Master and God

21

Lucilla went to tell Nemurus face to face.

Various scenarios occupied her head before she tackled him. Mainly she feared an argument, imagining that Nemurus would show how vicious he could be when thwarted. She wondered if he might even hit her.

It was quite unlike that. Nemurus behaved as if expecting her to leave him. Lucilla had forgotten he was a philosopher. Normally she gave it little thought but she knew that every day he practised accepting whatever fate dumped upon him. To endure her departure without anguish was, for him, an exercise in making himself at one with Nature. For a stoic, a useful test in leading a good life.

‘I spoke to your father just now, Nemurus; he is sending someone with a handcart and I shall return all the books you lent me. I do thank you for everything you taught me. I am grateful that you married me. But marriage requires the willingness of both parties to live together; I am afraid I no longer wish to do so.’

‘What caused this?’ The slight peevishness was regrettable in a stoic.

Lucilla described Orgilius’ attack. To explain her escape she said only that ‘someone conveniently arrived’. Nemurus looked suspicious, though did not query this. ‘I spoke to you of my fears, Nemurus, but you brushed my pleas aside. The most terrible thing was that you actually told that man where to find me.’

Pity the poor woman who had to give a notice of divorce to the man who had taught her literary criticism. He was bound to be thinking about vocabulary, style, tone, imagery, arrangement and presentation of material…

But all Nemurus said was, ‘Yes. That was unforgivable.’

Then he surprised her, surprised himself perhaps. He spoke with a warmth he had never shown before of his regard for Lucilla; he declared he would miss their companionship.

It was too late. Lucilla knew that if there had been children she would have struggled on with this marriage, but as things were she saw no point. ‘Try again,’ she urged him. ‘Find someone rich, so you have no worries to distract you from your work.’

Finally Nemurus did snap: ‘While you pursue your affair with that Praetorian!’

Lucilla flinched. ‘I have known Vinius for a long time, but there is no affair.’

‘Does he know that, I wonder?’ mused Nemurus theatrically.

Lucilla walked out, with no more conversation. She and Nemurus had been together just over two years, though never had a home of their own. The household gods they honoured belonged to his parents. There was neither dowry nor property to redistribute. She had no father to return to, but she had her apartment and furniture; Nemurus never made any claim on those. There she would attend to her customers and live her life quietly.

She told nobody she was divorced. It was no one else’s business.

It was a wild time to have upheaval in her life. A menacing atmosphere depressed Rome, with good events only making dark ones more terrible by contrast.

Domitian was pleasing the people. He had given them a congiarium, the personal gift from an emperor to his people, traditionally wine or oil in a special vessel, but now more conveniently a cash payment. He held numerous games in addition to other festivals in the traditional calendar, all adding to Rome’s carnival atmosphere. He became famous for innovation, allowing foot races for young women and freak events featuring female gladiators and dwarves; he lavished money on spectacles, with regular mock-battles between infantry or cavalry, plus naval fights in flooded arenas. He had added two new chariot teams, the Purple and Gold, in addition to the traditional Red, White, Green and Blue. He created a new Stadium and Odeum in the Campus for athletics and music. People were less than happy when he forced them to remain seated during a sudden violent thunderstorm, allegedly causing some to catch a fatal chill, but they forgave him when he feasted them with an all-night banquet for every Circus spectator, served up to them in their seats.

If the people loved him, the Senate did not. Domitian made no attempt to disguise his antipathy. He strictly controlled admission to the upper and middle ranks. Relegation was the least worry. Banishment and execution were a constant threat. It was said that the Emperor encouraged those who were under a cloud to commit suicide, to spare himself the opprobrium of murdering them; there may even have been some who killed themselves out of misplaced anxiety.

Like many men whose own behaviour is questionable, Domitian regulated everyone else’s moral conduct. Vinius had not exaggerated when he warned Orgilius that the Emperor took a direct interest in criminal accusations. Women were charged with adultery while men were just as sternly prosecuted under the law against sodomy with freeborn males. Other crimes were fiercely tackled too. Supposedly one woman was executed merely because she undressed in front of a statue of the Emperor; this caused an extra dimension of fear, because someone in her own home must have informed on her. No one could trust even their most intimate household.

