The Peacekeeper Read online

  “Oh, Marcellus, thank you!”

  “However,” I emphasized gravely, “these are my terms. He must prove his loyalty, and I swear by the gods who followed my father to his grave, should he again prove disloyal, he shall die by my hands very S-L-O-W-L-Y.”

  Eleyne nodded. “Of course, dear, I understand.”

  “That is not all,” I continued in a slow and deliberate manner. “For the time being, he will be shackled by the legs and chained in the cellar at night.”

  Eleyne’s hand flew to her mouth. “Marcellus, please don’t!”

  “He’s a slave! I won’t risk our lives—he has to earn our trust. He’s fortunate I don’t whip him to death like a common criminal or crucify him.” I didn’t mention under Roman law I could extract a confession by torture, because he was a slave, and use the evidence to link the freedman to the assassination attempt. But it would be of little value, because I could not directly tie Gallus to the conspiracy on my life. Therefore, he could not be charged with a crime.

  For a few minutes, I remained silent as I regained my composure. Nefer slinked back into the bed cubicle. She looked about sniffing the air. The cat glared at me, growled at Chulainn, and jumped onto the bed where she hunkered down and stared at both of us. Strangely enough, I felt calmed by her presence.

  “You tell him, Eleyne,” I continued in a steadier voice, “when he proves his trustworthiness, I’ll remove the chains. Keeping him chained is degrading, but to keep the other slaves in line, he must be made an example.”

  “Don’t be so cruel, Marcellus,” Eleyne said in a voice full of sorrow.

  “Would your sentiments have been the same had he succeeded in murdering me? Would you have cared if he had not been a Briton—a Regni?”

  Silence.

  I shouted for the steward, but the cook, gripping a long butcher knife, and the maid, Imogen, arrived first, apparently having heard Eleyne scream. They lit the other bedroom lamps. In the shadowy, smoky light, I saw the despondent face of my captive and the scowl of Eleyne’s dark eyes glaring at me. I was confused as to why she would side with a slave against me.

  “Porus, where are you?”

  “Here, sir,” called the short Greek. Gray and streaked hair proclaimed his age. Old for his forty-one years, he shuffled into the room. “Forgive me for taking so long, I came as fast as I could,” he added in a soft voice, breathing heavily.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Help me take Chulainn to the cellar.”

  Roughly, we dragged him from the room, with Porus cuffing his ear every other pace and the cook following with his knife.

  In the dark hours of the same morning, I ordered Bodvac’s body taken to the cramped cellar cell and thrown in with Chulainn for about an hour. Before dawn, the corpse was secretly spirited away and dumped in front of the gate to Gallus’s mansion.

  Eleyne would not speak to me the next day. She was furious with Porus, who pleaded with me to execute Chulainn as a warning to the other household slaves. Old tribal loyalties still simmered beneath her pretty countenance, and an incident such as the assassination attempt was enough to bring the old ways to the surface. Chulainn represented a link to her past. Fortunately, her anger subsided and about a week later she admitted I was right in shackling Chulainn. However, I had the feeling she would never completely forgive me. Britons! Women! Exiled queens! Gods, I would never understand any of them, and my wife was all three!

  In the excitement of the night, I had failed to learn from Chulainn how Bodvac approached him with the proposition. Eleyne learned the circumstances. Bodvac contacted him five days before, while she and I were shopping along the Sacred Way. He and Chulainn planned to flee to Britannia after killing me and giving Eleyne her freedom. Little did the fools realize Gallus would have silenced them.

  Eleyne’s former betrothed told the maid, who had answered the door, he wanted to see Chulainn. Against strict orders to allow no one in during our absence, the maid, who found him handsome and taken by his crude charm, let him enter. After he and Chulainn agreed on the plan, the maid was bribed not to disclose the visit. For her disobedience to my commands, I sold her to the wealthy owner of Rome’s largest private bath. She would spend the rest of her life cleaning filth-laden latrines.

  I summoned the rest of the household slaves together, who probably knew of Bodvac’s presence, and warned them of the consequences of further betrayal of their mistress and me. They would suffer crucifixion.

  The question remained, would Gallus use assassins again in an attempt to kill me?

