Fanina, Child of Rome

by Pierre Sabbagh

  There was a strange ring in Sejanus’s voice. Was this the true Sejanus revealing himself to Fanina, this man whose features were softened by an immense, poignant sadness, whose great dark blue eyes, slanting towards the temples, looked at her with that suspicious resignation familiar only to those who, having fought the long battle to reach the top, are still hated and despised by the aristocrats of the old families who consider that the highest offices, glory and fortune are their due for all time?

  For the very first time Fanina, the patrician, saw in its true light the tragic issue that periodically rent Rome asunder: this merciless perennial fight between the great families and the boldest members of the lower classes who were unwilling to remain forever in subordinate roles.

  Would the criticisms levelled at Sejanus have been so sharp had he borne the illustrious name of Claudius, Cornelius, Domitius, Fabius or Faninus? Fanina wondered. Was it not above all ‘the lowborn upstart’ — as she herself had often called him — that people hated in him?

  Suddenly Sejanus straightened up. He was listening to something. Far away along the Aurelian Way in the direction of Forum Aurelii, there came the sound of several horses galloping at top speed over the cobblestones.

  Was someone pursuing the party of Praetorians? A thought flashed through Fanina’s head: might it not be the Emperor’s guards dispatched on Horo’s orders to take her away from Sejanus? In the present circumstances anything was possible.

  Fanina watched Sejanus tensely; his expression had hardened, and in that split second he had become the man of war again, the virile adventurer for whom there was danger on every hand. This was the fascinating face of Sejanus the conqueror, the face only his fellow soldiers must have seen in time of battle. The face of an ambitious soldier risen from the ranks, whose life was a continuous all-out attack, and who, in his desperate desire not to lose a single advantage he had gained, but to climb higher and still higher, must never be caught off his guard, and must be ever ready to return blow for blow.

  The carruca came to a halt and they heard Gryllus, who had been riding beside the coach, say:

  ‘They are men of our own cohorts, master.’

  ‘It’s Vegellius and five horse of the sixth turma!’ he went on immediately.

  Sejanus drew aside the curtains. Noisily pawing the ground, the newly-arrived horses had drawn level with the carruca. A deep voice gabbled out the customary greetings in a strong Venetian accent, then, without any transition, began:

  ‘Mission from Rhoecus the centurion, who sends me to you, master!’

  Sejanus appeared to have forgotten Fanina. With slightly narrowed eyes he was watching the soldier as if trying to read his mind.

  ‘Rhoecus?’ he snapped.

  ‘As you ordered, the sixth and seventh turmae will not leave Cecino until tomorrow, master, but centurion Rhoecus has received such serious news that he thought you should be informed....’

  The Praetorian paused, then in a quieter voice went on:

  ‘The pay wagon of the fourth Gemina Martia Victrix has been robbed near Velina by men of the legionary cavalry, who massacred the escort.’

  Sejanus leapt out of the carruca with a catlike bound. The silken curtain fell back and Fanina crouched behind it, her heart pounding, listening to the Praetorian as he went on:

  ‘There’s worse to come, master. According to one of the escort, who by some miracle escaped the slaughter, the legionaries concerned talked among themselves in a Germanic dialect.’

  Then the Praetorian added very softly:

  ‘According to this veteran, the bandits were no common highway robbers. He told us that they were exceedingly well disciplined and that they behaved exactly as if the attack had been a military operation.’

  He paused for a moment then whispered:

  ‘The centurion and I had a long talk about it. It’s a hard thing for a soldier to have to say, but these men can only have been exmembers of the Emperor’s Guard.’

  Fanina closed her eyes. She vividly remembered the men with the hard, deeply lined faces who had stopped her on the Aurelian Way. She pictured to herself those redoubtable giants whom, in spite of their instinctive antipathy towards these mercenaries re-cruited from once hostile nations, the Roman people could not help but admire when, before Tiberius had taken them with him to Capri, they Had accompanied him wherever He went, dressed in their sumptuous uniforms.

