Caesar's Spies- The Complete Campaigns

by Peter Tonkin

  ‘Ah, Septem,’ said the general. ‘Is it done?’

  ‘Yes, General,’ answered the stranger. He lifted into view a roughly woven sack which he had been carrying.

  ‘Well, let’s have a look, man. Don’t be shy!’

  Septem put the sack on the table and opened it so that its contents were visible. He stepped back so everyone could see. Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus regarded the assembled commanders with wide, glassy eyes. His expression one of mild shock. As though the removal of his head had been a minor insult rather than a brutally efficient execution. ‘Have it packed in ice,’ ordered Antony. ‘The gods know, there’s enough ice and snow about, even now! I want everyone to recognise it when it’s spiked in the Forum. I want to send a message…’

  ‘That this is the fate awaiting anyone who had a hand in Caesar’s murder?’ asked Lepidus.

  ‘That this is what happens to anyone who dares to stand against me!’ snapped Antony.

  There was a tense moment as Antony’s notoriously volatile mood wavered. But Septem broke the tension by stepping forward again. Closing the sack over its horrific contents. ‘Packed in ice, General. Yes. Immediately.’

  He stepped back. And Antony, in his sunny mood once more, slapped his hands together and rubbed them briskly. ‘That’s the first one I can actually put on display,’ he said. ‘Given the state of Trebonius’ and Pontius Aquila’s. First spiked in the Forum but third one down. Twenty more to go, eh Septem? Tribune? Three down. Nineteen to go.

  ‘But now that I have so many legions to support my actions, I think I might just go home to Rome and take you all with me. Yes. That would be the best move. We’ll all go back together. Pay a visit to Cicero and his friends in the Senate. Then I’ll happily let them watch me stick this first head up there in the Forum Romanum myself…’

  CICERO DIES!

  Peter Tonkin

  For

  Cham, Guy and Mark,

  As always.

  Prologue

  DECIMUS

  September 711AUC/43BCE

  i

  Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, Propraetor and Governor of Gallia Cisalpinus, favourite of Cicero and the Roman Senate, victorious defender of the besieged city of Mutina, slayer of the recently deified dictator Divus Julius Caesar, deadly adversary of Mark Antony Caesar’s right-hand man, recently declared hostis enemy of the state, leaned forward in the saddle to ease his aching buttocks. Nearly crushing his testicles as he did so.

  One day, thought Decimus as his eyes flooded, someone will do something to a saddle that will allow the rider to take some of his weight on his feet rather than his culus or illia backside or balls. He blinked away the tears, tensed his weary thighs and rocked more carefully towards his horse’s neck until the saddle-horns on the front dug into his lower belly reminding him he had not relieved himself in several hours. Not since he had left yet another makeshift camp, in fact. Easing his aching arse back into the saddle once more, he kicked his heels into the sides of his ambling mount. Without noticeable effect.

  At home in far-away Rome, he thought, the Ludi Romani Roman Games would be in full-swing with public competitions, gladiatorial bouts, beast hunts, plays and races - for both chariots and horses. In which this spavined nag would never take part. Neither would Decimus himself. Nor in any other festivals, come to that. Unless he could come home again, victorious, with his friends Brutus and Cassius who were, alongside Decimus, the main motivators of Caesar’s execution. The three of them with their armies, ideally marching over the slaughtered body of the outlawed Mark Antony.

  The Senate had added an extra day to the Ludi Romani a couple of years ago in celebration of the dead dictator’s life. The day remained, even after Caesar’s murder. Caesar had been honoured with more than an extra day in the games, come to that. He had an entire month named after him. What had been Quintilis through most of Decimus’ 42 years of life was now called July. After Julius Caesar. Whereas Decimus, the brains behind the plot to kill him, had no such memorial. On the contrary, he felt forgotten, lost and alone up here in the mountain wilderness of Gaul. Politically and strategically emasculated – if not quite physically so. And the downhill road that led the powerless, seemingly abandoned fugitive Decimus to this low point in the high Alps oddly seemed to have begun two short months ago.

  In July.

