Rome 4: The Art of War (29 page)

‘You would be without your beard and with your hair less dark,’ I said. ‘If Gudrun at the Inn of the Crossed Spears can make Pantera into a Berber, I think we can find someone to turn you into a northman. You couldn’t be a carter any more, you couldn’t go back to the inn. You couldn’t risk being seen in Pantera’s company or mine. But Rome is a city of millions. There are places a man can hide if he chooses.’

I had been kissing his chest, nipping the hairs that grew there between my lips as I spoke. Then I looked up. His eyes shone rich with hope.

‘If I stayed, could I see you?’

‘I would like it if you did.’ I kissed him. It felt good. I corrected myself. ‘I would be heartbroken if you didn’t.’

We slept soon after that, and made love again when we woke, and by the time he went to find the horse that had been booked for him in the name of Hormus, we had a workable strategy planned.

Trabo had finished his letter to Geminus and had pressed on to the closing wax a small circle of wheel-binding wire that he had woven into his own makeshift seal, to prove that the letter was his. Geminus had its twin, to match against it in a rough but effective scheme dreamed up in the alley.

The seal was now in my possession, to give to a man loyal to me who would be well paid to take Trabo’s place on the trip up to Ravenna. I didn’t find it necessary to tell Trabo that the group would be ambushed and all the others killed and only Hormus would ‘escape’; as I said before, Trabo is a soldier, not made for subterfuge, and there are things we had to do to ensure his safety that he was better off not knowing.

That apart, we had a good result. Lucius thought he owned Trabo and Pantera thought that Lucius thought it while Pantera was the true owner. And I knew that Pantera thought
so and was wrong: if anyone had rights over Trabo that September, it was me, and me alone.

Everyone thinks that it was Pantera’s actions that changed the course of this war and brought about what happened, and while on the larger scale that might be true it is also true that here in Rome, Trabo was the hub about which we all turned; his loyalty was the one thing we had all bought and none of us owned and in the end it was that – his loyalty – that we all needed.

Rome, October,
AD
69

OCTOBER BROUGHT US
cold and rain and Lucius began to arrest anyone he even suspected of knowing Pantera and question them under duress.

Some of them, it turned out, did know him. There was a date-seller who, after two days of close attention, had revealed details of a hollow date that could be used to transmit messages. He had been too disfigured by then to send out on the streets to act as a decoy, and although we tried it with a substitute that trail ran cold.

There was an ostler who gave us little more, a slave who carried water; small people who told us small things and from those we learned that Pantera had been a small, wizened Berber, and then a tall Mauretanian merchant and was now neither.

He might well also have been an Ionian poet, a Dacian tanner, a British freedman – or perhaps he kept a Briton as a freedman, we were never clear – and a failed priest of Isis. The temples of Isis
throughout the city maintained no knowledge of him and there were limits to even Lucius’ powers; none of the priests was brought in for questioning.

Lucius, therefore, was in a foul mood while I read him the steadily lengthening reports sent by Trabo from Ravenna and concluded that the hero of the legions was as fond of the pen as he was of the sword, which surprised me quite a bit.

‘Antonius Primus, legate in charge of the rebel legions, keeps to his camp in Verona. He has ordered that all the statues of Galba that were overturned be reinstated. The men of the VIIth Galbiana are pleased.’

‘Pantera sent a message to Lucillius Bassus yesterday telling him that Caecina was within a day’s march of Ravenna.’

‘Lucillius Bassus believes that Caecina may attack him in passing, and has put his men in readiness to fend off an assault. He has ten thousand marines at his beck, it being the winter season and the sea lanes closed.’

This last came early in the month and caused Lucius to send messengers on fast horses to warn Caecina so that he marched his men along a curving route away from the port to avoid any confrontation with the marines.

And then there was a gap of half a month with no reports at all and I feared that Trabo had been exposed and was even now in some small and bloodied room, being subjected to the same knives and hot irons and crushing devices as Lucius was using against Pantera’s suspected allies.

