The Eagle's Vengeance (48 page)

He smiled beatifically down at them.

‘And now I think it’s time for you to take yourself off home, Senator, secure in the knowledge that you’ve done your duty to your emperor and averted the threat that was hanging over him as long as the previous praetorian prefect was at his side.’

Albinus nodded with more respect than Marcus had seen in him earlier, gesturing to his companions to accompany him.

‘We’ll renew this discussion elsewhere. It probably isn’t fitting for the steps of an imperial palace in any case.’

‘Just you, Senator, and your bodyguard of course. The tribune and I will stay a moment longer before he goes on his way.’

Albinus arched a disbelieving eyebrow, but found something in Cleander’s level gaze that stilled any complaint he might have made, and he turned away down the steps with a wave to Cotta. The bodyguard stared for a moment at Marcus and then nodded at him.

‘We’ll meet again, I expect, Centurion
Corvus
.’

Marcus met his gaze and inclined his head in return.

‘Indeed, Centurion Cotta. Perhaps we’ll provide each other with some sport, the next time our paths cross.’

Cotta barked a laugh over his shoulder as he followed Albinus down towards the street and his waiting men.

‘Oh, I have little doubt of that!’

Cleander smirked at Scaurus.

‘You need to keep your attack dog on a shorter rope, Tribune. He seems to be filled with the desire to tear out the throat of anyone and everyone that gets close enough to him.’ He stepped closer to Marcus, looking him up and down as if he were examining a finely bred chariot horse. ‘You’re a fascinating specimen, Centurion … Tribulus Corvus, was that what you said your name was?’

Marcus snapped to attention.

‘Centurion Marcus Tribulus Corvus, First Tungrian Auxiliary Cohort, Chamberlain!’

Cleander nodded.

‘Yes, that was it. Tribulus Corvus …’ He looked at Scaurus with an amused expression. ‘I believe that a tribulus is a military invention scattered in large numbers across ground where a cavalry attack is expected, a neat little device of sharpened iron that presents a spike uppermost to pierce a hoof and instantly render a horse lame. A very military name, and in that case surely one that stretches back a fair way in the city’s history, and yet I am told by men who ought to know that there is no record of any such clan title. I watched the centurion closely during that entertaining audience with the emperor, and on two occasions I could swear that I saw him barely restrain himself from leaping first at Perennis, and then at our beloved Caesar, by what appeared to be supreme self-control. So,
are
you simply an attack dog, Centurion, or are you perhaps something infinitely more dangerous?’

He regarded them both for a moment in silence.

‘I find it impossible to believe that you, Tribune, would do anything to bring jeopardy to your emperor, and you clearly trust the centurion here, and yet I’m finding it hard to avoid the conclusion that Tigidius Perennis was in fact correct when he pointed the finger at this young man and named him as the outlawed son of a senator who was executed for treason three years ago. And if that’s the case –’ he raised a hand to Marcus as if to forestall an assault by the stone-faced centurion ‘– if you really are Marcus Valerius Aquila, then having successfully found a place to hide for the rest of your days on the empire’s frontier, what would be a sufficiently strong lure to bring you back to Rome? Revenge?’ He raised his hands to the night sky above them. ‘If so, then how lucky you are to have had the gods grant you the pleasure of watching the man who sentenced your family to death writhe with a spear through his guts, even if it was wielded by hands other than your own. And having met the emperor, you will now be clear that he had little part in your father’s condemnation and murder, or in any other part of running the empire for that matter.’

He waited until Marcus responded, nodding reluctantly.

‘Excellent. In which case all is well. Perennis is thwarted, the gold he sought to use for his own ends is restored to the imperial treasury, his demise has doubtless satisfied your desire to see him suffer in return for the suffering he inflicted upon your family, and you two gentlemen can return to your cohort and renew the centurion’s anonymity. I’m sufficiently grateful to you for bringing this matter to my attention to keep the truth of your parentage to myself, and to allow you to return to the shadows from which you came. I will even overlook the small matter of exactly where the gold displaced from those chests to accommodate the eagle and Legatus Sollemnis’s head might have got to. After all, I’m sure that your journey here wasn’t without its expenses.’

