Rome 4: The Art of War (19 page)

He was an honest man, Scopius. He ran his eye along the line and saw men either too old, too deformed or too unsavoury to carry a litter for anyone.

He let his arms drop; there was nobody left who might have bid for
them anyway, except there was, suddenly, a slim, balding steward shoving his way through the dwindling crowd. He was flustered, with the manners of a man who was used to doing everything in timely fashion and did not like to rush.

He hurried to Scopius’ shoulder. ‘Litter-bearers? I need four, swiftly. What have you?’

Scopius pulled a face, took his elbow, turned him aside. I only caught half a phrase, lifted on the sultry air: ‘… tomorrow. Nothing of worth …’

The mad little Berber heard that, too. He leapt up, an animated bundle of rags, and caught the steward’s arm.

‘One denarius, nothing more. Just one, and I will carry your litter on my own!’

He was pitiful; the kind of idiot you would ride past in the street and ignore, but he had his claws in the steward’s arm and Scopius could not prise him off.

‘One silver coin, to carry your master’s litter!’

‘It’s for my mistress and it will need more than you.’

With wary distaste, the steward viewed the other four men. They were not particularly even, but none was as wizened, as old, as veritably mad as the Berber. He was about to take those four when the little man rushed forward and grabbed three, apparently at random. One was a tall and bulky British slave who looked as if he’d rip your head off in your sleep; another was smaller, with the look of a eunuch who had ink on his fingers and had lately been a scribe. In my experience, men who can read and write do not, on the whole, carry litters, so this one had almost certainly been dismissed for forgery or larceny or worse.

The last was the most disturbing: a lean, scruffy blond boy with a squint, who gazed vacantly at the sky with one eye and me with the other as if he were wondering how soon he could cut my throat; he made my stomach heave, I tell you. The mad
Berber dragged him forward, leaving the fifth, a Gaul who kept staring at the clouds and pointing, as a child might, and looked at them now as if he might weep.

This was first-rate entertainment. All about me, Guards were laughing, clapping the steward on the back, telling him to shout for their help when his mistress was robbed and he had need of the Guard to stop worse from happening.

It had all been so cleverly done. It was seeing it, understanding what underlay it, that first made me think this man at whose side I had fought might be the spy the Guards had spent all day hunting for across the city, raising the price on his head with every hour that went by.

There’s nothing like hiding in plain sight and they’d all seen what he wanted them to see: a mad little Berber grandfather, small and wizened and lame, and none of them had thought that if he stood upright he’d have been their height or taller, and if he let his face grow smooth he’d have been half the age he looked. If he had been olive brown, not black, he’d have looked Roman enough to sit in the senate.

If you looked closely, there were signs on his body of the beating he had taken the night before; not nearly as many as there should have been, but they were there, if you knew what to look for.

Nobody did, though. That was the point. They all saw what Pantera showed them, and he let them make fun of him, and what man suspects that the object of his derision is making a fool of him in return?

I caught his eye and gave the smallest of bows. He ignored me, but I expected that, and settled back into my corner, grinning, as the steward ushered his uneven crew out of the courtyard and up the street, looking for all the world like a man who had set out to tend his herd of goats and had come home with a flock of tigers.

Rome, 4 August
AD
69

I DIDN’T KNOW
where Matthias had gone; but I knew something was going to happen.

Earlier in the day, I had put pebbles in my shoe against the possibility that I might forget I was too lame to walk up the hill to see Sabinus. By the evening, the pain in my foot was becoming tiresome. Leaning on Matthias, I hobbled out of the front door of the cottage on the Street of the Bay Trees and out to the waiting litter. Four Guards watched me do it; they had been there from midnight to midnight without cease and there are few things more irritating than knowing that four men are watching your every move. It was tiresome, of course it was, but what could we do?

I was running a little late, and the litter was already up on the shoulders of the bearers. They lowered it for me and scooped it up again swiftly enough, for all that they looked exceedingly ill matched.

