Rome 4: The Art of War (20 page)

‘You need messengers,’ Sabinus said. ‘My brother has many.’

‘He does, but everyone knows it and what Lucius knows of, he may buy.’

‘We can’t trust them?’ Sabinus sounded genuinely perplexed. He was a politician, but he had the blind spot of all well-bred Romans who think that men who vow to their service will be loyal for ever.

Gently, Pantera said, ‘When the future of Rome is at stake, we must trust very few and all of them secretly. I have a means of communicating with Vespasian and Mucianus, but I cannot reach the men of the Rhine and Balkan legions, or the navies at Ravenna and Misene, who are crucial to our cause. To connect with these, we need men with horses: honest men who can be trusted to deliver a sealed letter and return with its answer; resilient men who have good reason to be on the roads and can answer questions honestly when stopped; above all, men unknown to those who know Seneca’s routes and Vespasian’s. Lady—’ His eyes were on me, sharp, hard, direct. ‘Would I be right in thinking that the lady Antonia inherited her father’s message service, and that it was greater, in its day, than that of Julius Caesar?’

I blinked, slowly, thoughtfully, to cover my shock. ‘You would be correct, yes.’

‘And so would I also be correct in thinking that her freedwoman, her amanuensis, inherited that service when her mistress died?’

I could
feel Sabinus’ gaze burn into the side of my face. He was a decent man; kind, honest in his way, but for all his scheming in the senate he didn’t have the depth of deceit that was needed to stay three steps ahead of men such as Lucius. Or Pantera.

I was not sure that I had that depth of deceit either, but I knew where I was being led, if not why.

I said, ‘Did Vespasian tell you?’

‘No. If he knows, he would not say so to me. He will do nothing, ever, to risk your safety, and what I propose is not safe.’

‘Yet still, you will do it?’

‘If it can be done without risk to you.’ He took a breath and I thought him uncertain, which was unusual enough to be interesting. ‘I am asking that you cede control of the network into my hands. That you give me the pass-phrases, the names of the men, the means to set it all in motion. And that you trust me enough to allow me not to tell you all that I do with them.’

‘For my own safety, of course,’ I said, drily. ‘And so that if I am arrested, I cannot be made to divulge it. You, of course, will never be taken?’

Pantera had dreams that said otherwise and had been rash enough to mention them; there was nothing he could say to that.

I said, ‘I will cede you control, but only under the condition that you inform me of everything you do. If you are taken, we will find ways to leave Rome. We are not without resource, but if you don’t know what we plan, then we have that much protection.’

I had bargained with merchants all my life and I knew my own bottom line and how to hold it. There was a moment’s silent pressure and I saw him concede.

‘As you will, lady. If you would—’

‘
Having messengers is only the first step,’ Sabinus said. ‘You need a list of officers in the legions who may come to Vespasian’s side.’

‘Can you provide such a list?’

‘I can make a series of educated guesses. I can have them within a day, but we have the problem of how to get them to you without being seen. As you will have observed, we are closely watched. Perhaps if the lady Caenis were to be taken ill now, and was unable to dine tonight, she might recover and return again tomorrow? We can plan together what to do.’

So it seemed that Sabinus, too, wanted to join in the planning. I could tell Pantera didn’t like that. It was obvious that the fewer people who knew what he was doing the safer he was, but this was Vespasian’s brother, and Pantera didn’t have the authority to argue.

His lips were set in a straight, hard line and I decided that I didn’t want to be the focus of his anger on the day when it turned outward rather than in.

But he bowed to us both, saying, ‘My lady, if you give me a time to return to the porter’s inn, and then send Matthias to fetch us, we will bring the litter for you. Make your illness a good one; we shall be watched.’

Rome, 4 August
AD
69

I HAD NO
idea what was wrong with Vespasian’s mistress as her litter came back down the hill again.

She wasn’t screaming in pain or anything; well-bred ladies rarely do until they’re staring death in the face, and often not even then, but she was clearly unwell, in a decorous kind of way. The echoes of her anguish rippled up and down the Quirinal in a manner that seemed likely to draw her to the attention of even more cutthroats and bandits than carried her litter.

