Fire in the East (2 page)

 

The conspirators had been right. There were very few guards around the imperial tent. Many of those present were asleep. It was the drowsy time just after midday. The time when the siege paused. The time when the emperor and his son rested.

A nod from one of the conspirators, and Ballista set off towards the huge purple tent with the standards outside. Suddenly he was very aware of what a beautiful day it was; a perfect Italian early June day, hot with a light breeze. A honey bee buzzed across his path. Swallows were wheeling high above.

A praetorian guardsman blocked Ballista’s way with his spear. ‘Where do you think you are going, barbarian?’

‘I need to talk to the emperor.’ Ballista spoke reasonable if heavily accented Latin.

‘Who does not?’ The praetorian was uninterested. ‘Now fuck off, boy.’

‘I have information of a conspiracy against him.’ Ballista dropped his voice. ‘Some of the officers, the nobles, are plotting to kill him.’ He watched the guardsman’s evident indecision. The potential danger of not passing on to a suspicious and vengeful emperor news of a possible conspiracy eventually overcame the natural fear of waking an increasingly short-tempered and violent man for whom things were not going well.

‘Wait here.’ The praetorian summoned a fellow soldier to watch the barbarian and disappeared into the tent.

He reappeared in short order and told the other praetorian to disarm and search the barbarian youth. Having given up his sword and dagger, Ballista was ushered into the tent; first into an antechamber, then into the inner sanctum.

At first, Ballista could see little. The purple gloom in the depths of the tent was profound after the bright sunlight outside. As his eyes adjusted he made out the sacred fire that is always carried before the reigning emperor burning low on its portable altar. Then he could see a large campbed. From it rose the huge pale face of the Emperor Caius Julius Verus Maximinus, commonly known as Maximinus Thrax, Maximinus the Thracian. Around his neck glittered the famous golden torque which he had won for his valour as a private soldier from the Emperor Septimius Severus.

From the far corner of the tent a voice snapped, ‘Perform adoration,
proskynesis.’
As Ballista was pushed forward on to his knees by the praetorian, he saw Maximinus Thrax’s handsome son walk out of the darkness. Ballista reluctantly prostrated himself on the ground, then, as Maximinus Thrax held out his hand, kissed a heavy gold ring set with a gemstone cut with an image of an eagle.

Maximinus Thrax sat on the edge of the campbed. He was wearing just a simple white tunic. His son stood by his side, wearing his customary, elaborately ornamented, breastplate and ornamental silver sword, its handle in the shape of the head of an eagle. Ballista remained on his knees.

‘Gods, he stinks,’ said the son, putting a perfumed cloth to his nose. His father waved a hand to silence him.

‘You know of a plot on my life.’ Maximinus Thrax’s great grey eyes looked into Ballista’s face. ‘Who are the traitors?’

‘The officers, most of the tribunes and a few of the centurions, of Legio II Parthica,
Dominus.’

‘Name them.’

Ballista looked reluctant.

‘Do not keep my father waiting. Name them,’ said the son.

‘They are powerful men. They have many friends, much influence. If they hear that I have denounced them, they will do me harm.’

The big man laughed, a horrible grating sound. ‘If what you say is true, they will be in no position to harm you or anyone else. If what you say is not true, what they might want to do to you will be the least of your concerns.’

Ballista slowly named a string of names. ‘Flavius Vopiscus, Julius Capitolinus, Aelius Lampridius.’ There were twelve names in all. That they were the real names of the men in the conspiracy hardly mattered at this stage.

‘How do you know these men want to kill me? What proof do you have?’

‘They asked me to join them.’ Ballista spoke loudly, hoping to distract attention from the growing noise outside. ‘I asked them for written instructions. I have them here.’

‘What is that row?’ Maximinus Thrax bellowed, his face twitching with habitual irritation. ‘Praetorian, tell them to be quiet.’ He held out a huge hand for the documents that Ballista proffered.

‘As you can see -’ Ballista continued.

‘Silence,’ ordered the emperor.

Rather than abating, the noise outside the tent grew. Maximinus Thrax, his face now contorted with rage, turned to his son. ‘Get out there and tell them to shut the fuck up.’

Maximinus Thrax read on. Then a surge of noise made him lift his pale face. On it Ballista read the first glimmer of suspicion.

Ballista leapt to his feet. He grabbed the portable altar bearing the sacred fire and swung it at the emperor’s head. Maximinus Thrax caught Ballista’s wrist with an unbelievably strong grip. With his free hand he punched him in the face. The youth’s head snapped back. The big man hit him in the stomach. Ballista collapsed in a heap. With one hand the emperor pulled Ballista back to his feet. He brought his face, a face like a rock, close to Ballista’s. His breath stank of garlic.

‘You will die slowly, you little fucker.’

Maximinus Thrax threw Ballista away almost casually. The youth crashed through some chairs and overturned a camp table.

As the emperor picked up his sword and headed towards the door, Ballista desperately tried to get some breath in his lungs and struggle to his feet. He looked around for a weapon. Seeing none, he picked up a stylus from a writing desk and stumbled after the emperor.

From the antechamber, the whole scene outside was framed and brightly lit as if it were a painting in a temple or portico. In the distance, most of the praetorians were running. But some had joined the legionaries of Legio II and were pulling the imperial portraits down from the standards. Nearer, there was a thrashing tumult of bodies. Just beyond the threshold was the mighty back of Maximinus Thrax. Sword in hand, his huge head turned this way and that.

The tumult stopped, and above the crowd rose the severed head of Maximinus Thrax’s son, stuck on a spear. Even smeared by dirt and blood it was still beautiful.

