Rome's lost son

CHAPTER VI

Vespasian admired the fortified walls of Abydos on the Asian shore, just half a mile off to starboard as the trireme rowed by, struggling against the current of the Hellespont and a contrary wind. For what was once such a strategic town positioned at the junction of Europa and Asia it was now a city of little importance, as Roman peace had negated the need to guard against invasion from one continent to the other. Looking to either bank of this mile-wide channel he tried to imagine the bridges that Alexander, Darius and Xerxes had used to transport their armies across and found himself recalling his one-time friend Caligula’s bridge across the Bay of Neapolis; that had been three times the length needed to bridge the Hellespont. The brash young Emperor had ridden across it wearing Alexander’s breastplate in an attempt to outshine those colossi of history. However, the bridge was to be a memorial to Caligula’s folly rather than the proof of his military prowess. Vespasian smiled as he recalled his thoughts on seeing the Pharos in Alexandria for the first time: if you want to be remembered, build something that’s of use to the people. Caligula’s mistake had been to build something that was of no use to anyone — not even himself.

‘You seem pleased with yourself,’ Sabinus said, joining him at the rail looking very wan; he had spent the first two days of the voyage from the closest port to Philippi, another Neapolis, proving yet again just what a bad sailor he was.

‘I was thinking about Caligula.’

‘That’s nothing to smile about; it’s something that I try to avoid doing. I see Clementina’s face as he dragged her off to rape her and then I see her as she lay dying in our house, flayed by a malevolent god.’

Vespasian shuddered and was silent for a few moments as he remembered the confrontation with the god, Heylel, conjured by druids in the garden of Sabinus’ Aventine villa; Sabinus’ wife had suffered a hideous death at its hands. ‘Yes, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be; I’ve got used to it now. And it’s a comfort having my son serving as a military tribune with the Fifth Macedonica. It means I get to see him three or four times a year.’

‘Which reminds me, I need you to take the son of a client of mine on as a military tribune.’

‘Whose son?’

‘Laelius.’

‘The chickpea contractor?’

‘That’s the one. I had Pallas get the Emperor to restore him to the equestrian order as part of the deal to come out here.’

‘What’s in it for me?’

‘Call it repayment for having you exonerated of all blame for missing those Parthians.’

Sabinus leant heavily on the rail and breathed deeply to control his churning innards. ‘I’m never going to live that down, am I?’

‘So it’s a deal?’

‘Yes, it’s a deal; I’ll write to Laelius offering the lad a position as soon as I’m back in Thessalonike.’

‘I’m sure his gratitude will be expressed in chickpeas.’

‘As long as it’s expressed I don’t care.’ With a sudden heave Sabinus lost the battle with his guts and shot a thin stream of pale liquid over the side.

Vespasian slapped his brother on the back. ‘I just hope that whatever Tryphaena manages to tell you about the Thracian nobility is worth all this discomfort.’

‘It will be,’ Sabinus said in a high voice as he convulsed again. ‘When we apprise her of the situation she’ll be very anxious to convince us of her total loyalty to Rome so that we will vouch for her if Agrippina’s ever exposed. That’s got to be worth a few potential traitors’ names and suggestions on how to deal with them.’

*

The arrival of two men of proconsular and one of propraetor rank caused a flurry of activity in the recently modernised port of Cyzicus the following day. The two customs officials who waited on the quay for the gangway to be lowered looked at each other in alarm at the sight of senatorial togas surrounded by so many lictors. After a brief enquiry as to the names of such distinguished visitors the paperwork was suddenly deemed to be unnecessary and all thought of searching the ship or charging the exorbitantly high mooring fees disappeared from the officials’ minds, as they tried to outdo one another in their attempts to ingratiate themselves with their illustrious guests. Messages announcing their arrival were sent to Tryphaena and all the other worthies of the city, refreshments were called for as suitable transport was arranged, and flattery and obsequiousness oozed out of every sentence in the firm belief that one can never fawn too much to men of high rank.

