‘Lord, I cannot, will not-’ My throat tore apart with grief. My hands tied themselves behind my back.
Otho flashed the quick, easy smile that had won me and all his men long before Galba named his unfortunate heir and so precipitated his own death. He said, ‘I want you to sharpen it for me. I would trust no one else. Unless you’d rather I called back Plotius with his weeping and promises of easy victory?’
That was unthinkable. I dragged my hands from behind my back. ‘You honour me, lord.’
Otho had the stone, and, although it was impossible to put a better edge on the knife, the rhythmic sound of iron stroked against the grit was a balm of sorts to my grieving soul. Also, it covered the sound of Otho’s careful whisper.
‘You will remain with me while I do this. You will be my witness. And before you step out to call the others in, you will take from beneath my pillow the letter that is there. When today is over, you will deliver it to Vespasian’s mistress, Caenis, at her home in the Street of the Bay Trees on the Quirinal. Don’t rush. Don’t go into Rome too early; Vitellius’ forces will not welcome you. Caution matters more than speed in this and you will be hunted, whatever Lucius and Caecina may say to the contrary.’
‘Yes, lord.’ I didn’t know it at the time, but he saw the future more clearly than any living man should have been able to do; standing on the edge of death gave him clear sight.
‘The knife, then,’ Otho said, and there was a moment, standing in the burst of sunlight, when we were both alive, and had all the hopes of the world between us.
And then Otho moved, one single inward stroke that drove the blade into his heart, and all hope was gone.
I held him as he died, felt the wild, erratic rhythm of his heart leap and buck and patter to silence.
I closed his eyes against the cruel day and lowered him to the floor and then, before I went out to speak to the officers, freedmen and slaves waiting outside the tent, I reached under the pillow, still warm from his head, and transferred the letter that lay there into the breast of my tunic.
In Caenis’ atrium, I opened my eyes. I saw her first; a small, bright sparrow of a woman, with a fine mind and moist eyes.
She had known Otho, and cared for him. Jocasta had known him too, she who was not small or sparrow-like at all, but burned bright as a furnace, her wild intelligence unshielded; vital.
And behind me was Pantera, who had not yet let his blade drop. I turned my head, slowly, and felt it score round my neck. I stopped when the tip was digging into my larynx.
‘I am yours,’ I said. ‘Accept me now, to help you in any way I can, to promote your mission, whatever it is, to expend my last tear, my last drop of blood, in the defeat of Vitellius — or kill me. The choice must be yours. I have said all I can.’
There was a time when I would have laughed at any such grand, noble gestures, but then Otho had made his one grand, noble gesture and changed my world. I laughed at different things now; dead Guards, mostly.
I thought Pantera might laugh, and, laughing, kill me. I was strangely at peace with the thought.
The tip of the knife was a focal point of pain; just enough to notice. Blood pooled in the hollow of my throat. I counted a dozen heartbeats before the pressure slackened off.
Something had gone on over my head, a silent exchange between Pantera, Jocasta and Caenis that I wish I had seen; Jocasta was like a lamp burning in my soul by then, and I couldn’t think why I had ever left her in Rome, unwed.
It was Caenis, with her innate compassion, who spoke first.
‘Will you renew your Guard’s oath,’ she asked, gravely, ‘in the name of the emperor Vespasian, accepting myself and Pantera as his agents, to be obeyed in all things?’
After Otho’s death, I had not expected to find joy again, certainly not so soon. But it was with joy that I turned, and knelt and placed my hands in hers and spoke again the words of my legionary oath that had been inscribed on my heart since my first day in the legions.
‘I swear in the name of Jupiter, Best and Greatest, that the emperor Vespasian is my lord and master in all things, that unto death will I serve him and his and at his command. I offer my life in the protection of his demesne. And’ — this was not in the oath — ‘I will undertake personally to reach the men on this list, as many as I may, and tell them of our lord’s endeavours, and bring them, heart and soul, to his support.’
They allowed me a small silence, a moment of dignity, and then Jocasta said from behind my right shoulder, ‘You may do that, but someone has got in ahead of you. This is the news I came to bring. Lucius heard it this morning and told me: Antonius Primus, the legate of the Seventh Galbania, has brought together the five Balkan legions and sworn them to Vespasian. He is marching at the head of thirty thousand men, straight for Rome. If nobody stops him, he’ll be at the gates by Saturnalia. So now the only way to prevent all-out civil war is to identify those men who will support Vespasian and push them into doing it openly. If enough legions can be brought to his side, Vitellius’ generals might abandon their cause.’
Chapter 27
Rome, 4 August AD 69
Jocasta
I’m not sure what I expected after I told them about Antonius Primus and his blatant opportunism, but it wasn’t that we’d be up all night talking through strategies to turn him to our best advantage.
By dawn, when we’d run out of words, my eyes felt as if they’d been rubbed with goose grease and sand; each blink was slow and gritty. Thinking was hard.
‘We should leave.’ I stood, slowly, rolling my shoulders. ‘The Guards will come back with the sun and they must find the lady Caenis and lord Domitian here alone. The rest of us must leave while it’s still dark.’
‘I could escort…’ Domitian had been half asleep. His cheek held the scarlet imprint of his fist where he had leaned on it for the past hours. He pushed himself upright now, scrubbing away the memories of dreams with the heel of his hand.
I smiled for him; he was a good boy. Strange, yes, solitary, inward, scarred by a life lived in the shade of his perfect brother, the soldier and seducer of queens, but good all the same. Whatever else happened later, you must believe me when I say that I did not want to see him hurt.
That August morning in Caenis’ atrium, with the early sun shining silver on the flat sheen of the pond, I said simply, ‘Thank you. It would be good to have your company, but you must stay here with the lady Caenis. You must seem to wake if the Guards come. You must be ready to lie for your life and ours. Can you do that?’
You see? I was good to him. His smile was radiant. I squeezed his shoulder as friends do to each other. Trabo glowered, which was ridiculous, but he was as exhausted as the rest of us… one has to make excuses. Caenis, on the other hand, looked as if her heart might break on Domitian’s behalf, which was unfortunate, but there was nothing I could do about it just then. He was the son of the man who might become emperor and I wished to remain on the right side of him, but I had no intention of relieving him of his virginity, which was what he so clearly wanted.
What did Pantera do?
Nothing. That is, I don’t remember him doing anything particular, except that he grasped Caenis in a brotherly embrace and kissed her cheek and it looked to me as if he whispered something. So yes, all right, he did do something, and very probably it had a bearing on what came next.
A last moment’s brisk leave-taking gripped us all and then we three who were leaving stepped out into the remains of the night, each heading in a different direction.
Trabo went along the road to the Inn of the Crossed Spears, Pantera turned uphill and I headed west, towards the Aventine, and home.