‘I swear to you now that I will protect the lives of these three with my own, or I will answer to you when you are emperor.’ He shifted a little, listening. ‘And now, my lord, I think you must dress, and go out to meet your legions.’
This once, he was late, for I had already heard it: the susurration of a thousand sandalled feet scuffing over sand, the hush of men trained in silent assault.
I was not under assault any more, but I had heard this sound so often in the pre-dawn dark of a raid on a village, or a town, or a cluster of caves in the desert, that it raised battle blood in my veins.
An unexpected flap of tent skin made me jump: Demalion was there, and Hades take him but the lad was smiling. Not broadly, not with Titus’ ripe humour or Pantera’s scarred irony, but the sweep of his mouth was unquestionably up instead of down, and it was this small miracle, with its promise of a flask of Falerian, that told me I had crossed my own Rubicon; that there was, in truth, no going back.
Demalion carried my tunic over his arm, and my armour pack, and my silvered greaves and the enamelled belt, worn through to the bronze beneath with three decades’ wear. With his help, I dressed as fast as I have ever done, and then I lifted the tent flap with my own hand.
I looked left and right, to Titus and Mucianus who had come to join me. Behind were Pantera and Demalion.
‘Shall we go to meet our destiny?’
Outside, the day felt newly minted; sharp, fresh, not yet too hot. My men were standing in parade order, line upon line, in their hundreds, their thousands, in their shining, dazzling tens of thousands: the IIIrd, the Xth, the XVth, that were my own, plus the IVth Scythians, the VIth Ferrata, and the ill-fated XIIth Fulminata commanded by Mucianus.
There was a moment’s lingering stillness as each man took a breath and the suck of it rippled soundlessly back from the front lines to the rearmost.
It held one last, long heartbeat, and then the morning split asunder, rent by a wall of sound as, with one voice, thirty thousand men hailed me in the word that made me their ruler.
‘ Imperator! ’
II
Chapter 5
Rome, 1 August AD 69
Sextus Geminus, centurion, the Praetorian Guard
It was raining on the morning of the lead lottery that was my first true introduction to Pantera; the kind of torrential rain that felt as if the gods had upended the Tiber and were pouring the result on to our heads; the kind of rain where you were drenched to the skin as soon as you stepped out of the door; the kind of rain that everyone said was a bad omen.
But still, it was only rain; nobody was dying, and in any case, we were legionaries: if we were ordered out of barracks, we went.
Vitellius had given the order. He didn’t believe in the power of omens and he wasn’t going to cancel his precious ceremony just because the sky was weeping, so we were called to parade in the forum at the second watch after dawn and had to stand in our cohorts, listening to him read his speech.
We should have known it was bad then. I mean, really… we’d just marched the length of Italy, and risked our lives half a dozen times to put him on the throne. We’d fought other legions, just as good as us, when the men in them were our brothers, our fathers, cousins, friends and lovers. We’d killed men we admired and marched over their bleeding bodies in his name. Was it so hard to say thank you?
I’ve done it without notes, he could have done the same. But no, he had to read from his sodden scroll and we had to stand and watch it disintegrate in his hands. When he was done, we had to about-face and slow-march to the top of the Capitol.
There are three routes up that particular hill. If you’re feeling fit, there’s the Hundred Steps on the north face that take you straight up to the north gate, but it’s a stiff and savage rise. If you want something slightly less vicious, there’s the Gemonian steps on the southwestern aspect. That’s the place where the bodies of executed criminals are exposed before they’re tipped into the Tiber.
And then there’s the long, slow, winding path that takes you up the south slope on to the Arx and then across the saddle of the Asylum before you reach the Capitol proper and the temple of the three gods.
This was the new emperor’s opportunity to display his victorious troops to his city, which meant we had to take the slow route so that the masses could line the streets and cheer. They did, of course; to do anything else risked being arrested for sedition.
He’d already banned the astrologers, which did nothing much beyond ensuring that every street corner was decorated with graffiti telling in detail how the stars predicted his death. Everyone read it and half believed it, but nobody wanted to be next in line for exile, so the plebs turned up in force and stood in the driving rain to cheer us as we marched out of the forum.
I hadn’t been back in Rome for long and it was interesting to see what had changed. Nero’s giant statue was still there; Galba had taken it down and Otho had put it back up again. I think Vitellius couldn’t decide whether he wanted to make friends with the senate, who hated Nero, which meant he’d have to take it down, or with the people, who’d loved him, and wanted it to stay. I don’t think the fact that it was still there meant he sided with the people, more that he was just really bad at making decisions.
So we passed Nero, and remembered not to salute as we’d done when we were last in Rome, and on we marched up the hill, past the statue of Juno Moneta and on towards the mint, where you could feel the blast from the furnaces even through the rain.
The coiners had been working night and day since we came back to Rome, melting down coins of the other emperors ready for reminting. Vitellius had only just got round to sitting for the celators so it was only the newest coins that had his image on.
It wasn’t a bad likeness. If you only look at his face, he’s a good-looking man, taller than any of us by half a head, with a strong nose and a bald circle on his pate that can look quite stately at times.
He was lame, though, which is less than ideal in a general, and it wasn’t as if it was an injury gained in the field; he’d broken his thigh bone in a chariot accident, which is about as stupid as it gets, really.
So we passed the mint and the coins in my pouch jingled in sympathy with those being put to the fire, and my guts griped, and if I could have walked off down the path I would have done.
Why? Because the whole thing was a mistake. If you’re going to follow someone all the way to Rome, you have to make sure it’s the right man, and Vitellius was never that.
I said so in January when the whole thing started about not renewing our oath to Galba and swearing to Vitellius instead. I argued as long as I could, but there’s a point when loyalty to the old regime becomes treachery to the new and I had my men to think of.
So I swore with the rest of them and after that… when it comes to the edge, a man’s word is his only coin. If you can’t keep an oath, you’re no better than the barbarians.
On we trudged, past the row of dilapidated priests’ dwellings, each leaning on the next like an old man in want of a stick, and on, shuffling in through the vast and ancient gates of the temple, which has been home to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva since the time when Rome was too poor to build them a temple each and had to house all three under the one roof. Later, when there was gold enough and more to spare, nobody was about to offend two out of the three most revered deities in the city by rehoming them elsewhere.