In the privacy of Plum Street Lucilla’s clients, a forthright bunch of matrons, preened the immaculate curls their meek husbands were paying for and ridiculed anyone who kept a statue of Domitian in her bedroom. If it really seemed advantageous to own such a statue, the thing could so easily be relegated to a little-used library or the horrible saloon where one’s husband greeted his morning clients…

Even Domitian’s own household became increasingly destabilised. His removal of state servants continued. Finance and correspondence secretaries came and went for no obvious reason, as if merely to keep the others on the hop.

Recent events still weighed heavily on the Emperor. Nobody knew the full tally of reprisals after the German revolt. Severed heads displayed in the Forum had been only one show of punishment. Domitian refused to publish details of those he executed; rumours of ‘many’ senators being put to death were perhaps false, but the chief officers from the two rebellious legions, who were caught, savagely tortured and killed, were senators’ sons. Details of their torture — scorched genitals and hands cut off — were so specific it sounded true.

Some deaths certainly occurred; the governor of Asia, Civica Cerialis, was abruptly executed for unknown reasons, and without trial, possibly because Domitian believed he had encouraged the false Nero. The governor of Britain, too, Sallustius Lucullus, was put to death, ostensibly when he ‘invented a new lance and named it after himself’; that seemed absurd but Domitian may have been convinced Lucullus also supported the Saturninus revolt.

In Rome, the vengeful Emperor then played a macabre joke on the upper classes. Members of the Senate and the equestrian order received personal invitations to dine with him; he was holding a special banquet to honour those who died in Dacia. Everyone was so insecure, the mere offer of dinner with their emperor filled them with anxiety. Unless a man was on his deathbed with physicians’ notes to prove it, the invitation could not be refused. All were terrified of Domitian. The more they quaked, the more he enjoyed his power over them.

Flavia Lucilla had joined the background team for this carefully managed occasion. Arrangements were on a theatrical scale. A master of ceremonies had sounded her out on the subject of dyes and skin paints, with which they conducted experiments. She was primed to attend with the necessary equipment, but sworn to secrecy.

One afternoon shortly after her divorce, she was collected in a litter. With her baskets of materials, she was taken down the Vicus Longus, through the new imperial forums, across the ancient Forum of the Romans, and up the steep covered entrance to the top of the Palatine, where she had her first real experience of Domitian’s fabulous new palace. Work was still incomplete but already she could see that this was a building of staggering style and innovation. Crowning the Palatine Hill even more majestically than its predecessor, the new palace was designed to give the impression its halls were those of gods.

After the steep climb up from the Forum, the entrance had been positioned close to the ancient Temple of Apollo and House of Augustus. An octagonal vestibule, which had curvilinear anterooms, gave a preliminary hint of magnificence and led to the first inner court. A portico of fluted columns in Numidian yellow marble surrounded a huge pool; it contained a large island over which water continually splashed via complex fountains and channels. Every surface was veneered in expensive marble.

To the left was a staggering audience chamber, roofed with ninety-foot beams of Lebanon cedar; the vast space featured fabulous purple columns and niches which contained massive statues of demigods, hewn from metallic green stone brought from the far Egyptian desert. A monumental outside porch where the heavy columns were grey-green Carystian provided the daily setting for Domitian’s formal appearance to be saluted by his people.

To the right of the entrance, Nero’s dining hall, once beautiful in itself, had been superseded by a stupendous banqueting suite that would seat thousands at great public feasts. A hundred feet high and lined with three orders of columns, the main hall boasted enormous picture windows which gave views to fountain courts where intricate oval water features stood among yet more multicoloured marble pavements.

Beyond these first formal public rooms lay areas where most people would never penetrate: astonishing second and third courts, exquisite suites, deliberately confusing corridor links, sudden changes of scale or form or level, sunken gardens, bath houses, and a private interior which formed a palace within a palace for the Emperor and his family.

