by Crystal King
Rúan squinted at me. “You already know?”
I took a sip of wine and passed it to Rúan. “No, I didn’t. Tell me how.”
He drank of the wine. “He fell ill more than two weeks ago. He succumbed to the sickness this morning.”
“Ill?”
“I suspect he was poisoned. He had indigestion one night before dinner. I fed him the celery and leek soup you taught me to make, with the pepper and honey, but he did not improve.”
“Who attended him besides you?”
“I never saw him. He only let his body-slave, Silius, attend to him. If I didn’t know better, I would thank the gods. It means I can’t be a suspect.” He handed me the cup. I smiled when I saw it was empty.
“Did they question the body-slave?”
“They can’t. He’s missing.”
“Missing?”
“Aye, since last night. No one knows where he is.”
I set the empty glass down on the bench beside me, wishing I had brought a flask of wine with me when I left the kitchen.
“It’s odd, though,” Rúan mused, looking out into the dark garden. I thought I heard an owl hooting in the distance.
“What is?”
He sniffed. “No one seems to care about the missing slave. Livia wanted a further inquiry but the doctor proclaimed there was no foul play. Sejanus told Livia he wasn’t going to waste men looking into a murder that wasn’t there. That is that.”
That was that, indeed.
• • •
A few weeks later, I was going through a list of client requests with Apicius when a slave burst through the door of the library without knocking. Apicius and I looked up to see Sotas had snatched the boy up by the back of his tunic.
The boy squeaked, “Caesar is here! Caesar is at the door!”
We sat there, stunned. Caesar at our house?
Apicius sprang into action. “Don’t stand there! Let him in! We’ll be there straightaway!”
Sotas let the boy go and he scampered down the hallway.
Apicius looked me up and down. “Thank the gods we both look respectable. Come now, we can’t keep him waiting.”
“Why is he here?” I asked as we walked swiftly through the house.
He didn’t answer. My heart was pounding so hard I wondered if Apicius could hear it beating.
How could he be calm? I was terrified. Publius Octavius was dead and Livia suspected foul play. What if somehow the trail led back to Apicius? I wouldn’t put it past Sejanus to frame him; it would be an easy way to get Apicius out of his hair, and the gods knew Livia hated him as well.
In the atrium, Tiberius sat on a plush chaise the slaves had brought to accommodate him. He was accompanied by several Praetorian Guard, including Sejanus, who sat on a chair next to him.
Sotas left us at the door, taking a spot at the side of the atrium. Apicius strode across the room, stopped before Caesar, and reached out a hand in greeting. I waited behind.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of this visit to my humble abode?” he asked as Tiberius shook his hand.
Sejanus guffawed, the skin around his eyes wrinkling with amusement. “Humble? Your villa is more extravagant than Divine Augustus’s was!”
Apicius still smiled. My heart pounded. Please, Apicius, I willed him, don’t say anything stupid.
Tiberius didn’t give him the chance. “But that is precisely why I am here. You understand how to entertain dignitaries, princeps, and kings. No doubt you have heard I am in need of a new gastronomic adviser.”
“I heard.”
Tiberius motioned for Apicius and me to sit in the chairs the slaves had brought for us. “Sejanus tells me you are the best man for the job. Livia tells me it will anger her to no end to bring you into our service. Two good reasons for you to take on this role for me.”
Tiberius handed Apicius a scroll and watched as he opened it and scanned the contents. “Are you interested?”
Apicius looked up from the scroll. He looked as he did after tasting a successful new recipe. Euphoric. “I am!”
Tiberius’s gaze landed on me. “And you, cook. I applaud your performance at the market a few months ago. A good man knows when the price is too high. Better to have your dignity and your purse intact at the end of the day.”
“Thank you.” I swelled with pride. I looked at Apicius but he was scanning the scroll again.
“You’ll need a salary too, I suppose. I’ll see to it.”
Tiberius stood and we rose with him. “I’ll expect you to do much of my entertaining. I am not interested in pandering to those who desire a pound of my flesh. Still, it can’t be helped, so you’ll do it for me.”
