'No, but have you been able to help Fronto?'
The Greek's eyes went hard. 'He is beyond help. Forget him,' he said coldly, and turned away.
But Rufus was not to be allowed to forget Fronto.
XXXV
The summons arrived one evening two weeks later during preparations for the chariot races that would mark the festival of Consus.
The guards who came for him ordered that he wash and dress in his best clothing, and, with Livia watching apprehensively and holding her swollen belly, escorted him through the park to the palace.
Their destination was the room with the great silver table, but this time there was a difference. Rufus was the first guest to arrive.
Caligula lounged on his padded couch on a raised dais and studied him closely. 'Here, elephant boy.' He waved a hand in the direction of the couch closest to him. 'But first I have some questions for you.'
Rufus felt his bowels turn to ice as the two Praetorians pushed him in front of the Emperor.
'You wouldn't plot against me, would you, elephant boy?' the Emperor enquired in a voice as honeyed as the confections that sweetened the end of his feasts.
'N-n-n-no, majesty,' Rufus quaked, ashamed of his fear.
Caligula laughed lightly. 'N-n-n-no,' he mimicked. 'You sound just like Uncle Claudius. Not that it would save you. Claudius plots, you know, Claudius and that scheming Greek of his. I'll get rid of them both soon. So you don't plot?'
Rufus shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.
'You see, a little bird – well, a little spy, actually – tells me you have been consorting with that old master of yours, the hairy one. What is his name? The animal trader? I forget. You too? Never mind. Not thinking of returning to him, are you?'
Rufus shook his head again.
'Good. That would be a mistake. Protogenes tells me the hairy animal trader is a plotter. Isn't that right, Protogenes?'
'Yes, majesty,' a harsh affirmation rasped from somewhere to Rufus's right and he realized Protogenes must have silently entered the room while Caligula was questioning him.
'So if you were to plot with him, that would make you my enemy and I'd have to have you executed. Do you agree?' Caligula continued.
Rufus didn't know whether to nod in agreement that it would be perfectly reasonable for the Emperor to execute him or shake his head and risk calling Caligula a liar. He did neither.
'But you aren't a plotter?'
Now he shook his head until he thought it was going to fall off.
'Excellent. If I had to kill you, who would look after my elephant? Protogenes says he once saw an elephant walk along a rope suspended above the ground,' he added conversationally. 'I don't believe him, though. You're a liar, Protogenes,' the last in a great shout that almost made Rufus faint with fright. 'How big a rope would you need to support an elephant? Come, sit here, at my side.'
From his vantage point to the left of the Emperor's dais, Rufus was able to see the other guests enter the room by a doorway behind the couch where Protogenes lay with a sneer of anticipation on his ravaged face: Chaerea, who greeted him with a cold smile of recognition, and a beautiful girl much too young to be his wife; Appeles, the third of the ever-presents, sporting a purple bruise on his cheekbone, new scars just visible through his blond hair, and darting scared glances at the Emperor; and Cornelius Aurius Fronto.
There were further arrivals, but Rufus barely noticed them.
Fronto was visibly terrified, his whole body racked by spasms. The only colour in his sweat-sheened face was in the purple rings beneath his eyes, and his toga hung on a skeletal frame. Rufus swore he could hear the old man's heart thundering against his ribcage, until he realized the galloping rhythm was that of his own.
The banquet began as normal, each course removed almost before it was touched. Caligula chatted languidly to Chaerea, the pale blue eyes running lazily over the Praetorian commander's partner in a sensual way that suggested he had already chosen his companion for the evening's entertainment. The other guests draped themselves across their couches and tried to look relaxed, picking at a morsel here, a sweetmeat there. Rufus touched nothing.
Protogenes's dull, merciless eyes never left Fronto.
Finally, the Emperor eased himself into a sitting position and turned to face the animal trader. But it was to Protogenes that he spoke.
'Tell me, Protogenes, how does our business prosper?'
Protogenes picked up the thicker of his scrolls and unrolled it with exaggerated care, studying it closely before he replied. 'It prospers, majesty, but perhaps not as it might.'
