Caesar's Spies- The Complete Campaigns

by Peter Tonkin

  Enobarbus glanced over his shoulder. He had a disturbing feeling that he was being watched and wished for a moment that he had brought a bodyguard of Gaulish warriors with him. But the locals were apparently friendly. To Antony at least. Because Antony was at war with Decimus Albinus whose legions had run riot in the high country before Antony trapped them all in Mutina. With whom, therefore, the local chieftains had several scores to settle. Still, it was an uncomfortable feeling.

  Enobarbus dragged his mind back and looked in front of himself. The view was at once spectacular and disturbing. The clear, thin air stretched away to another peak in the distance. A peak that seemed to be burning as the wind lifted clouds of snow like smoke off its flanks. Between them was a valley of immense depth whose sides were so steep that it seemed miraculous that they could ever meet at the bottom. The tribune was used to measuring distances – had done some work with ballistae catapults in the past. But he couldn’t even begin to guess how deep this valley was. Perhaps the sheer sides never met at all, he thought fancifully. Perhaps the valley simply opened through the roof of Hades’ dark kingdom itself. Went on down until it met the surface of the River Styx. Or even the fires of Tartarus far below even the river of the dead.

  And part way down this sheer side, perhaps two hundred pedes feet directly beneath him, was a ledge. And on the ledge, a track perhaps a third as wide as the Via Aemilia. And on that track was Antony, leading his horse, at the head of his army. Like a line of ants walking along the thinnest twig at the top of the tallest pine tree in Rome.

  Enobarbus would never know what made him glance back over his shoulder then. As a lone wolf the size of a British war dog came charging up the slope towards him. It came silently and incredibly swiftly. The tribune had no time to reach for his gladius or his pugio. He threw himself downslope away from the precipice, turning as he did so to try and meet the monster head-on. As he straightened, the thing took one long last bound and leaped for his throat.

  Enobarbus had served with Caesar in Britannia. Had faced the native war dogs which were often as big as their ponies. So he was by no means frightened. Even though he knew his situation was desperate. If his attacker was alone he might stand a chance. If it was the leader of a pack, then he was dead. He had a flashing image of a lean grey muzzle, burning golden eyes and long yellow teeth. A blood-red tongue, dripping drool. The stench of its breath in his face. Grabbing it by the throat he fell backwards, praying that he had come in from the edge just far enough to stop himself going over. But not far enough to stop the wolf going over. As he fell, he heaved with all his might, kicking up with his right leg even as the back of his helmet and the shoulders of his backplate hit the icy ground. And the wolf was gone. Cartwheeled away by the momentum of its own attack. Thrown over his head entirely. Pitched over the edge of the cliff immediately beyond. Its howl of rage seeming to echo endlessly towards silence as it fell.

  *

  ‘Typical!’ bellowed Antony later, as Enobarbus and he waited for his army to edge gingerly off the precipitous path. ‘The one thing with a bit of meat on it that we’ve come across in this forsaken place and you chuck it off a cliff!’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of it as food at the time,’ answered Enobarbus.

  ‘That’s just about all I do think about at the moment.’ Antony admitted. ‘I’ve even stopped thinking about women!’ He stooped and cupped a scoop of puddle water in his hands, drank and spat. ‘Horse piss,’ he said. And Enobarbus knew he meant it. Literally. ‘Well, almost,’ he continued. ‘Cleopatra somehow sneaks into my thoughts every now and then. But largely because she serves such amazing feasts! What I wouldn’t give for a wild boar or two at the moment. Stuffed with Nile perch and flamingo. Roasted over sandalwood…’ he wiped the back of his hand over his mouth and down the front of his thickening beard which was now wet with saliva as well as horse piss.

  ‘The best you’re likely to get in the immediate future is the nuts out of the pine cones when we get back down to the tree line,’ said Lucius, joining the tribune and his elder brother. ‘Or, if we’re lucky there might be some grass. But, if we get really desperate, there’s always the horses…’

  ‘That’s what Decimus Albinus did, Lucius. Stupid little pederast! Not for me, brother. I’ll need my cavalry able to ride at the enemy. Not run!’ His lip curled with disdain. ‘To tell you the truth, I’d rather the men ate each other than the horses.’

