Realizing that he had let himself be carried away by his own passionate outburst, Sejanus broke off.
‘Emperor Sejanus will be in a better position than anyone else to re-establish the Republic so close to your heart, my dear Bella.’
Fanina gave a quiet smile.
‘That’s exactly what I meant, my dear Sejanus,’ she said with studied sweetness. ‘You can fool Tiberius. You can even fool me if you dare, but don’t forget that you can never fool the gods.’
With bowed head, he murmured:
‘And you, illustrious Bella, didn’t you have the effrontery to fool the gods by taking a lover when you were a vestal?’
He had dared! ... Fanina sat up abruptly, cheeks aflame.
‘That’s none of your business!’ she rejoined sharply.
She regained control of herself. Relations with this man were indeed becoming more and more difficult. She had wanted to be his companion in arms, but unless she was careful, she would soon become nothing more than a woman he madly desired ... and desired all the more for having held her in his arms; for he was unable to forget the pleasure she had given him.
His head resting on his hand, Sejanus had stretched out in front of Fanina and it was she who dominated him. He lay staring into space, not speaking. Her voice calm, with the merest trace of sympathy, Fanina remarked:
‘What can you know of true love, Sejanus, you whose myriad affairs are known to the whole Empire? You are and ever will be but a passer-by....’
Fanina looked round the carruca. One could scarcely have imagined a cosier nook for two lovers than this sumptuous vehicle designed for long voyages, for escape to distant parts. Suddenly she felt herself assailed by a thousand delicate perfumes, the perfumes of all the women who must have given themselves to Sejanus in this very carruca....
The section of the Aurelian Way along which they were travelling at that moment was shaded by great trees. Strange tousled shapes and bright shafts of light danced across the clear silk dome of the carriage whose rumbling, like the tread of the escorting horses, seemed to have grown quieter.
Then Sejanus spoke:
‘You are right, Bella: I know nothing of love as you see it in all the uncompromising pride of youth ... nothing. ... I am married, and yet it is so long since I saw my wife that we have ceased to exist for one another. ... I have travelled a great deal, seen a great deal of life, and held so many women in my arms that often, in the early hours of the morning, I would have found it impossible to describe the face of the woman who lay beside me, so confused had it become with the other faces of all the other women who had come before....’
Seeking Fanina’s eyes, he looked intently at her and went on:
‘And yet I call the gods to witness that I would have been a one-woman man had I had the good fortune to meet one who could have made me love her for her intelligence, her courage and her beauty....’
Fanina looked away. His voice full of urgency, he went on:
‘By Cypris I swear to you, Fanina, that I could still be such a man.’
What fine promises Sejanus was making her! How many girls had he said the same thing to? And what did she care for Sejanus? Suddenly Fanina wished she were a hundred leagues away. It was not this voice she wanted to hear saying these things, and yet in spite of herself, it stirred her blood.
In a voice in which there was a ring of sadness beneath the cutting irony, she said:
‘Sejanus-Jupiter settling down after a thousand giddy affairs? My poor friend! The King of the gods himself, in his omnipotence, has never yet met the ideal creature who could hold him after all the short-lived affairs attributed to him. A seducer goes from one woman to another, Sejanus, and any woman who listens to his promises must be crazy.’
Lying on his back looking at the roof of the carruca, Sejanus spoke in a dreamy voice:
‘The seducer, Bella? I once knew the perfect seducer, one whom no woman ever resisted ... even when he was the most wretched of creatures, a slave, a condemned man wallowing in filth, he obtained the favours of everyone: the prettiest, the most prudish, the noblest women one could encounter. He only had to glance in their direction, even with the utmost indifference, and they went mad. He went from one to the other, despising them all, until one day ...’
He broke off, then changing his tone, went on:
‘It’s the most beautiful love-story I know, Bella.’
Their tete-a-tete had once again almost taken a turn that made Fanina uneasy. Sejanus was offering her a way out. He had also intrigued her, for Fanina knew of no other true love-story than her own pitiable adventure from which she had emerged broken and helpless.
