by Peter Tonkin
His plan was simple. He would follow the air duct under the floor to the kitchen. He would ease out into the room through the foculus, cooking fire. Then he would go to work. Work that would end the existence in this world of everyone he could find in the villa. Starting with Antony himself. But including Fulvia and the children. Sheathed on his black belt and secured to his forearms and thighs – even tucked into his boots – were knives of various sizes and designs. From neat little Babylonian daggers to Iberian blades that were almost swords. Collected from all over the known world. All of them almost incredibly sharp. Each of them supremely suited to its single task – of ending lives swiftly and silently.
But the assassin was not relying on his armoury alone. He had managed to bribe two people. One of Antony’s Praetorians and one of his slaves. He carried clearly in his memory, therefore, minutiae of the soldiers’ guard dispositions and a map of the entire villa. With details of who slept in what room. There would also be a dark lantern waiting for him in the culina – in a prearranged spot he could find in the utter blackness. And anything that might trip him or fall and make a noise between the fireplace to the lantern had been carefully cleared away. The only risk as far as he could see was during those few dangerous moments it would take to light the lamp before he could close its shutter.
Within a few heartbeats all the bricks were safely moved – ready to be replaced when he escaped. So no one would suspect how he got in and out. To make the whole thing seem like the work of the gods. Or of the Friendly Ones. Smiling at the thought, he leaned forward, and with the slow, deliberate movements of a stilio chameleon, he eased himself into the hole in the wall. The darkness was absolute. The sensation of being crushed by the weight of the layers of concrete and tile above him almost overwhelming. But he had practised this. Rehearsed it in the ruins of a villa on the far side of the city. He controlled his fear and moved slowly onwards. Everything around him – above him and below – was warm. But not hot. It all reeked of smoke. But not strongly enough to make breathing difficult – even through the black mask. He closed his eyes – which were useless in any case – and concentrated on the plan of the house he carried in his memory. And imagined himself moving relentlessly across it. Towards the culina and liberty. And the start of his murderous task.
It took him longer than he had thought it would. But then, maybe his sense of time passing had been blunted by the situation. Still, he made it. Alerted to his approach to the kitchen by the upward slope of the tiles beneath him. Guided to the actual opening by the way the columns closed in on either side. Alerted to his arrival at the culina itself by the sudden cleanness of the air and the redolence of roasted meat.
Myrtillus snaked out through the flue into the camina kitchen fireplace. Reached up to feel the spit that normally carried sheep, boars, cows and the occasional ox. Pushed it back silently on its well-greased hinge. Came a little stiffly to his feet and paused, orientating himself. Then he moved silently along the cleared path five steps to the table where the dark lantern stood. With flint, steel and kindling wool beside it. Three strikes and the kindling caught. The dazzling light revealing the lamp. Open and ready. He touched the flame to the wick and it caught at once. A couple of heartbeats later he had extinguished the wool and was closing the shutter. Only the slimmest finger of light shone out in front of him.
Myrtillus paused, checking the weaponry strapped to his body. Making sure that every blade, no matter what its length breadth or curvature, was easily available. Then he picked up the lantern and was in action. The rooms on the ground floor were all public spaces, until they ran into the slaves’ quarters at the back. Myrtillus kept clear of those – the chance of causing an alarm while slitting the throat of some nonentity it wasn’t even a crime to kill was just too high. Instead he crept to the staircase and silently mounted to the second floor where the family’s bedrooms were. Following the finger’s width of light he crept along the ectheta balcony with the drop onto the atrium on one side and the doors into the sleeping quarters on the other. He was following the map drawn in his memory step by step. And so he knew exactly which door led to Antony’s chamber.
Silently, he lifted the latch that opened the door. With his shoulder he eased it wider. In his left hand, the dark lantern gave its shard of brightness for him to follow towards the sleeping man even as his right hand felt beneath his night-black cloak for his favourite sica knife. The splinter of light showed the centre of the room as he swept it swiftly from side to side. The bulk of the bed with a table close by. The chests and stands containing the general’s armour and the consul’s robes. The hillock of the sleeping man in the high, wide expanse of the bed.
