Rome's executioner

CHAPTER XVI

A soft but insistent tapping on the door woke Vespasian from a deep, untroubled sleep. Caenis lay next to him, curled in the crook of his arm. He opened his eyes; it was still the dead of night.

‘Who is it?’ he asked in a projected whisper.

‘Me, sir.’ Magnus opened the door a crack and peered into the gloom. ‘It’s time we was going; I’m afraid that you’ll have to leave that nice warm bed and its contents.’

‘I’ll be right out,’ Vespasian replied as Caenis stirred beside him.

‘We’re meeting in the atrium; I’ve got your bag. See you there.’

Magnus closed the door leaving the room in complete darkness.

‘Shit,’ Vespasian said to himself, sitting up.

‘What is it, my love?’ Caenis whispered sleepily.

‘I’ve got to go.’ He leant down to kiss her, wrapping an arm around her warm body.

She responded and then gently pushed him away with a giggle. ‘That’s not going to help you get up.’

‘It is.’

‘I meant up and out of bed. Come on, I need to get up as well; my mistress will be wanting to see you off. I’ll get some light.’

She slipped out of the bed and over to the chest. Vespasian heard her taking something out of a drawer and then striking a flint; within a few moments a glow softly illuminated her face, shortly after a flame burned at the end of the thin wick of an oil lamp.

‘I always wondered how the house-’ Vespasian stopped midsentence, feeling desperately uncomfortable.

‘How the house slaves light the first oil lamp?’ Caenis said, raising her eyebrows at him. ‘It’s all right, Vespasian, you don’t have to be coy about my status; we both know that I’m a slave. I accept it; so must you.’

Vespasian grinned sheepishly and got out of bed. He knew that she was right; it was an unassailable fact, which, although it divided them socially, should never be allowed to come between them in private.

He took her in his arms and kissed her. ‘I’m sorry, my beautiful slave girl.’

Caenis smiled up at him. ‘There’s a big difference between acceptance and rubbing it in my face,’ she chided him gently.

A short while later Vespasian arrived in the sparklingly lit atrium; Magnus and Pallas were already there and Sabinus and Corbulo joined them almost immediately.

‘Good morning, masters. We should get the priest and then leave at once,’ Pallas said, taking command, despite his slave status. The brothers and Magnus did not question it but Corbulo bristled.

‘As a senator and a member of the most noble family present, I should be giving the orders,’ he said huffily. ‘I’m certainly not taking them from a slave.’

‘And so you shouldn’t, master,’ Pallas agreed smoothly. ‘You will give the orders, but I’ll decide what to do because I am acting in the Lady Antonia’s name.’ He held up his right hand; on the little finger was Antonia’s seal ring.

Corbulo looked at the brothers. ‘Do you accept orders from him?’

‘I think that he knows better than any of us what is required,’ Vespasian replied diplomatically.

Corbulo, realising the ludicrousness of a situation whereby he would just repeat Pallas’ words like a herald, drew himself up and swallowed his pride. ‘Very well then, Pallas leads.’

‘Pompous arsehole,’ Magnus said, not altogether under his breath.

Corbulo turned and glared at him but could not bring himself to acknowledge the insult. It was bad enough taking orders from a slave — he was not going to compound that by demanding an apology from an urban ruffian. He turned and followed Pallas out of the room.

‘That didn’t help,’ Vespasian hissed at Magnus as they trailed behind.

Marcus grinned. ‘I know, but it felt good.’

At the rear of the house they descended a stone staircase into a long, damp corridor lit by flaming torches in holders down one side of the wall; their acrid smoke partially obscured the low ceiling, staining it and the wall behind them black. On the opposite side were a series of sturdy-looking oak doors with grills in them at head height. The stench of urine, sweat and fear hung in the air. The clatter of their sandals reverberated off the walls and ceiling.

‘Antonia has her own private prison, it seems,’ Magnus observed as Pallas stopped outside one of the doors and inserted a key into the lock.

Vespasian chuckled. ‘I suppose this is where you’ll end up if you stop performing for her.’

With an echoing, metallic clunk the lock turned; Pallas pushed open the door, walked in and reappeared an instant later dragging a filthy, naked, skeletal body by the ankles: Rhoteces. His long, straggly hair and beard were matted with shit. He had evidently been asleep because, as he was pulled into the light, his head jerked up and his eyes opened. He immediately started screaming, grabbed the doorframe and held on whilst trying to kick Pallas away.

