by Peter Tonkin
Unlike Lord Brutus’ doorkeeper, the head which sat squarely on the thick neck did not look too small for the considerable body. The face was youthful, fine boned. Surprisingly unscarred. Sharp cheekbones stood between black-bearded cheeks and ears that stuck out like the handles on an amphora. The nose was aquiline but almost delicate. It had not yet been broken, which suggested some skill in the arena. Or some luck. The eyes beneath the square-cut, luxuriant hair and single black bar of eyebrow were dark. Burning with passionate intelligence.
Like the downward twist of the full lips, they betrayed the Syrian’s attitude to life. Revealed his excitement at the prospect of torturing two new victims. All in all a dangerous enemy. Motivated not only by Basilus’ orders. And his money, no doubt. But also by simple enjoyment of wielding power and inflicting pain. The club man might be shorter than the Greek spy by almost a head. But by the look of things he was physically and mentally his equal. Younger; maybe fitter. The only edge Artemidorus had was experience. But he had plenty of that.
Unaware of Artemidorus’ scrutiny, Syrus started to release Cyanea from the post. His gestures were rough, designed to hurt her as he worked out his frustration at not being able to torture her at once. His face folded in a frown of childish disappointment. She suffered in silence as his abrupt movements bruised the pale, soft skin. Of her arms. Shoulders. Breast. Working on her bonds with his cruel fists.
Priscus was slower, finding a length of rope and beginning to secure her would-be rescuer. Artemidorus thought that Ursus would have been a better name for him. The gladiator was as hairy as a bear. His shaggy head seemed to join his sloping shoulders without benefit of a neck. He moved in a slow slouch, dragging his feet. It was a wonder that the big paws at the end of his arms were capable of holding the sword he also wore at his right hip.
The skeletal senator lingered, observing the process of binding the prisoners. ‘Had you been a little more quick-thinking,’ he sneered at Artemidorus, ‘then we should have enjoyed a most amusing time.’ His voice was low, but it carried. He was, after all used to public speaking. In the Forum. In the Senate. The sibilants hissed, snake-like as he spoke, spraying a fine mist of spittle into the torchlight. His passions were the same as Syrus’, thought Artemidorus. But his power and ability to indulge them were infinitely greater. As demonstrated by the stabbing of his young slave’s thigh. They befogged his mind and interfered with his reason. He continued to talk too much as a cover to his lingering enjoyment of the spectacle his helpless prisoners presented.
‘But your slow wits have saved you for the moment,’ he continued. His gaze fixed on what Syrus was doing to Cyanea. Eyes glinting as he watched the beautiful young woman being rebound. ‘As I said, I am due to attend the deposito barbae coming-of-age ceremony of Lord Cassius’ son. Which begins soon. And I am by no means the only guest invited. Being tardy would disgrace me before many of the city’s most powerful men. But I wish to refer to Lord Cassius before taking further action. Both you, woman, and your dead friend were members of his household after all. For a while at least.
‘Therefore you two will accompany us. So that he can decide your fate. Even if I propose to make Syrus execute it according to my personal preferences.’ He licked his glistening carmine lips again. Cyanea’s arms were tightly tied behind her back now, squaring her shoulders and thrusting her breasts into prominence.
‘I’ll look forward to breaking you,’ sneered Syrus as Lord Basilus turned away. ‘Like we broke Telos. Bone by bone.’
‘You might find that more difficult than you think, boy,’ breathed the spy. ‘Without Cestus to hide behind.’
By way of answer, Syrus picked up his Syrian club and drove it into Artemidorus’ belly. The club was as long as Syrus’ arm and covered with dull spikes at its end. A rough-and-ready weapon modelled on the club the legendary Hercules was often pictured wielding. But Syrus was no Hercules. No more than Lord Antony was. But at least the general was huge and prone to wearing lion skins in honour of the demigod he claimed to be descended from.
The ex-gladiator was expecting the blow and tightened his stomach muscles. But he folded over as though badly winded when it hit home. The muscles of his torso and arms bulged hugely as he fought for breath – just at the very moment that Priscus was finally knotting ropes binding his wrists behind his back. He wheezed and tore the ropes from Priscus’ fists as he staggered into the villa on the heels of the departing senator. Retching and gasping as he went. Close behind Cyanea. In the midst of Syrus’ brawny companions. Vanishing before the startled gladiator could check the knots he had just tightened.
