The Great Game (19 page)

Rufinus felt guilt wash through him. Allectus had been nothing but friendly and helpful, and he hated risking this potential friendship - and his entire career - but the sight of Perennis and Scopius together in the streets was too suspicious to let pass.

‘I’m really sorry, Allectus.’

‘For what?’ the man asked suspiciously, but Rufinus had already burst into a run, away from the cart to the side of the road, where he ducked and charged between two small groups of people, catching a blur of silver and white ahead.

The rain battering down on him, soaking him to the bone and saturating his white crest so that it sagged idiotically, Rufinus hurried along the paving as fast as he could, dipping between the members of the public who had braved the weather. Beggars reached out from shadows at the side, from urine-soaked alleys between buildings, desperately calling for alms, their stumps and rotten, gangrene-eaten limbs in horrifying evidence. Paying them no heed, Rufinus kept his eyes locked on the white figures moving down the street’s centre. Slowly, he was catching up with them; they seemed unhurried, talking in a conspiratorial huddle as they moved.

Suddenly the thought struck him that, as they in their white tunics and armour stood out among the colourful crowd, so would he for the very same reasons. Frowning, he hurried on, hunching down slightly to keep himself partially-hidden behind the traders’ stalls that stood at the street side, leather covers keeping the rain from their wares.

Rufinus’ world blurred. His hob-nailed boot had slid on the shiny, wet surface of an uneven cobble, and the hapless guard found himself falling forward, his helmeted head slamming into the wooden strut supporting a stall. A gallon of water sprayed from the jostled leather roof and further soaked him as he struggled upright to the amusement of the people nearby, collecting his shield.

His ears were ringing and his forehead felt badly bruised where it had jammed into the rim of his helmet. As his eyes swam into focus, he could just see the figures in white further down the street. Shaking his head, he refocused on the stall and the merchant, who was yelling at him with a spittle-flecked chin.

‘Sorry’ he said sheepishly and, frowning, added ‘how much are your cloaks?’

The merchant glared at him and said, after a moment’s thought: ‘to you? Thirty sesterces!’

Rufinus deliberated for only a moment before whipping the money from the purse at his belt and grasping the low-quality, almost threadbare, brown wool cloak from the stall. He’d expected more deference to a guardsman from the common folk, but was more than used to being treated less than respectfully.

Without further delay, he jogged on past the market, ripping the ostentatious crest from his helm, tucking it under his belt, hauling the cloak over him and pulling it tight. The sensation of crushing his sodden armour to his skin beneath the dry wool was unpleasant to say the least. He tried to keep his shield concealed beneath the cloak and briefly considered disposing of it and asking Allectus for a replacement later, but he had probably burned that bridge already, so he struggled on with his bulky equipment beneath the voluminous sodden drab wool.

On he hurried, down the slope of the street, watching the pavement beneath his feet for slippery cobbles and keeping an eye on the three figures ahead. Moments passed and the press of people thickened as they approached the heart of the city. A brief glance back revealed that Allectus and his cart were far enough behind that they had vanished from sight. For a long moment, he lost track of the three figures in white and shining silver and worried that they had ducked into a doorway unnoticed.

As he reached a short, flat stretch of the road, his head swung this way and that, trying to locate his quarry. A sudden flash of reflective steel caught his eye and he ducked back to peer down a
side street he had almost passed. Perennis and his two men had turned off the main street and were making for the bulk of the baths of Traianus.

A social outing? Surely not.

Hurrying along the shiny, wet street, the wool cloak becoming heavy as it soaked through, Rufinus tried to keep step with the three men, just thirty paces or so back among the crowds of people.

He had been paying so much attention to the slippery paving beneath his feet, trying not to make a spectacle of himself, that he was almost on them before he realised that they had stopped. Not far from the grand, triple arched entrance to the baths where former bathers huddled, reluctant to move out into the rain, the three men stood in a huddle.

Realising that they were scanning the street, Rufinus dropped his shield to the ground at the street’s edge and sat heavily on it, his heart pounding as he pulled the sodden cloak tight around him, holding out his arm in the manner of a beggar. Scopius’ gaze passed over his hooded form as it peered suspiciously at the entire street, and Rufinus was surprised that the man couldn’t hear his heart beating even from there.