  ***

  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. Had Decimus been less fatigued and preoccupied with life’s little ironies, he might have appreciated the grandeur of the country he was riding through. Even in early autumn, the high Alps were a feast for the senses of almost Lucullan proportions. The mountain peaks towered like the fangs of gigantic wolves, angular and sharp-pointed. Their tips dazzling white with snow. Their lower slopes carpeted with wild flowers, many still in bloom. And, in-between, tall green stands of pine-trees whose heady, resinous scent came and went on the breezes blowing up and down the valleys. Intermixed with the aroma of those countless blossoms. None of which made any impression on the increasingly desperate man.

  Decimus looked back over his shoulder. As he had done ever more nervously during the last week, surrendering to the eerie certainty that someone was watching his every move. Following every footstep he had taken. Not only recently, but even during the months after the battle of Mutina while his hunt for the defeated Mark Antony had relentlessly come to nothing. The forward motion of his pursuing army slowly grinding to a halt. Stopping like a full-tide against the high wall of the mountains over which Antony had vanished. And faltering there, exhausted. As though it was Decimus and his legions who had been conquered. Decimus himself, seemingly helpless, unsupported, rudderless. As his legions dwindled unstoppably away.

  Ultimately forcing the governor and general to leave what little remained of his command and flee through the mountains in hope of reaching the other leaders involved in the plot to murder Divus Julius on the Ides of March more than a year ago, far distant though they were, with their legions in the East. Despite the fact that he was still in command of the entire province as far as Cicero and the Senate in Rome were concerned. Distant as they also were from the actual situation; in oh so many ways.

  Therefore the exhausted Decimus remained oblivious to the multi-coloured slopes and blazing peaks outlined against a cloudless cerulean sky stretching away behind him. But when he looked forward, up ahead the heavens were grey and darkening far too rapidly for his taste. There was a bad storm coming. ‘Hey! Hey!’ he called to no one in particular. ‘Ask the guide if there’s any shelter nearby.’

  The guide was the only Gaul amongst the Roman soldiers and Decimus did not trust him. There was good reason for that. Even beyond the fact that the promised three-day journey had almost doubled in length. During his term as pro-Praetorial Governor of Cisalpine Gaul he had trained and motivated his legions by letting them have free rein to loot the local countryside. To fight the local men and rape their women. Steal the local livestock and enslave the local children. It was a strategy he had repeated when the hunt for Antony came to nothing in July, in a vain attempt to keep his bored troops active and stop them becoming factious. Something he had been forced into, he told himself, because the Senate, who appointed and supported him swayed by Cicero’s eloquence, were fatally slow to pay him.

  They sent messengers when they should have sent money. Good wishes instead of gold. He had needed that gold desperately, even as long ago as January, before Antony arrived with his legions, planning to tear Cisalpine Gaul out of his grip. Having to bottle him up and besiege him in the city of Mutina in order to do so. Until at last the Senate sent armies to relieve him. For, as Decimus was bitterly forced to admit, the long months of that siege and its aftermath proved he was not the sort of leader men would follow for love rather than for money. He was no Mark Antony. He was no Divus Juli
us. Though in the end he had defeated the former in battle outside the walls of Mutina last April. Just as he had murdered the latter in Pompey’s Curia thirteen months before that.

  ii

  As Decimus looked around now, he saw all too clearly the proof of his failing leadership. Of all the legions he had commanded, all the thousands upon thousands of soldiers, he only had ten men left.

  Letting his legions loose up here to scavenge and loot was a strategy he bitterly regretted now. And regretted more keenly with every burned-out farm and deserted village they passed. For it had ultimately made matters so much worse. The vanished legions he had once commanded simply made unforgiving enemies of the local tribes. To little or no purpose. Instead of winning pitched battles, booty and glory, they ended up besieged and mutinous in Mutina. Confined. Afraid. Starving, towards the end.

  Then, even when the siege was lifted by armies sent laggardly by the Senate under the command of the doomed consuls Hirtius and Pansa, grudgingly supported by Divus Julius’ young heir the 19-year-old Octavian, they had been fatally slow to pursue the man who besieged them. In spite of the prompting of Cicero and his puppet Senators safe at home in Rome.

