Rome 4: The Art of War (25 page)

Ten paces on, I gave up; I wouldn’t have known what to look for anyway and I wasn’t going to treat my closest friend as an enemy. If I did that, Lucius would have won, and while I might have given my oath to the emperor, and had every intention of holding to it until death, I had given nothing at all beyond necessary obedience to the emperor’s brother, nor did I ever intend to give more.

Quite what we thought would happen when Lucius ascended the throne – because he was obviously aiming for that and part of the reason Caecina was so unwilling to leave Rome was that it meant leaving Lucius behind with his brother – was anyone’s guess and too far away to contemplate. Thus did I keep myself sane.

With Juvens easy at my shoulder, I came to the Aventine, strewn with big houses with gilt-tiled roofs and fountains that had flowed with wine instead of water on the occasion of the emperor’s birthday.

Here was the real wealth, the vast, overstated, too-much-money-and-no-sense wealth that buys fripperies because they are today’s fashion; British slaves this month, Thessalian next; pâté of larks’ tongues today, caviar tomorrow; wine yesterday, a different wine today, a different one again tomorrow. Always wine. And gold; there was so much gold here, a
man could have died blinded by its shine. Valens lived on the crest of the hill, with a view north in the direction his legions were due shortly to march.

The front door to his house was locked and barred as if he had already left and sent the slaves away, but a door at the side gave on to a walled garden aburst with colour and scent; many dozens of fruit trees bowed under the bounty of their harvest, while late-flowering roses climbed the walls, assaulting the air with their perfume. A small river flowed cheerily down the slope, though I would have bet it was not natural, and that Valens was not paying his due to the water commissioners for diverting their aqueduct to this small patch of glory.

This was my first impression, taken in a single sweeping glance, which ended at the gardener’s hut. There, a group of slaves was huddled round a prone figure, headed by Hermonius, physician to the wealthy, and, in my opinion, one of the most morbidly dangerous men in Rome.

‘Valens?’

I was running now, if not fast enough to put a bolting horse to shame, then at least fast enough to leave Juvens behind. At the hut, I skidded to a stop: it was Valens, prone, perhaps breathing, with a splattering of vomit near his head and clumps of foul, bloody diarrhoea clotted about his buttocks and the ground around.

The stench was enough to throw a man back. I gagged, covered my mouth with my hand, and knelt, feeling for a pulse. The slaves had backed away; they had no authority and could exert none. I grabbed the closest, a youth of perhaps eighteen. ‘Run to the Quirinal hill. Find Scopius who tends the Inn of the Crossed Spears. Tell him we need his wife, to tend your master who has both vomiting and loose bowels. If you can’t find him, ask the silver-boys. Tell them there’s gold in it and no harm to their master. Don’t gawp at
me, child; I was born here, I know how the streets run.
Go!
’

He ran. I turned back in time to grab Hermonius, the physician, and bodily prevent him from taking a lancet to the general’s veins. ‘You can leave. We don’t need you.’

‘You, sir, have no authority, while I—
Ah!
’

I had drawn my blade and slammed the flat of it back-handed across the physician’s chest, sending the man flying into a pile of mule manure.

I stood over him, with the point at his face. ‘My blade is all the authority I need. You will leave. I will send for you should we have need of your particular lack of skill.’

I watched the physician scuttle away, and then rolled my general gently on to his back, sent for sponges and water and waited for the slave to reach Scopius and Gudrun, praying all the while that at least one of them would come.

Rome, the ides of September
AD
69

‘
VALENS IS ILL
. If he hasn’t got the bloody flux, then he’s been poisoned. Either way, he may not live to see the next new moon. He certainly won’t be riding out today or tomorrow.’

Hard though it was to believe, Caecina was in a blacker mood now, at ten o’clock in the morning, than he had been at daybreak. He heard out my report in silence, pacing back and forth a dozen strides each way, hands caught behind his back, shoulders concave.

