The bar was not a bad place to work in the evenings. The patrons might be rough, but Ascyltos allowed little rowdiness, and he took no more than half of what she made. During the day she only needed to entertain a few clients in her own room, mostly regulars from the neighbourhood. There was the old die-cutter across the hall. He had grown odder after his wife died. He had turned to the worship of Dionysus, joining a cell of Iobacchi. That had not lasted. Since then he had taken to slipping out of his room, down the creaking stairs, long before it was light. He came back late at night, sober. He would not say where he went, who he saw. Whatever he did, it was not within the law. Doubtless the authorities would reward an informer who discovered his furtive activities.
Caenis did not mind the die-cutter. He made no unusual demands. But she preferred the visits of Castricius. The young cut-purse was generous. Often he brought wine and a handful of delicacies. Thin and wiry, when he had finished, he told jokes. Her laughter was not feigned. He spoke educated Greek, and always left a tip.
There were heavy footsteps on the stairs, the rap of hobnails, the jingling of the ornaments on a military belt.
‘Open.’
‘A moment.’ Caenis slipped naked from the bed. She pulled on a tunic, before unlatching the door.
‘A modest whore.’ The Centurion filled the doorway. There was an air of harmfulness about him. In the room even the inanimate objects – the bed, the one chair, the chest, the chipped bowl and jug – seemed to shrink from him.
‘I was not expecting you. With the rioting, I thought the Praetorians would be on duty.’
‘Emperors come and go, whores still have to pay the tax.’
Caenis did not like having to prize up the floorboard with him watching. She counted out thirty-one denarii, one for each day of the month.
The Centurion put them into a wallet on his belt. ‘Two short.’
There was nothing to be gained by arguing. Caenis handed over another two coins. He slid them into a different wallet. The chair creaked as he sat to write the official receipt.
‘A denarius a fuck.’ He shook his head in mock wonder. ‘Hardly seems worth it.’
Caenis remained very still. Perhaps he would just leave.
‘On your knees.’
He got up, and stood in front of her. ‘Get my prick out.’
She pushed up his tunic, unbuckled the belt that held up his breeches.
His penis hung flaccid. She took it in her mouth. It was unwashed, tasted of urine.
‘Look me in the eye.’
She did as she was told.
‘If only your father could see you now.’
His penis stiffened.
‘Over the bed.’
She leant on the covers, as he hauled her tunic up around her waist. He spat on his fingers, pushed them between her legs. She felt him bend his knees to guide himself inside her. Her mind went blank, her thoughts unfocused.
Down in the street someone was singing. Somewhere in the tenement the sounds of furniture being moved. He gripped her hips, grunting as he thrust.
When he was done, he left without speaking.
Caenis tugged the tunic over her head. She squatted over the bowl, washed herself, tried to sneeze. There were some hours before she had to go to the bar.
Chapter 15
Africa
The Town of Lambaesis, Numidia,
Six Days before the Ides of March, AD238
They rode over the last rise, and Lambaesis was below them; the jumbled town on the lower slopes, the plain beyond, bright with spring grass, and in the middle of it the great, regular fortress of yellow stone, and beyond that the green hills, saw-toothed against the sky. Nothing in the scene lifted the dissatisfaction that was habitual with Capelianus.
He did not hate Africa, but he did not love it, and he had had no desire to return. For four years he had been governor of the province of Numidia. He had been meant for greater things. His grandfather had been Consul, governed Pannonia Inferior, and been friend of the Emperor Antoninus Pius. Admittedly his father had failed to attain the Consulship, and had squandered their money. Capelianus himself had mortgaged the ancestral estates at Cirta to pay the huge bribe to Alexander Severus’ mother for a belated Consulship. His patrimony had been almost exhausted by the next payment. He had hoped for one of the rich, major provinces, Asia or Africa Proconsularis, somewhere fitting to his dignitas, where he could recoup his losses. Instead that avaricious Syrian bitch Mamaea had sent him here. Numidia was a post for ex-Praetors, not those who had been Consul. It was held by much younger Senators, men not destined for the highest offices. Well into his sixties, and for four years he had been stuck in this backwater.
