‘Lord, you underrate your Guards.’ I spoke before my good sense could stop me. ‘We will fight to the last blood of the last man for you. We can hold those passes for years if we need to, and if your brother can hold the western port, then we can supply Rome and the men indefinitely from our loyal provinces.
‘Other loyal legions can be brought in, too, from Gaul or Britain or Hibernia. They can attack the Flavian forces from the rear or sail into the port at Misene and strengthen Rome. None of this is impossible. Let us only do it and you shall see how you are loved.’
The silence ached. The big masseur was looking at me thoughtfully; I knew that look, and that blood followed it. In that moment, I realized that Julius Agrestis was as good as dead and there was every chance I was going to follow him to the underworld. Even together, I don’t think we could have overpowered the giant German.
I didn’t care any more. I was sick of the plotting and the double speaking. I wanted to get out into the fresh air and fight.
I said, ‘Let me lead the men north to face Antonius. I guarantee you they will not yield while I remain alive.’
‘No.’ Lucius answered before Vitellius could draw breath to speak. ‘Juvens will lead them; he has the same vitality as you do, he can hold a line with the same skill, he is as loved by his men. And you are needed in Rome. In my absence, you will organize the defence of the city, the provisioning of the troops, the control of the streets. We need a man we can depend on.’ He turned to the centurion. ‘Julius Agrestis, you are dismissed. Drusus will escort you out. Geminus, you will accompany me back to the barracks and we shall set in train the means by which you will provision two armies and keep Rome fed.’
So I wasn’t about to die. I could have said something to win a reprieve for Agrestis, I suppose. Perhaps I should have done, but Lucius was never inclined to revoke his commands for execution and so I stepped back and let the condemned man walk out past me.
He looked relieved, as if the threat had passed; he barely noticed that the giant masseur had followed him. I counted thirteen slow heartbeats before I heard the crack of bone and flesh and the sudden exhalation that comes with a death. I have never been one to see the spirits of men as they depart, but I felt the iced fingers of a ghost passing down my back as Agrestis died.
‘Why?’ I asked, as Lucius and I left. ‘He told the truth.’
‘There is truth, and there is too much truth. He crossed that line. It will be put about that in his desperate desire to prove to my brother the nature of the danger we face he threw himself on his own sword, saying that if my brother did not believe his tale of being ready to die in his imperial cause, then he was of no further use in this life. A fitting epitaph, I think?’
I didn’t answer; Lucius was prone to rhetorical questions and could presume agreement where he chose.
The sad thing is, there are men who will believe what they are told. And then those same men will be inclined to repeat what they believe to be a noble act. Thus does insanity infect the legions.
Chapter 39
Rome, October, AD 69
Trabo
October was the month when everything changed. At the start of the month, when Geminus and Lucius thought I was sending reports from Ravenna, I was, in fact, one of three senior cooks in Julius Claudianus’ gladiator school.
I still saw Jocasta sporadically, but not as often as I would have liked. I saw Julius Claudianus far more often; any time he wasn’t actually driving the men through their exercises, he was in the kitchens.
He said he came in to watch over us, to ensure that his men were fed only on the best, but he had picked up the sweating sickness somewhere in his travelling youth and I think he liked being in the heat and the steam. And he held meetings in our presence; we became his second office, a place where he could hold private meetings without the risk of being overheard.
Which was necessary when his visitor was the emperor’s brother Lucius, come to ask if the gladiators of Courage would form a cohort to fight in support of the emperor.
Julius Claudianus was a big, loose-limbed, shambling man, but there and then he drew himself upright and sucked in his stomach and almost wept with the devotion he could promise from himself and his men.
As a former legionary commander, he knew, he said, exactly what qualities were required in a fighting man, which were not always the qualities of a gladiator, and he might not have enough at his own school, but if the emperor’s brother could offer gold then Julius Claudianus could bring together a century or more of the best fighting men in Rome.
Lucius offered an unlimited amount of gold. The deal was struck.
They clapped each other on the shoulder like sworn brothers and Lucius came over to taste the goat’s cream and chicory sauce I was cooking. He deemed it fit for an emperor and ordered some for his brother for that night.
Later, in the tavern, Julius Claudianus bought me a drink, sat me down in a corner, took a pair of dice out of his pocket and asked me for a game. When we finished, one of his dice had become mine. It was about the size of my thumbnail, beautiful, and well weighted.
Julius rose, and patted my arm. ‘Give it to Pantera,’ he said, although neither of us had spoken his name before then. ‘To him and nobody else.’
I did. It took me about eight days to set up a meeting; I had to find Borros and tell him and then we had to take care that it wasn’t just a way to trap both of us in incriminating circumstances.
We met in a tavern on the far side of town with Felix and Borros standing guard. I gave Pantera the die and watched him slide his knife under the six face and lift it free. There was a note inside. Opened, it read, The gladiators will be raised for Lucius.
It wasn’t news, I had already told him that, but what it told me was that Julius Claudianus was Pantera’s man.
I didn’t mention any of this to Jocasta when next I saw her. Pantera told me to put it out of my head and I did. If I’m honest, I thought she knew and it would have seemed like gossiping.
Chapter 40
Rome, November, AD 69
Geminus
I had heard about the gladiators in October when Lucius first commissioned them, but hadn’t paid them much attention. We were busy planning for Juvens’ triumphal exit from Rome and I didn’t have time to think about anything else.
On the ides of November, I watched him leave just as I had watched Caecina leave two months before; in fact they looked much the same. Juvens had had his usual mount taken away and had been forced on to a grey parade gelding all done up with white plumes, and he wasn’t happy about it. His men had been polished till they shone and they marched after him, looking almost as unhappy.
Fourteen cohorts of the Guard plus all the cavalry wings at our disposal went with him. The city cheered much as it had cheered Caecina, which didn’t feel like a good omen. Realizing this, Vitellius issued an edict to the effect that Caecina’s name was no longer to be mentioned, and that all talk of treachery was to be met with the greatest severity.
Given that there were only two cohorts of the Guard left behind, plus the Urban cohorts and the Watch, both of whom were loyal to Sabinus, who was looking increasingly like brother to next year’s emperor, that kind of order was always going to be difficult to enforce.
I had been left in charge of the Guard, with responsibility for discipline and order, and so found myself arranging the men into groups big enough to take care of themselves and sending them to those parts of the city least likely to harbour dissent. The problem, of course, was working out which those areas might be from an ever-dwindling pool of possible options.
We managed like this for half a month, and then we had word from Juvens that he required the emperor’s presence.