The two travellers on horseback had left Porta Capena behind at least a couple of hours before. Despite the fact that the Via Appia was the largest and busiest consular road in the Empire, it could only be travelled at a trot to avoid the risk of the horses tripping on the cracks between the large flat stones that formed it.
“I don’t understand why this change of plan,” said one of the two. “We usually meet at the spa, and my body by far prefers the warm water of a laconicum to the humidity of the evening.” The voice’s tremulous tone, drawl and piping timbre betrayed the venerable age of its owner. “And then,” the man added, glancing up the side of the road, “I never feel at ease when I come down here.”
The first vigil had long since passed and the capital was far away. The two horsemen were passing through the cemetery section of the consular road. As they passed, tombs of all shapes and sizes paraded silently by – haughty monuments which played games with the shadows of the night and whose presence marked the passage of time.
The elderly traveller turned to the companion behind him almost as though wanting to make sure he was still there. The other was a few years younger, but the curve of his back and his wrinkled hands showed that too was growing long in years. Wrapped in a sagum of goat’s wool that left his right side and arm exposed, he wore a suit of linen armour which had once been white.
“Victor, are you sure we’re doing the right thing?” asked his companion, struggling with the pangs of arthrosis that had been afflicting him constantly for months. “We’re too old these days to be taking risks.”
The prefect removed his hands from the saddle and answered him with a gesture.
“Yes,” answered the elderly traveller, “I know you always have the situation under control, but I’m worried about the young ones. The latest report from the provincial offices arrived from Augusta Vindelicorum five days ago while all the others are late. The tabellarii have always been punctual and when they had problems they sent military couriers. Even Leptis is silent, and instead of worrying about it, here we are wandering through the countryside.”
Victor Felix did not react. He merely indicated a detour that led to a tree-lined avenue where funerary buildings gave way to countryside. In the distance the lights of a stabulum were visible .
The two travellers arrived at a two-storey stone and brick structure with a wooden sign in the shape of a deer set above its main entrance. They only dismounted when they had gone around the back of the building, slipping silently through a half-open door.
The stench of sweat, garlic and burned meat greeted them like a slap in the face. They walked into a small room where a group of patrons, urged on by a pair of middle-aged prostitutes, were playing dice, and found themselves in another room only slightly larger than the one they had just left. Many customers were eating from steaming dishes or simply dozing after gulping down their usual excessive ration of watered-down wine.
Felix looked around them: no one had paid any particular attention to their arrival. About twenty Praetorians occupied a long table at the opposite corner of the hall and their loud laughter showed that their dinner had been long and that abundant wine had flowed . All the other tables were occupied too, and there were only two places left, next to a beggar with long, greasy grey hair who was encouraging a mouse to jump over the sharp blade of a small knife with hiccup-like incitements.
The prefect nodded.
Let’s sit down.
His companion obeyed, hoping to be able to hide the effort it took him to bend his knees. The man who was playing with the mouse jerked his head up and tried to attract the attention of the landlord, who was taking an order at the nearby table.
“Bring me my wine or give me my money back!” he started to shout, but his voice died in his throat. The angry landlord was about to answer him rudely, but Felix stopped him with a nod.
“Bring us a jug of wine,” Felix’s companion said. But then he looked at the beggar and corrected himself. “Make that two.”
The landlord snorted, shook his head and walked away. The beggar sneered, grabbed the mouse and put it in a leather bag that he closed with a string. The little creature kicked for a few moments then became calm.
“Now tell us why we have been forced to come to this tavern,” said the old man banging his fist on the table. “I hope you have important news.” The room was so noisy that nobody noticed his gesture, but the sharp pang of pain in his wrist that the action caused made him wince.
In what presumably was intended to be a smile, the beggar showed them no more than half a dozen rotten teeth.
“Let me see the money.”
“You’ll get your money. But afterwards.”
The beggar shook his head then peered around him and warily leaned close to the two travellers. “Bad news from Germania Magna. Nobody knows exactly what really happened yet.” When the innkeeper returned with a jug full of red liquid, the man’s eyes shone and Felix took care to fill his mug immediately. The beggar gulped down the wine and put his mug back in front of the Roman officer’s face. When it had been filled again, he went on. “It is said that a messenger is traveling from the Rhine fortresses with more exact information, but it seems that there was an ambush and that many legionaries have been killed. There is talk of hundreds, perhaps even thousands of dead.”
