The Great Game (12 page)

‘Idiots!’ snapped the prefect as the men beside him relaxed again. ‘Come on.’

Rufinus, breathing slowly, hurried to catch up. ‘Sir?’

Paternus glanced over his shoulder and spotted the new guardsman.

‘Rufinus? Where are you bound?’

‘The emperor wishes me to return to barracks and get myself prepared for his announcement this afternoon.’

‘Yes?’

Rufinus shrugged uncertainly. ‘Respectfully, sir, I’ve not been allocated quarters or told where to go?’

The prefect nodded wearily. ‘Go to the headquarters and find the Praetorian clerk’s office. He can sort you out.’

Rufinus bowed and then strode along behind them at a respectful distance. The four Praetorians passed through the light-well and into the richly-decorated corridor, only to find two more figures waiting half way along. Rufinus saw the prefect’s shoulders rise and slump as he sighed in resignation.

A young man, perhaps the same age as Commodus and wearing a deep blue tunic and expensive sandals, sat in a decorative chair by the wall, a look of sorrowful concern on his face. His dark hair was oiled and tightly curled, a two day growth of stubble on his face apparently an affectation rather than an accident. Blue eyes the colour of the sea below Tarraco stared out from beneath bushy black eyebrows that furrowed slightly.

Behind him stood a man considerably older, wearing tunic and breeches of plain grey, a practical cloak about his shoulders. His face was full and slightly chubby, lined with the cares of years and wrinkled around eyes that were disconcerting: a steely grey with a slight, peculiar shine. His brown, wavy hair was giving way to white at the temples and beginning to thin at the front, while his beard, fully grey, was clipped neatly. There was something about the man’s expression that instantly put Rufinus on his guard.

‘Ah, Paternus. How is our young master bearing up at this most unfortunate time?’

The prefect fixed the speaker with a flinty look, meeting those shiny grey eyes as though negotiating with an enemy commander. Rufinus, close enough to hear Paternus’ teeth grinding, paid careful attention. ‘
Master
Cleander. I should have known you would be hovering at the edge of today’s events, waiting to swoop down and take the richest pickings.’

The older man, a wealthy or important freedman judging by the dress, simply smiled indulgently. ‘Don’t play games with me, Paternus. You haven’t the wit. Is Commodus open to visitors or have you sealed his quarters shut as tightly as that arse of yours?’

Paternus’ teeth were grinding again and suddenly the young man stood, holding his arms up placatingly.

‘Gentlemen, this is hardly the time for such vitriol.’ His voice was silken, smooth and quiet, like listening to well-played lyre music. Rufinus felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck in response.

Paternus turned his gaze on the slight young man and Rufinus was surprised to find that the baleful glare the prefect had cast at ‘Cleander’ had been replaced by a look of such scornful contempt that it barely registered the speaker as human.

‘I have no doubt you will squirm your way into his presence soon enough, but not yet. Give the family time to deal with today’s events before you start injecting your poisons.’

The young man’s face fell. He looked genuinely hurt by the comments and stepped back, lip quivering. Cleander smiled a slightly feral smile.

‘Your hold over the empire is weakening, Paternus. Commodus will not indulge you as his father did.’

‘What the emperor chooses to do in the wake of his loss is
his
affair and no more mine than it is yours. Get out of this house before I lose my temper.’

Cleander shook his head sadly and laid a hand on the tearful young man’s shoulder. ‘Come, Saoterus. Let us partake of food while we await the emperor’s summons.’

The pair stood and made their way back along the corridor, out into the atrium. Paternus stood for a moment, perhaps allowing time for them to disappear from sight before he moved on.

‘Vultures! Aurelius isn’t even cold yet and they’re already gathering to hook their talons in the boy. Snakes, vultures and catamites, the lot of them. If half Aurelius’ friends in the senate were here, these vermin wouldn’t dare poke their faces out into the light.’

Rufinus kept his mouth carefully closed and waited until Paternus sighed and walked on before continuing behind and trying to remain more or less invisible. Today’s events were becoming more and more complex with every turn and he was ill-prepared to deal with it all.

