Commodus Read online

  Whatever had occurred there, wherever we went we found no tribes awaiting us. By the time we reached Carnuntum, which had itself been badly battered during the conflict, the campaigning season was drawing to a close. The Marcomanni had clearly ravaged Pannonia and then crossed back into their own lands, safe and smug at their victory. And with a northern winter, which I was told could be harsh, there was no chance as yet to move on them and chastise them for fear of being caught far beyond the great river when the snows came.

  Consequently, diplomatic parties were sent up- and downriver, seeking out the lesser tribes, securing peace and their loyalty, with an oath not to fall in with the Marcomanni in subsequent years. The emperor began planning to cross the river once the winter was past and to visit upon that murderous tribe everything they themselves had visited upon Rome. And while planning was the order of those cold, frosty days, the army set to work rebuilding and strengthening the fortress and the frontier it guarded.

  I passed an odd winter in Carnuntum. Everything here was very military, and I was unused to such things. Carnuntum was a provincial capital and a grand municipium, and the most important stop on the amber road that fed that precious stone to the empire, but despite that, every building looked like a barrack block. All was walls and spears and hard-looking men with equally hard-looking families. It was far from the quiet, peaceful world of Praeneste.

  Quadratus visited me less and less often as he attempted to make up for a clear lack of military talent by being present and enthusiastic for the emperor at all times. Commodus was kept relatively busy, too. He was learning the craft of a general from his father and the great Pompeianus, and was involved with planning, training and the constant tasks of rule as often as he could be. Consequently, I spent a lot of time in the civilian areas of Carnuntum, which were far too military for my liking. I socialised with the officers’ wives – the lesser ones, who were willing to be seen with a plebeian woman who was mistress to a former consul, anyway. I learned another lesson there: not to place my faith in the women of Rome’s aristocracy. Each one has more than one face and would eat you alive if it suited them. But among the wives of senior centurions and non-patrician prefects, I found friends. Moreover, I gradually gathered together a cadre of humorous women who liked bawdy humour, enjoyed nothing more than poking quiet, irreverent fun at their menfolk, and whose related exploits sometimes shocked me, sometimes made my sides hurt with laughter, and sometimes gave me very useful ideas.

  Without my books and those women, I might have gone mad in the northern winter.

  I saw Commodus again, more often, as the snow began to fall on Carnuntum like a soft shroud. Once we were settled in and winter surrounded us, all planning done and all campaigning over until spring, the prince suddenly had free time. He was still occupied with his tutors, of course, but not all the time, and in a reflection of the old Commodus I knew on the Palatine, he would occasionally skip his lessons and seek amusement elsewhere.

  We did not talk about what he had been through over the past year without me. He had suffered, though, and that was clear. He had lost weight and had acquired a seemingly permanent sallow complexion. Furthermore, he had not managed to pull himself out of his melancholia the way I would have managed, by inducing a joy in the things around him that lifted his spirits above the gloom. Instead, he had more or less ridden it out like a fever, nailing an expression of hardy competence to his face each day as he pushed the pain and the anguish deep down inside and contained it. And eventually, like a healing wound, he had begun a slow recovery, though like such a wound, it had left its own scar tissue.

  All this he did not tell me directly, but I surmised it easily enough from his words. Slowly, over the winter, Commodus regained something of his old self, partially through the rekindling of our relationship. Indeed, there was something new there, now. Something stronger than before. I was now a woman, and he approaching manhood, and there had been a subtle shift in our attitudes. When I found myself alone I would reflect again and again on those words of Cleander’s so long ago, accusing me of being in love with the prince. It had, I was sure, been but a childish jibe, yet now the truth of it was becoming harder and harder to ignore or refute. I was the mistress of an ex-consul, but it was growing clear to me in those cold days that I loved someone else. And though he never said it – could not say it – I felt certain that my feelings were matched in him. I could see the hard stares I was getting from Quadratus for spending so much time with the prince, but even my current master would not argue with the emperor’s heir. Daily, I suppressed my emotions. No matter what we shared, I could never have Commodus and one day, probably quite soon, I might have to distance myself from him, lest we both be hurt.

  And so, the winter passed.

  Spring saw a return to military activity and preparation. Enduring periodic visits from Quadratus and enjoying occasional ones from Commodus, I watched in fascination as everything unfolded. I was in an almost unique position as an observer. I was too low-born and unimportant to grant expensive and much-needed protection, and Quadratus was too busy to spend a great deal of time with me. Consequently, I had almost unparalleled access to everything that happened in the campaign.

  I watched the first forays of soldiers crossing the great Danubius and searching the closer regions of Marcomannia, looking for trouble and setting up bridgeheads in advance of a full push. I watched them come back, nonplussed. They found little. By late spring the advance units had confirmed that Marcomannia was largely depopulated, and interrogations of those they found, in addition to a few well-placed threats to neighbouring tribes, revealed the reason. It transpired that the bulk of the Marcomanni from the nearer lands were south of the Danubius again. They had crossed the river early in the year, as soon as the snows melted, and begun a fresh spell of raiding before the army of Rome stirred and considered the campaign season open.

