318
No Roads Lead To
Rome
R.S. Gompertz
Via del Prat
No Roads Lead to Rome
© 2009 R.S. Gompertz
All rights reserved
Smashwords Edition License Notes:
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold, or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
2nd Edition
SW 061511
Print ISBN: 978-0-9825829-0-9
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009940539
www.noroadsleadtorome.com
Vía del Prat
Prologue
When it comes to assassination, execution is everything.
With no witnesses to testify otherwise, and no documents to the contrary, Hadrian seized the reins of the Roman Empire. His claim to the imperial purple, a last-minute writ of adoption, was as thin as the vellum it was scribbled on. To avoid civil war, the legions rallied behind him. After the deaths of four opposing senators, the surviving majority gave their unanimous consent.
On the site of the Golden Milestone, the geographic center of the world from which all distance was measured, Hadrian built a column commemorating the former emperor’s conquests and with great ceremony, buried Trajan’s ashes at the foot of the monument.
Then, reversing everything Trajan had fought for, Hadrian issued a confounding decree. Status quo might be Latin, but it was not his credo. The empire, he said, was swollen to the point of bursting. Rome was overextended, her borders too vast to maintain. Where Trajan had spent his lifetime burning the benefits of civilization across the sacred groves of ungrateful barbarians, the new ruler would shrink the empire. He would set free those who could never be governed, and build a wall around those who could.
One
I
AD 123
Centurion Marcus Valerius, a veteran from North Africa, struck fast. He knocked the suspicious conscript to the ground and planted a wet sandal squarely on his chest. The quarry foreman where Valerius had spent the night insisted that the young man called Gaius Severus had been drafted, but Valerius took nothing for granted. He was too seasoned to accept anything or anyone at face value, the sharp tip of his short gladius was the perfect instrument to probe for truth.
“What’s the best stone for building an aqueduct?” Valerius snarled. Severus looked harmless enough, but before delivering him to the local garrison, Valerius wanted to double-check the kid’s bona fides. A military levy in a peaceful province was not without precedent as soldiers were always needed elsewhere in the empire, but something about Severus did not bode well.
Severus tried to speak, but the sharp sword point pressing into his throat made it difficult to do more than gurgle. He looked up the length of the blade at the short, bronze-skinned centurion and realized that the masquerade was over.
Severus’ recently cropped hair—the only disguise he could muster in the day since the security sweeps—slouched backward in stiff brown clumps. Following his father’s instruction, he had fled to the quarry, only to be snared in a trap and marched back toward Tarraco, the provincial capital. Now he was flat on his spine with steel at his throat and mud wicking up his backside. Alive or dead, he would soon join his unfortunate kin.
“You don’t fool me, kid,” Valerius said. “You’re as phony as the rest of this province.”
Centurion Valerius had been in Hispania for a week and already hated her rutted roads and cold, gray skies. Somewhere along his journey from Mauritania, the sun had disappeared, confirming to him that the upper reaches of the world were bathed in darkness. Valerius did not know why Governor Biberious had summoned him, but he hoped to leave as soon as he secured his pension and honorable discharge from the emperor’s service.
A murder of crows cawed loudly as they passed overhead; there was no mistaking the omen. Something was amiss. Silently cursing the brown hills and northern chill, Valerius choked down a shiver, ran a chapped hand over his close-cut hair and scanned for more portents.
“A real stonemason would know the answer,” Valerius said. His small muscular frame tightened. “Assume your life depends on it.”
“There’s an aqueduct just outside of Tarraco, sir,” Severus said cautiously. He paused to think about the question, but instead wondered if Valerius was also masquerading. What kind of legionary would get so worked up about an aqueduct? Severus tried to twist out from underneath the knife, but Valerius gave him no quarter. “Some say it was built by Pompey the Great, sir.”
“I didn’t ask for a history lesson, schoolboy.” Valerius tightened his grip on the gladius, the perfect tool for justice at arm’s length. It would be sad to kill a boy, but sadder yet to be killed by one. A worthless conscript would not be missed, a missing spy wouldn’t be sought after, and either way, the rain would wash away his forgotten blood. “The aqueduct—what’s it made of?”
“The columns and arches are made from blocks of travertine, from the quarry where you found me.” Severus stuttered at first, but then spoke more rapidly. “Tufa stone would work better, but we don’t have any here. The coliseum at Rome is made of both. I’m told that my grandfather helped to build it. It probably won’t last long though, because—”
“Enough.” Enough to suspect, but not enough to strike. Valerius withdrew his blade an inch.
“Did you know, sir, the columns are hollow and filled with concrete?” Severus shifted away from the blade and continued, shrill and rapid. “Quicklime and a mineral powder; you mix it dry so it sets hard, especially when you’re sealing a watertight pipeline or rendering an open channel. Underground conduits and lead pipes are better for long hauls—more difficult for sneaky farmers to tap. I’d wager that half the piss in Hispania started as stolen water.”
“Stop!” Valerius shouted. “You talk too much for a quarry boy.”
