Master and God

by Lindsey Davis

  At that moment Lucilla would, for once, have fallen on the Praetorian’s neck. Unfortunately, his arms remained rigid as he still gripped her shoulders, so she was unable to collapse into that inevitable disaster.

  ‘What am I to do then?’ Tears were about to gush again. Vinius let go of her quickly.

  ‘Buck up, girl. There has to be a solution. I’ll sort you out.’

  ‘I can sort myself,’ Lucilla whimpered ungraciously.

  Vinius scoffed. ‘Doesn’t look like it to me! I’ll help. I don’t want snotty brats ruining my elegant investment, not to mention you blarting and reneging on your rent.’ Knowing when things were swinging his way, he changed his tone. ‘The best way to plot is over a food bowl. I’m ravenous and I don’t suppose you bothered to eat today? Does that bar down on Plum Street run to a Chicken Frontinian? Get your stole; I’ll treat you.’

  ‘I can pay my way.’

  ‘I’m offering street food, not a banquet.’

  Lucilla unbent a little. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  ‘The Scallopshell does chicken dumplings or pork morsels,’ Lucilla told him. ‘You have to wink first.’ The old emperor Vespasian had banned everything except pulses in food shops. Tiresome gruels discouraged people from lingering at the counter so long they started muttering against the political regime. In his previous existence, Vinius had policed the edict in a desultory fashion; when barkeepers were found selling meats instead of lentil pottage, the vigiles could lean on them, extracting information by threats to suspend their licences.

  He could live with dumplings if Frontinian was unavailable. Eating out in public was safe. It held fewer temptations than being alone together in the apartment — provided his wife never heard about it. He had no evil intentions. He was too committed to thinking up a way to solve Lucilla’s problem.

  Vinius found a solution quite easily.

  He consulted Lucilla, then next morning took her to visit his brother. Felix and his wife, Paulina, had had a young son and daughter who both died of a childhood ailment the previous year, a common tragedy. Paulina had been a good mother and was desperate for more children. She had even suggested searching rubbish-dumps for abandoned babies. She felt apprehensive about risking pregnancy at her age, but longed for children so badly she was contemplating it — ‘Though my husband drives, which means he works at night. Not much chance of anything happening!’

  During that remark, Lucilla saw Gaius Vinius was amused at the suggestion a couple might only make love in bed and at night; she looked away quickly.

  ‘The only other thing,’ said Felix, ‘is to buy a healthy slave girl. I can father a couple of nippers on her, no sweat.’

  Paulina was a woman of few words, but said what she thought about that. Although Felix was a big man with bigoted opinions it was clear that in their house Paulina held sway. He pulled a face at his brother, but backed down, appearing oddly proud of his strong wife.

  Vinius lost no time in taking his brother aside to broach his idea. Paulina was ahead of him. As soon as Lara’s orphans were mentioned, she showed Lucilla the room where her own children had once slept, an untouched shrine still containing their two tiny beds and pathetic row of clay animal figurines; she produced a copy of their memorial stone with its sad picture of the children, their pet duck and puppy.

  Lucilla described the two little girls, whom Lara had named Marcia and Julia after the months of their birth; they were about five and six. If they could be taken care of, Junius’ mother would bring up the three older boys, who needed less attention; as lads, Junius took more interest in them anyway. Everyone thought the baby, Titus, who was about fifteen months old, was too sickly to live.

  Without delay, Paulina asked for a meeting; Vinius shepherded her and Lucilla to Lara’s house. Since their mother died, the younger children had become very subdued. The boys had the same shifty manner as their father; they would be fine with him. The two girls were pretty, like their mother; Paulina instantly took to them.

  Junius fairly readily agreed to give up his daughters. His only tricky reaction involved him taxing Vinius: ‘Your connection with my wife’s sister is what, exactly?’

  ‘I am Flavia Lucilla’s guardian,’ replied the Praetorian, unfazed. His sister-in-law glanced at him quickly.

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘I appointed him,’ Lucilla interrupted. ‘I met Gaius Vinius through official channels when he was very helpful to Mother and me. I would not dream of taking any important decision without his advice first.’

