The corridor led left and right and he followed the former branch, past a well and a staircase, turning at the corner for the rear of the building. The corridor ended abruptly at a blank wall, with the last two rooms opening off to either side. The door on the left was marked XXIV and, with a sigh of relief, he strode inside.
To his surprise, the room was quite spacious with a window that was currently shuttered against the hot sun. Most unusually it held only two beds and no upper bunks. The guard apparently had the unthinkable luxury of just two men to a room. As he wandered around the chamber, running his finger across the dusty table and examining the badly hearth and the other, slightly shabby furnishings, he wondered what his new room-mate would be like.
With another sigh, he threw himself back onto the bed and bounced. It was soft and comfortable, especially after the past two years of intermittent life in leather tents.
His mind flickered through shifting images as he recapped the amazing couple of hours since he had first spotted the roofs of Rome. It seemed astounding that he was now here, lying in his own room. While he’d have loved time to explore the city and find his bearings, tomorrow they would be escorting the emperor, so he would get his wish in part at least. With a sigh, he reluctantly raised himself from the cot and clambered to his feet to go in search of the nearest latrine before it became a matter of too much urgency. Whistling quietly, he walked out of the doorway.
The wooden marching pole caught him a heavy blow on the side of the head and sent him reeling, his head swimming. He reached up to his scalp as he bounced off the door jamb and his hand came away scarlet.
Slowly, his eyes swam into focus. Scopius and a pair of his cronies stood in the corridor, two with solid ash marching poles, the third with a wooden mallet. The two extra thugs he didn’t know, but Scopius was all too familiar, as was the look in his eyes.
‘Time for your first lesson, shit-heel’ the bully snapped and lunged forward.
Quick as a flash, already recovering from the blow to the head, Rufinus dodged the attack and danced out of the way. Gritting his teeth, he cracked his knuckles, forcing a feral grin.
‘Alright, Scopius. Let’s do it.’
VIII – Glory and distress
MEN rushed into position across the turf, cursing and gesturing to their compatriots. The Praetorian Guard, along with various other military units, chariots and drivers, wagons of ‘spoils’, roped lines of captive ‘tribal chieftains’ – all very much a charade, and even four elephants, a great grey beasts from south of Aegyptus with a horn on its nose, four lions and half a dozen camelopards. It was a spectacle the like of which Rufinus had never thought to witness.
Despite the supposed austerity of the triumph, with the priestly colleges to add the appropriate tone of piousness and zeal, the emperor had even acquired a troupe of acrobats from Armenia who danced on the back of horses, ate fire, leapt through burning hoops and suffered needles to be thrust through their cheeks, apparently without harm.
The veterans and officers of the First cohort rode or marched alongside and behind the chariot that would carry Commodus himself and the freedman Saoterus, who had rarely left the emperor’s side in the week since they had returned. Mercator was there, perhaps six feet from his master.
Far ahead, standing mopping their collective brow in the shade of the great mausoleum of Hadrianus, the white and purple toga-clad figures of the senate were involved in their own chats and intrigues, along with the magistrates and senior officials of the city. They would lead the column. Behind them, the musicians of the city’s cohorts, Praetorian, Urban and even the Vigiles and Speculatores, tested their instruments, issuing a sound like nothing more than a herd of wounded oxen. Next came the carts laden with so-called treasure from Marcomannia: great chests of coin and gold and priceless paraphernalia, all – Rufinus was sure – of Roman manufacture and bearing the marks of the palace. If the defeated tribes lived up to their side of the treaty, they would be sending large chests of treasure to Rome on an annual basis but even the victorious Commodus had not expected a beaten people to manage to organise the gathering and delivery of such a princely sum in half a year from a ravaged and destroyed land.
Following the treasure carts would come the bizarre and motley collection of entertainers. During the first gathering this morning, Rufinus had found himself with a couple of moments free and had tried to speak to one of the Armenians in the troupe, but his Latin had been so rough and heavily accented that it was almost impossible to communicate and he had quickly given up.
The priests, with their sacrificial animals roped together, stood sombre and disapproving behind the cavorting easterners, a peculiar juxtaposition. Indeed, the oxen and bulls, goats and cages of birds flapped, stamped and shook nervously, an exotic parade of wildlife following on a little closely for the doomed creatures’ liking.
More carts lined up behind, the column already stretching around the corner of the mausoleum’s base and lining up across the grass toward the Tiber where it curved and looped back to the northwest. These carts bore the very same trophies of arms, armour and banners that had hung on the back wall of the dais when Rufinus had received his decorations in Vindobona.
And then came Rufinus.
A far cry from the glorious position of Mercator and his compatriots, surrounding the golden child of Rome, Rufinus and his seven sour-looking companions stood at attention, one eye on the spectacle, the other on the pathetic, dirty and degraded collection of mismatched Thracian, British and even Sarmatian slaves roped together, playing the part of the captured leaders.
He looked at the other seven guards. They were not all recent arrivals, though four clearly were. The other three were miserable, sour looking veterans who smelled of cheap wine in the sort of quantities that no amount of bathing this morning had been able to clear. Apparently those out of favour and awaiting hearings for disciplinary action were on a par with the new recruits, duty-wise.
At least it was an easy task. Even in the worst of circumstances, the slaves were unarmed and unarmoured, bound at the wrists and roped together both there and by the neck. In this particular case, though, there was an added incentive to behave. The prefect had made it clear, in some cases through a translator, that any man that played his part well this afternoon would be retained in an easy position in the palace, and the most outstanding would be granted his freedom.
Rufinus glanced over his shoulder at the main section of the procession. Behind the lictors, bearing their fasces, the emperor’s chariot sat awaiting its occupants, four magnificent black stallions champing at the bit. Behind the chariot and the officers and senior commanders, stretched the ranks of Praetorians, two cohorts of the urban guard, Speculatores, Frumentarii, Imperial Horseguard, and even the marines of the Misenum fleet that had arrived in the port of Ostia yesterday. It was a magnificent show of power, given the absence of even a single legion, let alone the ones that had actually been involved in the war.
There was the sound of a prolonged fart from among the ragged slaves roped behind Rufinus and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. They smelled bad enough when they weren’t flatulating!
Turning, he cast his eyes over the thirty four dejected slaves and the eight guards standing in two lines boxing them in. Amazingly, several of the captives gave him a defiant glare.