Valerius sheathed his gladius but kept a watchful eye on Severus. That the kid had answered the question proved nothing; any half-trained spy would have thought through the basic details of his cover story. Valerius had not spent the past twenty years outwitting Hades himself just to be entrapped by a stool pigeon like Severus.
“Get up. Start marching unless you want to feed the jackals.”
Gaius Severus stood up slowly and kept a respectful distance from the cranky old veteran. Valerius looked to be in his thirties—a relic in tarnished armor. “Are you really a centurion?” Severus asked. “You’re not a slaver, are you?”
Valerius indicated their new direction with a rough sweep of his hand. “March in front of me and stop talking.”
The sky darkened a second before a bolt of stiff lightning crackled over the damp chaparral. The air smelled of goats and smoke, and these omens were not lost on Marcus Valerius. When sudden thunder shook overhead, he stumbled over a weed-infested pothole.
“Curse this stupid province!” Valerius shouted. “Of all the vexed places to be in November.”
November was generally a lucky month, but Valerius knew that certain days required special vigilance. Soon, on the dreadful eighth day of November, the gates to the underworld would open and no mortal soul would be safe until they slammed shut again.
Valerius fought another shiver and tightened the belts of his weathered cuirass. Instead of spending his last two months of service patrolling a warm border on the southern edge of the empire, he was now wandering half-frozen in the crumbling province of Hispania. “Why weren’t those ruts filled?” he asked. “The worst road in Egypt is better than this goat trail. Where are the vexed road crews and engineers, anyway?”
“They’ve all gone north to build Hadrian’s Wall,” Severus answered. “Surely you know about the wall, Centurion? That must be why I was conscripted. Rome needs stonemasons and quarrymen like me to build a great wall across Britannia.”
“The wall? That vexed wall! So that’s your story, is it? You’re a wall builder?” Valerius found that shouting made his frustration more bearable, so he shouted louder. “Why is our glorious emperor building a wall across some moldy island? Enemies are defeated with swords, not bricks.”
“But, sir,” Severus said, “Hadrian’s Wall will prevent barbarians from destroying civilization.”
Valerius laughed. “Is that what your mother taught you?”
“Please don’t mention my mother, sir.”
Valerius did not see the sadness on Severus’ face. Instead, he lost himself in a chance to rail against a fraction of all that had been bothering him lately. “When did Rome go soft, and since when do warriors build walls? All barbarians understand is force. Force is the only thing they respect.”
“Perhaps in the long run respect is better than force,” Severus said. “Maybe if we treat people with respect, they’ll be more loyal. They might steal less, pay their taxes and stop rebelling.”
“Now you’re talking like one of those vexed Christians,” Valerius said, lowering his voice to a growl.
Before Severus could respond, the dark sky unleashed an angry hailstorm. The frozen pellets bounced off Valerius’ armor and rattled like a one-handed drum roll. The men ran and took refuge under an olive tree until the assault subsided.
“Frozen stones!” Valerius said. “What in Jove’s name was that?” He shook a few cold granules from his sandals and struggled to interpret this latest omen.
“Hail, sir,” Severus looked over Valerius’ dull and dented gear. Something about the gruff old geezer did not add up. A real centurion would never look so ragged. Had Valerius plucked the uniform off a dead man? Why would a North African soldier be banging around in Hispania? There was more than one reason to harbor suspicion. “After such a long trip, you’ll need to polish your armor.”
“Polish my own armor?” Valerius grabbed the scruff of Severus’ tunic and jerked him forward. Normally, he would have given the impudent conscript a good drubbing; instead, he just sent him spinning. “In the old days we had a team of slaves ready to polish armor, sharpen swords and maintain our gear in fighting condition. It all worked just fine until some Roman numeral cruncher decided slaves were too expensive. Can you believe it, slaves too expensive?”
“Sorry,” Severus slipped free and recovered his balance. “Who polishes the armor now, sir?”
“You.” Valerius gave his charge a quick once-over and saw that the kid might be useful for something. “My sword needs to look sharp when I meet Governor Biberious. As soon as we get to Tarraco, you’ll have it shining like the sun.”
“Governor Biberious is dead, sir,” Severus said, but Valerius had already charged ahead to investigate something rustling in the nearby shrubs.
Valerius threw a sharp stone into the underbrush, and an offended jackal—another ruinous portent—scurried away. “Four-legged jackals are nothing to worry about,” Valerius said. “In Rome, they walk upright.”
A light rain began to fall, and soon the drizzle turned into a merciless downpour.
Valerius was on edge: cold, wet, and fed up with being lost on the north side of nowhere. “It’s all part of Hadrian’s vexed Imperial Transformation,” he muttered. He stopped a hair’s breadth short of blasphemy after realizing that the bony scorpion Severus might be eager to witness a treasonous outburst. The kid, a mere sapling of sixteen, was clever beyond his days, but Valerius hadn’t spent twenty years outwitting Rome’s southernmost enemies only to be taken off guard by a young spy in a backward province.
