“Go ahead. I’ll do a formal report for the emperor. He isn’t going to like the looks of it.”
“I don’t like the looks of it,” Lucius said. His plain, freckled face looked a little older than usual. “I hate things I can’t prove.”
“I think the answer’s obvious,” Flavius said. “I’m going to tie that snake into knots.”
Lucius was busy scraping the letters out of the wax. “Let’s just hope the emperor shares your inclination,” he said. “Because if he doesn’t, there’s not a judge in the City who’s going to risk his own ass on a conviction. And if the snake gets wind of it, he’s going to bite you.”
VII Theophanes
“I’m afraid, sir, that there just aren’t any other possibilities.” Flavius stood respectfully before the emperor Titus and kept a wary eye on the emperor’s brother. Domitian reclined on a couch to the side of the room, with an empty wine cup on the floor beside him. He was playing with a wooden puzzle, carefully fitting pieces through a slot.
Titus sat in a chair at his desk, a massive table loaded down with scrolls and tablets. A bronze bowl of dried figs and a miniature catapult sat at one end. He ran a hand through his hair. It looked as if he had already done that several times this morning. Titus gave his barber an hour in the morning to make him presentable and that had to last. He didn’t like people hovering over him with combs.
The emperor read over Flavius’s report one more time. “On the face of it, it looks as if this is our man,” he said. He seemed to be waiting for an outburst from Domitian, but his brother kept silent. He rattled the pieces of his puzzle from hand to hand. Titus looked at his aide. “I have to have a name, Flavius.”
“Sir, we know the man has access to all the shipping schedules, including cargo lists, and he gets his fastest information on the shipping out of Ostia Harbor and the Port of Rome,” Flavius said. “We also know that he’s making a lot of money on this, and that’s going to show up. Vettius has the prefecture of the Shipping Offices and the inflow of slightly mysterious cash.” He looked directly at the emperor. “He also has the ambition of another Pompey, and ambitious men need money. If you know of anyone else that all this would point to, sir, I wish you’d tell me.”
“Why hasn’t your brother come up with a name?” Domitian said. It appeared he had been taking notice of the conversation, after all. “He seems to have done an admirable job of digging out the rest of it.”
“I doubt there’s a name to be had,” Flavius said. He turned back to Titus, who was the man to convince. “I would be surprised if these pirates know whom they’re dealing with. That would be too much of a risk to take, even for Vettius.”
“Then I don’t think we should put a name to him,” Domitian said quietly. “That constitutes slander until we do have some proof.”
And you got him that shipping prefecture, Flavius thought. Embarrassing for you.
“A point I have always hoped you would keep in mind,” Titus said acidly to his brother. Domitian listened avidly to each talebearer who crept into the palace. Now he looked uncomfortable. “Go and find your friend Vettius,” Titus went on, “and tell him to come to me. Don’t tell him why I want him.”
“Don’t you think—”
“I think that if you want to share privileged information, as befits my heir, that you had best obey me!” Titus snapped. He looked like a bull, and the muscles in his thick neck were bunched. “Push me too far, Domitian, and you may not even be able to count on that!”
Domitian rose. “As the emperor commands.” He swept Titus an elaborate bow.
Titus watched his exit with an exasperated face. “He’s my heir, Flavius. Don’t say it.”
Flavius raised one dark eyebrow and restrained himself. “Is he going to warn Vettius?”
“I don’t think so,” Titus said. “He’s still afraid of me when I want him to be.”
“I’d like to put the fear of the gods in Vettius.” Flavius’s hands twitched, and he picked up the purple-fringed ends of his sash to fiddle with. It was tied just above the waist around the silvered cuirass of his full dress uniform. Everyone he knew who wore a sash of office twitched at it when he wanted something to do with his hands. It was a pacifier for senior officers.
“Flavius, I want to make one thing very clear,” Titus said. “I know what my brother is up to at all times. You are to make no comment about how far I choose to let him into my confidence. He won’t learn to govern by being kept in total ignorance. He may learn from example, in time. I have no sons, and Domitian is going to sit here after me, as my father requested.”
