Pupienus embraced the old man, inhaling the familiar scorched smell, feeling the strength that remained in the muscles of arms and shoulders.
‘Health and great joy, Father.’
Not letting go, the smith leant back, regarded him.
‘What is wrong?’
Pupienus took a deep breath – charcoal, hot metal, dust – and tried to find the words. ‘The Gordiani are dead.’
‘Even in this remote backwater, we heard.’
‘The Senate intends to elect a new Emperor from the Board of Twenty.’
His father smiled, sadly. ‘And you are a candidate.’
‘Yes.’
They stood without speaking, holding each other like men on the edge of some disaster.
Pupienus’ father broke the silence. ‘You know that I never wished to be parted from you. Your brothers and sisters were dead. I had buried your mother. You would have died too. I had nothing. The man I sold you to was not unkind.’
‘No, my master did not mistreat me,’ Pupienus said. ‘And our kinsman Pinarius soon saved the money to buy my freedom, took me to Tibur, brought me up as if I were an orphan. I have never blamed you.’
His father disengaged himself. ‘But an ex-slave cannot hold a magistracy, let alone aspire to the throne. Give me the ring.’
‘No!’ Pupienus was shocked despite himself. ‘There is no need. Apart from the two of us, only Pinarius and Fortunatianus know. My old master has been dead for more than three decades. Your slave thinks that I am an old patron of yours.’
‘Give me the ring.’ His father’s voice was gentle. ‘I am old, my strength failing. Would you deny me a peaceful release?’
Pupienus could not speak.
‘My mind begins to wander. I talk to myself. Words escape my mouth unintended.’
The slave boy knocked on the door. The food was ready.
They walked across the yard to the house with its bare earth floor, sat on rustic benches. The boy sent away, they ate alone: bread, cheese, cold mutton.
‘I know you cannot come here again,’ his father said.
Self-control, Pupienus told himself. He could not let his discipline desert him now. He took the ring from his finger, and handed it to his father.
That was how one ate and drank at the court of a King.
Northern Italy
The Aesontius River, Four Days before the Nones of April, AD238
Menophilus was back at the bridge over the Aesontius, gazing down at the Pons Sonti from almost the same place. But the circumstances were different. Last time it had been night, now it was day. Then he had ten men, now four hundred. Then he had been hunted, now he was the hunter. The gods had looked graciously on his endeavours.
It did not do to tempt fate. If the day went well, if he survived, he would make an offering. Nothing extravagant, not an empty show of ostentatious wealth, but give the gods something he valued. The small, silver memento mori of a skeleton would serve. He had worn it on his belt for years, thought it brought him luck. He would dedicate it in the Temple of Belenus in Aquileia. Menophilus smiled. Once he had thought he was on the path to Stoic wisdom, now he accepted that he had not advanced a step. Far from a sage, he was still a fool mired in superstition.
If the gods had not had a hand, a strange combination of efficiency and negligence on the part of his enemy had given Menophilus this opportunity. With the competence of years in the field, Flavius Vopiscus had built the pontoon bridge, got the siege train across the river, and marched off towards his objective. All had been accomplished with alacrity, yet, displaying a carelessness that could only have come from an utter contempt for those ranged against him, Maximinus’ general had not thought it necessary to bring any cavalry. It had made the task of Menophilus’ scouts simple. Operating in pairs – one from the 1st Cohort, and a local volunteer – they had kept their distance. Menophilus had no wish to disturb the complacency of Vopiscus. All he needed to know was the whereabouts of Vopiscus’ main force.
The four thousand or so Pannonian legionaries that comprised the advance guard of the imperial army were camped, along with the wagons carrying the disassembled siege engines, ten miles to the west on the Via Gemina, about six miles north-east of Aquileia. Informed of that, Menophilus’ strategy had been obvious. A night march from the city, east along the Via Flavia to reach the river, and then follow the stream north. Get behind Vopiscus, approach the bridge without his knowledge. The farm had been a worry. Half a mile from the site of the Pons Sonti, when Menophilus had been here before, it had contained an enemy piquet. They could warn the garrison of the bridge. Extraordinarily – yet more evidence of lax overconfidence – the guard had been withdrawn from the farm. The house, barn, sheds, and huge wine barrels were all empty. Now Menophilus’ auxiliaries were resting in the farmstead, eating cold rations as an early midday meal, waiting for his signal.
Menophilus himself was back in the woods, lying, wrapped in a dark cloak, among the beech trees and elms, under whose boughs young Barbius had been hacked to death. He pushed the thought away. Guilt served no purpose. What could not be changed was an irrelevance. The youth’s father would not see it, but death was nothing. It was a release.
The river was even higher than before. Its waters surging through the roots of the willows on its banks, breaking white over the remains of the piers of the demolished stone bridge, tugging with immeasurable force at the pontoons of its replacement. The little rowing boat had gone; perhaps, if carelessly moored, it might have been swept downstream by the force of the current.
Waiting was the hardest part of battle. Menophilus did not fear death. What was life but standing in the breech, awaiting the barbed arrow? Nothing was certain in war – one should never take the favour of the gods for granted – but he had few doubts about the outcome of the day. Below him less than a hundred men of the 10th Legion Gemina still guarded the nearer, western end of the bridge. There were more enemy troops at the far end; among the trees, their numbers could not be gauged, but there was no reason to think them any greater. Menophilus outnumbered the foe, by two to one, or more. Surprise was on his side. Wait for the right moment, when the legionaries were at their most unready, a sudden charge, seize the bridge, and sever the cables securing the pontoons. The river would do the rest. Vopiscus, the advance guard and the siege train, would be isolated on the Aquileian side of the Aesontius. Maximinus and the main army left stranded on the other. It would not win the war, but it would delay and frustrate the enemy.
The eight men who would wield the axes and cut the bridge were volunteers. Menophilus had consulted an engineer, a sardonic individual called Patricius. Part the cables holding together the two central pontoons, and the river in spate would tear the rest of the structure apart in moments. The volunteers had been promised great rewards, comparable to those first over the walls in the storming of a city. Their names were all listed, as were those of their dependants. In the myth Horatius, the bridge demolished behind him, had swum the Tiber in full armour. Today, Patricius assured him, many, perhaps all of the men with axes would be claimed by the Aesontius.
Menophilus watched the grey-green water rushing past, inexorable and carrying all manner of flotsam. His eyes rested on a branch, a drowned cat, another branch; always changing, always the same. When he had been here before, his duty had seemed clear. The Gordiani were dead. His post was at Aquileia. Who the Senate placed upon the throne was none of his concern. He would remain at Aquileia,