Sejanus

7

'Marcus, you're not concentrating.'

'Hmm?'

'You do realise that this sleuthing business is simply ruining our love life?'

'Yeah?'

'Yes. I thought we'd done with all of that. And personally I find it very hard to make love with a brain ticking away just above my head.'

I slipped an arm round her shoulders. 'Brains don't tick.'

'Yours does. It's distracting.'

Yeah, well. Maybe I had been putting in a bit of illicit thinking. There's a time and a place for everything, and as far as turning possible political scams over in your head is concerned two in the morning in a beautiful woman's bed isn't either. I pulled her tighter and her chin wedged itself into the hollow of my neck.

'How did you know to pull that stunt with the wine?' I said.

'Mother used to do it. And Aunt Marcia. It's Torquata's one failing.'

'Failing? I'd hate to match that old dear cup for cup in a drinking bout. As a Vestal she's wasted. A shame it had to be the last of the Caecuban, though.'

I felt Perilla grin. 'Nothing else would have done. I wanted her in a good mood. She adores wine, but she wouldn't have drunk so much if it hadn't been the best.'

'Oh, I'm not complaining. Not really. The stuff went to a good home, and Livia would've approved. Thanks again, lady.'

She snuggled against me. 'You're welcome.'

'Is that so?' I kissed her ear, then moved on to the cheek. No response. Things should've been warming up by now, but apart from the snuggle they weren't. For a lady who'd just lodged a formal complaint Perilla was being pretty distant. That should've started alarm bells ringing. It didn't.

'You're right about one more thing,' she murmured.

'Yeah?' I carried on westward. 'Namely?'

'Junia Torquata is wasted as a Vestal. Vestals can leave the priesthood and marry after thirty years, when there's still time to have children. One child, at any rate. I'm surprised she didn't do it.'

Uh-oh. There went the bell. I paused, just to the right of her mouth, and tried to keep my voice light. 'You joking, Perilla? After that crack about vipers what kind of a mother do you think she'd make?'

'Torquata isn't as hard-bitten as she likes to appear. And what woman doesn't want children? Even a Vestal?'

There was no answer to that, not one I wanted to make, anyway. And I could feel the spot of dampness on Perilla's cheek under mine. Quietly, I gathered her in and we made love, as we always did, as we'd been doing for the past ten years. In terms of comfort it wasn't much, but it was all I could offer.

Perilla had been right about the brain. I couldn't sleep. Leaving her huddled under the blanket I picked up the nightlight and crept downstairs to the study, via the wine cellar: Bathyllus was in bed long ago and if he'd heard me moving around he would've got up. I'd run the little guy pretty ragged these past few days, and he deserved a break. Bathyllus gets sarky when he doesn't have his eight hours.

I lit the reading lamp next to the couch, pulled out my notes and poured myself a cup of Setinian (no Caecuban left; really no Caecuban left, this time. I'd checked). 'You Know Who'. Yeah, well, I did at that. Torquata must've been talking about Agrippina, especially with the bit about the kids: Germanicus's widow was tough as old army boots, and she'd kept both her sons right under her thumb; the third one, too, Gaius, although he was the favourite.

So. Silanus had been mixed up with Agrippina. Sure, I knew from my talk with Lippillus that he'd been a Julian supporter, but this sounded more specific. And it involved money.

Okay, what had we got? I laid it out. Gaius Silanus had been the governor of the richest province in the empire; better, Asia was senatorial, so although Tiberius kept a watching brief, as he did throughout the provinces, he wasn't directly concerned with the admin. Or the taxes. Right. A scenario. Let's say Silanus was creaming a bit off the top, like governors do and have done since we took Sicily from the Greeks and Carthaginians almost three hundred years back; only instead of the money going into his own pocket it went to the Julians. That would fit in with what Torquata had said about her brother not sticking to feathering his own nest. It would explain the treason charge, too, and why the Wart hadn't wanted the details to be made public. He couldn't afford an open breach with Agrippina, and he wouldn't've wanted it, either, not when he was grooming her sons for higher things. So long as the hole was plugged, that was enough. He'd even commuted Silanus's death sentence to exile, as a goodwill gesture.

