The Ides of March (13 page)

Then he’d lowered his gaze to look at the centurion’s body, covered with cuts and gashes.

‘So many wounds,’ he whispered with dismay in his voice, ‘so many wounds . . .’

Publius Sextius wondered why, in this moment of total solitude, in the middle of a night-long journey through the deserted forests of the Apennines, with a snowstorm raging all around, he should remember those words.

In front of him, the inscrutable Sura plodded on at a steady pace, holding the torch high, staining the immaculate snow with its ruddy reflection, leaving behind him the prints of a good, strong, patient horse who continued, one step after another, further and further up the twisting path, under the skeletal branches of the beeches and oaks.

It occurred to Publius Sextius that someone might have gone ahead and be setting a trap. Maybe Sura was leading him into an ambush from which he wouldn’t escape. Maybe the message would never arrive at its destination in time. But then he remembered how the innkeeper had insisted that he spend the night in the
mansio
, safe inside under the watchful eye of four legionaries, including Baebius Carbo of the Thirteenth. No one knew where dawn would find him tomorrow.

Sura lit the second torch and threw the first stub into the snow. It glowed for an instant, then died in the darkness of the night. A bird surprised by the sudden light of the torch took to the sky with a shriek that sounded like despair before disappearing far away in the valley.

The wind died down. There wasn’t a sound now, or traces of life of any sort. Even the rare milestones along the road were buried in the snowdrifts. All Publius Sextius could hear were Caesar’s words, repeated endlessly in his lonely, empty mind:

‘So many wounds . . . so many wounds.’

9

In Monte Appennino, per flumen secretum, a.d. VI Id. Mart., secunda vigilia

The Apennine Mountains, the secret river, 10 March, second guard shift, ten p.m.

M
USTELA FLOUNDERED
helplessly in the swirling waters of the underground torrent, dragged along by the current. The whirlpools would suck him under the surface, where he tried to hold his breath for as long as he could in a struggle to survive until he was tossed up further along, where he would spit out the water he’d swallowed, gulp at the air and then disappear under the waves again.

He stifled his cries when the current smashed him against the rocks and he could feel blood oozing from his cuts. More than once he thought he would lose his senses as he hit his head hard or took such a pounding from the waves that he didn’t think he would survive.

Suddenly he felt something grazing his belly. Gravel and sand. He grabbed at an outcrop of rock and managed to stop and to catch his breath as he lay in a small bend of the river where the water was shallow.

Panting uncontrollably, he tried to work out whether he had any broken bones and to ascertain what was pouring from his side. He touched his hand to his mouth and could tell from the sweetish metallic taste that it was blood. He stuck his fingertips into the wound and discovered that the skin was torn from his hip to his ribcage on the left side. However, the gash had not penetrated too deep and so he hoped that no serious damage had been done.

He could hear the sounds of the waterfall he’d already gone through coming from upstream. Further downstream there was a different noise, deeper and gurgling, but the utter darkness filled him with an anxious uncertainty verging on panic. He had no idea where he was, how far he had come and how much further he had to go. He’d lost all sense of time since the moment when he’d lowered himself into the icy river and let go of the last handhold along the water’s edge.

His teeth were chattering and his limbs were completely numb. His feet hung like dead weights and jolts of pain shot up from his side and one of his shoulders. He backed into a craggy area that turned out to be a small, dry cave. It was warmer there and big enough for him to crouch in. He even managed to stop the bleeding by tying a strip of fabric ripped from his clothing around the wound as a bandage. He let himself fall back and drowsed, more out of exhaustion than any desire to sleep. When he came to, he couldn’t have said how long he’d been there, but he knew that he had to continue his journey through the bowels of the mountain. He invoked the gods of Hades, promising to make a generous sacrifice if he managed to get out of their underground realm alive. Then he dragged himself back towards the water, lowered himself into the freezing river and let the current carry him away.

For a long time he was tossed around, battered, knocked under and thrown back up, as if he were in the throat of a monster, a sensation that felt more real to his terrified mind than being in the river.

