The Imperial Triumph Page 5

  ‘We know what happens to those who have been caught; poor Sempronius getting caught with that ballista, such bad luck. But I’m sure that you can use your influence if we do fall foul of the Urban Cohorts; as his benefactor did.’

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I want as much profit from this as possible.’

  ‘And rightly so. We’ll use the Gate of Salus on the Quirinal; we should be able to avoid the most-crowded areas and get them to Pomegranate Street without too much fuss.’

  ‘Good. There’ll be six carts in all so bring covers for each of them. Get them unloaded as quickly as possible and start work immediately; the sooner it’s finished the sooner I can make money. Is everything ready in the house?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘No sign of the owner?’

  ‘None so far.’

  ‘Good. I’ll be down the morning after to see how you’re getting on.’

  ‘We’ll be fine, senator, provided you can furnish me with a letter and a certificate.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  The senator’s well-fleshed face creased into a florid grin as Magnus told him. ‘Oh very good, Magnus; I do most certainly take your meaning. I’ll do the letter immediately and you’ll get the certificate when you pick up the wagons after the Triumph.’

  The Triumphal Gate – used only for this sacred procession and the lesser version: the Ovation – swung open, shortly after the second hour later that morning, to a fanfare of horns and the deep percussive resonance of massed drums. At a sedate walk, matching the beat, the musicians entered the city. A roar of gargantuan proportions erupted from all those within view that transmitted itself along the crowds lining the entire route, as a flame follows a trail of oil. Soon, the whole city was cheering the Triumph of the man who laid claim to the conquest of an island whose strategic worth was negligible and financial value negative. But despite that, still they cheered and waved the colours of their racing factions, Red, Green, White and Blue, for they cared not for such lofty considerations; their main concerns were their stomachs, their purses and their loins – although not necessarily in that order.

  And then, following the musicians, came the captives, ragged rank after rank of them, weighed down by chains and misery, to be paraded in front of a crowd of hundreds of thousands whose collective martial prowess was noticeably less than the ten thousand once-proud warriors whom they jeered. But at their head was no king nor great chieftain; only a few of the lesser nobility from minor sub-tribes were destined for ritual strangulation later that day, for the Triumph was a sham as many of the tribes of Britannia fought on still, resisting the Claudian invasion with every drop of their blood. Caratacus, their leader, was by no means subdued. But that did not bother Magnus and his brethren as the captive women and children, in their wailing masses, began to stumble through the gate in the wake of their menfolk, for Magnus had business to attend to that was made easier by the distraction of the farce being played out throughout the city.

  ‘You take the Chainmakers’ Street with your lads, Tigran; we’ll do this one,’ Magnus said as he and a dozen of the brothers pushed four handcarts down the Vicus Longus. Apart from the public slaves working in the newly set-up kitchens, the road was virtually deserted; just cripples and drunks remained and they were too preoccupied with their own conditions to care overmuch about the passing of the brethren. Magnus stopped next to the temporary kitchen at the junction with the Chainmakers’ Street. ‘Remember, Tigran: just the middle house and then make sure that a kitchen is moved right outside it. We’ll meet up at the Flaminian Circus with the rest of the brothers after the Triumph.’

  The easterner nodded his agreement and led Cassandros and two other brothers into the narrow street where more kitchens and tables were set out, bedecked with the colours of the Blue racing faction; Magnus hawked and spat at the sight of the banners. ‘Marius, you lads do the centre one of the three on this side and we’ll see to the middle two of the four over there.’

  ‘Right you are, Magnus. Good luck on getting Sextus to concentrate what there is of his mind on the matter in hand.’ With a grin at the bovine Sextus, evidently still in the thrall of his early morning visit to Laelia to pick up the new locks, the one-handed brother led his three lads to the property in question past the kitchen on the pavement outside where slaves were butchering sides of pork ready for the grill.

