Rome 4: The Art of War (41 page)

This was a new Geminus, prouder, more erect, more savage even than when he had slaughtered my beloved Cerberus, more driven; a Geminus who bore in the chiselled angles of his face all the authority that Vitellius lacked.

A Geminus whose gaze roamed the crowd, who caught the eye of every third or fourth man and gave a nod that was more of a flicker of the eyelids that I knew so well from my years in the House of the Lyre.

There, it meant ‘Yes, loosen your ties now’, or ‘Take her upstairs
soon, before the wine becomes too much’, or ‘Yes, he likes to be hurt, but go carefully, he could have us all crucified in the morning.’

Here, it meant ‘Yes, keep the crowd chanting the emperor’s name’, or ‘Move a little to your left, fill that gap, don’t let anyone through’, or ‘If the senator to your right shows any inclination to support the emperor’s abdication, you have my permission to kill him.’ Or her. There were women here, listening in the forum. I swear this is true. Truly, the world has changed.

At the end of his speech, Vitellius took out his dress dagger and tried to hand it to the consul, Caecilius Simplex. The weasel-faced little man was there to confer some kind of authority on the event, but had ruined it by looking at everyone except the emperor throughout the speech.

Now, with no sense of spectacle at all, he reached for the dagger’s hilt. And found himself staring at the slick, clean iron of Geminus’ blade.

He froze: it would have been comical if the whole situation had not already been immersed beyond redemption in pathos.

It may be shared between two men, but the office of consul is the second highest in the land. Simplex outranked a Guard officer in the way the emperor outranks a slave.

With much gesticulation, he explained this, but Geminus had gone beyond social niceties and iron carries its own authority: Vitellius had been made emperor by the sword, and by the sword he was not going to be allowed to abdicate easily.

On Geminus’ orders, Caecilius Simplex stepped back. Confused, Vitellius turned a tight circle, offering his dagger to whomsoever might be stupid enough to take it.

Not a man lifted his hand: he was not, after all, offering to give away the throne of Rome, but rather desiring that someone – anyone – take from him the symbol of its office.

Vitellius
found himself blocked on all sides by a solid mass of men standing shoulder to shoulder, and by then it was nearly impossible to tell which were Guards and which were citizens: everyone was united in wanting him to stay: Geminus made that happen.

In the end, the emperor took the only route left open to him and turned up the hill back towards the palace. The men closed behind him, shepherding him forward. As Tiberius warned, and every emperor since has found, you take the wolf of the empire by the ears, it is yours unto death. Rome was still his. Vespasian and those who supported him must needs fight to take it. Or wait to see what happened.

Pantera jumped down from the wall. It was daylight now; his face was easily seen, but not yet readable.

‘Borros, take Horus home. Trabo, come with me.’

I was affronted. Leave me and take his tame thug with him? I said, ‘I don’t want to go home.’

‘You have a party to host.’ In theory, that was true. It was still Saturnalia; another Night of Free Exchange was due to take place at the House of the Lyre – with a different guest list, obviously.

I shook my head. ‘Not tonight. Not if war is on our doorstep.’

‘Even so, we are going to meet the prefect of the city, Titus Flavius Sabinus, and very likely his nephew. Do you really want to meet Domitian in the cold light of day? Do you think he wants to meet you?’

It had been too much to hope that in the dark Pantera had not recognized the youth who had shared my bed last night. Yes, I had invited Domitian to the House of the Lyre and yes, it was his first time at the Night. He hadn’t been old enough last year, too lost in his collections of pressed butterflies and bluebottles pinned to boards. In any case, he had been the impoverished son of a minor general who had been banished to Greece
and faced almost certain death: we had never had any reason to invite him.

By this year, he was the son of the man who looked certain to become emperor. Even if he’d still been penniless, we’d have invited him. But he wasn’t. He had come to us five or six times in the preceding months and paid in gold each time. So our invitation to the First Night at the Lyre was legitimate by all our usual standards.

And anyway, I had no intention of letting Pantera browbeat me into going away, not when leaving him was so manifestly dangerous.

