperial Horse Guard troops—savage barbarians whose troops had first been raised by the emperor Trajan while he was still a soldier in Germany—be reporting a member absent without leave?
As he crossed the Roman Forum and made his way uphill through the streets that led towards the camp, it became clear to Flaminius that he had enemies. First there had been the lion episode at the Villa. Now this. It could only be that someone had sent the two men, whether they were soldiers or bandits, to kill him. Someone knew that he was getting close to the truth.
When at last he returned to camp, he entered his cohort’s barracks and went straight to his quarters, brushing aside anyone who tried to speak to him. Wearily, he cleaned his wounds and dressed them himself, drank deep from an amphora of wine, then went to his pallet to seek the healing balm of sleep. Despite his weariness, it took him a long time, and when he did fall asleep, his dreams were filled with foreboding.
—12—
11th April, 122 AD
Early the following morning he woke to find his limbs were stiff and painful, but when he inspected his wounds they seemed to be healing. He went down to the camp surgeon to have them inspected, fobbing off the inquisitive Greek medic with a half true story of getting into a fight in the city after a night of drinking. When he returned to his barracks he found the members of his cohort on day duty lined up, ready for the march to the palace. Centurion Junius Italicus looked the worse for wear, as if he had really spent last night in debauchery. He had no wounds, though, and he made no comment on Flaminius’ bandages.
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