Hiding her curiosity behind a mocking smile, she said:
‘I shall be delighted to hear what the illustrious Sejanus calls a beautiful love-story.’
Chapter Seventeen
After halting at a relay-post where fresh horses awaited them, the carruca proceeded on its way.
Half lying down, with her back propped up by a pile of cushions, Fanina listened. Beside her, lying on his side, and leaning on one elbow, Sejanus looked like a guest at a banquet reclining on one of the three beds the Romans placed around the dinner-table.
‘It was about twelve or thirteen years ago,’ he began, ‘when the most handsome slave in all Rome belonged to the consul Lucius Seius Tubero. He was called Thuleus, for he was said to be the son of the king of the isle of Thule, where the world comes to an end in vast tracts of eternal ice. Thuleus had been reduced to slavery after a bloody fight in which he himself killed six of our legion-aries. It happened in the Rhine delta where his ship had been driven by a storm. He was exceptionally tall and blond, and his physique was so perfect that there was not a sculptor working in Rome at the time who did not use him as a model in carving a statue of one or other of the gods whose superhuman beauty he wished to express. But unfortunately for Thuleus, it was not only artists who were attracted by his splendid figure; the most illustrious ladies in Rome fought for his favours. And as for his mistress, the adorable Sextia, she was crazy about him. Who knows what the future might not have held in store for the incomparable Thuleus, had not Tubero surprised him one night in his wife’s bed.’
This must have caused a tremendous scandal, thought Fanina, for she had often heard people use the expression ‘to arrive unexpectedly like Tubero’ without ever having known the origin of this now proverbial expression.
‘After considering every possible kind of punishment he could inflict on Thuleus to take his revenge, Tubero chose the cruellest of all: he sold him to a slave-dealer who bought up criminals and sold them again to supply slave-labour for one of the Egyptian goldmines, from which, up to that time, not one convict had ever returned. So, after being scourged for a whole day, the too handsome Thuleus set sail from Ostia at the very moment when in Rome Sextia and three of her friends, all inconsolable, were cutting their wrists in despair.’
Fanina was listening with greater and greater interest. The commander of the Praetorians was opening up to her a world about which she knew nothing. She followed him behind the scenes of the tumultuous theatre of Roman life of which she had hitherto seen only the stately facade. What hidden dramas lay behind the faces she had known up till then!
‘A few years later,’ Sejanus went on, ‘I went to Egypt with my father. It happened that on our way we visited the gold-mines which had been worked from time immemorial in the region of the Altaic mountains.
‘Now I have travelled a lot, Bella, and I have seen many terrible things, but nothing to compare with the horror I found in those dark galleries, where men, women and naked children swarmed together, chained for ever to their place of work from which they would never emerge, even after death, for their bodies were left to rot where they fell....’
Sejanus looked down at the ring he wore on his finger.
‘I do not claim to be unduly sensitive, but you know, Bella, for a long time after that I was unable to look at anything made of gold without thi
nking of those Altaic mines, and without hearing the incessant crack of the hippopotamus-hide whips as the overseers lashed the backs of those unfortunate creatures.’
He gave an embarrassed smile and shook his head. ‘How many faces has he?’ Fanina asked herself. Was this man, who hid his emotion at the memory of the tormented lives of those wretched people behind an awkward smile, the same Sejanus who, her father had said, pitilessly wiped out all those who stood in his way?
It was then that Fanina realized that she had become so fascinated by the story Sejanus was telling her, that she had imperceptibly drawn closer to him until a bare few inches lay between them.