  ‘This way, lads,’ Magnus said to Sextus, Laco and a third brother, crossing the street to the second of the four tenement blocks. Whereas on a normal day the two business premises – one a tavern, the other a bakery – inbuilt into its ground floor to either side of the entrance would have been open and bustling, today they were firmly shut; who would want to spend their money on food and drink when there would be enough for all for free? And besides, the new tenants were yet to take up their residencies as there were far greater attractions to occupy them this day. Magnus walked towards the building unremarked. ‘Get them moved closer, Laco,’ he ordered, pointing to public slaves stoking the cooking fires in the kitchen on that side of the road, bringing them up to temperature.

  He disappeared into the tenement; Sextus, his expression still wistful, followed with his cart and the third brother.

  The hallway was dank and dark, no light other than what seeped through the door reached into its depths; its reek was almost physical in the suddenness of its violence. A stairway, with the steepness of a ladder, punched up through the low ceiling into the first floor, which was a realm of gloom whence no light escaped, just the sound of dripping fluid.

  ‘Put it there,’ Magnus said, pointing to a shadowed corner to the left, just inside the door.

  Sextus swivelled the cart and pushed it to where he had been ordered, pulled back the leather sheet covering it and then, along with the other brother, took a couple of handfuls of rags from within and scattered them on the floor all the way to the front door.

  Magnus took an amphora from under the remaining pile of rags in the cart and lobbed it up the stair to hear it shatter on the first-floor landing. ‘That should do it, lads; time to nip next door.’

  Laco had terrorised the public slaves into moving their kitchen further up the hill as Magnus came out the first building. ‘Bring your cart, Laco,’ he ordered, pushing past one of the slaves repositioning an awning.

  The interior of the adjacent building was much the same, the only noticeable difference being the dead dog that must have crawled in there to die during the night having come a poor second in a fight. This time Magnus led them on through the creaking passage to a rear door and then out into the relative freshness of a dingy courtyard no more than twenty paces square, backing onto both buildings. Moss covered much of the walls and crept up the trunk of a long-dead tree whose branches touched the upper storeys’ shuttered windows of either tenement. ‘Over there, Laco, next to the tree, between it and the wall.’

  Laco did as ordered and again they spread some of the rags around the cart and again Magnus removed an amphora from the remaining pile left within; this time, however, he also pulled out some twine. He handed both to the third brother, a slim lad not yet out of his teens. ‘Up you go, Lupus.’

  Using Sextus’ hands as a step, Lupus shinned up the tree into the upper branches and secured the amphora so that it dangled directly above the cart; removing the waxed stopper he made his nimble way back down.

  ‘Good lad,’ Magnus said, adjusting the handcart a fraction. ‘Come, Brothers, time to go and see just what it is that we’ll be taking delivery of later.’

  The tail of the three-mile trail of slaves had just reached the Via Sacra by the time that Magnus and his brethren had shoved their way to a vantage point. The whips cracked down on the last ranks of weeping women and their wailing offspring and the crowd’s catcalls and jeers turned to whistles and cheers as the first of the tableaux trundled into view. The cheers were expressions of wonderment as the invasion fleet was depicted in the form of four quarter-scale triremes with oars, oper
ated by slaves, beating in time, each on its own carriage pulled by heavy oxen. On their decks, actors, dressed as legionaries, struck heroic poses and in the prow of the first stood a representation of the emperor boldly leading his men to the mysterious island across the water.

  ‘I was there at the landing,’ Magnus shouted to his brothers above the din of the crowd, ‘and I can assure you that he was not.’

  And then came the depiction of the landing itself. Terrifying tribesmen waved fearsome swords at legionaries seemingly stuck in the sand as yet another representation of Claudius battered down a chieftain resplendent in a winged helm. Again it was another piece of political spin that had absolutely no basis in reality: the landing had been unopposed.