At the end, he spun on his heel to face me. ‘Then we need another general. I cannot possibly be expected to lead detachments from eight different legions, four of them loyal only to Valens. If I am to …’

He drifted to a halt. His eyes grew wide and his scowl swept through a startling spectrum from fury to surprise to self-examination to a slick-hair, straighten-belt smile of sunny delight that I had never before seen on his face and would have had real trouble imagining.

‘
Jocasta!
’

He was past
me, veritably leaping across the parade ground to the gate, where stood a tall dark-haired woman dressed in a stola of deep, deep red, almost black, fashioned from a silk that radiated a quality, a richness, a raw, demanding sensuality that was a forgotten thing on a parade ground, and often in a fighting man’s life.

Caecina was a comet, a blazing ball of light, so complete was his transformation. Long before I could have reached him – I didn’t try – he had bowed, made his excuses for the state of his barracks, his hair, his dress, and swept the lady forward into his office. They entered it, unchaperoned.

Without undue effort, I managed to find duties that allowed me to keep an eye on the door. Nobody entered and nobody left until shortly before noon.

Caecina came out first. He had combed his hair, but otherwise he looked much as he did any time he walked out of his office; he was never the kind of man to let his belt hang awry, or to have stains on his tunic. He was a monument to perfection in the legions, and he knew it.

The lady Jocasta emerged on his heels and she, too, had not a hair disarrayed. She was as cool as any Roman matron going about her business in Rome. This did not necessarily mean, of course, that their intercourse in the office had been entirely cerebral.

In my experience, the men and women of the senatorial class are trained from birth in how to look outwardly cool while their inner lives are in turmoil. They could have been rutting like rats on the far side of the door, and nobody would necessarily have known anything about it.

Whatever they had done, Caecina was manifestly in a better mood. He escorted the lady to the gate and assigned eight Guards to escort her wherever she might choose to go next. There was a spring
in his step as he marched back to me so that I had to fight not to grin at him as he approached.

‘All well?’ he asked as he came within hailing distance.

‘All is well, lord. The detachments of the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Fifteenth, Sixteenth and Twenty-first legions are ready. The Twenty-second has had an outbreak of thrush in their stables; eight mules have gone lame. Replacements are being sent for and they’ll be ready by nightfall. They can march to join you with tomorrow’s dawn.’

‘Excellent! Excellent.’ Caecina rubbed his hands down his arms. ‘They are the best Rome has to offer. Get them gathered so that I can tell them so. We’re going to march out of here today shining –
shining!
– so that Antonius Primus and all the rest of Vespasian’s men know exactly what’s coming against them, and tremble at the sight.’

It was such a spectacular change of tone, delivered with such enthusiasm, that it was only many days later, when the disaster had happened, that I looked back and saw the seeds of catastrophe sown in that moment when Caecina’s talk was all about how well his men looked, and not at all about the strength of their fighting capacity.

At the time, I did as I was told: gathered the men, ordered them into tidy lines and stepped back to let Caecina take his rightful position on the podium, ready to address them—

And found I had trodden on Lucius’ foot, and must move aside, awkwardly, and fall into apologies; I was most sorry, I had no idea that the emperor’s brother had graced us with his presence. I absolutely did not intend—

‘Of course you didn’t.’ Lucius’ whisper was more deafening than most men’s shout. ‘Stop grovelling and listen to me. I hear you are on the verge of capturing Trabo?’

‘Juvens is, yes.’

It was Juvens’ job. Juvens drew his name. Lucius should have been speaking to him.

‘Don’t.’

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘Don’t take him. Watch him, yes. Approach him, definitely. Find a place he can’t escape from and corner him. But don’t arrest him, and certainly don’t kill him.’

‘May I ask why?’

Lucius’ smile was quenched in snake blood. ‘We have word that Trabo is working with Pantera. The two have made an alliance. Since July, I have been trying to place someone on the inside of Pantera’s network and now we have someone handed to us on a plate.’

‘I’m sorry, do I understand you rightly? You think Trabo, who held Otho as he died, who has given pledges on the altar of the legions’ god that he will see Vitellius removed from power, you really believe he can be turned to our cause?’

