Rome 4: The Art of War (21 page)

‘Lady, I apologize for the inconvenient delay. Sadly I am unable to continue my duties as your bearer. Matthias will take my corner to deliver you home. It’s not far; a few hundred paces and we’ll have you safe, if such a thing exists in Rome tonight.’

The door flap dropped. He hadn’t asked for my permission. Why would he when he was so effortlessly in command? And Matthias had lowered himself to carrying my litter. Truly, the day had reached an unprecedented level of strangeness.

For a brief moment, I allowed myself the luxury of hating the man who had brought us to this, and his paid henchmen, and Vespasian, who sent him in the first place. It didn’t last long, but it
filled me with a hot, red, savage rage, which sustained me round the corner into the Street of the Bay Trees, and on the hundred yards to the front door of my house.

Which was where I should have dismounted and dismissed the men. I had lifted the flap and was stepping out when Pantera’s hand caught my arm.

‘Stop,’ he said, and I did. ‘Someone’s in there. The door’s been unlocked.’

‘Guards?’ I asked, looking as far as I could up the empty street. ‘Where are the watchers?’

Pantera nodded. ‘Indeed. Where are the Guards? They may be the ones inside, but if not, they have taken themselves away. Or been ordered to leave. There are some things even paid watchers are better off not seeing.’

He gave orders again, one pitch above a whisper, and his four men – Matthias was his now, sprinting to obey – made a ring around me, facing out, cudgels hefted, while Pantera thrust his captive ahead of him as a shield and barged fast and hard in through my terrifyingly expensive, worryingly unbarred front door.

Rome, 4 August
AD
69

‘
JOCASTA?
’

‘Trabo!’

‘Jocasta!’

‘Pantera?’

‘
Domitian?
’

This last, of course, was me, coming late across the threshold, hemmed about by rough men who smelled of garlic and olive oil and rich-sour battle sweat.

Domitian stood ahead of me in the atrium, holding one of my best wine glasses in his hand. The flask was on the floor by the couch on which his guest was reclining. Or she was until Pantera barged in.

I think that’s the first time I saw Jocasta as she was, not acting. I had seen a woman in utter control of herself, playing the whore and the diplomat and shifting from one to the other without pausing for breath.

Now, she flung herself to her feet and up close to Pantera’s prisoner. With
a delicacy that was entirely surprising, she traced her exquisite fingers round the margins of the raised welt on his cheek that promised to grow into an angry bruise.

There was wonder and a real affection on her face, maybe something more; certainly a shared history that went back longer than this one night. It occurred to me that I had watched Pantera devote to her the kind of attention I didn’t think he lavished on anyone else, but had seen nothing but courtesy in response. Here, with this bandit she had called Trabo, was more than courtesy.

Sharply, she said, ‘Why are you holding him thus? He is Trabo. I told you.’

This to Pantera, who had not set down his knife. By way of answer, he tightened his grip and pushed his man further into the room.

I was ahead of him, lighting candles. It was one of Matthias’ duties, but I thought I had lost Matthias to Pantera; certainly he took his orders from him, although he remained behind with us when the other three ruffians left at Pantera’s quiet order: to guard the house from the outside, or to leave so they were not caught, I still don’t know which.

So I lit candles, which gave me a measure of calm and allowed me to study the changing tensions on the faces of the four men and one other woman in my atrium.

Walking from one wall bracket to the next, I passed Domitian who had been flushed and happy, the lord holding forth in his house, and now was peevish and angry and coming to realize that his love had eyes for other men, and they for her.

Every man in the room had eyes for her, actually. Even Matthias, who until that moment had adored me and reserved his lust for one of the silver-skins on the Palatine, paying him in monthly silver for a fidelity they both knew to be fiction. But here and now he was gazing at Jocasta as if she were Aphrodite walked out of the sea.

But these two,
much as I loved them both, were the bit players in this drama; the two men at the centre of the room commanded the better part of my attention.