“Mithras grant it’s a long way off,” Flavius said.
“Flavius—”
There was a warning note in the emperor’s voice, and Flavius knew enough to listen to it. “For not wanting to lose yourself, sir,” he said lightly. “The gods grant you a long reign.”
Titus laughed. “Your devotion is commendable. I’m young yet. By the time I die, Domitian will have a little sense of the sort that age puts into you. My father founded a dynasty, the first direct succession in the principate. As long as it continues, there will be no more civil war, and Domitian is the continuance.”
“You should marry again, sir.”
“I tried to,” Titus said. “The Senate thought otherwise, so now they will have to take Domitian. And now you get out of here before Vettius comes. I don’t want a brawl.”
* * *
Marius Vettius appeared before the emperor, wearing an easy, genial smile and an air of helpfulness. His toga was of better cloth than the emperor’s, and his tunic’s broad senatorial stripe proclaimed a rank held by his ancestors back to somewhere just short of Romulus. Titus’s father, Vespasian, had been the first emperor to come from strictly equestrian stock.
“I’m pleased to see you looking so well, sir,” Vettius said. “One hopes that this year will prove less wearing than the last.” Titus’s accession less than two years earlier had been marked almost immediately by the explosion of Mount Vesuvius above the Bay of Neapolis, followed by an outbreak of plague in the City, and then a fire that had done great damage. Titus had personally supervised the aid and cleaning up after all three, but he found he didn’t care for Vettius implying that he wasn’t up to it.
“Thank you,” he said dryly, “I manage to get by. Now that your concern for me is assuaged, I can tell you that it’s your knowledge of shipping that prompts me to send for you.” He issued no invitation to sit, and no one sat in the emperor’s presence without one. He hoped Vettius was uncomfortable. The floor was marble, which grows hard very quickly, and Vettius had a bad knee.
“Some difficulty with the grain fleet?” Vettius looked concerned. “If there is any way I can help—” Rome baked her bread from grain grown elsewhere, and a full third of it, 150,000 tons a year, came from Egypt. If the grain fleet didn’t sail on time, the City went hungry, and the prefect of Supply had been known barely to miss lynching.
“Thank you, no,” Titus said. “The fleet made good time last year, a trip and a half each.” The grain fleet shuttled continuously along the Rome-to-Alexandria run. A full round trip a year was essential. Another one-way run gave a breathing space. “We should have no problems with the grain supply, this year at least.” As you should know. I would as soon send a rabbit to weed my garden. He looked Vettius in the eye. The senator’s eyes were gray, an odd, pale color like his hair. “I’m more concerned about civilian shipping around the German coast,” Titus said.
Vettius looked perplexed. “Has my office fouled up somewhere? I thought we were right on top of things. Most of our companies are doing well. There’s a very good trade with the German provinces.”
“Not so good as our trade with the German pirates,” Titus said. He thought that Vettius looked startled, but then his face smoothed out like a wax letter scraped over. It was as pleasant and bland as ever.
“Piracy does seem to be getting worse, sir, and I’ll admit our office has had complaints, b
ut I’m afraid I don’t follow you.” Great respect and a hint of regretful condescension – centuries of good breeding deferring to rank.
“Let me be blunt, Vettius,” Titus said. “Someone has been feeding the German pirates our shipping schedules right down to the cargo lists, and someone has been making a fortune off the death and losses of his fellow citizens, and it has been put to me that that someone is you.”
Vettius let a second or two pass. “That is both scandalous and outrageous, sir.”
“You deny it?” Titus’s expression was not particularly pleasant.
“Of course I deny it! Who made these charges? And where’s his proof?”
“At the moment the proof is highly circumstantial but close to conclusive to my mind. Admit it and make reparations now, and you will find me considerably more reasonable than you will if I am forced to spend time digging up witnesses.”
“There is nothing to admit!” Vettius’s pale skin had an angry flush, and his genial mood was gone. “I am shocked and insulted that it would even be suggested! May I ask your leave to go?”
