The Conqueror Read online

  The wagon driver pulled up before the tomb of the Junia clan. While the deacons were readying the body for burial, Flavia approached Father Miltiades.

  “Pistis was a righteous man,” she observed. “He worked hard and never complained.”

  Miltiades nodded. “It is noble of your father to grant him an honorable burial in your vault.”

  “The prayers of Saint Paul will comfort his soul,” Flavia said, gesturing toward the famous apostolic tomb, which stood a short distance away under a large cypress tree. “Yet the necropolis itself is pagan.”

  “It is mostly pagan, that is true. Yet many brethren are buried here in remembrance of the great apostle.”

  “My father’s tomb cannot house all the Christian dead, Miltiades. They die by the day in our city—and most of them go to rest among unbelievers.”

  A long moment passed before Miltiades turned and met Flavia’s eyes. “I know what you desire, dear one. Be patient. In time, God may grant our petition.”

  “You could approach the emperor again,” Flavia suggested. “Ask him for a favor.”

  Miltiades frowned and shook his head. “Maxentius only feigns support for us. He wants to keep our cemeteries as a bargaining coin.”

  “But the persecutions are over! Our lands should be returned!”

  A deacon approached the priest. “We are ready now, Holy Father,” he said.

  Miltiades put his hand on Flavia’s shoulder and leaned close. “Keep praying, dear one,” he whispered in her ear, “and I will see what I can do.” Turning away, he removed a gospel book from his satchel and proceeded toward the tomb’s entrance.

  Flavia crossed herself and raised her eyes heavenward as she followed her spiritual mentor. Lord, your proverbs say, “Like a rush of water, so is the heart of a king in God’s hand.” Now I ask you to turn that wicked emperor’s heart!

  Father Miltiades led the burial rites with gentleness and poise. When the ancient ritual was finished and the body was laid in the tomb, the funeral procession returned to the city. No one wailed or screamed, for Christians did not grieve like those who have no hope. One by one, the mourners dispersed to their homes, until only those who belonged to Flavia’s household were left to escort her there.

  Upon their arrival, the master of the house met them in the atrium. Senator Neratius Junius Flavianus was a tall, thin man with a spindly neck and a ring of gray hair around the back of his bald head. To the servants he often seemed stern, so they scattered quickly, leaving Flavia alone with him.

  “Greetings, Father,” she said, offering a bow of respect.

  “You walked?”

  “It isn’t far.”

  “But is it dignified for a noble girl? Look at your dusty feet.”

  “Feet can be washed.”

  Neratius pursed his lips for a moment, then let out a sigh. “Indeed, they can. Come and sit, my daughter.” He snapped his fingers toward a handmaiden standing in the corner of the room. A stool was brought to the edge of the shallow pool beneath the atrium’s skylight. After Flavia had seated herself, the servant began to remove her sandals—and with her father standing there, Flavia did not object.

  “How was the funeral?” Neratius asked.

  “Pistis was given over to God with all dignity. Thank you for granting him a niche in the family vault. That meant a lot to the servants.”

  “He was a good worker for us.”

  “And a faithful brother. Yet”—Flavia glanced at Neratius—“he was buried in a pagan necropolis.”

  The remark made Neratius frown. “A necropolis that once housed the body of Saint Paul! That is no small thing.”

  “I know. It is certainly a worthy resting place for Pistis. Yet it bothers me that Maxentius still holds the church’s rightful lands. He is your childhood friend! Can you not do something?”

  “The persecutions only recently ended here, Flavia—and they still continue under the Eastern colleagues. Everything is unstable now. This isn’t the time to be making religious requests of a nervous emperor.”

  “I would do it,” Flavia muttered. She noticed the handmaiden who was rinsing her feet suppress a smile.

  Neratius snorted. “Oh, I suppose you would snatch the folds of the augustus’s toga and shake him until he complied?”

  “If that’s what it would take, I would!” Flavia replied defiantly, though she knew the statement was ridiculous.

