Rome 4: The Art of War (44 page)

He stopped just inside the doorway. ‘This one demands to see you. He brings this.’

He thrust his hand forward. Gold glimmered on the heft of his palm and it looked like Lucius’ ring, which wasn’t an auspicious start.

I caught Juvens’ eye, and we stepped close to Vitellius, one on either side, ready to support him if this heralded news of his brother’s death.

Given what he had brought us, I took a closer look at Drusus’ victim, who was, in fact, rather older than he had at first appeared, if not yet old enough to carry the responsibility of such a message.

Tousled blond hair framed a filthy face and eyes that didn’t quite see in the same line. His lopsided gaze fixed as best it could on Vitellius’ face and then swivelled from Juvens to me, in evident confusion. Here, where the emperor eschewed the obvious trappings of state, it was not immediately obvious who ranked over whom.

Sighing, I said, ‘Speak your business. If it is to our benefit, the emperor will hear you.’ I nodded to my left and Vitellius, reading his cue, took half a step forward. Good man. That settled the question of identity.

The youth was pressed to his knees, his head forced down. Muffled, his voice reached us. ‘I was coming north up the Appian Way when I came upon a man who had been set upon and left for dead. He begged me to bring his lord a message.’

‘Let him up.’ In the back of my mind, I had been expecting this. ‘What, exactly, did the messenger tell you to say?’

The youth rose. His face was blotched white and red with pain, his breathing fast as he rubbed his wrist. Drusus’ fingers had left bruises all round it that would be purple by nightfall.

‘I am first
to show you the ring and say that a brother’s love is unsurpassed. Then I am to wait to see if you will hear the rest.’

The ring passed from the youth to Drusus to me. Beneath a patina of dried blood, it was authentic: there was no question but that this was Lucius’ ring, down to the notch in the setting that held the largest of the emeralds. I knew its weight, its look on a hand, the wounds it left on a man’s face when he was struck by it, hard, back-handed.

And the watchword was correct; Vitellius acknowledged that with a brief nod.

I caught Juvens’ eye again and we stepped away, leaving our emperor to speak to the youth with the greater authority of a man who stands alone.

Vitellius said, mildly, ‘We will hear the rest of what our brother sent to us.’

The boy closed his eyes, the better to remember his message, and like that, with his face screwed tight, said, ‘I am to tell you that, following his resounding victory at dawn in Tarracina, the lord Lucius has heard news of rebels massing at the port of Misene who wish harm upon your reign. With your permission and blessing, he goes there now, to suppress this fresh revolt.’

It had the ring of Lucius, the ostentation, the arrogance, the overly flowery language.

With a sigh, Vitellius asked, ‘Does my brother seek my permission? Or is he going anyway?’

‘My lord … ?’ The youth’s eyes snapped open. One of them looked at me, one at Juvens. It was really most distracting.

He was at a loss. ‘I can say only what I was told, and that from the mouth of a dying man. He could barely speak. I heard what I could, but if it is wrong I can only—’

‘Don’t gabble, man. You did well, and shall be rewarded.’

Vitellius pulled one of his own rings from the thumb of his left hand.
With that, even now, a man could have bought a fast horse, a sword, put down rent on a house and live without further work for a year.

‘Take this in gratitude … What is your name?’

‘Felix, lord. A freedman of Ostorius who owns the Inn of Five Hands.’

I had never heard of that inn, but made a mental note to track it down and talk to the landlord.

Vitellius, who was not prone to suspicion, and liked to be kind, nodded gravely, as if he knew it well. ‘Then, Felix, you are now a freedman of the emperor. If you will fight for us in the coming days, we may bring you into our service. We have use for loyal men. Or—’ A thought came to him. ‘Have you a good horse?’

Warily: ‘He is not bad, lord. He carried me here with all speed, but he belongs to—’

‘Your master. Of course. And he will be tired. Then you must apply to the stables for a fresh mount in our name. We have need of a royal messenger and you have proved yourself already. You will carry our reply to our brother at Misene in the stead of the man who died in your arms. We shall summon a scribe and have it written. In that time, Drusus will find you a new tunic in our colours, and ensure you have the best horse.’