“You may not.” Titus folded his arms on his desk. “You may thank the gods that I am not some of my predecessors. Until I get proof, your hide is safe. When I do get it, I would suggest you open a vein and spare me the trouble.”
“I assure you—”
“You do not! But you can take a piece of advice in the meantime: Curb your ambition, Vettius. Better men than you have gone under from an excess of that. Also, there will be some shipping information put through your office from mine. An honest man will see no reason to question it, so you had better not. If you aren’t selling knowledge to the pirates, then someone with access to your office is. And this is one piece of information that I want to reach the pirates. Do I make myself clear?”
“I believe so, sir,” Vettius said stiffly.
He’ll pass it on to them, Titus thought with satisfaction. Vettius would sell out the last of his kin to save his own silky hide. He would have no hesitation about selling out the pirates. He would mourn the loss of revenue, but he wouldn’t risk stopping that one schedule out of all the others or stopping any of them so hard on the heels of an accusation. And now we’ll have to pull the entire Rhenus Fleet down to the coast for the rest of the spring, Titus thought disgustedly, or we’ll be sacrificing honest men’s ships for bait. And that would leave all the lower river frontier badly guarded. He felt like a man madly shifting pieces on a game board.
* * *
Marius Vettius stalked through the emperor’s outer chambers, with clerks quailing before him. No one was particularly fond of Vettius, but there were plenty who were afraid of him. As he passed through the antechamber where those who hoped to find an audience with the emperor were herded by the palace stewards, Domitian rose lazily from a bench along the wall.
“You look like you saw a Gorgon.” The emperor’s brother shook out the purple-bordered folds of his consul’s toga. “Talking with my brother can be very wearing. I always find it so. Come and have a drink.” He thought that Vettius would probably have preferred a jump in the Tiber, but if he knew what was good for him, he’d come along.
“Thank you.” Vettius’s finely curved mouth compressed a little, and his cold eyes took careful stock of the others in the antechamber. “I am afraid that our emperor has misunderstood a small problem in the Shipping Offices. Perhaps you would be able to reassure him.” He smiled and waited while a steward bustled past. “I have always thought that perhaps you understood these things better than your brother.”
It was a pity that the Fates who had allowed Titus to be born first hadn’t felt the same way, Domitian thought, grinding his teeth. Titus’s parting words had not been calculated to improve Domitian’s temper, and it had reached boiling point when he had returned and found that the emperor had given orders that he was not to be readmitted to his presence that morning. Domitian, the emperor’s brother and heir and co-consul, parked on a bench in the public antechamber, next to a fat old gentleman from Campania and a freedwoman with a petition in her hand! He had kept his temper outwardly while he sat fuming in the antechamber with the rest who came clamoring every morning for his brother’s attention, but he was still furious. Domitian swept through the crowd and into the outer hall that opened onto the broad marble steps of the palace, pulling his toga to one side as he passed three Praetorian Guardsmen in red and yellow plumes, just come off duty and lounging by the doors.
“I made my opinions known to my brother,” he said between his teeth as they started down the steps. He shot a glance at Vettius. “It would help if you were innocent.”
“My dear consul,” Vettius said smoothly, “I can quite assure you of my innocence.”
“I doubt it,” Domitian said, “but I don’t really care. If you want to rob my brother blind, it makes no difference to me.”
“Shortsighted of you,” Vettius said with a smile. “You will inherit one day, you know.”
“One day is too damned many days away!” Domitian snapped. “I’m tired of being treated like a lackey!”
“It’s a shame that the emperor hasn’t seen fit to grant you responsibilities in keeping with your abilities,” Vettius said. “I expect he is afraid of being outshone. Still, I wish you would assure him of my good wishes. This accusation has made me most uncomfortable.”
“You seem excessively interested in my brother’s patronage,” Domitian snapped. “You won’t find much luck there, Vettius, not with Flavius Julianus sticking his nose into your doings.”