I took a swallow of wine: the Setinian tasted almost rough after the Caecuban, but like I'd told Perilla Livia's thank-you present had gone to the best home possible. Yeah, that fitted. It fitted with Caesius Cordus, too, the Cyrenean governor who'd also been prosecuted for extortion and treason. Cordus was the other half of the scam. Maybe he'd put in a penny or two himself — Crete/Cyrene wasn't in Asia's league, but it was no pauper — but I suspected his main job had been to launder the cash-flow between Silanus and Rome. Whichever way it was, he'd been nailed at the same time; only not jointly, because that would've started people thinking. Or at least made a point that the Wart didn't want made…

Asia. There had been something else about Asia, if I could only find it. I shuffled through the notes looking for the reference. There it was, on the top of the third sheet; one of the prosecutions I hadn't included in my shortened treason list. A year after Silanus was exiled to Cythnos a guy named Lucilius Capito had been condemned for — quote — 'usurping the governor's authority and using military force'. And Capito, so my notes said, had been the Wart's Asian factor…

Things were falling into place sweet as a nut. I sat back. That made sense, too. As emperor, Tiberius had private estates which he ran through factors: narrow-stripers, plain-mantles, even a few freedmen. Most of the estates were in Italy, but a lot were overseas, and of these Asia was the biggie. Taken together, the revenues from the Wart's Asian properties would've equalled the tax returns of a small province: Noricum, say. or Lusitania. With both the governor and the imperial agent chipping in to the kitty we weren't talking peanuts.

Okay. In Capito's case I was guessing. But let's say he was in on the scam. While Silanus was governor there was no problem; the governor took his cut from the ordinary provincials and Capito milked the private sector for what he could get, with the governor's connivance and support. Only then Silanus gets chopped and Capito is on his own. Sure, the guy could simply have pulled in his horns and crawled back into his shell, but he didn't; maybe he'd just got used to being the big shot and couldn't give it up. Anyway, he carries on the way he's been doing, using the local government troops to provide the muscle, and the new governor, who's Tiberius's man, naturally blows the whistle. Whereupon the Wart hauls Capito back to Rome and has the senate detach his balls…

It would work. Sure it would, although I'd need to dig if I wanted proof. The important thing was that I had that tingle at the base of my skull that told me I was right. With that amount of cash flowing into Agrippina's secret fund on a regular basis she could really make things happen. Even when the cash-flow stopped. A careful Roman housewife like her would know how to make the best use of the pennies…

My jaw muscles tightened and I yawned. Yeah, well, maybe that was enough for one night. If I'd uncovered a major Julian finance scam it wasn't a bad evening's work. A shame to leave the wine, though; I'd hardly touched it. And I knew that as soon as I got upstairs my brain would start buzzing again. Ticking. Whatever.

Okay. One final stretch, and we'd call it a day. What was it for, the Asian money?

I had the answer to that one already. I'd had it ten years back. When Germanicus had been chopped he and Agrippina had been plotting treason. Treason doesn't come cheap, not these days. People have to be bought, and kept bought: I knew a few of them now myself. Oh, sure, there are the altruists who conspire out of principle, but they're pretty thin on the ground. Even the Julians couldn't expect all their supporters to be dewy-eyed devotees willing to give their all for the cause. A Roman doesn't give anything for nothing. He expects something back.

So. Silanus and his pals had been financing a Julian war-chest. The big question was why? The Julian plot was dead; thanks to Sejanus and the Wart it had gone down the tube with Germanicus's own death, a full three years before Silanus had been prosecuted. Yet Torquata had talked about a specific scam, an 'idea', she'd called it, that was linked with Agrippina. When Germanicus had died, he and his wife had had the empire all sewn up, potentially: the Rhine legions, the east, even Italy and Rome itself. The only really important bits left unaccounted for were…

Were…

I sat up so fast I spilled my wine. Jupiter! Oh, holy Jupiter! Jupiter Best and Greatest!

The only really important parts left had been Gaul and Spain!

I scrabbled for the notes, ignoring the spilt wine, and fumbled through them. It was all there, starting at the same time as Capito had been prosecuted, four years after Germanicus's death: Vibius Serenus, the Spanish governor, convicted of public violence; Gaius Silius, governor of Upper Germany, convicted of involvement in the Gallic revolt: Silius, whose involvement with rebels I couldn't understand, who commanded half of the biggest army north of the Pyrenees. Shit! And there was more, sure there was! I leafed through the papers frantically. Serenus again, hauled back from exile later in the same year and for the same crime as Silius: involvement with the Gauls. Votienus Montanus, Gaul, condemned for slander…

Gaul. Spain. The two major western provinces. The only parts of the empire barring Africa that Agrippina didn't already have her claws into. Or at least at the time I hadn't thought she had. And although Sejanus's uncle Junius Blaesus had held Africa he'd been kept too busy with the rebel Tacfarinas even to scratch himself…

The prosecutions all dated to four years after Germanicus's death. Four years after the Julian plot was officially dead and buried. And the year before that…

Bull’s-eye! I reached out a trembling hand, refilled my empty wine cup and drank the Setinian down.

Sacrovir!