The Ides of March (25 page)

‘We have to intercept any messengers directed south, especially two men fitted out as
speculatores
.’

‘What do you mean by “intercept”?’ asked the other.

‘Stop them, I suppose,’ replied the man who had just come in.

‘What if they won’t stop?’

The man drew his finger across his throat in an eloquent gesture and added, ‘How else?’

Mansio ad Vicum, a.d. III Id. Mart., tertia vigilia

The Village station, 13 March, start of third guard shift, midnight

T
HE MILESTONE
marked the sixth mile from Chiusi and Mustela turned to enter the courtyard of the
mansio
. He tethered his horse, walked up the stairs to his room, opened the door and closed it behind him. He was exhausted. He raised the wick on the oil lamp that was about to go out.

‘Hello there,’ said a voice in the dark.

Mustela drew his sword.

‘I guess my time hadn’t come yet,’ said Publius Sextius. ‘Surprised, my friend? Dead men don’t show up out of nowhere, do they? But as you can see, I’m not. You thought you could take your time since I was out of the picture and so I made it here first.’

Mustela lunged forward, but Publius Sextius was ready for him. He parried the blow with his
gladius
and with a quick thrust sent the weapon flying from his attacker’s hand. He then pounded his cane flat against Mustela’s chest. The man collapsed to the ground.

Publius Sextius jerked him up and sat him down on the only chair in the room. Leaning back awkwardly, he seemed a disjointed puppet.

‘Let’s start by you telling me what signal you sent,’ he hissed into his face.

‘Forget it.’

Publius landed a stone-hard punch in the middle of his face and Mustela whimpered in pain.

‘You’ll kill me anyway, so why should I tell you anything?’

‘You’re wrong. If you talk I give you my word of honour I will not spill your blood.’

Mustela, still in pain from the wounds incurred during his long journey, was destroyed in body and spirit.

‘They say that Publius Sextius always keeps his word,’ he managed to get out.

‘And so be it, in the name of the gods,’ replied Publius Sextius. ‘Well, then?’ he said, raising his cane again.

‘The message was to intercept two
speculatores
on the Via Flaminia or Cassia.’

‘I see,’ replied Publius Sextius, receiving the news with seeming indifference. He moved behind Mustela. ‘Anything else?’

‘Nothing else, I swear it. I’m a wreck. I can’t take this. Leave me in peace.’

Publius grabbed his head and twisted it with a swift wrench, breaking the man’s neck.

‘There you go. You’re at peace now and I’ve kept my word.’

He went down to the courtyard, mounted his horse and set off at a gallop.

17

In Monte Appennino, Lux Insomnis, pridie Id. Mart., tertia vigilia

The Apennine Mountains, Never-Sleeping Light, 14 March, third guard shift, one a.m.

PUBLIUS SEXTIUS
had assumed control of the signalling station
manu militari.
He had taken command of the squad of signal corps auxiliaries by showing them his
titulus
and the persuasive, knotty symbol of his rank. He went straight to the signalling tower to transmit the counter-order and save the lives of Rufus and Vibius, whom he didn’t know but who, he was sure, were two courageous young servants of the state. Lighting the fire for the beacon was difficult enough in itself. The weather had worsened considerably. Clouds covered the moon and lightning bolts were discharging their flames on the mountain peaks, swept by a raging wind. It had started raining again, on and off. Publius Sextius was gripped by mounting distress, obsessed by the realization that time was slipping away. His mind continued to calculate the distance he might have been covering if he had not been forced to interrupt his onward journey. But how could he go on without trying to protect the other messengers? The only way to stop them from being killed was using the light,
Lux Insomnis
, like the code name of the station. But when he was finally able to transmit the message, no one answered.

‘Answer me, you drunk bastards, answer me,’ growled Publius Sextius, teeth clenched, but no light shone back over the Apennines, apart from the bluish flashes of lightning.

He left the signalling tower and went down to the room below, spreading the map that Nebula had given him out on the table. He placed a lamp on the map and ran his finger along the route to the point at which it intersected with the Via Cassia.