  They were a rigorously selected company, kept under iron discipline, tough soldiers without fear or pity. Fanina was sure of one thing: never would they have done such a thing except by order of the Emperor to whom they were fanatically devoted.

  An hour later a messenger, from Rome this time, brought Sejanus two letters which, obviously relaxed and smiling, he came to read to Fanina.

  ‘Guess who has written to me, guess, Bella! ’ he exclaimed, jumping like a boy into the carruca.

  Fanina looked gravely at him. He was brimming over with joy. He was so happy that, forgetting his self-imposed restraint in his dealings with Fanina, he took her hand and shook it like a small child.

  ‘You’ll never guess, Bella. It’s from the Emperor, it’s from Tiberius!’

  Radiant, he crouched beside Fanina and leaning towards her, he read aloud emphasizing every line with his finger:

  ‘My dear Lucius, I have a most distressing piece of news to impart to you. Twenty-three men of my guard have deserted from Capri. What upsets me more than anything else is the fact that old Hermann is their leader, a man who has never left my side these thirty years. The wretches have got away with over five million sesterces. I beg you, my dear Lucius, to seek out these dastardly brigands as quickly as possible, to punish them mercilessly and to send me back the five million sesterces stolen from me.

  ‘I am deeply distressed at the loss of those five millions. I am also very distressed by Hermann’s treachery, for I had always considered him as a friend. A friend who steals five million sesterces from me! Who is one to trust, my dear Lucius? Apart from you, and dear Thrasyllos who has read so many wonderful things about you in the stars, I no longer have any sincere and unselfseeking friend to sustain me and offer me true affection during the closing years of my long and arduous life. The theft of those five million sesterces, which I shall cruelly miss, has affected me more harshly than all the exhausting illnesses that are cutting short my old age. I am a wretched old man with only a miserable puff of life left in him. If you were not there to assume the heavy tasks with which I burden you, my dear Lucius, because there is no one else in the whole Empire still capable of fulfilling them to my entire satisfac-l ion, old Tiberius would have been gone a long time ago.

  ‘May the gods who have had the goodness to place you at my side watch over you, my dear son. Tiberius.

  ‘P.S. Let the punishment inflicted on Hermann and his accomplices be such as to serve as a warning to others. Send me their heads as soon as possible. And get my five million sesterces back to me as soon as you can. I need them. Thanks.’

  Still laughing, Sejanus read the second letter, a very long report by Monimus, one of the many agents he used to keep an eye on the Emperor’s activities. It contained a detailed account of the sensational desertion of Hermann and his companions. Monimus told how the deserters had seized a small cargo vessel which had set them ashore on the mainland near Salerno. He told of Tiberius’s utter astonishment when he heard the news and of his fury when he discovered the theft of the five million sesterces. Since then, not knowing any more whom he could trust, the Emperor had kept to his Jupiter villa with his astrologer Thrasyllos, his cook and a dozen servants all armed to the teeth. In a fit of rage he had spoken of getting rid of the German guards and of replacing them by Praetorians, then, announcing that he did not wish to deprive his faithful Sejanus of men who were so precious to him, he had changed his mind, and after doling out a few gold pieces to each of the guards, he had promised to mention them all by name in his will.

  In fact, commented Monimus, the old man was behavi
ng exactly as if he was out of his mind. He was failing and seemed near the end of his tether. Finally, Sejanus’s spy reported what Charikles, Tiberius’s doctor, had apparently said in the presence of certain close friends:

  ‘The Emperor will certainly not see the year out. Although he is always saying that he has not got much longer to live, he does not realize how gravely ill he is. Otherwise, as he often tells those close to him, he would already have handed over the Empire to Sejanus....’

  Fanina watched Sejanus in utter astonishment. As he read he had come still closer to her and had finally strctched out beside her. He was so close to her that she could feel the warmth of his body pervading her own. Sejanus, rid of all his mistrust, and relieved of his worries, was freely indulging the high spirits caused by the excellent news he had just received.