Scopius at the Crossed Spears was known to provide a clean, swift
service, with graded men. Today, though, a dust-strewn Egyptian shared the rear poles with a blond boy of not more than fifteen who had one lazy eye and a slight leer. If that were not bad enough, the boy was taller than the man so that the litter would have listed to the left had not the disparity in their heights been counter-balanced by that of the front bearers, a bulky Briton and a wizened old Berber who looked ancient enough to be his grandfather.

We progressed in our uneven way up the hill. Sabinus was waiting for us outside his big, gilt-roofed villa on the upper elbow of the Quirinal hill. No Guards openly watched him; he was prefect of the city, commander of the Urban cohorts and the Watch: his power in the city was almost as great as the emperor’s and Vitellius had to treat him with a degree of respect.

Nevertheless, he was elder brother to the man who had named himself imperator and on my three previous visits I had seen the same bearded thug guarding a nearby villa where there had never before been a guard, and two others working to rebuild a wall which had not progressed so much as a hand’s span in the past nine days.

Sabinus gave a fractional nod as he moved in to embrace me.

‘Sister, are you well? Your leg is improving?’ All solicitude, he took my arm. ‘You must let me call for the bonesetter. Aescetidorus is exceptionally skilled in these things. He would have you walking sound as a horse in no time.’

‘Thank you, I have no wish to walk like a horse.’

I waved a hand at Matthias and, as all the stewards do, he took the litter down the street a little way to where a neatly favoured inn served the servants of the senators who lived on the hill.

Thus, simply, did Vespasian’s lady and his brother appear as we needed to appear while each knowing where the danger lay. Sabinus took
me inside. Neither of us looked at the men watching his house.

Like my own, Sabinus’ home was built around an atrium, but where mine had a small pond and only four columns holding up the central roof, his had a water garden with five fountains shaped like nymphs and satyrs and sixteen columns, and as many rooms linked by a covered walkway around the edge.

The walls were painted in crimson overlaid by frescoes and mosaics showing Greek tragedies and Roman victories. It was a man’s house with no redeeming subtlety, a statement of ostentation; quite hateful, really.

I didn’t hate Sabinus, that must be clear; he was a good, kind man and from the first, when Vespasian and I were new lovers, he treated me with utmost respect, which I have returned in kind. Even so, he was, in all ways, the opposite of his brother.

Where Vespasian was over-generous, impecunious, a hater of politics and a lover of war, Sabinus hoarded money all his life, and thrived in the backstabbing atmosphere of the senate. He was never likely to be exiled by Nero for sleeping through a recital, nor to emerge from a governorship with less money than when he entered it.

For all that, he was still the bluff country boy, one generation away from the soil, and he was kind to me in the dark years when Vespasian was married and siring two sons and a daughter on another, more suitable, woman.

His wife and daughter are both dead now, and I had care of the younger son. I was as married as I could ever be to the man who had let his legions name him emperor. Nobody was likely to forget that I was once a slave, but next to Vespasian, his brother Sabinus had always come closest to managing that particular feat of perpetual amnesia.

That evening, as soon as we stepped indoors, Sabinus held out his arm
for me to lean on while I took the pebbles out of my shoe as if it were normal to greet any visiting lady this way.

After, he walked ahead of me through the vestibule to the atrium and came to stand by a fountain shaped as Youth.

It was an unfortunate juxtaposition of images. He was sixty-nine years old and each year had cut another line of worry at the margins of his eyes. He was not as ruddy as his brother, more olive in his complexion, but his chin narrowed to the same point and his ears stuck proud of his head in the same way. He took my hand and kissed it fondly.

‘What news? Or are you here simply to confound the Guard?’

‘Wait.’

I held up my hand, listening. Matthias had left the litter at the tavern and returned by the servants’ entrance. He walked past in one of the servants’ corridors and I could tell by the singular rhythm of his feet that he was unhappy. I listened after, and heard, if not a sound, then what we might call the absence of a sound; a gap, that was more telling than anything.

Aloud, I said, ‘The spy, Pantera, has perhaps more news than either of us? If he has access to the general’s messengers?’