  Mark Antony. Who retreated into the icy mountains and apparently to certain death followed faithfully by men who trusted and almost worshipped him. Antony, who led his legions, seemingly destroyed at the Battle of Mutina, in good order up the Via Aemilia and its less imposing extension north past Placentia, Castra Taurinum and into the Alps. Five months ago, at the bitter end of a lingering winter when many of the passes were still blocked with snow and provisions non-existent. And, miraculously, they had survived. Burgeoned, in fact, in spite of the Senate’s declaration that he was hostis – an outlaw - he had been joined by three more legions en-route and then merged with the legions of Gallia Narbonensis, Transalpine Gaul and Hispania.

  Decimus’ own legions, however, knew the reputation they now had in the mountains. And were very wisely unwilling to put themselves between Antony’s well-ordered retreating Vth Legion, Divus Julius’ deadly Alaudae Larks, the IInd Sabines, the XXXVth and the vengeful Gaulish warriors who called these oft-ravaged mountains home.

  Decimus had hoped for help and backing from young Octavian, who called himself Caesar now. Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, if you please! But Octavian did not perceive him as an ally. The arrogant boy made it all too plain that he saw Decimus only as the man who led his adoptive father to the slaughter. Literally. By the hand. Overcoming the advice of friends who warned him exactly what was going to happen. Friends like Antony’s military tribune Enobarbus, the spy and centurion Artemidorus, - codenamed Septem - the augur Spurinna, his wife Calpurnia and the rest whose names had filled the plotters’ ecstatic conversations after the deed was done. While the blood on their hands was still wet. So, in the absence of the money and support which Decimus had been promised to keep his men loyal, he found his disgruntled troops sneaking away during the long months of the increasingly pointless pursuit.

  Even during that brief period of renewed hope when General Plancus and his legions joined Decimus camped at the foot of the mountains. Before they, too, changed sides and vanished. Plancus went to Antony with his legions and many of Decimus’ men followed. The others went to join young Caesar, the youthful commander waiting in the warmth around relieved and grateful Mutina and fertile, accommodating Bononia. Promising fortunes to everyone just for serving with him, while refusing to follow the Senate’s orders to put his legions under Decimus’ command. This was even before the boy had somehow managed to get himself inducted into the Senate in January and get equal imperium with Hirtius and Pansa in April. He replaced them as commander in chief when they both died. And he had even got himself appointed Consul of Rome on the 19th of Sextilis last month, leaving the increasingly pathetic governor his meagre bodyguard and his guide.

  ***

  Only desperation forced Decimus to trust the Gaulish guide Gretorex without holding his wife or children hostage. For, although he had served here on more than one occasion, long ago with Caesar himself during the Gallic Wars - and even spoke Gaulish - he did not know the mountain passes. Nor did the centurions who formed his bodyguard. He was relying on sneaking slowly but anonymously through the Alps and down to the coast. Because his only hope of salvation now was to take the first available passage to the east. He could join the Libertore army in Illyria. Help Brutus move down from Macedonia in the north as Cassius moved up from Syria in the south to crush Antony’s associate and Cicero’s hated son-in-law Dolabella in the central province of Asia between Greece and Syria. Caught in the middle between them as he was, like a nut in a nutcracker. To take vengeance for the torture and murder of Decimus’ friend Gaius Trebonius nearly six months ago. Trebonius, the first of Caesar’s executioners to die.

  A brutal wind came blustering down the valley, bringing the promise of bitter weather to come. It felt like knives against Decimus’ cheeks and set his squinting eyes to streaming once again. Blew his hood onto his shoulders and brought his thoughts back to the present. It did not smell of Alpine forests or flowers. It smelt of the snow and ice in the high peaks, where it was always winter. The roaring it made lingered, echoed, became part of a low snarl of thunder. ‘Tectum! Shelter!’ bellowed Decimus. ‘What does he say?’

  ‘Up ahead,’ came the answer. ‘There’s some kind of building…’

  Black thunder-clouds came spilling over the valley head at that moment, streaming forward on the storm wind like the smoke of a burning city. A wall of hail hung beneath it like chain-mail made of ice. The exhausted horses pushed onward without prompting. Lowering their heads and speeding almost to a trot. As though they knew where shelter lay as clearly as the guide did. Decimus pulled his hood up once again and leaned further forward. Taking the lashing hail on bowed shoulders as though it was some kind of scourge.