Marble was the principal material — cut, carved, polished, veneered, mosaicked — but Rabirius had been allowed to spend endlessly on gold too. Everywhere glimmered and shone until the interplay of light with the musical counterpoint of water from the fountains dazzled and entranced the senses.

Amidst so much glimmering beauty, Domitian’s guests tonight were to have a very different dining experience. None of the glorious banqueting halls for which the palace would become famous were used for the Dacian dinner. A large room had been repainted entirely in darkest black: floor, ceiling, all four walls, plus cornices, architraves, door furniture and dados. On the bare black floor stood bare black couches.

Wives were not invited; each man had to endure the night alone. On arrival, all were separated from their attendants too. No friendly slaves from home would be removing their shoes and handing them napkins tonight. In the hall, they found a formal funeral banquet like those families held for their deceased relations outside necropolis mausoleums. By the dim light of cemetery lamps, each diner found beside his couch a grim black slab that looked like a tombstone. It bore his name.

As guests nervously settled, a stream of beautiful naked boys slipped into the dark room, all painted head-to-toe in black. These creatures performed a ghostly dance, winding around the couches like shadows, ebony against pitch, so only occasional movements and the whites of their eyes showed. The undulating shades finished their performance by stationing themselves one to each diner.

All the solemn sacrifices associated with funerals were made. Black serving dishes were set on low ebony tables. Each spectral pageboy served his diner with strange dark food. Cinnamon and myrrh, the spices thrown on cremation biers, stuffily perfumed the room.

There was no music. No nervous chatter broke the silence. Presiding, more gloomy than Pluto enthroned in his Underworld caverns, only Domitian talked. The sardonic host chose topics all relating to death and slaughter. Throughout the nightmare dinner, his guests expected to have their throats cut.

Finally their ordeal concluded. When they rose to leave, no one could forget that Domitian’s family had previously executed opponents when a meal ended. False smiles were a Flavian signature. Tottering back to the great vestibule, the disorientated guests then found that all their personal attendants had vanished. Slaves they had never seen before escorted them home in carriages and litters. At every step of the journey they expected to be dragged out and murdered.

They fell into their houses. As they shuddered in recovery, new terror arrived. Loud banging announced messengers, sent after them from the Emperor. Every tormented man now imagined the worst.

Exactly as Domitian intended…

That tense evening had been observed by Vinius Clodianus. Because this dinner was for the fallen in Dacia, as a survivor Vinius had been ordered to be there, to represent the lost army.

He was not required to smother himself in black war paint. Thank you, gods! The night was an ordeal for him. It gave him no solace for his dead comrades; it granted no release from his survivor’s guilt. He would endure it as a soldier, but his mood was doleful.

He was dressed up in a hybrid parade uniform, with special dispensation for one night only to be armed within the walls of Rome. Over the standard off-white tunic, which soldiers bloused up short ‘for ease of movement’ (or to show off their legs), he wore a muscled breastplate and military belt, with his most decorative dagger. The belt was composed of metal plates, ornamented with silver and black niello, and heavy with its apron of metal-tanged leather strips. He carried the long oval Praetorian shield, covering his left side from shoulder to knee, exquisitely decorated with a motif of moon and stars behind the Guards’ scorpion emblem. He had neatly tied his neckerchief; his cloak hung smartly. Most spectacularly, he had been loaned a gilded cavalry helmet, not crested like the usual parade helmet, but crowned by an eagle’s head. Its full-face metal mask, with shadowed eye, nose and mouth holes, looked remote and mysterious, although the only effect for the soldier inside was to make breathing difficult.

‘Very pretty!’ smirked the cornicularius. He still thought that Vinius Clodianus lusted after his job. He could not decide whether to loathe his cheek or admire his hunger. ‘Women who like a man in uniform will be lined up with their legs open.’

‘I’m in luck then, Cornicularius sir!’ The face-covering helmet muffled how much Vinius disliked the idea.

‘Shag one for me, son.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Suit yourself!’ the cornicularius grumbled under his breath, as he sensed that this fussy soldier would never take advantage of the hypothetical queues of good-time girls.