Artemidorus had been in much more pain and a great deal more danger many times before and yet he had lived to tell the tale. Usually because of careful thought and planning. Sometimes because of luck – or the good offices of his own favourite demigod, Achilleus, hero of Troy. This was all a calculated risk, he thought as he came up behind Cyanea’s slim rear. But a risk well worth taking. It allowed him to help Cyanea escape – if she needed help.
And, more importantly, perhaps, if he could not be at the centre of the conference in Lord Antony’s villa, then he was very happy to be at the centre of the suspiciously large gathering at Cassius’. For the youthful subject of the ceremony was at least a year too young to lose his beard. And this was the fifteenth of the month – the Ides. Not the seventeenth, Liberalia, when the annual ceremony that passed a youth into manhood was traditionally carried out.
It was the assembly of men at Cassius’ villa, therefore, and not his son’s ceremony, that was important.
*
As Cyanea and he were being hurried towards the heart of the conspiracy, the Greek spy was relying on Spurinna’s young slave, the quick-thinking Kyros. To assess the situation as soon as the troupe of nobles, clients, servants, slaves, captives and gladiators came streaming out of the villa. To follow them all to Cassius’ villa and observe the men assembling there under pretext of honouring the boy. Actually about some other, darker business. And to take news of what was happening to Spurinna, Enobarbus and hopefully Lord Antony.
There were handy men in the VIIth, led by Quintus among others, who would be happy to come to the spies’ rescue. If Enobarbus decided the action was necessary. Or to stand between Cassius’ guests and any harm threatened to Caesar himself. If the hesitant General and Co-Consul Marc Antony had arrived home yet. If he was in a fit state to make decisions. If he could be convinced to order the action. To risk the utter enmity of the most powerful men in Rome. Men who would be his unrelenting political and personal enemies for the four-or-five-year duration of Caesar’s imminent Parthian campaign if Antony miscalculated in any way. Or the information his contubernium eight-man unit of spies gave him proved inaccurate. In the meantime Cyanea and he were on their own. But none the worse for that, thought Artemidorus. For the moment at least. If everything continued to go to plan.
The crowd of men and one woman spilled out into the street, flambeaus blazing, lictors’ fasces held high. Clients grouped around their patrician benefactor. Gladiators in a wall of muscular flesh around their prisoners. Artemidorus straightened apparently painfully and looked around as he staggered forward across the wet cobbles. Motivated by Syrus’ club in the small of his back. The aftermath of the departing storm had left restless winds. They slammed around the streets in unexpected gusts which made the flames of the torches dance and flicker. But it had also left a clear sky and pellucid atmosphere. There would be no darkness before the coming of dawn today.
Which meant fewer shadows for Spurinna’s cunning slave to hide in as he followed them all towards Cassius’ city home. Or to linger in as he counted heads and noted faces. If only he had thought to bring Puella too, mused Artemidorus with a flicker of frustration. To see which of the so-called guests she recognised. He had thought ahead. But not quite far enough ahead. Distracted, just as his enemies planned. By Telos’ horrific fate and the terrible danger to Cyanea. On the other hand, Puella would have shared their
current fate had she accompanied him. Though the prospect of torturing two beautiful women, one with white skin and one with black, might have been too much for Minucius Basilus. Might even have given him a dose of the falling sickness that Caesar suffered from.
Artemidorus straightened to his full height, his face breaking into a fleeting grin at the thought of Basilus fainting from an excess of lust. One of the very weaknesses the Stoic philosophy warned against. The eastern sky above the Esquiline Hill was beginning to lighten with soaring streaks of red. As though Zeus himself, god of the sky, had had his throat cut like Telos. Or Eos, pink-fingered goddess of the dawn was wearing red robes today instead of her traditional saffron. As though her brother Helios’ rapidly approaching sun chariot was bright with ruby flames instead of golden ones. High above the muttering of the clients and the trudging of the gladiators’ hobnail boots, a lark suddenly burst into song. Somewhere, not too distantly, a cock began to crow.
