Douglas Jackson - Enemy of Rome

But Brocchus had underestimated the crowd who’d gathered in the Forum reckoning it was relatively safe to emerge from their homes. Most were just thankful they’d survived, but some blamed Vitellius for what their city had suffered and these crowded round the pitiful procession to witness his humiliation. Brocchus growled at them to stay back, but he wasn’t going to risk angering the mob over a stumbling fat man at the end of a rope. Vitellius was helpless against the spittle that splashed into his face and on to his tunic. Sharp fingers poked into the flesh of his enormous belly and tweaked the coarse hair of his beard. They shouted their hatred in his face and the tears streamed down his cheeks. He wondered that these screaming, contorted faces were the same people who had hailed him as Emperor a few short months ago, and more recently refused to allow him to abdicate the throne. No thought now of the luxuries he’d showered on them, the games and the tax benefits. They were passing through the line of pillars with his statues upon them and he saw that already the mob was preparing to tear them down. Without warning someone tripped him, and he fell to his knees, crying out as the cobbles tore the soft skin of his knees. Brocchus hauled at the rope, almost throttling him as he struggled vainly to rise. Another pair of legs appeared beside the centurion’s and Vitellius looked up into the coldest eyes he had ever seen.

‘I will take responsibility for this prisoner.’ The man held his hand out for the rope. Brocchus opened his mouth to argue, but thought better of it. He noted the phalerae that signalled the other’s long service in the Praetorian unit that Aulus Vitellius had disbanded, and the fifteen or twenty stone-faced veterans at his back. ‘He’s mine,’ the officer repeated. Brocchus shrugged and handed over the rope, reflecting that the sword wasn’t a bad trophy and there was plenty more loot out there. He didn’t give the man he’d captured another thought.

Vitellius was hauled to his feet, and the soldiers formed up around him as their officer forced his way through the crowd. The mob stepped back from these hard-eyed men and the abuse faded, but for Vitellius the vision of a sacrificial bull was all the more vivid. His head sank on to his chest, but one of the soldiers drew his sword and slipped the blade under his chin, forcing it upwards. It seemed he must witness every instant of his humiliation. Past the rostrum, where he had tried to save Rome from this very fate, past the beginning of the Clivus Capitolinus, to … his first instinct was to struggle and pull himself away as he realized their destination.

The officer turned. ‘It will be easier for you if you cooperate, but we will drag you if need be.’

‘Please …’

The rope tightened, and he was pulled forward on to the stairs. The Gemonian Stairs. All fight evaporated from him and his heart fluttered like a trapped butterfly. Suddenly everything in his world seemed sharper. He could see the pores on the faces of his escort, the tiny rust pits on their swords and the fibres of their clothing. Every grain on the granite steps appeared visible to him. He looked up, hoping to see the sun, but clouds filled the sky and a light drizzle settled on his face. This was where Titus Flavius Sabinus had died, and he felt a twinge of regret for his old enemy. No man should die like this.

The little procession shambled to a halt and the tribune removed the rope around his neck, staring at him as if he wanted to remember the features for ever. When he was satisfied he spat in Vitellius’s face, so he felt the warm phlegm on his forehead and in his hair. ‘You destroyed my career, ruined my family and ordered my brother’s execution,’ the young man said, as if it explained everything that was about to happen.

‘Yes,’ Vitellius agreed, ‘but I was your Emperor and it was my right. You have no right to do this.’

‘My sword is my right.’ As the tribune said the words, he plunged the blade into the other man’s chest. Agony beyond imagining expanded to fill Vitellius’s entire body. As he fell, his last conscious thought was for Galeria and Lucius, but then the next sword struck and the darkness closed in. In that moment, the reign of Aulus Vitellius Germanicus Augustus was ended. He had been Emperor for eight months and a single fateful day.

The battle for the walls of the Castra Praetoria was over almost before it began. As Valerius predicted, Primus sent his siege towers forward to draw the defenders before launching squads of legionaries up the long ladders they carried into the gaps between. When the Praetorians rushed to meet the new threat, the Flavians burst from the towers and overwhelmed the weakened defences. In a siege, the first fissures must be instantly sealed or the cracks become gaping holes that undermine the entire defensive structure. Valerius could feel it happening around him.

A legionary in a red tunic rushed out of the darkness, his shield gone and his sword held too high. Valerius feinted to the right and hammered the hilt of his gladius into the man’s face, battering him so hard he flipped over the parapet and fell to the rocky ground thirty feet below. So much for not killing. He had to kill to survive. And he had to survive for Domitia.

‘They’re over the wall in about five places,’ came Aprilis’s harsh, breathless shout from his left, as he exchanged cuts with another shadowy figure. ‘If we’re going back to the armoury we have to go now.’

Valerius’s left-handed sword found a gap in his opponent’s defence and the point pierced the enemy’s thigh. Not a death wound by any means, and he would have been happy to leave it at that as he retreated towards the stairs. But the injury only seemed to enrage the man and he clambered forward, roaring until Valerius silenced his shout with a backhand cut that almost took his head off.

They leapt down the stairs three at a time and ran towards the armoury through a welter of struggling anonymous figures. One man rushed at Valerius, but he dropped shoulder and with a Serpentiustaught gladiator trick flipped his attacker over his back into the dust, running on with barely a pause. Others had a similar idea and by the time he reached the armoury building the doors had already been barred. For a moment they were trapped at the entrance with Flavian troops converging on them from all sides, but someone inside must have spied the silver breastplate because the door suddenly opened and they were dragged inside.

‘We thought you were already dead, centurion,’ a tired voice said, and Aprilis clasped hands with another survivor from his century. ‘We’ve done what we can, but perhaps you’d like to inspect our dispositions, sir.’

Aprilis nodded, but he needed a moment to recover his breath before he began. Like the rest of the Castra Praetoria, the armoury was solidly built of red brick with only a few barred windows; ideal for all-round defence. Valerius knew this was only a small part of it. They stood in a long corridor with doors on either side that opened on to narrow storerooms. A set of stairs led to the upper storey, and beyond them was another door that would lead to the open central courtyard where the armourers repaired Praetorian weapons and equipment on their forges. Men bustled about carrying benches and arms racks, turning every room into a mini-fortress, blocking the barred windows and using the torn-off doors to create barricades.

Aprilis looked over the preparations with quiet satisfaction, but few illusions. ‘We’ll keep them out for as long as we can,’ he nodded. ‘Once they get inside they’ll have to take the place room by room and we’ll make them pay.’

‘Has this place been provisioned?’ Valerius asked. Aprilis’s expression told its own story even before he replied with a bark of laughter.