Domitian was first to start arranging the men differently. He said, ‘Antonius Primus can’t be down here at Cremona any longer. He won’t wait at a battle site, in case Valens manages to raise an army and falls on him. He must be coming up Italy by now.’
He had hold of a figure in a blue cloak and was moving it up the roads that were marked as deep lines on the map.
‘He is,’ Pantera said. ‘He has joined Lucillius Bassus, who has pledged his oath to your father. That was at Ravenna, here, on the eastern coast. The marines have moved out of the port to provide support on his flank.’
He placed a number of blue cloaked-pieces inland from the port where a ship wrought in the bronze showed the navy to be resting.
He went on, ‘Antonius Primus is coming on towards Rome now, with an advance army of perhaps ten thousand men, mostly fast-moving auxiliaries and cavalry. The infantry are coming on more slowly behind. All the early estimates still stand: he’ll be with us by Saturnalia.’
Saturnalia. Less than a month away. A winter war.
This shocked us all to momentary silence. Sabinus broke it, saying, ‘Vitellius is hiding in the palace as if nothing were happening. Surely now he must act.’
‘But what can he do?’ I pointed to the map, where Pantera was setting blue-coated horsemen in a line pointing straight for the heart of Rome. ‘Caecina has defected to our side and Valens is still in the depths of Italy. The emperor’s two best generals are absent. He has nothing left but leaderless men.’
‘He has his brother,’ Pantera said.
‘Lucius will never leave Rome,’ I said. ‘He’s the core of the administration. It will fall apart without him.’
‘Which is exactly why we need to lure him out,’ Pantera said. ‘And we have to do it before things become complicated at Misene. See what happens if we can persuade them to join us.’
His hands swept across the map. The flowing blue river of Antonius’ forces advanced in a great curving line towards Rome. But behind the city lay a mass of green-clad men: the marines at the western naval port Misene, who, we had to assume, were as able as their counterparts at Ravenna. Before our eyes, Pantera changed their cloaks from green to blue.
Now, when we looked, the green cloaks in the city were effectively surrounded; there were blue men advancing along the Flaminian and Appian ways, north and south, and no escape routes remained for those who would flee the city.
There, graphically outlined before us, was a stark truth: if the marines at Misene went over to Vespasian, then Vitellius and Lucius were effectively trapped in Rome.
‘Clearly, the marines are our key,’ Pantera said. ‘I’m working on bringing them to our cause but we need to lure Lucius north. If he’s still in Rome when the marines defect, he’ll be down on them like a hammer on a naked hand and we’ll lose the west coast. And if we lose the west coast’ — he pointed away from the dog’s head of Italy to where Egypt lay — ‘Vespasian will not be able to reach here in the spring if he is needed.’
‘How can you make this happen?’ Domitian asked bluntly. ‘You don’t command Lucius.’
‘No, but if he thinks I really don’t want him to go north, he’ll do it.’ Pantera gave a dry smile. ‘Trabo was made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Since July, he has been with the fleet at Ravenna passing to Lucius every letter I have sent to Antonius Primus. Shortly, he will pass on one I sent three days ago, which said that I was doing everything in my power to prevent Lucius from leading the legions north on the grounds that he could do us serious damage and interrupt the assault on Rome. The battle between us has become intensely personal. If he thinks I want him to do something, he will do its opposite. I have no doubt of that.’
We left soon after. The last thing I remember is the sight of Caenis looking hard at Pantera, as if she had caught him out in a lie, but I thought it had something to do with Domitian.
Pantera and I collided in the doorway. I was waiting for my litter-bearers, he was heading out into a city where death waited for him round every corner. Already he looked smaller, more exhausted.
‘Come back with me,’ I said. ‘I can offer a clean bed and hot food and safety, at least for one night.’
‘No you can’t. You’d be endangering yourself and not helping me. I couldn’t let you risk that.’ We were close, and I could feel the warmth of his body, taste his breath. This was not the faked slobberings of a pretend-drunken centurion and his pretend-whore. I could smell him, that scent of slightly scorched linen that hovers over some men and makes the air sweeter. I caught his wrist.
‘Come. You will be safe.’
I felt his hesitation. He did want to; I truly believe that. But he shook his head. ‘I can’t. One woman, caught between two men. It never ends well.’
‘Two men?’ I stared at him. ‘You surely don’t think Lucius…’
‘I wouldn’t so insult you. But without question Trabo is in love with you and has reason, I would say from the frequency of your meetings, to think his passion is returned.’
Shocked, I took a step back; he had just lied to the entire group about Trabo’s being at Ravenna. And I had believed that he believed it. How did he know? And how long had he known? ‘Are you following me?’ I asked.
‘No.’ He gave a small, rueful smile. ‘But I am most certainly following Trabo. You’ve done well, both of you. And the reports from Ravenna are exceptional in their detail and literacy. Whoever you sent there is far more competent than Trabo would have been. I commend your choice of agent.’
He lifted my hand and kissed the back; just a touch of dry lips, no passion in it at all, but it carried more intimacy than anything we’d ever done.
‘Good night, Jocasta. This war will be different next time we meet.’
Chapter 37
Rome, October, AD 69
Trabo
Jocasta came to me late in the night and I could tell she was upset.
I wasn’t at the Retiarius any more; I had my own lodgings on the edge of the Capitol, by the gladiator school, a brisk but easy walk from the Circus Maximus.
Pantera had got me that job. Don’t ask me how or why, because I don’t know. I had thought my staying in Rome was a secret, known only to Jocasta and me, but it became clear that Pantera was in on the deal when, sometime in the first month, Borros, the big lumbering Briton who served him like a dog, found me at the Retiarius.
He made me buy him a drink, sympathized with my lack of work and then told me that Pantera thought it would be ‘useful’ if I were to offer my services to one Julius Claudianus, formerly a leader of the marines at Misene, now senior tutor at Courage, one of the foremost gladiatorial schools in Rome.
He said that I should offer myself as an undercook, and make no approaches, but that I should befriend Claudianus if I could. My story, if I needed it, was that I was one of the former Guardsmen returned incognito to find work in Rome because I couldn’t bear the exile. All I had to do was find another name and so, for a while, I became Julius Demonstratus, which aroused nobody’s interest.
I’m not the empire’s best cook, but I can soak beans and boil them and make sauces to pour over them; a gladiator school is not that different from the legions except that we were forced to eat more meat — I spent a winter eating hare and boiled beef once, and never want to see either again. The gladiators feast on more wholesome fare.
So I trimmed my nails tight and rolled up my sleeves and spent my days cloaked in broth-flavoured steam, washing pots and scrubbing vegetables and boiling beans and my hands have never been cleaner, my shit has never been so regular and I have never seen so many men so tired of fighting.
I didn’t talk about the legions much at first, but I found myself in the neighbouring tavern one evening with some of the other cooks and weapon-cleaners and general factotums and Julius Claudianus came over and took me aside and asked me a couple of pointed questions and I admitted that I had been in Otho’s Guard and that I was in Rome because I couldn’t bear to be away. I swore him fealty and said I wasn’t any threat and I wouldn’t cause trouble, all of which was more or less true.