Scaurus opened his mouth to respond, but before he could speak the chamberlain raised a hand.

‘However, it’s clear to me that you both possess some rare qualities that might sit well in the service of the throne, at least while I’m consolidating my grip on the city. Two men such as yourselves, backed up by two cohorts of battle-hardened men with no existing political allegiances? Yes, Tribune, obviously I had you investigated as well. It’s an old name, they tell me, and once a proud one, now simply struggling to survive with no ties to any of the major families. All in all, I’d say that your continued presence in Rome might well be the answer to my most fervent prayers. So I won’t
hear
of your leaving for Britannia until I’ve extorted one or two trifling favours from you. And gentlemen, just in case you miss my meaning, I used the word
extort
then in the full sense of its meaning. This really isn’t a request in which you have any choice.’

He turned away, calling back over his shoulder.

‘I’d return to your barracks if I were you, and take some time to show your men the sights of the city. You’ll be earning the corn you consume,
and
the gold you spend …’ He turned back and winked at Scaurus, who met his gaze unblinkingly. ‘Yes, you’ll earn them both when I finally decide to which of my many problems you’re the best answer.’

Tribune and centurion watched as he walked away up the steps and disappeared back into the palace. After a long thoughtful pause Scaurus spoke, clapping a hand to Marcus’s shoulder.

‘Well now, Centurion, if you’re an attack dog then I’d say it’s time to get you back to your kennel. It seems we’ll be here a while longer, and after all that excitement you’re probably feeling as much in need of a bath and a quiet period of reflection in the Mithraeum as I am. Blood spilled in that fashion has a habit of seeping into the soul as well as the pores.’

Marcus nodded.

‘Indeed, Tribune. Although I’ll be praying to Our Father to grant me the opportunity to shed the blood of the other men I intend to see dead before I leave the city myself, rather than watch another man spill it for me.’

Scaurus shrugged, turning to walk down the steps to where their men were waiting.

‘I don’t know. It isn’t every man that can say they’ve had their vengeance delivered by an emperor.’

Marcus stared out over the Circus’s massive stadium before replying.

‘That’s true, sir. But if I’m to find peace from my father’s ghost I have to deal with his killers myself, not stand by while other men put them to the sword.’

The tribune turned back and looked quizzically back up the steps at him.

‘It’s not as if you even know whom you’re dealing with, beyond the name under which they do the throne’s dirty work.’

The young Roman shrugged.

‘I’ll know soon enough, Tribune. There are men in this city who know their names, and they’ll have one simple choice to make, to either aid me or obstruct me. And if they fear what the “Emperor’s Knives” will do to them if their betrayal is discovered, they’ll soon enough learn to fear the consequences of refusing me a good deal more. Tomorrow I’ll bathe, and make my peace with our god, but once that’s done I’ll be a servant of another god until this matter is dealt with and my family’s honour is avenged.’

He looked out over the sleeping city, clenching a fist and answering Scaurus’s questioning look with a single word, his voice harsh with his pent-up fury and eagerness to carve a bloody path through Rome, to hunt down and kill his father’s murderers.

‘Nemesis.’

THE ANTONINE WALL

For a long time overshadowed by its more famous cousin to the south, the wall constructed at the start of the reign of the emperor Antoninus Pius in
AD
139–142 is now considered to be just as important from a historical perspective as the comparable frontier defence constructed by the emperor Hadrian across northern Britain only two decades before. It was granted World Heritage Site status in 2008, alongside sites in Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary as part of the Roman Empire World Heritage Site, which also includes both Hadrian’s Wall and the Upper Raetian German frontier defences. From the perspective of a historical fiction author whose work is at least partially set in late second-century Britannia, and at a time when this northernmost line of defence which had been abandoned in the early 160s may have been sporadically reoccupied, it was too good an opportunity to miss.