“And you had us come here to tell us this? We would have learned it anyway in the next few days from the delatores and from the military dispatches,” said the older of the two travellers, unable to hide his impatience. Neither he nor the officer had yet considered it appropriate to lower their hoods, despite the fact that it was infernally hot in the tavern.
The beggar gave a leer.
“I’ve heard it said that there were also some of your people among those soldiers.”
“What? Who?”
“Soldiers. But also some students. And two or three masters.”
Felix and his companion exchanged grim, worried looks. The prefect’s hands moved.
Jago and Dryantilla. I had advised them to take advantage of the movements of the legions towards their winter quarters in order to move under guard.
“We absolutely need fresh news,” said the officer’s escort, shaking the informant’s wrist feebly. “We will pay you well if you get if for us by dawn tomorrow.”
The two made to stand up but the drunkard held them back.
“That’s not why I had you come here.”
Slowly, Felix sat down again. Behind him the praetorians continued to fill the already heavy air with lewd and blasphemous songs, and he noticed that some customers were beginning to show signs of impatience with their exuberance.
People didn’t like the Praetorians very much, and they were certain to receive a hostile reaction in a place like this, far away from the city and mostly frequented by ex-convicts. But the scorpions loved to flaunt their power, often in a provoking way.
“If something happened to your men, it certainly won’t have been due to an ambush,” said the beggar, hunching his shoulders and peering over at the last drops of wine in the jug.
Explain yourself, the prefect gestured.
The man turned his head and slowly looked at all the other customers in the room. “I want to see the money.”
“Pistrix rapax,” muttered the older of the two travellers, and threw a rattling bag on the table.
The beggar hurriedly collected his fee and made it vanish into the folds of his tunic. “For a long time, someone has been observing your movements. Your travels. Your actions. He knows what your teachers do and knows who your students are.”
“Of course. The emperor.”
“Not only him. Someone very close to the emperor but who doesn’t share his feelings about you.”
“And who might he be? Where is he hiding?”
The informant shook his head. “You must realise that to some your methods may appear… unorthodox.”
“We’re not here to take lessons from you. Continue if you have useful information. Otherwise be silent.”
“Some senators. Not many, but influential. And the whole college of priests of Rome. For a long time, they moved in the shadows, but now they have decided to take action and their political pressure has managed to convince even the most fundamentalist part of the city cohort.”
“The Praetorians? Come on – they are the Emperor’s soldiers. Augustus’s guard. They would never betray him.”
“In fact, they aren’t interested in betraying him. They believe that by attacking you they will be saving Rome and its leader.”
“And how?” the other traveller snapped. “Not even we know exactly what those in charge of the legion’s external divisions are doing. The security system is tried and tested.”
The informant’s expression changed to one of feigned compassion. “I have news. The operation has already begun.”
Felix looked at him for a long time without making a move then his arm was suddenly tightly gripping the man’s neck.
His companion did not wait to understand what Felix meant by his gesture but merely backed it up with a question. “What are you talking about?” He felt the saliva trying to get into his throat, but it was as dry and hard to swallow as a stone. His thoughts returned to the delays of recent days – to the absence of informative dispatches and the unusually long silence of some of the masters.
The beggar coughed and Felix allowed him to breathe again. Many eyes were upon them now.
“Isolated choices, of course. But I am telling you the truth. And besides… you two are older than me now. You have lost control. Listen…” The man’s eyes fell on the drunken praetorians. One of them looked back at him and he immediately went silent and lowered his head. “But not here. There are too many voices and too many eyes. Let’s go outside.” He got up without waiting for an answer and quickly disappeared through the door by which the two travellers had entered
Felix and his companion waited a few moments before following him and the officer made some hand signals.
We must notify Augustus immediately.
“Of course,” said the other, “but first let’s get some more information.” He threw a couple of coins on the table and stood up, not without difficulty. “Let’s see what else he has to tell us.”
*
They soon found themselves outside, and the smell of fodder and animal sweat testified that the stables were nearby. The moon illuminated a large open space that had seen a plentiful coming and going of hooves in the last few days.
“There is one last thing, but I didn’t want to tell you it in there over the wine.”
They both spun around when they heard the beggar’s voice.
“All in all, you have always been good customers and you have paid me well. I can’t complain about that. But times change, choices must be made, and some factors weigh more heavily than others.” He was leaning against the pole to which their horses had been tied and weighing the bag of money in his hands. “I have made my choice.”