‘Believe it or not, Bella, but this hell on earth contained its own inner circle of hell to which they sent the toughest characters, the men who could not be broken.... Just imagine a narrow smokeladen passageway streaming with water. There, under the surveillance of guards armed with bows, eight men hammered at the incredibly hard rock face with mallets weighing a hundred and sixty pounds. There among the slaves I had immediately noticed a tremendous athletic figure, black with soot, whose fair hair had been charred by the lamp he wore on his forehead. He was a Titan, Bella! There was a very pretty, very elegant young woman with us; she was called Synhala, and was the wife of the man who ran the mine. She had accompanied us out of consideration for us as her quests, and it was the first time she had ever been into the mine. Synhala was fascinated by the man and went towards him in the half-light. Then he turned round: it was Thuleus. He had been I here for three years; his body was covered in scars, he was sweating hate, wild and untamed, but even more handsome in this wretched state than he had ever been before. Seeing the young woman, he halted, mallet raised, and looked at her, then, turning his back on her, took up his work again....’
Sejanus shook his head.
‘A week later there was an unprecedented mutiny on Mount Altai. Thuleus and all the slaves willing to go with him fled after massacring their guards. Synhala, who had engineered the escape, I led too with Thuleus. Long after, when we were back in Rome, I learned from my father that Thuleus was the leader of a band of brigands who were roving all over Roman Africa ...’
‘And Synhala?’ Fanina asked, fascinated.
‘Synhala had died a long time back in the desert. She was bitten by a scorpion and had died in terrible agony, happy to have sacrificed everything to the man she worshipped like a god.’
‘What did Thuleus do then?’
‘I don’t know. For years he allied himself with our worst enemies in order to do us the greatest harm possible, and behaved like a wild beast, spreading terror wherever he went. He was everywhere at once, and cared so little for danger that he was often seen in our cities, where he came to carouse and to debauch women and girls from the highest levels of society. So Thuleus went on from one criminal act to another, and from one heart to another, until one day, in Icosium he met Rhoxolana ...’
Sejanus broke off abruptly, brought his face closer to Fanina, and stared at her. In her astonishment she started back and said:
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
Running a hesitant hand across his brow, Sejanus remained silent for a moment, then, without taking his eyes off Fanina, said slowly:
‘Because for one moment I thought the gods were making sport of me. ... I was talking to you about Rhoxolana and suddenly as I looked at you — by Jupiter the all powerful who hears me, I swear this is the truth, Bella — I thought I saw Rhoxolana ... for you are the very image of the woman who, from the moment he met her, became all in all to Thuleus....’
Fanina was so taken aback that she had great difficulty in controlling herself. That last phrase! Why had she not thought of it before! There could never be two men alive on earth at once of the stamp of this Thuleus. Now she knew who he was, or rather who he had been.
‘It’s strange,’ Sejanus murmured. ‘Why was I never struck before by the extraordinary resemblance?’
Without taking his eyes off Fanina, he went on:
‘For I too met Rhoxolana when she came to Rome with her husband, chief Adherbal, one of the ambassadors the King of Garamantes sent to Tiberius. Adherbal was madly in love with his wife Rhoxolana for whom he had repudiated his other three hundred spouses, and he never wanted to be parted from her. You can imagine what a stir she caused during her regrettably brief visit to Rome.’
Fanina said nothing; she was watching Sejanus. Why was he telling her precisely this story, the story of this ... Thuleus?
‘It was when Rhoxolana got back to Africa, Bella, that Thuleus met her. He had been dreaming of organizing an uprising of all the peoples subject to Rome. Thuleus wanted Adherbal to rise against Rome. Then he saw Rhoxolana, and both the seducer he was and the conqueror he might have been forgot everything for her. For the first time ever, Thuleus was in love....’
Sejanus gave a strange smile.
‘Thuleus had enough prestige, courage and intelligence to have achieved anything,’ he went on, with a long look at Fanina. ‘One night of love with Rhoxolana — for Rhoxolana could not resist him any more than other women — one night of love was enough to turn him into a man like other men, weak, disarmed, without any other ambition than a happy life with his mistress.’
Cutting his story short, Sejanus condensed the rest into a few sentences:
‘What does it matter how Adherbal came to discover his misfortune! One day the whole of Africa learned that having returned to Cydamus, the capital of his province, the King of Garamantes had threatened to put Rhoxolana to death in the cruellest possible manner if her lover did not give himself up....’