Sure enough, they turned up before she was halfway down; five or six, or eight, or possibly ten quietly shambling figures homing in on either side of the floating white cave like jackals on a new corpse.

The Guard detachments should have stopped them, but, bizarrely, I couldn’t see any Guards any more. They’d shadowed Caenis all the way up the hill and kept covert watch on the house she had been in from the moment she entered. Now,
though, they’d all vanished, even on this, the second largest street up the Quirinal, which was, at the very least, a dereliction of duty. When I was employed to protect Rome, my men and I had marched the hill in tent-units of eight and, believe me, none of us was ever out of sight of those coming behind or going ahead.

The litter-bearers seemed to have noticed neither the lack of Guards nor the bandits slowly closing in on them. They trotted across the courtyard to Isis’ shrine as if there was nothing amiss and continued down the hill.

I followed, a strategic distance behind. I hadn’t killed any Guards yet that night and my blood still sighed for the hunt, but this was more interesting: Vespasian’s mistress had been visiting Vespasian’s brother and one corner of her litter was borne, if my instincts were right, by Vespasian’s spy.

It may have been that the shady men following didn’t know that, but they were careful, not the mindless thugs of the night before, and if I had had to bet, I would have said these were off-duty Guardsmen, sent out under cover of night to do what could not openly be done by day.

The litter came to the steepest part of the hill. The bearers leaned back, stiff-legged, taking the full weight on their shoulders in an effort to stop their burden careering down the hill. Sweat shone from them, briefly, in the light of the few lamps. Then, in three paces, they left the lucent puddles behind and entered a lampless dark where there was no sweat, no shine, only the ghosted outline of the litter and the sound of men in labour, and a woman’s groaning.

‘
Go!
’

I didn’t need to hear the hissed order to know this was where the ambush must take place; I had set enough myself to see the obvious. But the command came in Latin, which confirmed all I had thought and gave me, if I needed it, the last excuse to intervene.

As the
men converged on the lumbering litter, I ripped off my money belt and wound it round my right hand. No pain now; the promise of battle made me well-nigh immortal.

I was Achilles. I was Zeus. I was the bear-man the Guards feared so much that Lucius had threatened to flog anyone who mentioned it in his hearing.

The attackers were running downhill, cautiously because it was dark. This might have been the Quirinal, but that didn’t mean the route was necessarily free of debris.

I caught the last man in the line before he reached the litter. Surprise was my best weapon and I needed to kill in silence. My left arm hugged my enemy’s throat, crushing it tight. My gold-weighted right fist struck hard below his ribs, from the side and slightly in front. It crushed upwards, seeking the heart, the liver, the kidneys; anything soft that could be bruised and broken.

There was a moment’s frantic struggle; fingers clawed at my arms, a gladius swung up and had to be blocked, a nailed heel struck down on my instep, ripping the skin; I had to step back to avoid it a second time.

The man was good, and fought well, but I had the first grip and that’s what counts. I braced my right fist against my left to make a lever, pulled once, hard, and the fight was over. I lowered the body to the ground.

I had armed myself during the day with a small double-edged knife which I had strapped to my left ankle. It came free with a tug. They thought me a bear, and so I used the blade to slash once across his throat, and then thrice more across his face: no harm in keeping up the illusion.

Ahead, the litter was no longer wobbling. At a single, quiet command it had been set on the ground and the four half-lame, squint-eyed, disreputable idiots who bore it were looking less lame now, more confidently competent. They bore cudgels that were the mirror of the ones the bandits had used against
the spy the evening before; they might have been the very weapons, collected and stored for later use.

For one last moment, the night was perfectly still. To the east, a star fell from the sky, leaving a long singing trail across the dark. As if on that divine signal, the remaining ambushers attacked. There were a dozen of them; a tent-unit and a half, and they came forward in a particular formation that all the Guards know, called the Goose Wing: a staggered line that curves into the enemy and can slice open a waiting block.