Eventually two suitable carriages were procured and the brothers and their uncle were aided into one by many willing hands as Magnus and Hormus were obliged to climb the small gap between the ground and the other vehicle’s step using nothing but their own exertion. The two officials then insisted on guiding the lictors through the town, which was situated on the south coast of an island in the Propontis and connected to the mainland by a causeway a third of a mile long. With expressions of sincere gratitude for having been allowed to be of service, and with heartfelt requests that the Cyzicus customs service should be spoken of in a positive tone should their excellencies ever find occasion to mention it in the high circles that they surely inhabit, the two officials delivered their precious charges to the impressive building that was Tryphaena’s residence. They watched Vespasian, Sabinus and Gaius being received by the great lady herself without noticing Magnus and Hormus emerging from the second carriage, and therefore missed the chance of a purse of silver that Vespasian had instructed Hormus to give them should a tip be appropriate. In mutual agreement that they had done their finest crawling to persons of much importance, they walked away, convinced that they had shown the Cyzicus customs service in its best light, oblivious to the fact that they had totally failed in their duty to collect revenue for the province of Asia in the presence of three of Rome’s élite.

It had been over twenty years since Vespasian had seen Tryphaena and she had aged like wine rather than milk. Born in the same year as both Magnus and Gaius, she was now in her early sixties and had weathered the years far better than they. Her hair, gloss raven, was definitely dyed, Vespasian decided, but in a far more subtle way than Gaius’ tonged curls; indeed his use of rouge and kohl were made to seem extravagant next to her restrained application of cosmetics.

She smiled at Vespasian with dark eyes as he squeezed the fingers of her proffered right hand; her finely woven aquamarine stola accentuated, but did not flaunt, the curve of her hips and breasts — although what devices lay hidden beneath it to counter natural forces on that part of her anatomy, Vespasian could not guess. ‘Welcome, proconsul and ambassador to my nephew Radamistus, the rightful King of Armenia.’

‘You are well informed, Tryphaena.’

She inclined her head with a slight raising of her eyebrows in acknowledgement of Vespasian’s use of the familiar: the last time they had met she had been a queen and he a mere military tribune; now he was a proconsul and she just a private citizen. ‘My agents keep me up to date.’

‘Do they, though? Do they really?’ With a questioning look, he walked past her into the atrium where the city worthies waited and a steward had assembled slaves with trays of refreshments.

Half an hour later, Vespasian stood on a terrace overlooking the city of brightly painted public buildings and whitewashed, Greek-style houses. Sipping pomegranate juice from a blue glass goblet engraved with Bacchus — or more probably, Dionysus — enjoying the nectar of the vine, he rested one hand on the balustrade and looked in amazement at the huge amphitheatre that dominated the view even though it was outside the city walls.

‘Some consider that it should be ranked amongst the wonders of the world,’ Tryphaena’s voice said softly in his ear. ‘It’s over a hundred and fifty paces across and its walls are taller than your Circus Maximus.’

‘It’s an impressive building.’

‘It’s more than that; it’s a work of brilliance. It’s built on top of a river that’s covered over but can be dammed so that the arena floods and naval battles can be staged there.’

Vespasian was genuinely impressed but concealed the fact. ‘Claudius is going to stage a naval battle on the Fucine Lake before it’s drained.’

‘But, my dear Vespasian, that’s a one-off event and it’s miles from Rome; here we can entertain the people without them having a two-day journey either way. I’ve suggested to my cousin Agrippina that when Nero succeeds his father it might be a project worthy of a great emperor to be remembered by: an amphitheatre that can be flooded, as large, or larger, than this, built in the centre of Rome for the people of Rome.’

‘That could be a monument that stands forever,’ Vespasian agreed. ‘After all, who would want to destroy a place of public entertainment?’

Tryphaena took a fruit juice from a passing slave and said casually, ‘But you believe Agrippina has other plans for her son?’

Vespasian stroked the smooth white marble of the balustrade in thought. ‘So your agents do indeed keep you up to date.’