Attack has always been my best form of defence. Brows raised, at my most acid, I set my fists on my hips and stared him straight in the eye.

‘Do you really think that the emperor’s son— Hades! Who is that?’

It was impossible to continue an argument in the face of what had just arrived: a litter extraordinary for its vast size and the weight of the fabric that draped it.

In my head, I was performing the additions of cost upon cost. Sixteen men carried it, four at each corner, and as a result it moved swift as a sail ship with a following wind. Until it was set down in front of us, trapping us in the alley, but also blocking us from the view of the forum.

From within, a melodious voice said, ‘You may join me.’

It was Jocasta, of course, the Poet who had taken all that Seneca had built and moulded it to her own use. I helped her to do it, since she is neither a natural forger nor a good reader of ciphers. She needed me to help her understand her Teacher’s encoded notes, written over decades, and then to write to those who needed letters.

But here, now, in the midst of Saturnalia, she looked neither at me nor at the fool Trabo who mooned after her so; her gaze was all for Pantera, and his for her.

I had not
seen them in the same place before, but you could feel the air warp around them. They were rivals, of course. It was like seeing two gladiators who, after beating all others sent against them, finally meet their match and don’t know whether to fight to the death or to clasp arms and walk together out of the arena.

Pantera solved his immediate dilemma by bowing extravagantly low, ‘My lady, we are at your service.’

‘I know.’

The flap was thrown back on the litter and I saw her, Jocasta, a woman whose beauty was only surpassed by the sense of power that flowed from her.

Her hair was black as polished slate, with the blue-black hue of a newly preened raven’s wing. Her brows were the same, small wings that only served to accent her eyes. I had taught her, once, how to paint them to best effect and I am pleased to say she had used my tuition to great effect. Her eyes were like a panther’s, glowing. Her skin was flawless, her neck slim and erect, like a swan’s.

The interior of her litter – and I have slept in bedrooms that were smaller – was draped with lemony silk that transformed the weak winter sunlight into the sunburst bright of a summer’s noon. Then I caught the scent of freshly baked oatcakes, of warm cheeses, hams and olives, and my mouth ached with wanting.

But I was not invited within. To Pantera alone, Jocasta said, ‘Get in. Sabinus is taking the oath from the Urban cohorts and the Watch, after which, I strongly suspect, he will dismiss them. You will travel faster with me, and you can bathe and change into clothes that smell less of horse and sweat. The emperor’s brother will expect you at least to be clean.’

Pantera wanted to refuse, every line of his body said so, but she had presented unassailable arguments and so, in tones of deepest irony, he said, ‘My lady,’ and then, to me, ‘Not you.

You may be
happy to see the emperor’s son, but he may need some time before he sees you, and then not in the company of men who may one day take his orders. Gudrun and Scopius will provide a safe place until you can return to the House. Borros, take Horus to the Inn of the Crossed Spears. Meet us at the prefect’s house, or at the Capitol if we’ve already got there.’

He was lying, and I knew it. He didn’t think Domitian was ashamed of me or me of him; this was Pantera’s punishment for my treachery with Lucius. He didn’t know, or didn’t care, what they had threatened me with: the long death, the destruction of all I cared for, the letters they would have sent to Mucianus telling of infidelities that were never important. He just knew that I had sold him, and was taking his revenge.

Rome, 18 December
AD
69

I ROSE EARLY
on the eighteenth of December: this day was like none other.

Pantera and his men had not carried my litter for some time by then, but Matthias had hired me another team for the day and I was transported to Sabinus’ house before the first dunghill cocks announced the dawn. Matthias himself I left behind in case Domitian came; I wish now that I hadn’t.

At the top of the hill, men were already gathering, stamping their feet, blowing into their hands against the December frosts, watching Sabinus’ door in the torchlight, just as they would have watched the emperor’s, wanting to be among the first to hail him as he emerged.

It was still dark when Sabinus walked out amongst them. He didn’t yet accept their homage, but progressed through the growing crowd, greeting each by name. All eighteen senators who had attended the meeting at my house the day before were there,
and each had brought along a dozen friends at least.