Trust no one. Say nothing. Watch your back. Those were words to live by.
“Transformation?” Severus said. “Is that Latin?”
“It is now,” Valerius said. He quickened the pace and tried to ignore the rain and whatever Gaius Severus was now jabbering on about. There was something unsettling about the kid’s smart talk and smooth hands. In which nursery had they found this one?
“There must be some logic to this transformation,” Severus continued. He was a head taller than the sun-baked foreigner in front of him and couldn’t quite adjust his swinging gait to match the centurion’s short stride.
“Since when do quarry boys use words like logic?” Valerius shook another stone loose from his muddy sandal. “You don’t get it, do you? It’s not about saving money. Rome is loaded. You’re just too green to see the real agenda.”
“What agenda?” Seeing the veteran stiffen, Severus stepped back to avoid fresh punishment.
Valerius tried to keep his temper in check on the off chance the kid—an informer, no doubt—had a concealed weapon and actually knew how to use it. “Fewer citizens,” he said once his anger subsided.
Severus perked up. Military life was turning out to be much more interesting than spalling quarry stones. “What’s wrong with fewer citizens?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong!” Valerius shouted. He glared as if the Fates had chosen Severus as their agent of mockery. “Since the dawn of the Republic, becoming a citizen has been the highest aspiration of mankind. If our leaders take away the dream of dying as a Roman, what’s left to live for?”
Valerius marched faster, hoping to force the cheeky conscript to gasp for breath and choke on his next inane question. Tarraco could not be too far away. Retirement was so close he could feel the weight of his armor lifting.
“But Roman citizens have over one hundred and fifty paid holidays a year,” Severus said, following in lockstep. “All those triumphs, games, and weeklong celebrations must cost us a fortune.”
Valerius whipped around. He wiped rain from his dark eyes and confronted the phony quarry boy who dared torment a veteran. “I’ve defended civilization from Egypt to Mauritania. I rose from nothing, fought hard and became a citizen. Listen to me, milk pup: The dream of Rome is a beacon in the darkness for the conscripts, the slaves, and the subject peoples. It was for me, and it better be for you.”
“Yes, sir!” Severus said. He saluted first with his left hand and then, unsure of the protocol, followed with his right. Eventually such procedures would become second nature; for now, he thought it better to overcompensate with good intentions.
Valerius paused and considered recounting his life’s story but then thought better of it. There was no point in admitting his ignoble birth and unlikely ascent. Even if Severus were a real conscript, he would never survive a day on the battlefield. Why lecture him about the dream of citizenship? Citizenship for provincials was probably just another benefit that the paunchy visionaries in Rome would soon slash to divert more gold into their own purses. “Vesuvius!” he muttered. “When did saving money become the overarching purpose of the Roman Empire? And since when did whelps like you think about more than wine, war, and wenches?”
Having no such thoughts, Severus took two precautionary steps sideways. “I think I understand,” he said. “Most slaves and subjects never become citizens, but they die trying and that’s good for Rome.”
Valerius looked up and saw a new cluster of clouds bearing down like a colony of gray vultures. The smell of recent lightning—clean and threatening, lingered like smoke.
“Citizenship was our greatest reward, and now it’s dead,” Valerius said. “In the old days you could just capture a barbarian, dangle the promise of citizenship in front of his big nose, and he’d follow you around like a whipped dog.”
“You mean the legion isn’t allowed to capture people and put them to work anymore?” Severus said. “So what am I―”
“Enough talk! You’re too sticky with mother’s milk to understand anything.”
“Please don’t mention my mother, sir,” Severus said, unable to mask his sadness. Could she see him from heaven? He hoped not—not in this state. Severus followed in silence, torn with guilt over having abandoned his kin. He had run away from the vigiles, leaving his brother to be beaten and his father dragged off to jail. He had fled like a coward, taking refuge in a granite quarry with no better plan than to bide his time until the proscription passed. But someone had betrayed him for a few coins or promise of favor and soon he would march off to the farthest edge of the Roman Empire.
“Is this really the Roman Legion?” Severus asked. “It occurs to me that—say, how long have you served, Centurion?”
“Almost twenty years,” Valerius answered proudly. “I’ve got the scars to prove it.”
“Jove! Twenty years is longer than I’ve been alive. What will you do next?”
“Don’t ask,” Valerius said. “Just talking about it could hex my plans.” He picked another stone out of his sandal and threw it at a crow that only grew bolder with the provocation. The signs were unmistakable. Something had changed for the worse, and as usual, Valerius was the last to know.
Severus stumbled over a pothole that the centurion had just sidestepped. “Only five more years till your retirement,” he said, recovering his stride. “It’s not that far away.”
“Five years?” Valerius said, shaking his head. “I’m under the old plan, kid. I’ve got two months to go, and one night until I’m rid of you.”
“As I understand it, sir, after twenty-five years in the legion—assuming I survive, of course—I’ll be entitled to ten years’ pay, a bronze plaque, and a parcel of land in a veteran’s colony.”
