The Emperor's Knives (49 page)

Scaurus shrugged.

‘I won’t pretend that the man was any friend, Chamberlain. Let his family mourn for him, I have no tears to waste on the man.’

Cleander’s voice hardened.

‘Excingus was at the point of death when he was discovered, having been mortally wounded by some street scum or other, but he did manage to say one thing before expiring.’

The tribune smiled slowly.

‘Killed with his own knife? That seems poetic …’ He shrugged. ‘Did he say anything of note?’

Cleander stared at him for a long moment.

‘Not really, on the face of it. He was rambling, it seems, unmanned by loss of blood. Apparently his only discernible statement before he died was a single word. The word “impossible”. Having mused in the subject for a short while, I found my thoughts wandering back to the tunnel through which Senator Sigilis was spirited away under the noses of the men who were watching all of the exits from his property, including the two previously secret doors in the walls of his domus. A tunnel to the senator’s estate, which it seems was dug by men who had the gall to pose as workers refurbishing a shop. And it struck me that our mutual acquaintance, for all of his cunning, might have been tricked by something as simple as just such a tunnel? Perhaps, I mused, in overzealous pursuit of the centurion here, and in defiance of my orders, he led this collection of street thugs in seeking furtive access to the house in which your colleague’s wife has taken up residence, only to find several heavily armed men waiting for him? A tunnel would have been an excellent way for your men to take up their positions to wait for his intrusion without their presence being obvious to anyone watching the property on his behalf?’

‘A tunnel?’ Scaurus shrugged. ‘It’s a little far-fetched, Chamberlain. We’re infantrymen, not engineers. And besides, a tunnel from where?’

The chamberlain leaned forward with a hard smile.

‘From a certain recently opened barber’s shop, perhaps? I forgot to mention that the landlord of the property whose tunnel abetted Senator Sigilis’s escape from justice is the very same man who owns, or rather owned the shop in which your men have been practising the tonsorial arts for the last week or so. A landlord who appears to have sold up his properties for a bargain price and vanished, quite possibly on the same ship which I think it safe to assume carried Sigilis away on this morning’s tide. And by some strange coincidence, it seems that the entire block in which this shop of yours was located collapsed this morning, rather fortuitously without any loss of life. It seems that the occupants heard the structure creaking and fled the building before it caved in.’

He shook his head at the two men.

‘Doubtless, were I to order a sufficiently thorough investigation, my men would find some form of evidence as to your involvement in the senator’s escape and my informant’s regrettable demise. The former occupants of the collapsed insulae will doubtless surface soon enough, having spent whatever coin they were given in return for their absence when the block was pulled down by the same engineers who dug the tunnel in question as a means of disguising its presence. Were I to order this collapsed apartment block to be removed, piece by piece, I suspect that my men might well find its remnants, running from that shop straight to the house owned by Centurion
Corvus
here. Further, were I to order the fleet at Misenum to sea, with orders to overhaul and search every ship that left Ostia in the last day, I suspect that both senator and landlord would be back in Rome and awaiting their eventual punishments within another day or two. And were I to have you tortured, Tribune, or you, Centurion, or better still your doubtless wholly innocent wife and child, I expect the whole clever little deceit would be laid bare with remarkable speed.’

He sat back, waiting in silence for a response.

‘And the reason why we’re
not
being tortured at this very moment is …?’

The chamberlain nodded.

‘I thought that might provoke some comment from you, Valerius Aquila. The reason you’re not being tortured for your tribune’s transparent scheming – yet – is twofold. Firstly, I’m grateful for the brutally efficient manner in which you personally performed a series of badly overdue executions on my behalf. The Emperor’s Knives were an embarrassment waiting to happen, too secure in their positions for any other solution, given the need for their depredations to remain a closely guarded secret. And, to be frank with you, Excingus’s death is no more than the tying up of another loose end which would otherwise have required the attention of the men standing around you. So let me turn your question around, Centurion, since you’ve found your voice at last. Why is it, do you suppose, I haven’t ordered my men to slit your throats and dump you in the city sewer?’

Marcus shook his head in dark amusement.

‘That’s easy enough to work out. In less than a month, we’ve been instrumental in the death of the one man who was standing in the way of your absolute grip on power, destroyed a cabal of assassins who still owed some degree of loyalty to the emperor himself, and opened the way for you to replace them with your own men. We’re useful to you, aren’t we, Chamberlain?’