The official view of Clodianus was complimentary. From behind the parade helmet, he was conscious of being inspected by Rome’s most senior men. He saluted so often, and so smartly, he got pins and needles in his arm. Both Praetorian Prefects approved his turnout as if they had buffed his breastplate and sharpened his sword themselves. The Prefect of Vigiles had a good word for him. The gruff Prefect of the City, most senior of all, was Rutilius Gallicus who had served as Domitian’s deputy in Rome when the Emperor left on campaign and opened the city gates to receive him for his double triumph; Rutilius had less to say, though it clearly was not personal. He hardly spoke to anyone. On a night when Domitian was tweaking senators’ fears of death, perhaps Rutilius Gallicus was remembering that he inherited his lofty position when his predecessor was executed.

Occasion was taken to award Clodianus promotion: ‘liaison officer’, a runner for the cornicularius.

‘I think I’m going to drown myself!’ groaned that worthy, although Gaius was certain he must have been consulted. His own modest fears about the responsibility were biffed aside. ‘Take the money,’ ordered his superior. ‘For a scroll-worm like you, it will be a piece of piss.’

While the guests choked on their dinner, the Praetorian had to stand sentry outside. He joked with himself grimly that his role was not to prevent unsanctioned intruders but to stop guests making a getaway.

Towards the end, he spotted Flavia Lucilla. She was sitting on the edge of the great courtyard pool. Hugging his knees alongside her was a misshapen figure in red. Vinius saw it was Domitian’s dwarf, a man-child with an extremely small head to whom the Emperor often whispered comments on people at the court. Lucilla and the confidant were deep in conversation.

Vinius marched over and put a stop to that.

‘Hop it, Diddles.’

The dwarf grumbled but ambled away, while a shocked Lucilla snarled, ‘You arrogant bastard, Vinius!’

Vinius Clodianus removed his fabulous helmet. ‘How did you know it was me?’

‘Footfall. Voice. Bad manners.’

‘I’ve seen you in some company, but that beats all.’

‘The lad needs friendly conversation. He listens to terrible things all day: “Do you know why I appointed so-and-so to a praetorship…?” No one will have anything to do with him because he looks so odd and they are petrified he will inform on them to Domitian.’

‘You, on the other hand, befriend any freak at court.’

‘Yes, I have even been a friend to you in a crisis!’

There was a silence, broken only by the soothing splash of waters. Vinius massaged his earlobes where the helmet had rubbed. On another occasion, he might have dropped beside Lucilla, but he would not sit where that dwarf had squatted; anyway, on duty in full uniform, he was obliged to stand smartly. Leaning on his shield, he held the parade helmet in the crook of the other elbow, posing: the noble warrior.

After fiddling with her baskets, readjusting her sandal straps and brushing off water droplets from her hems, Lucilla deigned to take notice.

‘Nice rig.’ She was really thinking Vinius had a strange hard attitude these days.

‘I am glad you’ve seen me in it.’ Vinius then heard himself give her a line even he cringed over: ‘Once I’m released from duty, I shall need help taking it all off.’

‘You are pathetic.’ Lucilla grasped the handles of various baskets and struggled upright. ‘Find another handmaid to unarm you!’

She skittered away. Vinius loped after her.

‘Is this because I said no the other night?’

‘Weak moment.’

‘Give me another chance.’

‘No. Don’t pester me.’ Lucilla had not expected to see Vinius, she was tired after painting wriggly pageboys black all afternoon, and the soldier looked so fine tonight that fending him off was killing her. He seemed equally unsettled. Tiptoeing around the matrimonial laws was hard enough, but grappling with their own confused feelings was beyond these two.

‘I know you want me.’

‘ You don’t want me. Too risky. You could be cashiered…’ Lucilla was testing him, to see if her interpretation of his scruples was right. ‘Vinius, you are so wise! Think about Plum Street: you could be accused of “making a room available for illicit sexual purposes”.’

‘ I’ve never had any sex there!’ grumbled Vinius bitterly.

‘Whose fault is that? Pious you, the noblest Roman of them all.’