As he rode down through the streets of the town, the clop of hooves and the tread of the soldiers were drowned by the rumble and squeal of the big game cart.
Capelianus knew exactly when his career had stalled. It was when his whore of a first wife had cuckolded him with that old goat Gordian. No longer a man of promise, he had become a figure of ridicule. It was said the Emperor Caracalla had joked about it with his intimates. The court case had made it common knowledge. As Gordian had been found innocent, against all justice, Capelianus had not even kept her dowry when he threw her out. The threat of prosecution for the beating he had administered had come to nothing. He had not been fortunate with his wives. He had married twice more. Both had proved to be barren. Divorced, they had taken their wealth with them. In front of the required seven witnesses, he had said the words: Take your things and go.
They entered the base of the 3rd Augustan Legion by the rear gate and went up the Via Decumana towards the headquarters. The breeze was cut off by the barrack blocks, and the reek of big cat was strong in his nostrils.
At least the hunting had been good. They had been out twelve days in the mountains to the south. They had graded up through juniper and holm oak, up to where there were just cedars. Snow still lay in the hollows of the upper slopes. The steep-cut runoffs had been full of jade and white water tumbling and sliding over smooth stones. It had been cold at night, but the camp had been a pleasure. Big fires flaring bright in the wind. From outside his leather tent had come the ordered murmur of the men; not just soldiers and huntsmen, but bearers, skinners, cooks, grooms, and personal servants.
They had been too high for boar, yet the hunting had been good. Hyenas, two packs of wild dogs, three panthers, one with cubs, but the lion had been the prize. A big man-eater, heavy shouldered, with a fine, black mane. Capelianus savoured the memory of his first sight, as it padded through the trees. The beast had raided a mountain village. It had got into the sheepfolds. Escaping, it had killed a peasant, but taken a slight wound. Capelianus had planned with care. The camp and baggage animals had been protected by zeribas of thorn bushes. The bait, a gazelle and a mare, had been tethered behind the trapping box. Strong nets, secured to well hammered-in posts, had curved away on either side. Everything had been concealed by the fronds of cut branches.
The den was in a thick tangle of undergrowth and fallen boughs. Capelianus had sent in fifteen soldiers with big shields and burning torches. The lion had roared, an ascending thunder, ending in a guttural cough. It had reverberated in Capelianus’ chest, made his limbs clumsy with fear. The call revealed an older beast; old, wounded, and accustomed to killing men, dangerous beyond measure.
The lion broke cover. The soldiers came out after. The rough going had broken their ranks. The lion charged an isolated soldier, knocked him down with its great weight. Capelianus smiled, remembering the pinned man screaming. With teeth and claws, the beast tried to tear through the covering shield. Not until the brands singed its hide, did it turn and run into the waiting trap.
They had helped the soldier to his feet. He was not much injured, a few cuts to his arms and shoulders, but his breeches were soaked with urine. Everyone had laughed.
When they reached the rear of the Principia, Capelianus issued precise instructions about the care of the big cats
. He would send the lion to Maximinus. The Emperor was an uncultured brute. He handled the Res Publica like a goatherd who had climbed into a racing chariot. The Thracian had shown no favours to Capelianus. Yet perhaps the peasant-Emperor would be pleased by the beast. Perhaps Capelianus might escape from Numidia.
The carts rumbled away, and Capelianus rode into the forecourt. A groom held the bridle, and he dismounted. A Centurion announced the men were drawn up waiting. Capelianus was back among the tedium of a governor’s duties: pointless inspections of troops, endless court cases, disputes over inheritances, complaints of soldiers’ greed and brutality, endless pleas for remission of taxes. Still, it was only five days until the Mamuralia. The local version of the festival had delighted Capelianus. In other places, they beat the empty hide of an animal. Here the skins were worn by an old man. Capelianus would tour the gaols, choose the prisoner carefully. He should not be too aged or infirm, not go down too easily under the blows. The scapegoat needed to be beaten all through the streets to the city gates. Capelianus wondered what happened to him out in the country. Most likely he died in a ditch.