“I’m your man,” Apicius asserted.
“Perfect. I’ll send an escort to you tomorrow to be brought to the villa.”
He left, his guards following behind. Sejanus lingered.
“I have fulfilled my part of the bargain, father-in-law,” he said to Apicius, barely loud enough for me to hear. “Now it is your turn.”
“Yes, as we agreed.” Apicius made a small motion to Sotas, and the big man deftly, but politely, maneuvered Sejanus out the door.
Then I understood. Oh, the irony! After all these years, the tables had turned and it was Sejanus who became the paid assassin after all.
Apicius had just been handed everything he had ever wanted. It had come at the expense of a man’s life and required debt to the very man Apicius hated above all others. I thought back to the prediction of the haruspex and shuddered. For every success, greater failures will cluster to the sides.
Apicius was giddy. “Come, Thrasius! Let us tell Aelia the news. Tonight we celebrate!” He rushed off down the corridor, not bothering to wait for us to follow.
I stood there, jaw open wide, at a loss for words.
Sotas clapped me on the back. “Close your mouth, you might catch a fly.”
I stared down the empty corridor, confusion and anger coiled in the pit of my stomach. “Did . . . ?”
“Did Apicius just sell his soul to Sejanus?” Sotas asked, then finished for me. “Why, yes, he did.”
I shook my head. “What am I doing here, Sotas? Why do I stand by and watch him play these games? I am not beholden to him.”
“Aren’t you?” He gave me a crooked smile and turned down the hallway himself.
I thought about Passia and my little Junius and hated how right my friend was.
• • •
The next morning Apicius increased Apicata’s stipend by another eight thousand sestertii a month—the other half of the money promised to Sejanus.
• • •
We were finishing a bleary-eyed salutatio when the man Tiberius sent arrived. It turned out to be Rúan. After losing him to Octavius, Apicius had been caustic toward his former slave, convinced that he was a spy for his rival. This time he greeted Rúan like an old friend.
Rúan took us to the villa Tiberius was remodeling, a short walk across the Palatine. Tiberius resided primarily in a luxurious villa on the Esquiline, but with so many of his clientele living on the Palatine, he wanted to expand the villa on that hill as well. More slaves than I could count swarmed the exterior, making repairs and adding on to what was once a modest dwelling.
“Be careful.” Rúan gestured for us to step around boards and buckets of wet cement. I had walked by the exterior of the villa many times on my way to the temple of Apollo. The entrance used to be only a single marble arch but now several arches opened up into a broad atrium, which had itself been expanded.
Rúan led us through a twisting maze of corridors, some painted with frescoes, some not, the walls bare and the rooms empty with no doors. He showed us two triclinia and an office Apicius could call his own. The kitchen was much smaller than the kitchen at Apicius’s villa, with half as many slaves. “Is this all?”
Rúan nodded. “Aye, it is. But do not worry. You won’t be expected to do much entertaining here, only when Caesar desires to dine at home with his guests, which is not
often. Tomorrow I’ll show you the kitchen on the Esquiline, which is more expansive. For the most part, though, you’ll be expected to arrange entertainment at your own home or the homes of others. Tiberius will send dignitaries and foreign emissaries to you to take care of. You’ll find he won’t attend many meals unless it’s a state dinner or there is something he can’t graciously excuse himself from. He’s not fond of politics.”
“So I’ve heard.”
Apicius seemed disappointed. Being Tiberius’s gastronomic adviser was proving to be more work and less glory than he’d expected.
“You may, on occasion, be asked to accompany Caesar to one of his villas at Rhodes or Capri but it will be rare.”
“What of his tastes? What foods does he appreciate?” I asked. “Is he fussy about his meals?”
“No. He will eat anything as long as there is wine. It’s the wine that he loves. You’ve heard that they call him Biberius Caldius Mero?”
I couldn’t help but snort at the name, which meant “drinker of wine without water,” a phrase that described someone who was rude and acted like a pleb. “I had not, but I’ll make sure there is plenty of wine to satiate him.”