As the light fell on his face, Antony groaned and stirred. Snored and slipped back into deep sleep, sprawling on his back. His throat was a perfect target. Myrtillus slipped the razor-sharp curve of the sica out of its sheath. Placed the lantern on the table so that its modicum of light fell across the face and throat of the sleeping man. Took one ecstatic, victorious breath and raised his hand to strike.
When one of the nearby shadows stepped forward and clubbed him on the head. A blaze of brightness dazzled behind his eyes. Then a pit of blackness as deep as Hades opened before him and he tumbled into it.
ii
Myrtillus woke up to find himself tied tightly to a chair. He was naked. His clothing and weaponry was all piled on a table on his right. His head hurt abominably and the brightness of the lamplight surrounding him didn’t help at all. ‘You have to thank a woman called Puella for this particular approach,’ a friendly voice assured him. ‘Though I think she got a bit ahead of herself when she suggested we start by nailing your testes to the table. Perhaps later. What do you think?’
Myrtillus was gathering himself to answer when he realised the question was not addressed to him. ‘I think this is an assortment of blades that I’m going to add to my own collection,’ said another voice.
‘In the meantime,’ struck in a third. The familiar voice of Antony himself. ‘It doesn’t matter what we do to this nothus bastard as long as he answers our questions. He’s going off the Tarpean Rock in any case if he lasts that long.’
‘But I suppose we can make it easier for him if he tells us what we want to know,’ suggested the first voice. ‘If not, I think we should start with the cestus knuckledusters and take it from there…’
The succeeding hours became more and more uncomfortable for the sicarius. The men he recognised as the Centurion Artemidorus – the first of his targets – and Quintus, triarius of the recently disbanded VIIth, and Antony himself. Then they were joined by Fulvia – who was the most terrifying carnifex interrogator of them all. Then by the Tribune Enobarbus.
Myrtillus fed them the names of the Praetorian he had bribed to reveal the guard rosters. Then of the household slave who helped him with the map, the clear pathway and the dark lantern. He remained unmoved as first the soldier and then the slave were beaten to death in front of him – in vivid demonstration of what he could expect himself. But he held out against their relentless quest for the name of his employer. His only real regret – beyond the fact that he had got himself caught – being that he had failed to kill his chief interrogator. Not once but twice.
Until, at last, as he lay spreadeagled on the table, with the point of an iron nail resting icily on his scrotum and the hammer poised to drive it home, his resistance finally collapsed.
‘Caesar!’ he shouted brokenly. The syllables choking out of the blood-thickened phlegm in his throat; lisping through the ruin of his shredded lips and broken teeth. ‘It was Caesar! He disguised himself and pretended he was speaking on someone else’s behalf. But I recognised his voice. That of a boy…’
‘Caesar!’ snarled Antony. ‘Just as I thought! That nasty little nothus spurious bastard. All that goodwill up in the Temple of Jupiter was just a fictus sham! Chuck this excrementus off the Tarpean Rock and let’s get on with the war!’
The consul and general stormed out
of the room, followed by his wife. ‘Well,’ said Artemidorus amenably, ‘that seems to be that.’ As he and Quintus carefully began to release and re-secure the assassin limb by limb. ‘Normally, of course, a citizen would have to be arraigned before a praetor – perhaps even the Senate. And tried under the Twelve Tables of the Law. Before he went off the Rock. But both of the current praetors are on their way to Athens. And the Senate is just about to get very busy indeed. Courtesy of your testimony. The direct judgement of a consul bypasses most legal quibbles in any case. And, of course, you’re not actually a Roman citizen anyway, are you? I mean you’re not going to start shouting, “Civis Romanus Sum!” halfway down off the Rock expecting Jupiter to bear you safely up after all? No. I thought not.’
Quintus turned and went through into the main body of the villa, leaving Artemidorus and Myrtillus alone.