‘Yes, they do and you are both right and wrong. Right in that Agrippina wants to secure her son’s accession as soon as possible. But wrong in that you believe that she instigated the Parthian embassy and wanted to keep it secret from me.’

‘You have very good agents, Tryphaena, and fast. They must have travelled at a great speed to bring that to your notice before we arrived; I only said it three days ago. And I spoke quite quietly at a private dinner.’

The former Queen was unapologetic. ‘To survive one often needs to hear the quietly spoken private word.’ She looked over to Sabinus deep in conversation with a city worthy whose name Vespasian had instantly forgotten upon being introduced. ‘The man to whom Sabinus is talking is furnishing him with the names of the chieftains of my former kingdom whom I would consider to be less than happy with Rome’s annexation of Thracia six years ago. You see, Vespasian, with what alacrity I press to prove my loyalty to Rome?’

‘So you did have a hand in removing Mithridates and replacing him with your nephew? Otherwise you wouldn’t feel induced to make such a swift protestation of loyalty before it’s even been questioned.’

‘Oh, but it has been questioned, quietly and in private. I had more than a hand in the coup: I got my brother-in-law to suggest it to my nephew and provide him with the army. It was easy to do: I just made him think that Radamistus was plotting to murder him and take his throne, which I did without difficulty as it was the truth.’

Vespasian shook his head in disapproval. ‘Is this how eastern politics work?’

‘It’s much the same as Roman politics, proconsul: power and position. The only real difference is that we have fewer families fighting each other, which means that there’s a much higher incidence of patricide, fratricide, infanticide and any other type of family “cide” that you can think of.’

‘Charming.’ Vespasian’s gaze wandered over to the dun-brown mainland strewn with rugged formations of rock and copses of leafless trees housing hundreds of birds; the sun was weak and the land was still in winter’s grip. Goats tore at rough grazing watched over by small boys wrapped in cloaks made from the skins of their charges. Here and there a slender spiral of smoke rose to the sky, marking the position of a mean dwelling where the boys’ elder brothers and fathers worked with their hands, chopping wood, repairing tools, roofs and fencing, while sisters and mothers fetched, carried, cleaned, mended and cooked as the family struggled to survive the winter. It was a view, Vespasian surmised, that had not changed in centuries: the common man scraping a living. ‘But I imagine that it was ever thus for the royal houses of the East just as it was ever thus for those farmers.’

‘Do you disapprove?’

‘Who am I to judge?’ As he looked back to the mainland all the birds rose as one from the trees and flew off, out to sea. ‘The rural poor have the same choice everywhere inside and outside the Empire: stay where they are and work the land or join the army and fight for the powerful. Whereas for the powerful families it’s the opposite: fight to maintain your position or eventually become a part of the rural poor. If that means killing your father, son, uncle or whatever, so be it; but we try to do things differently in Rome.’

‘Do you, though? Do you really?’

A trembling in Vespasian’s legs distracted him; all conversation on the terrace died off as people looked around, startled. Vespasian felt the tremble grow, accompanied by a deep bass, distant rumble and the closer rattle of cups and plates shaking and clinking on vibrating tables; his drink formed concentric circles, the waves moving outwards with increasing rapidity.

Tryphaena put a reassuring hand on his forearm. ‘It’s just a tremor, nothing to worry about. We have them all the time in this area; the people believe that it’s because we live close to an entrance to the underworld. I should have read the signs; the gods always warn the birds. I’ll offer a sacrifice to Hades and Persephone; perhaps that will help to restore harmony between them before she returns to this world to bring spring and summer back to us.’

The sea seemed to shudder, waves breaking irregularly; beyond, on the mainland, the goats ran in fluid groups, changing direction at random, flowing hither and thither as their small minders huddled for safety beneath trees and boulders, terrified of the wrath of the gods that the tremor might well presage.

But the gods’ anger did not boil over and calm soon returned; the conversation on the terrace picked up with the forced nonchalance of people wishing to mask their fear.