The bearded bandit – Jocasta had called him Trabo – was grinning at Jocasta with a delight that pushed the boundaries of decency. He was not stupid; he had seen Domitian, and even as I watched, he glanced over and lifted a single raised brow and let his eyes ask the question.
This one? Him? Really?

Jocasta had her back to both me and Domitian and neither of us could see her answer, but the ruffian’s face did not fold as it might have done, only creased in a dry, knowing smile that crushed my heart.

Poor boy. He had had his hour of joy and had seen it end.

Pantera knew already of Domitian’s infatuation, of course. Still, as he watched Jocasta and Trabo, I saw surprise sweep across the landscape of his face, and something else, gone too fast to identify. It might have been love. I thought it was at the time.

Jocasta had asked him a question. He answered it in the same even voice he had used since the first attack. ‘He watched your house all morning. And this evening he was following me. He may be the most famous tribune of Otho’s Guard, but just because Vitellius has put a price on his head doesn’t make him an ally to our cause.’

‘Have you asked him?’

‘I am about to.’

Nobody asked how Pantera knew Trabo’s movements, or Jocasta’s. In her place, I would have asked that first, but the moment had gone and we have to suppose she knew his methods. In any case, Pantera had moved his knife so that it angled more steeply at Trabo’s neck, which captured everyone’s attention.

‘It will cost me nothing to kill you,’ he said. ‘The lady Caenis will disapprove of blood on her tiles, but it can be washed away. So you have
the length of my patience to explain what you are doing and why. It would be a mistake to assume it long.’

Trabo lifted a slow hand in salute to me. Without moving his head – to do so would have been to slice his own throat – he looked towards me.

‘If the lady Caenis would care to open the secret place in the back of my belt, she will find therein a letter addressed to her.’

I didn’t move. A slave’s training had little to recommend it, but it taught me never to move unless required to. It stood me in good stead now.

‘A letter from whom?’ asked Pantera.

‘The emperor Otho. It was the last thing he wrote before he killed himself.’

Trabo’s cultured voice roughened at the mention of the death. If he was an actor, he was a good one, but we were in the company of two excellent actors already, that he was a third was always a possibility.

‘Jocasta will take your belt,’ Pantera said. ‘If you move, you will die.’

Jocasta unlaced the belt. It sagged in her hand, weightier than it looked, which is always a sign that there’s gold inside. The leather had a long, narrow filet along the back on the inside, which, when opened, revealed a fold of fine paper, bruised to fragility, dark with sweat. My name swept along one face of it, in fine angled script.

‘Is that Otho’s hand?’ Pantera asked.

‘It is.’

I was unexpectedly moved: I had liked the importunate boy who pushed his way to the throne. In the brief flower of his glory he had written to me often as to a sister, asking advice, sharing thoughts; and now this last letter.

There were ways to do this properly. I had a small desk in an alcove beyond
the fountain. I carried the letter there and Matthias came to his senses at last and brought me the tall soapstone lamp in the shape of a swan that was my last gift from Antonia.

He did not lay down his cudgel, even then. I wondered if he ever would; does every man live to fight, if only he has the chance to find it in himself?

The letter’s seal was recognizably Otho’s: on the pale yellow wax, a sheaf of grain surrounded by the sun. He was ever an optimist, right to his death. My knife sliced through it, clean and clear. I scanned the salutation and the lines, and looked up, sharply, at Pantera’s prisoner.

‘Have you read this?’

‘No, lady.’ Trabo gave the faintest shake of his head and even that scraped his skin across Pantera’s knife, bringing a feather of blood. ‘But I watched him write it: he wept as he wrote his name at the foot.’

Jocasta said, ‘Can you read it for us?’

I read aloud, lightly, swiftly; Otho’s writing was strong and angular and easy on the eye.

‘
To the lady Caenis, with my thanks for your help and past comforts. You will know by now that I am dead. Trust the man who brings this; he is one of my best and his heart is the truest I have known. He will do what it takes to aid you in whatsoever you desire.

To that same end, I append a list of those men who will be true to you and yours. If the freedwoman of Antonia can rouse those who need it, it may be she will be raised as high as she deserves. None deserves higher.