  More and more tableaux laboured past, each depicting a phase of the conquest: the first contact as the legions had marched west between a line of hills and the Tamesis estuary and swept the tribes back thanks to Claudius’ bravery; the death of Togodumnus, the brother of Caratacus, defeated in single combat by the emperor; the battle to cross the Afon Cantiacii in which Claudius singlehandedly built a bridge. On it went: the crossing of the Tamesis led by the emperor, the routing of the final resistance, the fall of Camulodunum and the surrender of the kings and chieftains. Only in this last event did Claudius actually participate, but even this was exaggerated as it implied that every king on the whole island had presented his sword to the emperor. But the crowd did not care and cheered themselves hoarse nonetheless, applauding the most martial of the Caesars ever, if the floats were to be believed.

  And then came the real proof of the matter, and Magnus wondered if he had agreed to do something for his patron that he would just not be able to see through, for the wagons containing the weaponry of the vanquished were brim full; six of them, each twenty feet long and six feet high. ‘They’ll take a month just to unload, let alone process,’ Magnus observed as he felt his heart sink.

  ‘We don’t have to unload them all at once, Magnus,’ Marius pointed out. ‘They could all just about fit into the stable yard if we unharness the oxen and wheel them in.’

  ‘I suppose so, Brother; it’s just that I didn’t really appreciate the magnitude of what the senator wants us to do for him …’ He paused as a thought struck him. ‘But then I don’t suppose Senator Pollo did either. Now that is an interesting point that I think I might bring up with our patron at a suitable moment.’ With an inkling of how to resolve one of his present difficulties Magnus relaxed and turned his mind back to the parade as the rest of the booty was driven past: wagons piled high with furs, ingots of tin, silver and gold, cages filled with huge, barking hunting dogs, chests of jewellery and other riches ripped from the most recent people to have been raped by Rome.

  With the booty seized in the invasion now completely displayed, the tone changed: out went the martial music of horns and drums to be replaced by massed lyres plucking sweet chords in harmony as the trilling of many pipes soared above in descant.

  And then, enveloped by this melodious sound, came the victors: first, the senate, over five hundred of them in their chalked-white togas edged with thick, purple stripes; each man wearing whatever honours he was eligible to display: military crowns, Triumphal Regalia and other baubles of the elite. Waddling in their midst, sweating profusely, was Senator Gaius Vespasius Pollo, doing his best to look dignified, displaying his Triumphal Regalia that he, along with the hundred other senators who had accompanied Claudius to Britannia, had been awarded, thus considerably downgrading its worth. Each senator currently serving as a magistrate was preceded by his due of lictors; incense carriers belched out clouds of sweet-smelling smoke so that the stench of the vanquished before them did not offend their sensibilities. At the sight of the senate the common people of Rome not only raised the level of their vocal appreciation but also demonstrated it in a physical form: fronds and flowers soared into the air to fall on the parade as a multi-coloured rain that intensified as, following the long line of senators, the object of this day’s adulation came into view mounted in a four-horse chariot. Crowned with laurel, wearing the purple and gold toga picta and shod in red boots with his face painted the same colour in honour of Jupiter Capitolinus came the twitching, drooling form of Claudius. He acknowledged the acclaim of the crowd with shaky waves with one hand whilst holding the reins in the other; but that was just for show as each of the horses that pulled the quadriga had a groom holding its harness so that there was no danger of the beasts bolting and turning what was already a perceptual farce into a physical one.

  Fronds, flowers and now rose petals rained down upon the emperor and onto the mounted officers riding behind him – few of whom had actually served in any of the legions that had done the fighting, but they were not going to let that detail prevent them from sharing a modicum of the glory. Only the two lumbering white oxen, following behind them, had a genuine reason for being there and the sacrificial ribbons tied around them advertised their purpose. Finally, through the floral rain, dressed in the plain white toga of citizens appeared the victorious emperor’s troops, bellowing out marching songs with cheeky lyrics addressed to Claudius that carefully omitted any mention of the disabilities that afflicted him. Yet more flowers and fronds were strewn as the women of Rome called out their admiration for such martial men, some baring their breasts to emphasise the point whilst the cohorts of whores in the crowd lifted their tunics to show what could be purchased with the largesse that would be distributed to the legionaries; and the faces of many of the men showed that they too thought that this would be a very worthwhile transaction.