“Is that what they’re promising these days?” Valerius asked. Severus’ feigned innocence was depressing. The milkweed conscript had no idea how badly the odds were stacked against making it to day three. “No empire ever went broke paying pensions to old soldiers.”
“So, what I’m wondering, sir—in your case, for instance—will you take the money as a lump sum or a series of annual payments?”
Valerius scanned the darkening sky and cursed the approaching wall of black clouds. Tarraco had to be nearby, hopefully just beyond the next hill. He reckoned that they would arrive by nightfall. Shuddering at the prospect of bivouacking in unfamiliar territory with the suspicious conscript, Valerius drew his cloak tight across his shoulders and walked faster. The temperature dropped as the wind picked up.
Severus had nothing to protect him from the elements. After a few thoughtful paces, he shivered and tried to continue the conversation. “I think the lump sum is the way to go, sir. That way you have control over your money. You can invest it and get rich.”
“Get rich?” Valerius had heard it all before, usually on the eve of a battle before the conversation turned to lies about women. “If I knew how to invest, I wouldn’t be a soldier. Now stop talking.”
“I never asked to be a soldier, sir,” Severus said, ignoring the order. “Anyway, investing isn’t as noble as defending the empire. I mean, what’s so honorable about ‘buy low, sell high?’”
Valerius wheeled around with a warrior’s glare that stopped the boy in midspeech.
“Since when do quarry boys have so many opinions?” Valerius searched his memory for any reason the gods might be punishing him but came up clean. He took solace in knowing that he would soon dump the nattering conscript at the garrison. Once rid of Severus, he planned to spend the night drinking honeyed wine and swapping soldiers’ stories with Fidelis Magnus, an old comrade who had moved north a year ago.
They crested a small hill and saw the dusk-covered city below and the gray Mediterranean beyond. At the city’s edge, dockhands were unloading a small cargo ship. Firetrap tenements slouched toward the port and eventually gave way to busy plazas near the center of town. Above the circus and the forum, a stone palace watched over the day’s fading commotion.
“Tarraco, sir,” Severus said, trying to steady his nerves, “the capital of Hispania.”
For Valerius, the dank air bore the sweet scent of freedom. Gods willing, tomorrow he would meet with Governor Biberious, a former legate under whom he had once served. He would settle the confusion over his pension and retire far away from the fools, thieves, and opportunists who had taken over the empire.
Two
II
No crowds welcomed him to Tarraco, and for once Festus Rufius was content to be anonymous. The prospect of getting off the miserable little boat and becoming the new governor of Hispania was all that moved his weary corpse forward.
Searching for a silver lining among the black clouds, Rufius found comfort in knowing that history would never remember the grimy vessel and the barefoot mariners that had delivered him. He alone among the unsavory crew was unstoppable, destined to rise. So, unfortunately, was everything he had eaten during the past week.
Sailors pushed past him, jostling to reach the dockside chop shops and cut-rate depravities that every port offered. Rufius tried in vain to ignore their crude sniggers and look regal in case anyone saw him descend weak-legged and weary down the gangplank.
He stepped onto the dock, lost his balance, and barely caught himself by hugging a rough-hewn pylon. A seagull hovered overhead, behaving rudely.
Rufius, a senator’s son, had been told to travel incognito for reasons that the relocation bureaucrats assured him would be obvious upon arrival. Now, after four miserable days at sea, he had arrived, and nothing was obvious except that he smelled worse than the two motley German slaves waiting to unload the boat.
Disguised in a commoner’s rough cotton tunic, now soiled beyond salvation, he had traveled with little more than a jealously guarded strongbox. Inside, carefully wrapped in an elegant toga that he had forgotten to don before disembarking, Rufius had hidden a priceless document—evidence that would soon pay an imperial dividend.
Rufius steadied his well-bred bulk, ran a pair of pudgy fingers through his wavy black hair, and tightened his cherubic face to hide his disappointment. Beyond the port, the capital town of Tarraco could have hidden in the noon shadow of one of Rome’s seven hills. Above the skewed rooflines of sagging tenements, the setting sun broke through a cloud to shed a last ray of light on a terraced hillside covered with olive trees. Atop the hill stood a hulking granite mansion, the governor’s villa, Festus Rufius’ new home. It was small by Roman standards, but it was his.
Rufius turned his salt-caked face toward the last shaft of sunlight, but before Apollo could herald his arrival, he was betrayed by the dock shifting beneath him. Struggling to maintain balance, he plodded toward solid ground until he realized that he had forgotten his precious strongbox. He stiffened his aching abdomen and trudged back toward the boat. The trunk, the contents of which would soon bring down more than a few powerful rivals, was too important to entrust to the ragged slaves now unloading the ship’s cargo.
The boat, a squat, square-sailed vessel called the Goddess Livia was named after the deified wife of the Divine Augustus, Father of the Empire. Enthusiastically boarding the Livia earlier in the week, Rufius had mused that Augustus would have returned from the afterlife gladly to watch his bride’s wooden torso slapping across the water. But after four queasy days of watching Livia’s venerable breasts cut through the frothy Mediterranean, the allure of heaving cleavage was forever ruined for Rufius.