  Following the guide, the Romans fell into single file as they veered to the right and mounted a narrow path up the valley-side.

  iii

  The mountain slope up which the path led became a cliff wall reaching skywards on their left. At least it cut the wind, thought Decimus. Though the hail continued relentlessly. And the thunder became deafening. But after a few moments, the path widened into a considerable rock shelf. At whose back, someone had erected a big strong-looking building. Using the cliff face itself as its rear wall. The other walls were roughly fashioned of boulders wedged in place with smaller stones, made sound with slate and gravel. The roof was slate. The stable doors were unfinished pine. As, no doubt, were the roof beams.

  The guide reined in before the double doors and gestured. Chilled to the marrow, Decimus dismounted, staggering a little on legs that felt like wood. He handed his reins to one of the guards and entered the building. Swinging the heavy wooden door wide then letting it slam behind him. It was disorientatingly calm inside the stable. That was the first thing that struck him. No wind. No hail. The stillness of the air made it seem warm. He blinked his streaming eyes and realised there was more to the warmth than still air. There was a fire in a makeshift grate at the very back of the place, giving a little light as well as warmth. With no further thought, he crossed towards it.

  There was a rough table in front of it surrounded by rude stools. On one of which sat a man, very much at ease. As Decimus’ vision cleared, he saw that the stranger was dressed in simple Gaulish clothes. His hair was wild, but not long. His cheeks and chin were stubbled, not bearded. He wore it all like a disguise; not like a native.

  ‘Storm coming,’ observed Decimus in his best Gaulish.

  ‘More than a storm,’ answered the stranger in liquid Latin. ‘Much more than a storm. Please take a seat, Governor.’

  Decimus turned at that, every nerve alert as he realised that this was a trap.

  ‘Please sit down,’ repeated the stranger gently. ‘It’s far too late to think of running any more. Besides. You are quite alone.’

  ‘My guards…’

  ‘Gone,
I’m afraid. Without even an obol beneath their tongues to pay Charon the ferryman to carry them across the Acheron to the afterlife. Off the cliff, likely as not. If I know my friend Gretorex and his soldiers. It’s a good deal higher than the Tarpeian Rock in Rome.’

  Decimus turned back to face the stranger. And realised in some vague way that the man by the fire was not a stranger after all. ‘I know you,’ said the Governor.

  ‘I think ‘know’ might be too strong a word. You have seen me on occasion, I’m sure. But you didn’t really notice me. You may have heard my name, however. I am Septem…’

  Intrigued in spite of himself, Decimus moved forward. Towards the fire, the table and the seat the half-familiar stranger indicated. ‘Septem...’

  ***

  ‘The last time you saw me clearly was at the battle of Mutina,’ said the gently-flowing, softly modulated voice. ‘Just at the moment young Caesar Octavius reached Consul Hirtius’ dead body and tried to retrieve it from the midst of Antony’s attacking legion. Consul and general Hirtius’ aquilifer eagle-bearer beside him was also dead. You stepped back and went on your way, no doubt calculating that the boy would not survive such a dangerous moment, surrounded as he was by enemy troops. One less leader likely to challenge your position and your plans. One less Caesar in the world. And I must admit that I too had orders concerning him. But young Caesar freed the eagle and carried it forward trying to rally his men. And I found that, unlike you, I could not leave him to his fate.’

  Septem rocked back slightly on his stool, watching Decimus with strange smoke-coloured eyes. The light gleaming on his stubbled chin as though it had been dusted with copper. ‘Before that, I delivered secret messages to you concealed in rolls of lead when you were besieged. I swam the river outside Mutina carrying them and was allowed through your lines and into your city. Into your quarters, in fact. For I had the passwords. You were too interested in the messages to look closely at the messenger. Though, I’m sorry to say that the communications I brought you were by no means always accurate. And the replies bound for young Caesar and the Senate often went to Antony instead.