  “The Praetorians would run you through before you could take the first step.” Neratius craned his neck and gazed at Flavia’s feet. “That’s clean enough,” he told the handmaiden. “Put on her sandals and be gone.”

  “Yes, master,” said the girl. She finished the job and hurried away. The atrium fell silent now, its stillness broken only by the gentle gurgle of the fountain in the middle of the pool. A shaft of sunshine from the lofty skylight made the water sparkle. Flavia stared at the little golden fireflies that seemed to dance on the pool’s ruffled surface. At last she stood and faced her father.

  “If you were the city prefect,” Flavia declared, “Maxentius would listen to you.”

  “If I were the city prefect, I wouldn’t seek trivial favors from the emperor.”

  “Trivial? You are a Christian! A church even meets in our house. Wouldn’t you wish to defend the rights of your brethren?”

  Neratius’s expression softened. He began to approach, and Flavia smiled as he came. People often said her father looked like a stork, with his long legs and the beak-like nose of his patrician ancestors. He’s awkward, but he’s a good man, Flavia thought, a man who follows God as best as his high rank will allow. She let him bend and kiss the top of her head with stiff yet tender affection.

  “Will you pray to the Highest God that I might become city prefect?” he asked.

  “Of course, Father. I pray for it often.”

  “I’ll make a bargain with you. If God grants that petition, I will ask Maxentius to return the church’s properties.”

  “Not just that. Ask him to favor the Christian religion like Emperor Constantine does. Ask him to be baptized as a believer in Christ.”

  “Ha! You are worthy of the Junii clan, my daughter! You drive a hard bargain!” Neratius tapped his chin for a moment, then finally threw up his hands and shrugged. “Yet if that is God’s price for making me the city prefect, so be it. I shall ask Maxentius about this.”

  “Do you think he will agree?”

  Neratius chuckled and shook his head. “That old pagan? Not a chance.” After patting Flavia on the shoulder, he circled around the pool to the far side of the atrium. Pausing at the door, he turned and looked back. “But don’t forget to pray for me anyway.”

  “I will, Father.”

  Flavia demurely straightened her dress as she watched Neratius disappear into his study. Her father’s cavalier dismissal of the bargain disturbed her. Sitting down on the stool again, she glanced up to the skylight. A single puffy cloud adorned the blue rectangle above.

  “Can anything ever really change?” Flavia whispered to the cloud.

  At that moment the household gardener entered the atrium with a jug and waded into the decorative pool. Flavia watched him cup his hand against the fountain’s flow and direct its water into his vessel. When it was filled, the gardener turned and left the room, leaving wet footprints on the marble floor.

  “Like a rush of water . . .”

  A smile turned up Flavia’s lips as she looked back to the skylight again.

  “Alright, Lord,” she said, “I believe.”

  Rex was halfway up the road to the pass when he heard the first rumble of thunder. Though dark clouds had been gathering in the distance for some time, Rex had hoped the capricious nature of mountain weather might cause the storm to pass by. Now he knew for sure he was going to get wet.

  Just keep moving, he told himself. Embrace the pain and endure.

  Up ahead, two cadets were trotting at a slower pace than his. Soon he would overtake them, just as he had already passed four ot
hers. Though the men’s head start had seemed like an advantage at first, hunger and thirst were beginning to take their toll. Rex’s backpack, in contrast, held the rations, waterskins, and woolen cloak he had retrieved from the urban barracks. He intended to win the race not just with his body but with the careful planning of a sharp mind—like a true speculator should do.

  As he trotted uphill, his respiration heavy yet regular, Rex’s mind drifted back to one of Aratus’s most vivid lessons, an illustration Rex would never forget. The savvy centurion, tested by many battles, had been teaching his young cadets about the importance of the Roman supply chain. “It’s what separates us from the barbarians,” he had said. “They are mere warriors. We are a field army.”