The dinner was ending. Fraught guests began coming out to the vestibule. Someone whistled to Lucilla and she shot off, as if the summons was expected. She had scampered down a flight of steps. Vinius followed, but slowly; with his one eye, downhill treads always troubled him, and studded military boots could be lethal on marble. By the time he negotiated the obstacle, Lucilla had disappeared.

The evening was going disastrously wrong. Then Vinius ran into the dwarf again. Jealous of this creature’s familiarity with Lucilla, Vinius was filled with loathing and wild fantasies. If the dwarf laid a paw on her, Diddles would find himself hung upside down in the elegant fountain until he suffocated among the sluicing water-sheets and his tiny feet stopped kicking in the spray…

‘Be careful!’ Vinius warned him off. ‘You could be had for following a married woman around.’

‘Catch up, you prick!’ The dwarf spent so much of his time being pleasant to Domitian that when he was released he became filthy-tempered and foul-mouthed. Many men are complete opposites at work and at home. The imperial dwarf was no different.

‘What do you mean?’

The dwarf tended to speak too loudly. ‘She fucking left him. So get to the back of the queue, soldier!’

Gaius Vinius Clodianus was not a man who queued.

Storming off in the direction he had seen Lucilla vanishing, he followed his instincts and, eventually, much noise. He happened upon her, which was just as well because as he coursed through the spectacular spaces of this palace, he had absolutely no damned intention of asking anyone for directions.

Flavia Lucilla was divorced!

Flavia Lucilla was giving him the run-around.

She had gone to a bath house. It took a while to find her. Then, Vinius stepped into a scene so extraordinary he almost lost his equilibrium.

Every exalted guest at the Black Banquet had had a painted boy attendant; all those boys were now being hastily cleaned up in a vast marble warm-room. The noise was appalling: shouts, squeals and splashes, plus continual clanks of buckets and swooshes of rinsing water. The conceited little midgets would not behave. Swilling the boys down amidst the steam to a tight timetable, slaves and attendants were red-faced and frantic.

Lucilla was near the door, rubbing a sponge over a reluctant child who suddenly made a bolt for it. Vinius blocked him with his shield, then dropped it and grasped the naked escapee. This forced Lucilla to paddle over, through the ankle-high wash of diluted lamp-black, or whatever it was. She was barefoot and wearing just an old sleeveless undertunic, having anticipated this dirty task. Her bare arms and legs disconcerted Vinius briefly.

She resumed sponging the boy so roughly it was easy to see why he fled.

‘Explain?’ demanded Vinius. ‘- Ah shit, your little blighter dripped dye on my moon and stars!’ As well as the soiling on his shield, he was disgusted to find the hand with which he had grabbed the boy was covered with sticky black goo.

‘Next stage of the torture. The diners have been sent home,’ Lucilla told him. ‘Their last scare will be Domitian sending presents. They will assume it’s their personal executioner. But they will get their pageboy, washed and adorned, plus their fake tombstone, which will turn out to be a big slab of silver, and the platters they were served off, also made of costly materials.’ Gripping the boy by his hair, she dredged off the last of his paint, sloshing water from a pannikin.

More outrage gripped Vinius. ‘You are washing him all over!’

‘Yes, first I painted his little winkle — what a thrill — and now I have to clean it off… One imaginative evening takes hours of unseen work.’ Lucilla gritted her teeth as she struggled with the flailing child. ‘Don’t be pompous. It’s only the same as bathing my nephew.’

For Vinius the most hideous aspect was that he had found himself caught in this scene of watery mayhem, while simultaneously trying to start a furious argument with the love of his life. ‘It is not respectable!’

‘What a prude! You surprise me… It’s all Domitian’s sinister showmanship.’ Lucilla released the boy, who ran to be fluffed up and dressed. ‘Can you imagine household after household full of elderly maids and set-in-their-ways secretaries, when they wake up tomorrow to find they have to take in a gruesome little stage child with the morals of a rabbit warren. And they dare not get rid of him.’

Lucilla reached for Vinius’ hand and dabbed at the paint, but his dark mood reached her; she gave up and threw the sponge at him. ‘Oh do it yourself.’

As rapidly as the baths must have filled with the blackened boys, they emptied. A parade of imperial gifts, some human, was leaving the Palatine. Relieved officials ticked off addresses on note boards.