Tryphaena breathed a deep sigh as if she had been holding her breath; she looked over to her steward who had noticeably paled. ‘Have a pair of the blackest bulls brought to the priests of the chthonic gods. They’re to sacrifice them to Hades and Persephone in the name of the citizens of Cyzicus; but let it be known that it is at my expense.’

The steward bowed and went about his errand.

‘Displays of piety have a twofold benefit if they are made publicly,’ Tryphaena remarked, ‘wouldn’t you agree?’

‘In that they gain the favour of the gods and the popularity of the people?’ Vespasian was relieved to see that his pomegranate juice no longer vibrated.

‘I may not be a queen any longer but the people of this city look to me for leadership and patronage; all the new building that you see was paid for out of my own coffers. That buys me influence just as it would in Rome. It’s no different here.’

‘We don’t go around killing close family.’

‘And you don’t consider Tiberius’ great-nephews or Caligula’s cousin and great-uncle to be close family?’

Vespasian did not offer an opinion.

‘You accepted my assertion that Nero will inherit?’

Vespasian saw where she was heading with her argument. ‘Yes and he’s bound to kill Britannicus; but Britannicus is only a stepbrother.’

‘Indeed; but although it will be Nero who orders the knife wielded or the poison poured, Britannicus will have actually been killed by his own father. Claudius committed infanticide the moment he adopted Nero. So don’t try to pretend that you act in anyway different in Rome than we do in the East. Agrippina will kill her uncle and husband, Claudius, just as Caligula killed his great-uncle, Tiberius, just as Radamistus killed his uncle and father-in-law, Mithridates.’

‘So Mithridates is dead then?’

‘Smothered; and both his sons too.’

‘Smothered?’

‘Yes, Radamistus swore to his uncle that he would never harm him with blade or poison. Whatever may be said of my nephew, he’s no oath-breaker, so he had Mithridates smothered under a pile of clothes and then smothered his sons for mourning their father openly. I’m sure that comes as no surprise.’

‘Not really, no; it was the logical thing for Radamistus to do.’

‘As you said quietly in private the other night.’

Vespasian could not help a half-smile. ‘You’re not as well informed as you think. It was Sabinus who actually said it; I just agreed with him.’

‘I should have my agent strangled for that error,’ Tryphaena said lightly.

‘Then perhaps you will be able to tell me who it was?’

‘That would be the act of a fool.’

‘As would be having such a useful, active agent killed.’ Vespasian noted that Tryphaena did not dispute the point and immediately changed the subject. ‘So my embassy is a waste of time; I can’t restore a dead man to the throne, and yet if I don’t remove Radamistus Parthia will attempt to do so by force and we will be heading for war.’

‘It is a conundrum, proconsul.’

‘One which you helped to create.’ Vespasian looked at her pointedly. ‘Time to really press to prove your loyalty to Rome, I think. Persuade your nephew to step down.’

‘You’ll have to kill him because he won’t relinquish the throne now.’

The suggestion came as no surprise to Vespasian. ‘And will you help me do it?’

‘What would I gain by it?’

‘You would regain Rome’s trust.’

Tryphaena pointed to Sabinus still deep in conversation with the worthy. ‘I have just sold out at least a dozen of my former countrymen to do that. What would I really gain by helping you kill my nephew? Claudius will soon be dead, as you’ve worked out; my kinswoman Agrippina will see to that for the good of Rome before he completely loses our family’s power to his freedmen. In his place will be our golden boy Nero, and my Roman family will once again be back in control. So I will retain Rome’s favour and the favour of my brother in Pontus, my brother-in-law in Iberia and my nephew in Armenia; I am surrounded by friends.’ She indicated again to an enthusiastic-looking Sabinus. ‘What is more, the Governor of Thracia is now very well disposed towards me, and the new Governor of Asia, as you know, is my old friend Corbulo. So I ask you again: what would I gain?’

‘So you do want war with Parthia?’

