Master and God

29

One day, in his thirty-seventh year, when he ought to have known better, the Praetorian cornicularius Clodianus was called in to the Prefects’ office and invited to join a small committee of like-minded men. He could see no way to wriggle out. It was proposed to him, as such nightmares always are, as an honour.

Privately, he thought the term ‘like-minded men’ carried the same whiff as ‘concerned citizens’; it meant madmen with unpleasant designs on society. He had served in the vigiles. He had kept the surveillance lists of mathematicians, Christians and astrologers. He knew what like-minded men who gathered in furtive groups were generally aiming for and as a soldier he disliked it.

‘There has been bit of toing and froing on this,’ the Prefect admitted. It was Casperius Aelianus, the man Gaius first met after Dacia. ‘Usual nonsense. Changes of mind. Waiting for a decision. Still, we seem to be clear now, and you’ll be glad to know it has been agreed you are absolutely the right man for the job.’

No one else will touch it, thought Gaius. Luckily, keeping his private thoughts hidden was one of his talents. It was essential to his job. Being one-eyed with a wrecked face gave him every advantage in appearing inscrutable. With the Prefect, he played on it shamelessly. ‘Thank you, sir.’

His tone was so benign the Prefect shifted on his seat, caught by a riffle of uncertainty. He suspected that under the grave veneer, this Clodianus could be a subversive bugger.

The new committee was official, yet it was secret. Clodianus was given to understand that the Emperor was aware of its existence. That implied Domitian approved. Perhaps he had even suggested it — always a worrying aspect.

‘May I ask who chose me, sir?’

‘Abascantus. Know him?’

‘Vaguely. I know who he is, obviously — chief correspondence secretary. I have dealings with his people.’

There were hundreds of palace clerks, specialising in either Greek or Latin paperwork; Abascantus sat at the top, supervising both. The cornicularius received documents from various officials who had worked out that he was a safe person to push queries out to (where ‘safe’ meant, if the item looked harmless, he would not bother to relay tricky questions back but would diligently lose the original). He had even seen bumf with Abascantus’ signature on it, especially while the Emperor had been away in Pannonia, taking his chief officials with him. A lot of dross had floated back to the Camp then. Gaius had pigeonholed it with good-nature, though he could always be relied upon to find it again if unexpectedly requested.

Indeed, should that happen, he would even add a note or two, prettying up the document so it looked as if trouble had been taken to deal with the matter. Usually that sufficed to get the bumf lobbed back to him harmlessly for filing. He would put it away in the cache he had labelled very neatly with a Greek word for round objects. His symbol of two circles, he would explain sombrely to new clerks on their first day, meant the documents filed there had already been on two full circuits for comment, or as the cornicularius called it ‘chugging to Pannonia and back’. If the new clerk had not twigged the code by the end of the week, he would be transferred to granary records.

Perhaps Abascantus, who came from a family of imperial scribes, had noticed the devotion with which Clodianus tended the altar of bureaucracy.

‘An old-style freedman,’ said Casperius Aelianus. ‘Younger than you might expect, horrible hairstyle, you must know him by sight… I have him down as one of Domitian’s personal choices, not inherited from Titus.’

‘He involves himself in postings?’

‘Don’t they all?’ The Prefect looked demure. ‘I think he prepares most of the Emperor’s personnel suitability briefings.’ That was a new definition, which the cornicularius noted approvingly. He collected jargon.

‘Right,’ said Clodianus. ‘Well, better than having a ballet-dancer in charge of promotions, as that dodgy poet once claimed.’

‘Oh quite!’

‘I once rashly asked my predecessor what happened to promotion on merit.’

‘Oh merit works,’ the Prefect told him, in an offhand tone. ‘So long as you back it up with a large enough thank-you package for the freedman who gives out posts.’

‘So what exactly is my remit, sir?’

He thought the Prefect looked slightly embarrassed.

Aelianus explained that the superstitious Domitian regularly had the hour and manner of his death foretold by astrologers. Such prophecies went back so long that even his late father had chivvied him about it on an occasion when Domitian was handed mushrooms — the famous medium used for poisoning the Emperor Claudius. As his leery son refused the dish, Vespasian had joshed, ‘You’d do better to worry about swords!’ But Domitian was becoming increasingly afraid of assassination, and in the near future.