Like her namesake, the Livia had been full to the point of bursting. She was transporting thousands of gallons of garum, the pungent fish sauce favored by civilized people across the empire. Prior to this voyage, Rufius had loved garum. The sharp sauce, one of Rome’s many contributions to human progress, was as delightful on a crust of bread as it was on an otherwise dubious cut of meat. The best garum, made from fermented fish and salt brine, was reserved for Rome. The low-grade export, the variety the Livia carried in her hold, was concocted from whatever could be scraped from the moldy bowels of fishing boats.
The breeze shifted, and a familiar stench assaulted Rufius’ chapped and protesting nostrils. He turned his back to the foul smell but could not escape it. During his voyage the swelling sea had tossed the Livia and smashed her slurry-filled amphorae together. Cheap garum had spilled into the bowels of the rocking vessel, releasing a cloud of rank, acidic vapor that soon permeated every strained sail and creaking timber. The stench still filled his pores, clung to his stained tunic and burned his lungs. Rufius’ stomach clenched in remembrance of the hours spent doubled over the Livia’s gunwales, offering up the remains of his swallowed pride to Neptune’s hungry minions.
Before Rufius reached the vessel, he realized he was being followed. A small, wiry, mouse-faced man and a large red-haired slave were heading straight toward him. Worried about recovering his strongbox, Rufius stumbled back toward the Goddess Livia, but the tiny man darted in front of him and blocked his way. The muscular slave, looking short on brains and long on menace, obstructed any possibility of escape in the other direction. The mismatched strangers sandwiched Rufius and edged him away from the boat.
“Good job with the disguise, Governor,” the little man said. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
“Out of my way,” Rufius said. “I’ve already got two of whatever you’re selling.”
“Welcome to Tarraco, Excellency,” the small fellow insisted. “I’ve got a litter waiting to take you to the villa.”
Excellency! The word rang pure and true. It was the first time Festus Rufius had ever been called “Excellency,” and while he was far from feeling excellent, he already loved the sound of it.
Governorships rarely opened up, and when they did, it was usually a foregone conclusion which son of which powerful family would win the lucrative post. But Hadrian wanted to ring in a new era and wring out the old guard. His approach to developing Rome’s next generation of leaders was a radical departure from past practice. Nepotism and bribery were no longer enough. Talent and promise were new considerations in the imperial calculus.
Hadrian’s nose for potential had sniffed Festus Rufius away from a dull destiny and named him governor of Hispania. Never again would Rufius suffer the slanderous whispers and salacious gossip under Rome’s colonnades. Success would be his salty revenge upon those who had insisted that he would never live up to his father’s legacy or his brother’s achievements. His moment to shine had finally come.
“Your orders, Governor?” the little man asked.
“Who are you?”
“I’m called Minem, Excellency. Winus Minem.” The tiny man bowed so low that his beige toga fell from his shoulder. In contrast to the stern goliath towering behind him, Minem looked clever as a jackal. He rearranged the fabric and bounced forward to continue his introduction in near-perfect Latin. “I’m with IA, Imperial Associates. Your father hired me as your temporary chief of staff.”
“Hired you? With whose money?”
“Your father, the Senator, thought—”
“Thought that he’d spend my inheritance on Greek philosophers?”
“Not at all, sir—I’m Macedonian.”
“Worse.” Rufius felt dizzy and drained. He struggled to remain regal. “What’s with the big nightmare behind you?”
Minem looked back with disapproval at the muscular slave. “That’s Vindex; a murderer masquerading as a bodyguard.”
“Welcome, my lord,” Vindex said. His voice had the dull ring of a lingering hangover.
Exhausted, Rufius staggered forward and wondered if being governor of Hispania was a reward or a curse. He had barely arrived and hustlers were already dogging him. “I don’t need you, and I don’t need a bodyguard,” he said.
“I’m afraid you do, sir. All is not well in Tarraco,” Minem said. “Fortunately, I’m an ex-administrator, and Vindex is an ex-gladiator. Fascinating story, really. His entire tribe was captured along the Danube and enslaved by our former emperor. Vindex was just a boy when Trajan put most of his kin to death in—”
Rufius waved his hand to silence the small fellow. Whatever this little man claimed to be, at least he appeared harmless, unlike his lumbering sidekick. Since no one else had stepped forth to offer assistance, they would have to do for now. Not wanting to address the slave directly, Rufius looked at Minem and said, “Fetch my trunk then, won’t you?”
Minem passed along the order. Vindex grumbled and trotted down the dock to board the vessel that was now being loaded with amphorae of olive oil bound for the bathhouses of Rome. A few minutes later, he returned with the strongbox, proceeded to the quay, and tossed it into the waiting litter.
At the end of the rocking quay, Rufius pulled himself up the ramp to stand on terra firma. Solid ground should have been a relief, but his sense of equilibrium was still at sea. It was probably customary for a new governor to kiss the provincial earth, but nobody was watching, and the ground was muddy. He worried that if he knelt down, he would never have the strength to get back up.