  New units were raised from the sparse manpower of the region, and more forces arrived at the central Danubius, drawn from other frontiers to bolster the army. By early summer the military at Carnuntum had to be one of the largest forces ever assembled by Rome. I wondered why we remained at Carnuntum, gathering soldiers, while the enemy ravaged the lands behind us. But then even with access to military texts, I was no strategist, and Commodus was the one who explained it to me. Pannonia was already depleted and ruined. The further ravaging by the Marcomanni would not change things. But they were an army of raiders, and not an entire tribe on the move. They could not advance into the empire forever, and the lands beyond the Alpes were well defended and patrolled since the rebuilding of Aquileia. The tribes could not go far and could not do too much damage. And, critically, they would have to go home, which meant crossing the river into the north once more. Thus, the emperor and his generals had sent out scouts who kept tabs on the enemy and their movements and location, while we secured the support of other tribes, destroyed untenable crossing points and observed and fortified the ones that needed to remain in use. The Marcomanni would not try to cross at Carnuntum, but somewhere nearby, likely the very place they had crossed in the winter before the army was ready. I realised what was happening. The Marcomanni in their greed for further loot thought they had been clever and slipped past Rome. What they had done was trap themselves south of the river with a huge Roman force.

  Battle was joined in late summer. The tribes, feeling that they had taken all they could and that it was time to return to Marcomannia, made their way north, unaware that Roman scouts watched their every move and that riders hurtled back and forth between the advancing tribes and the waiting legions of Rome.

  Women have no place on the battlefield. Our wars are fought in the domus and the bedchamber, whatever certain infamous barbarian queens might think. Yet I saw this battle with my own eyes. The servants and slaves of the generals were kept close, and so with Quadratus’ household I stood on the bench of a carriage on the hillside and watched the whole thing. My view
was uninterrupted, and I could see Quadratus, Commodus, Pompeianus, the emperor himself and numerous other leading lights of Rome on another high point nearby.

  What followed was the most awful thing I had ever witnessed. The Marcomanni, laughing and victorious, ambled north, itching to be home with their ill-gotten gains. I didn’t see the opening moves as the Roman heavy cavalry appeared behind the tribe: cataphracts armoured from scalp to toe and with long, heavy lances, their horses similarly clad in iron, auxiliary cavalry from Gaul, Numidian riders, Mauretanian horse, Greek cavalry, even a few units of unorthodox, Parthian-style mounted archers. They came from the south where they had been in hiding and fell upon the rear of the Marcomanni. The effect must have been awful, though their job had not been to kill, but to drive the enemy north. This they did with ease. The Marcomanni, taken by surprise, panicked. What had been a happy journey home had suddenly become a descent into Tartarus.

  The first I saw of the enemy was as the tribe hoved into view across a low saddle to the south, desperately making for the crossing of the Danubius that lay a quarter of a mile behind me, guarded by heavily armoured Praetorian units. The Marcomanni were hungry, swift, believing they were outrunning their deadly pursuers and would make it to the crossing.

  That was the moment that I realised why Rome ruled the world and why even the great Parthian King of Kings had agreed to peace. Rome’s army is unbeatable; even beset by plague and famine, staffed by sailors and gladiators and all manner of combatants, no force could hope to overcome them.

  The Marcomanni flooded onto the flat ground south of the river, eager and hopeful – an optimism that was dashed in a heartbeat. The gleaming serried ranks of Rome awaited them, blocking the way to the bridge, thousand upon thousand, men from all over the empire, each dedicated solely and simply to ending the Marcomanni, who had troubled the empire for decades. The huge mass of tribesmen, some on foot, a lucky few on horseback, slowed at the realisation of their peril, but the nightmare for them had only just begun. The Marcomanni force was large enough that the rear ranks were entirely unaware of what waited for them, and were being driven on by deadly cavalry, pushing into those who had drawn up at the sight of the legions.

  All turned to chaos.

  The tribes north of the Danubius seem to have little in the way of tactical command, unlike our armies. Where in such a situation a Roman general would already have been planning their response and sending out orders to musicians to relay, the Marcomanni simply responded if not individually, then in small regional groupings. Some bore the hope of breaking through to the river and rushed at the waiting Roman force. Others preferred their chances against the cavalry and turned into their own, fighting a way back to the waiting horsemen. More still broke off east or west in the hope of fleeing the field along the near bank of the river. That was when the generals Pompeianus and Pertinax closed the trap, swinging the two wings of the army around at speed to enfold the enemy in an iron embrace.

  The Marcomanni dithered and panicked. Some fought. Some tried to run. Others simply dropped their weapons and called for their leaders to seek terms. No terms were to be given, though.

  Artillery began to loose with dull thuds as thousands of arrows slithered through the blue sky from the archers on the periphery of the field. It was slaughter. A butcher’s shop on a grand scale. Those who knelt and beseeched were riddled with dark shafts as often as those who bellowed defiantly. The Marcomanni had utterly slaughtered a Roman army near here two years ago, and Rome never forgets a debt owed.