In their hundreds, therefore, they filled the street, a slow river of white togas and greying heads. Of the two consuls, one had gone to be with Vitellius to take his abdication, while the other – Quinctillius Atticus, famed for his fish-pool – remained here, and moved through the crowd, distributing pamphlets.

He pressed one into my hand. It bore an image of Vespasian that underdid his nose and overstated his chin, with, beneath:

There followed a rambling list of reasons why Vespasian was the only rational choice for emperor. I’m sure they were perfectly valid, but I couldn’t bring myself to read them. In any case, Sabinus was there.

‘Caenis!’ He embraced me, his gaze sliding over my face as he glanced over my shoulder at more important men. He pulled himself back and looked me in the eye. ‘Where’s Domitian?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t come home last night.’

‘Is that unusual?’

‘Not really. He’s free to do what he wants.’ It was immensely unusual, actually, and on the first night of Saturnalia doubly so, but it was not out of character for how he had been behaving recently, and in any case I didn’t feel that Sabinus needed to know all the boy’s secrets.

I said, ‘He’ll be home by noon. He won’t miss Dino’s poppy-seed cakes.’ I believed this to be true, and had no way of knowing that by noon I would have no home for him to return to.

Sabinus was still looking at me, frowning. I pointed behind him, saying, ‘The Watch is here,’ and Sabinus strode off to meet
the commanders of the Watch and the Urban cohorts who had brought their men in their entirety to offer their oath of fealty to Vespasian. Within moments, their standard-bearers lined the street and Sabinus was standing at their head in his brother’s place.

He needed no written copy of the oath: he had been enough of a soldier to know it by heart and to know that he must be seen to be competent for his brother’s sake.

‘Men of the empire: in the name of Jupiter, Best and Greatest, do you now take the oath to honour and to serve, as long as you may live, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, to give your lives in his defence and that of the empire?’

They did. All of them. Unanimously and with enthusiasm.

It was done swiftly enough and the men were sent back to their barracks to await orders: Sabinus did not wish to be seen to have taken Rome by force.

That, at least, was what he told Pantera some short while later, when the spy turned up, clean, calm, damp-haired, with the rosemary scent of a man who had recently bathed, or at least seen the attentions of a sponge.

‘You let them go?’ Pantera clearly thought Sabinus insane.

Sabinus, for his part, was brother to the man just named emperor by three Urban cohorts and the entire city Watch. He had no interest in Pantera’s opinion.

‘Vitellius has abdicated. What need have I of the cohorts?’

‘Nothing, if that were true, but it is not. Vitellius has
not
abdicated. The Guard refused to let him. He has returned to the palace, and has sent his wife and son to safety. These are not the actions of a man planning to leave office in the immediate future.’

‘But he gave his word!’ Sabinus flushed an unmanly purple. ‘He swore before the altar in the temple of Apollo …’

‘He has reneged on that oath.’

It’s amazing how fast a single sentence can spread. Within four breaths,
the crowd was buzzing like a kicked hive.

Pantera took Sabinus’ elbow. ‘Geminus and his Guards know exactly how much they have to lose when Vitellius goes. Having put him on the throne, they are not inclined to let him give it up. You need to call back the cohorts and march on the palace.’

‘And begin a war of my own? I think not!’

Sabinus drew himself up to his tallest; he was not impressive, but he was the centre of attention and that conferred its own authority.

‘We shall walk to the forum ourselves and explain to the people of this city how matters stand. The Guard are only three thousand. In a city of a million souls, they do not make the majority.’

Rome, 18 December
AD
69

I DIDN’T EXPECT
to see Jocasta in that gigantic litter; truth be told, I hadn’t thought of her since we got back to Rome. When your friends are dying, thoughts of women fade away like morning mist and Julius Claudianus and the rest had become friends, that summer.

Anyway, her appearing out of the blue like that was a shock. I was so happy, just for a moment, until she cut me dead. The flat edge of her gaze hit me in the guts as if she’d jabbed me with the dull end of a spear.