  ‘I would have given a lot to see old Tiberius-Caesar-Augustus’s face when he discovered that his precious coffers had been plundered,’ he laughed. ‘The loss of those five million sesterces - a drop in the ocean compared with his vast fortune - was undoubtedly a worse blow to the old skinflint than the defection of his dear Hermann.’

  Then with a little laugh, he added:

  ‘And yet, if he still had a single ounce of common sense, the poor man would be terrified by that desertion ... Hermann was the most devoted of all the officers of the German Guard. When that sort of rat leaves a ship it must be due to sink very soon. By Jupiter, Bella, Tiberius will not be with us for long. ... It will soon be our turn. Very soon!’

  Fanina’s serious gaze met Sejanus’s and he broke off. Did he read in her expression a silent reproach for the over-familiar attitude he had allowed himself to adopt towards her? He sat up smartly and, under some vague pretext of a discussion he had to have with his officers concerning what steps to take, he slowly and regretfully climbed down from the coach.

  Left alone, Fanina read and re-read the Emperor’s letter.

  It was a letter worthy of Plautus’s comedy Aulularia in which a miser bewails the disappearance of the cooking-pot in which he had hidden his treasure, she thought. A jumble of senile drivel that would have sent any ordinary Roman into fits of laughter; for they got their own back for the fear and poverty in which Tiberius had forced them to live by making fun of his sordid avarice, his drunkenness and his lewdness.

  Fanina carefully weighed every word of the missive. This was not the letter the Tiberius she had known would ever have written under the same circumstances. That Tiberius had been a tall, elderly man, a thoroughbred to the tips of his fingers, whose sudden majestic appearance in her parents’ house ten years ago she had never forgotten. Tiberius the Pontiff of Pontiffs who, when he used to come to pay a visit to the House of Vestals, would fill even Vibidia with awe by "his incomparably noble demeanour, his prodigious lucidity and his never-failing memory.

  That Tiberius, haughty, reticent, imbued with an almost divine power, coldly caustic, cruelly inhuman, had nothing at all in common with this old fool bewailing the loss of his millions!

  When Fanina was a vestal, such a short time ago, she knew how critical people were of Tiberius’s immoderate love of drink, in spite of the distance that had always been kept between her and the world, with all its gossip, so beloved by the Romans. She remembered certain veiled remarks, gleaned here and there when the servants of the House of Vestals, thinking themselves alone, or judging her to be too naive to understand them, had spoken freely about him. To the accompaniment of winks and vulgar laughter they had said how fond ‘Biberius’ was of little boys and little girls. They used to say that he would shut himself up for days at a time in the library of his luxurious Jupiter villa on Capri, reading pornographic books and poring over equally pornographic pictures.

  Although Fanina was now up in arms against Tiberius, she none the less rejected with disgust these scandalous tales of slanders, even though they should have been food for her hatred to feed on. She preferred to hold to her own judgement. It was possible that over the years the Emperor had lost his wits, but was he really mad? The firm, elegant strokes of his handwriting just did not go with the content of his letter, which was a sinister piece of buffoonery.

  No, Tiberius was not mad. He was pretending to be mad, and re-reading the letter once more, to let it really sink in, Fanina analysed the subtle artifice piece by piece. The old tyrant was quite lucid, monstrously lucid.

  Hermann had not deserted. The officer of the mercenaries had been sent on a mission to the mainland by Tiberius himself. The theft of the five million sesterces and the brutal attack on the convoy carrying the pay of the fourth legion were merely a cloak to mask the true objective the Emperor had given his guards. First of all, under Horo’s orders, Hermann had protected Fanina in her flight. Next, with his men provisionally transformed into brigands, he was waiting, ready to intervene at the first intimation from his master.

  What lay behind this tortuous manoeuvre on Tiberius’s part? In spite of the web Sejanus prided himself on having woven about the Emperor, had not the latter at last got wind of the plot being hatched by the commander of the Praetorians in order to seize power?

  ‘Alone, isolated, unarmed, Tiberius is more powerful than anyone else....’

