The Emperor's Knives (3 page)

He stared at the killer for a moment, opening his arms wide.

‘So if you’d like to play through that possible future for your family, you go right ahead and put the knife into me.’

Silus shook his head.

‘No, my curiosity is quite satisfied. Funny though …’

His employer raised an eyebrow.

‘What is?’

‘I was just thinking that you’re not quite right in the head, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

The other man smiled at him broadly.

‘Many men have tried to offend me Silus, it’s in the nature of my business to attract insults, but very few of them have ever succeeded. After all, none of this is personal, it’s simply business. And trust me, there is a method in my apparent madness. I have a plan that will bring this man Aquila to justice at last, and in doing so more than likely perform the other task that my rather impatient sponsor wishes to see completed. So, let’s be about it shall we? These bodies aren’t going to bury themselves.’

1

Rome, September
AD
184

‘Close your mouth, Dubnus, or something will fly into it.’

The heavily built and bearded soldier walking alongside Julius, senior centurion of the First Tungrian Cohort, gave his superior officer a disparaging look before resuming his perusal of the inhabitants of the Aventine district through which they were progressing. When he spoke his voice was awestruck, as if he could barely believe the scene before him.

‘But they’re bloody everywhere, Julius! Bar girls, shop girls, girls on the street, girls on the corner, girls writing graffiti on the wall about how their clients made them scream with pleasure!’ He pointed to a prostitute leaning against the door of a house, her pitch marked out by several lewd and enticing statements as to her abilities and offerings scrawled on the wall behind her. ‘That one will even …’

He swallowed, and shook his head in amazement at the debauched act that was apparently on offer for the price of a decent meal.

‘Yes, the city can be rather overpowering for the first-time visitor, but then you would insist on accompanying us. Perhaps you should concentrate on the architecture instead?’

Julius turned and nodded to his tribune who was walking a few paces behind the two centurions, resplendent in a pristine toga and with his hair cut and combed to glossy perfection, even if his clean-shaven face was in defiance of the latest fashion. Dubnus drew breath to speak again, managing with some reluctance to drag his attention away from the prostitute who was so enticingly crooking her finger at him while lasciviously teasing the digit’s end with her tongue, but was rudely interrupted by Julius before he could open his mouth.

‘That’s a good idea, Tribune. That way he won’t embarrass the rest of us by walking round with a damp spot in the front of his tunic. You’re not wearing armour now Dubnus, look to your decency man!’

The big Briton gave his friend a hard look before gazing up at the buildings on either side of the road along which they were walking, craning his neck to stare up at the five- and six-storey insulae towering over them.

‘You’re the funny man today, are you Julius? As it happens, I was just thinking that I still can’t get used to the idea that people actually live in those things. Imagine having to climb all the way up there and then discover that you’ve forgotten something. And what happens if there’s a fire on the ground floor, and you’re all the way up there?’

Tribune Scaurus laughed grimly.

‘In that case, Centurion, you would at least have the gratification of knowing that you would be the last to burn, unless of course the screams of the better-off tenants in the lower floors gave you the time to ponder the choice of a slow death by fire or a quick one by impact with the ground. In the event of fire, I believe the rule of thumb is that the lowest tenant usually gets out with at least some of his possessions, the next highest occupant usually escapes with his life, and the next highest,
if
they’re blessed by Fortuna’s smile. After that it seems to be a simple question of either burning to death or jumping.’

The man walking beside Scaurus followed up on the tribune’s comments in a more serious tone of voice. Equally formally attired and groomed, he was tall and limber in appearance, muscular in an athletic way rather than any tendency to the hulking power of the centurions walking before him. His skin, darker by contrast than that of his fellow officers, advertised the fact that he had not been born in Dubnus’s native Britannia.

‘Of course these days, now that they’re mainly built with brick rather than timber, the main risk isn’t fire, it’s collapse. People lie in bed at night in those things listening to the building creaking around them, and wondering if they’ll be crushed to death if someone sneezes too loudly and brings the whole thing down. The bases aren’t broad enough for the height they build them up to, you see, since no one bothers to obey the height regulations.’