  ‘Don’t let anyone hear you suggesting that, General,’ said Enobarbus. ‘Because I’d say you’re still the plumpest of all of us.’

  ‘He’s right, Antony!’ laughed Lucius as he climbed into the saddle. ‘There’d be a lot of good eating on that great big carcase of yours!’

  v

  Artemidorus and Gretorex came across them first, for they were scouting ahead of Bassus’ column as they came down from the lower pass and out onto the flat plains near the river Rodonos. Turning north as planned, in search of Antony’s legions as they too came out of the mountains. Artemidorus could hardly believe the change in them. Even Antony, famously as robust as Hercules, was lean. The face beneath the wild hair and lengthening beard all sunken eyes, lines and angles. Cheekbone and hollow cheek. Enobarbus and the other legates and tribunes of his senior staff were gaunt to put it mildly. And the legions following on behind were almost ghostly. Two weeks without real food or potable water had taken a terrible toll.

  And yet their spirits seemed high.

  ‘SEPTEM!’ bellowed Antony as he recognised the riders galloping towards him. ‘Well met! Have you anything to eat? I’ve eaten nothing but bits of trees for a week and if I see another pine cone on the menu it’s the vomitorium for me!’

  ‘General Bassus will bring up supplies as soon as he knows we’ve made contact, General. But we should be able to scavenge something more immediate. At the very least there will be early grapes down here in the valley. It’s Maius after all.’

  ‘An excellent notion, Septem. But I would rather we started making use of the big fat birds that feed on the grapes. And the equally plump animals that feed on the birds. Did I mention that my tribune here threw a perfectly edible wolf off a precipice? I mean it went right over my head and away before I could catch it. Let alone kill it and cook it. That was more than a week ago and there’s been nothing to eat since! I think I’m going to have to get a smaller breastplate.’

  Artemidorus, his contubernium and a squad of Gretorex’ men oversaw the supply column as General Bassus sent it forward past his own hungry legions. And necessarily so. The route through the lower valley had been no easier than Antony’s route over the high col. The only difference was the fact of that supply column. And that Bassus’ men had been less hungry at the outset. Even so, they needed to exercise all their self-discipline as they watched the food they craved go forward. Though they knew it was going to feed legionaries in far worse straits than they were in themselves.

  But the contubernium of secret agents proved to be a greater asset than either Antony or Bassus calculated. For as the six legions, cavalry alae and ancillaries settled into encampments along the bank of the river whose valley they were occupying, so Artemidorus and the others led the legionary scavengers to pools and reaches aswim with fine fat fish. To stands of reeds packed with ducks, geese, herons, coots and grebes. And that was before the quaestors and quartermasters made contact with local farmers and bought up all the grain, olives, oil, bread, goats, sheep, cows and oxen that could be spared.

  This was only the beginning, however. For, as Antony’s and Bassus’ legions settled in on the eastern bank of the river, so the legions commanded by Marcus Aemilius Lepidus marched onto the west bank opposite. Settled and set up their camps. Antony, Bassus and their legions were, after all, in the province of Gallia Narbonensis now. And the governor was under direct orders from the Senate to arrest the hostis outlaw Antony and bring either his body in chains or his head to impale on a spike to the Forum in Rome.

  *

  At this point the
river was wide but shallow. Artemidorus reckoned that if he was careful he would be able to wade across most of it and only be forced to swim in one or two of the deeper sections. But the stream was swollen by snowmelt which added to the power of the current as well as to the simple volume of water rushing between the widespread banks. And, of course, to the lowering of the temperature. Even on an early summer’s night like this, the water seemed to give off a sinister chill that could be felt far away from the banksides.

  ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ demanded Ferrata on behalf of all the others.

  ‘We need to know what they’re thinking and planning over there,’ said Artemidorus. ‘We should have gone over earlier. I’m surprised Lepidus hasn’t sent spies across to sound out our men.’