  The day the Supreme Vestal spoke those words, Fanina had thought she discerned the anxiety felt by Vibidia in her unswerving loyalty, on account of the tremendous increase in Sejanus’s power. Now the phrase rang in Fanina’s ears as a most formidable threat, and the presence in the surrounding countryside of those German guards, so fanatically attached to the Emperor, filled her with disquiet.

  ‘Are you learning it by heart, by any chance, my dear Bella?’

  Sejanus climbed back into the carruca, which immediately set off again. Sitting beside Fanina, the commander of the Praetorians took the sheet of parchment from her tightly clasped fingers and with an air of repugnance murmured:

  ‘May it please the gods to let me die before I fall into such a deplorable state of decrepitude!’

  Then with a philosophical shrug he added:

  ‘Ah well! Meanwhile I have alerted all the police I was able to divert from this and that place and told them to catch this brigand Hermann and the rabble that have followed him into this pitiful adventure....’

  Fanina was unable to contain herself any longer.

  ‘Doesn’t this letter worry you at all?’ she asked.

  Sejanus seemed surprised.

  ‘Why should it worry me? It’s in exactly the same style as the others Tiberius has been writing me for the past two or three months. It looks as if some time in mid-December he suddenly lost the balance of his mind and as if that brilliant intellect of his collapsed. Now he drivels on, he whines, he fusses about trifles, he flatters me and then berates me.’

  He laughed.

  ‘In actual fact the old fool is fond of me, and I’m the only person he trusts. What is more, he owes me a certain debt of gratitude. About four of five years ago we were dining in a cave somewhere, and for goodness knows how long I held up a rock with my shoulder that very nearly crushed him. Everyone else had fled in terror; he has not forgotten that I alone risked my life for him.’

  Was it possible that the shrewd commander of the Praetorian Guard could be taken in by what Fanina now considered to be a blatant subterfuge?

  ‘So you don’t think him capable of playing a dirty trick on us?’ Fanina insisted. ‘Are you quite sure he could not have got wind of our plans?’

  Sejanus’s glance softened as he looked at her.

  ‘I don’t need to tell you, Bella, how happy I am to Hear you talk-fog like that.’

  His voice faltered.

  ‘Are you really the partner ... I hardly dare say companion, lk-lla, whom I have dreamed of to stand behind me in this enterprise?’

  The commander of the Praetorians seemed to be profoundly moved. Fighting against the feelings that were threatening to gain control over her, Fanina stiffened. An intimacy was growing up between them, and she did not want things to be lik
e that. She now knew that behind the armour of this tough jouster lay a man who was very much more vulnerable than she had thought. This man, who she now realized had feelings for her which she no longer wished to recognize, frightened her more with his weakness than the tough adventurer whom she felt strong enough to confront.

  ‘You did not answer my question, Sejanus,’ she said in a voice that trembled a little.

  It was as if she had wakened him rudely from the happy dream he had been spinning in accordance with his heart’s desire.

  ‘What dirty trick could Tiberius play on me, Bella? I have him just where I want him.’

  Bending over her, as if the better to make her feel the weight of all the power he stood for, he spoke in fevered tones, trying with all his might to infuse into her the boundless confidence he felt in his own star:

  ‘My plan has been ready for a long time. If Tiberius bestows the power of tribune on me, thus making me as sacred a person as he is at present, a power that would give me the right of veto and allow me to convene the Senate when I wanted, I would avoid having to risk a coup d’etat that might cause a dangerous upheaval throughout the Empire, for I would then be in a position to deal with the delicate matter of the succession in full confidence. But if on the other hand he drags on without conferring that position upon me, I have so organized things that I can crush him and anyone else who claims the succession.’

  ‘In other words, Emperor Tiberius will be succeeded by Emperor Sejanus,’ Fanina remarked quietly.

  He had not put it in so many words, but that was what he had in mind. His tone, his expression, every gesture with which he had punctuated his phrases, everything showed him up as the grasping conqueror, the man of prey for whom no pleasure compared with that of domination.

  Within the enclosed space of this carriage that bore them on towards Rome, whose crumbling institutions they both, for opposite reasons, sought to demolish, the duel of their two opposing wills continued.