‘A little help would be appreciated, masters,’ Pallas requested politely, ‘but don’t knock him out, I need him to swallow.’

None of them reacted for an instant, unwilling to go too near to the disgusting creature.

‘Fuck it,’ Magnus said, stepping forward and grabbing Rhoteces’ wrists he hauled them away from the doorframe.

The commotion had disturbed the other prisoners in the corridor and shouts emanated from behind rattling doors.

‘Master Vespasian, would you mind taking these?’ Pallas’ voice rose against the noise as he offered Vespasian the ankles.

Vespasian took hold of the spindly joints; they were so thin they felt as if they would crack if he held them too hard. A couple of sharp twists from Rhoteces disabused him of that notion and he gripped them with all his strength. He felt a tremendous sense of satisfaction that the man who he had witnessed so happily sacrificing Roman prisoners in Thracia four years previously had been reduced, during the past eight months, to nothing more than an animal.

‘Sit him up,’ Pallas said to Magnus as he pulled a vial out of his shoulder bag. ‘Master Corbulo, grab his head and force his mouth open; Sabinus, hold a knife to his throat.’

Corbulo winced but did as he was asked. Vespasian suppressed a grin guessing that Pallas had saved the most unpleasant job for him.

With his head held back, mouth forced open, baring his pointed, filed teeth, and with a knife at his throat, Rhoteces went still. Pallas approached him and opened the vial. ‘This won’t kill you if you drink it but that knife at your throat will if you don’t. Understand?’

Rhoteces wild eyes showed he had. Pallas tipped a quarter of the brown, viscous contents of the vial into his mouth and quickly held it shut, pinching the priest’s nose. He swallowed.

‘That will keep him sedated for twelve hours or so once it’s kicked in,’ Pallas informed them, ‘it’s what was used on Secundus yesterday. Let’s get him upstairs.’

Rhoteces had evidently accustomed himself to whatever fate was in store for him and had ceased to struggle.

As they pulled the priest along the corridor Vespasian noticed behind one of the grills a pair of eyes pleading with him from beneath a mono-brow.

He ignored them.

Out in the stable yard Rhoteces was pushed into the two-horse, covered cart that had transported him from Ostia; because he was drugged no one had to have the unpleasant job of travelling with him.

Antonia appeared in the torchlight on the steps leading up to the house. Caenis was behind her; she clutched her medallion and blew Vespasian a surreptitious kiss.

‘Gentlemen,’ Antonia said, ‘Macro has sent eight men of his previous command, the Vigiles, to escort you to the Capena Gate. I will pray and sacrifice every day for your success in this task. May the goddess Fortuna travel with you.’

She took each of them briefly by the hand and then they mounted up. Pallas climbed on to the front seat of the covered cart and took up the reins. The gates were hauled open to reveal the eight Vigiles, all holding flaming torches aloft; heavy clubs hung from their belts. With a click of his tongue and a flick of the reins Pallas urged the cart’s horses forward; the iron-rimmed wheels grated over the paved floor of the stable yard. Vespasian kicked his mount forward to follow the cart out. As he reached the gates he turned in his saddle and caught Caenis’ eye; he raised his hand in farewell, and she returned the gesture as he passed through the gates and out of sight.

The Vigiles led the way down the Palatine Hill and turned left on to the Via Appia as it ran alongside the huge, shadowy facade of the Circus Maximus and then passed under the inelegant but functional arches of the Appian Aqueduct to exit the city by the Capena Gate. The official escort and Antonia’s ring were enough to persuade the centurion of the Urban Cohort to let them pass without question. Now deprived of the Vigiles escort, who had left them at the gate, they had to push their way through the throng of farmers making their way to the city to sell their produce. Passing the public reservoir on their right they came to the junction of the Via Appia and Via Latina, close by the tomb of the Scipios; here they took the right-hand fork, staying on the Via Appia, and headed southwest as the first glimmers of dawn broke up the absolute darkness of the cloud-ridden night sky.