There was a gap at the far right-hand edge of their formation where the man I had killed should have been. I slotted myself into his place, wielding my little knife in my gold-weighted fist; once committed to a thrust, nothing short of a shield could stop it and these men weren’t carrying shields.

The nearest of the attackers was to my left. Reaching him, I turned, lifted my blade in salute and was rewarded by the fleeting grin of one who thought he had a friend at his side. The illusion lasted another two paces and then, launching forward, I struck my blade across his unarmoured throat.

Too easy! And there was not time to crow over the body. Happy now, but not happy enough, I spun, found another target, swept up the fallen gladius and used it in my left hand, to balance the knife in my weighted right. Another enemy fell, his throat laid open, his blood soaring in diminishing arcs on to the empty street.

A fourth came at me, blade thrusting fast, straight for my chest. I slewed sideways, felt it skitter past, shifted the gladius to my right hand and stabbed in, ferociously fast, hard, at an angle to the man’s unprotected flank.

There was a sense of resistance destroyed and I lost my fist in the blood-hot ribcage as the weight of my belt carried me through mere skin and flesh and fragile bone. The Guard choked on a gout of his own blood and toppled like a tree, dragging me with him.

I
stumbled, caught in a tangle of legs. I landed on my out-flung palm, felt my wrist crack, rolled, swearing, and—

And lay very still. A blade sliced the air above me and stopped on a level with my eye. Its point was black with flesh and gore.

‘If you move very slowly,’ said Vespasian’s spy, ‘I will let you rise. If you try to move fast, I will kill you, my gratitude for your help last night notwithstanding.’

About him was silence; a dozen or more Guards were dead or dying. Not one of the attacking force had lived. The odds were three to one in their favour and they had fought as motley a group of eunuchs, barbarians and squint-eyed youths as you could never want to assemble in one place.

But it was the Guards who were dead and not one of the litter-bearers so much as scratched. What could Otho have done with these men on his side? What could Vespasian do?

I lifted my hands to show they were empty, and levered myself cautiously to my feet.

‘We need to talk,’ I said.

‘One of us does,’ said Pantera, and took my right arm and twisted it behind my back and marched me over to where they had set down the litter.

Rome, 4 August
AD
69

I FELT LIKE
a block of carved granite, set in the flimsy surround of the litter.

Outside was a violence I had seen often at a distance, but never this close, never this personal. Matthias was armed with a cudgel –
Matthias!

He was a stranger to me, lost in a sea of silently fighting men, holding his own, but against unspeakable odds.

Long ago, Vespasian had offered me a blade and bade me carry it, ‘to protect my virtue’. I had laughed at him, poked his naked ribs, reminded him that slaves have no virtue to protect and if his name did not protect me, a blade was hardly likely to. ‘I’m not going to offer an assailant a weapon he may not have.’

It had sounded good, in the safety of his bed. Now, in the darkness of a hot summer night with men fighting outside, it was an offer I would have grasped with both hands, if only to make a clean end of myself before they came for me.

I lifted the hem
of my stola and considered whether I could rip it and make a noose for myself as braver women had done before me. The first, yes, the second, no; I didn’t have that kind of courage. Not yet, anyway.

I made irrelevantly unfulfillable vows to myself that I would never again allow myself to be caught in a situation where I was so impossibly helpless. And then I sat still: helpless.

Outside, the grunts of exertion grew fewer and further between. A voice issued a stream of quiet orders; Pantera, I thought. He was speaking a language I had never heard before and it warped his voice from what I knew, but the tenor of command changes little from tongue to tongue and I had lived near enough to soldiers for there to be a certain security in it.

I was surprised to feel the litter twitch in that edgy, erratic way that meant four men had taken hold of the carrying poles, and lifted. A hand appeared at the flap, and after it Pantera’s dye-darkened face. At his side, held in a grip that looked likely to cripple, was a bearded ruffian who smiled at me convivially, ignoring the blade angled at his jugular. In his turn, Pantera ignored him; his attention, at least outwardly, was all for me.