What were they
doing
?

The crowd parted as they passed the three men like a river round an island. It didn’t do to jostle a Praetorian - unless he was a young, accident prone one, apparently.

Rufinus was beginning to wonder whether he should move, his backside becoming soaked, freezing and numb on the uncomfortable wet shield, when the guard he didn’t know pointed away down the street and said something to Perennis. The three turned to look and Rufinus followed their gaze.

His heart lurched.

Lucilla, the emperor’s sister, was striding down the road towards them, her sandals sending up small splashes of rainwater, while the most radiant, most unexpected figure in the world hurried along behind her, holding a wide parasol above and keeping the rain from touching the noblewoman.

Rufinus stared, his mind whirling. The crowd was parting as she moved and he realised that the most powerful woman in the empire was not alone. A dozen or more heavy thugs with mail shirts and swords belted at their waists accompanied her like a moving wall
of sour-faced muscle, keeping the public a good ten feet from their mistress.

Lucilla? Why was
she
here? Meeting with Perennis in a crowded part of the city, away from both Praetorian camp and palace? Suspicious and peculiar.

Sadly, any hope of a logical thought process involving the strangely clandestine meeting was driven from his head by the intoxicating presence of the slave girl who had supplied him with endless pleasant dreams in the cold nights of Vindobona. However much he wanted to focus on the emperor’s sister, his eyes refused to be drawn from the girl’s alabaster face, framed by lush, black hair, the smile on her lips making his skin tingle.

Then, suddenly, she was lost from sight as the two parties met and Lucilla’s hired men fanned out, giving them plenty of room and obscuring Rufinus’ vision. For an irritating moment, he sat playing the part of miserable beggar while a big man with braided hair effectively blocked his view of everything interesting.

He was lost in an inner reverie when he realised the man had moved and, slowly and carefully, so as not to be too obvious, he stood, managing with only partial success to secrete the shield beneath the cloak as he rose. The party had entered one of the shop fronts that lined the wall of the baths - a tavern according to the sign, four of the thugs standing at the entrance and blocking access. As Rufinus watched, the other occupants were unceremoniously ejected by the mail-clad hirelings.

A moment longer Rufinus stood, loitering in the doorway and wondering what to do next. Was there a way he could overhear the meeting?

Clearly not.

With a start, he realised that he had been staring at the tavern and that one of the thugs had met his gaze. Uncomfortably, he looked away, hiding his face quickly in the folds of the cloak. The big man’s hand dropped to the hilt of his sword and he stepped out of the doorway. Panic rising, Rufinus turned and hurried away along the street, only glancing back as he reached the far corner of the bath complex. He had not been followed. Taking a deep breath, he walked on, putting distance between himself and the strange meeting before tucking the ragged sodden cloak into his belt, replacing his crest and hefting his shield into place.

As he dropped down a sloping street he’d not seen before and emerged near the ludus magnus, where ragged captives were forged into magnificent gladiators, his mind turned over all this new information. No matter how he thought about it, he could come up with no answer as to why Perennis might meet with Lucilla in such a manner that boded well for anyone.

One good thing had come out of it, though: he knew now that Perennis’ name would likely motivate Scopius into doing whatever he needed.

Nodding to himself, the bare bones of a plan beginning to form in his head, he recalled Allectus’ instructions and ran through them in his head. He would have to hope he could persuade the quartermaster not to report his absence. Making for the high, curved marble façade of the great Flavian amphitheatre, he passed the huge structure and headed for the impressive square bulk of the temple of Claudius on the hill opposite. A large, monumental nymphaeum stretched along the side wall of the temple, marching up the slope of the hill, great curved niches sporting statues of Gods and heroes. Sadly, the fountains seemed not to be flowing at the moment, though plenty of water ran in torrents down the stonework, graciously supplied by the lead-grey clouds.

Nodding appreciatively as he scurried past, he made for the crest of the hill, where he could see the great arches of an aqueduct crossing the road, an impressive monument to the skill of the engineers that had supplied Rome with its enviable water supply.