Scaurus raised an eyebrow at the younger man, and his reply carried an undisguised sardonic undertone.

‘Crushed under several tons of bricks? Much what anyone seeking to bother me this afternoon might feel like, I expect, given the number of escorts we managed to collect between my quarter and the transit barracks’ main gate.

One of the three obviously barbarian men bringing up the rear shook his head in disgust.

‘It’s a good thing I heard you discussing this little afternoon stroll with Centurion Corvus, before you had the chance to sneak off into this cesspit on your own.’

Scaurus shook his head in irritation without looking back.

‘Indeed, Prince Martos, what
was
I thinking? Why in Jupiter’s name would we have wanted to make our way to our meeting with one of Rome’s most influential senators in a discreet and, dare I say it, sober manner, when instead we could be preceded by a pair of swaggering centurions with obvious hard-ons for anything female under the age of sixty …’ He shook his head at Julius’s wounded expression. ‘I saw you eying up that little blonde, First Spear, so stop pretending you’re immune to the attractions of the opposite sex now that your woman has your balls firmly clamped between her thighs. Now, where was I …? Ah yes, preceded by a pair of priapic officers and trailed by a trio of barbarians, at least one of whom is equally intent on impressing every working girl we pass with the glory of his manhood.’

He shook his head with amused irritation.

‘If I’ve told you once Arminius, I must have told you a hundred times in the last ten years, they simply will not have sex with you without payment, no matter how muscular you are or, for that matter, how much you attempt to demonstrate that you have a penis that would make a donkey feel inadequate.’ He paused for a moment, listening for any retort, before continuing. ‘As for the need to protect us, Centurion Corvus here and I both walked these streets for years without ever attracting anything worse than an unkind glance, and that was when we weren’t in the company of the five biggest and ugliest men under my command. But no matter, you have at least provided us with some measure of entertainment during our walk. And here we are – this is our destination.’

He waved a hand at a sizeable domus, a rich man’s house set in enough ground for the construction of half a dozen of the towering insulae, each side of the large detached property shielded from casual view by mature trees that had grown almost as high as the neighbouring apartment buildings.

‘Perhaps you’ll all be a little less bumptious now that we’re no longer at such imminent risk of being robbed and murdered? And remember, we’re here to provide the senator with some consolation for the death of his son, so just mind your manners or you’ll have the pleasure of a long wait on his doorstep.’

An apparently imperturbable butler greeted them with an impressive lack of any reaction in the face of so large a party of men, most of whom were clearly disreputable types to judge from their scars, tattoos and in one case the absence of an eye, even if the barbarians among them were all dressed in clean tunics and had well-polished boots. Bidding them to remain in the house’s entrance hall, he withdrew to inform his master of their arrival, leaving the party to consider the murals that adorned the room’s walls. Dubnus leaned closer, admiring the detail in a representation of a goddess frolicking in a woodland glade seen through a window painted onto the plaster.

‘Nice work.’

Julius raised an eyebrow at his friend, shaking his head in apparent bafflement.

‘Nice work? Since when, oh Prince of the Axe Men, have you had any ability to recognise the difference between good painting and that done by a Greek pot painter using a brush poking out of his arse to slap the colours on? All you’re doing is admiring her tits, you dirty bastard …’ He leaned closer, pursing his lips in approval. ‘Although on closer inspection I’m forced to agree with you that they are a most lifelike representation, what with—’

Dubnus interrupted him, pointing at the view through another ‘window’.

‘I know. And look at what this satyr’s doing to the maiden he’s captured! I swear he’s got it up her—’

A voice from behind them had the two men start.

‘Greetings, esteemed visitors. I sometimes have to leave my clients waiting here for hours, given the number of visitors I routinely receive, men seeking either my favour or assistance, and these murals provide them with some small measure of distraction. Given long enough, I’m told, it is possible for the diligent hunter to discover over two hundred such visions of loveliness around the room, although I must confess I’ve never found the time …’

Scaurus stepped forward with a solemn expression, bowing deeply to the toga-clad man who stood in the doorway that linked the hall to the rest of the house.