  Even Gaius looked startled by this declaration, though he rallied enough to wink at Lucilla, a curious gesture from a one-eyed man.

  ‘Vinius Felix insists on proper arrangements,’ Paulina butted in, anxious to pin down Junius, of whom she clearly shared Lucilla’s low opinion. ‘If everyone settles down nicely, we will adopt formally.’ Her eyes narrowed at the whimpering Titus, whom Lucilla was tending. ‘What about that little mite?’

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ shrugged Junius. ‘He won’t last the week.’

  ‘Give him to me as well then. I’ll comfort him on his way out.’

  He might not die. Lucilla reckoned that if the toddler could be saved, this stern woman would achieve it.

  They went in a quiet crocodile to Felix and Paulina’s house. The two little girls, in their matching pigtails that Lara herself had plaited a fortnight before, walked one each side of their new mother, with Paulina grasping each by the hand. Paulina seemed abrupt at first meeting, but the children had immediately accepted her gruff kindness. Lucilla carried the frail Titus in a basket. Vinius shouldered a small pack with the children’s meagre belongings, together with professional equipment of Lara’s that Junius had passed on to Lucilla.

  Paulina gave them a meal, during which Lucilla had an odd feeling that her introduction to Felix and his wife might have wider repercussions. Paulina had encouraged her to see the girls whenever she wanted. She would be invited to their home again.

  When she and Vinius were leaving, Felix came and thanked her for making his wife so happy with this ready-made family. Lucilla began to feel tearful again.

  Vinius walked her back to Plum Street. ‘You did the right thing. Paulina is strict and Felix will spoil them silly; it’s perfect. Then of course, I make a wonderful uncle.’

  Lucilla felt their relationship shift disconcertingly.

  Vinius had to go to the Camp, or so he said. Lucilla wondered if he was really intending to visit his wife at the marital apartment. Whatever his destination, he seemed in no hurry to be there. Before he left that evening, he carried two chairs to the balcony. Felix had given him a flask of wine which Vinius poured into beakers. Feeling calmer about the future, but suddenly exhausted, Lucilla slumped in her chair beside his.

  They sat for some time enjoying their drinks in silence. It was good wine. As a carter, Felix sometimes drove for a wine importer.

  ‘You will be all right,’ Vinius encouraged. ‘If you need any kind of help come to the Camp and ask me.’ Silence. ‘You can ask.’

  ‘Yes.’ Lucilla held up a hand, palm towards him. ‘You are a good friend, Gaius; I understand that.’

  This was the first time she ever called him Gaius. It was a slip. Too personal. Even though he had become her nieces’ uncle, she would not repeat it.

  It was then that Vinius turned his chair so he sat directly facing Lucilla. He could have reached out and taken her hand, though he did not do so. ‘I want to ask you some questions.’

  Lucilla placed her beaker on the ground, immediately on the defensive. ‘What questions?’

  ‘Tell me about Lara.’

  ‘You met Lara once. She was here one day when you came, about six months ago.’

  Vinius did remember. The women were very alike to look at. He had heard Lara in the workroom, sounding cheery; then she came out to be introduced. A pretty woman, though with dispirited eyes. They had barely met, yet to his mind the sister had sta
red at him as if she did not trust him near her Lucilla.

  ‘She loved her children?’

  ‘Yes. She kept them immaculate. She would have been horrified to see them today, all grubby and tearful.’ Children were like that all over the Empire though many others, even in gruelling poverty, were given the best of everything possible. Lara had been devoted. Please gods, Paulina and Felix would be too.

  ‘And she loved you too,’ commented Vinius. She thought I was after you. She reckoned I was trouble… ‘How old was Lara, would you say?’

  ‘She was thirty-six this year.’

  She looked forty, Vinius thought; forty at least. ‘Thirty-six; and a mother how many times?’

  ‘Oh about ten,’ groaned Lucilla unhappily. ‘Some died. She still looked so young, to me, because of her happy nature, but she was worn out. And don’t say, “Never let that happen to you, Lucilla”, because she told me herself often enough.’

  ‘I bet she did!’ Vinius was still pursuing some mysterious line of thought. ‘When you were born, Lara would have been how old?’

