Rome, 21 December AD 69
Trabo
I woke to a stunning headache and the stench of burning men. I opened my eyes slowly, closed them, opened them again at the feel of soft breasts pressing against my arm.
I thought Jocasta and was full of hope and joy. And then I remembered. I made myself focus, strove for a name.
‘Tertia?’ I blinked and it was still her. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘She works here,’ said a man’s voice behind me. ‘Four denarii a night.’
Four denarii? Four? I’d paid her two sesterces a month and she’d had to buy food for us out of that.
And then I recognized the voice. I sat up, fast, and fell back against the wall at the bed’s head. ‘Where’s Jocasta?’
‘She’s gone south, we think.’ Pantera moved round to stand in front of me. ‘Do you feel well enough to ride?’
‘South? You think she’s gone to Lucius? I don’t believe you.’
I couldn’t stand, but lifted my head to look at where Pantera had sat down, cool as you like, on a pale blue satin couch. We were in the whorehouse and the whole place was done out in pastel shades and smelled of roses.
Looking down, I found I was lying on a bed with silk sheets in three different shades of lavender. More than the stench of funeral pyres, that drove me to my feet. I swayed and caught the wall to hold me.
‘Ride where?’ I asked.
‘Down the Appian Way. Lucius’ cohorts are advancing on Rome. Unless we want a repeat of yesterday, and I don’t think we’ll find a soul alive in Rome who wants that, it will be necessary to meet him in force. Antonius Primus is sending three legions south to stop him. They leave by the second call. If you want to see Jocasta alive, you’ll be ready to leave with them.’
I had no idea what time it was, only that there were chinks of daylight under the door and so it must have been after dawn.
‘She isn’t a traitor,’ I said.
He blew out his cheeks. He was grey at the edges, like a man who has had little sleep and much commotion. ‘You won’t know if you don’t come.’
He pushed himself to his feet. I don’t think he liked the couch any more than I did. It smelled of sex. Come to that, so did I, but mine wasn’t scented sex.
Stiffly, he said, ‘You are offered the lead of the army riding south. If you don’t take it, someone else will. So your choice is this: do you want to face Lucius and his cohorts and the risk of meeting Jocasta, or would you rather stay here and fuck Tertia at my expense?’
I could have hit him. Perhaps I could. But Borros was there and my head still hurt and he looked more than ready to hit me again.
Without a word to either of them, I turned and began to dress. I am not a coward, but I choose my battles and this was not one worth fighting.
Outside, the air was foul with the scent of burning flesh. Greasy soot fell in soft flakes, staining everything.
At the barracks, there were more men bearing bodies in funeral parties than there were in the columns of tired-faced men lined up ready to march out, and everyone was sunk into despond by the pyres that ranged behind the wall. They didn’t want war any more than I did, but nobody, either, wanted Lucius to descend on the city with his cohorts thirsting for blood, so they were there, ready; brave men all.
At Pantera’s orders, someone brought me a horse marked with Vitellius’ brand, but wearing trappings hurriedly cobbled together that showed the oak branch in leaf and nut that was Vespasian’s livery.
Someone else handed me a helmet with a fresh scarlet plume, and as I rode up the ranks the men who knew me stared and then cheered: I was Trabo, whose name had been in the lottery, and here I was, alive, ready to lead them. Those few who had never heard of me took longer to understand who I was, but before I reached the head of the column they were cheering too.
I waved: it was expected of me. I hated it.
‘I’m a fraud,’ I said bitterly to Pantera, as he rode up beside me.
‘No. You’re the man who fulfilled his oath to Otho and survived the depredations of the false emperor. Don’t belittle yourself.’
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him just what he thought he would achieve by going out with three legions against Lucius’ three cohorts, but there was something in his eyes that warned me off. He was in a rare mood: tight and taut with a sense of impending explosion. It left me jittery, and in any case my head still hurt from Borros’ attentions; this, too, wasn’t the fight I wanted to have.
We two rode in sullen silence and the men, feeling it, were quiet; nobody raised a marching song. If they were like me, every sinew ached, every bone felt bruised. Less than a day before, I had been desperate for battle; all that running around in dog-headed masks had driven me mad. Now, I never wanted to lift a sword in anger again.
I tried to remember if I had felt like this when Otho was beaten, but the past was a haze and all I could recall were the faces of the recent dead. Their shades walked with me in columns on either side, mourning their own passing. Someone said that Rome had lost fifty thousand men in the past month, which had to be the most monumental exaggeration, but even if it was a third of that number, it was too many.
Just before noon, on Pantera’s advice — his order, if we are honest — we halted in the open land between the Alban and Volscian hills. The rhythms of the legions were returning to me. Pantera may have given the order, but I saw it carried out and found the first beginnings of joy in the snap of command and response. At my signal, muted trumpet calls moved the men about: the cavalry to the higher ground, the legionaries into blocks in the centre with their banners brought down and kept tight so that they might not be readily seen from a distance.
The breeze lifted the horses’ manes, fluttered the ends of the coiled flags. Men stood in silence, scanning the horizon, but it was the cavalry, mounted on the higher ground, with the double advantage of height, who first saw the advancing cohorts and called out.
We waited until the mass of moving men marching north up the Appian Way was obvious to us all. Even this close, perhaps a dozen spear-casts away, they showed no particular sign of having seen us. We had the advantage of the sun behind us, and the folds of the land to protect us.
I waited until they had closed to half the distance before I gave the command for the companies to raise their banners aloft.
Then they noticed us.
It must have been a spectacular sight; the horizon suddenly forested with standards. A shudder rippled down the oncoming cohorts, of recognition, disbelief, despair. Lucius might have known already that Rome was lost, but from the look of things he hadn’t told his troops; they had believed they were marching back to victory, or at least to fight for a city that might still be taken.
Silence spread across them as they stamped to a halt, five spear-casts away. Their faces were a pale blur, but it was possible to see the images of Vitellius that remained on their standards, the only ones left anywhere near Rome.
Lucius rode a big bay horse that was already patched black with sweat as he paced it forward from the front ranks. Three figures followed him; one was an officer: Geminus, the second his prisoner — that must have been Domitian. There was a chain from his neck to Geminus’ saddle. The third wore a silk robe that blew in the breeze; a priest, perhaps, or an oracle.
‘Will he fight?’ I asked. My mouth was dry.
‘I hope not.’ Pantera was as grimly white as he had been in the morning. ‘Geminus was given help to escape from the city last night after he witnessed Vitellius’ death. He will have been the most credible of witnesses: not even Lucius could accuse him of lying. My hope is that, knowing his brother is dead, and seeing by how much he is outnumbered, he’ll realize that the only choice is surrender. Unfortunately, being Lucius, we can’t depend on his reason. We should go forward to meet him. Tell the men to hold.’