Progress was easy along the dead straight road and, in just two and a half days, staying at comfortable inns along the way, paid for by the generous travelling allowance that Antonia had given Pallas, they covered the almost seventy miles to Tarracina, where the road arrived at the coast on the edge of the Caecuban wine district. Here the road turned east and they followed it through the seemingly endless fields of neatly tended rows of vines. Sumptuous-looking villas on hills overlooking the crops that provided the money to build them demonstrated the wealth of the wine-producing families of the region.

Vespasian spent much of the journey time contemplating the problems of the transfer of power between generations or dynasties and how it had been effected by other peoples in the past. The history books that he had inherited from his grandmother had originally inspired his interest and then, in the last three months at Gaius’ house, he had belatedly taken up his uncle’s offer of the use of his good-sized library. With not much else to do in the evenings he had made his way through Homer, Herodotus and Thucydides as well as Callisthenes’ account of Alexander’s conquests — curtailed owing to the author’s execution by his subject. He had finally read Caesar and the more recently published History of Rome by Titus Livius. All these and more had widened his knowledge and understanding of politics and confirmed a truth in life: power and glory for their own sakes were the only motivations needed for the men who had sought them, to keep them; history was not littered with men like Cincinnatus.

Having spent the third night at Fundi they followed the road southwest again back to the sea and then along the coast. The March days were warming up and the sky stayed clear of clouds. The Tyrrhenian Sea sparkled to their right; trading ships and galleys passed to and fro in the busy sea lane between Ostia and Neapolis, now reopened after winter.

Passing Mount Massicus, they entered Campania and the Falerian wine district. Here the style of buildings became noticeably more Greek, attesting to the mixed ancestry of the Roman citizens of the region.

They spent the fifth night at the town of Volturnum, situated on the river of the same name, and had a pleasant meal on a vine-shaded terrace watching the fishermen offloading their catch after the day’s fishing at sea, just two miles downstream. Leaving early in the morning, they travelled the last few miles at a decent pace and, as the sun began to sink towards the sea, they passed the Portus Julius — home to the western fleet — and approached the rocky promontory of Misenum, which rose from the sea like the arching back of a mythical sea monster.

‘They seemed to be expecting us,’ Magnus commented as the gate to the imperial cliff-top estate was swung closed behind them by two uniformed Praetorians.

‘Macro must have sent a message in advance of us,’ Vespasian replied as they rode up the paved path to the villa at the tip of the promontory. ‘He said that his men guarded Misenum.’

‘I don’t know whether being guarded by Macro’s men should make me feel safe or not.’

Vespasian grinned at his friend. ‘I know the feeling; but I can assure you that it’s a lot safer than being guarded by Sejanus’.’

‘Let’s hope that it never comes to that,’ Magnus muttered.

They came to the whitewashed wall surrounding the villa and rode through an arch. Vespasian, along with all of his companions, gasped at the beauty of the place: set almost at the cliff’s edge, the single-storey, pink-marble-walled villa with its terracotta-tiled roof overlooked the glittering bay of Neapolis, which was speckled with ships and dominated by the humped-back mass of Mount Vesuvius rising over four thousand feet from the coastal plain. In front of the villa was a circular pool, fifty feet in diameter, surrounded by a colonnade studded with statues pillaged from Greece and Asia. At its centre was a marble fountain depicting the sea god, Triton; his human torso blended into a fish tail as he seemed to leap from the depths of the pool spurting a gush of water skywards from his upturned mouth whilst brandishing a conch shell in his left hand and, like his father Poseidon, a trident in his right.

Around the pool the gardens were laid out with a pleasing symmetry. Eight wide, shrub-lined paths emanated at regular intervals from the colonnade and terminated in the circular path, upon which they now stood, that encompassed the whole garden. The path was rimmed with acacias and cypresses with low, stone benches at their feet to provide a shady place to sit and read or just to contemplate the beauty of the setting whilst enjoying the soft sea breeze on your face.

A girlish scream brought the party out of their silent admiration for the place. Vespasian looked towards the direction of the noise and saw Caligula, on the other side of the pool, running down one of the paths, chased by two young girls; all three were naked.

As he reached the pool he jumped in and started to wade across; the girls followed him, cupping their hands and splashing water over his back. On reaching the edge he made a show of not being able to climb out and the girls caught him and, jumping all over him, pulled him under. There was a playful thrashing of lithe limbs breaking the surface of the pool until eventually Caligula surfaced and rose to his feet with the youngest girl draped around his neck. He looked towards where Vespasian and his friends sat on their horses and, instantly recognising them, waved.