Rufius climbed into the unadorned litter and pulled the door shut. The bench was hard, but it felt good to sit down on a still surface. “Why haven’t my subjects come to greet me?” Rufius asked.
“You’ve arrived on the eve of the funeral,” Minem said. He threw open the door, slid in beside Rufius and craned his short neck to look through the tiny window. He scanned cautiously along the docks and, seemingly satisfied, drew the curtain. “Good,” he said, “nothing too out of the ordinary.”
Rufius cringed as four slaves hoisted the litter onto their shoulders and lurched forward with Vindex stalking alongside. It was clear that the indifferent slaves had no experience transporting noble passengers. The litter rocked worse than the cheapest ride in Rome.
Rome. It seemed like long ago, but less than a week earlier Rufius had received the unexpected promotion along with orders to report to Hispania immediately. So sudden was the news that he had found barely enough time to call in a few favors, say good-bye to his mother, and shutter his luxurious domus in Rome.
Instructed to travel light, he happily ditched the pouting wife his father had arranged for him to marry recently. Her dowry already spent, she could come later, if at all. His administrator—the type of spiteful bureaucrat who loved to make suffer the more fortunate—had assured him that his household goods, slaves, and most importantly, his extensive collection of fine wines dating from the time of the late Republic would soon follow.
As the litter pitched and tossed, Rufius fought to maintain his dignity, but every gasping lungful of dank air tasted like his last. He felt like his body was turning inside out, his aching stomach emptier than a taxman’s conscience. Hoping to calm his rebellious intestines, he leaned forward and gulped a mouthful of sea air.
“No promotion merits this much suffering,” Rufius whispered. “I think I’d prefer to walk.”
“Good idea, sir,” Minem said. “I’ll send the litter ahead to create a diversion.”
“Fine,” Rufius said, “but the box stays near me.”
Rufius willed himself forward with dreams of a warm bath, a hearty massage, and the feeling of freshly oiled skin. It seemed like a century since he’d felt the reassurance of cobblestone under his feet.
Minem led him through a narrow alley and into the slums that crowded the docklands. It was quiet, dark, and—quiet? Since when was a portside village quiet? In sleepless Ostia, the great port where the River Tiber met the sea, Rufius had barely been able to push his way through the throngs of enterprising slave girls. At Ostia, the revelry did not wind down until the sober light of dawn. In comparison, the port at Tarraco was as silent as a snake.
“Where are the people?” Rufius asked, now feeling too exhausted to die.
“They’re at the ceremony, I suppose. The former governor’s corpse is lying in state at the Temple of Augustus. If we hurry, you can deliver the eulogy.”
Festus Rufius, the new governor of Hispania, slumped down onto a stoop. “Just get my corpse home or the only eulogy I deliver will be yours.”
Three
III
Two nights earlier, a bleak wind blew through the tenement canyons of Tarraco. Smoke from illegal braziers smoldering in firetrap dwellings drifted out across the harbor and guided the last ship into port as darkness reached across the slums.
Twilight gave way to evening as Gaius Severus and his older brother Marius watched their father attempt to conjure flame from a dry lamp. Their father, a pious, part-time butcher known as the Rabbi to the town’s tiny diaspora, had no money left for oil.
“The lamp of the Maccabees burned for seven nights,” the old man said. He glanced up at the ceiling that seemed to sag under the weight of heaven. “Can’t mine burn for just one night?”
“Miracles are in short supply these days.” Gaius, the taller and darker of the two brothers, sat against the cold wall of their tiny home. His back hurt from a hard week at the quarry, cutting granite into blocks for villas whose courtyards would never welcome him. Calluses from where his sandal straps had chaffed his ankles bore witness to the five-mile trek home through the foothills to reach his kin before sundown.
It was the first day of November, and tonight there would be no dinner beyond a thin, lukewarm broth. In addition to Gaius’ meager stipend as a quarry boy, Marius had earned a few coins by scraping mold from the walls of the plebian bathhouse. The brothers had brought in just enough during the week to keep the landlord at bay. With any luck, next week’s Sabbath would be more bountiful.
“Bless the bread,” Marius said, impatient as always. “We need the crumbs more than God needs us.” Marius was nineteen, one head shorter but, by his own ledger, two heads smarter than his bird-faced brother. He had his mother’s deep-set eyes and his father’s once-black hair. His thin lips barely hid his anger at God for having scattered the Jews like sand across the Roman Empire.
At an age when most young men had already wed and started families, Marius’ sharp tongue and lack of a steady trade had soured the only two families whose daughters were still available for a reasonable dowry. While Gaius toiled as an apprentice stonemason, Marius, older and wider than his more dependable brother, worked odd jobs, charmed widows and plotted the downfall of the Roman Empire.
