‘Caenis believes that Narcissus thinks my uncle is somehow important in that respect.’
‘I can’t see why but nevertheless you’ll take him with you: he can come back to Rome and give me the information once you’ve seen Sabinus.’
Vespasian knew that he would not be sending Gaius back with any information until he knew which freedman to give it to.
‘You, meantime, will carry on east in one of Sabinus’ ships and then travel overland from the coast and be in Armenia by the spring.’
‘Does Agrippina suspect that I have a dual mission?’
‘No, she suspects nothing. She’s just pleased that you’re going. Whether she is behind Radamistus or not, she isn’t concerned because she thinks that you will fail.’
‘Then she does suspect one thing.’
‘What?’
‘She suspects that I’ll never come back.’
Pallas regarded Vespasian with a shrewd eye. ‘That’s in the hands of the gods.’
PART II
CHAPTER V
Snow, driven by a harsh easterly wind, lashed into Vespasian’s face. He pulled his hood lower and hunched his shoulders against the worsening conditions; his mount plodded next to a wagon creaking along the Via Egnatia pulled by a pair of rough-haired horses, their obvious reluctance to move forward into the wind punished by regular licks of Magnus’ whip. Hormus sat on the bench next to Magnus rubbing his hands and looking miserable with chattering teeth. Despite the knitted woollen mittens and socks, Vespasian’s fingers and toes were almost numb and he thought with envy of the relative comfort that Gaius must be enjoying in the covered rear of the vehicle and contemplated joining him.
‘I would if I were you, sir,’ Magnus said, giving his team another sharp reminder of their duty.
‘What?’
‘Get under cover. You’ve glanced over your shoulder three times since the last milestone.’
Vespasian looked up at the eleven lictors — the due of a man of proconsular rank on official business — marching in step in front of the wagon with their fasces on their shoulders and shook his head. ‘They’re having it far worse than I am; seeing as they’re the only protection we’ve got I want them well disposed towards me should I require them to risk their lives. Besides, it can’t be more than another four or five miles to Philippi.’
‘If that’s the case then we should be able to see a huge area of marshland to the south,’ Gaius called from inside.
‘We’re having trouble seeing the horses’ arseholes at the moment, sir,’ Magnus informed him, not quite truthfully. Gaius pushed his head through the flap in the leather wagon cover.
‘Oh, I see what you mean.’ Although the snow had only just started to fall thickly and was yet to settle in depth on the ploughed fields on either side of the dead-straight road, visibility was very limited. ‘Well, take it from me, Vespasian, that your grandfather on your father’s side and great-grandfather on your mother’s and my side were both here just over eighty-four years ago.’
Vespasian thought for a few moments and then remembered his history. ‘Of course they were, but on opposite sides of the field.’
‘Indeed, dear boy. My grandfather served with Augustus and Marcus Antonius in the Eighth Legion.’
‘And my grandfather, Titus Flavius Petro, was, if I remember rightly what my grandmother told me, a centurion of the Thirty-sixth Legion under Marcus Brutus’ command. She said that it was mainly made up of his old Pompeian comrades who had surrendered to Caesar after the Battle of Pharsalus.’
‘It’s a shame that we can’t see that far; between the two armies they fielded almost a quarter of a million men, which must have been quite a sight.’
‘On both occasions,’ Vespasian reminded Gaius. ‘Petro made it through the first battle and then his legion got badly mauled in the second, twenty days later when Brutus was crushed. He managed to escape and made it home to Cosa but he was amongst the couple of thousand equestrians that Augustus forced to commit suicide.’
‘Whereas mine was rewarded with the land of one of those men.’ Gaius chuckled. ‘And now here we are, all those years later, the products of either side of the argument in the breakup of the Republic, trundling across the site of the greatest battle between Roman citizens that’s ever been known, on our way to do the dirty work for two Greek freedmen who are the ultimate beneficiaries of that battle. It would seem that for all the cries of freedom issued by either side the end result has been domination of us all by a couple of ex-slaves. I wonder if Augustus, Marcus Antonius, Brutus or Cassius could have foreseen that and, if they could, would any of them have done things differently?’ He rubbed flakes of snow off his ruddy face, looked around quickly, his mouth pursed ruefully, and then disappeared back inside.
‘Course, it don’t make any difference for most of us, though, does it?’ Magnus stated with certainty. ‘If you was just a common legionary, whether you was on the winning side or losing side in that battle didn’t make a scrap of difference — if you survived, that is. Only a few legions were disbanded; the rest went back to business as usual. Whatever the political changes back in Rome, most of the legions just returned to their camps on the frontiers and guarded the Empire. The only change they noticed was that the oath was worded differently but everything else was the same: their centurions, their food, the discipline, everything was exactly as it was. So the whole exercise was purely for the benefit of a few vain men whose sense of honour meant that they had to be seen to have a say in how the Empire was run. If only they’d realised that most people couldn’t give a fuck. They could have dispensed with the armies and just had a nice scrap amongst themselves; a couple of hundred dead and the whole affair would’ve been sorted out and everyone would’ve been happy.’
Vespasian laughed, despite his freezing lips. ‘Much easier. But it didn’t happen that way and the result of that struggle and all those deaths has been hijacked by two self-serving freedmen.’
‘Ah! But at least they didn’t force a quarter of a million men to fight each other so that they could grab power. In a way Pallas and Narcissus have got less blood on their hands than Augustus. You senators almost resent the fact that they’ve come to power without a good civil war in which thousands of common citizens die; that would legitimize them in your eyes. Their greatest crime is sneaking their way to power rather than bludgeoning their way there like all those upstanding families in the Republic used to.’
Vespasian found himself unable to rebut that statement and instead wondered at the truth of it. To follow that line of logic, Augustus was the only ruler for the last eighty years to be legitimate because he had fought his way to power.
He had thought that his resentment of Narcissus and Pallas was mainly based on the way that they had come to power and then held on to it; but was their way any more unjustified than Caligula’s? He too had come to power by trickery and subterfuge if the rumours were to be believed. But then neither of the freedmen’s great-grandfathers had killed more of his enemies’ soldiers than they had his on this plain so far from Rome.
So, therefore, it was to do with who the freedmen were, not how they got to where they were, that was the real cause of the growing resentment. The resentment that he had felt when Narcissus had — as Pallas had predicted — ordered him to a private room as he left Pallas’ apartments had been bitter. The resentment had grown when the freedman had suggested that Vespasian’s appointment as ambassador to Armenia was a very convenient cover for him to use to stop off in Macedonia and speak to his brother so that he could furnish Narcissus with the information he needed to defeat Pallas. When he thought of Pallas he remembered him as Antonia’s steward. Then, he knew his place; now, he was forming imperial policy. He was a man who had risen way beyond his station and Vespasian realised, for the first time, that the real cause of his resentment for the pair of them was envy. Envy that people born so low should have risen so high. Ex-slaves had no right to such power. He came from a family far above them and yet they could order him to do things that he would rather not do. It began to seep into his mind that he was jealous of their power because he wanted it for himself, and if he were to have it he would have to take it in the old-fashioned manner: he would bludgeon — as Magnus had put it — his way there. Then the image of the ‘V’ on the sacrificial liver played in his mind and, much to his surprise, it seemed to calm him.