He led us back to the atrium again, where the gardeners bustled about, planting trees and flowers.
“Oh,” Rúan added. “You’re expected to throw a cena publica that announces your new post and demonstrates Caesar’s wisdom in giving it to you.”
“Of course.” We knew such a banquet would be expected and had talked about it over breakfast that morning.
“I’ll secure the guest list for you. Thrasius, send me any instructions you like, any lists of food for purchase. I am at your service.”
“It’s good to work with you again, old friend. I missed your funny accent.” A burst of happiness swelled within me when I thought of bantering anew with him over the preparation of a meal. Although Timon was a master at his trade, I missed the camaraderie I had with Rúan.
“Aye, and I missed your funny talk of all your crazy gods! But I suspect you’ll work me even harder than Publius Octavius did.”
At the name, Apicius seemed to snap out of his reverie. He cleared his throat.
“Come, Thrasius, we have much to do.” He strode off toward home. I waved good-bye to Rúan and followed, knowing Apicius was likely to be in a mood best avoided.
• • •
We decided to hold the banquet at the school, in the gardens we had designed for such a purpose. The kitchen there would allow for easier food preparation and we could easily set up couches and tables to accommodate the five hundred people on the guest list.
Fannia, Trio, and Celera joined us for dinner that evening. The discussion that night was the possible theme for the cena publica. “Hold a competition.” Fannia was tipsy, delighted that Caesar Augustus was dead and Tiberius had ditched the old decorum that one could drink wine only after dinner and women should drink only when religious ceremonies required.
“A competition? With swords?” Trio was skeptical. “Aren’t there enough gladiatorial games without us throwing another?”
Apicius waved a hand at Fannia to continue. “Gladiators are so droll.”
“Not a gladiator fight. A competition.”
We all looked at her, still uncomprehending.
“A footrace?” Celera offered.
“Drinking? We all know how badly that might end.” Aelia smirked at Apicius.
“No, no, no. A competition between the gods!” Fannia said.
“Continue.” Apicius tossed the bones of his chicken wing onto the tiles behind the couch to appease the ghosts of the ancestors.
“Imagine. Neptune and Diana competing to prove who has the most delicious bounty—the sea or the forest. The food could be animals of the sea and the land.”
“Tiberius could judge!” I mused. It was a brilliant idea.
“Yes, exactly!” Fannia exclaimed.
The fire of this idea roared through my brain. I could barely get the words out of my mouth I was so excited.
“Each course could be dedicated to one of the gods. We bring out the seafood first, then the animals, then back and forth in each course . . .”
“Yes! And the final course will be the pinnacle dish from each god!” Apicius had caught the fire now.
Everyone agreed and a clamor arose as they gave suggestions about the banquet. “Excellent!” Apicius was jubilant, as were we all.
It was an exquisite feeling—a feeling that wouldn’t last long.
CHAPTER 23
It took us eight months to plan the banquet. Those months were some of the busiest and most exciting of my life. I spent hours at the market looking for ideas, buying up everything from new napkins to intricately embroidered cushions for the couches. I sent messengers across Italy: to our farms for wood pigeons, dormice, capons, and heaping baskets of grapes, apples, and beets; to the fields beyond Rome for fresh pears; to Nomentanum for amphorae of wine, some more than forty years old; to Praeneste for hazelnuts; and to the plains between Ostia and Lavinium for wild boar and deer. I sent men to Ostia for fresh, salty mackerel and mussels and to Mount Hymettus for the finest honey to dilute the Falernian wine we had on stock at home for the princeps and all the senators. I purchased ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and other spices from India and Taprobane, not only to flavor the food but to present as gifts. I even sent a man to Sicilia for green and black olives and for the olive relish that was a specialty of the region. I reveled in the planning of such a massive banquet.