‘I know he can. The man is an incurable romantic, prone to grand gestures. Corner him, and offer him a deal in exchange for his life: he will spy against Pantera for us, or we will kill those for whom he cares most before we kill him. Let him know that the lady Jocasta is vulnerable if he refuses. If you need to sweeten it, tell him the price will be removed from his head the day Vespasian is dead and the insurrection dies. If he serves us well, he can be a tribune of the Guard again.’

‘And if he accepts, what do you want him to do?’

‘You will arrange a means by which he can contact you. Keep it simple. Keep it foolproof. I want details of everything Pantera does, of who helps him, who doesn’t, what they offer. And particularly I want to know how he gets his messages to and from the generals. He has reawakened the old Antonine messenger service from the days of Caesar and Octavian and he’s using it to keep in touch with the legions. When Pantera dies, that service will be mine. It’s more important than he is.’

‘Then
why don’t we take Trabo and question him? He could tell us where Pantera is and then we could question Pantera. However committed he is to his cause, there is no man who can withstand the inquisitors for long.’

Lucius pulled a face. ‘He lasted three days in Britain and told them nothing of value. I would like to think we have greater skill, but we can’t be sure of it. If he dies and we have learned nothing, we will be in more danger than if we had left him alive. The enemy you know is a dozen times easier to fight than the one you don’t.’

There was a light in Lucius’ face I had not seen before; he thrived on the hunt and, like Juvens in the morning, had seen his way clear to a kill. Except in his case, he wanted to prolong the chase as long as possible.

He clapped my shoulder. ‘Geminus, you’re a natural diplomat. Use all your skills on Trabo and get me what I need. There’s a generalship in it for you if you succeed in this.’

There was a time when I would have given my right arm for the chance to serve as a general. But only emperors can make or unmake senior officers and the very fact that Lucius felt safe in making the offer without first asking his brother left me profoundly despondent.

I saluted, and went to find Juvens, to tell him the news that he wasn’t going to get to kill Trabo and I wasn’t to be allowed to arrest Pantera, and what we had to do instead. I knew he wasn’t going to be happy. I wasn’t quite ready for the explosive fury that followed.

‘Fuck that! I gave my oath in the temple of Jupiter that I’d hunt Trabo down and kill him and now you want me to call him a friend? Are you completely out of your fucking mind?’

I shrugged. ‘Lucius ordered it. If you want to tell him he’s an imbecile, feel free. I’ll wait here.’

‘
Fuck you.’

‘Right, then …’

We spent most of the afternoon setting up what we needed. When we had done, I have to say, it went with satisfying smoothness.

Rome, the ides of September
AD
69

I WAS REPAIRING
a wheel that afternoon, as I remember; but then, I spent a lot of those days repairing wheels. It would have been surprising had I not been.

I’m not a wheelwright by trade, but in my guise as a carter men expected me to be able to at least repair the spokes and set the rim true and I had found I could do that readily enough; after twelve years in the legions, I can turn my hand to most things.

It was a satisfying occupation. I liked the smooth feel of wood under my fingers, the smell of the shavings as I whittled a new spoke to fit its socket. I liked the satisfaction in a job well done at the end, as I set the wheel spinning down the hill. That kept the children happy, and impressed some of the less world-weary customers.

More important, it allowed me to sit at the side of any street in Rome without anybody paying me too much attention.

Which, in
turn, allowed me to watch the people who mattered most to me.

The first of these, of course, was Jocasta, who was endlessly fascinating. I could have followed her all day and not grown tired of her. And she was easy to follow; far too easy. It may be that she knew I was there, and so was going out of her way to smooth my new mission as her self-appointed protector, but it was also possible that she was just distressingly easy to follow.

Take, for instance, her visit to Caecina that morning: she had made no effort to hide where she was going and none to hide that she had been there afterwards.

Given the nature of her mission as defined in Caenis’ rooms, this seemed to me at first to be the height of folly: she had successfully poisoned Valens and pretty much immediately after, she walked straight into Caecina’s office.