Capelianus walked through the Basilica, and out into the peristyle courtyard. He went to ascend the tribunal, but a row of soldiers locked his way. An officer he did not recognize stepped forward.
‘Caius Iulius Geminius Capelianus, you are dismissed from your command.’
The officer who spoke had a short, stubby beard. His lined face and upturned nose seemed familiar. Capelianus did not recognize the two young tribunes who stood with him.
‘You are to be confined under house arrest,’ the older of the three officers continued.
Arrian, one of old Gordian’s legates. Capelianus knew him now. A friend of Gordian’s dissolute son. One of the pair they called the Cercopes, the lying, cheating twins of myth.
‘Fellow soldiers of the 3rd Augustan,’ Capelianus shouted.
‘Preserve your dignitas,’ Arrian said. ‘They have sworn their oath to our new Emperors, Marcus Antonius Gordianus Sempronianus Romanus Africanus Pius Felix Augustus, Father and Son.’
Chapter 16
Rome
The Caelian Hill,
Five Days before the Ides of March, AD238
When the drinks came in they all stopped talking. There was time to study the small room. Like everything in the house of the Consul Fulvius Pius, it was decorated with restrained good taste; the walls painted in blocks of red and black panels, busts of Brutus, Cassius and Cato the Younger on plinths.
Pupienus thought about the portraits. Two Stoics and an Epicurean. Two men who had assassinated Caesar in the name of Republican libertas, and one who had killed himself rather than live under his dictatorship; two tyrannicides and a martyr for freedom. Had Fulvius Pius dressed the room to appeal to Gallicanus? On the other hand, if they were a permanent feature of the decor, did it indicate some hankering on the part of the Consul for the long lost free Republic? Not necessarily. Pupienus had read of an equestrian official who had exhibited busts of the same men, while faithfully serving in the imperial administration for nearly half a century, serving under the tyrants Tiberius and Caligula, possibly Claudius as well. It annoyed him that he could not recall the man’s name. He prided himself on his memory.
Perhaps Piso’s sculptures were merely an assertion of culture. It was possible to read too much into a man’s choice in art. Yet, in politics, small details might reveal character; interests, affiliations, strengths and weaknesses. If he was to be harnessed to them, at least outwardly, in the new Board of Twenty, Pupienus needed to know everything he could about the other four men in the room; penetrate beneath the exterior of the young Stoic Menophilus, the gross patrician Balbinus, the hairy Cynic Gallicanus, as well as their anxious looking Consular host.
The servants left, and Fulvius Pius was the first to speak.
‘Before we look to the future, the city must be safe. Murder, arson, rape; some people have been afraid to leave their homes. They are not safe even there.’
It was for Pupienus to answer. He took a sip of watered wine, let them wait a moment. The Consul was cautious, irresolute; not to be relied upon, but posing little threat. Some people, indeed. He needed reassurance; the calm enumeration of matter-of-fact details of security.
‘When he heard that Sabinus was dead, Potens fled; maybe to Maximinus in the north, more likely to his brother-in-law Decius and the comparative safety of Spain.’ Pupienus nodded to Menophilus. ‘The Watch has a new commander; Maecius Gordianus, an equestrian kinsman of our noble Emperors. The Prefect Felicio has administered the oath of allegiance to those Praetorians still quartered in their camp. Serapamum has the Second Legion ready to march from their base in the Alban Hills. The necessity should not arise. As Prefect of the City, I have put the Urban Cohorts back onto the streets. The ringleaders of the recent troubles are being arrested. Timesitheus, the Prefect of the Grain Supply, has ordered a special distribution. With the stick and the carrot, the plebs should be quiet.’
The others took it all in, sitting still, or toying with their drinks.
