Caesar's Spies- The Complete Campaigns

by Peter Tonkin

‘Do you know me you slimy little nothus?’ The voice was nearer now. And disturbingly familiar.

  Philologus began to get some awareness of his surroundings. He was on a chair in a warm room that smelt of cooking. His head hurt. He went to raise his hand to his brow. Which was how he discovered he was tied to the chair.

  He opened his eyes blearily, head forward, looking down. Which was how he discovered he was naked.

  Stunned, fighting for some kind of grip on what was happening, he looked up. And understood almost everything.

  There was a tall, aristocratic woman standing immediately in front of him. Who had clearly just slapped him into wakefulness. The widow he had been wishing for. But not this widow. Any widow but this one. The woman who now owned him was Pomponia. Marcus Tullius’ sometime sister-in-law; wife to Quintus Tullius Senior until their divorce. Mother to Quintus Tullius Minor. ‘You know me now. I can tell!’ the raging woman spat.

  ‘Yes, domina my lady,’ he croaked, looking wildly round. He was at the heart of a well-furnished kitchen. The fire was stoked up, heating an oven and a range on which rested various pots and pans. Immediately beside him was a table on which lay a selection of kitchen knives. He had an instantaneous vision of himself somehow snatching one and cutting himself free. Then he noticed that the gladiator was still here.

  ‘Then you will not be too surprised that I have plans for you, you slimy, snivelling little traitor!’ the raging woman continued.

  ***

  ‘Domina...’

  ‘Taceo shut up!’ she snarled. ‘I do not care that you handed your master my pompous windbag of a brother-in-law over to those murderous scum without a second thought. I don’t even care that you gave them that imbecile I spent so many unhappy years married to. But you gave them Quintus Minor. You gave them my boy... My baby...’

  Abruptly, she caught up one of the largest knives from the table and plunged it straight into the front of his right thigh. He felt the point scrape his thigh-bone as the point went right through to the chair-seat. Then the pain came. And the shock. He screamed. And screamed again. She stood and waited as the screams became wails, then sobs. Then she took the handle of the knife and pulled it half way out of his flesh. The wound gaped as the muscle contracted. Overflowed with blood. He howled again. She pushed it back. Even deeper this time.

  ‘Let me describe the next hour or so to you,’ she said. ‘I am going to untie your hands and give you this knife. You will then use it to cut a good-sized piece of flesh from your own body. If you refuse, or even hesitate, Spiculus here will apply a red hot iron to parts of your fat, slimy carcase until you start butchering yourself again.’

  The gladiator obligingly pulled a long metal spit out of the fire. Its end glowed dull red. He swung it towards Philologus until the sweating man felt the heat of it drying the droplets on his chest. ‘Yes!’ he shouted. ‘Yes, domina!’

  Pomponia untied his hands. In a kind of frenzy, he pulled the knife out of his thigh and began to cut a slice of the skin with a thick section of flesh beneath it. Staring just above his knee and pulling the knife towards his hip. Taking the point in his left fist as his right gripped the handle. Sawing frantically as far as the length of the blade allowed. Watching as the skin and muscle curled back as he cut it free. Watching as the blood flowed over his leg and onto the kitchen floor. As he worked, he howled with anguish. The shock of seeing so much blood pouring out of the huge wound he was himself making seemed to intensify – with the agony. At last the slice of raw meat fell free. Splashed into the puddle of blood on the floor. Pomponia stooped and caught it up. Swung round and dropped it into one of the pans on the oven-top. There was a sizzling sound, and the smell of cooking meat.

  Philologus’ stomach heaved. Fainting, he dropped the knife. Leaned forward over the oozing mess of his agonised leg. Discovered that he had cut so deeply he could even see the bone. Leaned back, staring at the ceiling, trying to settle his spinning head. Time seemed to slip away strangely. There were loud noises that he knew could not be real. Lights that seemed to come and go across his tear-blurred vision.

  Then Pomponia was there. Looming over him. She held a plate beneath his chin. It was piled with lumps of meat. She drove the point of the knife into the largest of them and pushed it towards his mouth. He took it without thinking, and started to chew. It tasted strangely like pork. And yet not like pork at all...

