The Emperor's Knives (24 page)

He looked about him with a triumphant expression, raising his arms to encompass the men gathered before him.

‘No, my friends! Tonight we shall be feasting upon the very best that the empire has to offer our very
particular
tastes! For tonight, for one night only, we will enjoy the fruits of …’ He paused dramatically, milking his audience. ‘The fall of the house of Perennis!’

His audience looked on in what Marcus could only construe as unabashed delight, men whispering to their fellows with huge grins plastered across their faces.

‘Oh yes, we’ve enjoyed the
leavings
of other great houses in our time. Few of us that were present will ever forget the sport that we had from the disgrace and execution of Senator Appius Valerius Aquila!’ Marcus froze at the words, willing himself not to leap forward and attack the man as Pilinius continued his speech. ‘But tonight, gentlemen, we have a feast to surpass even
that
epic Bacchanalia! Behold, our stars of the evening!’

A dozen men clad and armed in the same manner as the doorman on the floor above hustled a large group of women forward and into the circle of torchlight in which the senator was standing. Half of them were dressed in white, the others in black, and the purpose of the chequered robbers board worked into the hall’s floor became all too obvious.

‘Here you see before you Sextus Tigidius Perennis’s wife …’ A weeping woman was led forward by a pair of his men, forced to her knees and presented to them, the men gathered around her muttering their approval as Pilinius ripped open her thin tunic to reveal her breasts. He cupped one of them, squeezing the dark-skinned nipple between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Who among you doesn’t want to sample this lady’s charms, especially given her rather exotic birthplace?’

‘She’s a Dacian, you know.’ Avenus was whispering to the man next to him. ‘Perennis always used to boast that she was a wild animal in bed …’

‘And here!’ A girl was led forward, barely out of her childhood. ‘The Praetorian Prefect’s daughter by his previous marriage, young and unsullied! One of you will be taking her virginity tonight! And here, the lady’s handmaid, her hairdresser, her seamstress, and a large number of female household slaves …’ Pilinius paused for a wave of approving comments to die away. ‘Yes, gentlemen, enough women for
nearly
every one of us to get his prick wet before the night’s done! And for the rest …’ He grinned around him evilly. ‘I have a smaller number of the younger and more attractive male slaves from the Perennis household.’ He tapped the blade of the dagger sheathed at his waist. ‘And if you’re not inclined to a shapely boy, then you’ll know what to do with them!’

The men gathered about him laughed, exchanging excited glances that spoke volumes to Marcus as to their intentions towards the captives.

‘So, honoured guests, who wants to play robbers!’

A roar of approval greeted the question, and the guards started hustling their captives into position on the game board.

‘And now, young man, tell me more about these shows of yours in Britannia. Making captured warriors fight each other in the legion arenas is all very well, but it’s not the most intimate of entertainments, is it? What about the women, the female members of the aristocracy, eh? What about the tribal kings’ daughters? You must have had some fine sport with
them
?’

Marcus stepped forward, inclining his head deferentially and asking their escort the only question he could think of to distract the senator’s gimlet-like attention from Scaurus.

‘Forgive me, Pomponius Avenus, but I’m a keen robbers player. Which rules will we be using tonight?’

Avenus frowned.

‘Rules? Who the fuck cares about
rules
? It’ll be the usual, I expect, pieces removed by being bracketed to either side by the enemy, the king captured by being surrounded …’

The younger man flicked a glance at the massive playing board, seeing that the guards had positioned Perennis’s wife on the square usually taken by the white king, one man mockingly placing a rough wooden crown on to her head. The man playing the white side then stepped onto the board and pointed to one of the terrified slaves, indicating for her to be moved two spaces forward. A pair of the senator’s men took an arm apiece and forced her to move to the appointed square, and Avenus barked a harsh laugh.