Rome, 18 December
AD
69

THE NIGHT OF
the eighteenth was dark and wet and cold: a bad combination for any man standing sentry duty.

It was no surprise, therefore, that the ring of iron around the foot of the Capitol hill became more of a sieve as soon as night fell.

Pantera took us all through together, Domitian and the catamite and me, and brought us past the barrier Jocasta had made with all its upward pointing knives.

‘Hooks on ropes would pull those down,’ Domitian said, as we passed. ‘Germanicus used such things to overcome the enemy warriors in the forests of the Rhine. The Guard will know of them.’

So the boy had been reading military texts. His father would have been happy to hear it, which was probably the point.

We discussed tactics for a while, in the process of which we learned that, while Domitian and Sabinus were unable to leave the
city, Pantera was sending a steady stream of men out with messages to Antonius. Their lot was harder, we gathered: the Guard around the hill might have been notably lax, but the sentry points at Rome’s gates were triply manned and everyone leaving was searched.

One man had left in a coffin, wrapped in shrouds and lying beneath the leaking, stiff, stinking body. Another had gone in a cart-load of rotten fruit. Only those things impossible to imagine were safe, and soon not even those.

If Domitian had any doubts about being here, that was enough to stop them. He participated more fully, after that, in the planning of tactics for when the Guard came upon us.

When, not if. We had no doubt they would attack, the only question was when – and how much we could rely on Sabinus and those around him to fight back.

The only time I saw Domitian in doubt was when Pantera mentioned that Jocasta was there, and that she had organized the barricades. Whatever it was that flashed across Domitian’s face then – fear? shame? shyness? – was gone too fast for me to read it, but there was no doubt that he hadn’t expected her to be here, and wasn’t pleased to hear of it. I thought he had been her lover, and was ashamed to have her see him in the company of the painted catamite from the House of the Lyre.

I hated both of them for that.

Domitian didn’t see my face, or if he did he didn’t care. He moved briskly on, as if her name had not come up, saying, ‘The temple is ahead. Will they open the doors to us or do we need a password?’

‘The password is Vespasian,’ Pantera said. ‘We’re not seeking prizes for originality. Speak it aloud and they’ll let you in.’

‘Are you not coming too?’

Pantera had already turned away, and was heading back down the hill.

‘I have to be
sure that Felix is alive, and that he has been sent with his message to Lucius. If he hasn’t, we may have to change a number of things very fast. If I’m not back before dawn, Trabo will organize the defences. Take your orders from him as you would from me.’

That, as you can imagine, pleased nobody.

Rome, 18–19 December
AD
69

SLEEP WAS HARD
to come by that night. I lay in the dark on a thin mattress laid across the doorway of Vitellius’ small, stateless bedroom and counted again the number of men I had at my disposal, their dispositions, their morale.

The blockade of the hill was for show only, but Rome itself was effectively under military rule: my rule. Every road coming in had at least a half-century of men holding it secure, with trumpet signals arranged to call more at need and roaming units making sure the plebeians of the city were loudly on Vitellius’ side, and that the roads were kept clear where we needed them to be and blocked everywhere else.

Antonius Primus and his men were coming closer. I had no idea how fast or in what numbers, but besieging Vespasian’s brother had been an extravagant mistake that was only ever likely to bring him to us faster and in greater fury. I had known that since I had heard of it, but if the fates had dealt me a poor hand, it didn’t mean I had to play it badly. As far as I was
concerned, as long as Lucius returned soon from Tarracina with his cohorts largely intact, we would be able to repulse the coming assault, and perhaps break Antonius Primus for ever.

Looking to the longer term, I had already sent men to Gaul, to Iberia, to Britain, where there were legions that would support our cause, asking for their aid, but in the short term all we had to do was hold out until Lucius came back.

All this I turned over in the half-sleep before waking. Dawn bled into the half-empty palace, building mountains of the shadows, filling them with enemy faces. I saw Pantera, Trabo, Vespasian, Sabinus, Lucius, the emperor’s dead mother. This last was by far the most frightening. The old harpy had died by her own hand the night before; the emperor had not wept at her death, but he had not been the same since.