When, one day at the end of the month, a letter did finally arrive, it was twenty-six pages long, and even the first page tore the world apart.

‘Caecina has defected!’

I exploded into Lucius’ office, uninvited, unwelcome. I didn’t even stop to salute. ‘Of all the two-faced, insane, treacherous bastards … This is the man who got us through the mountains
when everyone said it was impossible. He held us together after the mess at Cremona. He practically took the empire single-handed. What the fuck is he playing at?’

I looked up. Lucius was alone, which was a blessing, but only barely. He blinked and I came to my senses. I saw a crocodile once, when I was posted to Alexandria as a young man. They threw it a slave who had dropped a dinner plate in his master’s presence. I remember the screams sometimes, in my dreams. The crocodile had blinked as it watched them drag the wretch to the pool’s edge. Lucius’ blink was just like that.

He said, ‘Did his men defect with him?’

‘What? I mean, I don’t know. I didn’t read that far.’ I looked down at the letter.

To Geminus, centurion of the Guard, and to Juvens, greetings, from Quintus Aurelius Trabo, centurion of …
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The salutations took up a third of a page. For the rest …

‘Yes,’ I said, and then, ‘Actually, no. He tried to take them. He nearly succeeded, but they resisted and arrested him. Listen.’

I read aloud from the second page of the letter.

‘…
the day before the full moon in October. The weather was cold, but dry thus far although there had been some distant thunder. Our enemy, Antonius Primus, was camped with his legions at Verona, having had word from Pantera ordering him to wait in Vespasian’s name
.

‘
Caecina, meanwhile, had stationed his thirty thousand men in an open space between the town of Hostilia and the river Po, his flanks defended by marshes. He was unassailable, but he was thirty miles from Verona, too far to reach it with any semblance of surprise. He had planned instead for defence in strength
.

‘S
oon after this, he received the unwelcome news that the Ravenna fleet
had finally defected to Vespasian’s side. This was on the thirteenth of October. Caecina used this news as a reason to negotiate with Antonius Primus over the surrender of his men
.’

I stopped, too angry to continue. But Lucius, he of the famous temper that could order a man’s limbs broken and his face held into a fire if he was in the right kind of filthy mood, said only, ‘What were his terms?’

And that’s when I realized it wasn’t news to him; he had sent Caecina out knowing that he was planning this, perhaps had even told him to. I just didn’t know why and I couldn’t ask. Sometimes, a sensible man doesn’t pry.

I read from the letter.

‘
Caecina’s terms were poor. He stressed the folly of civil war and pointed out the strength of the men he planned to bring to Vespasian’s cause. He asked for nothing and offered everything. His letters were read out to the rebel troops by Antonius Primus, who jeered him. He did not once mention Vitellius, nor suggest our cause was just
.

‘
Antonius accepted the terms, and, on the morning of the eighteenth of October, when the men were out of camp on foraging duties, Caecina summoned the officers left in camp and proposed to them that they join him in taking their men to Vespasian’s side. By the morning’s end, they had all sworn their oaths anew to Vespasian and the portraits of Vitellius had been removed from the standards. The legions no longer owed him allegiance
.

‘
That situation prevailed until the men came back for the evening meal, and noticed that all sign of their emperor had gone. They quickly gathered, forced the details out of their officers and set about reversing the deal. These were the same men who had been victorious in the spring and they intended to be victorious now. They were certainly not going to give themselves to their enemy without a fight. They arrested
Caecina and put him in chains
— Ha! That’ll teach the motherfucking, goat-buggering bastard …’

I faltered. Lucius was beginning to look annoyed. I read on.

‘T
he loyal troops restored the images of Vitellius. All was well until the following night, when the heavens displayed their wrath at Caecina’s treachery, for the moon became bloody, dripping red to the earth, and was swallowed by the night sky, so that the men fell to their knees and prayed that the power of the omen be on Caecina’s head and not theirs
.’

‘That was the night of the eclipse,’ Lucius said. ‘The eighteenth of October. Nearly half a month has passed since then. Why has it taken so long for us to hear of this?’

