Fanina, Child of Rome

by Pierre Sabbagh

  A great burst of laughter made her jump.

  ‘May Silenus knot my guts, Romilius! Take a look! She’s even pinched his shirt, the artful little thing! Even so he can’t have failed to have fun with her.... Did you see how sweet she looks, even wearing that thing?’

  The two Praetorians were watching her through the keyhole. Throwing back her hair, Fanina walked resolutely towards the door. The sound of a bolt being shot rang out on the other side of the door.

  ‘I still can’t imagine what she can possibly have done to the chief, but right now, I have the impression she’s bent on escape.’

  ‘That would cause a fine fuss when the chief comes back!’

  ‘Enough to send us to join Dorotheus and Nealces in Pluto’s kingdom, old chap!’

  They were going away now. They walked down the creaking stairs. Trembling with rage, Fanina began to pace round and round the room like a tiger in a cage. She could think of nothing more. Should she tip over the brazier and set fire to the house? What about that window? Why had she not thought about the window?

  She already had the bronze casement down. The air was cold with the chill of the approaching dawn and it made her shiver. She leant out and peered into the darkness. Somewhere below her, far below, there must be a torrent, for its distant murmur suggested that on that side at least, the building overhung a ravine. To make sure, she took a heavy silver cup that stood on a small table, dropped it over the window-sill, then began to count calmly.

  When she reached five, she heard the first tinkle, then, very clearly, she heard it rebound faster and faster as it tumbled down a steep slope. A long silence ensued, then, afar off, a final clink of metal.

  Fanina understood then why the window was not barred, and why Romilius and Gryllus had not been anxious lest she should try to escape that way.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Was there then nothing for it but to wait for Sejanus to come back? Was there not some other dramatic turn of events that could extricate her from this intolerable situation?

  For a moment Fanina had considered shouting in order to bring the soldiers up to her room. But what would have been the point of it? Fatalistically, she abandoned herself to her destiny, refusing to dwell on the past or to go back over what had been. She even tried to drive thoughts of Vindex from her mind, for they filled her with grief and shame.

  Why had Vindex abandoned her? If he had really tried to seek her out, she would not be in the position she was now in. But he had apparently managed to forget her, the over-naive little vestal who had given him her all, for the sake of that pretty-pretty Calpurnia whom she detested.

  She kept on going round in circles. Time was passing. She would sometimes stop to examine the walls, the ceiling, or the floor, as if hoping to find some hidden way out. As she walked ceaselessly back and forth, she bumped into the table and came to a halt in front of a piece of folded paper that had been used to level one of its legs. She picked it up without thinking, unfolded it, and gave a shudder.

  It was a copy of the Official Gazette of the Roman People, a broadsheet that gave details of the edicts of different magistrates, the most important news items, announcements of the games, of marriages, divorces, births and deaths.

  This particular copy was a week old and there was very little to read on it. Fanina scanned it...

  THE XVITH DAY BEFORE THE KALENDS OF MARCH

  Consuls: Tiberius Caesar Augustus jor the fifth time and Lucius Aelius Sejanus.

  Pontius Pilatus, Procurator of Judaea, who had come to Rome to present his report to the Senate on the recent disturbances that have led to bloodshed in his province, will return to his post at the end of the month.

  The most venerable Kaeso Domitius Calvinus, senior member of the College of Pontiffs, has just celebrated his hundredth birthday. As a token of friendship towards this most saintly and well-loved old man whose priesthood sanctifies our altars, the Emperor has decided to erect to him a statue which will be of gilded bronze, eight cubits high and will be set up on the Area Palatina.

  Travellers report that the skies rained milk and blood in Narbonne the day the Temple of Mars was dedicated.

  Caius Geminius Rufus, accused of impious conduct towards the Emperor, together with his wife Publia Prisca, have committed suicide.

  The illustrious Lucius Calpurnius Piso, Prefect of the City, accompanied by the military tribune Caius Julius Vindex, has returned to Rome from Baiae.