“Sabbath, the bride of twilight,” their father said as the sliver of sky above the alley surrendered its hue. Faint light feathered into the room from the rising moon. Abandoning the lamp, Rabbi Severus said the blessing over a small piece of flat bread that remained from the morning. He thanked God for having brought forth grain from the earth, and broke off a fragment of stale bread for each of his sons. The darkness rendered his face more gaunt than usual.
“Perhaps next week the Lord will bring forth a bit more,” Marius said. He cracked through the crust with his front teeth. “Freshly baked, if it’s not too much bother.”
“Perhaps you’ll get a real job and stop blaming God for our troubles,” Gaius said, before his father waved a hand to silence them both.
While the two young men partook of the dry sacrament, their father blessed them as he had at the start of every Sabbath since they were born. A tear welled in his better eye at the mention of their departed mother whom he blessed in absentia.
“May the Lord bless you and keep you,” he said. The old man extended his arms and moved his open hands in a slow circular motion. His wrinkled face folded into a loving smile and the tufts of his gray eyebrows floated like rain clouds over his dark eyes. “May God shine his face unto you and show you favor. May the Lord protect you and grant you peace.”
But peace was in short supply. Shouting in the street below interrupted the brief promise of Sabbath calm. The sound of hobnailed sandals pounding across the cobblestones and the drunken laughter of ruffians storming up rickety stairways heralded the arrival of darkness.
“Vigiles!” Marius parted the torn curtain to look four stories down into the street. “God has truly forgotten us.”
There was no longer any reason to wonder when the flood of official vengeance would arrive. In the shops, baths, and forum people had talked of nothing else for the past two days. The murder of Sextus Biberious, former governor of Hispania, would not go unpunished.
The security sweep was as predictable as the foregone conclusion that whoever had actually assassinated the corrupt old governor would never see justice. While those who might directly benefit from the governor’s demise slept in comfort, an irregular cohort of dockhands and sailors had been incited to deliver a taste of Roman justice to those who needed no reminding of their station.
The promise of violence rattled through the lower corridors of the building. The banal sounds of terror—unhinged doors and smashing plates—punctuated the cold November night. In the name of justice and the absence of reason, the vigiles ransacked households too poor to pay for protection. What the vulnerable citizens, slaves, and freedmen of Tarraco did not render unto Caesar in taxes and tribute, they would now pay his henchmen in bribes, bruises, and futile supplications.
Alerted by the shouting in the corridor, Gaius Severus hid the family’s few belongings in the space between two floor joists while his brother attempted to bar the entrance.
The door—nothing more than a few pockmarked planks lashed to a leather hinge—gave way with barely a whimper. Two rough sailors charged into the one-room residence, Marius stumbled backward and tried to draw them into the room so his kin could slip away to the relative safety of the darkened streets.
“Long live Hadrian!” Marius shouted on the off chance that invoking the emperor’s name would dissuade the thugs from their devilry.
But the invaders’ patriotism did not extend beyond plunder. One of the dockhands, a bald, dog-faced northerner, carried a canvas sack that was already half-filled with stolen goods. He shoved Marius aside and stormed into the dwelling. To buy time for his family, Marius lunged for the other man’s leg and brought him tumbling down.
While Marius wrestled with the smaller man, the larger fellow looked around for something worth stealing but found nothing of value beyond a small charcoal stove, a bowl of apples, and a pile of scrolls. He slit their only mattress with a knife and rifled through the straw. Coming up empty-handed, he cursed in frustration. In the darkness, his bald head and hollow eyes gave his canine face the dull sheen of a funeral mask.
“They’re not as poor as they look,” said the other man, still struggling with Marius. His accent was Corsican and his unshaven face was as rough and ruddy as a vein of pink granite. He shook Marius loose, grabbed one of the Hebrew scrolls from the table and tore it to pieces. “Papyrus,” he said, and shredded another.
“Stop!” shouted Rabbi Severus. He threw himself against the invader and tried to save the remaining scrolls.
The Corsican knocked the old man to the floor like a toppled statue and threw the unlit oil lamp against the wall, smashing it to pieces. He looked around the tiny room and hissed in a dialect that needed no translation while the fearsome northerner pounded on the thinly plastered wall and stomped around on the floor in search of hiding places.
“Aha!” the northerner said, finding a hollow spot. He bent down to pull up a loose floorboard.
“No!” Gaius shouted. He grabbed the nearby stool and broke it over the northerner’s head, surprising both of them with his audacity.
The northerner wavered for a second and then fell hard enough to shake the entire fourth floor of the complex. In the corridor, neighbors ran for the stairway, children in tow.
The Corsican laughed. Keeping the family at bay with a drawn blade, he removed a small silver menorah from the compartment, examined it against the thin moonlight filtering through the window and stuffed it in his partner’s sack. “What else have you got?”
The brothers planted themselves between the ruddy Corsican and their frail father. The old candelabrum was the family’s only heirloom, a link to a past that would soon fade to legend. They could not allow the ancient menorah to fall into profane hands. They lunged at the Corsican but were easily rebuffed.