‘Too far,’ he murmured. ‘Too far off my road. I would never make it in time. May fortune assist you, lads.’

He walked out to where his horse was waiting and rode off.

In truth they had received his signals up at the station, but could do nothing but remain inside the building because the storm was lashing the post with unnatural force. Clouds heavy with hail, edged in white, shot through with flashes and bolts of lightning, were unleashing a torrent of freezing rain on the signalling tower. Clumps of ice exploded upon impact with the stone paving slabs, shattering into thousands of pieces that glittered like diamonds in the sudden bursts of light. The whole building resounded with the incessant clatter, as if it were being targeted by a thousand catapults.

They could see the signals from the small splayed windows of the tower and the station master wondered what on earth could be happening in Rome, for such contradictory messages to be arriving in such quick succession. But the long wake of the civil wars had taught him not to ask too many questions and to follow orders as long as the accompanying code was exact. This new message was to annul instructions to intercept two
speculatores
and was to be put into effect immediately. The original message had been an order to kill, and the chief realized that he’d have to send a man out to stop it before it reached its destination. Hardly a man, in reality. The only person he could send was a boy – skinny, almost skeletal, with a perpetually bewildered expression. He had not the faintest hint of a beard, but a light downy fuzz like a chick’s. That’s why he was called Pullus.

He had neither father nor mother – or rather, he did, like anyone else, but no one knew who they were. He’d been raised by the army and was happy to do anything he could to make himself useful. He’d been a stable boy, baker, cook, dishwasher. But what he did really well was run. He could run for entire days and nights, light as a feather, animated by an energy that came out of nowhere. He couldn’t run for as long as a horse, but when it came to getting around on steep, rocky terrain, Pullus was second to none, man or beast. He climbed like a goat, scaled mountain slopes like an antelope and leapt from one cliff to another with an agility and grace that contrasted greatly with his frail, ungainly appearance.

The station master handed him a ciphered document with his seal and ordered him never to stop until he succeeded in intercepting the original message. His chances were good, as he would be aided by the bad weather and by his unequalled familiarity with every nook and cranny of the territory, which would allow him to shorten and simplify each leg of the journey.

Pullus left at once, in the rain and hail, holding his shield over his head. The onslaught that was hammering away at his lid stopped before long and he was able to rid himself of the extra weight. Hiding the shield behind a bush, he ran on unhindered at even a faster clip.

Pullus never hesitated or paused. He ran down rain-flooded paths, raising splashes of water that soaked him to the neck. He ran through the barren fields, under the leafless trees, through the sleepy villages. Dogs barked at the approach of his swift, light stride, taking him for the king of thieves, but they soon fell silent as his footfalls faded into the same nothingness they had materialized from.

He pondered his mission as he raced on, the young, tireless runner. Could he save both of them? If he had to choose, one would have to die so the other could be saved, but which one? He thought mostly about who the
speculatores
might actually be, and after discarding a few hypotheses, he was down to two names, the most probable. Two faces, two voices, two friends among the very few that he had. Including the dog at the station and the goat that he milked every morning.

Vibius and Rufus. He was willing to bet his goat on it. If he was right, there’d be no need to make a choice, because he knew how they moved. The flip of a coin decided who would go where and how. Knowing who they were made it easier to calculate. They had certainly left
Lux Fidelis
over five days ago, on two of which the weather had been bad. They would have begun along the high course of the Reno. The one heading east would have had it easy at first and then found things more difficult; the one who had taken the mountain route would have made slow progress at first and then been much quicker. Pullus decided to try to reach the former first, whichever of the two that was, and took off even more swiftly through fields and forests, following the briefest route possible thanks to his innate sense of direction in the dark, moving by instinct, like a blind man.

By morning he was on the street at a few miles from an important changing station. This was where he would wait. If his hunch proved to be right, one of the two would show up here before evening. He entered the
mansio
and handed over the coded message that annulled the first order. He gave instructions to refer the counter-order to all the remaining stations up to Rome. A messenger departed at once.