The emperor was still asleep: I could hear the melodic snores that marked his peace.

In the half-dark, I rose, stepped past Drusus’ sleeping bulk and went to empty myself in the latrines. A sleepy slave stood in attendance, holding the sponge on a stick for me to wipe myself clean when at length I was done. I crossed the corridor to the baths and washed, quickly.

My clothes were ready folded as I stepped out of the hot pool. In the kitchens, the cooks had stoked the ovens and already the scents of honeyed wine and early baking filtered through the palace. Filching an anchovy-flavoured pastry on the way past I decided I could become used to living with this kind of luxury.

My footsteps echoed down the halls, announcing my presence to whoever chose to listen; there was no secrecy here. I reached the throne room and was surprised to find Vitellius there ahead of me. He had never been an early riser.

He was still dressed in his ash-strewn toga from the day before. Someone needed to tell him to change, that he was not about to
have his throne removed and could dress normally, but I was not yet that man.

In any case, he was grey with fatigue and lack of sleep, and he had news, it was written on his face.

‘Sabinus sent a centurion. He was here, at the palace.’

‘What? Who?’ I had been in the baths for less than the time it took to finish a jug of wine and a man had been and gone?

‘Cornelius Martialis.’

The name was familiar. He was a primus pilus in Juvens’ legion, as far as I remembered. It was not a surprise that these men were beginning to congregate around Sabinus; depressing, but not surprising.

‘What did he want?’

‘That I honour my word and abdicate. What else?’

My throat had gone dry. ‘Is he dead, this centurion? Did Drusus kill him?’

‘No. We are civilized still. But he has left. I sent him out by the back route, so that the Guards might not kill him for his part in a concept they loathe.’

Vitellius had a dry, cool sense of humour, but once in a while it sparked, softly, like a pearl seen on the seabed. ‘I instructed him to take back to Sabinus my deepest regrets, and the news that I am no longer in control of the Guard. He left swiftly, as you might imagine. Which is just as well.’ Vitellius fell sombre again. ‘Because Antonius’ forces have attacked in the northeast of the city.’

‘
What?
’

‘Petilius Cerialis is attacking in the northeast with a thousand cavalry. They’ve come in just to the north of the barracks.’

‘Hades. I need to go—’

‘Juvens has gone already. He said to tell you that he can hold the route without difficulty. His men know every house, every alleyway, every small manor of the suburbs while Cerialis’ forces
are from the Danube and may as well be attacking Parthia as Rome for all they know of it. They’re bogged down, confused, and half of them were loyal to us until ten days ago when he defeated them; these ones are not fighting hard. Juvens thinks this is a feint and Antonius Primus may stage a main assault up the Flaminian Way. He says if you go anywhere, go there.’

At least there was something concrete to be done. I looked around the throne room. Drusus was a solid, silent presence standing just inside the door. ‘Don’t let anyone in except me or Juvens. Not slaves, not the cook—’

‘No.’ Vitellius stepped into my path. ‘Don’t go. Juvens can manage this one small incursion. We need you here, to organize the defences. You’re a commander now. You don’t need to be in the front line.’

He couldn’t have ordered me; we both knew where lay the balance of power, but he was my emperor, and, more important, he was right.

To Drusus, I said, ‘Make sure any messages are brought straight to me. And send water to mix with the wine. We need clear heads.’

I sat on the emperor’s couch and tried to picture the entirety of Rome, and what forces we could muster to defend her.

And so the day started.

Rome, 19 December
AD
69

NIGHT PLUNGED INTO
the western sea and sucked the rain with it. The next day, the nineteenth of December, dawned fresh and clear and seemed as if it might be kind to those of us besieged on the Capitol hill.

Pantera came back before dawn, and seemed cheerful, and then Cornelius Martialis returned before the first watch was called with news that Vitellius had turned down the offer to abdicate – again – but that he believed his brother to be caught up in Misene and unlikely to return.