  And so passed the soldiery, but there were far fewer of them than would normally expect to be parading in a Triumph as none of the men actually serving in the legions of Britannia could be present due to the fighting still raging in the province. The legionaries receiving the people of Rome’s acclaim were drawn from the Praetorian Guard, parade-ground soldiers in the main who had accompanied Claudius to the island and had taken part in a staged battle so that the emperor could, with a certain degree of truth, claim to have led an army in anger. But, again, these considerations were brushed aside as the city embraced the holiday and the Triumph rolled by to the accompaniment of the musicians, incense and cheers topped with the rich aromas of roasting meats from the hundreds of kitchens throughout the city.

  As the last rank of legionaries passed followed by the final phalanx of musicians combining, in a crescendo, the earlier martial beats of drums and horns with the melodic strains of the lyres and pipes, the crowds turned to follow the route to bear witness to the sacrifices and pageantry in the Forum.

  ‘Time to go, lads,’ Magnus said, turning in the opposite direction, ‘the head of the parade will be arriving back on the Campus Martius by now.’

  The rest of the South Quirinal brethren were gathering near the Flaminian Circus as Magnus and the brothers accompanying him pushed and shoved their way through the chaos of the Campus Martius. All the elements of the Triumph were being dispersed to their various holding places. Slaves, many of them now naked, were being herded into pens to await the mass auctions that were to take place over the following few days; the tableaux were being dismantled whilst the wagon-loads of booty were drawn into the arena of the circus itself.

  ‘Any sign of Pallas?’ Magnus asked Tigran, arriving at the open gates as a wagon of howling hunting dogs trundled through.

  Tigran indicated with his head to the tunnel exposed by the gates. ‘He’s through there; he said to find him as soon as you arrived.’

  ‘We’ll go together, we need to talk.’

  The easterner nodded and followed Magnus into the gloom of the passage leading beneath the seating and out onto the sand.

  ‘You don’t have enough support, Tigran,’ Magnus said in a conversational tone.

  ‘What do you mean, Brother?’

  ‘Don’t play dumb with me; you know precisely what I’m talking about, and if you carry on then you might find yourself not needing any support at all, if
you take my meaning?’

  ‘Are you threatening me, Magnus?’

  ‘No, Brother; I’m just pointing out the facts as I see them: you openly criticised me the other night and the only person who showed open support was Cassandros. When it comes down to it he and I go back a long way; we served in the legions together and, ultimately, I think I can count on his loyalty whatever you might have offered him. I know he’s ambitious, as are you, but now is not the time to try and push me aside.’

  ‘Who said that I was trying to do that?’

  ‘No one said it but questioning my judgement is the equivalent to asking whether or not I’m fit to be the patronus of our brotherhood. I’ve waited until this time to have a word with you about it because I now know that by tomorrow all our problems will be solved and any silent support you may have thought you had will have melted away.’

  Tigran rubbed his hennaed beard between his thumb and forefinger but said nothing.

  ‘So you have three choices, Brother: support me completely, or leave Rome, or carry on muttering and end up with your body floating downriver to Ostia and your head sinking in shit in one of the sewers.’ Magnus smiled – it did not reach his eyes – and put a friendly arm around Tigran’s shoulders. ‘But we don’t want it to come to that, do we, my friend? There’ll be time for you yet but it ain’t now.’ With a squeeze, Magnus let go as they came out into the light of the arena crammed full of wagons, bellowing oxen and busying people. ‘Now, what’s it to be?’

  Tigran answered immediately: ‘I stay, Magnus.’

  ‘Good lad for not hesitating. Now, I ain’t stupid and I know that when a man is hungry the best thing to do is feed him. So, Brother, I shall give you more responsibilities, which will in turn lead to greater financial benefits. Never let it be said that I don’t look after my own.’