David

by Barbaree Deposed

  ‘Yes, Caesar.’

  ‘Well, I hope you don’t need him to talk. Otherwise you didn’t get your money’s worth. Whatever you paid.’

  *

  On the walk back to Nerva’s, the streets are empty except for a few carts making their deliveries. I’m beside Nerva. The Batavian is walking behind us with Appius.

  ‘Well,’ Nerva asks. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘I can hazard a guess. I saw the way he looked at her.’

  I look back at the Batavian. I see a small patch of green fabric in his hand. Gods, the man is mad as a sack of eels. He’s taken a piece of Domitilla’s shawl as a prize.

  Beside me, Nerva strokes the beard he doesn’t have. ‘If he’s going to be this difficult, I may as well make money on him in hunts, maybe even the gladiatorial games.’

  ‘You’ll let a prize like him die in the arena?’ I ask.

  ‘Why not? The price I paid was good. I’m sure he’ll give me a good return before he loses.’

  ‘Caesar took a liking to him?’

  ‘You couldn’t even look at Caesar. And now you are an expert in what he favours?’ Nerva says. ‘You made quite the fool of yourself, didn’t you?’

  ‘I’d never met an emperor before. Or been in the palace.’

  ‘He was a general once. You’ve met generals before. Or, at the very least, been more than a puddle in their presence.’

  ‘Yes but now he’s the Emperor, touched by the gods.’

  Nerva stares at me for a bit. Then he laughs. ‘The lower classes are fascinating, aren’t they?’

  Nerva suddenly sighs as though something has just occurred to him; he stops walking and turns to face me.

  ‘I appreciate your assistance today, Calenus,’ he says. ‘I do. But I’m not sure how much work I’ll have for you in the future.’

  ‘What?’ I say, bewildered. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve told you before, Calenus. Your value to me is in your anonymity. But you just entered the palace and met Caesar’s family. That very ugly face of yours is known now.’

  My heart drops down into my stomach: Nerva is my only way to make coin. If he drops me, I’m not sure how I’ll live.

  He sighs again. He’s acting as though this is a hard decision, but I know he has ice for a heart.

  ‘I appreciate all you’ve done, Calenus. Truly. But what would you have me do? I hired you to stalk the shadows and gather information. You can’t exactly stalk the shadows if you’re now a minor celebrity. But don’t worry. I won’t drop you outright. There will be a transition. I’ll need help breaking him in.’ He points at the Batavian.

  I shake my head. I can’t believe it. Bad fortune always seems to find me.

  Nerva starts walking again. Like a slave – because I need his coin as long as he’s offering – I hurry to catch up.

  TITUS

  15 January, depth of night

  The Imperial palace, Rome

  Virgilius and I have three glasses of unmixed wine before we are ready to talk about what we’ve seen. An oil lamp burns on my desk, another on the side table. Ptolemy is in the corner, asleep on a stool.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like that before,’ Virgilius says.

  ‘Nor I,’ I say.

  We have seen our fair share of battles. But what we saw tonight . . .

  ‘They say something similar happened to those captured in Teutoburg Pass,’ I say, referring to Rome’s worst defeat, seventy years before, in the forests of Germany. ‘Their mouths sewn shut, their throats slit.’

  ‘Why?’ Virgilius asks. ‘What purpose could it serve?’

  I shrug. The question is simple, the answer elusive. ‘The gods’ favour; to turn fortune; because life is precarious and we are all at the mercy of the gods.’

  We don’t discuss the attempt on Domitilla’s life. We’ve no information to know whether it is related to the body we found mutilated by the Tiber. Father’s words keep repeating in my head: aspiring minds are salivating.

  Later, Ptolemy ushers Secundus into my study, Halotus’s bloodied scroll in hand. He is out of breath and needs a moment to collect himself.

  ‘I received your note about what you discovered by the Tiber,’ he says. ‘I didn’t think I should wait to tell you what I’ve been able to translate in the scroll we found on Halotus.’

  ‘You think the two events are related?’ Virgilius asks.

  ‘I do,’ Secundus says.