Silently, he followed them out through the corridors and rooms of the commander‘s house, the prefect clearly seething as he strode on ahead, the other two guards remaining carefully quiet. A moment later they strode out into the grey of late morning, already half a hand-width of snow beneath their feet and more falling from the sky in increasing quantity with each passing moment.

Without pausing or exchanging words with him, Paternus and his two men turned away and walked off toward the Praetorian barracks. Rufinus, his senses numb, battered by the input they had received this morning, stood in the doorway, the flanking guards watching him warily. His gaze dropped to the floor where snow was settling on his boots. Three fresh sets of footprints led off in the wake of the commander and his guards. Two more, clearly that of the two freedman, disappeared the other way, out toward the main street.

Briefly, he considered following the pair, but such foolishness would likely only lead to yet more nerves and discomfort.

Shrugging, he strode out and made for the clerk’s office. He was a Praetorian now and his emperor had need of him.

PART TWO: ROMA

VI – Journeys and recollections

RUFINUS sighed wearily and slumped a little further in the saddle. The front horns of the leather seat had been rubbing his hips raw for five days now and every step the beast took was a fresh hell of scraping pain. The segmented plate armour, never a good choice for horseback travel, felt as heavy as Atlas’ burden. The cohort was not a unit of Praetorian cavalry as such, but speed of travel was Commodus’ highest priority and so the cohort had been mounted for the journey.

On the bright side, the weather, which had been warming for months now, had improved dramatically as soon as the column had descended the southern side of the Alpes and made for Italia. Now, the blue sky was beautifully accompanied by the buzz of bees, the chirp of birds and the scratching of cicadas in the long grass. The height of summer may have just passed while the emperor remained in Vindobona, but autumn in Rome promised to be warm and comfortable.

The column had joined the Via Flaminia at Ariminium on the Adriatic coast and then turned southwest for the almost two hundred mile crossing of the mountains. Fortunately they were travelling outside the snow and avalanche season, and there was a sense of weary gratitude among the men as they closed on the last leg of the journey. The grey-brown pall that hung in the air over the next rise indicated the presence of the greatest city in the world, a city that was the ancestral home of the Rustii, even if Rufinus himself had never set foot there.

The change in weather conditions over the past six months was echoed in the changes visible in the emperor and his entourage, and yet more in the newest member of the emperor’s guard. Gone were the shaggy black hair and itchy beard. Rufinus was, as he had always wished to be, neatly trimmed and manicured, clean-shaven and tidy.

Months had passed in Vindobona as the emperor developed the frontier and Rufinus settled into the routine of the guard, which
was greatly different to that of the legions. The few men he had known since the beginning, those he had fought alongside in that snowy woodland dell, became good friends, particularly Mercator. The majority of the First cohort, however, would only exchange words with him as required by duty and a few, whose names had been permanently etched into his memory, had taken a serious dislike to him.

The troubles, instigated by three men in particular, had begun with the traditional ‘cold shoulder’ and quickly moved on to petty tricks. Rufinus had taken it all stoically; such trickery was the norm with a new man in a unit. But the third week had seen an escalation that had driven the feud to unacceptable limits: the theft of his silver spear, the ‘hasta pura’, had finally broken his composure.

That evening, as the ringleader, Scopius, entered the latrine to relieve himself after his evening meal, Rufinus had slipped through the door behind him, closing and bolting it. A quarter of an hour later he had emerged, having revealed to Scopius in very physical terms his background in inter-unit boxing. The bulky, sneering guardsman who had plagued him for three weeks spent nine days in the hospital and would complain of his left knee during wet weather for the rest of his life. Unsurprisingly, the silver spear had mysteriously reappeared on Rufinus’ bunk that same night.

The following months had settled into seething disaffection with no overt moves and the whole situation had calmed to an uncomfortable simmer. Indeed, the pasting Scopius had received, though no evidence as to the identity of his assailant could be found, had earned Rufinus a certain grudging respect among a number of the older veterans. Perhaps things would change now they were returning to their home.

The column, strung out along the Via Flaminia, was beginning to pass the first structures, sporadically dotted by the roadside and carefully constructed just far enough away from the great tombs, funerary monuments and columbaria of the rich and famous as to be respectful and proper. Small pockets of folk appeared outside their residences or places of work, gawping at the great column as it passed.