‘When I said to explain, Lucilla, I did not mean this fiasco.’ Thoroughly self-righteous, Vinius sensed he was making no impression. ‘You got divorced.’

Lucilla was gathering her equipment, then pushing her way to a changing room. It was almost deserted, since most of the other attendants were still involved in swilling away the grimy water, or just descending into horseplay now their earlier frantic activities had finished.

‘Turn your back, Vinius.’ Her undertunic was drenched; she intended to remove it before climbing back into her other clothes, which she had retrieved from a manger above the bench. ‘ Face away! ’ Vinius haughtily held up a towel to hide her. She must have forgotten he had once seen her all by starlight.

‘You got divorced!’

Lucilla shook down her dry gown and, once decent, began forcing on sandals. As the straps resisted, she snatched the towel to dry her feet roughly. ‘So?’

‘You bloody well got divorced and never told me.’

Silence.

‘Every pervert in this putrid palace knows — but not me. We had a conversation earlier and you never even mentioned it.’

Lucilla bundled her wet tunic into one of her baskets.

‘ When were you intending to tell me?’

Silence.

‘What — never? ’

‘My marriage is private.’

Vinius was livid. ‘And this sudden split has no connection with me?’

‘Causing a divorce would do you no credit.’

Lucilla was ready to leave. She made her way to the vestibule, gave her name to an orderly, and a litter was called for her. Vinius had tailed her like a hopeful dog. There was no room for him in the conveyance, especially as those who had helped behind the scenes tonight were being sent home with hampers of leftover food and unused amphorae.

Lucilla gave the bearers instructions for Plum Street. A fraught transport queue was building up behind. ‘Leave it, Vinius.’

‘Am I expected to follow you?’

‘Do what you like. Go to the Camp.’

‘I thought I meant something to you.’

‘For heaven’s sake. I only just left one man I regretted — Goodnight, soldier.’

Lucilla was carried away. Vinius was left standing in the vestibule in his gorgeous array, while hard-hearted imperial planners with rotas to organise openly sneered at him.

As the litter bumped her homeward, Flavia Lucilla longed to weep unshed tears on his strong shoulder.

It was the wrong time of the month. For aesthetic reasons, even though her libido was always high, she kept to herself on those days. Had Gaius known her better he might have recognised the signs. She had dark circles under her eyes, she felt uncomfortable in her body, she was prone to making mistakes. Unfortunately, on such days she was incapable of taking precautions against the mistakes…

‘You never do my hair as well, dear,’ her client Aurelia Maestinata had told her frankly. ‘Still, once you get to my age you will be blissfully free of all that.’ Aurelia also had a view on the male reaction. ‘Every month is a surprise. The problem is, dear, men cannot count!’

With three wives and many aunts in his history, Gaius had certainly encountered women’s sudden flare-ups. He never dreamed Lucilla rebuffed him for that reason. He thought it could only be because she did not like him (surely not?) or, more likely, she was a teasing little bitch. He called himself an understanding man, yet he loathed women who were unpredictable.

Lucilla knew she had just taken a decision she regretted. In the course of it, she had seen Gaius Vinius in his worst light. Petty, peremptory, authoritarian, unrealistic, self-centred and vain.

Aurelia Maestinata would say, all men are like that, just ignore it. Aurelia’s tart good sense being unavailable, when Lucilla got home she drank too much from the amphora they had given her at the palace, and simply added new adjectives for Vinius to her list.

Nemurus would have called it hyperbolic auxesis. Vinius would have called that crap.

Gaius Vinius made one further attempt to court Lucilla: hating himself for giving in first, he called in at Plum Street the next day. Lucilla was not there. (She was curled up among many cushions in the back of the manicure salon downstairs, where Glyke and Calliste had dosed her with hangover and cramp cures; she had done the same for them on many occasions.)

The dog was gnawing his rush mat because he missed Lucilla. He had already torn down the curtain that normally hid the lavatory. He growled at Gaius, having insultingly forgotten who he was. Balanced on a stool to rehang the curtain, Gaius growled back.

