‘I do. And so would you, in my place. Every additional person I share my knowledge with presents an additional risk of my being betrayed …’
The first spear barked out a laugh.
‘And wouldn’t that be ironic!’
Excingus simply continued speaking, ignoring the barb.
‘… tortured for as long as I could stand the pain without descending into insanity, no matter what truth and lies I babbled in extremis, then summarily executed and dropped into a deep pit to rot, unmourned and most certainly unlamented.’
Sigilis coughed as if clearing his throat.
‘And so, having been paid …?’
The informer nodded.
‘Apologies, Senator, I was on the verge of becoming maudlin. As you say, to business.’ He turned to address the Tungrians. ‘I suggest that you abandon your prejudices, gentlemen, and pay especially close attention to what I am about to tell you, for I doubt that anyone else in Rome has either sufficient knowledge or courage to provide you with this information. There are four men who form the heart of the emperor’s policy of propping his treasury up through “confiscatory justice” …’
He paused, waiting for any of them to comment, but none of the men sitting around him responded.
‘These four men bring a particular combination of skills and experience to the services they perform, not to mention their shared disregard for the humanity of their victims. They are, in different ways, intelligent, driven and successful men in their own fields, positively charming in one case, and none of them displays any overt signs of mania, and yet they are all, in their own ways, just about the most dangerous men in the entire city. Perennis gathered them to him when it became clear that the throne would not survive without financial assistance, reasoning that his own praetorian guard might be likely to draw the line at being ordered to slaughter a man and then either kill or enslave his entire familia. He gave them whatever it was that he believed would motivate them, but we can simplify that down to two things. Firstly he offered them money. A lot of money, for a relatively small amount of effort. And secondly, he extended to them the opportunity to do exactly as they pleased with some of the most respected families in Rome. Think about that for a moment, and then ask yourself how many men in the city would jump at the chance to have free licence with the women of a household like this one. Never mind the novelty of taking the mistress of the house by force while her husband’s corpse is still cooling on floor, think of the possibilities for a man with that inclination. Daughters, female slaves … more than enough helpless female flesh for everyone, eh?’
He met Marcus’s stare of hatred with an equally frank gaze.
‘I won’t ask for your forgiveness for pointing out the obvious, Centurion, since I know that your own family was one of the first to suffer such a catastrophic end, but I will point out that I’m simply explaining these men’s motivation. Hate me for doing so if you like, but at least recognise the realities of what you’re dealing with. You might find that understanding of some value, once you’ve mastered your repugnance at the knowledge.’
He shrugged in the face of the young centurion’s obdurate stare.
‘Anyway, as I was saying, there are four of them. So, where shall we start?’ He mused for a moment. ‘Perhaps with the most dangerous of them, a gladiator who fights under the name of Mortiferum …’
The Tungrian party left the senator’s house in the late afternoon, Excingus having departed via a well-disguised and heavily built door in the garden wall that opened into the storeroom of a shop on the other side of the wall. Senator Sigilis had stared at the departing informer’s back with the expression of a man who urgently needed to wash his hands.
‘I rent the shopkeeper his premises for next to nothing, on the condition that the occasional person comes and goes in a rather more discreet manner than knocking at my front door. Of course, using it to admit a man like that means that I can’t rely on it for a discreet exit myself, should the need arise, but then it’s not the only secret way out of the property, as I’m sure you can imagine.’
The Tungrians had taken their leave of him with much to consider, and even Dubnus was uncharacteristically quiet as they made their way back towards the Ostian Gate. Less than a hundred paces from the gate’s massive archway, a pair of men stepped out onto the cobbles before them, one of them instantly recognisable as Senator Albinus, Scaurus’s former commander in Dacia and, since the confrontation in the emperor’s throne room that had ended in the praetorian prefect’s death, his sworn enemy. The other was Cotta, a muscular man with a weather-beaten face and the leader of Albinus’s personal bodyguard. A former legion centurion, he had established a small but effective team of bodyguards composed of the pick of the soldiers retiring from his legion and had been bankrolled by Albinus, to whom he therefore owed a considerable debt in both money and gratitude. The tribune stepped forward to meet them, holding up a hand to halt his men.
‘Senator Albinus. Centurion. To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?’
The big man stared back at him in silence for a moment before waving a hand and calling out a command that rang out down the suddenly empty street.
‘Bring them.’
As he strode off down a side street, ten or so men emerged from the shops to either side and behind the Tungrians, another half-dozen strolling out into the street behind Cotta and blocking the road to the gate. Each of them was carrying a tight role of cloth, and Julius raised a hand waist-high, waving it downwards in a clear signal to his men to refrain from reaching for their knives. Cotta smiled easily at Scaurus, gesturing to the side street.
‘Best if you come with us, Tribune. The senator wants a word with you, and it’s probably best not to have the plebs gawping at us while he’s doing it, eh?’
He shot Marcus a knowing glance and then raised a questioning eyebrow at Scaurus, who looked appraisingly at the men encircling his command.
‘Your men are armed, I presume, Centurion Cotta?’
The retired soldier snapped out a terse order.
‘Swords!’
Each of his men pushed a hand into their roll of cloth, pulling a short infantry gladius from the fabric. Scaurus shrugged, his glance at Marcus eloquent, then turned to follow Albinus up the street. Thirty paces brought them out into the shade of a small square surrounded on all sides by insulae, and the burly senator waited silently in its middle until his hired swordsmen had herded the Tungrians into the enclosed space, grinning as Julius and Dubnus looked about them with expressions promising swift violence, clearly restrained only by the weapons that hemmed them in on all sides.
‘Perfect, isn’t it? I own the buildings around us, of course, which is why there aren’t idlers dangling out of every window!’
Scaurus looked about him with thinly disguised amusement.
‘Always one for the theatrical, aren’t you Senator?’
The big man smiled broadly back at him, revelling in his domination of the situation he had so clearly engineered.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t call this theatrical, Rutilius Scaurus, I’d be using the term gladiatorial.’
The tribune shook his head in bemusement.
‘Gladiatorial? What, do you intend to turn your men loose on us in some sort of pitched battle? What do you think the urban cohorts will make of that? I’m sure they’ll be along soon enough, given the spectacle you made back there with so much illegal iron on the street.’
Albinus shook his head, his smile widening.
‘Oh, I doubt it. The local tribune has managed to get himself rather deeper into debt than might have been sensible, so once I’d purchased that debt it was relatively easy to persuade him to keep his men clear of the area for rather more time than I need for this carefully constructed scenario to play out. Centurion?’