‘At last,’ he called. ‘I’ve been so looking forward to this. Come over.’

With a degree of trepidation Vespasian led the party to the pool’s edge whilst the girls, with much giggling and squealing, hauled Caligula under again. Vespasian dismounted and approached his friend, who had managed to get to his feet again. Caligula divested himself of the young girls to reveal the most prodigious erection, almost as big as the false phalluses worn by actors in satyr plays: nearly a foot long and with a girth and scrotum to match.

‘Vespasian,’ Caligula cried, stepping out of the pool and grasping Vespasian’s forearm; his sunken eyes beamed with delight. ‘It’s good to see you. Look, I’m still alive — how about that? Tiberius hasn’t decided to kill me; in fact quite the opposite, he’s going to make me his heir.’ He gave a short, semi-hysterical laugh. ‘When I’m Emperor I’ll be able to play with my sisters all the time. Drusilla, Livilla, this is my friend Vespasian and his brother Sabinus; you must both be very friendly to them.’

‘Drusilla,’ the elder of the two said, holding out her hand; she could not have been more than fifteen. She had a small but not unattractive mouth and slightly chubby cheeks. Her ivory skin glistened with water and her thick black hair hung in damp clumps and stuck to her shoulders. She made no attempt to cover her nakedness and Vespasian was unable to help his eyes drifting over her firm adolescent breasts and down to other points further south. She looked at him with appraising brown eyes as he took her hand.

‘I’m very pleased to make your acquaintance,’ he managed to say, tearing his eyes away from her nubile body and meeting hers.

‘And I’m Julia Livilla,’ the younger sister said, stepping out of the pool. ‘I enjoy making new friends, especially if they’re friends of dear Gaius.’

‘This is a nice Livilla, not like that gruesome aunt of mine,’ Caligula said, stroking her cheek; she clasped her arms around Caligula’s neck and gave him an affectionate kiss on the lips whilst pressing her belly against his persistent erection. She was about two years younger than her sister; she shared Drusilla’s small mouth but had higher, more pronounced cheekbones and a longer, sharper nose. Her breasts had just started to bud on her skinny ribcage.

Caligula disentangled himself from his sister and greeted Pallas, who managed to act as if there was absolutely nothing amiss, nodded briefly at Magnus and then approached Corbulo, who was standing with his mouth open, goggle-eyed and positively brimming with aristocratic outrage.

‘This is Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo,’ Vespasian told Caligula by way of an introduction.

‘Hello,’ Caligula exclaimed, and then leapt back into the pool, leaving Corbulo even more speechless than before.

‘We shall have dinner soon,’ Caligula said, resurfacing. ‘Back to the house now, my sweets.’

His sisters giggled, and then, each with a hand grasping his magnificent penis, led their brother back to the villa.

‘I’ll find the house steward,’ Pallas said, climbing back up on to the wagon, ‘and get him to organise our rooms and horses.’

He flicked the reins and the wagon moved off around the pool. Vespasian followed, leading his horse and hoping that Caligula and his sisters would dress for dinner.

Vespasian stepped out of his room into the courtyard garden to find Clemens sitting with Sabinus on a stone bench under a fig tree. The garden was enclosed only on three sides, the southern end being left open to afford a stunning view over the Bay of Neapolis; in the distance, with its sheer cliffs glowing red in the last rays of the sun, lay Capreae.

‘It’s madness over there,’ Clemens said as he clasped Vespasian’s forearm. ‘The old man’s gone quite mad. He’s obsessed by sex, death and astrology to the extent that he thinks about nothing else, apart from the construction of the new villa that he’s building: the Villa Iovis. It’s only half finished but he’s moved into the completed part and has filled it with pornographic mosaics and frescoes. I sometimes wonder whether it might not be a good idea for Sejanus to become Emperor. At least he has Roman values. There’s nothing Greek about him; you wouldn’t find him sodomising the young sons of his supposed friends. And he’d keep death where it belongs: in the arena or on the battlefield.’

‘Or in the law courts,’ Vespasian added.

