Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome (15 page)

Merlin had said he could see his own future – he’d told me that
specifically
– so how had he not foreseen what would happen once I’d left him?  How had he simply ignored all the facts that would have led him to the conclusion that keeping me in his make believe fantasy world was dooming me completely?  He should have known how weak the old me was, how ineffectual in times of torment he was, and how useless under pressure he could be.

No, he’d done it all on purpose because he was jealous.  Jealous of my ability to harness both orbs’ potential power for myself, a power he couldn’t even touch anymore.  I’d taken his precious blue orb into his very presence, and he hadn’t even tried to take it from me.  Whether he’d had two hours or thirty seven days, he hadn’t attempted to reclaim it for himself.

Because he couldn’t.

He had no more power in this world anymore.  Whether it was the magic the ancient Druids had once been thought to possess or the technological resources of some advanced precursor civilization that had prowled the Earth before recorded history, he had nothing anymore.  He was the sole survivor of some lost, dead culture, who needed some poor sap like me to do his dirty work for him.  He had no interest in me finding my way back home; he simply wanted me to reclaim both orbs so that he could take them for himself.

But I was on to him and his deceptive little scheme to rule the world as a god.  I was ready for him and his plans to attack me once I had what I’d come for.  I was prepared to kill him when the time came so that I could preserve what was rightfully mine.  I was the heir to Romulus and Remus’ power.  Even if it was only some odd happenstance or trick of fate that granted me that ownership, I did not care.  I would be the god, not him.

Because it was my destiny, and mine alone.

No one would take it from me.

No one.

I turned to Agrippina.  “Ready?”

She met my eye and smiled sweetly.  “Of course, Jacob.  And you?”

I kicked Felix into a trot and aimed him toward Rome. 

“I was born for this.”

***

Unlike the last time I had travelled to Rome on a clandestine mission of great importance, we’d yet to encounter any additional security along the roadways or when entering the city.  When I had entered Rome six years ago with Agrippina, Claudius had been in power.  He had locked the city down for fear that Caligula’s agents had been sent to reconnoiter and sabotage the city.

The only real difference this time was that traffic going into the city wasn’t nearly as heavy as it had been then.  Rome was a placid city, even in this time of war and upheaval.  Nestled safely in the middle of Italy, far away from most of its client states and conquered territory, it would be impossible to tell just from looking at the city that wars were being fought all over its great empire and in its name.  From as far as Spain in the west to Judea in the east, brush fires, rebellions, skirmishes, and outright wars were being fought, all because the leading men, and one powerful woman, of this particular city demanded it.

As we finally entered into the city proper, I was greeted with familiar sensations that tickled my nose and attracted my eyes, but I felt neither melancholic nor nostalgic over my return to the city that had once held such a special place in my heart.  All around me, Romans of various social strata milled around, going about their meaningless daily business that meant so little in a world that passed them by, almost unnoticed, and had me clearly at its center.  Even after so many years, this whole city seemed familiar to me, even if something was missing.  My mind kept going back to the days when I would run through the city’s streets, but my memories were incomplete, as they often seemed to be.  I remembered some form of black streak waving in the air beside me, like some kind of flag, as though it belonged to someone running beside me, but that was all I could recollect, so I ignored it.

Markets sold exotic clothing, spices, and jewelry imported from all over the empire, storefronts with homes built into them hocked locally made household wares or other items of interest, and food stands enticed patrons with freshly baked breads, spiced meats, vegetables and fruits of questionable freshness, or seafood that was more often than not smothered in the deeply pungent fermented fish sauce known as
garum
– the modern world’s less nuanced predecessor to Worcestershire sauce – prepared with fish guts.  It had a pervasive and disgusting aroma, and was a condiment I had never once tried in all my time in antiquity, having learned of its ingredients when I was in college.

In fact, I was so put off by it that now that I had returned to Rome, where the stuff seemed to flow through the streets like an extension of the Tiber River, I found myself gagging and suppressing the urge to disgorge my breakfast.  I lifted my fist to my mouth and did everything I could to re-acclimate myself not just to the smell of
garum
, but to all Rome’s otherwise dirty, shitty garbage as well.  Certain parts of Rome, like any city, were just as clean and beautiful as one would think when looking at a piece of art depicting the city, but the rest of the metropolitan area was not much cleaner than a dingy alleyway in New York City or Chicago.  Only within the more coveted downtown districts could one venture without the risk of stepping into something one would rather avoid.

But the streets in Rome’s outskirts were mostly clean, and the citizens friendly enough.  Nothing stood in our way as Agrippina and I led our small procession of horses through the streets of Ancient Rome, along the
Via Tiburtina
, which entered the city from the east.  Like General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines during World War II, I, myself, had returned to Rome, and even though such an occasion seemed like it should have been celebrated and momentous, it apparently wasn’t.

Beside me, Agrippina rode her white horse proudly, but with her face still covered by a veil.  She may have been Empress Agrippina the Younger of Rome, the beautiful and once-loved ruler of the Roman Empire, but her living legacy was an infamous one, and Romans weren’t exactly lenient with despots who overstepped themselves. Most ended up in an early grave.  Agrippina was too shrewd, though, to let something like that happen to her, so we’d agreed that she would conceal the fact that she had returned until she could contact whatever Praetorian force remained in the
Castra Praetoria
– their base of operation.  If one thing had changed about the Praetorian Guard thanks to my meddling, it was that they were a fanatically loyal bunch these days, and wouldn’t immediately turn on Agrippina as the bodyguard organization had often done to emperors like Caligula and Nero in my timeline.