  Then he realised what it was.

  He leaned forward, vomiting helplessly. The burning bile landing in his lap covering his exposed genitals like Greek fire.

  ‘Never mind, little man,’ cooed Pomponia, almost as though she was talking to her dead child Quintus Tullius Minor. ‘There’s plenty more where that came from. And you’ll eat every morsel...’

  iii

  Caesar was sitting alone at his desk in the tablinum study of the villa he had rented while he was staying in Rome. Like Antony, he had little intention of staying in the city long. He just wanted to oversee the final proscriptions. The collection of the money garnered from the property of those who had died or fled – either one equally acceptable to him now that the men he wanted killed were mostly deceased. Including his hated tutor Thoranius. But the dead represented a surprisingly small number in the final analysis, given how long the original proscription lists had been.

  Caesar would have left already to be with his legions like Rufus and Agrippa, but it looked as though the proscriptions were going to fail in their main objective. As Cornelius Balbus had explained to Maecenas and himself last night over dinner, it looked as though they could be as much as two hundred million Attic drachmas below what they had hoped for. With little recourse to make up the short-fall other than to lower the tax threshold or widen the tax base. Perhaps even to start taxing women.

  And Antony’s usually thoughtless open-handedness hardly helped. Though, thought Caesar with a smile, it had been worth the worry and potential inconvenience to see Septem being awarded fifty thousand Attic drachmas to match Popilius Lenas’. Good old Felix. He pulled that one out of thin air like Divus Julius snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

  Thoughts of Septem, Felix and Popilius Lenas made the young Triumvir look away from the paperwork that had claimed his attention so far today. As with the team he had built out of Agrippa, Rufus and Maecenas, he needed all three sorts of men. Builders, bankers and butchers. He recognised that he was not an introspective person. Perhaps introspection would come with age. For the time-being he was too busy doing to spend much time on reflecting. And yet he was wise enough to recognise two sides to his nature. Sides that often came into conflict. The cool, calm commander; the hot-blooded, sometimes brutal would-be tyrant. His actions over the last few months had reflected that. His calm, calculating negotiations on the island; the savage way he had dealt with Quintus Gallius’ attempted assassination.

  And his associates reflected this duality as well. Would do so more fully when he had found a way to seduce Septem away from Antony. Especially if the imaginative and forward-looking spy was serious about setting up an intelligence network. How useful that would be when they went to war with Brutus and Cassius. He needed the calm and calculating Felix. But at the same time – though Maecenas controlled him and took some responsibility for his excesses – he needed the brutal Popilius Lenas. And more men like him. But most of all he needed men whose vision matched his own. Agrippa, Rufus, Maecenas. Septem...

  He had reached this point in his reflections when he was disturbed by a scratching at the door.

  ‘Immeo, enter,’ he called.

  One of the highly diplomatic slaves Cornelius Balbus had lent him opened the door and tip-toed in. ‘My Lord,’ he said, his voice hardly above a whisper. ‘There is another lady seeking an audience...’

  Caesar looked silently at the man. He hesitated for a moment, caught between the calm commander and the hot-blooded tyrant. The situation was familiar to him. Had become more and more so during the last few weeks. So that he no longer hesitated in t
aking advantage of it.

  ‘Show her in,’ he said.

  ***

  The lady entered modestly enough. Her stola a delicate blue, intricately folded – as became a patrician lady – but anonymous. Anonymity compounded by her hood and veil. Neither, to be fair, remarkable, for pallid skin was all the rage and even in mid-winter the sun might bring an unfashionable blush.

  ‘You have asked to see me?’ Caesar asked, his voice gentle, used to playing this game. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Trembling hands raised the veil. Her face was full and faintly familiar. Cheeks plump, chin dimpled. Lips generous and red. Hair blonde and possibly naturally so. Nose straight in the Greek style. Eyes enormous and violet. ‘My husband...’ she began.

  ‘Yes? Your husband is?’

