Throne of the Caesars 01 - Iron and Rust (4 page)

‘No,’ Maximinus said.

‘Whatever pleases you, Emperor,’ answered Honoratus.

‘He was no Nero. The plebs did not love him. There will be no false Alexanders. No runaway slave will gather a following, masquerading as him miraculously saved and come again; not in Rome, not even in the East. As for the Senate …’ Maximinus paused, scowling as he sought the right words. ‘… the Senate are men of culture. They do not need the thing flourished in their faces to believe. There is no need to paint them a picture.’

‘
Quantum libet, Imperator
,’ Honoratus repeated.

‘Anullinus, when you have shown the head to the troops, bury him. All of him. Come back for the rest.’

The officer shifted his loathsome burden into his left hand and saluted. ‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready.’ The other two equestrians followed him out.

‘To deny a man Hades is to deny your own
humanitas
.’ Maximinus spoke out loud, yet to no one but himself. He moved deeper into the chamber. Something turned under his boot. It was a finger, cleanly severed, the nail perfect. The place was a slaughterhouse. There was blood everywhere, livid across the white carpets, darker on the purple hangings. The remains of the young Emperor lay, mutilated and decapitated, by his throne. His mother, also naked and hacked about, next to hers. There was blood on the ivory thrones.

How had it come to this? Maximinus had not wanted it. He had known Alexander was unpopular. Everyone in the army had known that. Perhaps in his cups he had voiced unguarded criticisms. But he had no idea the recruits he was training would mutiny. Once they had thrown a purple cloak over his shoulders in Mogontiacum, there had been no way back. If he had tried to step down, either the recruits would have killed him there and then or Mamaea would have done so later.

Almost certainly the revolt would have been crushed, and crushed swiftly – Maximinus’ head would have been on a pike by the end of the day – if Vopiscus and Honoratus had not ridden into the camp of the recruits. Vopiscus was governor of Pannonia Superior. He commanded the legionary detachments to the field army from both his own province and that of neighbouring Pannonia Inferior. Honoratus was legate of 11th Legion Claudia Pia Fidelis. He had led the detachments from the two provinces of Moesia up the Ister. Between them they had pledged the swords of some eight thousand legionaries, the majority veterans.

Even so, it had been up in the air until Iotapianus had brought them the head of the Praetorian Prefect Cornelianus. Iotapianus was a kinsman of Alexander and Mamaea. The archers he commanded were from their hometown of Emesa. With their desertion, there had been no hope for the Emperor and his mother.

Once you have taken a wolf by the ears, you can never let go. No, Maximinus had not desired the throne, but now there was no going back. At least his son would revel in their new station. Which might be far from a good thing. Maximus was eighteen, more than pampered and spoilt enough already. And Paulina, what would she think? She had always wanted her husband to better himself, to rise in society. But to the highest eminence of mankind? From her senatorial background, she knew all too well how others despised his low origins.

The red gashes on Mamaea’s body were painful to look at. Something about the old woman reminded Maximinus of the day long ago when he had walked into a hut and for the first time been confronted with the remains of a family who had been put to the sword: the old woman, the old man, the children.

He turned away. There was a table spread with food, a vast, fat man dead at its foot. Inexplicably, tiny birds hopped through the plates. The food was cold anyway. Maximinus had never cared for cold food. In the corner of the tent, a dog sat with a human head between its paws, contentedly gnawing.

‘
Imperator
.’

Vopiscus and Honoratus were at Maximinus’ elbow.

‘It is time to address the troops, Emperor.’

Maximinus drew a deep breath. He was just a soldier. Either of the two Senators would make a better speech. Either of them would make a better Emperor. But once you have taken a wolf by the ears …

Maximinus was just a soldier. The men out there were just soldiers. They demanded nothing elaborate. He would speak to them as their fellow-soldier, as one
comilitio
to another. It would take only simple words. He would march with them, share their rations, fight alongside them, share their danger. Together they must conquer the Germans as far as the Ocean. It was that or Rome would die. He would quote the last words of his old commander Septimius Severus: ‘
Enrich the soldiers, ignore everyone else
.’

CHAPTER 3

Rome
The Senate House,
Four Days after the Ides of March, AD235

It was still dark when Pupienus walked down from his house on the Caelian Hill. Not a star showed, not even the Kite or the Lycaonian Bear. The torches of his link-boys sawed in the gusting breeze. The pavements were dry, but the air smelt of rain.

Pupienus was in the habit of leaving his home at this hour. Normally, unless it was the day of some festival and piety demanded leisure, he would bear off to the right towards the Temple of Peace and the well-appointed offices of his high magistracy. Today was far from a normal day.

He walked under the Arch of Augustus and out into the Roman Forum. Off to the right, above the great façade of the Basilica Aemilia, the sky was beginning to lighten. Tattered black clouds could be distinguished, pressing down from the north. To most they would bring no more cheer than had the news from that direction the previous afternoon.

Down in the gloom, torches guttered across the Forum, each followed by an indistinct figure in shimmering white. All were converging on one point, like moths to a flame or ghosts to blood. The Senators of Rome were meeting in extraordinary session.

Pupienus was one of their number. Even after all this time, nearly thirty years now, it both thrilled him and seemed somehow unlikely. He had attained membership of the same order that had included Cato the Censor, Marius and Cicero. And he was not just anyone, not just a foot-soldier. Marcus Clodius Pupienus Maximus,
Vir Clarissimus
, twice Consul, was Prefect of the City of Rome, responsible for law and order in the eternal city, and up to one hundred miles beyond. To enforce his will, he commanded the six thousand men of the Urban Cohorts. He had come a long way since his youth in Tibur, let alone his childhood in Volaterrae. Pupienus stamped down the unwelcome thought of Volaterrae. The gods knew all too soon he would have to make another clandestine trip there and face the past he had taken so much trouble to hide.