“Julianus?” Vettius looked thoughtful. So he was the source of the emperor’s suspicions. “It’s a pity that young man has got so far into the emperor’s trust. Do you think it’s possible that Titus relies on him too much? To the exclusion of other… uh, wiser counselors?” There was a wine stall ahead on their left, tucked under the overhang of one of the second-floor merchants’ offices that formed the upper level of the commercial district.
“Let’s go have that drink now.” Vettius laid a hand on Domitian’s arm and steered him toward the wine stall. He would have preferred to drink in the privacy of his well-appointed house on the slopes of the Quirinal, with its serene view of water and gardens, but Domitian had a taste for public dives. “Here, let me pay.” Vettius reached into the purse tucked into the front folds of his toga.
“Really, do you think it’s wise of the emperor to rely so heavily on someone so inexperienced in government?” Vettius went on as they seated themselves at a table hastily cleared by the wineshop keeper. “After all, young Julianus—”
“Flavius Julianus is probably the most honest-minded aide my brother has,” Domitian said. “The more fool he. He has the antiquated notion that the emperor is barely one step short of sacred. He swallows Titus’s faults without batting an eye and guards him like a watchdog.” He swallowed his wine and gave Vettius a sour look. “I wouldn’t look for any more favors from my brother for a while. Never, maybe, if he finds out Julianus is right about you.”
Vettius spread his hands in a gesture of dismay. Pale, well-cared-for hands with smooth nails, slightly too broad in the palm. “This is very upsetting. I don’t know how to defend myself.” Defense was essential. When Domitian stopped being mad at his brother, he would alter his views somewhat on the subject of treason. “Most distressing for me, as I’m sure you realize. I hope you’ll see fit to plead my cause for me. I would, of course, be happy to pay any expenses incurred.” There would be no expenses involved in Domitian arguing his case with Titus, but it was better not to offer the emperor’s brother a bribe outright. It might be necessary to step up his plans a little, Vettius thought. Titus might not have the evidence he needed in the matter of the pirates, but he would watch Vettius uncomfortably closely after this and might possibly forbid Domitian to associate with him. If Domitian could be persuaded to remove his brother from this world now, it would make things immeasurably easier. “If anyone can reason with the emperor, Consul, I’m sure it’s y
ou.”
Domitian scowled across the table. “It would be good if you remembered that, Vettius. A man in your position ought to keep in mind where his loyalties lie.” He snapped his fingers and the wineshop keeper scurried over to pour his cup full. Vettius paid.
* * *
“Vettius? Yes, I remember him. He was a sleek man, like a… a scrubbed horse. He had a… fine hide.” Berenice waved her hand in a gesture of looking for the right words.
“My brother-in-law called him a snake,” Ygerna said. “He was mad,” she added thoughtfully. “He said that Correus has risked his neck to catch this man, and now nothing will come of it.” Her dark brows drew together. “It is bad enough for Correus to risk his neck, but a soldier is expected to do that. I do not care for it when nothing comes of it, though.”
“My dear, if you are going to be involved in the doings of the palace, even peripherally,” Berenice said, “you will find that most often nothing comes of the things that ought to. I’ve lived in five palaces, and that’s been true of all of them. Sometimes the more important the ruler, the less he can do.”
They were sitting curled on cushions in a small, pleasant room that overlooked a tiny garden like a jewel box. Spring flowers sat in neat rows along colored marble walks, and there were fruit trees growing out of small squares of emerald grass between. A fountain at one end was alive with a multitude of bright birds, and a white-domed aviary with a screen of gilded wire held more exotic specimens. The doors into the garden were open, and a spring breeze blew its perfume up the polished steps into the room.
A slave girl in an Eastern-looking gown of coral-colored cloth hovered nearby, and there was an ebony table laid with poppy-seed cakes and dishes of olives and fish and preserved fruit. Shallow two-handled bronze cups with silver linings held a rich dark wine that Ygerna drank sparingly. Too much of any drink made her head swim, but it was pleasant to sit and feel the breeze and talk with Berenice, another foreigner in the land, who didn’t disapprove or poke at her or ask if she was feeling well. Wrapped in a shawl beside her, the baby lay like a caterpillar in a cocoon.
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