Master and God

22

Quintus Julius Cordinus Gaius Rutilius Gallicus had locked the office door himself. He was a man on the defensive, which to him seemed the only acceptable condition nowadays. Either the daily dirge of his office or simply the pathos of life in general had become too much for him. He could no longer cope. He found it unaccountably difficult to carry out the most mundane daily tasks; dressing, going to the baths, dining were all beyond him. Without slaves to attend to him physically, he would be curled up in a corner at home, naked and filthy. Everything had to stop. Since he could not do anything, there was no point in people coming in to make demands of him. So he locked the door to keep them out.

Having six names was not a sign of hereditary grandeur. Six names meant you had been adopted by somebody with status, because your original birthline was not flashy. Coming from Augusta Taurinorum was no help either. It was pretty well over the acceptable border and into the Alpine provinces. Senators from outside Italy had a hard grind to find acceptability. Julius Agricola had come from Gaul, and suffered for it. Ulpius Traianus came from Spain and didn’t give a damn, but that was the Baeticans all over. A man from a province at least had a province behind him. A man from a north Italian city had to scrabble up every inch of the cursus honorum, schmoozing snobbish freedmen, squeezing posts from emperors’ pockets, entirely on his own with it. You could get bloody fed up with looking solidly reliable. In Rome you could get sick of having to defend a home city that lay on the rim of the Alps. You could become exhausted by your wife always nagging to go north to see her family.

Rutilius was weary. He could not sleep, yet he was dead tired. He was tired with the heavy weight of the mentally sick, and he knew no way to extricate himself.

He was sixty. Sixty this year. Nobody of sixty thinks they are old; they know they are at the height of their experience, able to show upcoming young idiots a thing or two. Nevertheless, the start of the body’s wearing out makes itself known. Hair goes. Heart and kidneys struggle. Energy hiccups. Dexterity falters. Sexual intercourse, if called for, becomes touch and go. At the same time, the demands of high office become greater. There is too much to do; the physical frame struggles to hold up. The mind may be overwhelmed by its burden of responsibility.

Rutilius was a Flavian stalwart. In his early career in the army, he even served under Corbulo, the Empress’s father. Luck fell on him, moreover. On Nero’s death, he had stepped into Nero’s shoes for one useful honour: the prestigious role of priest of the Augustan cult, nurturing emperors who were declared gods. A cynic would say, bloody good training for dealing with Domitian. Later, Vespasian had made him governor of Germany just at the right moment to pop over the Rhine and safely capture Veleda, a German prophetess who hated and tried to destroy Rome. Rutilius never thought enough was made of that exploit. Perhaps by then Veleda’s star had faded. When he captured her and brought her to Rome, now in middle age, she seemed neither mad enough herself nor representative of a sufficiently thrilling danger. As a bogeywoman Veleda was a disappointment.

The watchword was conciliation now. A new German prophetess, Ganna, had just visited Domitian along with the king of the Semnones; she was well received and sent back to her forest with gifts. If wild women were merely allies these days, the man who once captured Ganna’s predecessor lost cachet.

Domitian did honour him. Rutilius was governor of Asia, a plum post, one of Domitian’s first appointees. Then came the City position. Who in his right mind would be grateful for a job where the last incumbent had just been executed on a charge of treason? Arrecinus Clemens, a man known for his gentleness. Too close to Titus though. One of the in-laws who had brought up Julia. Too close to her as well, therefore. Even Julia’s influence on Domitian could not save her uncle.

A typical story was told about the end of Arrecinus Clemens: Domitian, who often craftily pretended affection for those he was about to murder, took him for a carriage ride. Passing the sleazeball who was informing on him, as Arrecinus must have been aware, the Emperor murmured, ‘Let’s not talk to that slave until tomorrow.’ It added to the cruelty. Arrecinus was doomed and knew it; he just had to live out an extra day of suspense while Domitian gloated.

City Prefect was a post where you had to work with the Emperor on a daily basis. When he was in Rome the workload was intolerable, the pace pitiless, the stress ghastly. You could not give in to it. Plus there was the tricky stuff: never knowing what Domitian really wanted, never sure he didn’t want you dead.

When Domitian was away, the burden for a conscientious man increased. Rutilius was his de facto deputy. Who could deputise for the divine?

To be left in charge of the city was immensely important. If anything had happened to Domitian when he went after Saturninus, or afterwards on the Danube, it would have fallen to Rutilius to close Rome’s gates and secure the heart of the Empire. He might have been called upon for delicate diplomatic negotiations or, if it all went wrong, he could have died, as Flavius Sabinus died twenty years ago, torn apart on the Capitol by the Vitellian mob. He was unafraid of death, yet the anxiety subtly damaged him.

He worked too hard. He devoted himself to curating Rome, from dawn when good senators arose from their beds to dark hours by lamplight when scrolls became a strain to read.