  ‘Gaius Coponius.’ The words came tumbling out almost unstoppably. As usual. ‘His name is on the list. In error. I am certain it is a terrible mistake. All his life he has been a supporter of Divus Julius and his friends. He has spoken in support of Antony in the Senate on many occasions. He was among the first to vote that you be made Consul in spite of your youth. I am sure he has been nominated by some disaffected slave or business rival jealous of his success and coveting his riches and his villas. Oh Caesar, if you could intercede on his behalf...’

  ‘What then? If I could, as you say, intercede?’

  ‘I would be so grateful...’

  ‘How grateful?’

  ‘Caesar, I would do anything. Anything...’

  Caesar rose from behind his desk and approached Gaius Coponius’ wife, who stood, trembling, like Virtue on a monument. He realised that he had seen her on several occasions. At parties. Social gatherings. The fact that he remembered her said something – most likely that he had wondered whether a moment such as this might ever arise. And the fact that it had arisen now made it more exciting still. He ran his finger under her chin. Her skin was soft. Warm. Her breath scented with cloves and honey.

  Close-to, it was clear she was by no means in the first flush of youth. Distracted for a moment, he wondered whether she had a daughter. Several women of a certain age had offered him their daughters in situations identical to this. And there was always a tension when such an offer was made – should he choose innocence over experience? He had yet to take the obvious course and welcome both to his bed at once. But there was plenty of time yet. And no doubt the opportunity would arise. But in the mean-time there were those astonishing violet eyes. And, now that he noted them, particularly attractive lips.

  ‘Anything?’ He repeated.

  ‘Anything,’ she promised firmly.

  He took her hand and led her to a doorway half hidden by the office shelves. Here he paused. The Caesar Octavian he had been so recently, might have lingered here giving her the opportunity to change her mind. Not so the new man he had become. ‘And what does anything mean?’ he challenged her. ‘How much will you do to ensure Gaius Coponius’ life?’

  By way of answer, her hands scrabbled at the front of her stola, pulling its hem up to her waist. Higher. He felt the heat of her through the skirt of his light silk tunic as she pushed forward against his upper thigh. The softness of the breasts crushed against him was surmounted by nipples as hard as sling-shots. Almost of its own volition, his hand reached downwards. She wore no underclothes. Beneath the stola she was naked. Her belly was as smooth as eggshell. Like many Roman matrons, she followed the fashion for depilation.

  His fingers slid down to discover that she was not only warm. But moist. Excited, perhaps, by the thought of sleeping with one of the two most powerful men in the world. Or simply at the prospect of having a young, vigorous man after years with an ancient, flaccid husband. Or by the thought of doing something blissfully wicked. Possibly – though improbably – by the thought of yielding herself heroically to protect her husband and her family. Whatever her reasons, she gasped with genuine lust when he touched her there and he pushed open the door into the second office. Into which he had moved a bed. For occasions just like this one. Which were becoming more and more common these days. And with the blessings of Tyche, and Fortuna would become more common still as time went on.

  He followed Gaius Coponia’s wife into the brightly-lit, private chamber, close enough behind her to be loosening the fastenings of her stola as the pair of them crossed towards the bed. They were still a few steps away from it when the garment slid to the floor. She stepped up out of the bright blue puddle like Venus rising from the waves. The strange situation bringing out a very satisfying shamelessness in her – for far too many of his conquests were too shy to show themselves; preferring to surrender in shadow or darkness. But Gaius Coponius’ wife paused, turned, and, for a moment, could well have been mistaken for one of the Greek statues of the naked Venus that filled so many peristyles and galleries in the city. Except that where marble was pale and cold, the body displayed so wantonly in front of him was all shades of pink. And, when he reached for it, hot.

  iv

  Antony climbed into bed alone. Stepping up on the bedside block as though mounting a horse. The bed itself was huge, ornate, surrounded with hangings and depressingly empty apart from himself. And icily cold. As soon as he pulled up the covers, his body slaves departed, leaving a single lamp burning on a bedside table. Which only served to show how huge, cavernous and deserted the bedroom itself was. Empty of everything except shadows.