‘Yes, well, there’s always going to be an element of that no matter who’s Emperor; but Tiberius goes too far. Our Republican ancestors would fall on their swords for shame if they saw some of the things that I’ve seen in the last few months. One time he got over a thousand slaves and had one of them gutted in front of the rest, who were told that any man who didn’t do as he was ordered would die in the same painful fashion. He then lined them all up and made them masturbate until they were all erect — his young catamites went along the line helping any of them who was having a problem — and then forced them into a long line of buggery; over a thousand of them in a row, can you imagine it?’

Vespasian, much to his consternation, found himself able to.

‘Then,’ Clemens continued, ‘he had a century of Praetorians — infantry, not my cavalry boys — go up and down the line strangling the slaves as they orgasmed and reminding those who hadn’t what would happen to them if they stopped, even if they were pumping a dead man’s arse.’

‘That’s not really the action of a Scipio or a Julius Caesar,’ Vespasian agreed.

‘What was Tiberius doing whilst all this was going on?’ Sabinus asked, mildly fascinated by the whole image.

‘He had the fifteen-year-old son of Lucius Vitellius Veteris fellating him.’

‘What about Caligula? Was he there?’ Vespasian asked hoping for an insight into his friend’s eccentric behaviour that afternoon.

‘Oh yes, and positively encouraging the old man,’ Clemens replied, shaking his head. ‘He’s worked out that to stay alive around Tiberius you’ve got to seem to be interested in his new hobbies. The first couple of months he was there he was in a constant state of terror, thinking that Tiberius was going to execute him on a whim at any moment, which I think has unhinged him a bit.’

‘A bit?’ Vespasian queried. ‘He was having sex with his sisters when we arrived.’

‘He’s been doing that for the last couple of years,’ Clemens replied dismissively. ‘He just can’t help himself when it comes to women, including his own blood. What I mean by unhinged is that he seems to find it hard to concentrate on any one thing for too long and he’s become prone to hysterical laughter for no reason; but other than that he’s still very much the same: sexually insatiable but good company and full of life.’

‘Well, I’m pleased to hear it,’ Vespasian said, strangely unsurprised by Caligula’s relationship with his sisters; he now understood the reason for Antonia’s disapproval of his visits to Misenum.

Further discussion of the subject was put off by the arrival of the house steward to announce that dinner was ready. They followed the steward into the villa as the sun finally disappeared beyond the horizon leaving the evening star burning brightly over the placid Tyrrhenian Sea.

‘Tiberius doesn’t like to be surprised,’ Caligula announced as the gustatio was cleared away, ‘even if it’s someone with good news or even a present.’ He took a sip of his wine and then laughed briefly, before putting his hand on Vespasian’s, who was reclining to his left on the same couch. ‘Last month a fisherman scaled the cliffs to bring Tiberius the largest mullet I’ve ever seen. The old man was so unnerved by someone being able to get into his presence unannounced that he ordered one of his guards to scrub the man’s face raw with the scales of the fish.’ He paused whilst he adjusted something on Drusilla’s dress; she reclined on Caligula’s right and had her back towards him talking with Corbulo, who was uncomfortably sharing the next couch with a very friendly Julia Livilla.

‘Anyway,’ Caligula carried on, happy with whatever adjustment he had just made, ‘the fisherman showed spirit and despite his obvious agony managed to crack a joke.’ He started to giggle almost hysterically and eased himself closer to Drusilla. ‘He said… he said: “Thank the gods that I didn’t offer Caesar the huge crab that I caught.”’ Caligula broke off into peals of laughter whilst seemingly trying to get himself comfortable on the couch. Vespasian joined in the mirth along with Clemens and Sabinus, who reclined on the couch to the left.

‘But then…’ Caligula continued as he managed to get himself under control, ‘but then Tiberius orders the crab to be found and has the fisherman’s face rubbed with that; it almost took all his features off.’ Caligula dissolved into hysterical laughter, which ended with a sudden jerk of his lower body and an abrupt grunt of pleasure. He reached for his wine cup. As Caligula drank, Vespasian took the opportunity to raise himself up slightly and look over him at Drusilla. He looked away very quickly. Her stola was raised above her buttocks; Caligula had evidently penetrated her, but, judging from the angle of their bodies, it was not by the standard method. Drusilla was carrying on her conversation with Corbulo as if nothing had happened; from the look on Corbulo’s face Vespasian could guess that he knew perfectly well what was going on.