The noise the emperor made was not human. Before the big man could move, Ballista launched himself unsteadily at his back. Like a beast hunter in the arena trying to despatch a bull, Ballista stabbed the stylus down into Maximinus Thrax’s neck. With one mighty sweep of his arm, the big man smashed Ballista back across the antechamber. The emperor turned, pulled out the stylus and hurled it, bloodied, at Ballista. His sword raised, he advanced.

The youth scrabbled to his feet, grabbed a chair, held it in front of him as a makeshift shield and backed away.

‘You treacherous little fucker, you gave me your oath - you took the military oath, the
sacramentum.’
Blood was flowing freely down the emperor’s neck, but it did not seem to be slowing him down. With two strokes of the sword he smashed the chair to pieces.

Ballista twisted to avoid the blow but felt searing agony as the sword thrust scraped down his ribs. On the floor now, holding his arms to the wound, Ballista tried to shuffle backwards. Maximinus Thrax stood over him, readying himself to deliver the killing blow.

The thrown spear punched into the emperor’s unprotected back. He staggered an involuntary step forward. Another spear slammed into his back. He took another step, then tipped over, landing on Ballista. His enormous weight was crushing the youth. His breath, hot and rank, was on Ballista’s cheek. His fingers came up to gouge the boy’s eyes.

Somehow, the stylus was back in Ballista’s right hand. With a strength born of desperation the youth drove it into the emperor’s throat. Blood sprayed out. The emperor’s fingers jerked back. Blood stung Ballista’s eyes.

‘I will see you again.’ The big man uttered his final threat with a hideous grin, blood gurgling and foaming from his twisted mouth.

Ballista watched as they pulled the body outside. There they fell on it like a pack of hounds breaking up its quarry. His head was hacked off and, like that of his son, hoisted on a spear. The huge body was left for anyone to trample on and desecrate, for the birds and dogs to tear to pieces.

Much later, the heads of Maximinus Thrax and his son were sent to Rome to be publicly exhibited. What was left of their bodies was thrown in the river to deny them burial, to deny rest to their spirits.

By the time the warship had cleared the harbour breakwater of Brundisium, the spies had found each other. They sat on the deck, inconspicuous among the men of the Dux Ripae. From their position near the prow they looked back down the narrow hull of the galley to where, over one hundred feet away, stood the object of their professional attention.

‘Sodding barbarian. All three of us just to watch one sodding barbarian. Ridiculous.’ The
frumentarius
spoke quietly, lips barely moving.

The speaker’s accent pointed to the slums of the Subura in the teeming valley between two of the seven hills of eternal Rome. His origins may have been low but, as a frumentarius, he and his two colleagues were among the most feared men in the Roman Empire, the
imperium.
As
frumentarii
their title should have implied that they had something to do with grain distribution or army rations. No one fell for that. It was like calling the wild Black Sea ‘the hospitable sea’, or the daemons of retribution ‘the kindly ones’. From the most patrician consular in Rome to the lowliest slave in a far-flung province like one of the Britannias, the
frumentarii
were known and hated for what they really were - the emperor’s secret police: his spies, his assassins, his knife men - at least, they were known collectively. They were a special army unit, its members transferred out of other units, its camp on the Caelian Hill. Individually, the frumentarii were seldom known at all. It was said that, if you recognized a
frumentarius,
it was because he wanted you to, and then it was too late.

‘I don’t know,’ said one of the others. ‘It might be a good idea. Barbarians are naturally untrustworthy, and often as cunning as you can imagine.’ His voice summoned up the sun-drenched mountains and plains of the far west; the provinces of Further Spain or even Lusitania, where the Atlantic broke against the shore.

‘Bollocks,’ said the third. ‘OK, they are all untrustworthy bashtards. They have been lying since they could crawl. But the northern ones, like this bashtard, are thick, slow as you like. Your northerners are big, ferocious and stupid, while your easteners are small, sly and shit sheared of anything.’ The intermittent slurring showed that his first language was not Latin but Punic, from North Africa; the tongue spoken almost half a millennium ago by Hannibal, the great enemy of Rome.

All the men on deck and the crew below fell silent as Marcus Clodius Ballista, Vir
Egregius,
Knight of Rome, and
Dux
Ripae, Commander of the Riverbanks, raised his arms to the heavens to begin the usual ritual at the start of a voyage. The water was calm here at the threshold of the sea, where the sheltered waters of Brundisium harbour met the Adriatic. With its outstretched oars at rest, the galley lay like a huge insect on the surface of the waters. In good Latin, which nevertheless had a twang of the forests and marshes of the far north, Ballista began to intone the traditional words:

‘Jupiter, king of the gods, hold your hands over this ship and all who sail in her. Neptune, god of the sea, hold your hands over this ship and all who sail in her.
Tyche,
spirit of the ship, hold your hands over us.’ He took a large, finely worked golden bowl from an attendant and, slowly, with due ceremony, poured three libations of wine into the sea, emptying it.

Someone sneezed. Ballista held his outstretched pose. The sneeze had been unmistakable, undeniable. No one moved or spoke. Everyone knew that the worst omen for a sea journey, the clearest possible indication of the displeasure of the gods, was if someone sneezed during the rituals which marked the departure. Still Ballista held his pose. The ceremony should be over. An air of expectation and tension spread through the ship. Then, with a powerful flick of the wrist, Ballista sent the bowl flying through the air. There was a collective sigh as it splashed into the water. It glittered for a moment below the surface, and then was gone for ever.

‘Typical fucking barbarian,’ said the
frumentarius
from the Subura. ‘Always the big, stupid gesture. It cannot take away the omen, nothing can.’

‘That bowl would have bought a nice bit of land back home,’ said the North African.

‘He probably stole the thing in the first place,’ replied the Spaniard, reverting to their previous topic. ‘Sure, northern barbarians might be stupid, but treason comes as naturally to them as to any easterner.’