The carnifex interrogator leaned forward, lowering his voice. ‘And, as we’re talking of thoughts at the moment, I also think you are a lying nothus spurius. I’ve been a carnifex for long enough to know the difference between truth and untruth. I think you know very well Caesar was not your employer. I think you know who was. And I just have to work out a way to make you tell the truth to me. Before, during or after the general’s orders are followed and you get thrown off the Tarpean Rock.’
iii
But no sooner had Artemidorus uttered the words than his chance to interrogate the prisoner further came to an abrupt halt. The Praetorian Tribune Licinius arrived with a dozen burly soldiers. And orders from Antony to expedite the execution. The arrival of the officious tribune and his men somehow changed the dynamic of the situation. As they took great delight in hurting and humiliating their helpless victim, Artemidorus discovered with some surprise that he was beginning to feel some sympathy for the would-be murderer. A glimmer of respect, born during the time Myrtillus had held out against the enraged Antony and the cestus he wore on each fist. He might be an enemy, thought the grim centurion. But he was an enemy worthy of respect.
Which Licinius and his men did not accord him. Instead, they dragged his naked body out of the villa and into the street. Artemidorus followed, shocked to discover that it was mid morning already. Any passer-by who glanced in their direction might have been surprised to see a squad of soldiers carrying a side of beef fresh from the macellarius butcher’s. For that’s what the condemned man most resembled. Artemidorus walked beside him through the streets and across the Forum – right to the bottom of the steps up to the crest of the Capitoline. His mind was racing, conceiving and discarding questions whose answer might reveal the secrets the dying man was still keeping so close. But in the end, nothing came. And all he said, as Myrtillus was hauled upward was, ‘Dive headfirst. Don’t jump, whatever you do.’ It was good advice. And well meant. From one professional to another.
Then Tribune Licinius and his death squad were gone. Their victim nothing more than a pale glimmer among them as they ran at the double up the steps towards the Temple, the Precinct and the Rock. For reasons he was never able to explain, Artemidorus waited in the road. Licinius had left a secondary squad behind. Six soldiers to clear a space in the thoroughfare immediately beneath the execution place. And two more sent to summon the executioners who would complete the punishment by dragging the corpse on a big bronze hook through the streets to the Tiber. Where it would be thrown like offal into the stream.
The Vicus Jugularis was busy and the rumour of an impending execution made it more so. Artemidorus soon found himself at the front of a considerable crowd, pressed up against the solid shoulders of Licinius’ men. Then there came a unified gasp that seemed to issue from the crowd all at once. And there, framed against a clear blue sky came Myrtillus. Upright. Legs pumping as though he still had a chance to run away from what was happening. He remained erect and running during the racing heartbeats it took for him to fall. Then he smashed onto the stones of the street, the sound of his body shattering drowned by a great, feral cheer. Artemidorus pushed through the soldiers at once. ‘Keep the crowd back!’ he snarled. Incandescent with frustrated rage, he ran across the open space. His mind was shouting, Why did you not listen to me? Why did you jump? But he said nothing.
For, shattered though he was, with fragments of bone protruding from what was left of his legs. With his pelvis clearly crushed and his back – to say the least of it – broken, Myrtillus was still alive. His chest heaved in great ragged breaths. The gap-toothed, red-lipped cavern of his mouth gaped. His eyes, wide with shock, rolled in the swollen ruin of his face. His arms made helpless movements as though they still had the power to pull him erect. There seemed to the centurion to be even more blood than there had been when Divus Julius died. He crashed onto his knees beside Myrtillus, pulling out his pugio dagger. Someone shouted. He paid no attention. ‘I’m going to kill you,’ he whispered urgently. ‘It’s the only way and I’ll make it painless. You don’t want to be still alive when they hook you and drag you to the river.’
Their eyes met. Something seemed to pass between them. And Myrtillus began to whisper, rapidly. His voice slurred by the state of his shattered teeth and swollen lips. His breath coming and going in great tearing gasps. ‘Decimus Albinus,’ he said. ‘Gaius Trebonius. Minucius Basilus. And by the voice I’m sure their messenger was a woman. Kill me now.’