The crowds thinned out as he moved away from the city’s centre. Excited now at the prospect of a peek into a hidden military world that even most officers would never see, he hurried beneath the arches of the great aqueduct and out the other side, his eyes fixed on the high walls of the Castra Peregrina, where even now he could see Allectus’ cart passing through the gate. Amazingly, given the slowness of the carts, he had caught up with them before they’d arrived.

‘Watch out!’

Something hit Rufinus in the side and knocked him flat. As he lay floundering on the ground, he looked up. A man in a legionary tunic with a stylus behind his ear and a curly, blond beard lay on top of him, a great wooden pulley swinging back and forth on a rope roughly where his head had been.

As Rufinus’ mind swam, the assaulting man stood and grasped his arm, hauling him upright and raising his other hand to restrain the swinging block.

‘Sorry about that, sir. Civilian labourers. Ten of ‘em ain’t worth a single legionary, eh?’

Rufinus stared at the man and then turned his head to take in the aqueduct. The structure was clearly undergoing some kind of repair, wooden scaffolding climbing the piers of the great bridge, covered in men, buckets of mixed mortar, piles of bricks and coils of rope. Part of the water channel at the top of the structure was dissembled, though most of it had already been put back into place with fresh mortar.

Rufinus turned back to the man. ‘Sorry. Miles away. What’s going on?’

The military engineer shrugged. ‘Repairs. Channel had blocked in a couple of places and the water pressure at the palace had dropped. We’ve had a mandate for a week’s work to clear it, but it only took three days, so we’re clearing out the crap from the settling basin while we’re at it.’

Rufinus’ gaze followed the pointed finger and took in a large, square, featureless structure that stood astride the aqueduct just to the east of the road crossing, the water channel passing into the far side and then emerging once more at this one.

‘Sorry. Don’t know what you’re talking about?’

‘Settling basin?’ the engineer repeated, slowly and patiently, as though he’d had this sort of conversation a thousand times. In Rufinus’ experience, no one liked to talk about their work more than an engineer. Obsessives, the lot of them. ‘Settling basin separates out all the dross from the flow so that only fresh water reaches the terminus, but the basin fills up over time and occasionally needs clearing.’

Rufinus eyed the large square, brick building. ‘So you’re busy clearing it out now? It’s full of mud and stuff?’

The man laughed. ‘No. Done it. Too fast for these people, me. If I’d had some of my lads from the Third with me, we’d have done it in half a day, mind.’ He took a deep breath. ‘No more work after this. Tomorrow we finish the outer facing and take down the scaffold, and then the day after, we can remove the block and let it flow again. I daresay the emperor’ll be pleased. They’ve had to rely
on the three springs on the Palatine for the past few days for their fresh water. You see…’

But Rufinus wasn’t listening any more. His eyes strayed back and forth across the building. A thought occurred to him. ‘Is there a smithy anywhere nearby? A hardware store?

The man shrugged. ‘No idea, but I expect so.’

Rufinus nodded. ‘Thanks for saving me a blow to the head. Had enough of those recently.’

Ignoring the strange look on the man’s face, he turned his back and strode off toward Allectus’ cart as it entered the camp of the Frumentarii.

His plan was coming together nicely, with the aid of Fortuna.

X – The dark places of men’s souls

PITCH blackness. A curiously echoing silence was broken by a low groan.

‘Ah… the beast awakens.’

More grumbling, then a clank and a squawk.

Flick – flick – flick.

Sparks flew like shooting stars, dispersing wildly.

A glowing ember on dried grass became a small flame.

Rufinus’ face swam into focus, demonic - lit from beneath with an eerie red-orange light.

The figure in the darkness recoiled with another clank and more groans.

Rufinus busied himself lighting the four small terracotta oil lamps, three in an arc around them on the floor, the fourth on a ledge in the wall.

Scopius groaned again.

Wherever he was, the place was cavernous and dark as Nero’s heart. There was a faint smell of mould and decay and a cold, dank chill ran up the burly guardsman’s spine. The light still wasn’t enough to illuminate their surroundings, even with four oil lamps flickering. Not trusting his voice enough to speak, Scopius stared at the cloaked figure of Rufinus, white tunic flashing occasionally beneath the cheap wool of the covering.