‘Look at the stupid bitch, she clearly doesn’t have a clue about the game! The most fun comes when you get a decent player as one of the pieces on the board, as you can imagine. Once one or two of them have been dragged away,
then
we find out which of the remaining pieces can actually play the game! They’re the ones looking about them, working out who’s likely to be next to be taken, and we even once had a man who started shouting advice at the player controlling his side of the board!’ He laughed uproariously. ‘As you can imagine, our man immediately started playing to lose, which caused the idiot to become ever more hysterical! It was too, too funny for words!’

Marcus leaned in closer to the senator.

‘And when the pieces are taken?’

The patrician smiled at him approvingly, raising his own token and leering at its depiction of a woman being sodomised by a toga-clad attacker at knifepoint.

‘Ah, so you see the point of the game! When a piece is taken, young man, a lot is pulled from that bag Pilinius’s secretary is holding, lots corresponding to the numbers on the tokens that gain us entry. If your number is called then you are free to enjoy the piece that’s been taken from the board in any way you like. Any way at all!’ He smirked at the younger man. ‘I don’t know how you did it in Britannia, but here in Rome the custom is to screw the backside off her, or him, in any way you like. And after that …’

He drew a finger across his throat.

‘Of course, it doesn’t have to be a quick death, that’s all down to individual choice.’ He slid a slim dagger from his toga with a sly smile, displaying the evilly sharp blade before putting it back in the sheath concealed in his sleeve. ‘My preference is to open them up and take wagers on how long it’ll take them to die.’

Marcus stared at him, evidently aghast.

‘You
murder
them?’

Avenus frowned, his expression between disapproval and surprise.

‘Well of
course
we murder them! Why else would Asinius Pilinius take such great care to ensure that there are no witnesses to these exclusive gatherings of Rome’s most influential men?’

The younger man leaned forward and gagged, dry retching and clinging to Avenus’s toga. The senator pushed him away with a horrified expression.

‘You’re not really man enough for this,
are
you? You, come here!’ He beckoned to one of the guards, who walked across to the three men with a well-practised look of inscrutability. ‘Take this young fool outside for a breath of air, before he pukes all over someone. Take
special
care of him, you understand? Very
special
care.’ He turned to regard Scaurus with a jaundiced eye. ‘And
you
, tribune, are you in the wrong place, too?’

The heavily built man nodded impassively and put a hand on Marcus’s sleeve. Allowing himself to be drawn along in the guard’s wake, he shot a glance back at Scaurus as the tribune shook his head in disgust, replying to Avenus’s question in a disappointed tone of voice.

‘It shows how much you can get to know a man and still be surprised by his reactions to the simplest things. To think, an officer who I saw stand firm in the face of a massed barbarian charge only six months ago, reduced to a useless choking wretch by the simple prospect of killing a slave. You did the right thing in telling that man to kill him, of course, I doubt he’d have kept his mouth shut about what he saw here.’

The patrician nodded approvingly, looking across the room with the evident hope of catching their host’s eye. Scaurus pulled gently at his guide’s toga, lowering his voice to a level that forced the older man to bend closer.

‘We’ll have to go and tell Pilinius what happened of course, but first let me restore a little military pride by explaining to you how we
actually
did things in Britannia. There was one particular tribal nobleman who I had beheaded in front of his wife and daughters, after which I deflowered each of the girls in turn while she watched. And when I was done with that, I went one better with their mother …’

The senator, his interest piqued, fastened his attention on the tribune only to have it distracted by the first piece to be captured on the robbers board. With a scream of terror the handmaiden, her eyes rolling with fear, was manhandled out from between the two black-clad pieces sweating to either side of her, and was carried away from the game. One of Pilinius’s household slaves dipped his hand into a leather bag, his face impassive as he read the number carved into the wooden ball he had selected at random.

‘Number seven!’

One of the guests raised his token in the air, the glint of its polished silver winking in the torchlight as he stepped forward to claim his prize, dragging the woman away by her hair.

Avenus grinned approvingly.

‘Now there’s a man who knows how to give us a spectacle. That one’s exit from this life won’t be a swift one, I can guarantee that!’

Senator Albinus presented himself at the Pilinius domus’s front gate with an imperious lack of regard for the guards’ demand for his invitation.