  ‘Fifteen. She was fifteen years older than me.’

  ‘When did she marry Junius? He’s a horror, by the way.’

  ‘When I was a baby, I think. Very young — too young. She married and she moved away. So I never really knew Lara during my childhood.’

  ‘While you were being brought up by her mother, Lachne.’

  ‘ My mother! How do you remember her name?’

  ‘You told me, at the station house. The day the big fire started. Most vigiles remember that day all too well… When did Flavia Lachne become a freedwoman?’

  ‘Soon after I was born. She must have been thirty; those are the rules. Flavia Domitilla granted her freedom — or perhaps Mother had to pay for her manumission; she never said. One thing she was very proud of, Lara told me, was that she managed to save enough of a nest-egg to buy freedom for Lara and me.’

  ‘But at the time when you must have been conceived, both Lachne and Lara were still slaves?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Lucilla was too intrigued to object to these questions, though she felt uneasy.

  ‘Let me guess — Lara was sunny in temperament, pretty, a very appealing young girl?’

  ‘Yes. You met her. You just saw her daughters. Our mother was good-looking too. Lara must always have been beautiful. Vinius, what is your point?’

  ‘Think, Lucilla.’

  Consciously or subconsciously, Lucilla resisted what he wanted her to see.

  Vinius left the suggestion, temporarily. He picked up her beaker and shared out between them what remained in the wine flask. He tilted his cup, saluting her, and waited. Vigiles interrogations had made him a patient man. ‘Sweetheart, it happens.’

  ‘What happens?’

  ‘Slavegirls are seduced when very young.’

  ‘You are beginning to offend me.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ His motives were good, in his opinion, so Vinius pressed on. ‘Lara meant so much to you and she obviously cared very dearly for you — even a stranger could see that. I just wondered if you ever thought of the possibility that Lara, and not Lachne, might have been your real mother?’

  Lucilla had never imagined this.

  Once before, at the vigiles station house, Gaius Vinius had said something that disturbed her family ties. Now he was doing it again. He knew life. He knew people. He picked up clues from nowhere and analysed them forensically; he shook out the truth like moths from an old cloak. As soon as he made the suggestion, Lucilla felt it was probable. Many things became clear. Lachne’s occasional air of resentment; Lara being kept out of sight during Lucilla’s childhood; Lara’s tender reception of Lucilla after Lachne died…

  It must have been agreed that Lachne would bring up Lucilla so Lara could marry and have a life — if marriage to seedy Junius, with its endless pregnancies, could be called life. It was respectable, and less precarious than Lachne’s own existence relying on a series of lovers, but had Lachne later regretted what happened to her elder daughter? Lucilla remembered Lachne speaking sourly of Lara’s family arrangements.

  ‘Don’t be upset,’ Vinius soothed her. ‘I only wish I had thought of saying something when Lara was alive, so you could have asked her.. This would not be unique, you know. Mothers do step in to help very young daughters in that predicament.’

  ‘Oh history had repeated itself,’ agreed Lucilla in a dull voice. ‘Lachne bore Lara at an even younger age. The same, presumably: a slavegirl seduced, whether she wanted it or not.’

  Lara’s and Lucilla’s father could even be the same man, Vinius thought; he was too considerate to say so. ‘Forgive me for speaking?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Vinius let a little lightness into his voice and did, finally, tease her: ‘After all, I am your guardian.’

  Lucilla gave him the dirty look he wanted, burying her nose in her wine beaker. Vinius smiled slightly.

  After a moment, Lucilla let herself smile too.

  This was dangerous. Assuming responsibility for a woman in trouble was something Gaius Vinius had never done. His own wives, except his first and youngest, barely needed him for emotional support. What they wanted was his money and the social status of marriage, especially marriage to a Praetorian. He was pretty sure that Verania required him to be faithful yet herself strayed. She had never sought his advice, offered advice to him, nor wanted consolation of any sort. Keeping their distance suited both of them.

  A quiet voice in his head warned him to watch out.