Urbanization was heavy in our current location, with plenty of sharp-angled and cubed buildings erected along straight roadways with right-angled cross roads, but navigating Rome’s main thoroughfares was as easy as following a straight line.  The city’s famous seven hills made directions slightly more complicated, and the city was certainly far more complex in modern times, but as Agrippina and I approached the
Porta Esquilina
, a gate that still existed in my own time, I did not need my innate sense of good direction to know that we were approaching Rome’s epicenter.

The Servian Wall wasn’t particularly impressive, only ten meters or so in height, maybe more in certain places, but it had performed its job of protecting the inner part of the city quite well over the centuries.  By this point in history, it had not yet been breached by a foreign power, although Hannibal had certainly knocked at it. He’d never attempted to storm the city, though.  Only during Rome’s tumultuous civil wars about a century ago had the walls been tested and found lacking, but it was hardly the wall’s fault, since most of the time the city gates were deliberately left unlocked and open by one traitor or another.

Even so, there was something intimidating about our approach to the
Porta Esquilina
.  I’d spent months within the Servian Wall during my first year in Ancient Rome, but it was different this time because I’d also been to what I considered Pre-Ancient Rome as well.  Merlin had taken me to Rome’s seven hills before there’d even been a single brick laid upon them, when all the eye could see was wide open country with seven hills that sloped at varying degrees, creating a rolling vista of shallow valleys.  Everything had moved too fast for me to imagine either ancient or modern Rome superimposed on what I had seen with Merlin, but now that I was back, I was beginning to see everything in my world in a completely different way.

Once the Servian Wall was behind us, there was nothing standing in our way as we journeyed west, with the Esquiline Hill to our left.  It was one of the city’s higher hills, although its slope was shallow, and at the top were residential homes and a clustering of academic establishments.  It was most famous as the later location for Nero’s ostentatious Golden House, and Trajan’s sprawling bath complex even later. 

Thoughts of Nero’s extravagances made me turn to Agrippina beside me.  “When was the last time you saw your son?”

“Nero?”  She asked, appearing startled by the question.  She took a moment to think before turning to me.  “By the gods, I believe it must have been a year ago.  Why do you ask, Jacob?”

I shifted atop Felix to achieve a more comfortable position, keeping my eyes on those Romans we passed by in case of trouble.  “You aren’t afraid that all this time apart from his mother will harm him in some way?”

“I do not believe so, no,” she said confidently.  “Proper Roman men should not be coddled if they are to grow independent and strong.”

“Is that so?”  I asked, wondering why the other Agrippina I’d studied in history books hadn’t thought the same.

The Agrippina I knew and the Agrippina I had studied no longer seemed much like the same person.  The one I’d studied had coddled her son, taking the notion of spoiling a kid to a whole new level.  While it was undeniable that Nero’s crazed nature must have stemmed at least in some part from genetic predisposition, having a mom like Agrippina, whose ambitions had outweighed her accomplishments, certainly couldn’t have helped.  But this Agrippina had achieved everything she’d ever wanted and more.  She may have lost Claudius, the man she’d claimed to have loved, but she’d managed to inherit the mantle of empress in the process.  She was no longer driven by blind, wanton ambition because she no longer had anything left to strive for.  And because of her imperious nature, the time with her son must have been quite limited over the years.  In fact, her prior obsession with me had kept her away from him completely for over a year.

Could that have been enough to change Nero?

Was it possible that he’d grow up to be a benevolent and magnanimous emperor in this reality?  The kind that didn’t displace thousands of individuals so that he could build an ostentatious abode in no one’s honor but his own, or that would blame Christians for the fire that had destroyed much of Rome during his tenure, which later led to the murder and crucifixion of thousands.

I didn’t know.

“Of course it is so,” Agrippina reiterated.  “I was there for him during his first few years of life, doing all for him that any mother should, but no more once the time came for independence.”

I peered at her for a second while I said, “Galba once told me that he’d turned into a spoiled brat.”

“And what does Galba know about raising children?”  Agrippina demanded, and I was surprised at how personally she’d taken the comment.  “He is merely a fat, ugly crank who knows little more than battle strategy.  While I have not seen Nero in quite some time, I am confident that he has grown into a sound young man, and I am most excited to see him soon.”

“We have business first,” I reminded her, as the two of us reached the far west end of the Esquiline Hill. I could finally see the Viminal Hill off to my right, the Capitoline Hill ahead of us, and just barely in sight to the left, our intended destination: the Palatine Hill. At the foot of it was the Temple of Lupercal, and beneath that a hidden cave, the very place where I had first arrived in this period of history.

My life in Ancient Rome had just about come full circle.

“That is unacceptable,” Agrippina argued.  “I have not spent the last year of my life traveling from Germany to Judea and later to Britain, only to return home to Rome and be unable to see my son immediately.  You are most welcome to join me, Jacob.  Your travels have been more taxing than my own, and have lasted far longer.  Would you not like to spend at least one evening within the comforts of Roman civilization again?  When was the last time you had anything to eat besides campaign food?  Or had a hot bath?

I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had a
cold
bath.

I drew a deep breath, although there was no need to hesitate before answering.

“Fine.”

***

The journey to the imperial palace atop the celebrated Palatine Hill had taken only minutes, but the bath Agrippina had promised was still just a dream.  Agrippina had continued to conceal her identity while we’d curved around the Esquiline Hill to head south, but once we’d ascended the hill upon which her magnificent home was built, she had finally revealed herself for all to see.

It seemed fair to compare the Palatine Hill to a modern day subdivision in a swanky suburb, although a small one, owning its own complex of homes, temples, and businesses.  The hill itself had seen extensive renovation projects in recent years, one in particular thanks to the fact that Bordeaux had destroyed Augustus’ house seven years ago, and there would hopefully be many other projects still to come.  The most recent, however, was one I hadn’t yet seen and wasn’t familiar with, as it was a renovation spearheaded by Agrippina herself in the time after I’d been banished from Rome.