I was right: he was there! Pantera’s quiet voice answered me, from somewhere nearby.

‘My lady, I can tell you that the general is safe in Alexandria where he chafes against the bit and yearns for action, that Mucianus is on the march and that the King of Kings in Parthia has offered forty thousand archers, and has promised not to invade Judaea while Vespasian is emperor.’

‘He can’t accept the archers!’ I spun to face the place whence I thought Pantera’s voice had come. ‘He’ll be said for ever to have used foreign aid to take the throne, to have made Rome a vassal of Parthia.’

‘He
knows that, lady. He won’t accept.’ He wasn’t where I thought he was. I spun again as he spoke on. ‘But it’s good news that Vologases won’t invade either. I think they find much in common, our general and the King of Kings. It will be good for them to find this out for themselves.’

I could see him at last, and it was not only that he had found the darkest shadows in Sabinus’ blood-red room to hide in that had made him hard to see, but that he was black of head and foot and hand and hair; he was, in fact, the Berber who had carried my litter and I tell you truly, had he not spoken, I would not have known him.

To give him credit, Sabinus didn’t call his own steward to have this intruder ejected. He stood on the far side of the room biting down on his lower lip, which Vespasian only did when he was immensely angry.

I stepped between them, saying, ‘My lord, may I introduce to you the agent sent by your brother to keep us all from harm in the coming months? Circumstances overtook him and now he must come under subterfuge.’ I favoured Pantera with an acid glance. ‘Sebastos Abdes Pantera, this is Titus Flavius Sabinus, prefect of Rome, commander of the Urban cohorts and the Watch and uncle to Domitian. I must tell you that the Guard are offering eight hundred in silver for you—’

‘Alive. I know. And I am told that alone of Nero’s people, the inquisitors have survived all three of the recent palace purges. It takes a long time to find individuals with the skill and vocation to break a man and yet leave him able to answer questions. You could enquire of your friend Scopius, sometime, as to the content of my dreams. He has been very careful not to interpret them for me.’

That was clever. I felt Sabinus’ anger dissolve as he came over to join me. It would have taken a harder heart than his to feel anger for long at a man whose dreams were filled with his own long-drawn death.

I was
perhaps the one feeling most aggrieved. I asked, ‘Does Matthias know who you are?’

‘If he doesn’t,’ he said, ‘you really ought to find another steward. Nobody in his right mind would have taken on the men currently carrying your litter.’

That set me back. Something of my discomfort must have shown, for Pantera said, drily, ‘Matthias cares for you so much that he will set aside his honour to lie for you. And he finds in himself surprising depths, I think, and a versatility that does you great service.’

‘Did you come just to tell me to praise my steward, or are you here for a better reason?’ I was sharp with him, I admit it, and not yet ready to think well of Matthias.

‘I came to introduce myself to the senator, to bring his brother’s greetings and to tell him personally that the safety of Vespasian’s family is my first responsibility while in Rome. And to tell you both that you must be assiduous in your support of Vitellius and your denigration of Vespasian.’

‘You tell us what we already know,’ Sabinus said. ‘I have pledged my oath to Vitellius more times than I can count. When he resides in Rome, I attend him when he wakes, I host dinners that will beggar me for years, I assure him of the devotion of the Urban cohorts and the Watch. I tell him how reckless is my brother and what a stain he lays on the family name. If there is more I can do, you have only to say it, but I know of nothing.’

‘There is no more you can do, lord.’ Pantera gave a small bow, hand on heart, after the manner of the Egyptians. ‘But the lady Caenis, I think, may be able to lend other aid to our venture?’

I had no idea what he was talking about, but there was a warning in his eyes, or perhaps a plea, so I said, ‘Go on,’ as if this were something we had planned.

He said, ‘The general wishes to ascend the throne with as little
Roman blood spilled as can be managed. To achieve that, we must find those tribunes and legates of the legions most readily persuaded to his cause. We must commend them, flatter them, bribe them, threaten them; do whatever it takes to win them to our side. To do
that
, we must have a means of communication by which we can reach them and they can reach us.’