  Then again, he rather enjoyed the warm feeling he experienced when this vulnerable soul looked to him for help. A vulnerable soul with melting brown eyes and — he let himself notice as she reclined in dappled sunshine — an inviting body.

  I don’t suppose if I stayed here tonight, you would sleep with me?

  Get lost, Vinius!

  When she seemed composed, Vinius left Lucilla to herself. Though she bore no grudge for his raising the subject, he saw she wanted to think about her mother and sister in solitude. Her family connections were so very few, and now they all needed to be reconsidered.

  He had intended to visit his wife that evening. But Verania was like a jealous dog or cat; she would smell other people on him and their aura would make her sulk. Their relationship was sketchy, yet any hint that he had other interests inflamed her. Even the touch of melancholia that crept over him when he left Plum Street was liable to drizzle into Verania’s mind and affect her as if he had committed some act of blistering disloyalty. When in fact (Vinius convinced himself) all he had done was a kindness to someone.

  As he neared the Market of Livia, within reach of their apartment, he changed his mind abruptly. An insistent voice urged him to return to Plum Street. But Vinius turned his steps up along the ancient Servian Walls and returned via the Viminal Gate to the Praetorian Camp.

  13

  In Sarmizegetusa the balance of power shifted.

  In where?

  Sarmizegetusa Regia, the royal citadel of the Dacians, lay four thousand feet up in the Carpathian Mountains, the hub of a string of powerful fortresses from which Dacia would wage war upon the Romans and their emperors for the next thirty years. The very fact that the name of their citadel was a tongue-twisting hexasyllable indicated the Dacians’ attitude to the outside world. They were a warrior people. They did not give a toss.

  Sarmizegetusa had a military purpose but was also a political and religious centre of greater sophistication than enemies might suppose. Its people, who mined for gold, silver, iron and salt, had long been wealthy and had a very high standard of living. On a daunting approach road, which climbed steeply through leaf-littered woods where exquisitely cold mountain streams rattled over pebbles, no milestones signed the citadel. Sarmizegetusa was too long to carve on a stone. If you had a right to go there, you would know where it was. If not, then keep out.

  The heartland of Dacia was a remote area that would one day be called Transylvania, al
most entirely surrounded by the crescent of the forbidding Carpathians. This heart-stirring enclave was a mix of striking crags, rolling meadows, delightful forests, fast rivers and scenic plains. There were alluring volcanic lakes, wild bogs and mysterious caves. Wildlife teemed in bounding abundance, with every kind of creature from bears, boars, lynxes and wolves, various deer and chamois. Fish filled the brooks, lakes and rivers. Fabulous butterflies roamed over hay meadows. Wild flowers crowded everywhere. Eagles slowly soared above. Nobody gave a second thought to the odd vampire bat.

  A few forbidding routes led in from the exterior over high, well-guarded mountain passes. It was hostile terrain, especially in winter, when all strategists agreed that approaches should be tackled only in dire necessity, or for a very dubious advantage of surprise. A winter invasion would certainly be a surprise — because it would be madness.

  In the interior were impregnable hilltop fortresses, plus an old royal city and others no one else had ever heard of, of which the capital was the most magnificent. Any Dacian might well believe that all roads led to Sarmizegetusa. Though not snappy in any language, it had a certain portentous quality, whereas ‘all roads lead to Rome’ can sound by comparison like a line in a comedy musical.

  At Sarmizegetusa, the four-sided fortress crowning the hill was guarded by massive masonry, enormous blocks that were known as Dacian Walls, with monumental gates. As a military building it was equal to any Greek acropolis, on a scale with the Cyclopian Walls of ancient Mycenae, though a Dacian engineer would claim they had better setting-out and better-dressed masonry. Dacian Walls were tremendous structures, with a double skin of stonework that was bonded with timbers and a hard-packed earth and rubble core. Outside the fortress, civilian areas occupied a hundred or so great man-made terraces to east and west. Their buildings were sophisticated, often polygonal or circular, created with great precision. There were domestic compounds, workshops, stores and warehouses. Water was pumped through a sophisticated system, with ceramic pipes feeding the homes of the well-born. The citadel had all the accoutrements of a thriving population who benefited from a rich economy.