  ‘Well,’ I reply. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘It has been difficult because much of it was stained with blood when Halotus died. But I am certain it contains instructions.’

  ‘Instructions for what?’ Virgilius asks.

  ‘On sacrifice,’ Secundus says, ‘human sacrifice to a Germanic god. One I’d not heard of before.’

  ‘And this god’s name?’

  ‘Torcus,’ Secundus says. ‘The god of the marsh.’

  ‘And how does it relate to what we’ve found tonight?’ I ask.

  Secundus opens his mouth but he pauses, unsure of how to continue. I’ve never seen Secundus reluctant to speak of anything, least of all some foreign anomaly. Usually, he’s fascinated by anything different. His reluctance is ominous.

  ‘Out with it, Secundus,’ I say. ‘What do the instructions describe?’

  He swallows and then describes a ghastly mutilation and murder.

  ‘And is this what happened by the Tiber?’ Virgilius asks.

  ‘I believe so,’ Secundus says, ‘though I will need to inspect the scene.’

  ‘What are you saying, Secundus?’ I ask. ‘You believe some cult is at work here in Rome?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first,’ Secundus says. ‘How was this chamber found?’

  ‘A slave from the neighbouring warehouses found it by happenstance,’ Virgilius says. ‘As he was passing by, he saw what looked like light coming from under the door – a door to a warehouse he’d never seen used before. It was the middle of the night and the door was chained. He thought someone might have left an open flame. He went to the vigiles and told them, thinking there might be a reward for stopping a fire. The vigiles broke the lock and went inside to snuff out the flame. They found a torch, as they’d expected, and much more. They were in over their heads, so they notified the Praetorians.’

  ‘How many murders have happened there which have gone unnoticed?’ I ask rhetorically.

  Quietly, we ponder the question.

  Then Secundus asks, ‘What about your father? This cult, the attempt of Domitilla’s life – he may not be safe.’

  ‘I will send him away,’ I say. ‘I believe that anywhere else is safer than Rome at the moment. He will go with only a select few, only those we know we can trust. No one will know his destination other than Caesar.’

  Secundus nods in agreement. ‘It is a good idea. A different schedule, a different location – it would make planning anything against him difficult.’

  ‘And you,’ I say to Virgilius. ‘You will go south. You will find Plautius for me. We will learn more of whatever plot was being hatched in the south.’

  Secundus and Virgilius leave.

  I’m alone for a time at my desk, lost in thought, when, unannounced, she emerges from the dark, gliding out from the corridor like a ship. It’s the middle of the night. She is alone.

  ‘Antonia,’ I say, ‘is everything all right? How did you get in here?’

  Her hair is no longer up, as it was at dinner; it hangs about her shoulders and conceals one of her oval, ox eyes. She sails toward me, silently. Her turquoise shawl shimmers in the lamplight. She comes to my side of the desk and leans against it.

  ‘You left tonight . . . Was it Plautius?’ she asks.

  ‘No.’

  Still looking away, she bends down and pinches the hem of her stola; she pulls it up just above her knees. She takes my hand and places it on her inner thigh, then pushes it higher.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I s
ee Ptolemy silently rise from his stool and, still half-asleep, float out of the room and into the dark of the palace.

  I move with purpose now, confident we will not be disturbed.

  XIII

  Time to Go

  A.D. 69

  NERO

  11 January, afternoon

  City jail IV, Rome

  With my ear to the window and my chin resting on the stone sill, I hear Doryphorus below. He begins with expert, actor-ly precision.

  ‘That’s not sour wine.’

  ‘It is too,’ a soldier says, his voice heavy with drink.

  ‘It’s not.’ Doryphorus sounds tipsy as well, but I suspect he’s dead sober.

  ‘It is!’ says a different, equally drunk soldier.

  ‘What do you mean?’ says a third who may only be half drunk.

  The second voice belongs to Juno. The third to Venus, I’m certain. I will never forget Venus’s plebeian pitch.

  ‘The swill you drink is soft,’ Doryphorus says. ‘It’s for women and eunuchs. Now this –’ I picture him holding up a jug of wine ‘– this is sour wine. This is the drink that will put hair on your back and make your balls drop.’