  Chapter 11: March, 52 AD

  Sitting alone in my small office at Station One of the Watch, headquarters of the prefect, I studied security plans for the approaching Julian Festival. Minutes earlier, I had dismissed Chulainn after he delivered a message from Eleyne. Getting up from my hard-backed chair, I stretched my cramped legs and stepped to the office door. In the hazy morning sun of October, I watched as Chulainn disappeared in the distance through the Porta Ratumena gate off the Via Lata. Had it been nearly five years since we nearly killed one another?

  As Eleyne promised, he had proven his loyalty. A few weeks after the assassination attempt, Eleyne persuaded me to remove his shackles so he could escort her to the Great Market near the Forum. The possibility of escape existed, but Chulainn’s fear of the city and crowds minimized the likelihood.

  On a cold November day, he and three other slaves had accompanied Eleyne to the street of the silversmiths, where she purchased an expensive candelabra. One of the escorting slaves carrying the item fell behind on the busy street. Two thieves emerged from the crowds, clubbed the little man, and sent him sprawling onto the trash-filled pavement. Sweeping up the prize, they fled as the bleeding slave futilely cried for help.

  Disregarding the danger, Chulainn chased after the felons. The fugitives ran into a nearby neighborhood considered so dangerous even the Watch feared to enter without heavy reinforcements. Cornering them in a dingy alley, Chulainn proceeded to beat the thugs within an eyelash of their worthless lives. Suddenly, three or four young toughs attacked him with daggers. Seasoned in battle against the Roman army, he fought like a savage warrior. He slammed one bandit’s head first against a brick wall, knocking him unconscious. Disarming two others, he used their weapons to inflict a score of wounds on the rest before they finally escaped. A bruised and bleeding Chulainn returned a dented but still shining candleholder to a delighted Eleyne. He never wore another chain.

  I had heard a rumor that much to Gallus’s consternation, even though Eleyne’s former slave, Candra, had been condemned to the arena five years earlier, he had survived undefeated as a gladiator. Game after game he packed the wooden stadium of Statilius Taurus with fifty thousand spectators to watch him slay Rome’s finest gladiators. Only fools wagered against him. Women came in droves to admire his immense physique, and he had the choice of wenches. Dressed in a loincloth, he fought with a long trident, a dagger, and a large fishing net—costume of the Retiarii. The mob worshipped him as a god.

  Another conspiracy against Emperor Claudius’s life had been uncovered. Plotted by his libertine wife, Messalina, and her lover, Consul Designate Gaius Silius, the attempted overthrow occurred in the full of autumn about two years after Eleyne and I were married. Stunned to learn his conniving wife planned to replace him as ruler with Gaius Silius, Claudius allowed his secretary, the clever Narcissus, to handle the crisis. Although illegal for a freedman, the emperor gave him permission to take command of the Praetorian Guard for one day.

  At the sight of the mock wedding being performed between Messalina and her paramour, Gaius Silius was immediately executed. A bloodbath ensued. Four hundred people attending the ceremony were slaughtered on the spot as traitors. Escaping the carnage, Messalina fled to the home of her unsympathetic mother. Discovered by the Praetorians, an officer of the Guard gave her the option of committing suicide. When she refused, he did his duty by slicing off her lovely head.

  That same evening, a dazed Cl
audius was known to have asked Narcissus, “Why is her ladyship not present for dinner?”

  “You had her put to death, Caesar, don’t you remember?”

  “Oh, but of course—I had forgotten . . . gods, I had forgotten,” he answered, his voice trailing away.

  Most startling of all, especially to Sabinus, was the execution of his friend, Decrius Calpurnianus, the Watch prefect. Sabinus had been totally unaware of his complicity in the Messalina-Silius intrigue. Concerned that he might be wrongfully accused of treason, Sabinus hurried to the emperor’s side and reassured him of his loyalty and disavowed any knowledge of the conspiracy. Fortunately, Vitellius, who had been attending the emperor through most of the ordeal, vouched for his long-time friend’s integrity.

  “Now, the score is even,” Vitellius said to Sabinus later.

  “In what manner of speaking?” a puzzled Sabinus asked.

  “You saved my friendship with the emperor when I was willing to sign my political and financial life away to young Gallus. Remember how much I wanted to marry the barbarian woman, Eleyne?”