Cleander nodded.

‘Exactly. You’re resourceful, cunning, and, it has to be said, you take a rather more direct approach to whatever gets in your way than most of the men in my service. But as my father used to say to me, a man needs to be careful what he wishes for, given that wishes are rarely granted in exactly the form that we hope for. You came seeking the destruction of the men who killed your family, to release you from the unbearable pressure of your wounded honour, but was the end result really to your liking?’

He turned his attention back to Scaurus.

‘You leave me with only two alternatives, Tribune, given that I won’t be the only person with the wit to connect the events of the last few days and come to an accurate conclusion. I can wrap the protection of the state around you, and make you part of the organisation that runs the empire for a ruler who is, to be brutally honest with you both, far more interested in the contents of his bed than the incessant demands of governing one hundred million people. Or I can unearth your conspiracy to murder imperial officials and assist a known traitor in evading justice, with the inevitable result that you and your officers, and their families, will all be subjected to the full weight of the emperor’s justice. What do you think?’

Scaurus pursed his lips, looking back at the chamberlain with a steady gaze.

‘If it were my choice, I’d be tempted to take the hard way out.’

Cleander nodded.

‘I can see it in your eyes. But it isn’t simply
your
choice, is it, Rutilius Scaurus? And even you, seemingly without dependents, still have a sponsor whose eminence in Roman society might be more than a little dented were I to make it my business to take an interest in his doings.’

‘No, it isn’t my choice.’ The tribune shrugged. ‘What is it that you want from us, Chamberlain? I think I can speak for my officers when I tell you that we won’t be party to any “confiscatory justice”.’

The other man smiled wryly.

‘Oh no, I have something rather better suited to your particular collective skill set in mind.’ He held out a hand to his secretary for a pair of scrolls. ‘Here.’

Scaurus took them, opening the first and staring at it for a moment before looking up in genuine amazement.

‘
Legatus?
’

Cleander smirked at him.

‘It’s a strange feeling, I’d imagine, to have your life’s impossible ambition offered to you as an alternative to execution, and by a man for whom you feel nothing better than contempt? And the other scroll?’ He waited while Scaurus opened and read the second order, grinning at the look that the tribune shot him after a moment’s perusal of the contents. ‘And I think your young colleague’s somewhat charmed life as a fugitive from his father’s crimes should be put on a slightly more regular footing. I’ve therefore decided to appoint him to the tribunate, under your command of course, Legatus Scaurus, and by doing so to confirm that Marcus Tribulus Corvus is a trusted servant of the throne. Or rather, of mine. His previous life shall be our little secret, and shall remain so just as long as you both provide the emperor, and more importantly myself, with the appropriate combination of loyalty and effective service. He will be formally elevated to the Equestrian order, and thereby enabled to act as a military tribune under your command. As long as the pair of you perform effectively, you will be under my personal protection. Fail to do so, or display even the slightest sign of biting the hand that has chosen to protect you, and your falls from grace will be spectacular.’

‘What …’

‘You? Lost for words, Legatus?’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘No, Chamberlain. I’ve long since passed the point of amazement, I was simply gathering my thoughts. What is it that you want from us?’

‘There is a legion, Rutilius Scaurus, in a distant and rather warm part of the empire, that needs a firm grip on its collective neck. You are to relieve the current legatus, take command, and act as you see fit to restore Roman authority to that legion’s operational area without delay. Our frontier is being disregarded, Legatus, and I want those men who find it entertaining to display their contempt for us stamped flat, as an example for their kindred that won’t be forgotten for the next fifty years.’

Legatus and tribune stared back at him for a moment before Marcus found his voice.

‘And my family?’

‘Your family,
Tribune
Corvus, will stay here in Rome under my personal protection. And in any case, I wouldn’t have thought you’d want them with you, not where you’re going.’ Cleander stood, smoothing his toga out with his hands. ‘As to your men, Legatus, you can decide what to do with your Tungrian cohorts. Send them home, take them with you, it makes no odds to me, although I think having some friendly faces at your back might be a sensible idea, given the depth of venality to which your new command has succumbed of late. Who knows what form their resistance to your assumption of command will take? And now, gentlemen, you’ll have to excuse me. The emperor does so hate it when I’m late for our meetings. I’ll be sure to stress to him just how pleased I am to have delegated this small matter to such consummate professionals.’ He nodded to the leader of his freshly assembled group of assassins. ‘Escort the legatus from the palace.’