The two travellers realised that his eyes, which had seemed to be staring in their direction, were actually looking at someone behind them. Someone that held cold iron blades.
Felix turned slowly and his elderly friend imitated him. The Praetorians, who until a few moments before had been acting rowdy inside the tavern were standing there with mocking looks upon their faces. Every trace of drunkenness had disappeared and their bearing had returned to that of the proud guards of Rome.
Their chief, a young low-ranking officer, twirled his sword with rapid movements of his wrist.
“Victor Julius Felix, the famous commander of the legendary Legio Occulta,” he said emphatically. “Do you know that when I was little you were my hero? I think I even had a terracotta figure that depicted you. But then I grew up and I realised things that one cannot understand at a young age. And today you are here, in front of me, invariably accompanied by your servant,” he went on, pointing the blade at them, “the simulacrum of a story now told only in the brothels of the frontiers.”
“Watch your tongue, young man,” said the older traveller, “you’re talking to an officer of the Roman army.”
“You too are talking to an officer of the Roman army. My name is Calpurnius Julius,” said the praetorian,” and I am tribune of the second praetorian cohort.”
The traveller lowered his hood. His skin was waxy and his once sharp features were now old and tired. He brought a hand to the fibula and a moment later his cloak fell to the ground with a rustling sound, revealing a woollen tunic held to his chest by a leather jerkin. Several armillae had been attached to the rectangle of hardened leather by clever sewing work. At first sight it looked ridiculous, but for a moment the praetorians were enchanted by that display of decorations.
“Don’t you feel the weight of all that metal on you, old man? Going by that, you must be as old as the temple of Jupiter.” A chorus of laughter greeted the joke. “Or perhaps the rumours about that elixir of eternal youth are true? No, they can’t be. But you know, they tell so many stories about you…”
The traveller ignored the sarcasm of his interlocutor and brought a hand to his side to prevent the armour from sliding to the ground. “My name is Marcus Lucretius. I have known the battlefields of Gaul, Dacia and Africa. I saw the walls of Gergovia burning, I rode alongside those generals that you know only from military reports and I sailed to the lands of the Cimbri before even your mother gave her first cry. And once I had the privilege of being the beneficiarius of one of the most heroic centurions of the Roman army. Each drop of my blood is worth more than the lives of a hundred of your men.”
He stressed the last sentence by pulling out, with a certain clumsiness, a long Hispanic sword that had somehow been hidden in the folds of his robe until then.
Calpurnius Julius seemed struck by the man’s words, but showed no sign of relenting.
“Your time is up. I respectfully honour your deeds, but tonight I must complete a mission by order of the Emperor. Give yourselves up and I promise you that nothing will be done to you. I am not in the habit of killing old people and children.”
“By order of the Emperor? I’ve known Augustus since he was a child, and it was the man next to me who trained him how to handle a sword. And you want to tell me that it was he who ordered you to arrest us?”
“I have a Senate document that allows me to do so.”
“The Senate? And since when did the Emperor speak through the mouth of the Senate? If you want to arrest me, you must show me Octavian’s seal. Only then will I give you my weapon.”
“I can show you something more convincing, if you wish.” Calpurnius Julius nodded to his men, and the sound of squeaky wheels preceded the arrival of a small wagon pulled by two mules. It carried a large sack tied closed by a rope. The fabric of the sack was stained dark at various points.
“See for yourself.” The officer stepped aside and his men lowered their swords, forming a long human corridor between Lucretius and the cart.
The beneficiarius proceeded slowly and as he approached the cart, he met the eyes of each of the Praetorians one by one. And with every step less that separated him from his goal, his heart beat faster.
The cart gave off a terrible smell of putrefaction and it took the old man an eternity to climb up one of the wheels onto the bed of the cart. He was about to grab the rope of the bag but the hand of Victor Felix, who had silently followed him, stopped him. The prefect drew his dagger and cut the knot and then he too climbed up onto the cart and grabbed the edges of the bag. When he opened it, the hand that gripped the weapon instinctively went to his mouth.
The night was a clear one. No cloud obscured the horizon and the moon shone in all its splendour. The stars looked like fireflies suspended in the hands of Jupiter, but anyone who wasn’t looking up at the sky might have believed that a storm was on the way. The wind abruptly subsided and even the leaves on the trees, had they possessed the power to do so, would have held their breath.