  ‘No you’re not,’ observed Quintus. ‘Lepidus is just playing a waiting game and you know it. He doesn’t want to precipitate anything. Certainly he doesn’t want to do anything that might irritate Antony and bring things to a head here. And spies running around in each other’s camps are the sort of thing that will do that.’

  ‘Are we going to precipitate anything then?’ asked Puella. Not that she cared, thought Artemidorus. She was bored and itching for action. And she was by no means alone in that.

  ‘Not if we can avoid it,’ said Artemidorus decisively. ‘We’re just going over to poke around. Listen outside a few tents. Get the lie of the land as they say. Test the breeze. Check the atmosphere.’

  ‘Right,’ said Puella. ‘Just so long as I don’t have to sleep with anybody. Keeping on top of you two is more than enough for me as things stand.’

  Somehow, although she was still besotted by Artemidorus, Mercury’s calf-love seemed to weaken her resistance every now and then. That and a good deal of pity for the state of his face. Certainly, they all concurred, no other woman would ever have him. Unless he agreed to wear a sack over his head at all times.

  Artemidorus stepped down into the icy rush of the water and waded out towards midstream. The brightness of the fires behind him coming from Antony’s encampments and that ahead coming from Lepidus’ was augmented by a low moon hanging in a clear spring sky. Wishing he had thought to bring a pole with him to test the water depth immediately ahead, he proceeded slowly and carefully. Miraculously remaining upright, leading the others in a steady line. At last he felt the riverbed begin to slope away and he leaned forward, careful to make a minimum of noise. As, like Horatius having kept the Bridge, he swam in full armour towards the far bank.

  But he need hardly have bothered. There were no sentries. No sign of any security at all, in fact. Away to his right, upstream as he pulled himself ashore, he could just make out the black square of a palisade that no doubt surrounded the camp of Lepidus’ Praetorian bodyguard, his senior officers and the governor himself. But down here there were only leather-roofed tents, campfires, and the relaxed banter of several thousand soldiers with nothing much to worry about. In fact, as he stood shivering amid the bankside reeds, he was able to make out a surprising number of figures coming and going across the river from one camp to the other. Not spies, he reckoned. Certainly not counterspies. For these would have to come from his own contubernium.

  Just friends fraternising.

  As the other six came ashore behind him, they split into pairs. Puella as Ghost Warrior, would watch his back. Mercury would watch hers. Then Kyros and Hercules would go one way and Quintus and Ferrata another. All to meet back here by moonset. To swim back to camp and prepare a report to give to Antony at his morning briefing tomorrow at dawn.

  vi

  ‘Here?’ said Antony next morning. ‘We cross here?’

  ‘Yes, General,’ answered Artemidorus. ‘It’s where we crossed last night.’

  Antony scratched his chin through his thick black beard. ‘What do you think, brother Lucius?’

  ‘Looks all right to me, Antony.’

  ‘And Septem here has never let you down yet,’ added Bassus. ‘Has he, Tribune?’

  ‘No, General,’ answered Enobarbus at once.

  ‘Right then,’ decided Antony. ‘Over we go.’ He waded into the water. ‘Better clench your scrotums, boys. This water’s cold enough to freeze your testes bollocks off.’

  ‘It was colder than this last night,’ said Artemidorus quietly. ‘And I’ve still got mine.’

  ‘As Puella can attest,’ observed Enobarbus drily.

  ‘But there are no guards!’ said Bassus, his sense of professionalism outraged. ‘And you say there were none last night, Septem?’

  ‘None, General. We wandered around the camp without even being challenged.’

  ‘Outrageous!’ huffed Bassus. ‘Divus Julius would have had them decimated!’

  ‘Don’t complain too loudly, Bassus,’ called Antony. ‘It’s all working out to our advantage after all! As long as we’re still able to fornicate when we get out of this freezing water.’

  *

  No one tried to stop the little group as they heaved themselves out of the river and onto the far bank. There were no real lines here – just a city of tents. Outside which men were sitting cooking or eating jentaculum breakfast.

