Robert Fabbri - Rome's executioner

Vespasian almost gagged as he entered; the sickly-sweet, cloying smell of decaying flesh was overpowering. The doctor raised his lamp and Vespasian could see why the man would have no further interest in life. His nose and ears had been severed, the wounds covered by a blood-spotted bandage wrapped around his face. The palms of his hands were likewise bandaged, but just the palms, his fingers and thumbs were all missing and, judging by the bloody dressing on his groin, they were not the only appendages that he had lost. He woke as the light fell on his face and looked up at the visitors with desperate pleading eyes.

‘Help me die, sir,’ he croaked. ‘I cannot hold a sword with these hands.’

Paetus looked at the doctor who shrugged. ‘Very well, legionary,’ he said, ‘but first I want you to tell the tribune what you told me earlier.’

The legionary looked at Vespasian with sorrowful eyes; he couldn’t have been more than eighteen. ‘They were waiting for us in the woods, sir.’ His words came slowly with shallow breaths. ‘We killed two of them before we were overpowered. They looked like Thracians, but their language was different to what they speak here and they wore trousers.’ His voice grew thinner as he spoke; the doctor held a cup of water to his mouth and he drank greedily. ‘They started with Postumus first, they bound his mouth to stop him screaming and then went to work on him with their knives — slowly; he’d been badly wounded in the ambush and so didn’t last long. One of them spoke Greek and told us that was what would happen to us if we didn’t cooperate. My mate told them to go fuck themselves; that pissed them off and they cut him up worse than Postumus. I was terrified by this time, sir, and after they cut me a few times I said that I would help them. I’m sorry.’

‘What did they want?’ Vespasian asked.

‘They wanted me to identify you when you came out of the camp, sir. We waited for a couple of days, and then you came out this morning with two slaves to go hunting. I’m sorry to say that I was relieved, I thought that they would leave me alone. But they called me a coward for betraying my people and two of them did this to me while the other two followed you.’

‘There were four?’ Vespasian glanced over to Paetus who raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes, sir. Now finish it.’

Paetus drew his sword. ‘What’s your name, legionary?’

‘Decimus Falens, sir.’

He placed the tip of the sword under his lower left rib. ‘Leave this life in peace, Decimus Falens, you will be remembered.’ He cupped the man’s head in his left hand and thrust his sword up under his ribcage and into his heart. Falens spasmed violently, his eyes bulging with pain, then, as the life fled out of him, he looked at Paetus with relief.

The men of the second and fifth cohorts of the IIII Scythica snapped to attention in front of a wooden block and four seven-foot-high posts. The high-pitched call of the signal horn, the bucina, echoed around the parade ground. Vespasian stood next to Paetus on a dais, surveying, with tired eyes, the rigid lines of legionaries. He had not slept well; his mind had raced all night. After leaving the hospital he had joined Sabinus and Magnus in his quarters and told them what had transpired during the evening. Paetus’ offer of a turma of thirty cavalry to escort them to Pomponius’ camp had cheered them slightly but neither had been pleased with the prospect of having Poppaeus’ man accompany them or by the fact that there were two more Getae out there with their bows aimed at them. Their complaints, however, fell on deaf ears as Vespasian turned his attention to the letters that Sabinus had brought. The two from his parents contained nothing more than news of the estates from his father and a stream of advice from his mother, but Caenis’ words of love and longing made his heart leap.

The horn rang out again, bringing Vespasian back to the business of the morning. Five men were led out of the guardhouse next to the hospital, and paraded before the cohorts; they were halted by their guards in front of the posts and the block. They wore only their sandals and their russet tunics, humiliatingly unbelted, like a woman’s.

‘Centurion Caelus,’ Paetus called out, ‘prepare the prisoners for punishment.’

‘Prisoners, attention!’ Caelus barked. The men jerked rigid. ‘Prisoners to draw lots, step forward.’

Two of the five stepped out of the line. Caelus raised his fist; it held two straws. ‘Whoever draws the short straw will be seen as being guilty of striking both officers and will receive sentence from the garrison commander, the drawer of the long straw will receive a dozen strokes of the cane with the others. Now choose.’

The two hapless men, both in their early twenties, looked at each other and swallowed hard. Together they reached forward and plucked a straw each from Caelus’ hand. Vespasian could easily tell the loser, his head dropped and his shoulders sagged, whereas the other man stood bolt upright, his chest heaving as he hyperventilated with relief. No one has ever been so pleased to receive a beating before, Vespasian mused to himself.

‘Prefect Paetus,’ Caelus shouted, ‘this man is guilty. What is your sentence?’

‘Death,’ Paetus replied simply.

The speed at which the sentence was carried out surprised Vespasian. The man was brought forward to the block and made to kneel in front of it with his hands resting on it. He voluntarily bowed his head and then tensed his arms against the block, knowing that to get a quick, clean death he needed to hold his body firm. One of the guards stepped up next to him, his sword already drawn, and with a quick, vigorous downwards blow struck off the man’s head. His body fell forward and slumped over the block, spewing forth a powerful fountain of blood.

The men of the second and fifth cohorts stood in silence, eyes fixed on their dead comrade as his head was quickly collected and carried away along with his body.

‘Prisoners to the posts,’ Caelus barked again, tapping his vine cane against his legs. The four remaining men stepped up to the posts and held their hands together above their heads; they had witnessed many a beating and knew the drill. Guards secured their wrists with the leather straps and then tore the tunics from their backs, leaving them in only their loincloths. Brandishing thick vine canes, the mark of their rank, Caelus and three of his brother centurions took positions to the left of each of the men.

‘One dozen stokes on my mark,’ Caelus shouted. ‘One!’

In unison the four sturdy canes thumped down across the men’s shoulders, causing them to tense every muscle in their bodies and exhale with loud grunts.

‘Two!’

Again the canes flashed through the air, this time hitting just below the welts made by the first contacts. Vespasian could see that these centurions knew their business as they worked each stroke lower so as not to hit the same place each time and risk breaking bones; the object was to punish, not to incapacitate; had the offence required that, the whip would have been used.

By the eighth stroke blood was beginning to run down three of the men’s arms from where the leather straps had eaten into the flesh around their wrists. Only Varinus had managed to avoid this. Vespasian realised that he must be an old hand at being beaten and had learnt not to pull down with his arms at each stroke. He wondered idly if the veteran had passed on this tip to his younger mates; if he had they clearly were not able to show the same self-control as he and were suffering more than necessary because of it.

‘Ten!’

The four canes cracked on to the men’s buttocks with such force that one, Caelus’, snapped in two; the broken end flew through the air and hit the officers’ dais with a loud report.