Artemidorus obliged. Though he was only a few heartbeats ahead of Thanatos, the god of death, he thought.
Hoof beats approached from behind him. A chain rattled. A huge, gold-coloured hook clanged onto the roadway beside him. He pulled himself to his feet, sheathed his pugio and turned away.
He did not watch the executioners drive the hook up under the ribcage until the point came out under the corpse’s left arm. He did not see them whip the horse and drag the shattered body towards the Forum. With the excited crowd laughing and chattering close behind. But he followed the long smear of blood into the Forum, turning right, as it did, to go past the new half-built basilica. But he turned left and headed for Quintus’ villa where the red smear turned right again into the Vicus Tusculum, heading for the Forum Boarium behind the Circus Maximus and the river docks down there.
All the way back to the secret villa, he was turning over the assassin’s dying words in his mind. Testing whether he believed them because he so much wanted to or because they were the truth. Decimus Albinus, Gaius Trebonius and Minucius Basilus. And their messenger was a woman.
X
i
‘What’s all this about Trebonius, Decimus Albinus and Minucius Basilus?’ demanded Antony. Clearly in the worst mood he had been in for some time. And with good reason, thought the Tribune Enobarbus. It had taken some time to catch up with his general right at the far end of the Appian Way. And now he wished he hadn’t done so after all.
‘The sicarius told me it was Caesar,’ he snarled. ‘Looked me in the eye and told me to my face. And even though the little ricinus tick has sworn in public – and even on the steps of my villa – that he had nothing to do with it, I for one don’t believe him. Especially as I’m here in Brundisium having to sort out a bloody mess that is entirely of his making!’
‘The man Myrtillus changed his story on the point of death, General,’ insisted Enobarbus. ‘He was all but standing on the bank of the Styx staring Charon in the eye. That has to carry some weight.’
‘All right. Say I believe this deathbed confession,’ Antony paused, gave a dry, humourless chuckle, ‘though the stones of the Vicus Jugarius aren’t my idea of a bed. Not after you’ve just come off the Tarpean Rock. Black enough for the River of Death, though. Still, say we give this some credit. Even the bit about the mysterious woman. What then?’
‘I sent Septem to Pompeii at once with a cohort of your Praetorians to back him. They haven’t been much use for anything else. My idea was at least to detain Basilus and Trebonius until you could talk to them. But the villa was closed. Basilus has disappeared. The slaves Septem talked to say they have no idea where he’s gone. Though they
’re all terrified of him and could well just be covering his tracks. But they made no secret of the fact that Trebonius left in a hurry to take up his post as Governor of Asia. And Septem is certain the mysterious woman who gave Myrtillus his instructions is the traitress Cyanea. She went ad orientem eastwards with Trebonius. We think they were all scattering on the assumption that their assassin would be successful and there would be utter turmoil in the wake of your murder. So those involved had either to be invisible or securely in their appointed positions to ride out the storm.’
‘Or that if the sicarius failed and was caught then he would hand over all of their names,’ Fulvia said, breaking into the conversation. ‘Which is what actually seems to have happened in the end.’
‘Well, the bloody boy Octavius is out of reach at the moment down in Capua, surrounded by the legions he’s managed to buy so far,’ said Antony bitterly. All too well aware that his position with his own legions was weak. He was offering a ruinously expensive bounty of four hundred sestertii a man. Caesar Octavius was now offering an eye-watering two thousand. ‘So I can’t do much about him in any case. But Decimus is ripe for shaking. I’m going to do that myself as soon as I’ve settled things here. Shake him right out of Gaul once and for all. Especially if Septem’s right and he’s been paying sicarii to try and murder me. In the meantime, I think you should send my undercover contubernium eastwards too. Before the autumn weather closes in and makes travel really difficult from now ’til next spring. Get them to check up on Trebonius.’ There was a brief silence. The air around the three speakers and the men assembled in front and behind them thrilled with tension. There were four legions awaiting exercise of his judgement against them. Hundreds of men about to die.