Timesitheus had done more than produce a surplus of grain. The Praefectus Annonae had shown an extraordinarily detailed knowledge of the identities and domiciles of the plebeian rabble rousers who had led the mobs out of the Subura. Pupienus did not care for surprises, and every conversation with Timesitheus was a revelation. The little Greek was easy and subtle, full of charm, but, for those with eyes to see, remorseless ambition glimmered just beneath the amiable surface. He needed watching, and now, not without reason, he expected a reward. It was a pity that Menophilus had already assigned the commands of the Praetorians and the Watch. Timesitheus had implied that he would like to add one of those Prefectures to that of the Grain Supply. Something else needed to be found to satisfy the Graeculus. It would be unwise to alienate such a man.
‘Our problem remains.’
Menophilus might be the youngest and the most junior present, but no one objected to his taking the lead. He was close to the new Emperors, and no one was likely to forget that in the last few days he had killed two senior politicians with his own hands. one with a sword, the other clubbed to death with the leg of a chair. The principles of Stoicism had always been malleable, Pupienus reflected.
‘The Senate has decreed a Board of Twenty to defend Italy from Maximinus, and we still have twenty-three names.’
‘A free vote in the Curia,’ Gallicanus said.
‘It is inappropriate,’ Menophilus said.
‘Inappropriate!’ Gallicanus bounded up from his couch, like one of the big apes in the imperial menagerie, when they are prodded with a stick. ‘Free speech in the Senate House is never inappropriate. It is the very cause for which we have put our lives at risk.’
Balbinus raised himself on an arm. His large belly shifted as if some rotund animal, something more slothful than simian, had taken refuge in his clothes. ‘If every Senator exercises his choice, do you think most would vote for an ex-Praetor, a man from nowhere, one who ceaselessly parades his austerity?’
Gallicanus wrung his hands with great violence, probably wishing Balbinus’ neck was in their strong grip, but subsided.
Pupienus thought Balbinus a fool. A true statesman never gave offence, unless it was necessary, unless it brought him advantage. Bitter words should be dipped in honey.
‘When Cato condoned bribery in elections,’ Pupienus gestured at one of the busts, ‘he accepted that occasionally Roman voters require guidance; that sometimes strict morality and temporal laws must stand down for the greater good, for the well-being of the Res Publica.’
Gallicanus did not look particularly mollified or grateful. Oaf, Pupienus thought, yapping Cynic dog.
‘A Board of Twenty,’ Menophilus resumed. ‘Three men, no matter how deserving, must be dropped from our list. Experience of military command should be a prerequisite. As such, for the safety of the Res Publica, I am prepared to strike out the name of Celsus Aelianus, friend though he is of
our Augustus Gordian the Younger.’ He turned to Balbinus. ‘Your amicus Praetextatus also has never commanded troops in the field.’
‘Never.’ Balbinus’ jowls wobbled with incoherent vehemence.
Gallicanus laughed, an unpleasant sound, fortunately seldom heard. ‘At least we would be spared looking at him. The only person in Rome uglier is that daughter of his. No matter how large the dowry, he cannot find her a husband, doubt he ever will.’
Balbinus ignored the comments. ‘That sniggering little Greek scribbler Licinius has never seen an army. Draw a line through his name.’
‘Letters must be written, governors and communities persuaded,’ Fulvius Pius said. ‘He has been imperial secretary. We need his eloquence. He has been a Rationibus. We need his financial acumen. Anyway he governed Noricum, an armed province. What qualifications does your friend Valerius Priscillianus hold? Is he not Curator of the Banks of the Tiber and the Sewers of the City?’
Well, Pupienus thought, our Consul has a backbone after all. Perhaps he wants to build a little factio of his own.
‘Never,’ Balbinus shouted, ‘not while I live and breath. What about Egnatius Marinianus. He has nothing to recommend him except Valerian married his sister.’
Pupienus withdrew part of his mind. Long ago Mark Antony, Octavian and Lepidus had met on a small island in a river near Bononia. While everyone else waited on the banks, they drew up a proscription list, trading friends and relatives, marking them down for death. The stakes here were not that high, not yet. But something had to be done to break this deadlock, some concession.
‘Appius Claudius is so old, he will be dead by the time Maximinus gets here,’ Gallicanus said.
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