  The bed was freezing, he thought. He should have ordered it warmed. Ideally by a nubile body waiting, naked, for his arrival. But no. He shivered. Waited for warmth to come. Fulvia was out of sorts and keeping moodily to her own quarters. His breath-taking mistress Volumnia Cytheris was little more than a fading memory. And Cleopatra haunted him from distant Alexandria. Too distant, alas, to be of any immediate help. There had been women enough like Gaius Coponius’ wife willing to give their all to save their husbands. Their all often enough including their daughters. Given his Cicero-tarnished reputations, some had even offered their sons. But not this afternoon. Not tonight.

  He had drunk enough unwatered Falernian to float a quinquireme, but he still felt sober. Restless. Lonely. Wearily he went through his mental list of the household slaves. But Fulvia had made certain that none of them was pretty enough to attract his attention. He loved her and she had many sterling qualities. But sometimes – and on a regular basis – he would cheerfully have added her name to the top of the proscription lists.

  He suddenly found himself envious of that little tick Caesar. Underneath that priggish, oh so proper exterior, there was seemingly a man after all. Someone Antony could understand. A true heir of Divus Julius in this one regard at least. There were whispers that he was more and more regularly accepting the blandishments of ladies desperate to preserve their husbands, families, wealth, possessions and position. His adoptive father Divus Julius, the old goat, had screwed his way through most of the patrician matrons of Rome in his day. It looked like his son and heir was trying to do the same. Not that Antony begrudged him – he was by no means above that sort of thing himself. But that was not a thought likely to bring him much comfort now.

  Well, he decided, there was no help for it. Wearily but wakefully he composed himself to sleep. In the certainty that it was unlikely to come for hours. His mind drifted onto worries, as it always did when he was sleepless at night. To begin with he was becoming increasingly certain that the proscriptions were never going to raise all the money they needed in order to mount an unbeatable campaign against Brutus and Cassius. Even leaving Lepidus here with the smallest number of legions they dared – in the face of Sextus Pompeus’ presence in Sicily with his fleet, his legions and his increasing number of fugitives from the proscription - they could scarcely amass an army which would outmatch the treacherous Libertores. They were rumoured to have, potentially at least, fifteen, maybe seventeen legions. Ideally, therefore he and Caesar would need seventeen, maybe nineteen to be safe. But the figures were little more than guesswork. What he needed was some more s
olid information. The sort of information that Septem might supply if he ever did set up the intelligence network he had talked about on the night he admitted to killing Cicero with a slingshot.

  But no-matter how many legions became involved on either side, Caesar and he would have to take the fight to the Libertores which meant campaigning in the East. Marching along the Via Egnatia through Macedonia and down to Greece. Their flank exposed the moment they passed Thessaloniki and came down to the coast if Sextus Pompeius of any other of their friends with access to a naval force chose to bring his fleet east against them. Their flank and, indeed, their rear – for communications with Italy would depend on keeping the sea lanes in the Mare Hadriaticum between Dyrrachium and Brundisium clear. That could become a serious problem.

  How in Hades’ name could he protect his flank, his rear and possibly his lines of communication from a sea-borne attack when he didn’t have a navy worthy of the name? Because, of course, the fleet that Pompey had built and which the Senate controlled on behalf of the People of Rome had been given to his one remaining offspring Sextus Pompeius while Antony was away in Cisalpine Gaul and trapped on the far side of the Alps. Cicero and his associates relying on Pompey the Great’s son and heir to sweep Mare Nostrum clear of pirates as his father had done all those years earlier. And of course, given the way things had fallen out, Sextus had no intention of giving the Senate’s navy back. Which left Antony and Caesar without much more than a couple of triremes to their name. A situation that would have to be resolved before the campaigning season started, one way or another...

  ***

  Antony jumped awake. The room was in absolute darkness. In spite of his best efforts to warm it up, the bed was icily cold. He found he was shivering. He sat up. Turned towards the invisible bedside table where the lamp and the flint he needed to light it lay. But his hands were shaking so much he stopped. There would be no point in trying to light a lamp in this condition – chances were he would drop it and smash it in any case. He swung back, sucking in a breath to call someone from outside. There were always slaves and praetorians out there guarding him.