  ‘I’d have been fighting for a share of that a week or so ago,’ observed Antony as he led them up the riverbank towards the palisade that formed the only proper defensive position in the entire camp. ‘I’d probably have been happy to eat the leather of the tents. But have I told you how Cleopatra has whole boars roasted, crispy skin and all? Divus Julius used to say he sometimes found it hard to choose between her dining room and her bedroom…’

  It was surprising how quickly the general had filled out now that he was able to eat properly again, thought Artemidorus. His Herculean stature was almost fully re-established. But for some reason he had resisted the urge to see the legion’s tonsors, so his beard was beginning to bush out. His black hair was falling in waves towards his shoulders, its ends beginning to form virile curls. And, judging from his conversation, women of all sorts were beginning to replace food in his thoughts and dreams.

  But even Cleopatra and her culina kitchen could not entirely fill his dreams, thought the spy. For Antony was also dreaming of revenge. And the men on whom he planned to visit his Nemesis formed a long and lengthening list. In a strange, subtle way, this Antony was different from the Antony who had led the Larks, the Sabines, the XXXVth and all the others into the mountains. He was certainly very different from the man who had crossed the Rubicon heading north to shake Decimus Albinus out of Cisalpine Gaul. It was as though, somewhere in the long journey he had made since leaving Rome soon after Divus Julius’ murder, one of the Friendly Ones had crept into his soul and taken up residence there. And the comparison suddenly shocked him. Antony was fast becoming the masculine equivalent of the vengeful Cyanea.

  Antony led the group behind him through Lepidus’ camp, turning the heads of the soldiers he strode past, almost as though he were the ghost of Divus Julius himself. By the time he reached the gate of the governor’s palisade, he had acquired quite a following. Needless to say, the gate into the simple fortification was standing wide open. But at least there was a guard.

  ‘Qui est ibi? Who goes there?’ he challenged nervously as the cohort led by the gigantic figure swept towards him.

  ‘The hostis outlaw General Marcus Antonius and his senior officers,’ Antony answered. ‘Here to see Governor Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.’

  The guard looked around in a panic, but there was no one nearby to help. And Antony had no intention of stopping. So he strode on into the makeshift fort and followed the familiar layout of the paths to Lepidus’ command tent. Even when he got there, he did not hesitate. With Bassus at one shoulder, Artemidorus and Enobarbus at the other, Antony swept the leather door wide and strode on in.

  Lepidus and his senior officers were grouped around a table, surrounding a map that appeared to Artemidorus to show most of the land between Hispania Posterior and the Rubicon. The area from which a competent leader could control the wh
ole of Italy. Pieces of fruit and bits of bread were placed on top of it. Breakfast serving as battle plan.

  Lepidus glanced up, frowning at the unexpected interruption. His face went blank for an instant. Then a strange combination of dawning recognition and sheer horror swept across it. ‘Antony!’ he said. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come to discuss the terms of surrender,’ answered Antony cheerfully.

  ‘Surrender? Surrender!’ Lepidus’ expression was almost comical in its utter confusion. He glanced down at the food-covered map then up at his equally horrified companions. ‘You’re surrendering?’ he demanded, as though utterly unable to believe what was happening here. ‘You’re surrendering? To me?’

  Antony gave a huge bellow of laughter, then he spoke as though addressing a backward infant. ‘No, Marcus Aemilius! No! You. Are. Surrendering. To me!’

  Epilogue

  i

  Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, Pro-praetor and Governor of Gallia Cisalpinus, favourite of Cicero and the Senate, late defender of the besieged city of Mutina, murderer of Divus Julius Caesar and enemy to the death of Marcus Antonius, leaned forward in the saddle to ease his aching buttocks. One day, he thought, someone will do something to a saddle that will allow the rider to take some of his weight on his feet. He tensed his weary thighs and rocked towards his horse’s neck until the saddle-horn dug into his lower belly. Reminding him he had not relieved himself in several hours. Not since they left yet another makeshift camp, in fact. Easing back a little, he kicked his heels into the sides of his ambling mount. Without noticeable effect. Decimus and his horse were exhausted, like his ten centurion bodyguards and their animals. After so many days in the mountains, the only ones there who seemed active and sprightly were the Gallic guide and his sturdy mountain pony.