  To drive home his point, Aratus had assembled his protégés at the wrestling ground, then ordered a naked Thracian to stand before them. The slave was the most muscular individual Rex had ever seen. His physique was so bulky that he looked like the product of Europa’s tryst with the bull. As everyone stood gawking at the giant monster, Aratus pointed to the scrawniest cadet of the bunch and declared, “You shall fight him.”

  The boy and the Thracian were each given nets like those used by the “fisherman” gladiators. For a long time, the adversaries circled each other under the hot sun—feinting, dodging, throwing their nets, missing, and trying again. The boy was quick and kept his distance, for the Thracian was obviously a superior warrior. Soon, however, it became apparent that the giant’s strength was failing. When his throw was errant and his attempt to retrieve the net too slow, the boy managed to entangle his opponent and bring him to the ground. All the other cadets cheered.

  Only then did Aratus reveal a secret: the Thracian had been starved for two weeks and deprived of water for two days, making him vulnerable to the skinny trainee. “Your body is like a fire,” Aratus said. “Without fuel, it dies to an ember and goes out. A speculator will always supply his flame so it can burn bright.” As Rex passed the two men ahead of him on the road, one of whom was staggering like a drunk, he silently thanked Aratus for such a memorable lesson in logistics and resupply.

  When the rain finally came, it tumbled from the dark sky as if some aquatic god had decided to empty his pitcher on the sons of men. Rex had already donned his cloak, so he simply pulled up the hood and maintained his slow trot. Though his long blond hair was tied by a thong at the nape of his neck, wet strands hung from his forehead and plastered his cheeks. Water trickled from the hood’s edge into his eyes and soaked his tawny beard. Sometimes a cold rivulet would find its way down the collar of his woolen tunic like an icy finger probing his sore muscles. Eventually Rex quit trying to wipe his face and just learned to squint through the ever-present droplets.

  “You got another cloak?” the Sicilian cadet called from the base of a larch tree on the side of the road. His arms were crisscrossed over his chest, and he was shivering badly. Rex passed him without reply, for this wasn’t a cooperative competition. No man deserved any aid. The winner’s prize would not be divided. Only three men were ahead of Rex now. He had seen no sign of Geta, who was likely in the lead.

  By late afternoon, Rex’s pace had slowed to a steady walk. The rain had not let up and the wind had intensified, sucking the warmth from his body. As the road snaked higher toward the alpine pass, it also turned steeper. Each swing of his leg was an effort, each upward step a victory. Rex longed to huddle under an overhang for a brief respite from the drenching downpour and bone-chilling gale, but such a stop would result in failure. The short breather would become an hour’s nap, and then all would be lost. Rex knew his greatest adversary was neither behind nor ahead on the road. His real competition was his own mind. He had to find the iron will to keep going when his body demanded relief.

  The attack happened at the place where the road left the tree line. Three legionaries burst from the underbrush with clubs and ropes in their hands. To capture a cadet in this famous race would surely earn the men some leave time or a few coins—and no one would mind if the cadet’s nose had to be broken or his teeth were knocked out in the scuffle. Since there was nowhere to run, Rex turned to the attackers and readied himself for a fight. It was time to see whether Aratus’s three years of grueling preparation had done their job.

  Though the oncoming men were soldiers, troops like these were primarily trained for collective battlefield maneuvers, not hand-to-hand combat. The disciplined ranks of the Roman legionaries, with their stabbing swords and interlocked shields, were more like a consolidated war machine than individual martial artists. But Aratus had taught the cadets the art of pancratium, the “all-powerful” method of fighting devised by the Greeks. The techniques included powerful punches, sudden takedowns, stifling chokeholds, and excruciating armlocks. A good pancratist could have an opponent on the ground before he knew what hit him. Most standard legionaries had never seen anything like it.

  The first man to reach Rex was a tattooed recruit of Celtic background. He roared like a bull as he swung his club in a wide arc. Instead of taking the force of the blow on his body, Rex stepped into the swing and secured his opponent’s elbow and upper arm. Using his hip as a pivot, Rex turned the man’s momentum against him and hurled him to the ground. The big Celt screamed as Rex twisted his arm while he wallowed in the mud, forcing him to release the club. A hard whack on the back of the head left the soldier prone in a puddle. Now Rex had a weapon of his own.