‘Of course, proconsul; as you have already guessed — quietly and in private, but for many of the wrong reasons — that’s what this is all about. I may not be a queen any more, Vespasian, but the blood of the royal houses of the East and the Emperors of the West still flows in my veins. I would have neither of those great houses return to the level of the rural poor, as you so astutely observed.’

It was as if curtains before Vespasian’s eyes were drawn back and he suddenly saw Tryphaena for what she really was: another Antonia. But she was not fighting for one family’s survival in power, but two. ‘It’s you who is behind this, not Agrippina. You knew of the Parthian embassy and you timed your nephew’s invasion of Armenia to make it look as if they had instigated it in order to get a Roman embassy sent there; you wanted Parthia provoked. You know Corbulo, you had him recalled and given Asia so you could have Rome’s best general awaiting in the region because you couldn’t afford to have Rome lose the war that would secure both your families. If Rome beats Parthia in Armenia you gain even more than Agrippina.’

Tryphaena tutted with disappointment. ‘I always had high hopes for you, Vespasian; you’re close but you’ve missed one vital point. I knew that you had a keen mind and Antonia mentioned a few times in her letters just how impressed she was with your development; she evidently was being a little too generous. However, you did work out who my agent was when I carelessly as much as admitted that he was still with you; but you tried to take care not to let me know by changing the subject. Do you know which one?’

‘By a process of deduction, if it is one of my lictors — and how else would my words travel as fast as me? — then it has to be the only one that could disappear for half an hour without the permission of the senior lictor so that he could brief you upon our arrival before you came up here. Therefore it has to be the senior one himself and that would be confirmed by the fact that I saw him lurking outside the triclinium door the other night when it was opened suddenly and I had been talking quietly and in private.’

‘Very good. Will you keep him? As a favour to me, that is.’

‘So that he can spy on me?’

‘No, so that he can keep you alive.’

‘That’s what lictors are meant to do, amongst other things.’

‘Yes, but he will keep you alive for my sake because I chose him specifically to look after you.’

‘How? I only knew that I was coming East three days before I left; you had no time to get that news here and then fiddle with the lictor appointments.’

‘I’d already done it.’

‘So you’d already decided who would lead our embassy?’ Vespasian did not need an answer; now he truly understood and his eyes widened. ‘Your agent knew of the Parthian embassy because he was with it when it arrived in Tyras; he was with it because …’ Vespasian paused in admiration.

‘Go on; say it.’

‘He was with it because it didn’t come from Parthia, it came from here.’ Vespasian’s eyes widened as Tryphaena did nothing to deny his assertion. ‘It was false. You set it up to seem as if the Parthians had negotiated with the northern tribes and had your agent tell Sabinus who, naturally, believed him; and then you made sure that his failure to capture it was brought to the notice of the people who count in Rome. Meanwhile, the fake embassy returned here and you paid a trierarchus heading back to Rome to give Agarpetus information that implied that the embassy had travelled via Iberia; this was enough for Narcissus’ spy-master to bring the matter to his master’s notice. You timed the Iberian attack on Armenia at the same moment as the embassy would have been in that country to make the whole thing look as if it were a Parthian plot. Finally, you made sure that Narcissus suspected his enemy, the Empress, of treason by having Agarpetus intercept a false message purporting to be from one of her agents that implied that Agrippina knew of the embassy and was trying to keep it a secret from you. Pallas was right: he had been purposely kept in the dark while Narcissus was purposely enlightened. You also rightly concluded that Narcissus would think that he had an ally in me because Agrippina hated me and would use any excuse to block me. He also guessed that my brother might have known more than he had let on so therefore my uncle and I would be the best people to talk to him. But most of all you knew that a consul, newly stepped down, is the most obvious candidate to lead an embassy to Armenia if the grandeur of Rome is to be taken seriously and Pallas, who would make the final choice, would see me as his ally in a delicate matter. You are why I’m here.’

‘And all for the cost of three expendable ships.’ Tryphaena looked genuinely pleased at the exposure of her duplicity and took Vespasian by the arm and led him inside. ‘Antonia did train you well after all. Now I shall put all that training to good use.’