Then, little by little, the speed of the current began to lessen and the channel became wider and less precipitous. Even the crashing noise of the waves died away. Perhaps the worst was past, but he couldn’t be sure. He had no way of knowing what new dangers the river might have in store for him.

But he was so exhausted from the cold, his endless struggle and his constant gagging as he coughed up the water he had swallowed that he merely let himself go, abandoning himself like a man would to death. A long time passed, how long he couldn’t tell.

The darkness had been so enveloping and so dense until then that he couldn’t believe it when the faintest glimmer of light came into view in the distance. Could he have reached the end? Would he see the world of the living again? Hope instilled a surge of energy and he dived into the middle of the river and began swimming. The vault of the tunnel within which the water flowed seemed to lighten imperceptibly, so that he was no longer in pitch blackness. This was the promise of light more than light itself, but with the passage of time it grew stronger until he became aware of the pale glow of the moon brightening the night sky.

Utterly exhausted by the enormous strain on his body and frozen half to death, Mustela fell to the ground, finally outside, finally under the vault of the sky, on a low, sandy bank. He laboriously dragged himself towards dry land and collapsed, without a single drop of strength left in his body.

In Monte Appennino, ad fontes Arni, a.d. VI Id. Mart., ad finem secundae vigiliae

The Apennine Mountains, at the source of the Arno, 10 March, end of the second guard shift, midnight

T
HEY CONTINUED
on the ever narrowing road, one closely following the other, black figures in the reddish glow of the torch, moving over the snowy stretches. Publius Sextius forced himself to count the milestones, when they weren’t completely covered, and to keep a lookout for signs of animals that might attack them.

Oppressed by his solitude and worries, he turned to his companion.

‘Don’t you ever talk?’ he asked.

‘Only when I have something to say,’ replied Sura without turning, adding nothing further.

Publius Sextius went back to his thoughts, brooding over the revelation that had upset him most: that Mark Antony had been asked to participate in a plot against Caesar and, even though he hadn’t accepted, hadn’t told Caesar either. That could only mean one thing: he was on no one’s side but his own. Quite a dangerous quality in a man. Antony must have reasoned that, if the plot was successful, the conspirators would be grateful to him for his silence, and if it failed, he would have lost nothing. But how, then, to explain that gesture of his at the Lupercalia festival? If he was really so smart and so cynical, how could he have committed such a huge error? He had chosen to stand out by making such a blatant move at such a sensitive moment. Perhaps he’d always deliberately acted the part of the simple soldier, who knows nothing of politics, in order to hide his bigger ambitions. But even if that were so, what sense did it make to attempt to crown Caesar king in public? Evidently Antony had known, or had thought he knew, how the crowd would react, so why didn’t he worry about Caesar’s reaction? Even if he thought he could continue to hide behind his pretended ingenuousness, Antony couldn’t ignore the fact that – if a conspiracy was being planned – his gesture would contribute to making Caesar more vulnerable and more alone.

So why had Antony chosen to do such a thing? What could the reason possibly be?

Publius Sextius continued turning it over in his mind, again and again, but it was like beating his head against a wall. Finally, he gave up and instead watched the snow descending silently in huge flakes in the light of Sura’s torchlight as they proceeded slowly, ever more slowly, while he would have preferred to race like the wind, to devour the road, to reach his destination before it was too late. Maybe it was already too late. Perhaps all his efforts would prove to be in vain.

There had to be a reason. Fleetingly, when the vice loosened and the cold air let him breathe, he felt he was close to finding a solution. The answer must lie with several key people, not many, perhaps three or four. With the balance of power or interests among them. He forced himself to consider every possibility, the likely motives of each individual and how they might overlap or conflict. He would have liked to jump to the ground and use the tip of his knife to sketch out the complicated connections on the immaculate snow, in the way that he would use the hard ground of an army camp to plan the action for his unit during a battle. But then he would lose track and his thoughts would dissolve into thousands of small, confused fragments, at which point he would realize he was no closer to a solution than he had been at the start and his gaze would drift again to the spinning white flakes.