  I watched that battle – that mass murder – and not once did I close my eyes or turn my head from the scything of metal into flesh or the screams of agony from men transfixed. I watched, and I hardened myself to it, for these men deserved no less than they received. Yet I also felt sick at what I saw, and I was minded of Commodus’ words that day at his uncle’s villa: ‘War is different. It kills men by the thousand, and rarely solves anything.’

  I watched to the end. It lasted but an hour in all, and the Roman officers were merciless. I gather from later conversations that they tore through the surrendering barbarians in the last stages, seeking their king, wanting him alive to kneel before the emperor, but it seemed that this Ballomar was not part of the army. The king who had led them to sack Aquileia and to defeat the legions at Carnuntum was still somewhere in his tribal lands in the north.

  I finally turned away when it was over, the plain by the river a grim tableau of death and decay, twisted bodies issuing soundless screams from open mouths below wide, terrified eyes, pila and spears standing proud of the bodies like a forest of branchless trees. The metallic stink of blood was almost lost beneath the rank odour of opened bowels that sat upon the land like a miasma. Crows hopped from still warm body to still warm body, gorging on succulent flesh. Other scavenging animals moved around the areas with the least movement to deter them, and the Roman camp followers were already sawing off fingers to claim prized rings or lifting bodies up to remove expensive torcs from necks. It was quite the most appalling sight imaginable, and after that, Hell holds no fears for me, for God cannot inflict upon us any torment worse than that we can visit upon each other.

  Prisoners taken and sold to the numerous slavers that followed the column in hope were fewer than any man would expect from such a conflict, while the mass burnings of the bodies turned the air black for days. The Danubius stank of cooking pork for the rest of my time there, for once that sickly-sweet smell lodges in the nostrils it is there to stay.

  The return to Carnuntum was a lively and grand thing, the officers satisfied, slapping each other on the back and anticipating who would receive awards and recognition for their part in the victory. The soldiers, already enriched from looting the dead on the field, heedless that much of that wealth had so recently been looted in turn from the Roman provinces, were in high spirits. I was not. I knew that the Marcomanni deserved what happened to them, and I was content to watch two men of skill attempt to best one another in the arena, but I would hope never again to witness the horror I had seen by the Danubius.

  I was saved the rest of the campaign. The emperor, determined to chastise King Ballomar for his actions, led his armies north of the river in the following days and spent the rest of the season in Marcomannia. The great generals went with him, and so did Commodus and Quadratus. I was left with the courtiers and the families in Carnuntum. I felt a panic when the season closed and there was no sign of their return, though missives confirmed that the entire army would remain beyond the river, settled into winter quarters among the enemy, while ambassadors secured alliances with other neighbouring tribes.

  Winter in Carnuntum is cold and dismal, worse than the worst Roman winter by far, and I spent much of that time tucked up in warm rooms reading and drinking expensive wine that came along supply lines from the south. As part of one of the most senior officers’ households and with access to seemingly unlimited funds, I lived more comfortably than most that winter, and as mistress of a household with an absent master I used Quadratus’ house and his money to entertain my friends among the lesser officers’ wives, all of whom were in the same boat, with their menfolk away. I wrote missives to Mother on occasion, when I had anything to say, anyway. She might not be able to read them, but I sent them anyway, sure that a palace functionary would read them to her. And I prayed to God that Commodus had a good winter. I had promised myself never again to be apart from him when he needed me, but events kept us separated during this last great push of the campaign.

  I need not have worried. Not about his sinking into melancholia, anyway.

  Time rolled on with regular news of victory after victory, and the army of Marcus Aurelius returned to Carnuntum before the summer faded. Ballomar had been found and had surrendered. He had begged for clemency for himself and his people and, while the emperor was noted for his mercy and understanding, even he would not see the Marcomanni reasoned with. I rushed to the gates of the cit
y when the column approached, along with the rest of the populace. I watched the glorious emperor with his Praetorians and his senior officers, riding for the gate as the army began to disperse behind them, seeking their own camps in the locale.

  It took me long moments to spot Commodus. I had been looking for my prince in his rich tunic, perhaps wrapped in a cloak against the northern breezes. What I found was a ten-year-old Caesar riding alongside his father, armoured as a great Roman commander, purple cloak draped over his horse’s rear, golden hair shaggier than ever. And as he approached the gate with a smile of satisfaction that mirrored his father’s, I saw something startling. The prince had something dangling from his saddle horn, bouncing from the flank and from his knee occasionally, and I realised with rising bile that it was a human head. That of Ballomar, King of the Marcomanni. The empire’s revenge was complete.

  I wanted nothing more in the ensuing days than to spend time with Commodus, but still, that was not to be. For one thing, Quadratus had returned and, though he had sated himself from time to time in some indulgent way on campaign, he had missed the ministrations of his mistress. Once more I was a concubine – a plaything for the sickness of Quadratus, who revelled in his ‘military glory’. For another, Commodus was something of a celebrity, kept busy at all times. It seems he had deported himself during the campaign with every bit of the vigour and glory to which his uncle Verus had been wont. It had been he the emperor had given the final say over Ballomar, and it had been Commodus who ordered his head be taken. He had led units and directed some of the action. He was being lauded by Pompeianus as a man who held great potential as a general.