The tribune put a hand on his shoulder.
‘You did what you had to do. And now my advice would be to let the whole thing go. Put any thought of completing your revenge from your mind.’
Marcus stared up at the looming bulk of the imperial palaces.
‘I have. Although I doubt that Velox will take the same attitude …’
They were escorted through the ring of iron that protected the Palatine, the officers supervising each successive praetorian checkpoint deferring to the dagger-shaped emblems on their escort’s dangling belt ends with an alacrity that made Scaurus smile quietly.
‘As ever, Cleander seems to have taken Perennis’s informal expedient and turned it to his own ends.’
The four soldiers guided them through a waiting room filled with supplicants waiting their turn to speak with the chamberlain, many of whom shot them the venomous glances reserved for those who pass unchecked where others are forced to wait their turn. Walking through the door into the chamber beyond, they were greeted by the sound of the chamberlain’s unmistakable voice.
‘Justice? If you want justice, Senator, you know what the price is. And now, I’m afraid, your time is at its end. You choose, either make the necessary payment or wait for the wheel of imperial justice to finish its slow and unpredictable revolution. Who knows, you may be lucky enough to draw a magistrate who will sympathise with the injustice that appears to have been dealt out to you …’
He gestured to an aide, who took the senator in question’s arm in a firm grip, leading the man away while he continued to protest his innocence in whatever matter it was that he had come to bring to the chamberlain’s attention.
‘And now … Ah, good, I’ve been looking forward to this all morning. Tribune. Centurion. I see you’ve made your acquaintance with the Emperor’s new Knives? I say “the Emperor’s”, of course, where in point of fact I mean “mine” …’
He smiled at them, encouraging them to join in his joke, and Scaurus smiled wryly back at him.
‘And of course, our pursuit and murder of their predecessors was only ever possible with your active assistance.’
The chamberlain nodded, his expression sanguine.
‘Of course. As I’m sure you’ve worked out by now, Varius Excingus was my creature from the very start, the agent of my helping you on to the scent of each of them in turn. How long did it take you to make the realisation?’
‘It was the moment that I found Senator Albinus waiting for us outside Pilinius’s villa. We already knew that Excingus was feeding information to him, but despite his having every opportunity to give us up to his apparent sponsor, he seemed reluctant to do so. Why, I wondered, would he not complete his betrayal of us, unless there was some bigger dog with his throat in its jaws? And what bigger dog could there be than a Roman senator with more than enough gold to buy the loyalties of a single informant? I didn’t have to look very far for the answer.’
Cleander conceded the point with a smile.
‘You’ve played quite a game, haven’t you, Tribune? While it seemed to all appearances as though you were simply supporting this man’s revenge-crazed rampage through the ranks of the man who killed his father, you were in truth once again dabbling in Roman politics, weren’t you?’ Scaurus looked back at him with a nonplussed expression, drawing a reluctant laugh from the chamberlain. ‘Come now, you’re not going to expect me to be taken in by your silent protestation of innocence?’
Cleander sat back in his chair, waiting for the tribune to answer.
‘You do me too much credit, Chamberlain. I am no more than a simple-’
The other man guffawed loudly, shaking his head in amusement.
‘A simple soldier? I don’t think so. I sent my new Knives out yesterday evening for their first task, with orders to remove a substantial problem from my already heavy burden of difficulties. They attended the residence of Senator Gaius Carius Sigilis who, as I’m sure you know, has recently been under something of a cloud for his pronouncements in the senate glorifying the former republic and demonstrating grievous and unforgivable disdain for the imperial cult. Expecting to find the senator in residence at his domus, since his movements have been tracked for the last few weeks to ensure that he didn’t attempt anything foolish to further undermine imperial rule, they were disappointed to find him absent, and the house completely empty.’
He fell silent, playing a hard stare across the two men’s faces.
‘I trust your men managed to recover the senator’s estate as some means of reparation for his crimes?’
The chamberlain nodded slowly, clearly unable to fault the concern in Scaurus’s voice.
‘For the most part, Tribune, although the fugitive seems to have escaped with a significant fraction of his wealth, which he appears to have been quietly converting into liquid assets for the past few weeks.’
Scaurus’s tone hardened, a note of disgust entering his voice.
‘And presumably he’s been doing that in such a way as to make it untraceable? These people leave me speechless, seeking to undermine the throne and then running away with their money when an attempt is made to bring them to heel!’
Cleander stared at him for a moment longer before speaking again.
‘A more detailed investigation of the senator’s domus this morning revealed the means by which he escaped, a tunnel that had been dug from a shop in an adjoining street, and which ran a full one hundred and ten paces into the senator’s garden before coming to the surface. A tunnel which, I’m told by those that know what to look for, displayed all the hallmarks of military engineering …’ He allowed the silence to play out, waiting for some response from Scaurus. ‘Nothing to say, Tribune?’
Scaurus shook his head.
‘There’s nothing I can say, Chamberlain, without sounding disrespectful to the emperor’s own legions, and therefore I shall say nothing.’
Raising an eyebrow, Cleander resumed his story.
‘And so we come to the facts surrounding a man with whom we’re both well acquainted, our mutual associate Tiberius Varius Excingus.’ He waited in silence again, but Scaurus made no more attempt to comment than before. ‘Excingus was found on the street in the Aventine district this morning, close to death as a result of several knife wounds of varying severity, apparently delivered by his own weapon since it was missing from the scene. Held in his hands …’ One of his aides leaned forward and whispered in his ear. ‘I stand corrected. Nailed to both of his hands was a severed man’s head, that of one of several men who were also found dead in the same area at much the same time. They had, apparently, been killed with long bladed weapons of the type used by your Tungrians. The head in question has been identified as belonging to one of Excingus’s closest associates, a man by the name of Silus, and it seems that it had been secured in place by means of the type of nails usually used for military crucifixions, two of which had been driven through each of his hands and into the dead man’s head in an X-shaped pattern, making it impossible for him to pull them out without assistance.’
Scaurus shrugged.
‘I won’t pretend that the man was any friend, Chamberlain. Let his family mourn for him, I have no tears to waste on the man.’
Cleander’s voice hardened.
‘Excingus was at the point of death when he was discovered, having been mortally wounded by some street scum or other, but he did manage to say one thing before expiring.’
The tribune smiled slowly.
‘Killed with his own knife? That seems poetic …’ He shrugged. ‘Did he say anything of note?’
Cleander stared at him for a long moment.
‘Not really, on the face of it. He was rambling, it seems, unmanned by loss of blood. Apparently his only discernible statement before he died was a single word. The word “impossible”. Having mused in the subject for a short while, I found my thoughts wandering back to the tunnel through which Senator Sigilis was spirited away under the noses of the men who were watching all of the exits from his property, including the two previously secret doors in the walls of his domus. A tunnel to the senator’s estate, which it seems was dug by men who had the gall to pose as workers refurbishing a shop. And it struck me that our mutual acquaintance, for all of his cunning, might have been tricked by something as simple as just such a tunnel? Perhaps, I mused, in overzealous pursuit of the centurion here, and in defiance of my orders, he led this collection of street thugs in seeking furtive access to the house in which your colleague’s wife has taken up residence, only to find several heavily armed men waiting for him? A tunnel would have been an excellent way for your men to take up their positions to wait for his intrusion without their presence being obvious to anyone watching the property on his behalf?’