Douglas Jackson - Enemy of Rome

‘Less of your lip.’ Valerius grunted in agony as Lucca rammed the butt of a spear into his stomach and shoved him roughly down the stairs. ‘First section with me, the rest of you get on up to those walls and make sure you don’t let old Lucca down.’

Valerius had been in the carcer before, and the stinking, airless atmosphere, thick with the scents of urine, vomit, excrement and terror, was even less welcoming now. Rome’s high-ranking prisoners were held here before execution. He doubted anyone would dare kill him without some sort of trial, but the inescapable fact was that he was trapped. The same pair of brutes who had tormented Lucina Graecina to her lonely, insane death stripped him of his sword belt and threw him in a barred cell at the rear of the prison. His only luxury was a pile of mouldy straw to sleep on, but he knew he’d been fortunate not to be flung into the bottle-shaped dungeon whose entrance was in one of the side wings. The jailers were unlikely to be shifted by threats or bribes, but he tried in any case, driven half mad by his inability to protect Domitia. ‘Don’t you know there’s an army on your doorstep?’ he raged.

‘We have served five Emperors, and if another happens along we will serve him just as loyally,’ the taller of the pair smirked. ‘Never let it be said the keepers of the carcer are afraid of change. Now stay quiet. It wouldn’t do to beat a gent like you, but we will if we have to. Your fate is sealed the moment you enter that door. The only question is whether you leave it alive or dead, and you have no say in that. Time means nothing here.’

Time means nothing here. Valerius paced the narrow confines of his cell cursing his impotence and the arrogance that had made him show the one attribute that identified him as clearly as a brothel sign. Five steps one way, three the other, then another five. Did an hour pass, or two? His imagination tortured him. What was happening outside these walls? For all Lucca’s boasts, experience told him three cohorts of Praetorian Guards and a few thousand lightly armed civilians couldn’t hold out for long against Primus. Vitellius must negotiate, or the city would burn. But Vitellius was hamstrung by fear and a prisoner of those same Praetorians who believed they had nothing to look forward to but an early death. A vision of Cremona haunted him, the bloody streets and stacked bodies, the flames and the terror, the raped women and speared babies. It could already be happening just a few hundred paces away. The treasures of the Golden House would be their first objective. Domitia would be at the palace when they came and the fear of it made him rage and rattle the bars of his cage, to the amusement of his jailers. Wasted energy. He must conserve his strength and prepare for whatever the day would bring. Soldiers can sleep anywhere, and though it was only a fitful doze tormented by memories and foreboding, Valerius eventually slept.

He was woken by hammering on the carcer door accompanied by the muffled sound of voices arguing. A few moments later the tall jailer walked in with a sour look on his face and the key to the cell in his hand. Behind him, grey with exhaustion, came Aprilis, his sword drawn and the blade still bloody.

‘You were fortunate your Spaniard found me,’ the Praetorian said, acknowledging Valerius’s thanks. ‘My comrades are killing all their prisoners as they retreat and they would have got round to you soon enough.’

‘What’s happening?’ Valerius asked as the jailer freed him, muttering apologies about his treatment — ‘a mistake has been made … unaware of your eminence, your eminence’. Valerius ignored him and Aprilis explained the happenings of the previous few hours.

‘We tried to hold them at the Milvian Bridge, but they pushed us back up the Via Flaminia into the Campus Martius. It was carnage. The civilian militia threw their weapons away and ran. One minute they were fighting beside us, the next the scum were cheering the enemy and helping cut the throats of our wounded. A flanking column attacked up the Appian Way, forcing the Campus to be abandoned. Not long ago I had word that the Seventh Claudia had taken the Aurelian Gate. It meant we’d been outflanked and I was ordered to withdraw a second time. The only good news is that we still hold the Castra Praetoria and that’s where we’re going.’

As they emerged into the daylight one of Aprilis’s soldiers stepped forward and handed Valerius a sword. He nodded his thanks as he draped the strap over his shoulder. ‘I have business at the Golden House, but I will join you at the Castra Praetoria if I can.’

Aprilis shook his head, weariness making him impatient. ‘You’ll never make it. The palace is surrounded and might already be taken. The only reason the Seventh isn’t here already is that our rearguard is holding them on the Velabrum. It won’t be for long.’ As if to confirm his words a roar swept like a wave between the Capitoline and the Palatine mounts, followed in moments by a stampede of retreating Praetorians along the Vicus Tuscus a few dozen paces away. Aprilis grabbed Valerius by the arm. ‘You’ll be no good to your lady friend with a sword in your guts,’ he said. ‘The chances are they’ll treat her well enough if she’s with the Emperor and his family. Stay here and you’re dead.’

Still Valerius hesitated. These were his friends the Praetorian was telling him to run from. The two men were standing at the junction of the Sacred Way and the Clivus Capitolinus. At the far end of the Way he could see the walls of the Golden House where Domitia waited. But Aprilis was right. As well as the Praetorians streaming across their front, hundreds more were being forced back through the Forum. The centurion pulled him away in the direction of the Argiletum.

Before they had gone a few hundred paces they saw signs that the Flavians had been ahead of them. Clusters of dead and wounded legionaries and Praetorians lay scattered across the cobbles. Blood oozed into the central gutter.

‘Third Gallica,’ Aprilis muttered when he saw the insignia on the legionary shields. ‘Where the fuck did they come from?’

They cleared the Subura and started up the slope of the Vicus Patricius. Behind them, Valerius could clearly hear the sound of fighting as the Praetorian rearguard tried to hold back the attacking Flavians. He considered cutting across the Esquiline to try to reach the Domus Aurea from the north, but every way was blocked. Instead, they were swept along like leaves in a swollen torrent as more troops filtered on to the street from right and left to swell the seething throng, a certain indication that Primus’s legions were already in possession of most of the city.

‘Vultures,’ Aprilis spat as they ran past looters ransacking a jeweller’s shop.

‘What happens if the enemy already hold the Castra Praetoria?’ Valerius gasped.

Aprilis turned to stare at him. ‘Then we die where we stand.’

The Castra had not been taken. They cleared the Porta Viminalis, lungs burning and legs shaking with the long run uphill, and there it stood: huge and impregnable, a massive red-brick square with walls three times the height of a man studded with towers at regular intervals. It had been the Praetorian barracks since the time of Augustus, but it was a fortress too, with the largest armoury in the city. Now the survivors of Vitellius’s Praetorian Guard streamed from the Viminal gate or down the Via Salaria to make their last stand here. No surrender for these men. They were the veterans of the German legions who proclaimed Aulus Vitellius Emperor and they had no illusions about their fate if they were captured. Aprilis summed it up for all of them. ‘If the bastards want to kill us it’s going to cost them dear.’