‘And why should I serve your cause?’

‘Because, proconsul, you would be foolish not to and I don’t think you are a foolish person. Now, how are your powers of suggestion? Because the procurator of Cappadocia, Julius Paelignus, is the key to this.’

Grey clouds rolled in on a northeasterly wind, thickening over the trireme’s masthead as if the incoming thunderstorm was aimed at that vessel alone and anything else that it hit was peripheral. Thunder rumbled with brooding menace across the Euxine and over the mountains of Pontus. The coastline showed the same threatening intent: high, dark cliffs rose from an unsettled sea, jagged teeth of rock at their base waiting to gnaw hungrily on any hull driven onto them by Poseidon’s malice, Fortuna’s whim or just plain bad seamanship.

Magnus pulled his cloak tight about his shoulders, his grey hair lank with spray as he looked with angst at the looming shore a quarter of a mile away to starboard and coming ever closer. Vespasian, standing next to Magnus at the starboard rail, glanced back at the trierarchus, positioned between the steering-oars; the deck bucked once more and all lurched in an effort to remain upright. The trierarchus scanned the endless procession of cliffs, his face set grim as the steersmen to either side battled to keep the two steering-oars’ blades straight in order to prevent any more drift towards the sure death that lurked so close to them.

‘He can’t see anywhere safe to heave-to,’ Vespasian said, his voice raised against the growing storm.

‘Then we should run before the wind,’ Magnus opined through clenched teeth.

‘What makes you a nautical expert all of a sudden?’

‘Logic: if you can’t fight against something then go with it.’

At that moment the trierarchus evidently came to the same conclusion and screamed a stream of orders through his speaking trumpet that sent the cowering crew scuttling barefoot to all points of the deck. Ropes were unsheeted and hauled upon as the steersmen pushed their oars to starboard and, as the trireme came round, a small section of the bow sail was unfurled; the leather immediately ballooned, pumped by the wind that drove the ship before it faster than it had done for the last five days. Five days since they had dropped Sabinus and Gaius — along with the untrustworthy lictors, despite Tryphaena’s request — at Byzantium and begun the long pull along the coast of Bithynia, Paphlagonia and then Pontus. Five days in which Vespasian had tried to get to grips with the magnitude of what Tryphaena had asked him to do; no, not asked, ordered. And it had been an order that he could not refuse because to have done so would have spelt disaster for him and his family. Gone had been the kindly Queen who had helped him when he had been a young military tribune in Thracia; now he could see that she had only been kindly because he had been working for Antonia’s, and therefore her own, agenda. It had not been threats that had bent him to her will; it had been bald statements of fact.

Fact: his family were not well established and could revert to the status of the rural poor within two generations if Tryphaena’s two families decided to make it so. Fact: however Tryphaena’s scheme ended, either Pallas’ or Narcissus’ life would be forfeit, leaving the survivor in Tryphaena’s debt and Vespasian would benefit from that. Fact: that what he was to do would ultimately benefit Rome and, although it could never be made public knowledge, his participation would eventually be whispered in the right people’s ears and in the meantime he could console himself with the thought of service for the greater good. But there had been one other reason why he had finally decided to do Tryphaena’s bidding and that was not a fact but, rather, a hunch; and it was a hunch that he kept to himself.

But he had not been fooled into feeling safe and that was why he had entrusted Gaius with a letter to Caenis. If something should go wrong with what he planned to do and he was exposed and killed, she would be able to make sure that his reasons for acting as he did would not remain secret as Tryphaena would wish. Gaius would wait out the year with Sabinus in his provinces before returning to Rome next spring with Vespasian, all being well, and if not, then with just the letter.

As the ship began to run fast with the gathering wind, carrying him swiftly towards his destination, Vespasian felt a strange relief; the gale was hastening what he must do. If his mission went well, Tryphaena would reward him and Corbulo would have the military command that he desired.

Because Vespasian was hastening towards Armenia to provoke Parthia into war.