Guardsmen rode alongside the carriages that held the emperor and his companions, keeping the ordinary folk at a safe distance. Commodus’ carriage was particularly fine and large, almost a moving palace, with two separate rooms, containing couches, tables,
a bed, cushions and curtains, drawn by four oxen, each titanic in size. The two carriages that followed on close behind carried the new emperor’s circle of friends and advisors.

One of the commoners, standing in the shade of a veranda and wheezing after his labours, bellowed ‘Hail Caesar!’ and threw up his straw hat into the air in an expansive gesture. The shout was taken up by the rest of the citizenry and soon became a deafening roar of acclaim that accompanied them toward the crest of the hill beyond which lay the Porta Fontinalis and the great city itself. The cry echoed round Rufinus’ memory and brought back images of that northern city on the border of the empire:

Standing in the snow on a bitter afternoon a few days after his transfer, in the rich, grand forum of Vindobona, white tunic and gleaming armour lost among hundreds of identical figures, Rufinus had watched the passing of the only emperor he had ever known and had seen the young man who had co-ruled Rome for two years slide seamlessly into the role.

Silent and bleak, Commodus had stood with his family watching, apparently impassively, as his father passed from the world of men and grey-clad mourners with their tragic masks swayed around the square, wailing and sobbing. The watching crowd added their moans and cries of anguish, the whole cacophony brought to horrendous climax by the ear-rupturing addition of the legions’ musicians, blaring out the funeral dirge.

Commodus was the first to take one of the blazing pitch-soaked torches and touch it to the pyre, watching as the flames ripped through the incendiary wadding between the timbers. Lucilla was close behind, followed by her husband, the Syrian Pompeianus, then Commodus’ wife Bruttia - stunning even in her plain funeral garb. Paternus and Perennis added their flames, and then others: many more, one after the other, until the pyre became a great orange inferno, the features of the former emperor lost to the ravages of the fire.

As the pyre collapsed in on itself, taking with it the charring remains of Marcus Aurelius, the crowd’s moaning slowly turned from wails of despair to hollow calls of respectful loss and finally someone in the crowd had shouted ‘Hail Aurelius… Hail Caesar!’ to the burning morass.

The rites and ceremonies over, Commodus had made a speech to the grieving populace, reminding them that the great man was not
simply dead, but had been transformed and now watched over them in a far more powerful manner, from among the Gods. He had reminded the people that, despite the sadness of the day, there was still reason for them to celebrate, as the ever-present threat of the barbarians at their door had been broken. He had promised to rule as wisely as his father and to always hold the people of Vindobona and the province of Pannonia dear to his heart as the foundation of his tenure as emperor.

The army had ‘hailed Caesar’ for his largess when he had announced their return to Rome, but Rufinus suspected no one would have cheered as loud as the defeated tribes. Commodus had brokered a deal with the captive leaders that was, in retrospect, marvellous for all concerned. Marcomannia was a poor, unproductive land and so, instead of Roman settlers trying to eke out a living in this barren land, trying to turn a profit and send their goods to Rome, the barbarians would retain their own lands, using them to supply Rome with grain, goods, gold and men. Rome would benefit, replenishing some of the finances lost in the wars, while the barbarian leaders showered the emperor with praise, gratitude and personal gifts, not only for their sudden and unexpected freedom, but for the right to retain control over their former lands.

Hail Caesar
!

Here: a new salute; a
first
salute to a new leader; a man with youth, strength, vision and intelligence. The peasants and freedmen along the sides of the Via Flaminia bellowed their chant again and again, just like that cold day back in Vindobona. There had been two such cries that day, and for very different reasons.

Suddenly the column crested the hill and Rome came into view.

Rufinus drew in an astonished breath.

In Hispania he had lived near Tarraco, an Imperial provincial capital, replete with all the great public works one would expect; a seething, busy mass of endless crowds and deafening noise. He had visited the ports at Barcino and Ampurias as well as Saguntum and Dianium, and even travelled south once to visit the great sprawl of Carthago Nova, the city of Hannibal. He had, on his way to join the Tenth Gemina, passed through the ancient ports of Narbo and Massilia.