Scaurus and Marcus were led back through the palace’s maze, finding themselves on the steps of the Palatine Hill once more. Both men stared out over the Great Circus’s grandstands with mutual bemusement for a moment before Scaurus spoke, his voice flat and emotionless.

‘Legatus.’

Marcus looked at him, seeing the disgust in his face.

‘You do have a choice.’

The older man laughed, his amusement hollow.

‘Do I? Think about it for a moment, and you’ll come to another conclusion. If I refuse this honour, this pinnacle of a military man’s career, this
impossible
honour for a man of my class, then I make hostages to fortune of every man under my command. You will be executed, be under no illusions about that. Your family …’ He shook his head, unwilling to speak the words. ‘And the fifteen hundred men we brought here? I can imagine numerous ways to make every last one of them wish he’d never volunteered, and none of them will ever see their homeland again. Nor can I leave them here, at the mercy of every officer with a gap to fill in his ranks. There’s no choice for either of us, Tribulus Corvus. I must accept this position, and smile at the taste of ashes it will leave in my mouth, and you must accept the reality that you may never again use your family name in public.’

Marcus nodded, looking up at the sky above them.

‘In which case, Legatus, I suggest we go and break the good news to my brother officers. What was it that Cleander said? “Distant, and rather warm?”’

AFTERWORD

Gladiators. Even now, with the apparently elevated moral perspective of modern society, the word still carries a resonance far beyond that which might reasonably be expected for a concept as barbaric as the gladiatorial arts as exercised under the Romans. The iconography of this archaic blood sport is as vital now as it was then, and a constant flow of books, television and even films attest to its enduring popularity, although few of us would find the Flavian amphitheatre’s entertainment (we call it the Colosseum these days, named after a huge statue that used to stand alongside its walls) an easy spectacle to watch, were we given the opportunity to view such contests in their full bloody pomp.

The Romans seem to have borrowed the concept, as was so often the case with their ideas, weapons, tactics and ways of life, from their defeated neighbours. The first mention of gladiatorial combat, by Livy in 264
BC
, seems to have been exceptional, but the dominant powers in Italy before Rome, the Etruscans and Samnites, seem to have constructed purpose-built arenas long before that. Etruscan sacrifices to their gods seem to have involved an element of combat, and when Rome and its Samnite neighbours squared up for domination of the Italian peninsula between 343 and 290
BC
it is likely that prisoners of war on both sides would have been forced to fight to the death. But if the Romans were late to adopt gladiatorial combat as a form of public spectacle, they were as quick and morally uninhibited as ever to take that concept and develop it to its ultimate expression.

The first Roman gladiatorial fights on record were a relatively small affair, with three pairs of men chosen from among twenty-two prisoners of war to fight in a Roman cattle market to honour the memory of the
consul
Decimus Junius Brutus Pera, human sacrifices to appease the gods to the dead man’s arrival with that extra thrill of men fighting to the death. Sacrifices at funerals were always likely for exactly this reason, but the idea of making the men who were doomed to die fight each other was, from the Roman perspective, inspired. At first the games were restricted to funeral rites, although there was a steady escalation in the number of men involved, and therefore the prestige of the man hosting the event, until in 216
BC
the death of a man called Aemilius Lepidus was celebrated by twenty-two pairs of fighters. The number of fighters at an aristocratic funeral had become a mark of prestige, and nobody who considered himself to be a prominent member of Roman society could afford to be seen to skimp on such an event. It was Scipio Africanus, the famous republican general and politician, who started the move to disassociate the games from death rites when he held such a
munus
– the term means ‘obligation of honour’ – for his father and uncle several years after their deaths. An ambitious
aedile
by the name of Julius Caesar took the practice to a new level by holding a games for his dead father twenty years after his death, unashamedly presenting the public with no fewer than 320 pairs of gladiators in single combat in a move that paid him back with success at the next elections. The
munus
had been translated from a show of devotion to a departed relative to something far more cynical and calculated, the expenditure of large sums of gold, frequently borrowed by the politician in question, to buy public favour as the would-be office holder’s ‘duty’ to his constituents. The immediate result was that the hosting of games was banned for anyone seeking office within the two years of the event, and limiting the number of armed fighters to remove the risk presented to the republic by what were effectively highly skilled private armies.