‘A token? Of course I don’t have a bloody token! Do I look like the sort of pervert who attends your master’s debauchery? I need to see the senator urgently, as I have news of the greatest import to him!’

He folded his arms, daring any of the guards to raise a finger against him, and his bodyguards planted themselves around him with equal obduracy. The leader of the group of men minding the gate beckoned one of his men.

‘Go and fetch the senator’s secretary, you’ll find him at the inner gate. Tell him we’ve got a guest without an invitation by the name of Senator …?’

‘Albinus. Decimus Clodius Albinus. And hurry! Senator Pilinius has unwanted guests on his property, men who mean to do him harm!’

The guard walked swiftly away through the villa’s garden, leaving Albinus to listen with a grim face to the music, laughter and occasional shriek that was emanating from the far side of the wall. He paced up and down while he waited, his anger and impatience growing as the time stretched out, and he was on the verge of approaching the gate guards again when a slightly built man with high temples and a bookish look to him emerged from between the closest of them. He bowed to Albinus with the proper degree of deference, extending a hand to indicate the garden beyond the guards.

‘Senator Albinus. Senator Pilinius has asked me to extend warm and convivial greetings to you, and to assure you that you’re more than welcome to attend the main party in the house, and to avail yourself of any and all entertainments that take your fancy. The Senator’s parties are well known for the promise that nobody ever leaves without having taken their fill of food, wine and the very finest female company.’

Albinus shook his head impatiently.

‘That’s not what I came for man! If I want to be debauched I’ll do it somewhere a damned sight more private than this bloody garden orgy! I came to warn Pilinius that he has imposters attending his private party! I think you know what I mean, the gathering within a gathering where he slaughters slaves for his closest friends’ decadent enjoyment?’

The secretary sniffed.

‘I really can’t comment on the senator’s private affairs, sir, but if you tell me these men’s names I’ll ensure that they don’t gain access to the grounds.’

‘I’m telling you they’re already here! Two men, both close-shaved with military haircuts!’ The secretary started, and Albinus jabbed a finger into his chest. ‘You’ve
seen
them, haven’t you?!’

The secretary turned and ran, bursting through the surprised gate guards and heading for the house, leaving Albinus open-mouthed in his wake. He made to follow, only to find a wall of muscle blocking his way.

‘Here, I’ve got to—’

One of the pair of men blocking his path shook his head forbiddingly.

‘I’m sorry, sir, I can’t allow you in unless either the senator or his man there give you permission to enter, unless you have an invitation? The lads at the back entrance will tell you just the same.’

Albinus fumed, raising his voice to shout at the hard-faced guard.

‘Of course I don’t have a
fucking
invit—’ He stopped in mid-sentence. ‘Back entrance?’

Marcus sucked in a lungful of the cool night air as he was ushered through the door, looking about him at the house’s torchlit rear garden as the guard half turned to close the door behind him. Where the front of the domus had been adorned with groups of trees and bushes, the rear was little more than a well-ordered open space. Its lawns were edged with white stone, and the drive that led to the gate was surfaced with gravel that made a pale grey ribbon in the moonlight. There would be no chance of stealth, he realised, pivoting to grasp the guard’s hair and smash his temple brutally forward into the door he had just closed, jerking the head back and knuckle-punching the stunned man in the throat before he could recover his wits to call for help. Allowing his choking victim to slump to the ground, he stamped down hard on the man’s exposed neck with his boot’s edge, feeling the spine snap beneath his heel. Swiftly stripping off his toga, he manhandled the corpse out of its belt and tunic, dressing himself in the dead guard’s uniform before turning to head for the gate with a purposeful stride. The gravel crunched noisily beneath his booted feet, and as he came within a dozen paces of the gate another guard stepped forward from the wall’s shadow, his voice thick with the accent of the slums.

‘Stop for a wank, did you? I suppose they’ve started fucking and cutting up the—’

The knife he’d taken from the dead guard’s sheath was rammed up into the oncoming bodyguard’s throat before he even saw the threat, the point lodging deep in the base of the hapless man’s skull, and he sagged bonelessly onto the gravel.