‘I think Trabo followed the army, and was caught up in the fighting. Do you want me to keep reading?’

‘No. If I wanted someone to read me a book, I would call a clerk. Just tell me what it says.’

So I gave him the gist: that the new commanders of Caecina’s legions, seeing the eclipse as an omen – or, at least, telling the men that’s what it was – had struck camp before dawn, crossed the river Po and cut the bridge behind them to hinder any following force, then fast-marched their men to Cremona, where the rest of Caecina’s legions had been sent.

They had covered a hundred miles in five days, which may be nothing if you’re on horseback but when you’re moving a line of men two miles long it’s five days of hard marching with little rest in between.

They got there in time, but only just.

In the interim, Antonius Primus had heard of Caecina’s attempted defection and was rejoicing that he’d won the war without bloodshed as Vespasian wanted: he didn’t know that the defection had failed. It was two days before he learned that Caecina was under arrest and his men were still loyal to Vitellius.

At around
the same time, Antonius heard that General Valens had finally left Rome and was intending to catch up with the men, take command and drive them in a wedge straight at Antonius Primus’ five legions.

What could any general do but respond swiftly? Antonius Primus gathered his men and marched them quickly along the Postumian Way towards Cremona.

Yes, Cremona. Before the legions destroyed it last spring, Cremona was a small town of small wealth and small satisfactions; of wooden houses barely gilded, ragged children playing games in the street, town councillors puffed up by their own importance; of quiet people, who did not understand that the legion which came to camp outside their walls was bringing ruin. They fêted them and fed them and took them into their homes and offered them every hospitality, as good citizens should.

Then the other legions arrived and the fighting started and the men inside would not let the town’s councillors surrender, and even if they had the men outside wanted to take the town by force, because then the rules of war meant every spoil within it became theirs by right.

And so by summer Cremona was a small town burned to charred roofbeams and the stubs of walls with a great banner of smoke lying heavy across it, holding in the stench of burned flesh and hair and bone, and the sounds of women, screaming.

And then this autumn, after the eclipse on the night of the eighteenth of October, it all happened again.

They shouldn’t have gone there. Really. Anywhere but Cremona. It didn’t deserve that.

Antonius Primus’ advance forces got there first, but the bulk of his men were eighteen miles behind. He sent for them and they ran the whole way and then insisted on fighting. Caecina’s forces, meanwhile, arrived at the end of their hundred-
mile march and they, too, insisted on fighting a battle that stretched into the night, where Roman fought Roman and men were able to switch sides to sabotage the enemy simply by picking up the shields of fallen men and listening to others speak the watchword.

You know by now how Antonius Primus himself was in the front line and when his men were routed by an early attack he killed a retreating standard-bearer with his own sword and picked up the banner and carried it to the front and shamed his men into standing and fighting back.

Maybe that’s why they won. Who knows? In battle, one brave man can turn a whole field; they teach us that as we train, and it’s true.

So maybe Antonius Primus really did win single-handedly. Or maybe our men had lost heart when they lost Caecina. Or the terrain was against them, or perhaps it is true that at dawn, after a night’s hard fighting, when the men of Antonius’ eastern legions turned to raise a shout to the rising sun in Mithras’ name, our men thought they hailed reinforcements and lost all heart.

But in the end the reason doesn’t matter. It’s the facts that count and the fact was that in this, the biggest and most important battle between Vitellius and Vespasian, we had lost.

Rome, October,
AD
69

‘
WE WON!
’

Domitian, who had never seen war, punched the air, dancing. Around him on the couches or standing by the pool in my atrium were Sabinus, Caenis, Pantera and me. We had all lived through too many wars to contemplate another with anything but horror.

‘What?’

Domitian rounded on us, his eyes alive with scorn. He had become more animated, more mobile, more expressive these past months. It’s possible, I agree, that I might have had something to do with that. I was kind to him. I didn’t reject him. I also did not sleep with him, ever.