This would all end well. The Emperor knew it. Alexander had faced death, and he had not been found wanting. He was no coward, no mean little girl. Their words could no longer hurt him. He was a man.
Along with the barbarian, the last of the servants seemed to have vanished. Even the dwarf was gone. The pavilion was empty except for his mother on her throne, Granianus beside her, and Alexander himself with the polyfagus. Alexander did not care. Elated, he rounded again on the latter. ‘Eat!’
There was a sheen of sweat on the man’s face. He did not eat, merely pointed.
Three Roman officers now stood in the doorway, helmeted, cuirassed. The leading one was holding something in one hand. Like the barbarian, they waited until they could see in the gloom.
‘Felicianus has returned.’ The speaker threw the thing he carried. It landed heavily, half rolled.
Alexander did not have to look to know it was the head of the senior Prefect.
The officers drew their weapons as they moved into the tent.
‘You too, Anullinus?’ Mamaea’s voice was controlled.
‘Me too,’ Anullinus said.
‘You can have money, the Prefecture of the Guard.’
‘It is over,’ Anullinus said.
‘Alexander will adopt you, make you Caesar, make you his heir.’
‘It is over.’
Alexander moved to his mother’s side. The sword was still in his hand. He was no coward. There were only three of them. He had been trained by the best swordsmen in the empire.
The officers stopped a few paces from the thrones. They looked around, as if taking in the enormity of the actions they were about to commit. The raking sunlight glanced off the swords they carried. The steel seemed to shimmer and hum with menace.
Alexander went to heft his own weapon. His palm was slick with sweat. He knew then his purchase on courage had been temporary. He let go of the hilt. The sword clattered to the ground.
One of the officers snorted in derision.
Sobbing, Alexander crumpled to his knees. He took hold of his mother’s skirts. ‘This is all your fault! Your fault!’
‘Silence!’ she snapped. ‘An Emperor should die on his feet. At least die like a man.’
Alexander buried his head in the folds of material. How could she say such things? It was all her fault. He had never wanted to be Emperor; thirteen years of self-negation, boredom and fear. He had never wanted to harm anyone. What you do not wish that a man should do to you …
The officers were moving forward.
‘Anullinus, if you do this, you break the oath you took before the standards.’
At his mother’s voice they stopped again. Alexander peeped out.
‘In the sacramentum did you not swear to put the safety of the Emperor above everything? Did you not swear the same for his family?’
His mother looked magnificent. Eyes flashing, face set, hair like a ridged helmet, she resembled an icon of an implacable deity, the sort that punished breakers of oaths.
The officers stood, seeming uncertain.
Could she stop them? Somewhere Alexander had read of the like.
‘Murderers are paid in just measure by the sorrows the gods will upon their houses.’
Alexander felt a surge of hope. It was Marius in Plutarch; the fire in his eyes driving back the assassins.
‘It is over.’ Anullinus said. ‘Go! Depart!’
The spell was broken, the thing now irrevocable. Yet they did nothing precipitous. It was as if they were waiting for her last words, knowing they would receive no benediction, instead nothing but harm.
‘Zeus, protector of oaths, witness this abomination. Shame! Shame! Anullinus, Prefect of the Armenians, I curse you. And you, Quintus Valerius, Tribune of the Numeri Brittonum. And you, Ammonius of the Cataphracts. Dark Hades release the Erinyes, the terrible daughters of night, the furies who blind the reason of men and turn their future to ashes and suffering.’
As her words ended, they moved. She stilled them with an imperious gesture.
‘And I curse the peasant you will place upon the throne, and I curse those who will follow him. Let not one of them know happiness, prosperity or ease. Let all of them sit in the shadow of the sword. Let them not gaze long upon the sun and earth. The throne of the Caesars is polluted. Those who ascend it will discover for themselves that they cannot evade punishment.’
Anullinus raised his sword. ‘Go! Depart!’
Mamaea did not flinch.
‘Exi!Recede!’ he repeated.
Anullinus stepped forward. The blade fell. Mamaea moved then. She could not help raise her hand. But it was too late. Alexander looked at the severed stumps of her fingers, the unnatural suddenness of the wide red gash at his mother’s throat, the jetting blood.
Someone was screaming, high and gasping, like a child. Anullinus was standing over him.
‘Exi!Recede!’
CHAPTER 2
The Northern Frontier
A Camp outside Mogontiacum,
Eight Days before the Ides of March, AD235
A blustery spring day, as was to be expected in Germania Superior eight days before the ides of March. It had still been dark, spitting with rain, when they rode out of Mogontiacum. It was mid-morning and the sun was out when they reached the camp near the village of Sicilia. Soldiers moved through the lines with no pretence of discipline. Some saluted, some did not. Most were drunk, a number to the point of insensibility.
The cavalcade dismounted. Maximinus Thrax stretched his large frame and handed his reins to a trooper. The Rhine rolled past, wide and glittering in the sun. The outer walls of the great complex of purple pavilions shifted and snapped in the wind.
‘This way.’
Maximinus followed the Senators Flavius Vopiscus and Honoratus. There were naked corpses in the corridors. They were grey-white, waxy, with a sheen as if rubbed in oil.
‘Not all the familia Caesaris fled in time,’ Honoratus said.
‘Servants and some of the secretaries, easy to replace,’ Vopiscus said. ‘The Praetorian Prefects were the only men of any account to die.’
A rack of bodies blocked their path. The heads of the dead lay close together in some final conclave.
Maximinus thought of the squalor of blood and death. It did not upset him. He had seen many massacres. He had let none trouble him since the first.
They stepped carefully over the splayed limbs. Maximinus knew his face would be set in what Paulina called his half-barbarian scowl. He thought of his wife and smiled. There could still be beauty, trust and love, even in a debased age.
It was gloomy in the throne chamber. The atmosphere was close, smelling of incense and blood, of urine and fear. Anullinus and the other two equestrian officers were waiting.
‘The mean little girl is dead.’ Anullinus held the head by its short hair.
Maximinus took the severed head in both hands. As was always the case, it was surprisingly heavy. He brought it close, scrutinized the long face, the long nose, the weak and petulant mouth and chin.
Was it true that this weakling had been Caracalla’s son? The mother had claimed so; the grandmother too. Both had boasted of the adultery. Morality had yielded to political advantage, as could be anticipated with easterners.
Maximinus carried the object back to the opening. In the better light, he turned it this way and that. Of course, he had seen Alexander many times before, but now he could really study him. He needed to be sure. The nose was not dissimilar. The hair and beard were cut in the same style. But, although he had begun to go bald, there had been more curl in Caracalla’s hair. Certainly his beard had been fuller than this wispy affair. Maximinus was no physiognomist, but the shape of the head was wrong. Caracalla’s had been squarer, like a bull’s or a block of stone. And his face had been strong, even harsh. Nothing like this delicate, inadequate youth.