Blood and Steel. Harry Sidebottom

with a walking stick.

      ‘A momentous day, and a heavy responsibility.’ His thin, reedy voice struggled to reach the back benches. Those behind him craned forward, turning their heads, cupping hands to ears. The next part of the exordium was drowned as the plebs outside burst into impromptu song: Fuck the Thracian up the arse, up the arse, up the arse!

      Four Senators, led by the hirsute figure of the Cynic Gallicanus, took it on themselves to unbar the main door, and slip out. If any Senator could quiet the masses, Pupienus thought, it was the demagogic follower of Diogenes, and his like-minded coterie. Sure enough, a short time later the obscene chorus died, and they returned. Pupienus noted with a measure of alarm that they failed to secure the door.

      Now quiet had returned, the Father of the House, who had continued inaudibly throughout, also fell silent. His head twisted on his scrawny neck, a display hideously reminiscent of a tortoise. Before continuing, he smiled, as if the new state of affairs were a product of his own oratory.

      ‘Only twice has this august house deposed a reigning Emperor. The first occasion was that disgusting actor Nero. Even I was not alive then.’ Cuspidius Celerinus laughed, a gasping, senile sound. ‘But the other time I was here. Didius Julianus had bought the throne at auction. Gesturing with his fingers up at the Praetorians on the walls of their camp. A more disgraceful spectacle has never been seen in Rome. We stripped from him the purple he was unworthy to wear. Didius Julianus was a drunk and a fool, but he was not a barbarian.’

      The stillness inside the Curia was so profound the silence itself seemed to be listening.

      ‘Maximinus was born a barbarian, and he should die like a barbarian. Bloodthirsty, irrational, beyond all redemption, he will kill us all, if we do not kill him first.’

      His powers were failing, Pupienus thought. Three years before the Father of the House had made a far better oration, distinct and sensible, with apposite echoes of Virgil and Livy, when he had recommended the Senate grant Maximinus all the honours and powers of an Emperor. And now … Still, when you were as near the underworld as Cuspidius Celerinus, there was little to hold you back from advocating fatal courses.

      When it became evident that the Father of the House had no more to say, again all attention focused on the tribunal. Aware he was presiding over a meeting that was slipping towards open treason, Fulvius Pius scanned the room with an air close to panic. ‘Senatorial procedure …’ His gaze fell upon the group of patricians on the front bench opposite Pupienus. ‘The Senator next in order of seniority should speak. I call on Decimus Caelius Calvinus Balbinus.’

      The man in question appeared to be asleep, or as comatose as made no difference. Most likely he had come to the session from drinking all night. Gods below, Pupienus loathed those indolent, arrogant patricians, detested their endless complacent talk of their ancestors, and hated their sneering contempt for those – like himself – they regarded as their inferiors. Rome is but your stepmother, they said to him. Tell us of your father’s achievements. He never replied. Everyone knew about his youth in Tibur, brought up by a lowly kinsman, the Emperor’s head gardener. But what happened before, his childhood in Voleterrae, not even his sons knew. As long as ingenuity, subterfuge and money served, he would keep it that way. Dear gods, it must remain that way, or he was ruined.

      Balbinus’ neighbour, the grossly obese Valerius Priscillianus, touched his arm. Balbinus opened his porcine eyes, and blearily looked around. Valerius Priscillianus whispered to him. Balbinus did not respond. With a strange delicacy, Priscillianus pinched his recalcitrant friend’s ear. Balbinus slapped his hand away.

      Now that was interesting, Pupienus thought. The superstitious thought the ear lobe the seat of memory. What did one corpulent patrician want the other to remember? Was it that Maximinus had killed both Valerius Priscillianus’ father and brother? Could familial feeling stir even the fathomless lethargy of these patricians?

      ‘Let him be slain, that he who best deserves alone may reign.’

      Having recited the line of Virgil, Balbinus folded his hands over his protruding stomach, and, with something like a smirk, closed his eyes.

      You fool, Pupienus thought, equivocation will not save you. Whichever side carried this debate, and whichever rulers finally emerged in undisputed possession of the throne, would consider all those who had not supported them as their enemies. If the Gordiani were triumphant, the repercussions might be less swift and savage, but all Emperors bear a grudge, and, if their memory fails them, there are always others to remind them of any perceived injury or slight.

      Gallicanus was given the floor. His constant companion Maecenas stepped forward from the small philosophical brotherhood, and took a place close behind him. The wool of Gallicanus’ toga was coarse and homespun, an ostentatious symbol of his often trumpeted devotion to old-fashioned frugality and morality. From under his rough cut mane of hair, he glared about, fierce censure personified. Given a wallet and a staff, and he could have been Diogenes himself, crawled from his barrel and ready to admonish Alexander the Great. Surely even he was not about to propose the ludicrous scheme he had once suggested to Pupienus of restoring the free Republic?

      ‘Maximinus has murdered our loved ones. No one has escaped. Gordian the Elder mourns his son-in-law, Gordian the Younger his brother-in-law, Valerius Priscillianus his father and brother, Pupienus his lifelong friend Serenianus.’

      Pupienus’ face remained as blank as the outer wall of a town house.

      ‘A tide of innocent blood, flowing across the empire: Memmia Sulpicia in Africa, Antigonus in Moesia, Ostorius in Cilicia.’ As the names rolled out, fired by his own rhetoric, Gallicanus swung his hairy arms, gesturing with angry, simian motions.

      ‘If any spark of ancestral virtue remains in our breasts,’ Gallicanus dropped to a murmur, ‘any spark at all, we must free ourselves.’ Now he shouted. ‘Declare Maximinus and his son enemies of the Senate and People of Rome!’

      Enemies, enemies. The first shouts came from the faction of the Gordiani. They were joined by mutterings from the darkness of the back benches.

      ‘Proclaim the Gordiani Emperors!’

      Emperors, Emperors. The sound swelled, echoed off the panelled walls. Gallicanus had won the house over. As the Cynic dog stood, exulting, Maecenas slipped an arm around his waist.

      Not waiting for the Consul to put the question, the Senators began to chant.

       Enemies, enemies! He who slays the Maximini shall be rewarded. Let them hang on a cross. Let them be burnt alive. Enemies, enemies!

      Pupienus got to his feet. Thessalian persuasion, he thought; necessity disguised as choice. Dear gods, how would this end? With his friends and relatives, he walked to the middle of the floor, the better to be seen. He filled his lungs, and shouted with the rest.

       To the gods below with Maximinus and his son. We name the Gordiani Emperors. May we see our noble Emperors victorious, may Rome see our Emperors!

       Chapter 6

       Africa

       Carthage,

      The Day before the Nones of March, AD238

      ‘Death is nothing to us,’ Gordian said the words to himself, barely moving his lips.

      The sound of their horses’ hooves and the rattle of their armament echoed back from the walls of the unnaturally deserted street. Gordian could smell the sea. They were nearly down at the port.

      ‘Where we are death is not, and where death is we are not.’

      A gap in the buildings revealed the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Utica off to the right. A merchantman was beating into the westerly breeze. Its sails shone white in