During the few seconds it took the Corsican to finish searching the tiny room, Rabbi Severus shoved a discarded plank through the open window to bridge the narrow alley. He gestured for his younger son to escape. “Run to the quarry and don’t look back,” he whispered. The wan light made his thin, curly hair look like a crown of smoke.
“What about you and Marius?” Gaius protested.
“We’ll be right behind you,” his father insisted. “Now go!”
Four stories had never seemed so high. “Tempus moriendi,” Gaius muttered, quoting one of his father’s old scrolls. “Time to die.”
While Marius delayed the Corsican, Gaius Severus climbed over the windowsill and scrambled onto the makeshift bridge. The young man of sixteen brief years tried to maintain his balance high above the cobblestone, but he had never felt comfortable looking down from the windowsill. The fear that had been welling now churned like sea foam in his stomach. His pounding heart threatened to throw him off balance with each beat.
Gaius Severus inched along the wobbling plank until he finally pulled across the chasm. He slipped under the threadbare drapes that provided their neighbor a shred of privacy and somersaulted onto her floor. Wiping the cold sweat from his brow, he looked up slowly and found himself eye to eye with two crying children. Their widowed mother cowered in the corner.
Hearing shouts from his home, Gaius sprang back toward the window in order to steady the plank for his father, but the old man was no longer at the sill. The taste of panic welled in Gaius’ throat, and a scuffle in the street below attracted his attention. He glanced down the length of the uneven facade where a struggling neighbor was being dragged away by an enterprising dockhand, an amateur mercenary hoping to receive a few coins for filling the prison.
Peering back toward his father’s window, Gaius heard the northerner laugh and strike his elder brother. Marius’ shadow fell below the sill. Their father lunged for the window, but the gruff Corsican pulled him back into the room.
“Vesuvius!” Gaius cursed. He froze in place, too stunned to move, but not too proud to pray. “Save them, Lord,” he whispered. “Is that too much to ask or do you thrive on tormenting us?”
The Corsican lifted one leg over the window sill, squeezed through the opening, and planted a wide knee firmly on the makeshift bridge. He flashed a malicious grin that needed no explanation. For the squat and muscle-bound sailor, a scrawny wishbone like Gaius Severus was easy prey.
Shoving his bulk forward, the vigilante managed to slide halfway across the narrow bridge between the buildings. The weak moonlight illuminated the folded dome of his fleshy head. Midway across the chasm, with no possible way to turn back, he could not move without shaking the sagging bridge.
With the Corsican stuck on the straining plank, Gaius Severus helped the terrified neighbor woman scoop up her crying children. They ran into the corridor, bolted down four loose flights of stairs, and stumbled into the street below.
Similar commotion in the other tenements had flushed many residents into the alley.
Severus handed the child back to her mother. He pushed through the crowd that had gathered to jeer at the vigilante, treed like a cat high above the street. Gaius shoved toward the entrance to his building, but the street was too thick with spectators to reach the door.
“Jump!” an elderly woman shouted up to the frustrated Corsican.
Stuck and steaming, the bald aggressor tried to steady the rocking bridge, but every breath put him in greater peril. On the cold street below, poor citizens and freedmen savored the mercenary’s predicament.
An old man whose hair was full of straw from a shredded mattress pried loose a cobblestone and broke it against another. Neighbors rushed in to grab the fragments and throw them at the brute teetering high above them. Seeing the big man fall would be small compensation for the night’s terror, but the downtrodden denizens of Hispania’s capital had long ago learned to collect payment in whatever form it took.
“Stop!” the Corsican shouted from his perch after a stone hit his broad forehead. Hoping to lower his profile and slide to safety, he tried to lie down along the splintering plank.
“If he falls, I’m not cleaning up the mess,” announced a street-level resident known to everyone for having tapped illegally into a water main. “The end of civilization starts with people not tidying up after themselves.”
Overwhelmed by all that had just happened, Gaius Severus wiped a sudden well of tears from his eyes just in time to see his father and brother dragged away by the dog-faced northerner. Marius’ glare was defiant, but his hands were bound like a condemned slave.
“Father,” Gaius whispered as the men passed.
“Save yourself,” was all the old man had time to say.
Four
IV
Festus Rufius slept for two fitful days, plagued by a recurring nightmare of fleeing from a giant. Still aching from the rude trip to Hispania, he awoke to hear Vindex’s heavy breathing on the other side of the bedroom door. The fearsome ex-gladiator was either standing guard or poised to attack. Parting the dark curtain to look through the thick and pitted window, Rufius noticed two kitchen slaves with butcher knives patrolling the garden.
The smell of fresh food on a tray by his nightstand drew him back from the window. He inspected the fare for something edible, but found little to his liking. When Winus Minem entered the room, Rufius was back in bed, studying a bowl of honeyed porridge.
“Did one of the slaves sample your dish, sir?” Minem asked.
Rufius gave the wheat porridge a sniff and swallowed the lump that was in his mouth.
“Not to worry, sir,” Minem said. He pulled open the curtain to let gray light into the room. “If it’s tainted, we’ll know soon enough.”