However, all the planning made Apicius unbearable. Nothing I did seemed to please him and I thanked the gods daily that he was no longer my master and could not whip me like he did the slaves unfortunate enough to be in the way of his whims and rages. Even Sotas seemed on edge. About this time came word of the terrible treatment of the slaves by P. Vedius Pollio, a once-friend of the Divine Augustus and a minor acquaintance of Apicius. A cupbearer broke a precious crystal goblet at one of his banquets and in a rage Pollio cut the slave’s hands off and hung them around his neck. The slave was forced to parade among the diners before Pollio mercilessly threw him to his death into a pool of lamprey eels.
“Dominus wouldn’t ever do that to Junius or me, would he?” Passia whispered to me one evening as I shed my clothes and climbed into bed. Our son, now four, snored softly from his bed in the corner of the room.
“No, my love. For all his faults he is not that cruel. And he loves little Junius. You know how much he dotes on him.” Apicius did love the tot, and that day had even given him a new brightly painted wooden horse on wheels to pull along behind him as he toddled through the villa.
“What about the other slaves? This banquet is for Caesar! Dominus might want to keep up appearances.”
“Don’t worry. Pollio did not win the kind of notoriety he might have liked by killing off that poor boy. Besides, Apicius is too concerned with his image to have people talking about him for anything other than his food. And he depends upon me too much to hurt those I love.”
Passia didn’t seem satisfied with the answer but she cuddled up next to me anyway. Soon she was breathing heavily into my shoulder. I lay awake for a while thinking of her question. I was not worried about what Apicius would do if something wasn’t perfect at the banquet. I was worried about what Caesar might do.
• • •
On the day of the banquet I was up before dawn helping the staff put the final touches on the decorations and helping Rúan and Timon begin the monumental task of preparing the main dishes.
When the water clock showed ten o’clock Sotas came to collect me for the astrology reading. Rúan laughed at me.
“Oh, how you Romans love your divinations!”
I just smiled at him. I had long ago tried to convince Rúan that the gods were powerful and that divination wasn’t a load of bunk, but in the end we had agreed to disagree. It didn’t stop him from teasing me regularly for what he saw as folly.
We met Apicius and Glycon and went to Ti
berius’s palace on the Esquiline. Tiberius was still in his morning robe when we met in the garden. He had a handful of guards with him, as well as a bald, smooth-shaven man Glycon seemed to know.
“Ahh, Thrasyllus,” I heard the astrologer mutter to himself.
“Good day to you, Caesar!” Apicius smiled broadly. “What a fine day to honor you.”
Tiberius looked uncomfortable. “We honor Rome first.”
I saw Apicius’s eye twitch. He thinned his lips into a long line as if trying hard not to respond.
Sejanus spoke up before Apicius could say something regrettable. “In honoring you, Caesar, we honor Rome, do we not?”
Apicius continued to make awkward small talk with Sejanus and Tiberius, leaving Glycon to slip off to the side to speak with Thrasyllus. A gold pendant flashed at the man’s neck, of a moon and stars. Tiberius’s astrologer. They talked in hushed tones. I caught a few words of their conversation, none of which inspired calm within me: “stars . . . the consequences . . . actions . . . friend . . . dire . . . we’ll tell him . . . yes, yes . . . he’ll believe . . .”
Tiberius’s voice rose. “Come now, let’s get this over with.”
Sejanus motioned for Thrasyllus to come forward. Glycon trailed behind him.
“Sir, the stars are most favorable. My colleague Glycon was right in choosing this date for the feast. The moon is full and will give us light beyond the candle. Mars is in the templum of Venus and Venus is in the templum of Saturn, aligning them all to look down upon us in various stages throughout the night. Today is a particularly auspicious time for a feast, dear Caesar.”
“Excellent! Now it is time for my bath.” He snapped his fingers and his guard came to attention. “Oh, and Apicius, I want my servers to be naked. Stark as the day they were born, understand?” He didn’t give Apicius a chance to respond, abruptly walking away, leaving us looking at his retreating figure.
“It seems everyone finds favor with you now.” Sejanus smirked. Where he had once been cordial to Apicius, he had diminished into sarcastic tolerance. “Let us hope they still do when the banquet comes to an end.” He inclined his head toward one of his guards. “Paulus, see them out.”