Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [100]
‘You have a plan?’ asked Fabius.
‘I always have a plan,’ replied Marcus, testily. ‘And we shall have need of one, for the accusations will arrive, whether Edius Flavia talks or otherwise.’
Fabius slowed his horse to a trot and withdrew his riding crop, waving it angrily in Lanilla’s face. ‘Let them make their charges, tribune. I shall defend my honour from all of those dwarves. Bring them on, and let them say their piece.’
Marcus pushed the crop away and grabbed hold of Fabius’s reigns. ‘You still fail to understand the seriousness of the situation. Any charges, no matter how unfounded, will do us damage. We can deny everything but we shall always be tainted with the mark of suspicion.’
‘Then we are undone,’ Fabius wailed.
‘Not so. What is the one thing that will appease all accusations, however base and unproven they may be?’
‘I know not,’ Fabius confessed.
Marcus smiled at his friend’s intellectual discomfort. ‘Only the death of the Zealot leader will appease Rome. If we can parade Basellas’s head on a spike through the streets then nothing either Calaphilus or Maximus can say or do will prevent us from achieving all that we desire.’
The representatives of the guards of those centurions still loyal to Gaius Calaphilus, and that was most of them, poured through the doors of the Lanilla household and burst into the lightly guarded triclinium, overpowering with almost no resistance those few private auxiliaries and cohors who were employed by Marcus Lanilla and his family.
With the hallways secured, Calaphilus swaggered into the villa of his hated enemy. How long he had waited for this moment?
The anticipation was lessened slightly as he strode into the triclinium only to find Agrinella, her hands on her hips, shouting at the sergeant of the guard.
Her eyes fixed on the general. ‘What is the meaning of this outrage, Calaphilus?’ she yelled. But there was something in her voice that told Gaius that she knew.
‘Articles of impeachment have been raised against your husband, madam,’ he said, with a relish in his voice.
Revenge, clearly, being a dish best served... any time one has the ability to serve it. ‘A confession by a conspiring insurgent has implicated tribune Marcus Lanilla in numerous and vile treasons against the praefectus, the state and the emperor. I am bid, by the powers that be, to bring your husband hence that he might answer such charges as are laid. Your name has also been mentioned.’
‘No,’ cried Agrinella. ‘This cannot be.’ It was not the defiant anger of an innocent woman, falsely accused, but the anguished wail of one in flagrante delicto.
That pleased Gaius even more.
‘Where is your husband, woman?’ he asked.
There was no reply as Agrinella stared, dazed and confused, around the room at a sea of impassive and blank military faces. Then, as if realising that all was lost, she threw herself to the floor in front of the general.
‘Gaius,’ she said, her voice quivering. ‘I implore you.
Whatsoever my husband may, or may not have done, I know nothing. Nothing,’ she repeated.
‘Get up,’ Calaphilus replied, contemptuously. ‘Get off your knees, woman, and face your end like a Roman.’
‘I can name the names,’ she said, quickly and desperately.
‘Honorius Annora, Marcelinus, Octavian, Antonia the praefectus’s former wife...’ Her voice trailed away.
Calaphilus shook his head. ‘These names are known to us already, traitor. Take her away,’ he told the guards, two of whom reached down for the weeping woman. ‘Letters have been sent to your father, the legate, informing him of your crimes. Should he be of a mind to save you, and endanger his own lofty position in Rome, then that will be his choice.
My own belief is that he will surrender you to dance on the end of a gladius for your treachery.’
‘Gaius,’ Agrinella said, shaking free of the hands of the two soldiers and struggling to compose herself as the general held up a hand to his men to let her speak. ‘I am not a simpering courtesan like Maximus’s wife. Neither am I bragging moecha