  Crushing her burning brow against the wall beside the window, Fanina fought for her breath. Her heart ached. Those few lines had caused her more misery than the situation in which she found herself, or than all the dangers she faced at that moment.

  Once again Vindex’s name was linked with that of Piso, the Prefect of the City. The Emperor had pardoned him and he was now a military tribune, but it was certainly from no military mission that he had just returned. What mission could he possibly have been engaged on in Baiae, the most renowned of all the holiday resorts in the Empire, the city of pleasure where Piso owned a magnificent villa beside Lake Lucrinus?

  Fanina had no doubt that, although the broadsheet made no mention of Calpurnia, she must have been one of the party.

  Vindex had really betrayed her....

  It seemed that everything was combining to crush Fanina’s spirits. A few brief lines written by one of the half-starved scribes who sat elbow to elbow in some smoky stall, and from dawn till dusk wrote out all the news brought to them by messenger from every corner of the city and the Empire, and the whole tragedy came once more to life.

  The man she had trusted preferred another woman, one who enjoyed all the good things of life, unlike Fanina who was unhappy, ruined, hunted and dishonoured.

  But this was not all....

  Fanina’s love had been dealt a cruel blow, but so had all she held most high, most pure and most sacred: her passionate reverence for the memory of her parents, the ideals of justice and peace her lather had inculcated in her, for which her ancestors had always fought.

  Tiberius had been so irresponsible, or rather so shameless, as to erect a statue to that criminal Calvinus on the Area Palatina, a stone’s throw from her ancient family home where her father and mother had committed suicide.

  That monster Domitius Brazen-beard, Senator Faninus’s enemy, who, with his cousin Calvinus as accomplice, had driven Faninus to suicide, had been entrusted with an important mission, and Tiberius had indicated his intention to give him some considerable reward.

  Geminius Rufus, a fellow soldier and very close friend of Fanina’s father, had been accused of impiety towards the Emperor and he too had committed suicide in order to escape the hangman’s noose.

  Tiberius! Still Tiberius! Always Tiberius! Every moment of agony Fanina was living through on account of this sheet of paper came from Tiberius. Lying in ambush like a spider on his island of Capri, the old Emperor was indeed the evil genius who, as the spirit moved him, pulled the strings of her destiny.

  Fanina had already often given rein to her anger, the most recent occasion being on the previous day when Horo had told her of his unswerving devotion to Tiberius, and she had vehemently accused the man she considered responsible for all the disasters she had suffered, for all the deaths, for the ruin of her love, and likewise for the terror that reigned in Rome and all the sufferings borne by the peoples of the Empire.

  Short-lived reactions, brief moments of revulsion. The memory of the unquestioning veneration in which her father and the Supreme Vestal had held Tiberius, the memory of years and years of homage paid to the Emperor-God, Father of the Nation, could not be wiped out all at once. But this time things had gone too far.

  More than Calvinus or Brazen-beard the real enemy was Tiberius, who had facilitated their crimes, and who had not shown the slightest trace of grief at the news of the death of Senator Faninus, the son of his best friend, the purest and most disinterested of his supporters, the soldier who had served for so long in his legions.

  The enemy of
this bloody despot who added to his heinous crimes the spice of cold cynicism, scandalous provocation, and odious outrage to the ashes of those he had sacrificed to his whims.

  The enemy was the man who delighted in rewarding the wicked, the criminals and the debauched.

  The enemy was the man who made the Empire live under the reign of folly and fear.

  Beneath what disastrous star had she been born ? More than ever before Fanina felt the cruel grip of the gods tighten about her. If she really was the ‘chosen woman’ foretold by the soothsayers, the mission for which she had been selected was one of suffering and renunciation. After showing her the miseries of the Empire and causing her to side with the victims of the crimes that were rife within its bounds, the gods had brought her to bay. They had shown her the culprit. Every hardship they inflicted on her was intended to toughen her, to make her capable of fighting the battle she had so often envisaged, which now seemed to be the only worthy course of action open to her.