‘Greetings, Senator Sigilis. Please accept our humble gratitude for your kindness in agreeing to meet with us.’

Their host returned the bow, albeit in the more cursory manner due to a member of the equestrian class from a senator, the taut smile of greeting on his face the expression of a man who had not shown genuine pleasure for a long time. He was as tall as either of the Tungrian centurions, although his body was whip thin by comparison to their muscular bulk, and his hair was silver-grey over a lean and heavily lined face.

‘The gratitude is mine, Tribune, for your kindness in expressing the desire to speak with me of my son’s last few weeks of life. I would imagine that most soldiers would prefer to forget the men they have left on the battlefield, much less actually come face-to-face with a grieving parent. Please come this way, and do bring your, ah …
familia
… with you.’

They followed the senator through the archway into a large garden in which a pair of slaves were tending the already immaculately manicured plants and flowers.

‘Over here.’

He led them to a seating area at the garden’s far end, stone benches arrayed around a flat gravelled area large enough to act as a small stage, or for a group of musicians to play their instruments, and protected from the sun’s heat by a circle of carefully planted cedar trees. At the butler’s command, the gardeners went into the domus and carried out a padded chair, into which the senator lowered himself with a grimace, then vanished back into the house leaving only the butler, who, satisfied that his master was comfortable, retired out of earshot.

‘Forgive my ostentation. A decade ago good honest marble would have sufficed for my backside, but these days I find the stiffness in my joints eased a little by a touch of luxury. I thought we might best speak out here in the garden, given that walls frequently hear more than would appear possible, even, I suspect, in my house.’ Sigilis played his bleak stare over each of them, his eyes assessing every man in turn before moving on. ‘You bring a large party with you, Tribune, larger than I expected, and yet you provide me with some small distraction by doing so. If I might speculate as to the origins of your people …?’

Scaurus smiled back at him.

‘By all means, Senator. We must present something of a mixed bag.’

‘Indeed you do, although some of you are easier to read than others.’ He looked at the tribune. ‘You, of course, are already known to me, Rutilius Scaurus. I remember your father well, and the disappointment we all felt when he was obliged to take his own life after being landed with the blame for that shabby little affair on the other side of the Rhenus. I am, of course, on excellent terms with your sponsor …’ He smiled thinly. ‘I find it ironic that his fortunes should be recovering so strongly with the praetorian prefect’s death, while my own seem to be in a terminal decline, but I can’t hold it against the man. He tells me that you’ve grown no less headstrong for your years of service. He also tells me that you’ve been dabbling in politics of late?’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘Not me, Senator, I’ll leave that to men with more ability and stronger stomachs than mine.’

Sigilis raised an eyebrow.

‘So it wasn’t you that marched ten boxes of gold into the palace and got the praetorian prefect murdered by the emperor a few nights ago?’

The younger man shrugged, his face commendably impassive.

‘I was no more than a small part of that night’s events, Senator. Most of the hard work was done by your colleague Clodius Albinus, in league with the emperor’s freedman Cleander.’

Sigilis chuckled mirthlessly.

‘How very self-effacing of you. You carried a cargo of gold, proving the praetorian prefect’s ambitions to take the throne all the way from the northern frontier … Where was it again?’

‘Britannia, Senator.’

‘Yes, all the way from Britannia, along, I’m reliably informed, with the lost eagle of the Sixth Legion, which you then used to tip Commodus over the edge to murder his own praetorian guard commander. Somewhat to the amazement of the hapless Clodius Albinus, I would imagine, and much to the delight of that conniving snake Cleander.’

Scaurus returned his level gaze in silence, until the senator nodded slowly.

‘Just as your sponsor intimated to me. You’re shot through with granite, aren’t you Tribune, and a dangerous man to cross for all of your modesty and self-effacement?’