Sejanus

23

Jupiter! That was an exit line, if I'd ever heard one; but the kid was dead on her feet and it could wait till morning. I didn't sleep much that night, though. Nor did Perilla, although for different reasons. I felt her getting up two or three times — quietly, so as not to disturb me — and heard her padding off along the corridor towards the west wing: there's a squeaky board that way, and you can always tell. Marilla must've been tidily asleep, because she came straight back.

I didn't raise the subject over breakfast, either, because the lady would've had my head. Marilla would tell me in her own time, no doubt, and then we'd decide what to do about it. The kid was looking a lot better this morning, anyway; brighter, and a more healthy colour. She could pack it away, too; I had to send Bathyllus off for a second cheese omelette and more bread rolls.

I'd left the two of them alone and gone out to sit in the garden. It was an hour later when she finally came through, and she'd got her grown-up face on.

'Valerius Corvinus?' she said.

'Hi, princess. Everything okay?'

'Yes. Yes, thank you.' She lowered her eyes. 'But I'd like to talk to you, please. About my father. And about what I said last night.'

'Pull up a chair.' It was another beautiful spring day, and the flowers were out. Marcia's garden in the Alban Hills would be nice, now, as well.

She sat down. 'Do you mind if I start at the beginning?'

'Start any place you like. But don't feel you have to tell me everything, okay?'

'No, that's all right.' Her eyes were still lowered. 'It doesn't only concern me.'

I waited. Finally, she said: 'My father's mad. You know that, don't you?'

'Uh, yeah…well…' That was putting it mildly, but I couldn't exactly say so.

'He hates Rome. He hates Romans. Everything you've done, everything you are, everything you stand for. He told you, that day you came, that he had Carthaginian blood?'

'Yeah.'

'He's very proud of that. In fact, it's more important to him than anything else.' She paused. 'Except for me, of course. I was his Ta'anit-pene-Ba'al, his Face of the Lord. But you know that already, don't you?'

I said nothing. She'd taken on that peaky, inward, too-old-for-her-years look she'd had the night before.

'Did he tell you the myth of Keret?' She still wasn't looking at me.

'Uh, yeah. He mentioned it, anyway.' I remembered the slab we'd been discussing when she'd come in: the old Phoenician carving showing a guy in a kilt carrying a knife.

'Do you remember it?'

'No. Not the details.'

'Keret was the king of Sidon, the mortal son of the Great God El. His kingdom was attacked by the forces of the moon-god Terah. Keret tried to resist, but the moon-god's forces were too powerful for him, and he was defeated and his kingdom occupied. On El's orders he took a wife. He had a son by her: a magical son who sprang from her womb crying: "I hate the enemy!" And the son drove the moon-god's forces from the kingdom.'

She'd recited it like she'd learned the thing by heart. Probably she had. A magical son, to drive the enemy from the kingdom. Sure. That made sense. And I could hear Marius now, talking about his daughter: 'She will breed perfect sons. Marvellous sons. Magical sons…'

'Uh huh,' I said slowly. 'I understand. You don't have to say any more.'

'It's all right.' Her fingers were picking at a stray thread in her tunic, and I noticed that the nails were bitten to the quick. 'There's a…special magical potency about a child got in incest. Or so Father thinks.' She finally looked up, and her eyes weren't those of a child now. 'He had his reasons, you see.'

'Yeah. I see.' I did: Jupiter, the poor kid! She was right, the bastard was mad. Barking mad. He'd wanted to breed the Messiah from his own daughter in the belief that by doing it he'd throw us out of Spain. Africa. Wherever.

Marilla was still picking at the thread. 'That was for the future,' she said. 'In the meantime he worked against Rome in any way he could. I don't know the details but he used to tell me bits of it. He wanted me to be proud, you see.' Her voice was bitter, and not young at all. 'He said he'd make you tear yourselves apart.'

Yeah. And that's what we'd done. That's what we were still doing. We'd been doing it for years.

'You have any names?' I asked gently. 'Names or faces? Of people your father's involved with?'

'No.' She shook her head. 'Not many, anyway. In Spain there was a man called Seius Quadratus. An ex-slave, I think. He used to visit my father quite often. I called him Uncle Seius because he asked me to, but I didn't like him. He touched me.'

I whistled silently. I'd never heard of the guy himself, but with that name he'd be a freedman of Tubero's. So. I'd got my link at the Spanish end. 'Anyone else?'

'Not in Spain. There were others but I can't remember them. I was too young.'

'Okay. How about here in Rome?'

'We didn't have many visitors. There was Crito, of course, the man who came the same day you did. He came quite regularly, two or three times a month.'

As soon as she said it I remembered. That was where I'd heard the name before. Just before I'd left, Marius's slave had told him that Crito was waiting to see him downstairs. He must've come straight round after murdering Celsus, and then gone out after me. And Festus had said that Tubero had used Crito in the past. Uh huh. So. Another link in the chain. I sat back.