The Curia stood four-square in the corner of the Forum, as if it had always stood there and always would. Postumus knew this building was not the original, but in some way that made no difference to the impression of permanence. He climbed the steps and passed under the portico. Pausing, he touched the statue of
Libertas
on the toe for luck, then went in through the bronze doors. He walked the length of the floor. He looked neither left nor right, not at friend or foe, not even at the presiding Consuls. He walked slowly, hands decorously hidden in his toga, eyes fixed upon the statue and altar of Victory.
Dignitas
was everything to a Senator. Without that potent mixture of gravity, propriety and nobility he would be no better than anyone else.

Pupienus ascended the tribunal. He made a libation of wine and offered a pinch of incense at the altar. The fumes curled up intoxicatingly from the little fire. The gilded face of Victory gazed down without emotion. He placed his right hand flat on his chest, bowed his head and prayed to the traditional gods. His prayers were for the health of the
Res Publica
, the safety of the
imperium
and the good fortune of his own family. They were all heartfelt.

His obligations to the divine met, Pupienus turned to the mundane. He greeted the Consuls and went down to his accustomed seat on the front bench. His two sons, Maximus and Africanus, were there. He let them wait, first hailing his wife’s brother Sextius Cethegillus, Maximus’ father-in-law Tineius Sacerdos and his own long-term ally and confidant Cuspidius Flamininus. Age and rank should come before familial affection. Finally, he embraced his sons. ‘Health and great joy,’ they repeated to each other. ‘Health and great joy.’

The house was very crowded, all the seats taken. Senators of less account stood packed together at the back. This would be a day to tell your grandchildren about. A new reign was beginning, the first for thirteen years. Anyone might seize the throne, but only the Senate could make him legitimate, vote him the powers necessary to rule. Without the Senate a new Emperor was no more than a usurper.

Pupienus let his eyes wander over the ranks on the other side of the Curia. The smooth, open face of Flavius Latronianus smiled at him. Pupienus smiled back. Some of the others he acknowledged more formally; none was his particular friend but, like Latronianus, all were Consulars, and all were men who had done the
Res Publica
good service and whose opinion carried weight. They returned his gesture.

The sight of those on the front bench immediately opposite gave him far less pleasure. Caelius Balbinus had the heavy jowls and florid face of the hardened drinker. He raised a hand to Pupienus with an ironic courtliness. As rich as Croesus, and as decadent as any oriental ruler, the aged Balbinus claimed descent from, among many other families and individuals of antique fame, the great clan of the Coelli. He revelled in the kinship this gave him with the deified Emperors Trajan and Hadrian.

Balbinus sat surrounded by other patricians cut from much the same cloth. Caesonius Rufinianus, Acilius Aviola and the grossly obese Valerii brothers, Priscillianus and Messala – all professed at least one ancestor who had sat in the very first meeting of the free Senate more than half a millennium ago. In recent times Emperors might have granted patrician status to the families of certain favourites, but Balbinus and his ilk looked down on the recipients. For them, no man was a true patrician unless his ancestor had been in the Curia on that day of liberty after Brutus had driven out Tarquinius Superbus and ended the rule of the legendary kings. Some, of course, boasted much more. According to Aviola, his line went back all the way to Aeneas himself and thus to the gods. Neither divine descent nor centuries of privilege tended to breed humility.

The young relatives of these patricians were still worse. Aviola’s cousin Acilius Glabrio and Valerius Priscillianus’ son Poplicola were two of the three-man board of junior magistrates who ran the mint. They were not even Senators yet. But they stood on the floor of the house, hair artfully curled, drenched in perfume, as if it was their entitlement. They knew as well as anyone that their birth, the smoke-blackened busts of their ancestors displayed in their palatial homes, would bring them office and advancement, irrespective of effort or merit, as it had for generations of their families.

Pupienus considered that he had nothing against the patriciate or the wider circle of the inherited nobility in general. The men on either side of him, Cethegillus and Sacerdos, came from the ranks of the latter. They each had several Consuls in their lineage, but remained men of sound mind and hard toil. They were men who could put public duty before their own self-regard and pleasures.

Pupienus himself had ennobled his family when he had held his first Consulship. Cuspidius had done the same, as had his other closest friends. Rutilius Crispinus and Serenianus were absent in the East, governing the provinces of Syria Phoenice and Cappadocia respectively. Part of Pupienus wished they were here now. He would have valued their advice and support.

Across the way, Balbinus was telling a joke, laughing at his own wit, his face porcine. Pupienus detested him. The higher Pupienus and his friends had climbed the
cursus honorum
, the ladder of offices, the more the likes of Balbinus had sneered at their origins. Their families were immigrants. Rome no more to them than a stepmother. Not one of their ancestors had been worthy of admittance to the Senate. What did that say of their heredity? What could a
new man
know of the age-old traditions of Rome?

The snide comments infuriated Pupienus. A
novus homo
had the harder path. He had to rise by his own services to the
Res Publica
, by his own virtue, not by the deeds of his distant ancestors. There was no comparison between the two. True nobility was to be found in the soul, not in a pedigree.

Balbinus finished his joke with a flourish. The patricians laughed, the corpulent Valerius Messala immoderately. Perhaps he was nervous. Perhaps it had penetrated even his obtuse understanding that in this changed landscape his splendid marriage to the sister of the murdered Emperor Alexander might leave him in a dangerous eminence.

One of the Consuls, Claudius Severus, rose to his feet.