This was what Fanina had been waiting for, nervously clasping and unclasping her fingers, ever since she had realized who Thuleus was.
‘Then, Bella, without a moment’s hesitation, abandoning all his dreams of power in order to save the woman he loved, Thuleus gave himself up to Adherbal who handed him over forthwith to his executioner. After informing Thuleus that Rhoxolana would be put to death at the first cry of pain to pass his lips, Adherbal ordered the executioner to turn his too-handsome prisoner into a monster, and spare him none of the suffering that this would entail.’
Head thrown back on the cushions of the carruca, Sejanus went on in a toneless voice:
‘That executioner knew his job. For three long months, day in and day out, hour after hour, he literally dissected Thuleus. Bending over his victim, Adherbal listened to his every sigh, waiting for him to give any sign at all of the terrible pain he was suffering. But Thuleus remained silent for Rhoxolana’s sake, As all this was going on, the aged Lentulus Getulicus arrived on a mission to Cydamus, sent by Tiberius. Lentulus witnessed what followed, and was present when Adherbal eventually brought Rhoxolana face to face with her lover whose tongue he had torn out the day before in a fit of rage.’
Trembling with pity, Fanina knew the picture Sejanus was about to paint of Thuleus:
‘Crowned with snow-white hair, ashen, emaciated through his suffering, his warrior-god’s face was more handsome than ever. The executioner had concentrated his entire skill on turning Thuleus into a dwarf with ridiculously short legs and elongated arms. Adherbal in his cruelty mocked him for having become so pitiable a creature, nicknaming him ‘Horo’ — object of terror — in his bad latin.’
At last Sejanus had spoken the name under which Fanina knew the dwarf in the russet leather cloak. Her hands were clammy and she had to fight to remain calm as she looked at the commander of the Praetorians. But he was staring into space and seemed to have forgotten her.
‘Later on, back in Rome, Lentulus told how as soon as she caught sight of him, the incomparable Rhoxolana fell on her knees before the man who had become a monster to her, and cried out that she had never loved him as dearly as she did then, and how Adherbal, mad with rage, plunged his dagger into her.’
Emerging from his reverie, Sejanus smiled wanly:
‘Do you want to know what happened after that, Bella? Lentulus, who was ne
ver considered to have a particularly thin skin, was horrified, and under the pretext of delivering him up to a Roman court, took from Adherbal the man who was now no more than the pitiable Horo and entrusted him to the legionaries of his escort. The following day Adherbal was found dead in his bed. No one ever quite knew how it had happened; but, in spite of the great weakness of his legs that would scarcely carry him, in spite of the soldiers, in spite of the guards protecting Rhoxolana’s murderer, Horo had managed to reach him, and after slowly throttling him, had returned to Lentulus’s camp. After that? ... Old Lentulus grew fond of Horo and on his return to Rome, instead of handing him over to the law, made him his confidential agent. Unhappily for Horo, Lentulus died soon after that, and his youngest son, who hated this dwarf who had been too devoted to his former master, took it into his head to sell Horo to a freeman called Atilus who was organizing a gladiator show at Fidenes...’
Sejanus blinked, as if to get a clearer picture of the scene he was describing.
‘I was at Fidenes that day, Bella. I have never seen so many people gathered together as in that improvised ampitheatre. The whole of Rome seemed to have poured into the little township to see the tremendous spectacle announced for the previous month on posters stuck to every wall in Latium: the dwarf Horo, the terror of Africa, against the twenty most famous gladiators in all Italy, who would take him on one at a time. Lentulus’s son had planned it this way in order to be sure that Horo would be killed.’
Sejanus conjured up the hastily-improvised arena. He described the retiaries, the mirmillons, the Samnites and the Thracians as they stood in one long row, laughing and joking as they waited their turn to fight the dwarf who had been dressed in a ridiculous costume that heightened his monstrous infirmity. Then the trumpets sounded....
‘One by one Horo threw down the pieces of armour he had been dressed in, followed by his sword, and his helmet; he retained nothing but his dagger. Then, bare chested, he advanced on his first adversary....’
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