  He is a wonder, isn’t he? The way he can change not only his voice but also his character to suit the company he finds himself in. He always had a knack for this, but his years on stage have cultivated the talent. Now he is a chameleon. He can play an effeminate Persian one moment, a drunken soldier the next. It is particularly useful today because it has put my captors at ease. This will make our plan far easier to carry out.

  Months ago, Doryphorus bought poison. Nothing too fancy, not the kind one uses to secretly kill a king, to make the regent’s slow decline and eventual death seem natural. No, it was the cheap and obvious variety. Then Doryphorus began to cultivate a relationship with the soldiers keeping watch outside. He brought them wine, or shared theirs, and together they would drink, each session growing longer and more relaxed, until the men looked forward to it. At night, Doryphorus developed immunity to the poison by taking incrementally larger doses, so that if it came to it, if he had to drink the same poison as the soldiers, he wouldn’t experience anything worse than an upset stomach.

  ‘Well,’ a soldier asks, ‘are you going to offer us a drink or are you going to stand there all day holding that damned jug in the air?’

  ‘All right, all right. If you women can handle it,’ Doryphorus says.

  I hear a fat whistle as a cork is removed from a jug.

  The banter becomes incomprehensible, but I can tell from the swishing noise that each man is taking his turn with the jug.

  ‘Aren’t you going to have a drink?’

  ‘Sure I will,’ Doryphorus says.

  A short swish of the jug.

  ‘That wasn’t much of a drink. I thought you were a . . .’

  And then all I can hear is the sound of choking – glorious musical choking. One man at first, and then a chorus fills my ears.

  Downstairs the door opens and I can hear a man leaping up the stairs. The door bursts open. ‘It worked,’ Doryphorus says. He rushes to the cell and starts to open it using the trick Marcus showed him, sticking two fingers into the lock.

  But then he falls to his knees and starts to retch.

  When he’s finished and panting for air, I ask, ‘Will you live?’

  He spits. ‘I’ll live.’

  ‘Then hurry. I want my face to be the last Venus’s sees before breathing his last.’

  *

  For the first time in months, I’m on the move. Doryphorus has procured us a mule. I’m sitting behind him, clutching his soft middle, as we head south, to Rome. It’s the sounds I find unnerving: the rustling of a tree, the bark of a dog, a growl somewhere behind us. In my cell, there was little stimulus beyond the voices of my various visitors; and the walls were tight and confining, which was – in a way – comforting. The unknown world, for ever dark, was scripted and controlled. Now, however, riding through the countryside, my true vulnerability is unearthed. Each sound could be a threat and I’d never know.

  But I can stomach the uncertainty and fear and humility because I have finally brought one of the men who betrayed me to justice. Finally Venus is dead; poisoned and now lying in the dirt. A fittingly ignominious end for an oath breaker.

  Once we pass through the city gate, I immediately feel the menacing proximity of the tenements and shops and flux of people around us. We force our way through the onslaught. It feels an eternity before Doryphorus says, ‘We’re here,’ and helps me dismount.

  For the tenth time today, I ask, ‘You’re certain he’s here?’

  And for the tenth time today, Doryphorus says, ‘No, but it’s the best intelligence we have.’

  Of all the men who swore to protect my life above their own, those who had access to my chamber the night I was taken, Tigellinus and Epaphroditus are the only two who are not in hiding. Epaphroditus, though, has found favour with the Hunchback. He is in the palace and, for the time being, beyond my reach. This leaves Tigellinus. Apparently, he has fallen ill and may not be long for this world. His home on the Quirinal was plundered and burned after I disappeared. Now he is reduced to living in poverty, in a Suburrian hovel. I suspect the illness is fake, another one of his tricks, to avoid prosecution for his bloody acts as prefect. But we shall see.

  Doryphorus helps me up the flight of stairs. A slave answers our knock at the door. His voice is ancient and weak. I imagine a very old man, with a monstrous hunch that drags him down toward the floor.