Caligula reacted with mock surprise. 'And why, Protogenes, why do we not prosper?'
'I fear we are being cheated, majesty,' the imperial aide said solemnly.
Fronto, becoming more agitated with each sentence, let out an agonized croak: 'No, it is –'
Caligula raised a palm to silence the old man. 'Cheated? Who dares cheat your Emperor?'
'I do not know, majesty,' Protogenes admitted, obviously pained by his ignorance.
'But surely your little books know everything? What do they inform us?'
With feigned reluctance, Protogenes again consulted his scrolls. 'It appears the animal trader, Fronto, has been using his position to divert your majesty's profits into his own hands,' he said.
'And how much do you calculate he has defrauded us of, Protogenes? You must know, you are so clever with figures,' Caligula added with overstated irony.
'This Fronto has been particularly devious, majesty. Much is hidden, but I would say he has stolen several thousand sesterces which should have gone to your treasury.'
'Such a sum?'
'Yes, majesty.'
'And what is the penalty for this crime?'
Protogenes thought for a moment, providing a theatrical pause. 'Death, majesty,' he pronounced with finality.
Rufus saw Fronto flinch as if he had been struck. On the underside of his couch beads of yellow liquid gathered and then dripped to form a small pool on the marble floor. A familiar yeasty smell made itself known over the aroma of the perfumed candles. From the corner of his eye, Rufus noticed Chaerea slip from his couch and vanish into the shadow of the room's outer edge.
'Yes, death,' confirmed Caligula. 'But did you not inform me that this man was a diligent servant before he strayed from the path of honesty?'
'That is true, majesty,' Protogenes admitted.
'Then we are inclined to be merciful.' Caligula smiled at Fronto, who stared at him with the wide eyes of a rabbit trapped by a hunting weasel. 'You are fined ten million sesterces.'
A gasp came from the Emperor's dining companions, astonished at the enormous sum, quickly followed by dutiful laughter.
'Of course, you must pay immediately,' Protogenes informed the bewildered Fronto, who had, for a split second, been overwhelmed by hope. 'You can't? Such a pity.'
Rufus watched the unfolding drama with growing dread. Now it was time to stand up for the man who had befriended him. He would accuse Protogenes. But his body would not respond. He was paralysed by fear. No matter how he struggled, nothing would break the iron bonds of self-preservation that held him to the couch. Suddenly he found it difficult to breathe and his head began to spin.
Through his panic, he barely heard Caligula's chilling whisper in his ear. 'Watch, elephant boy, watch every moment and understand how the Emperor rewards those who betray him. Look away but once and I will have your eyes sewn shut.' Then he heard the rattle of the chains.
Fronto heard them also, and began to plead his innocence in an incoherent babble of words. At first Caligula found his ravings amusing, but he quickly became irritated.
'If that man says one more word you will slice out his tongue, and if he raises his hands to his Emperor you will cut them off,' he told Chaerea, who had appeared behind Fronto with two of his Praetorians.
Chaerea ordered his guards to bind the condemned man with the heavy chains they had brought, but Caligula'
s fertile mind had concocted something more entertaining.
'No, it would be much too fitting to chain a man who has spent his life chaining animals. Let him be beaten instead.'
Chaerea, puzzled, looked round for his thick wooden staff of office.
'Let him be beaten with his chains.'
The Praetorians looked at each other, then doubled the long chains into manageable lengths. Chaerea nodded.
And the beating began.
The two burly Germans concentrated their aim on Fronto's shoulders and body, drawing grunts of pain from the old man, though the thick folds of his toga absorbed much of the force.
'No, no,' Caligula shouted impatiently. 'His head.'
Now Fronto learned the true meaning of horror. The heavy metal links smashed into his unprotected face and head, gouging into his flesh and pulverizing bone and sinew. His agony must have been terrible, for a high-pitched mewing began in the back of his throat, rising to a full-blooded scream. The scream changed instantly to a choked gurgling when a roundhouse swing by one of the Germans hammered into his open mouth, smashing teeth into fragments and shattering the bones of his lower jaw. In minutes, the Praetorians had trouble gripping chains that were slick with bright crimson, spattered with slivers of bloody scalp and clogged with matted strands of Fronto's long hair.
