When Decius went to push his man away, the barbarian tried to bite his fingers. A shove, and three sharp chops to the head ended his defiance.
The bandits were down or running. Their leader was gone.
Prisoners secured. The Decurion was at Decius elbow. The rags around his helmet gave him the air of a martial vagrant.
Decius had no leisure from command. Put pickets out, up and down the track, up both slopes. Send twenty men to bring the horses.
The Decurion barked out the necessary orders.
Decius walked to the side of the path, leant a hand against the black-veined trunk of a pine. The sun had burnt off the mist. Through gaps in the timber, he could see the distant peaks. He went to clean and sheath his sword. The front of his mail-shirt was clotted with blood, his forearms incarnadine. The bitter taste of disappointment in his mouth, like an old bronze coin.
The reckoning? he asked.
Three dead. Seven wounded, two will not live, the Decurion said.
How many captured?
About twenty.
Decius considered. Separate their wounded. We do not have time to crucify them. The ones who got away might raise the hills against us. Cut their heads off, and nail them to trees. Rope the others together. The stronger will go into the arena. The weaker can hang on a cross at the scene of their outrages.
The Decurion went to make it so. Decius remained; for the moment there was nothing to do but nurse his frustration.
A trooper approached with a strange soldier. The latter was drawn and filthy from hard travel.
The messenger saluted, and handed over his despatch.
There was something wrong with the imperial seal. Decius broke the purple wax, opened the diptych, and read.
The messenger saluted, and handed over his despatch.
There was something wrong with the imperial seal. Decius broke the purple wax, opened the diptych, and read.
How long since you left Africa?
The messenger thought. Fifteen, no fourteen days. I landed at Tarraco. They told me you were holding assizes at Caesaraugusta. I got a guide to bring me here.
Have you told anyone this news?
My orders were to announce it in every community through which I passed.
Trooper, arrest this man.
Governor, I am just a messenger.
Yes, I am sorry for it, but you must be questioned. First by me, then you will be sent to the Emperor.
Governor, he swallowed, struggling for words, I am only a soldier.
And as such, you know how things stand in Carthage.
I sailed from Hadrumetum.
How things are in Africa in general. Little would be gained, but it had to be done. Tell all you know, and you will not be mistreated. Trooper, take him away.
Decius rested his back against the rough bark, closed his eyes. What madness had possessed the Gordiani? No revolt in Africa had ever been successful. Fourteen days, the news would have reached Rome. Surely Vitalianus and Sabinus would have remained loyal. Decius felt a hollow fear in his chest. Etruscus, his eldest son, was in the imperial school on the Palatine, a hostage in all but name. Potens, his brother-in-law, commanded the Watch. Let nothing have happened to them. Etruscus was only twelve.
Chapter 20
Rome
The Carinae,
The Day before the Ides of March, AD238
Timesitheus did not care to be kept waiting. The Praefectus Annonae, the man responsible for feeding the million inhabitants of Rome, should not be kept waiting. Especially not by an ex-slave. The accent and manner of this freedman Reverendus proclaimed his origins in some effeminate eastern province like Syria or Cappadocia. His flabby face hinted at good looks in his youth. Probably buggered senseless as a boy. It was the nature of his sort to become insufferably insolent if they served a noble family. Still, one should only make enemies if it was necessary. The situation needed delicate handling. Timesitheus did not want to alienate a member of the familia of the Gordiani, but over familiarity with the odious creature, let alone a rebuff, would damage his dignitas.
At last the rain has stopped, and spring has arrived, Timesitheus said.
The weather is better, Reverendus said.
The tone of the freedman exhibited no desire for further conversation. Timesitheus arranged his face, and turned to studying the many beaks of warships that were set in the lofty walls of the vestibule of the Domus Rostrata and gave the house its name. Tranquillina gave no sign of noticing the abrupt exchange. She waited with complete composure, as if bestowing a gracious favour. His wife always knew exactly how to behave. Unlike her husband, she had grown up in the great houses of the eternal city.
Timesitheus looked closely at the bronze rams. Pompey the Great had decorated the house with spoils from his campaign against the pirates. Yet these ornamental prows did not look as if they had ever seen the sea. It was always important to look closely. Few things in Rome were ever quite what they seemed.
The superstitious considered this an unlucky house. Its owners seldom came to a good end. Pompey beheaded on a beach in Egypt. Defeated and abandoned, Mark Antony falling on his sword in the same country. The aged tyrant Tiberius, worn out with perversity on Capri, smothered with a pillow. Timesitheus was not superstitious. He coveted this property. A house like this would complete his rise from relatively humble beginnings on the backwater Greek island of Corcyra. His father had just scraped together the capital necessary to qualify as an equestrian in the Census. He had owned two small trading vessels, a modest house in Kassiope, and an estate of some olive groves and many barren slopes on Mount Istone. Possession of a palatial dwelling in the Carinae of Rome would seal the ascent of his son. Timesitheus would be content. Of course, he knew, Tranquillina would not. Her relentless ambition was one of the several things he loved about his wife; loved and almost feared.
