Deadly Election

16

We rendezvoused next day at my uncle’s house. Since Faustus had met the Camilli before, I let him make his own way there. I could have suggested breakfast first at the Stargazer, but as he had spent the previous evening in his ex-wife’s company, I felt cool towards him.

We had to wait. My uncle, the most noble Quintus Camillus Justinus, was in the midst of dealing with a child, one of six he had fathered. The infant must have behaved so dreadfully that for once even Quintus and his wife Claudia felt that playing the heavy paterfamilias was required. Quintus had probably had to look up how to do it. An efficient mother, his wife was bound to possess a child-education manual.

Claudia was somewhere else in the house, trying to stop their five other little fiends giggling. Nearby, we overheard a small boy shrieking defiance, then heartbroken sobs and muffled contrition. Silence fell.

Faustus winced, though I could not tell whether he was sympathetic to the boy or to my uncle. To cover the hiatus, I did ask about the dinner, to which he replied that the swinish senator had promised his favours but was obviously wriggling and that, yes, Laia Gratiana had been present but, no, he had not spoken to her. ‘Thoughtful hostess. Did not put me next to her.’ A hostess who knew their story, then.

‘I didn’t ask.’

‘But you were dying to know.’ He sounded scratchy, so I wondered if he had a hangover.

Quintus joined us, looking ruffled. At the same time my other uncle, the equally noble Aulus Camillus Aelianus, appeared from his own house next door, making smug comments about children who misbehaved, goading Quintus. These squabbling brothers were supposed to be acting as Romans of influence, greeting clients at their morning levée. For us they were not in their togas but casual white tunics. Neither appeared to have combed his hair that morning, though in other respects they were turned out neatly.

To me, who had known them from my teens, they were still the boyish relatives I had first met when I was about fourteen and they were in their twenties. Both had been despondent and unsettled then, due to career setbacks even when Vespasian was emperor; I had thought them glamorous, though now I saw they had both caused their parents great anxiety before they settled down.

We got them into the Senate at the same time, about ten years ago. They were just shy of forty now, and typical of second-generation senators who tried to act well yet felt increasingly hampered by the current regime. Domitian distrusted the Senate, working against it where he could; he had killed or exiled many of its members, some of them prominent. My uncles had sought to join this body out of ambition, a sense of duty and, in both cases, a genuine love of law and law-making. They found the Curia frustrating and unsafe. They could not leave. Nobody resigned. Domitian weeded out people, but his way of doing so was deadly.

According to traditional early-morning practice, we ought to flatter our hosts, so they would be gracious, possibly donating small gifts. But Faustus and I were not standard clients and that was not expected.

Quintus seemed fraught after disciplining little Constans; Aulus was characteristically glum. I left Faustus to canvass for Vibius. He had not brought his friend, preferring to speak for him. He made a good case. He was easy and direct. He admitted that he was unable to offer favours, though he could promise that Vibius Marinus would work hard and keep his assigned districts in good order. There was an unsaid hint that Faustus would supervise him.

The Camillus brothers politely assured him they would give thought to his candidate. Everyone knew what that meant. Faustus could not conceal a despondent sigh.

‘Is it always so hard to get answers?’ I asked sympathetically. ‘It must be especially difficult to excite senators over mere neighbourhood magistrates – I mean, they don’t put their noble noses out into the street much, in case the proletariat abuse them, so why should they care whether pavements are muddy and metal jugs displayed on pillars biff you in the face? – And then, of course, the position of aedile is optional in the senatorial course of honour.’

‘Not “one of us”, Albia,’ agreed Aulus. He spoke in his usual dour way, though his intention was satirical. These were my mother’s younger brothers; they had been brought up with the same wry attitude.

To emphasise how worthy Vibius was supposed to be, I ran through the scandalous stories I had unearthed about his rivals until I felt the Camilli might support our candidate at least by default. ‘Remember, my mother won’t like you if you vote for a man who hands out lewd dwarfs to Domitian.’ Mention of Helena Justina made them both wince in a way I thought silly. Typical brothers.

‘The outcome depends on the order for voting,’ said Aulus. Of the two, he was the legal tactician and he was prim about scandal.

‘I agree.’ Faustus leaned forwards, equally ready to expound on technical issues.

Aulus interrupted: ‘The word is, we must first elect some puppet called Volusius, “Caesar’s candidate”.’ The brothers had taken some interest then.

‘Volusius Firmus dropped out. Nobody seems to know why. I don’t know him personally, so I can’t ask.’

The uncles sat up. ‘Lost it with Domitian?’ suggested Quintus, quickly. The uncles glanced at each other. If I knew them, they would ask questions of colleagues, poking at this mystery. That would save me having to do so.