‘So I’ve made sure that Uncle Tiberius is expecting you, without unsettling him,’ Caligula continued as the next course — two large platters of mixed seafood — was served. A soft sea breeze blowing through the open window gently billowed the slaves’ tunics as they padded around the table.

‘How?’ Vespasian asked, selecting a crayfish.

‘He has an old charletan of an astrologer living over there called Thrasyllus who, incidentally, is the father of the lovely Ennia whom I met at dinner at my grandmother’s house.’

‘Macro’s wife?’ Sabinus queried.

‘I believe that she is; far too good for him, I’ve a mind to try her myself. Anyway, this Thrasyllus spends most of his time telling Tiberius that he is going to live to oversee the changes that will start when the Phoenix flies again in Egypt in three years’ time.’

‘What’s the Phoenix?’ Corbulo asked, anxious to be distracted from the outrage being perpetrated so close to him.

‘It’s a bird that has a life cycle of five hundred years, at the end of which it bursts into flames and a new Phoenix is born from its ashes heralding the beginning of a new age. Anyway, Tiberius likes the fact that he’s predicted to live for at least another three years so he listens to Thrasyllus; so I’ve persuaded him to predict that I’ll receive important news from my grandmother brought by a friend.’

‘But how will we get to Tiberius?’

‘Every morning, after he’s finished his… er… exercises, Tiberius and I go down to the unfinished part of Villa Iovis to check on the progress — he’s particularly interested in a frieze he’s having done in what will be his bedroom. So if we hide you in that room overnight I can warn him that the predicted news from Antonia has arrived and that I feel it’s so important that I think he should hear it; hopefully he’ll consent to seeing you.’

‘Just make sure that there’re no mullets or crabs handy,’ Vespasian said, breaking open the crayfish and rubbing his finger up and down the sharp shell.

Caligula laughed slightly more uproariously than the remark merited and adjusted his position against Drusilla. ‘Crabs!’ he guffawed, passing a whole grilled baby octopus to his sister, who was having trouble reaching the platters on the table.

Vespasian had noted with a good deal of relief that the siblings seemed content to remain surreptitiously coupled and were not writhing around next to him. Corbulo just carried on staring at them in disbelief and seemed not only to have lost his appetite but also the battle with Julia Livilla, who now rested a friendly hand on his thigh.

‘My men meeting you at the cove will take you to the perimeter wall of the Villa Iovis,’ Clemens said, getting the conversation back on track. ‘I’ll join you there once I’ve taken Caligula back to his quarters, and escort you to the room. My men will guard the door to make sure none of the artisans see you in the morning. Once you’ve seen Tiberius you’ll stay in the room until it’s dark and then we’ll get you back to the cove; that way you shouldn’t come to the attention of any of Sejanus’ men.’

Vespasian and Sabinus both nodded in approval.

‘If you think that it’ll work, Clemens,’ Sabinus said, ‘then I’m happy.’

‘It’ll work,’ Clemens replied, breaking off a hunk of bread and soaking it in the seafood juice at the bottom of the platter in front of him. ‘The problem’s going to be Tiberius’ state of mind.’

‘But Caligula said that he would forewarn him — didn’t you?’ Vespasian nudged his friend, who was now engrossed in feeding Drusilla prawns.

‘What?’ Caligula asked, teasing Drusilla with a prawn.

‘I said: you were going to forewarn Tiberius so he should be in a decent mood when he sees us.’

‘Oh yes, yes, absolutely,’ Caligula replied turning his attention away from his sister. ‘He should be, but that’s just the trouble. Recently, when he’s in a good mood, he’s taken to having people thrown off the cliff-top just for fun; he finds it very amusing. He’s been doing it so regularly to people he’s invited over to the island as guests that he’s even had a unit of marines, armed with clubs, stationed at the base of the cliff to finish off anyone unfortunate enough to survive the fall; he told me that doesn’t want his guests to suffer unnecessarily for his pleasure. That’s why a lot of the people whom he invites over commit suicide rather than accept the invitation.’

Caligula gave a short high-pitched laugh and went back to feeding Drusilla.

Vespasian looked aghast at Sabinus and Clemens and wondered just how much of this Antonia had known before she had sent them to see this madman on Capreae.