Timesitheus stifled a yawn. They had got up before dawn to attend, and Tranquillina had made strenuous demands in the night. That was another thing he loved about her.
Wake up. Tranquillina spoke softly, so that the freedman could not overhear. Her breath was hot in Timesitheus ear. Stop daydreaming. Remember why we have come. As the Gordiani are not here, we must ingratiate ourselves with their relatives and those, unlike you, who have already managed to get close to this new regime. I have no intention of remaining the wife of just another equestrian administrator.
Please come this way. Another freedman had appeared. This one was called Montanus, and he had the same infuriating air of superiority.
Waiting just long enough to assert their independence, Timesitheus and Tranquillina followed Montanus into the house.
Maecia Faustina was receiving visitors sitting in the shade on one side of the broad, airy atrium. Her salutatio was well attended, as was only to be expected. Many wanted to be admitted and recognized by a woman who was the daughter of one of the reigning Emperors and sister of the other. Few were deterred by her reputation as a cold, censorious bitch. It was said she had got worse since Maximinus had executed her husband Junius Balbus, the ineffectual governor of Syria Coele, the previous year.
The crowd eddied forward. Romans of the elite did not queue. They were brought up to dally politely. Timesitheus and Tranquillina paused by a massive, half-finished sarcophagus standing in the middle of the atrium. Tranquillina smoothed the folds of her husbands toga. Screened by the sarcophagus, she slyly ran a hand over his crotch, squeezed his prick. She grinned up at him.
By some unspoken agreement, their turn arrived to greet the mistress of the Domus Rostrata.
Health and great joy, Domina, Timesitheus said.
Yet another oily manumitted slave whispered to Maecia Faustina. She gave no sign of noticing her freedman Gaudianus. Necessary though it might be, to acknowledge that she needed to be reminded of her visitors names would be a breach of etiquette.
Health and great joy. It is a pleasure to welcome Gaius Furius Sabinius Timesitheus Aquila and his wife to our house. Her tone belied her words.
We are all praying for the speedy and safe arrival of our noble Emperors, Timesitheus said.
Maecia Faustina inclined her head. They are safe in the hands of the gods.
May I say, the city is full of your praise. The imperial dignity becomes you.
Neither the graceful words, nor Timesitheus most winning smile, softened her forbidding demeanour.
Duty not ambition called my father and brother to the throne. We must all do our duty, but such prominence comes at a price. I desired nothing but the solitude of a widow, to mourn my husband, and raise my son to live a virtuous life. The finest praise a woman can have is not to be talked about.
Tranquillina spoke in the low voice of a modest young matron. The sarcophagus will be a fitting memorial to your husband. What will the sculptures represent?
Maecia Faustina gazed over the heads of the throng at the great part-worked block of marble. Balbus procession as Consul. A reminder of him in happier days.
Who are the other men?
His closest friends in the Senate. Men of the highest rank and virtus, many of them also victims of the tyrant.
Will your son be depicted?
No, it is enough for him to have to have examples of such ancestral virtue before his eyes as he grows out of childhood. The man at Balbus right hand is Serenianus, the governor of Cappadocia, his amicus murdered by the Thracian.
Maecia Faustina was more animated, her voice softer. Superfluous to the conversation, Timesitheus glided away.
The colonnade around the open space was decorated with a famous painting of a wild-beast hunt. Long ago, Gordian the Elder had commissioned the panels to commemorate the games he had given when he held the office of Aedile. Timesitheus stood in an attitude of appreciation. Under his gaze, innumerable stags with antlers shaped like the palm of a hand met their end. His thoughts wandered as he counted them; twenty, fifty, a hundred.
Women were harder to fathom than men. He had never been as good at reading them, at winning their trust. Yet the gods knew, he should have been. His stepmother had provided him with an early training. His mother had been dead a year when she had come into the house. He was thirteen. She had not been an evil stepmother of myth. She had not tried to seduce him, murder him, or trick his father into cursing him with a false accusation of attempted rape. No bull from the sea had smashed him to death as he rode in his chariot. Not that his fathers patrimony had extended to chariots. No, their relationship had been a low-intensity conflict; a war of small ambushes and raids, of petty deceptions and diplomatic truces soon betrayed. He had not liked the half-brother she produced, but he had not hated him. Of course she would never believe that it had been an accident. The boy had always been boastful and proud. It was such pride that had undone him. Timesitheus had been home on leave between military commands, and the boy had challenged him to a swimming race. The currents in the straits off Kassiope were notorious. Timesitheus could not have saved him. He had nearly drowned himself.