  ‘We’ve come to pay our respects,’ Doryphorus says. ‘We hear the prefect is not long for this world.’

  ‘No visitors,’ the old slave says.

  Doryphorus rummages in his pocket and then says, ‘Let us have our time with him, old man.’ I picture the silver coin he is holding up. ‘This might see you through after he’s gone.’

  The door creaks open.

  ‘This way.’

  We step inside. Lurking beneath the trickery of cheap incense, the room stinks of mould and decay. It is the smell of death. Maybe Tigellinus is sick after all. We shuffle across the room and then I feel Doryphorus’s hands take me by the shoulders and guide me down to a stool. Once seated – once the creak of the wood ceases – the rasping lungs of a dying man fill my ears.

  ‘And who are you?’

  It’s a voice I heard nearly every day for seven years. I would know it anywhere.

  ‘You don’t recognise me?’ I ask.

  ‘I know no cripple,’ he says. ‘Bearded and filthy . . .’ He takes a deep, sickly breath. ‘You look like the beggar.’

  ‘You know me,’ I say. ‘Look closer. Imagine the gods had not abandoned me. Imagine at this very moment, blue eyes met yours, not bandages and scars.’

  I lean in.

  Quietly, he says, ‘No.’ A long pause. ‘No, no, no. You are . . . dead.’

  ‘I assure you, Tigellinus: I am alive.’

  ‘The furies come for me,’ he mutters; his rasping breath quickens.

  ‘I am alive, Tigellinus. I did not run from Rome. Three soldiers stole me away in the night and took my eyes. I have been imprisoned ever since. I am alive but you are correct: I am now a cripple, and I am a beggar. But I am not seeking coin or a free meal. Not from you. From you, I want answers – answers to questions I have been asking myself for many months.’

  He mutters ‘no’ again and again.

  ‘Who betrayed me?’ I demand.

  ‘Not I,’ he says. ‘Not I, not I.’

  He coughs uncontrollably.

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Is this a performance? I knew him well. Usually I could see through his endless tricks. But it’s difficult to evaluate a man’s truthfulness without my eyes.

  In the next room, I hear Doryphorus whispering with the slave.

  ‘Who was guarding my room the night I went missing?’

  ‘Spiculus,’ he says. ‘He an
d another gladiator. Hercules.’

  ‘Where were you?’

  ‘Asleep. In my chamber in the palace. I would never break my oath, Nero. Never.’

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  His lungs rasp, greedily sucking in the stale air.

  ‘I was woken in the night. By Spiculus. He said you were not in your bedchamber. He had been guarding your door but was called away on another matter. When he returned, you were gone. Or so he says. He took members of your bodyguard to search for you. I went to the Praetorian camp. By the time I was there – it was not yet sunrise – it was said that you’d fled the city. I thought you had abandoned me.’

  He calls for wine. The old slave comes in and helps him take a drink.

  He says, ‘I’d gone to the camp to find Nymphidius, to speak with him about our next course of action. But with you gone, my life was in danger. I fled the camp with my slave Antonius.’

  ‘What about my gladiators. What of Spiculus? Did you speak with him again?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I never spoke with anyone. I hid away. I heard Spiculus ran from the city.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Who had the key to my bedroom that night?’ I demand.

  He mutters to himself. Is he an old, sick man taxing his memory? Or a born liar playing another trick?

  ‘Epaphroditus. Spiculus. Myself. And . . . I’m not sure who else.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘But my spies . . . they witnessed certain meetings, in the weeks before the coup.’

  ‘What? Tell me.’

  ‘The eunuch, Halotus, was observed meeting with Nymphidius several times in the months preceding your fall. I had started to investigate, but never learned more before the coup.’

  Is this the truth? Tigellinus had spies throughout the palace, and Nymphidius was certainly involved in the coup. If he was meeting with Halotus . . . Halotus’s involvement would not be surprising. I’ve always thought him a snivelling, worthless eunuch, my mother’s lackey when she was alive. It seems my list is getting longer, not shorter.

  ‘Did your spies find anything else?’ I ask.

  ‘I thought it nothing at the time.’