  “Aye, and I would help you again.”

  “I believe you friend, and that’s why I returned the favor. You and Decrius Calpurnianus were known to be friends. If I hadn’t known you better, your association with him would have spelled disaster. I have, to put it coarsely, saved your hide.”

  Then rumor had it that Claudius swore he would never remarry, but within a year took his fourth wife, Agrippina, niece by another marriage. It was common knowledge that she was calculating and treacherous, far more dangerous than Messalina. She set her beautiful but wicked eyes on the throne for her young son, the headstrong Nero, instead of young Britannicus, Claudius’s son and rightful successor. Agrippina seduced the old man into making Nero, then twelve years old, heir to the throne. Many already feared Rome would rue the day.

  Nearly two years later, reports came to Sabinus that Caratacus, who had eluded capture for many years, was betrayed. Leading an army drawn from the remnants of several British tribes, and a band of mercenaries recruited from the western part of the empire, he made his final stand against the Romans in Western Britannia. Badly defeated by the Imperial governor, General Ostorius Scapula, and Legion Fourteen Gemina, Caratacus escaped. His downfall came when granted asylum by Eleyne’s distant cousin, Cartimandua, Queen of the Brigantes in Northern Britannia. Less than a week later, the flaxen-haired monarch was arrested and handed the renegade king over to the Roman Governor, who sent him to Rome in fetters.

  Impressed by the British leader’s defiant courage and impassioned speech before the emperor at the Praetorian Barracks, Claudius pardoned Caratacus and allowed him to live with honor in Rome. As Sabinus predicted, Caratacus fell into Rome’s hands when least expected. What a strange tangle is the web of politics and war. Stranger still was when I saw Rome’s one-time sworn enemy, hand in hand with his wife and little daughter, browsing the market place as a guest of Rome.

  A short time later, based on lies that rumor said came from Claudius’s friend, Herod Agrippa, King of Judea, the emperor expelled the Jews from Rome. He accused them of disturbing the peace of Rome at the instigation of the dead prophet, Christus, a god to whom Eleyne had grown attached.

  The exile of those strange but good people, including Pricilla and Aquila, embittered Eleyne. As she became more involved with the Christians, as they called themselves, their influence on her swelled. So long as the sect’s activities did not affect our family life, and its members obeyed the laws of the state, I didn’t care which god Eleyne worshipped.

  I jumped at the arrival of a messenger. Lord Sabinus requested my presence immediately. As reward for his loyalty during the conspiracy by Messalina, the emperor had appointed Sabinus acting Watch prefect, a position normally held by a member of the Equestrian Order. It was partial fulfillment of his original promise to make him city prefect six years before.

  Arriving at Sabinus’s office, I took the chair he indicated as he finished reading a report. Dropping the parchment to the table, he turned to me. “Drusus has been murdered,” he said evenly.

  “When did it happen?” Drusus had been tribune and commander of the Seventh Cohort. Tribune Faenus Rufus, who had since transferred to the Praetorian Guard, had warned me about Drusus’s sympathies to the Gallus family when I had arrived in Rome.

  “Not more than an hour ago.”

  “Any arrests made?”

  Sabinus shook his head. “None. No witnesses—at least none who would come forward.”

  “Where was he killed?” I gestured toward the office door.

  “The Trans-Tiberina District.”

  “What part?” Located on Tiber’s right bank, the district was the poorest and most crime-ridden precinct in Rome. An area of mixed races with people from all over the empire—they had no love for the Watch.

  “Happened on a lane ironically named Mercy Street,” Sabinus answered.

  I raised my eyebrows. “What were the circumstances?”

  Sabinus explained that Drusus was riding his horse, escorted by a contingent of ten Watchmen, when a dagger, hurled anonymously from the jostling crowd struck him in the neck. He toppled to the trash-littered pavement, dead, and lay there as the panicked crowd scattered.

  “Centurion Casperius Niger,” Sabinus continued, “was part of the dead tribune’s escort. He took charge of the investigation, ordered his troops to detain and question everyone in the area from which the knife was thrown.”

  “None too gently, I would guess.” Casperius had been promoted from sergeant to centurion since the raid in the caves that had uncovered old Gallus’s conspiracy against Claudius.