Aulus mused further about the listing until Faustus said he believed that now Firmus was gone the order for senators to vote would be: Trebonius Fulvo, Arulenus Crescens (the two bruisers), Dillius Surus (the drunk), Salvius Gratus (Laia’s brother), Vibius Marinus and finally Ennius Verecundus (the mother’s boy). Apparently his uncle had been digging: this list emanated from Tullius. There were four posts. The men were voted on one at a time. Once four obtained a majority, the rest lost out. None of us commented but that that meant, however worthy he was, in fifth position Vibius might lose.

He could stand again, but it was expensive and he would lose his chance of serving ‘in his year’ (at thirty-six, his first opportunity); also, all Faustus’ campaign work would have to be repeated. Personally I thought that would be a bad idea for him. He needed to do this now, then be rid of it.

‘And do you always vote as you are told by Domitian?’ I demanded of my uncles.

‘I am not ready to die.’ Aulus was taciturn.

‘Who instructed you to favour Volusius Firmus?’

‘Hints and whispers.’

‘The Emperor doesn’t gather you in a bar, offer drinks all round, then name his choice, I take it! But the Senate does what he wants – even when he is abroad?’ (No wonder he despised them, I thought.)

‘Out of sight, yet never out of mind,’ said Aulus. ‘He’ll be back for the vote. He won’t put up with a Pannonian winter.’

Quintus soothed me: ‘If we were told that wild Dacian tribesmen had rushed over the Danube and murdered Our Leader, we might have second thoughts. Though he likes to tease so awfully, he might well start such a rumour himself in order to see our reaction. To be safe, I would want to see the bier carried home. I might even need a peek at his cadaver before I felt free to vote independently.’

We tended to forget that Domitian was absent from Rome. That was because his influence never left. Last January, around the time Manlius Faustus first took up his role as a magistrate, the Emperor was challenged in a revolt by the Governor of Germany. It had been ill conceived and was brutally suppressed, the trouble all over before Domitian himself could arrive there. My family had paid special attention because the brutal suppression was carried out by Ulpius Trajanus, the crew-cut Spanish general to whom Falco was trying to sell Fountain Court – for heaven’s sake, we did not want this man Trajan distracted while we were urging him to sign our property contract …

Domitian only made it as far as Pannonia, where restless tribes from over the frontier had taken advantage of the upset on the Rhine. The Emperor was now embroiled in fighting those tribes at the western end of the Danube frontier, while also making a highly unpopular settlement with the King of Dacia, a more formidable enemy further east. He had harried Rome for some years past. As Quintus alluded, there had been massacres of whole legions, defeat in battle of the Praetorian Guard, and slaughter of Roman high officials by Dacians marauding across the river. They liked to behead significant officials, though had failed with Our Leader. He was rumoured to be out of their reach, safe in a fort, screwing sinful boys and eating specially imported oysters.

As you can tell from that, Domitian liked to see himself as a great military leader in the mould of his father and brother Titus, though he approached it rather differently. These barbarian opponents were tenacious. He could be kept busy in foreign parts for a long time. Despite that distraction, his morbid shadow fell on Rome. The tyrant controlled everything − including the election of minor officials at home.

My uncles moved on. They encouraged Faustus to talk about progress so far. He spoke fluently; one thing he mentioned was that he had canvassed a few senators from overseas because, as an owner of warehouses, his uncle Tullius had contacts among provincial traders. Senators were not allowed to trade directly – that did not stop them, just accounted for the numerous negotiators and agents in Roman society. The father of Vibius Marinus owned land in Gaul, where he had once served in the army, so they had started with Gallic senators.

Quintus and Aulus volunteered that they might be able to interest the small number of Spanish senators (though clearly not Trajan, our building purchaser, who was away governing Spain when not crushing rebels). Aulus, when young, had assisted a previous governor, and Quintus had married a Baetican. Claudia really came to Rome to marry Aulus, but nobody blamed her for transferring to his sunnier, better-looking brother. Aulus’s own first wife was Athenian and he still associated with her so, unexpectedly, he offered Faustus an introduction to Greek members of the Senate.

I was seeing how a good campaign was put together. This approach was all the better, Faustus said, because nowadays most candidates rarely bothered to court anybody outside Rome and never provincials. As a result, the foreign senators were grateful when he did so.

Romans are great snobs. Was this what Quintus Cicero had meant when he instructed his brother to talk even to people they despised? In deference to my uncles, with their foreign wives, I kept quiet. Quintus apparently loved Claudia. Aulus was on better terms with Meline since they divorced than when they were married. (Well, ever since he divorced two later wives, when Meline for some weird reason came back and helped him through it.)

I was probably foreign myself, though could not offer to cajole any senators from Britain. Hades, I dread even to think what they would be like.