Know that you have my heartfelt support, and gratitude. Rome’s future lies in your hands, and my good name.
’

I
looked up. ‘Below, he has written a list of a good two dozen names. He is sending to me what he could not – dared not – send to Vespasian.’ My heart was a great stone in my chest, rocking too hard, threatening my ribs. ‘He is telling us who will defect from Vitellius. He wrote this in April. Vespasian wasn’t hailed imperator until the first of July.’

That date had been engraved on my liver since I first heard it. You will find it at my death, if you care to cut me open and look. ‘How did he know? How did he
dare
?’

My question was for all of them, but it was Trabo who, gently, said, ‘We all knew, lady, who was most fit to lead the empire after Otho. Our question was only would Vespasian accept what was offered, not whether that offer should be made. As to how Otho dared – he was about to die by his own hand; nothing in life could touch him. That gives a man great freedom.’

Trabo was near to tears and wrestling with something else. I waited to hear it; we all did.

Red of eye, he said, ‘My lady, forgive me. I should have brought the letter sooner, only he told me to move slowly, to stay behind Vitellius’ advancing army for my own safety, and I did so, thinking he had written a signal of affection, nothing more. I’m sorry.’

Out of charity, I asked, ‘He gave this to you himself? At the end?’

‘At the very end, yes. I was with him when he …’ His hands described a small and futile circle that ended near his chest. His colour was high and tears stood proud at the angles of his eyes.

There was no question that he was genuine, and if he had not forgotten Pantera’s knife, he cared about it a great deal less than he did before I opened the letter.

‘Tell me,’ I said.

And he did.

Rome, 4 August
AD
69

IT HAD BEEN
dawn on the sixteenth of April. Otho was in his tent. We had not yet had news of the defeat at Bedriacum, but we had had no notice of victory either, so we knew it wasn’t good. He – the emperor,
my
emperor – abhorred civil war. He would not risk men’s lives to save his own.

He had truly believed that Vitellius would surrender his claim on the throne when he saw that the Guard supported
him
. He had not understood, however often we told him, that Vitellius was only the mask, that the men whose faces hid behind it did not care whom the Guard followed; they wanted victory for their man, whatever the cost in lives and blood.

That morning, the sixteenth, Otho at last understood, and would not let any other man pay the blood-price but himself.

Standing in Caenis’ atrium, with Pantera’s knife still at my throat, I closed my eyes, and shut away those watching me. Without effort, I was in another world, a sunlit morning, with birdsong, and
the sour aftertaste of a failed battle. The past was far more alive to me than the present.

Otho was dressed in his emperor’s battle armour, polished and peaceful, as a man is who knows that his end has come and he controls every moment of it.

Around him lay the scattered ashes of his correspondence, burned by his own hand so that none might be called to account for aiding him. The lead lottery was not his fault; the list of those who had helped to assassinate Galba had been given to his steward after he left Rome, and was supposed to await his return. None of us had imagined he might not come back.

Thinking always of others, Otho had arranged carriages and safe conduct for all who could leave: his generals, his brother, his loyal followers. He had kissed them goodbye, one by one, and ushered them, weeping, from the tent, until only I was left.

By design, he was standing in the cut of dawn sun as it slanted through the part-open tent flap. His hair was tousled; no amount of grooming would control it. His skin was clear, his gaze steady. He held out his knife to me, hilt first.

‘Lord, I cannot,
will
not—’ My throat tore apart with grief. My hands tied themselves behind my back.

Otho flashed the quick, easy smile that had won me and all his men long before Galba named his unfortunate heir and so precipitated his own death. He said, ‘I want you to sharpen it for me. I would trust no one else. Unless you’d rather I called back Plotius with his weeping and promises of easy victory?’

That was unthinkable. I dragged my hands from behind my back. ‘You honour me, lord.’

Otho had the stone, and, although it was impossible to put a better edge on the knife, the rhythmic sound of iron stroked against the grit was a balm of sorts to my grieving soul. Also, it covered the sound of Otho’s careful whisper.