The mouth of Victor Felix, from which no sound had emerged for decades, now opened slowly as his body stiffened. “Lu… cretius,” said a thick voice that had last been heard in the forests of Gergovia, “I can’t believe…” His eyelids suddenly became very heavy and fell slowly, like feathers, over eyes which were suddenly red from exertion. The prefect tried to remain standing but dizziness prevented him and the retching made him bend forward. He dropped to his knees and began to sob.
The beneficiarius almost slipped but managed to recover his footing and opened the bag. What he saw made him tremble. He grabbed the cloth clumsily and the contents of the sack toppled out.
The heads, bloody and in an advanced state of decomposition, rolled out at the feet of the praetorians, some stopping near their sandals while others disappeared into the darkness.
Marcus Lucretius grabbed one before it joined the others. Two bulging vacant eyes stared motionlessly back at him. The flesh, dead for days, almost fell apart in his fingers.
“What… what have you done…?” Kneeling, he gently laid the head down. “What have you done?” he repeated several times as he felt a stabbing pain in his back. “Our young ones… our priests. Our reason for living… in a bag full of severed heads.” He closed his eyes and very slowly groped for the hilt of his sword. His hands trembled and he missed grasping it several times, and when he did finally manage to pick it up, he heard a hiss and a snap. He opened his eyes again. Victor Felix had climbed down from the wagon and two praetorians were lying on the ground. They were dead even before their comrades had realised that they had been attacked. No other signal was needed.
The prefect and his beneficiary might have a combined age of over a hundred and fifty years, but anger and pain had awakened in them a dormant fury. A gladius and a Hispanic sword glittered several times in the dark. Perhaps not as rapid, incisive and devastating as they used to be, but still, many shocked praetorians fell at the hands of two old men.
The fray that followed was furious, and the battle cries and curses called the attention of many of the patrons of the tavern, who swarmed out of the door to stare in disbelief: they didn’t know if what they were witnessing was actually happening or was simply a hallucination caused by one mug of wine too many.
Two old men, disguised as soldiers and clad in armour that struggled to contain bodies grown portly with age, were fighting a whole unit of young Praetorians.
As the minutes passed, the cramped battlefield turned into an arena of mud and blood, and the contenders’ sandals splashed in the slush amidst shreds of tunics and abandoned weapons, and where the severed heads which had fallen from the sack were accidentally kicked back and forth. The white cloaks of the praetorians looked as if they had been dipped in cuttlefish ink, while the plumes of their helmets were scattered everywhere as if a fox had burst into a chicken coop.
Suddenly Calpurnius Julius found himself facing Victor Felix. The two Roman officers looked at one another.
“I must admire your courage,” said the first, circling his adversary as he studied him. “I had thought that the contents of that sack would have convinced you to surrender.”
“The contents of that sack,” replied the prefect in an unsteady voice, saliva spraying from the sides of his mouth. “were our young ones. The young ones I myself had chosen and who I considered my children.”
“Children? What are you talking about? They were bastards, slaves, prostitutes. Did you really think you could put them in the place of the priests of Rome?”
“Loyalty to Rome comes from an oath and all those children had sworn it. They knew they might meet death, but certainly not at the hands of a Roman soldier. You have doubly betrayed – you have betrayed them and you have betrayed Rome.”
“You have betrayed. You wanted to replace an established order. A sacred order.”
“It is the Emperor who decides what is sacred and what is not, not you nor even I.”
“There are limits to everything, but you were unable to see them and you went too far. Beyond the power of men.”
“The power of men?”
Victor Felix gave a hoarse laugh, his first since he had been a child. “I have in mind only the solemn promise that Jupiter made to the descendants of Aeneas and to which I will keep faith until my death.”
Calpurnius Julius spat on the ground and grimaced.
“You don’t understand, do you?”
“No, and neither do I care.”
He took a step forward and raised his sword to the level of his hip, ready to strike. The prefect prepared to return his blows, but out of nowhere, four arms blocked his movements: two praetorians had followed their commander and were standing behind him. Aimed at his neck, the only vulnerable point of a man in armour, the sword lunged forward, but before it could find its target, a shadow cut through its path. Having liberated himself of his opponent, Marcus Lucretius had rushed to the aid of his friend and thrown himself in front of the blade to deflect the blow.
The beneficiarius grasped his stomach into which the praetorian sword had sunk so easily.
Looking almost regretful about what had happened, Calpurnius Julius tried to extract his weapon, but Marcus Lucretius grasped the praetorian’s hand.
“No… you don’t deserve to get it back. Let it stay with a… real soldier.”