‘Hurry,’ snarled Minucius Basilus. ‘I don’t want to arrive late!’
I’m with you there, Senator, thought the spy as he began to test his bonds, feeling already the play that resulted from having tensed his muscles just as Priscus tied the knots. It was a trick as old as time itself. But apparently young Syrus and his ursine associate had never come across it before.
*
During the walk to Cassius’ villa, Artemidorus continued to work surreptitiously at the ropes binding his wrists. He wished to be taken to the chief conspirator’s domus but he had no intention of being held as a helpless prisoner there. Just as he had not even begun to entertain the thought that Minucius Basilus, Syrus or their men would get the pleasure of torturing both himself and Cyanea to death. His thoughts were neither pointlessly grim nor self-indulgently negative. At the foundation of Artemidorus’ view of the world and his place within it lay a weakness for the Stoic philosophy of Zeno and his followers. Which put him in step with some of his enemies, their teachers and their friends. From Cato, Porcia’s father, through Marcus Junius Brutus, her husband, to Marcus Tullius Cicero, their friend.
No. The Greek spy did not entertain negative thoughts so that he could attain eupathia and come to terms with the passions they aroused; finding peace and spiritual balance as the philosophy dictated. But because those passions could prompt him to try harder. To push himself further. As they had done many times in the past. He expected to escape. Planned to do so, in fact.
The streets through which Basilus’ attendants and their prisoners rushed were made restless by more than the wind. There was a stirring all around as the great city began to come awake. The ox wagons and mule carts would be hurrying to vacate the city’s roads. To leave them free for the citizens, their clients and their slaves to do their daily business in. Glimpses down other thoroughfares and into other forums showed other groups of men already hurrying along. Most with a guard of lictors. All led by servants carrying flaming torches. It seemed to the spy that there must be hundreds of people heading in the same direction as they were. And, unlike many citizens around him, Artemidorus, the soldier, centurion of the VIIth, knew exactly what a hundred men would look like.
But Artemidorus’ keen gaze was not interested in the hangers-on, the clients, lictors, torchbearers. It was the senators they accompanied whose faces he wished to see. Those men betrayed by their ceremonial togas who were placed at the core of each group like the seed in a grape. Many of whom must be at the centre of the plot he was fighting to stop. Like the pit at the heart of a poisoned olive.
He could recognise some of them because he had served under them. As he had served under Caesar. Antony. Lepidus, current magister equitum, third most powerful man in Rome after the co-consuls. The late unlamented Crassus, who he had not followed – thank the gods – to the slaughterhouse of Carrhae. He knew Gaius Cassius as a commander. Marcus Brutus as an administrator. Others he knew because they were public men whose faces were familiar to many, like Cicero. Still others he knew because he had stood on the steps of the Senate House with Enobarbus, noting the faces and the names the tribune listed to accompany them. For Enobarbus, as Antony’s lieutenant, had accompanied him into the Senate on more than one occasion. As Sulla had taken Lucius Gallius Fango. As Caesar himself had taken Decidius Saxa. Both, like Enobarbus, aristocrats of equites rank as well as retired centurions. Both magistrates. Both later elevated to senatorial status.
The closer they came to Cassius’ villa, the more numerous the groups of men hurrying alongside them; the more familiar the faces of the aristocrats at their centres. Artemidorus glanced down at Cyanea. Her eyes were as wide as his were narrow, soaking up the information like the practised spy she was. Antony would simply have to listen to them, Artemidorus thought. All he himself had to do was get them out and down to Pompey’s villa before the general departed for the Senate meeting. Due to convene before the third hour in the nearby curia of Pompey’s Theatre. Which stood on the Field of Mars outside the Servian wall, close beyond the Fontus Gate.