'Anything else you can tell me?' I said.

Her brow furrowed. 'There was a soldier five years ago. A Gaul. Father gave him money, a lot of money. I don't know his name, but I think it was for giving evidence in one of the trials. I was only small at the time, but I remember because Father said the emperor was furious about it. He was so pleased that he bought me my first pony.'

Aemilius. The guy who Lippillus had told me had insisted on repeating the slanders that had made the Wart lose his rag so spectacularly at the Montanus trial. Shit! I'd got Sejanus cold! At least as far as his involvement in the western scam went. And when Tiberius found out his buddy had been behind that bit of bad-mouthing he'd feed him to the lampreys personally.

Marilla was looking at me anxiously: a child with too-old eyes, desperate for praise. 'Does this help?' she said. 'I'm sorry, I can't tell you much more.'

'Yeah, princess. It helps. It helps a lot. Thanks. Now what's this about your father planning to kill the emperor?'

She squirmed in her chair. 'I don't know much about that, just the plain fact. He isn't going to do it himself, but he's in touch with the people who are.'

'Tiberius is on Capri. He has been for years.'

'Yes. I know. But I don't think that matters.'

I stared at her. Capri was like a fortress, naturally defended, with just one possible landing place. Nobody got in or out without Tiberius knowing about it, and with his permission. And of course everyone who was there already had been carefully vetted six ways from nothing; the paranoid old bugger made sure of that. So if it didn't matter that the Wart was squirrelled away in his self-constructed bastion then Marius — Sejanus — must have someone in place on the inside. And in that case we were looking at a whole new can of worms.

'You know when this is supposed to happen?' I asked casually.

'Yes. The twenty-eighth of July.'

I goggled. 'The twenty-eighth of July? Jupiter, you know the date?'

She nodded. 'Father said it was a lucky omen. The twenty-eighth of July was the day the Romans were beaten at Amtorgis.'

'You don't say?' Yeah, well, history never was my strong point. 'Remind me about that, will you?

'Amtorgis is a place in the Baetis valley,' she said carefully, like a schoolgirl repeating a history lesson of her own. 'The battle happened in Carthage's second war with Rome after the Spanish troops in the Roman army went over to the Carthaginians. Your general Publius Scipio was killed, his army was destroyed, and you lost all of Spain south of the Ebro.'

Uh-huh. I could see how the symbolism of that little anniversary would appeal to a nationalistic screwball like Marius. I'd noticed the 'you' from Marilla, too. Well, it was how the kid had been brought up, I supposed. If you can call what she'd been through bringing up. The twenty-eighth of July was a whole three months away, sure, but that didn't necessarily make things any easier.

'Marilla,…' I began. Then I looked up. Perilla was coming towards us through the portico. She looked frightened. Badly frightened.

'Marcus,' she said quietly, 'I think you'd better come. It's your Uncle Cotta.'

Cotta was standing in the atrium.

'Hey, Cotta, how're things?' I said; and then I saw what Perilla had meant. His thin, weaselly face was pale. Either with fright, or fury, or possibly both.

It was both.

'Marcus,' he said, 'what the hell have you been doing?'

I temporised. 'Uh…how do you mean?' Shit! We'd been rumbled! I'd known this would happen. I just hoped there were enough honest men left at the top to give me a fair hearing, because if I couldn't successfully plead extenuating circumstances for kidnapping Marius's daughter then I was dead. Maybe literally.

'Don't give me that, boy!' Cotta snapped. 'The rumour's all over the city, and I've just had it confirmed by Pomponius Secundus.' I knew Secundus: a close friend of Sejanus's, but not a bad guy in his way, just careful.

'What rumour's this, Uncle?' Hell, I hoped Perilla had had the sense to tell our house guest to keep out of sight. Brito too.

Cotta obviously wasn't listening. I'd never seen him so angry, or so frightened: trouble in a family had a habit of rubbing off on all its members. 'How could you be so stupid, Marcus?’ he said. ‘How could you be so bloody stupid? I thought you kept your nose out of politics. And you've only been back in Rome for a few days.'

There was something screwy here. He'd said politics, not kidnapping. Maybe this had nothing to do with Marilla after all.

'Uncle,' I said, 'I haven't the least idea what you're talking about here. You want to sit down and tell me calmly, or what?'

'Fuck calmly! What was it, a letter? Or did you just shoot your silly mouth off in the wrong direction once too often?'

'Neither, as far as I know.' I'd had enough of this. 'Now what exactly has Secundus been telling you?'

Cotta stared at me. 'You mean you don't know? You honestly don't know?'

'Look, just…'

'Aelius Sejanus is getting ready to arrest you for treason!'