  The second and third men arrived together, but they hadn’t been expecting a confident warrior with a stick in his hand. Rex launched himself at the men with a speed and proficiency they couldn’t withstand. Blocking their clumsy strikes, he gave his opponents hard blows to the torso and arms, though he kept the weapon away from their heads, lest he permanently injure a Roman soldier. One of the men—whose hand Rex thought was probably broken—turned and bolted for the forest. A leg sweep took the other assailant to the ground, where Rex put him in a fierce armlock that made him cry for quarter. Rex let up—just a little.

  “What’s your name, soldier?” the defeated legionary asked, breathing hard through gritted teeth.

  “Brandulf Rex, soon to be with the Second Italian.”

  “Aha! An honorable legion. The she-wolves are great fighters.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Eighth Augusta out of Argentoratum. The bulls.”

  “Drop your stick,” Rex ordered. The man complied, and Rex released the armlock. He held both clubs while his assailant got to his feet.

  “You’re just a boy!” the soldier said, inspecting Rex’s face.

  “Sixteen is old enough to enlist,” Rex replied, then added, “and old enough to beat you.”

  The man laughed good-naturedly. “What’s your name again?”

  “Brandulf. But everyone calls me Rex because my father was a king of the Alemanni.”

  “Brandulf Rex,” the man mused. “I suppose that might be a name I’ll hear someday. You’ll make junior centurion within a decade. Good fortune to you, soldier. The house of Jupiter is only a few more miles up the road.”

  “I know. And I plan to be the first to reach it.”

  “There are three men ahead of you.”

  “Not for long,” Rex said, then fixed his eyes on the top of Poeninus Pass and left the legionary in the pouring rain.

  Emperor Maxentius was quite certain that when all was finished, his new suburban villa on the Appian Way would be the most sumptuous dwelling since the infamous Golden House of Nero. It would be the envy of every senator in Rome. Yet even while the palace was under construction, Maxentius intended to present himself in the splendor he deserved. That was precisely what an augustus should do—even if the other imperial colleagues didn’t recognize him as such.

  “Do you wish to use your full regalia, sire?” the valet asked. The man was new to the house and didn’t yet have a feel for the ranking of social occasions.

  Maxentius gazed fondly at the royal scepter, which lay on a soft cushion in the valet’s case
. It was a rod of pure gold shaped like a budding flower, topped by a blue sphere of chalcedony that represented the earth. Such an exceedingly fine piece was far too elegant for a meeting with a mere priest of the catholic church.

  “No need for that today. My visitor is hardly so deserving.”

  “As you wish, Augustus.”

  Maxentius directed a fatherly smile at the simple valet, who, as a slave, probably didn’t know the significance of the term he had just used. “Do you know what that word means?” he asked the ignorant servant.

  “Augustus means highest and greatest, Augustus,” the valet replied, keeping his eyes down.

  “Have you ever heard of the Imperial College?”

  “No, Augustus,” said the valet, though Maxentius suspected the man probably had encountered the term. Slaves were prone to lie. It was their nature.

  “The Imperial College is an association of four emperors. The great Diocletian devised it because he realized our empire was too large to be controlled by one man. The four colleagues rule over their own territories in the East or West. Each is a true Roman emperor, though some are more powerful than others. Two augusti take the lead, and two caesars assist them. Four men now govern the realm that a single emperor used to command.”

  “Yes, my lord. And you are the Augustus of the West. Master of Italy and Africa. Well-deserving of that title.”

  Maxentius cleared a speck of food from his teeth with his tongue, then spat the bit on the floor. “I should be Augustus of the West. But the college doesn’t officially recognize me. The augustus who supposedly rules the West is Licinius. Yet Africa is now in rebellion and must be taken back. As for Italy, it is I who actually hold it. For that reason, I expect Licinius to attack me. He will want to win the prize of Rome.”