M. Scott: The Art of War

The giant German’s momentum carried him on and spun him round and his sword sliced down the side of Placidus’ head, carving away his ear in a gout of blood. Placidus fell away, screeching.

Eight men ran Drusus through.

‘ Drusus! ’

‘No!’ Marcus was weeping, but he grabbed my shoulders with both hands. ‘You can’t stop it. They’ll kill you if you try.’

I hadn’t been aware that I’d moved, but I looked down and found that, though I had been safely a dozen feet from the edge, now I was at it, poised to leap.

Marcus was right: I would have died had I gone down there, either crushed underfoot or slaughtered, exactly as Vitellius was being slaughtered.

He died with all his wounds to the fore, and in silence, but he died, all the same.

Drusus’ actions had pushed the mob past their boiling point and what had been contained ridicule descended fast into uncontained violence and eight men were not nearly enough to protect the emperor.

They didn’t even try; without Placidus to command them, they lowered their blades and backed away. If I were Vespasian, I’d have had them all flogged and dismissed for dereliction of duty. They stood by and watched the mob rip Vitellius apart.

He died under a dozen savage blows and then, with no one to stop them, the mob stripped his hacked and bleeding body and dragged it to the foot of the Gemonian steps, where lately Sabinus’ bloodied corpse had been left. There was a ghastly symmetry that was lost on no one. Somewhere, the gods were balancing the fates of the mighty, and laughing.

‘He’s dead.’ Marcus was holding me still; a boy, holding a man, talking sense to the senseless. ‘They’re both dead. Drusus and Vitellius are both dead. Please will you stop. Which one was it you cared for?’

‘Vitellius,’ I said. ‘And Drusus. Both.’

I was numb, dead inside. I should have been with my men at the barracks, but I could hear the noises of battle from the camp behind the Quirinal hill and knew that I was too late; the gates had closed and there, too, the slaughter had begun. My men were dying bravely, and I was not with them.

Pantera had kept me from that. Dully, I wondered why, and had no answer, although somewhere the shade of Juvens was pleased.

There was only one place left I could go and salvage any honour, any pride. Slowly, I unwound the green scarf from my arm and took the blue one Marcus had offered me earlier.

Tying it on under his too-adult sardonic stare was as hard as anything I had done, but necessary. After, I took his small fist, prised it open and tipped the contents of my belt pouch on to his flat palm. If nothing else, I had the momentary satisfaction of seeing the boy’s jaw go slack.

‘All of this,’ I said, ‘if you can get me out of the city and on the road south to where Lucius is.’

Indecision flickered for a moment across Marcus’ face, then he smiled a true smile that showed a different boy inside.

He handed back all but one new-minted silver piece. This one he held in the flat of his palm, dull in the late afternoon sun. He slid me a look. ‘One more like this when we reach the south gates.’

Solemnly, I spat on my hand and held it out. ‘Two if we can reach there before nightfall.’

Rome, 20–21 December AD 69

Horus

The house folded its silk welcome around us, warm, safe, homely; an antidote to Jocasta’s poison.

Word had come ahead of us of Drusus’ death; Segoventos, the Belgian who had taken his place as our doorman, was beside himself with grief and the rest of the House was subdued and sad even before we arrived with Felix’ body and news that Domitian had been taken by Jocasta.

It’s hard to know which part of that was hardest. We did not know Felix well, but Drusus had been our brother, our friend, and we mourned him. Then again, everyone had come to like Domitian in the time he had spent with us and all of us knew by then that he was the new emperor’s son — if he lived.

I ordered wine for everyone and locked the doors and had them hang white banners from the windows to show we were in mourning and promised that there would be no work tonight, or tomorrow.

The lady Caenis, it hardly needs saying, was a model of composure. We offered her a bed, alone, of course, and the opportunity to bathe, but she sat with the rest of us as we gathered news from the night.

She kept close to Borros, feeling, I think, a measure of responsibility for his grief; or perhaps she simply liked him. Together, they oversaw the laying out of Felix, ensuring he was accorded all honours as one who had given his life in defence of the new emperor; he was treated as a hero.

Trabo, of course, did not believe the evidence of his eyes. In his mind, Pantera was the threat and Jocasta the injured victim. In the end, we gave him poppy to calm his rantings, which worked for a while.

He recovered his wits around midnight, and I set a girl to tend him: Tertia, the one Pantera had paid for and ordered and sent to him in the summer, to see to his needs when Jocasta was not with him. Bizarre though it sounds, she had grown fond of him, I think. Certainly she cared for him, and soothed him, and let him work out his anger in safer ways.

Of us all, Pantera was least readily contained. I’ve known him almost all my life and never been afraid of him, but I was afraid that night. He didn’t rant or scream, or even speak much, but he gave off a kind of white-hot fury that stunned everyone to silence. Even the lady Caenis was subdued in his presence.

As soon as he could, he left, taking Marcus-who-served-with-us and together they called up every silver-boy they could reach — which was all of them, given that he had taken half of my gold stocks as payment. They were set to work with explicit instructions, but scour the city as they might they couldn’t find Jocasta or Domitian.

After midnight, when the noise of fighting had died away, Pantera sent Marcus back with news that the barracks had fallen: two thousand men bravely dead with their wounds all to the fore. Soon after, another boy brought word that Antonius Primus had occupied the palace formerly used by Vitellius and was holding it in Vespasian’s name while his men conducted a street by street clear-up of the city.

Nobody knew where Lucius was, except that he wasn’t in Rome. Pantera believed that he was marching up from Misene and would be on us within a day, and that Jocasta had gone to join him.

Near dawn, Pantera came back with word that a woman fitting her description had taken two of Vitellius’ horses and paid for them with coins cut in Vitellius’ likeness. It wasn’t proof, but it was as close as we were likely to get.

Pantera roused Caenis and told her that he, personally, was going to lead the legions that were about to march out to face Lucius. He knelt before her and swore that he would bring Domitian back to her alive, or die in the attempt. He chose not to leave her in my care, but took her to Antonius Primus, who could provide half a legion to protect her.

Then he came back for Trabo.

Rome, 21 December AD 69

Trabo

I woke to a stunning headache and the stench of burning men. I opened my eyes slowly, closed them, opened them again at the feel of soft breasts pressing against my arm.

I thought Jocasta and was full of hope and joy. And then I remembered. I made myself focus, strove for a name.

‘Tertia?’ I blinked and it was still her. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘She works here,’ said a man’s voice behind me. ‘Four denarii a night.’

Four denarii? Four? I’d paid her two sesterces a month and she’d had to buy food for us out of that.