Alex Scarrow - Gates of Rome

He’d ended up with over a thousand bloody eyeballs staring up at him from where they were piled on his marble floor. And their butchered bodies had covered the palace gardens outside.

Caligula’s bare feet had carried him absently out of his bedroom into the main atrium. There, standing guard outside his bedroom, was one of the few he could fully trust.

‘It is a hot night, is it not… Stern?’

Stern. Such an odd-sounding name. Caligula had tried to rename these guardians of his, but they only responded to the names they came with.

‘Affirmative. One degree centigrade hotter than last night.’

Caligula smiled, nodded. Some of the things Stern and the others said confused him. They used words he didn’t quite understand. He was sure he would understand these words, the strange language he’d heard Stern and the others of his guards use occasionally, when he properly became God.

Not so long now.

‘Will you walk with me?’

Stern nodded. Caligula admired the sculpted contours of the man, the fascinating olive-coloured armour he and his men wore; so light and yet so effective. And their helmets, so odd-looking.

‘Affirmative,’ Stern replied. His Latin perfect. His accent still so very foreign.

Caligula’s restless feet took him across the atrium, down the main passage. Three steps dutifully behind him, the soft clunk of Stern’s boots, the gentle clatter of his armour echoed in the stillness.

‘Do you ever dream, Stern?’

‘Negative.’

‘Have you no wishes? No fantasies? No desires?’

‘Negative. I have mission parameters that need to be fulfilled. That is all.’

Caligula turned and smiled at him curiously. ‘You and your men are such a puzzle to me, Stern. You are not like anyone else. You do not seem to have the weaknesses of other men, other soldiers. I never see you sleep,’ he said, laughing, ‘or get drunk.’

‘It is not a requirement.’

He’d never seen them sleep as such, but every now and then Stern and his men periodically went into a sort of trance, a meditation. He’d looked in a number of times on the palace quarters he’d given them over the years and seen the twelve of them sitting bolt upright on their cots staring into space in perfect, motionless silence. Nothing like the soldiers’ quarters he remembered from his youth: the smell of stale sweat and cheap wine, the raucous noise of men off duty, the clack of dice on a table, raised voices cursing poor fortune. The exchange of crude profanities and vulgar stories.

He rested an affectionate hand on Stern’s firm neck. ‘If only all men were like you. Dutiful, loyal.’

Stern’s grey eyes rested on him. He said nothing.

‘But then you aren’t really normal men, are you?’

‘Correct.’ Stern had explained on several occasions precisely what he and his colleagues were, again using a host of words that Caligula couldn’t begin to understand, but was certain he would one day soon. The language of angels — so cryptic.

‘You’re just like me,’ said Caligula. ‘Not of this world… this ordinary, tedious world. But somewhere far greater, somewhere magnificent. Somewhere beyond.’

‘Affirmative. We are not from this time.’

He squeezed Stern’s neck gently, feeling the cords of muscle there. Stern and the others were incredibly powerful for their size. And remarkably agile. They made superb gladiators.

In fact, perfect gladiators. None of the gladiators in the various commercial ludi based around Rome had ever managed to beat any of Stern’s men. Once, just once, one of the finest fighters from the ludus at Capua — a myrmillo — had managed to slice through the lower arm of one of Stern’s men. But, with just his remaining hand, he had been able to finish the gladiator off. Crushing the man’s neck, despite the man stabbing and stabbing him over and over with his gladius. One of the public displays he put on for the people from time to time: a free fight. Free entertainment. And a reminder to those with ideas in their heads that his guards — his Viri Lapidei, his Stone Men — were utterly invincible.

That particular myrmillo had died, of course.

Stern’s one-armed man had recovered within a couple of days.

They were paused midway down a long passage, lit by the guttering flames of several oil torches. To their left a heavy velvet drape shifted subtly. Caligula pulled the drape aside to reveal a short passage and, at the far end, a pair of thick oak doors, a locking bar across them. Two more of his Stone Men stood to attention either side of them.

‘I think I shall go and take a look at the oracle.’

Stern nodded.

Caligula’s bare feet tapped lightly along the smooth floor. Ahead of him the two guards watched his approach with impassive grey eyes. They slid the locking bolt to one side and pushed the heavy doors slowly open. Beyond, a dark room, completely dark. Caligula reached for a tallow candle and lit it from one of the torches.

He didn’t need to instruct either of the guards not to follow him inside. They knew the dark space beyond was for Caligula alone. They were forbidden to enter, Stern and his men. They also knew to close the heavy doors behind Caligula as he stepped inside and not to open them again until he rapped his knuckles on them to be let out once more.

Thick hinges creaked under the weight of old oak and Caligula found himself standing alone in the darkness. The candlelight formed a small pool of brightness on the tiled mosaic of the floor.

‘Are you awake?’ His voice echoed across the large chamber.

He took a step into the darkness. It was there, just ahead of him. The candle would pick it out soon.

‘I cannot sleep again.’ Caligula’s voice reverberated in the empty chamber. ‘What about you? Hmmm?’

His candle picked out the front of the wooden box in the middle of the chamber. A box, like the doors, made of thick oak and reinforced with metal brackets. He could smell it from here. An awful smell. Not dissimilar to the reek of those overcrowded streets in the Subura.

‘Are you awake in there?’

He heard a shuffling sound inside the box. A restless stirring like that of a caged tiger.

AD 54, Rome

It took several days, in fact, for Crassus and Cato to coordinate a meeting of their fellow conspirators. Crassus carefully arranged for two other ex-senators to discreetly join them; Cicero and Paulus, two more elders like Crassus, were alive because they too were wily politicians, and at the right moment had stepped away from the aborted attempt on Caligula’s life.

Cato brought with him a centurion he trusted from his cohort — the Palace Guard. Fronto. A muscular man in his early thirties with a scar running down the left-hand side of his face, and all his teeth missing on that side. One other conspirator, Atellus, was a tribune like Cato, but from another legion, the Tenth. Like Cato in his late thirties, muscular but lean, a career officer with a face that gave nothing away.

And, of course, Cato’s trusted old friend, retired Chief Centurion Macro. Just seven men prepared to discuss the assassination of a leader that was rapidly driving Rome — the only beacon of civilization in a dark world of savagery — towards a cliff edge.

‘Do you know how dangerous it is for us to even be in the same room together?’ said Cicero. He was referring to himself, Paulus and Crassus. Caligula’s spies kept an eye out for any huddled meetings of the few politicians left alive. ‘And you have us standing here… with these complete strangers! They could be — ’

‘They’re not spies, Cicero. I’m quite certain of that,’ replied Crassus. ‘They stand out far too much for that.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s why they’ve been my guests here, out of sight. Beyond the reach of spying eyes and wagging tongues.’