Having completed his mission, he would have been free to return to
Lux Insomnis
, but he wasn’t ready for that. If by chance the two
speculatores
were his friends, he preferred to wait and be sure that his message had been delivered in time and that at least one of them had been saved.

It had stopped raining, but Pullus was soaked through and shivering with the cold. Every now and then he would run around in a circle to keep warm. He kept scanning the horizon, the rain-damp street that came from the north. A mule-drawn cart passed and its driver cast a curious glance at the odd bloke running around a milestone. A shepherd passed as well, with a flock of sheep, and then a peasant pushing a heifer forward along the loose earth on the left-hand side of the road. The traffic increased as the day wore on, but no one that fitted the description of either of his friends put in an appearance. It was late in the afternoon when he saw a horseman followed by another man on horseback as well, lagging behind him. The second seemed to be advancing with some difficulty.

The first stopped to let the second catch up and Pullus recognized him: Rufus!

‘Rufus!’ he yelled as loudly as he could. ‘Rufus!’

The horseman jumped to the ground and ran up to him. ‘
Pulle
! I knew we’d run into you!’ He hugged the boy, realizing he could count every rib and vertebra, scrawny as he was.

The second horseman rode up as well: Vibius. He showed signs of a violent altercation and his horse seemed exhausted. He must have kept up a gallop for a very long stretch indeed.

‘Why are the two of you together?’ asked Pullus.

‘Yesterday morning,’ replied Vibius, ‘as I was approaching the fifth
mansio
, two armed men tried to stop me. I fought back but the two of them together were too much for me. I got away and raced off as fast as I could until I lost them. At that point, I decided to find Rufus. We always have a contingency plan and a second meeting point. But let me tell you, you look terrible, boy! Cover up or you’ll catch your death!’

He took a dry blanket from his bag and tossed it over the boy’s shoulders. Pullus regained a little colour, and a little voice.

‘We received two messages up at the station. The first was to intercept two
speculatores
at any cost. I wondered whether it might be the two of you. But then we got a second message, last night, which began with the army code and cancelled the first order. We couldn’t answer because of the bad weather, but I took off right away and didn’t stop until I got here. A messenger set off with the counter-order this morning, so you shouldn’t have any problems.’

‘I always knew we could count on you,’ said Rufus. ‘But who do you think gave the counter-order?’

‘I don’t know. The commander didn’t give me time to ask.’ Then he added, ‘What will you do now?’

Vibius turned to his comrade. ‘You go on. I’ll leave you my horse. He’ll recover quickly if he’s not carrying a rider. You can alternate the two and cover a greater distance.’

Rufus tied the second horse to the harness of his own as Vibius took the provisions satchel and the flask. They said goodbye.

‘Who knows, maybe none of this will have been necessary,’ said Vibius.

‘That’s what I’m hoping,’ replied Rufus.

‘Good luck, my friend.’

‘Good luck to the two of you! Be careful.’

‘No one will notice a couple of men on foot,’ replied Pullus with a tired smile.

Rufus jumped on to his horse and took off, pulling along the riderless horse of his comrade. Meanwhile, Vibius and Pullus set off down another road.

Caupona Fabulli ad flumen Tiberim, pridie Id. Mart., hora nona

Fabullus’s Inn at the Tiber River, 14 March, two p.m.

P
UBLIUS SEXTIUS
recognized the inn from a distance and he stopped. The weather had got better but was not stable and from the way the sky was looking he guessed it would worsen again that night. He had to get as close as possible to his destination so as not to lose another day. But would it make a difference, one day more or less? His long experience on the battlefields and roads of the empire had taught him that very often a mere hour gained or lost could indeed decide the outcome of a battle or even of a war. In any case, it was best to arrive early to whatever event destiny had prepared for you. If the event was favourable, nothing would change. If it was unfavourable – or catastrophic – there might be time to prevent it from happening, or at least limit the damage.