He waited around as long as he thought reasonable (not long). Then he reckoned the trollop must be off wasting herself on Domitian’s dwarf in some foul palace burrow.

Gaius gave up on her.

After that, his life descended into chaos.

He invited his brothers for a men’s night out. He still did not want to be his father, but he intended to get drunk out of his skull. Felix and Fortunatus were up for it. Their wives tried to forestall them with requests to put up shelves, which they parried with traditional delaying tactics. Gaius also invited his old mucker Scorpus and even his superior, the cornicularius. Luckily the cornicularius could not make it; he always visited a brothel on Wednesdays where he had been going so long the bawd made him supper and most times he just talked to her.

During many long hours in wine bars, Gaius expressed his current loathing of women so luridly that his brothers thought it was a convoluted hint. They set about what they reckoned they did best on his behalf: fixing up Gaius with a new wife. Soon Felix and Fortunatus were negotiating with a widow who was looking for security; they continued manoeuvres even though their own wives, Paulina and Galatia, cruelly suggested it was a mistake on the widow’s part to expect security from fly-by-night Gaius Vinius.

He didn’t need Felix and Fortunatus to organise his life, he reckoned. Left on his own in a bar one evening, after those wimps scuttled home, Gaius found his fourth wife for himself. At the time she seemed perfect, being the type of woman who did not mind picking up a new husband in a bar. Just his sort of girl, he thought.

His brothers went ahead eagerly with their own planning. For legal reasons, the widow needed to act fast. Felix and Fortunatus saw no reason why a bridegroom should be conscious at his wedding so they just supported their drunken brother through the event. The priest who took the auguries looked sick, but a cash bonus squared him. The widow’s need for immediacy outweighed any wish for a husband who could communicate. So Gaius never told her he had married someone else the night before.

With the lesson of his father before him, Gaius did try to sober himself up. He was helped by the cornicularius. ‘This is what I warned about: Dacia’s left you a mess, son. Either you start sorting yourself out — today — or you can take your discharge. I don’t intend to train you up if you’re going on a bender that will see you out, like your old man.’

‘You knew my father?’

‘This is the army. You don’t think I’d have any bugger in this office whose background wasn’t known to me?’ He always used the term ‘this office’ as a holy concept.

‘What about promotion on merit?’

‘Less of the filthy language, soldier!’

A slew of regrettable events threatened to destroy him; Gaius had to overcome his problems. He was supposed to be liaison officer with the military police — a body of investigators, arresting officers, torturers and prison jailers who followed up informers’ reports. In his current state, his superior refused to expose him to this shadowy corps, whose methods were notorious and likely to distress a man who had a five-day hangover.

Instead, one day a nervous lictor, a magistrate’s escort who attended on Rutilius Gallicus, came to ask for help from the Urbans, whom Rutilius commanded. The three Urban Cohorts were barracked with the Praetorians, though as the City Prefect was always a senator, and so a civilian, he never lived at the Camp. The Praetorian Prefects were quartered there, but a fine tradition of Camp life was that after lunch they were unavailable.

Deputising in his routine relaxed manner was the cornicularius, who found the lictor, wandering lost. Given the Praetorians’ traditional rivalry with the Urbans, he decided the Guards must hijack the query. ‘I don’t think we want some cack-handed Urban twerp making a mess of this… Sounds like a situation where we might be helpful, Clodianus?’

‘Happy to volunteer, sir.’ Even pie-eyed, Gaius knew what to say to an officer.

‘Going on what the lictor says, we’ll keep this very quiet. Use initiative.’

With as much of that commodity as a man with a headache, slurred speech and his feet falling over themselves could muster, Gaius took one Guard to help, choosing a large one. His other equipment included a thin-bladed stylus knife, a large military nail, eyebrow tweezers (one of the centurions had a bisexual servant) and a toothpick (his own). Anyone who had been in the vigiles could open locks, and since discretion was called for, he hoped to avoid having to smash down the door.

Rome had a problem. Rutilius Gallicus, the City Prefect, had locked himself in his office. He was having a nervous breakdown in there.