But, to start at the beginning, why would the Romans have gone to the considerable effort of constructing another frontier defence only a hundred miles north of the first one, and so soon after the completion of Hadrian’s perfectly serviceable construction? The most obvious answer is that the move to the Forth-Clyde isthmus allowed a much shorter line of defence than the Tyne-Solway line taken by Hadrian’s engineers, but we can see from the records of the units which served on this new frontier that this was in reality of little real benefit. Given that the line of this new wall was guarded by roughly the same number of men as that used on Hadrian’s Wall (about seven thousand, only a thousand less), the implication is that the significant reduction in frontage did nothing to reduce the troop strength deemed necessary to hold it.

This may well have been a direct consequence of the forward strategy that the emperor consciously chose on taking power, bringing Roman power toe to toe with hostile tribes who had previously been kept at arm’s length by the client kingdoms to the north of Hadrian’s Wall. Additionally, the ground to the north of the new frontier was probably harder to police than that to the south of its barrier. This might seem counterintuitive, since it was mainly unsettled wilderness, but in reality settled farmland would have been far less forgiving of armed intruders from the north – due to the farmers’ understanding of the likely consequences of assisting Rome’s enemies – than the empty land that the army was now faced with. Certainly the greatest concentration of Rome’s force on Hadrian’s Wall appears to have faced what is now known as the Waste of Spadeadam, an area so desolate that it has been given over to an extensive military weapons testing range, and where there were no native farmers to pose a problem for infiltrating raiders. The sheer difficulty of some of the ground over which the defenders had to operate would also have added to the difficulties involved. But if the move north was not likely to generate any efficiency savings in manpower – and the Roman army will have known that all too well – then what was the point of the move?

The answer appears to have been a depressingly familiar one – imperial prestige. Historians hypothesise that while Antoninus Pius did have some good military reasons to reposition the northern frontier, quite apart from any desire to harden his image as a new and militarily untried emperor, it is nevertheless instructive that he deliberately chose to make Britain the place where he would win his first victory – and that he never felt the need to take the title Imperator again in a lengthy reign and despite successive victories elsewhere in the empire. The advance north is likely have been relatively unopposed, given that the Romans had been that way before in the time of Agricola and had plenty of time to prepare the military and political ground. Once the Roman military juggernaut started its move northwards there was simply no way for the lightly armed and armoured tribesmen to defeat the legions and their supporting auxiliaries in open battle. It would therefore appear that the new emperor was pretty much assured of a victory in northern Britannia, once the decision had been made to annex the buffer zone to the north of Hadrian’s frontier, and this clearly made the expansion into Scotland a fairly safe bet as a means of strengthening his image.

With the advance complete the army not only built a wall every bit as imposing as that to the south, but also constructed a road onwards into the north, past the current-day location of Stirling and as far into barbarian territory as Bertha on the river Tay. At least four major forts were positioned along this road, to fulfil the same function as the road north from Hadrian’s Wall to Trimontium (modern-day Melrose) in southern Scotland did for Hadrian’s Wall. As is the case with Hadrian’s Wall, this forward projection of Rome’s power beyond the frontier provides us with a clear indication as to the new wall’s real purpose.

Rather than being a fighting platform, the Antonine Wall was a clear and unmistakeable delineation of Roman territory from that of the uncivilised peoples to the north. It served to make very clear where the empire’s boundaries lay, and was used as a customs barrier to enable trade between the two to be carried out on a controlled (and therefore taxed) basis. The men based along its length who were, we should remember, among the best trained and equipped soldiers on the planet, were in no way condemned to a Maginot Line style of static defence. Apart from power projection into the barbarian hinterland, cowing the locals with visible displays of their formidable equipment and discipline, the forts to the north of the new frontier served the further twin purposes of intelligence gathering and early warning for the main line of defence. Their function, if it came to war with the tribes, was to allow time for the legions and cohorts to deploy forward and strike at any attacking force
en masse –
although there is no evidence that this wall, unlike the one to the south which was overrun more than once, was ever tested in such an overt way. Little more than twenty years after its construction the northern line of defence was abandoned and Roman power was withdrawn south to reoccupy the former frontier. Just as with the advance north twenty years before this change of strategy raises a question. Why, when there seems to have been no compelling military reason, would the army have undertaken what must have seemed an embarrassing retreat?