The Secular Games had been a long trial. Rutilius had to organise them. They were the worst, because they were held only every hundred years, in theory when nobody who had been alive the last time would be still on earth to attend. Domitian altered the prescribed dates; Rutilius had to help fudge that. Then came months of nitpicking detail, dealing with temperamental poets and singers, athletes, equestrians and charioteers, priests, not to mention theatre-sweepers and ticket office staff who by definition chose times like that to threaten to walk out unless they were given a pay increase. There were constantly shifting programme details. New buildings to be finished on time. Then the sheer bloody logistics of bringing everyone into the city and moving them out afterwards through monumental traffic jams, housing and feeding hundreds of thousands, stabling their damned donkeys, finding extra lockups for the influx of festival pickpockets. And, even though it all happened just the same as every other Games, nobody ever remembered just how much extra shit and pee would be washed into the sewers from the public latrines at a time when the public slaves who cleaned those sewers were hoping for six days of public holiday.

That was just one worry.

He was too close to Domitian. He saw the mistakes as they were being made. For a loyal, hard-working state servant it was too depressing to watch a man twenty years his junior wrecking all that Rutilius and his generation had attempted to build and stabilise after the nightmare of Nero. By sixty, you were losing enough friends and colleagues to illness, without watching more sent to their deaths prematurely.

He was going mad. He had stopped functioning altogether. He was sitting now, with unattempted work mounded all around him. Mighty trays of scrolls and tablets. So much work that he placed the surplus in piles on the floor like the short masonry columns that supported the heated floor in a hypocaust. Work arrived every hour of every day; he could not look at it.

He was sitting very still. He had been in a stupor for a long time, days maybe. A dagger was lying close upon his desk, though his lassitude was so severe it prevented him even killing himself. Did he want to commit suicide? He could not even tell. He had no energy. He was lifeless. No one could reach his misery. He himself could no longer analyse what was happening, despite a confused feeling that something must have gone awry. Thought had become jumbled at one point, but now there was no thought.

There was nothing.

He heard the Praetorians arrive. Irregular thumps indicated vague attempts to break down the door, but that was short-lived.

He heard a man say not to damage the decor; stand back and let him fiddle. Rutilius tensed. After some scratching and a muffled curse, the double doors swung gently inwards. A Guard came in, sucking a cut hand. He came in alone. He closed the doors after him quietly then opened just one set of shutters to let in daylight. He came over and sat on the edge of the table, still sucking the blood from his hand where the knife he used on the lock had skidded off and gashed him.

Rutilius did not respond. He made no eye contact.

The Guard had only one eye, in fact. He could have looked terrifying. His matter-of-fact manner belied his scarred appearance.

‘Good morning, sir. My name is Vinius Clodianus. I have come along to see if everything is all right?’

The level way the Guard spoke was reassuring. Quintus Julius Cordinus Gaius Rutilius Gallicus managed to speak for the first time in days: ‘Something seems a little odd…’

‘Yes.’ Clodianus placed a hand — the unwounded one — kindly upon the Prefect’s shoulder. Rutilius did not react. The Praetorian lifted his hand immediately, taking the opportunity to pick up the unsheathed dagger from the Prefect’s desk. The young man placed the dagger on a side-table and came closer again. ‘Yes, I can see things are in a bit of pickle. But you’ve done a good job, sir, nice holding operation; now you can relax. I am here. Nothing bad is going to happen. My job is to take charge of absolutely everything, so you don’t have to worry.’

A group of servants, incapable of following a simple order, pushed into the room, twittering.

‘Would you all mind stepping back outside?’ The Praetorian spoke politely, though his voice showed annoyance. ‘The Prefect and I will ask, if we need anything. A doctor who understands these situations has been summoned. When he arrives, just knock on the door to warn us and let him straight in, please.’

The doors closed. As silence descended, the Prefect of the City found it easier to hold himself together. Nevertheless, he was only just succeeding.

The Praetorian Guard was seated now, long legs outstretched in front of him, ankles crossed. He had positioned his feet very carefully, as if he could only control his legs with great care, as if he needed the top one to hold down the other. It took a trained man to notice that. Despite it, the Guard had never let his single eye stray from watching the Prefect. Meanwhile he was prepared to sit companionably, applying no pressure.

He smiled. It had a wry quality. ‘We can talk, if you would like that,’ he offered. The Prefect was incapable of talking. He was sunk so deep in depression, he could not even move. ‘Or not. Incidentally, I am the Guard who was a prisoner in Dacia. We met at the palace the other evening; you had the goodness to speak to me encouragingly, sir. I have not been myself since I came home and I just don’t know how to straighten everything out. To be honest, I would appreciate a few quiet moments myself.’ Motionless, Rutilius might not even have heard. ‘Thank you, sir,’ replied the Guard, as if their two troubled souls had, in fact, communicated.

So, sitting together in that room burdened with documents that should have been dealt with days ago, weeks ago, even in some cases months ago, Vinius Clodianus and Rutilius Gallicus waited for the doctor to arrive. A fly battered itself pointlessly against one leaf of the open window shutter, buzzing at the same spot repeatedly, heedless of the fact that if it just walked around the wooden frame, freedom lay inches away.