  From her tenderest years Fanina had been brought up to accomplish this terrible and sublime mission, the precise nature of which had until that moment never been clearly stated. She was not refusing her mission; but why had Vindex abandoned her? It would have been so good to fight side by side with him; nothing would have seemed impossible if she had felt him at her side.

  Eyes reddened from lack of sleep, dead tired, her mind afire, Fanina paced round and round the room. She felt no desire to lie down for a moment on the soft bed, where the tumbled white furs reminded her of the caresses to which she had succumbed as she lay in the arms of Sejanus; they filled her with shame and anger.

  She had Tiberius to thank for this shame too!

  Tight-lipped, Fanina suddenly stood still. Sejanus! For other reasons, in his case discreditable ones, Sejanus also wanted to rid the Empire of Tiberius. In her position she had no choice: only the formidable power in Sejanus’s hands was capable of outweighing that held by Tiberius. The commander of the Praetorian Guard alone could make the Empire totter. He was prepared to do anything in order to supplant Tiberius. She must ally herself with Sejanus.

  Then later, she would see....

  The sky was full of wheeling crows and jackdaws. The air felt cold and damp as the day dawned. Black, wild and desolate the landscape that gradually emerged through the sinister light of dawn was well suited to the emotions that raged in Fanina’s breast.

  From time to time, at long intervals, one of the sentries Romilius had posted would give a brief call; another would reply, then another. Then silence would reign once more.

  Fanina leant out of the window and drew back sharply. There was indeed a ravine with a sheer drop from the huge building in which she was kept prisoner. A terrifying abyss that vanished into the darkness, a ravine in which no doubt there flowed a broad torrent of rushing waters. One could not have chosen a better site for a fortress than this huge building set at the extremity of a long plateau, which Fanina could see stretching out to her left, narrow and tortuous.

  Where was Sejanus, Fanina wondered. Why had he stayed away so long? He could not fail to return. He was superstitious like all the Romans and feared the gods; he had taken fright, but once he had recovered his calm, he would want to get to the bottom of the mysteries that lay behind Fanina’s resurrection, and he would above all want to know why she had been spying on him.

  Piercing the screen of light mist with their long golden shafts, the first sunrays threw into relief the tormented shapes of a huge mass of dark rock that rose up on the other side of the ravine. Stamping with impatience Fanina was cursing this black wall which hid the horizon from her, when suddenly a loud buzzing noise rent the air over her head. Something had flown in at the window, something metallic that ricocheted against the ceiling, against the opposite wall, and fell with a clear ringing sound on to the floor.

  The bronze pennant! It was the bronze pennant, the mysterious talisman given her by the Supreme Vestal in the name of the Emperor.

  Fanina must have lost it the day before in the temple at Vulci when the Praetorians had rushed at her to take her prisoner. Yet again, twisted and battered, it had come back to her, but this time Fanina knew who had sent it back.

  It could only have been Horo who had hurled it with his sling across the ravine to let her know he was there, still guarding her. The dwarf must be hiding somewhere among that mass of black rock; Fanina could not see him but he could see her.

  That was not all. As Fanina leaned out of the window she looked down and saw with a shudder long clear scratches on the dry stone of the walls: marks left by the nails in the heavy iron-clad boots worn by someone bold enough to have climbed this sheer wall, three hundred feet above the abyss.

  Fanina could not be in any doubt. That night, risking his life for her, time and time again just missing being hurled into the abyss, the enigmatic dwarf with the face of a warrior-god had climbed right up to where she was. He had stuck his broad cutlass between those two stones to serve as a step, so that he could clamber right up to the window and remain precariously balanced on the slippery sill.

  Fanina had not heard him. Never for a moment had she suspected he was there, but he had been there, protecting her still, the man who had become her shadow in order to ensure that she stayed alive. He could not have seen her through the rough panes of the casement, but he had heard her.

  He must certainly know what had happened in that room, on that bed....