The praetorian loosened his grip and withdrew his arm, and the beneficiary growled in pain and staggered. He tried to say something more but only managed to grimace, then he fell face down to the floor and rolled onto his side. He opened his arms as though to display the blood-stained hilt of the sword which had pierced his body and his breathing grew faster as his eyes searched for something.
Victor Felix tried to break free from the hands that held him.
“Let him go,” the praetorian commander ordered. “It’s over now.”
They disarmed him and loosened their grip, and the prefect threw himself upon his friend’s body. The praetorians who had been engaged in battle surrounded the two defeated men.
“My friend,” the beneficiarius sighed as blood flowed into his lungs, “I had almost lost hope that I would die in battle.”
“Marcus Lucretius, forgive me friend… I should never have brought you here with me…”
“I heard your voice again, Madron,” the old man interrupted. “From an early age I had dreamed of becoming a great officer but you became one in my place and I agreed to be your shadow, as I swore to my commander.” He grabbed the prefect’s arm. “Come closer.” His grip surrendered almost immediately to the lack of strength available to him. “I die happy, lucky boy,” he said, even managing to laugh, “because Jago and Dryantilla’s heads are not in that bag. I looked carefully, they are not there.” He laughed again. “Non dolet, Victor. Non dolet.” The beneficiarius seemed to whisper something else, but perhaps it was only a trick of the wind. Then his lips curved upwards and he ceased to move.
Victor Felix felt a piercing pain in the centre of his chest, as though someone had clasped his heart with all their strength, as if he were about to vomit it up. The same feeling that he had felt only once in his life, many years before, when he was still a young orphan with Celtic blood and had lost all those who could have called him by his real name. When he had heard the man who had allowed him to call him “father” die in his arms. When, from the pain of the loss, he had inherited the trauma of silence but also the joy of freedom. But also a name and a cloak. Under the torn sagum he could still feel that warmth. It was like the warmth of an embrace.
Calpurnius Julius grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him to his feet. The exhausted old man stared defiantly back at him.
“Now tell me, prefect. Before I send you off to keep your old friend company… what will you tell the gods tonight? That the terror of death made you regain the power of speech?”
“My name is Victor Julius Felix, prefect of Augustus’s cohorts,” said the Roman officer with his still-halting voice, “and his faithful servant. Son of the Gallic lands and of a valiant centurion of the legions of Caesar of which I proudly bear the name and whose teachings I have always followed – including that of always carrying a second weapon.”
The tip of the dagger shone for a moment in the moonlight before it penetrated the praetorian’s neck with a soft hiss.
Calpurnius Julius’s eyes opened wide.
“‘To them I impose neither borders nor limits of time’,” recited the old officer, his eyes like incandescent lava, “‘because I granted them imperium without end’.”
The praetorian tried to say something, but his life was abandoning him and he could only move his lips in silence.
“This is what Jupiter promised the sons of Aeneas.”
The prefect released his grip on the arm of the praetorian, who fell to the ground dead. Julius’s soldiers cried out in rage, and Felix raised his arms and waited for their fury to vent itself on his body. He had nothing left to lose, now. Nothing more to fear.
“I have gathered in my actions the virtues of my lineage,” he said as he let the dagger fall to the ground, “I have had the glory of my ancestors and now I am ready to rejoin them.”
He closed his eyes and waited, but nothing happened. There was a movement in the air, then another and another. Three short whistles in rapid sequence that made him open his eyes again. The nearest Praetorians were laying in the mud, swords sticking out from their chests and backs. Many of the witnesses to the battle had surrounded the surviving praetorians and now, encouraged by the death of the tribune and armed with broken bottles, daggers and clubs, were advancing threateningly.
The young soldiers dressed in white looked around them in terror, trying not to trample the corpses of the comrades whom the fury of the Roman plebeians had already dispatched to the other world. It wasn’t every day that you got the chance to have a bit of fun with the scorpions – especially when their sting was no longer able to harm you and the voices of Rome were so far away.
Taking advantage of the fact that he was no longer the centre of attention, Victor Felix managed to get away. Without ever taking his eyes from the corpse of Marcus Lucretius, he hurried over to his horse, swearing in his heart to his friend that he would return to give him a proper burial. But now he had to get back to Rome, if fate would allow him the opportunity. As he set off towards the Appian Way, he saw the crowd that had gathered around the surviving Praetorians in a last, deadly embrace.
Belief in Rome had tried to kill him, but hatred for Rome had been his salvation.