‘So when’s this scenario due to occur, sir?’

‘Don’t ask me. Highly confidential.’

‘Right,’ murmured Clodianus, feeling depressed. ‘A few details would have helped with planning. Date and time would have been perfect.’

‘Of course. But possessing the Emperor’s horoscope, that would be treason.’

‘Understood! If anybody told us, we would all have to be executed.’

‘Bloody ridiculous,’ agreed the Prefect.

He had been in post a good nine years. He thought he knew everything. He and Clodianus had worked together for long enough to develop an easygoing relationship. Although Aelianus saw his chief-of-staff as slightly maverick, he also thought he saw a steel backbone there.

According to the rule of thumb Clodianus used, after nine years, the Prefect was well past his best. In the Clodianus system, you spent the first year fumbling through everything, the second getting most things right, and the third absolutely tiptop efficient. From then on, you — and even perhaps your superiors — believed you were perfect, but you stopped trying. He himself was at that point. A sad moment to be noticed by some loopy freedman…

The caustic Clodianus had remembered Abascantus now. Way back, when he used to be on imperial escort duty, before he went to Dacia, he had been present one day when Domitian announced that freedman’s promotion to chief secretary. Abascantus had a pushy wife, Priscilla. She had thrown herself to the marble mosaic in front of Domitian, exuding gratitude for their princely master’s honour to her husband.

Sickening, Clodianus thought. Then he corrected himself. Flattery was only one way to proceed: you lied. You lied and praised him until your teeth hurt, in case Domitian’s mood changed abruptly.

‘We want trusted men to work on this.’

‘Absolutely, sir!’

‘Abascantus is setting up the committee to put the Emperor’s mind at rest. Domitian should now feel reassured, because you are out there, looking for the people who intend to fulfil that wicked prophecy. He has convinced himself there are enemies who hate him; he suspects a conspiracy.’

‘The idea is, I will infiltrate any desperados and observe…?’

The Prefect looked embarrassed again. ‘Assuming they exist.’

Which we are assuming they do not, sir? This is all a fantasy.

Too right. Just keep the stylus-pushers happy. ‘So — are you up for it?’

‘I suppose so, sir. Let me go along and give the wise ones my investigative expertise.’

‘Good man! That’s all anyone is asking.’

No formal minutes were taken for the Prefect — or not that Clodianus could see — but he felt convinced that whatever he had replied would go on his record. He was doomed if he did this and doomed if he turned it down. A wrong answer might look positively black. He was a Praetorian, whose job was protecting the Emperor. Any hint that he was lukewarm in respect of this committee would be the end of him.

He felt secret meetings were a stupid way to go about it. Still, he felt that about most things.

He had accepted a place on a body that he guessed would mutter away for years, calling for ineffectual papers, reviewing false evidence and vacuous submissions, making lists of action-points that no one subsequently reckoned were their responsibility, generally losing sight of its original mandate. Its mandate was in its title: the Committee to Preserve the Emperor.

‘Sheer bloody madness!’ complained the Prefect. ‘Chasing bloody shadows.’

Encouraged, Gaius suggested, ‘If there’s no real evidence, I could hire a few dodgy characters to look like activists, get them to behave suspiciously; then we could watch them at it and report back.’ Enjoying himself, he grew more inventive. ‘Dress them up in hooded cloaks, buy them all drinks in a seedy bar on the waterside…’

‘You are being frivolous!’ grinned the Prefect, glad of any light-heartedness to ease his constant burden of facing up to his emperor’s resolute anxiety. He knew the cornicularius was whimsical only to stay sane in Rome’s deadly drowning-pool where they all desperately dog-paddled. He would do the job. ‘I hardly need remind you how important this is, Clodianus. It is the highest grade of top secret.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Don’t mention this to anybody — not even your wife.’

‘No need to worry, sir. I am a soldier,’ Clodianus assured him gravely. ‘I cannot have a wife.’

He went straight home and told Lucilla all about it. Lucilla said, ‘Look on the bright side, love. If you cannot be told the hour when the old horoscope says our Master and God is doomed to die — then no plotters will know when to arrive with daggers either.’

‘What a woman!’ exclaimed Gaius. ‘What a mind! Jupiter, I love you, girl. Let’s go to bed.’

Gaius was perfectly right. There was no conspiracy to investigate.

Well, not then.