*
The roadway outside the villa, which was the city residence of Gaius Cassius Longinus and his family, was thronging. The last of the darkness banished by torches, held high to allow the actual guests to pass safely into the ostium entrance and through the fauces vestibule into the atrium inside it. The atrium was capacious but already crowded. Although the slaves and servants waiting outside seemed to have little to say, a lively hum of conversation issued from the aristocratic crowd within. Basilus’ men all stopped together at the outer edge of the crowd in the street. The senator strode forward, however, and the mob parted before him like the sea beneath the keel of a ship. In the instant or two of stasis, Artemidorus noticed that the senators inside also parted readily, allowing Basilus to walk swiftly towards his host, preceded by Cassius’ obsequious doorkeeper.
Then Syrus and his men peeled off, leading the two spies down the side of the villa towards the posticum servants’ entrance. Priscus grabbed a flambeau and led the way. The path to the private entrance was a narrow one bounded by the walls of Cassius’ villa and the one next door to it. The gladiators went three abreast. Syrus placed himself between the two captives. Immediately behind his bear-like companion who held the torch high and steady. As they moved away from Senator Basilus’ influence, the atmosphere among the group changed subtly. A new urgency seemed to animate their actions. The frown on Syrus’ face became one of concern rather than frustration. ‘Priscus,’ he called, his voice echoing between the walls.
Priscus glanced back. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m going to leave you in charge of these two. Keep them safe until the senator has talked to Lord Cassius and decided what to do next. Don’t let them out of your sight.’
‘Whatever you say, Syrus. But where are you going?’
‘The rest of us are due at Pompey’s Theatre at sunup. Lord Decimus Brutus Albinus is putting on a gladiatorial display there today and we’re a part of it. We’re running late already. Because of Lord Basilus’ demands and this great oaf being so slow to come to the woman’s rescue.’
‘Right,’ answered Priscus. But he didn’t sound too happy.
‘It’s good money,’ Syrus insisted. ‘Albinus inherited a fortune from some relative or other. I’ll keep your share safe for you. But don’t let these two out of your sight ’til you either hear from the senators or from me.’
‘As you say.’ Priscus sounded happier at the thought of the money. The fact that the instructions had to be repeated made Artemidorus even more certain that Priscus, already fooled by his play-acting, wasn’t a particularly sharp blade either.
The conversation took them to the side entrance of Cassius’ villa. Syrus’ men gathered round the doorway. Priscus hammered on the door and Syrus pushed the prisoners in as soon as it was opened. The light was dazzling. The heat and smell almost overpowering – the side door was between the servants’ quarters and the culina kitchen. There was a heady odour compounded of rank sweat and fresh-baked bread. Lord Cassius or – mo
re likely Lady Junia, his wife – had managed to replace Telos and Cyanea as cooks and kitchen hands. Hardly surprisingly, given the importance of the occasion – and of the men who had come to celebrate it. The last thing Artemidorus heard Syrus say was, ‘Give me the torch. Remember. Don’t let them out of your sight.’
Any hope the spy might have entertained at the prospect of being guarded by one slow-thinking gladiator instead of ten was dispelled at once. A couple of brawny servants stood behind the man who had opened the door. They regarded Cyanea with recognition but little warmth. They looked at her companion with naked enmity. ‘Bring them through here,’ said the servants’ leader. ‘Lord Cassius and Lord Basilus have told us to prepare a welcome for them. And appropriate accommodation. We have a room that will hold them until the ceremony’s over and we can give them our full attention.’
Artemidorus and Cyanea were bundled along a short corridor and into a store which appeared to be part-filled with amphorae, barrels of various sizes, sacks and the occasional basket. All stacked or standing neatly around two walls with shelving on the third. That was the impression the spy got during the instant the door was open and the little space became full of light with shadows dancing across it. No sooner were they through the door, however, than they were expertly tripped and sent sprawling onto the stone flags of the floor. The door slammed shut behind them before they could pick themselves up. The windowless cubicula storeroom became utterly dark. There was a grating crash as a bolt on the outside was pushed home.
Artemidorus rolled over and pushed himself painfully into a sitting position. Over the distant hubbub of the busy household, he could hear his own breathing and the thunder of his heartbeat. The only other sounds were those being made by Cyanea. Everything about them familiar to the lover’s ears. Except the circumstances, the pain and the fear. There were no other noises in the room. They were alone. In spite of his orders, Priscus had decided not to stay with them after all. A situation that seemed in equal measures promising and unlikely to last long.