Now and then he even suspected that the map Nebula had given him in Modena, before disappearing into the morning fog, was leading him straight into a trap. But even if that were so, he convinced himself, he had no choice and had to run this risk. The alternative was arriving too late to pass on his message.

Sura now broke one of his interminable silences to announce that they were close to the source of the Arno river and were on an ancient Etruscan road. He said nothing more.

Publius Sextius rode on, torturing himself with his thoughts all night long.

In Monte Appennino, a.d. V Id. Mart., tertia vigilia

The Apennine Mountains, 11 March, third guard shift, after midnight

O
NLY RUFUS
was suffering as much pain as he struggled to reach the Via Flaminia Minor in as little time as possible, which meant cutting straight across the mountainside. At first he followed the barely visible path that wound down the slope forming the western embankment of the Reno valley to get to the river. He managed this with considerable difficulty, often having to dismount and lead his horse by the reins, until he arrived at the riverbank. The weather had taken a turn for the worse. The falling snow was now mixed with a fine, relentless drizzle that trickled down his cloak and dripped on to the ground from the hem.

He found the ford by following the sound of the water rushing between the rocks and urged his horse into the river. The water deepened at the centre, rising to the horse’s chest, but they were soon treading on a bed of fine gravel and sand, having reached the opposite bank.

The path on that side ascended steeply, but when Rufus met up with the snow again the low glimmer of the white blanket helped him to get his bearings, enabling him to set forth on the path he had used so many times before. He soon reached the hut of a shepherd he knew well and he stopped there to drink a cup of warm milk and eat a chunk of bread and cheese. The cabin was lit inside by the flames in the hearth. Its walls, plastered with dried mud, were completely blackened by the smoke. The whole place stank of sheep, from his host to the hulking Molossian hound lying on the ash that circled the hearth, a hairy beast that everyone called by a different name. Rufus scratched him behind his flea-ridden ears by way of greeting.

‘What are you doing out here at this hour?’ asked the shepherd, in a mix of Latin and his Ligurian dialect that not everyone could decipher.

‘I have an urgent message to deliver,’ replied Rufus between one mouthful and the next. ‘What’s it like on the summit?’

‘You’ll be able to make it over, but be careful. I’ve seen a pack of wolves up there: an old male, two or three young ones and four or five females. They might get brave in the dark and latch on to your horse’s hocks. You’d best take a brand from the fire and make sure it doesn’t go out until you’ve reached the top.’

‘Thanks for the warning,’ said Rufus.

He left a couple of pennies for what he’d eaten and drunk, then, with firebrand in fist, he went back out into the open. At least here he felt that he could draw breath again, clearing the foul stench that had saturated the hut and filled his nostrils.

He took his horse by the reins and started to make his way up on foot, lighting his path with the brand he held high in his left hand. He wondered from what distance the light could be seen. Perhaps at that very moment his commander was standing on the upper terrace at
Lux fidelis
and looking his way. He could almost hear him cry out, ‘There he is! I’ll bet a month’s pay that that bastard has already made it to the crest!’

He didn’t have far to go, in fact. Up ahead, less than half a mile away, a group of towering firs marked the ridge.

His horse was the first to sense the wolves and Rufus saw them himself an instant later, the flaming brand reflected in their eyes with a sinister gleam. He didn’t even have a stone to throw at them and they didn’t look likely to retreat. He shouted and waved the brand. The wolves ran, but stopped just a few paces further away.

Rufus shouted again, but this time the wolves did not retreat.

In fact, they began to circle around him, growling. This did not bode well. They were carrying out the pack’s strategy for isolating prey and attacking. And he was their prey, or the horse, or both of them.

His horse was bucking and becoming difficult to control. If he panicked and fled, it would be all over for Rufus. He tied the reins to a tree branch so he could move more freely, then clutching his knife in one hand, he continued to wield the brand, which had burned right down to a stub, with the other.