  I smirked.

  “No one admitted to seeing or knowing anything,” Sabinus said. “I expected as much, even on a sunny day, with the street teeming with people.”

  “Why was he singled out?” I asked.

  Sabinus snorted. He picked up the metal stylus laying by the wax tablet on his desk and fingered it before putting it down again. “As far as Centurion Niger can ascertain, Drusus was involved with a worthless slut—the kind who follow the troops.”

  “How does a street follower fit in?”

  “Drusus killed her father after he returned home from the corner tavern and caught them in bed.” Sabinus shrugged, and then a malicious smile crossed his lips. “He couldn’t believe his daughter was that kind of girl. Seems like the drunken, old fool pulled a knife on him—a fatal mistake.”

  I shook my head.

  “Calpurnianus should have gotten rid of Drusus years ago,” Sabinus commented ruefully. “I couldn’t because he was an Imperial appointee—the most inept and corrupt of my tribunes. The Seventh is the worst disciplined cohort in the Watch. However . . . ” He paused as if for effect. “That’s about to change.”

  “Sir?”

  He leaned forward, his elbows touching the desktop, and clasped his hands together. He pursed his chapped lips as his hawk-brown eyes studied my face for the length of a few heart beats. “I’m appointing you the new commander of the Seventh Cohort.”

  A sickening feeling churned the pit of my stomach. Traditionally, an Italian-born tribune was promoted to the command. Somehow I had known, during the course of the conversation, he would pick me. As member of the Equestrian Order and a tribune, I expected to receive a command, but not in the Watch.

  I faced an enormous challenge in retraining the Seventh. For a moment I studied the black, marble bust of Cicero on the pedestal behind the prefect. Although a Republican, he was Sabinus’s favorite statesman and politician. I speculated as to how he would have handled the situation—no doubt, roll up his proverbial sleeves and take immediate action. I was determined to do the same.

  “You honor me, sir,” I finally answered. “May I prove worthy of your trust.”

  “You will,” Sabinus answered. “I don’t expect miracles overnight.” He shook his head. “They’re a bad lot, but you’re the right man for the job. Curse Drusus’s soul
—may he drown crossing the River Styx.”

  “I’ll whip them into shape,” I promised.

  “Literally. From the information I’ve collected, Drusus’s men haven’t felt the sting of a vine rod across their backs in ages—surprise them.”

  *

  Late afternoon, I arrived home with mixed feelings about the day’s events and twists. Despite confidence in my abilities to command the Seventh, my gut feelings said Sabinus wasn’t being realistic. I needed months, not weeks, to restore the cohort to the discipline and efficiency for which the Watch was famous.

  Horse-faced Porus greeted me at the door. “Good afternoon, sir. I trust your day went well?”

  I gave him my scarlet cloak and stepped into the small, lamp-lighted vestibule.

  “It could have been better,” I answered. I touched the smooth, bronze statue of Lares, the little house god, in the wall niche near the door for good luck. Eleyne no longer believed in the Briton gods, let alone Roman ones, but I refused her request to remove their images from the home. I found a strange comfort in their presence—perhaps as a reaction to Eleyne’s invisible Christian God.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Porus said in a sincere voice. His long face contorted as if in sympathy. “Is there anything I can do?” I could have complained of constipation and been met with the same reply. But his loyalty to our house was priceless.

  “Bring me wine, Porus, and tell the mistress I’m home.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  “I’m here, darling,” Eleyne called as I entered the flat’s small atrium. “I’m almost finished with my sewing.” She sat on a cushioned, high-backed chair. Nearby a brazier rested on an iron tripod, heating the otherwise chilly room. Black smoke formed thin strands curling their way up to the outside vent. Fading remnants of winter light filtered through the high, iron grill of the apartment wall. The small tapestry draped across her legs depicted a hunting scene of horsemen armed with spears and shields chasing a wild boar. Close on the beast’s tail ran four hounds, followed by slaves carrying nets. Nearly as colorful was her green, tartan skirt and top, embroidered in gold trim, which she wore. Mother had sent a weaver to instruct Eleyne in the art, and her natural skill bore fruit with prized works illustrating life in Britannia.