  Fanina’s face grew scarlet. Horo knew Sejanus had possessed her, and Horo was Tiberius’s right-hand man. But was it really on Tiberius’s behalf that Horo had risked his life in this perilous venture? Who in all the world would have risked for his master, whoever he be, what the dwarf had risked in secrecy and without a single witness? Had Horo not done this for her? Had he not written that he would die rather than sacrifice her to the Emperor?

  Nothing in Fanina’s life would ever be completely straightforward, simple and clear-cut. There would always be shadows along the paths she trod. Amongst Tiberius’s supporters, as amongst the conspirators surrounding Sejanus, there were just, honest men, as well as thorough rogues. The Supreme Vestal was undoubtedly still on the side of the Emperor, and so were Dolabella and most of her father’s friends too. She would certainly never persecute them, but would protect them without their knowing it and, once Tiberius was rendered powerless, she would give evidence of their good faith.

  The sound of horses’ hooves rang out over the plateau. She had not been mistaken : Sejanus was coming back. As she leaned out of the window she could see him now, riding a steel-grey horse with an immense mane and a long jet-black tail, the superb stallion he had been riding the day she had met him in the Triumphal Way; now a pitiful mount, its coat mud-spattered and glistening with sweat, foaming at the mouth, head lowered and stumbling with every step he took.

  Behind Sejanus walked two utterly exhausted men, leading their spent horses by the bridle.

  The fortress door grated, then the rapping of hooves grew louder beneath the archway and on the cobbles of the courtyard.

  In a few moments, Sejanus would be there....

  Over there amongst the black rocks that hid him, Horo must still be watching the window where Fanina stood. With solemn face, slightly strained, she held out her arms towards him, then, laying her fingers on her lips, blew him a kiss. Then, as if to break off contact with the man who nevertheless remained Tiberius’s trusted servant, she closed the casement and stood very erect in the middle of the room, waiting.

  The door opened and Sejanus walked in.

  He had come straight up to the room without waiting to change or even to wash his face that was grey with dust. He stood at the far end of the room, shoulders drooping, looking somewhat abashed as he faced Fanina. He had lost his former arrogance, but his anxious face no longer showed any trace of the panic that had been written all over it when he had fled like one demented.

  Tightly wrapped in Sejanus’s long blue cloak, her dazzling hair thrown back, making
the most of every inch of her height, Fanina calmly stared back at him.

  It was for him to speak first. In a very soft voice, he said:

  ‘You see, illustrious Fanina, I have come back.’

  He was keeping his distance. She was indeed the stronger of the two. When she spoke, her voice was clear and precise:

  ‘You could not have come to a wiser decision.’

  ‘I have been thinking a great deal, illustrious Fanina,’ he went on hesitantly. ‘It seemed to me .’.t you have every reason to be angry with me after ... that...’

  He waved one hand vaguely in the direction of the bed where the furs lay tumbled. Fanina showed not the slightest reaction. Sejanus went on:

  ‘It also seemed to me that since we are unable to wipe out the past, we might nevertheless attempt to come to some kind of understanding, illustrious Fanina.’

  A long silence followed. Sejanus was making the advances; Fanina tried hard to hide the look of triumph she felt might at any moment appear on her face, and waited.

  ‘I shall make no secret of the fact that I have thought of every possible way out, illustrious Fanina,’ Sejanus went on.

  ‘Even by doing away with me, I imagine,’ Fanina interpolated in icy tones.

  Sejanus looked away, then, in spite of himself, he looked at the unmade bed and murmured:

  ‘I could never have brought myself to do that, even had you not been what you are.’

  There was no doubt that she still retained the upper hand over him through fear, but Fanina began to realize that the longer they went on talking the more this salutary force would be tainted with those other feelings — more disturbing and sensual — that this aesthete, this impenitent voluptuary could not control as he looked at her, feelings that stirred up the memory of the pleasure he had wrested from her.

  ‘I have no desire to know what you mean by that!’ she broke in sharply. ‘But it would be a mistake to get rid of me, since if I died, so would every hope you have of accomplishing what you have in mind.’