All this Rufus watched from some place of refuge deep inside his mind. A place where he was safe from Caligula and all his kind. A place only a membrane from screaming madness.
He noted that when Fronto, or the thing that had been Fronto, slumped forward, making it difficult for the chains to strike where Caligula, bright-eyed with excitement, directed them, the Emperor ordered the two senators closest to the animal trader to hold his head up. He noted how, as the beating continued, the top of Fronto's head, now mostly white skull decorated with just an occasional tuft of hair, was transformed from a solid dome into a soft, amorphous mass. And he noted that in the background, among the Praetorians surrounding the walls to ensure that none should interfere with the process of Caligula's justice, one stood more rigid than the rest. Cupido watched helpless, his eyes mirroring Rufus's agony and blood running down his chin from the gash where he had bitten through his lip.
Finally, the Emperor waved a hand and the Germans paused, breathing heavily.
Caligula approached the piece of human wreckage that had been Fronto slowly, peering for some sign of life. The animal trader's eyes were swollen shut and the once-proud hawkish nose was beaten flat across his face. A triangular piece of skull had been knocked from the right side of his head just above the ear, leaving a hole through which could be seen a yellowy-pink mass that, on closer inspection, appeared to quiver.
Drawn to this window into the human head, Caligula delicately placed his forefinger in the opening, and was rewarded by a raw, rasping noise from the approximate position of Fronto's nostrils, accompanied by delicate bubbles of blood which expanded then burst with a gentle click, a phenomenon which clearly delighted the young Emperor.
'Quite amazing. He still lives. He must have been very strong, Protogenes. I wonder how long you would have lasted?'
Protogenes's ravaged face paled, but the question was clearly a rhetorical one, because the Emperor continued wistfully: 'A pity, really. Who will seek out our animals now?'
Chaerea motioned to his guardsmen to remove the dying man, but Caligula intervened with a smile. 'No, leave him where he is. He has been fine company. He deserves to enjoy the rest of the evening.'
Fronto was still in his place on the couch when a dream-walking Rufus was escorted from the palace that night. There were no tears when he returned to the elephant house. The animal trainer's living death was beyond mourning. Some instinct made him create a nest of hay in the barn itself. It was not until later that he remembered Caligula's words. 'A little bird tells me . . . a little spy.'
In the in-between world Rufus now inhabited it seemed appropriate to be summonsed a second evening.
Fronto remained in the seat of honour opposite the Emperor and Caligula introduced him animatedly to a reluctant group of aristocrats who tried, with difficulty, to hide their disgust.
The hideous form still fought for every tortured breath, but only the gods knew how. His battered head was terribly swollen, and the tight-stretched skin varied in colour from bright blue to black. From the wound above his ear a thin stream of yellow pus ran down the side of what had once been a face.
The Emperor was clearly as captivated by his living exhibit as he was by the gold statues lining the walls, or the rich paintings adorning them. When the old man at last let out a final snoring breath, he wept as if someone else had caused his death.
Rufus did not have the luxury of tears. For him the moment of parting had come when the first blow was struck. The rest was nightmare.
But he was still able to register surprise when Caligula, eyes damp with tears, turned to him and said: 'Here is your former master. He was our friend and companion. Take him from here and give him an honoured funeral as a good servant should.'
Then the Emperor and his guests stood in dignified silence as the same Praetorians who murdered Cornelius Aurius Fronto, the animal trader, wrapped him gently in a white shroud and carried him from the room.
The little group was bathed in moonlight as Rufus directed them across the grass and through the trees to Bersheba's barn. There the soldiers deposited their burden on the ground and stood for a moment in silence.
'I have no wood to cremate him,' Rufus said.
The Germans looked at each other. 'You'll have to bury him. Can't just leave him lying about,' the taller of the two said. 'Over by the wall would do. Not too many tree roots.'
'Can you help me?' Rufus pleaded.
'Not us, lad – we're soldiers, not gravediggers. He was your friend, you give him a nice send-off.'
'I will help you.' The voice came out of the darkness. The Praetorians turned, each right hand on its owner's sword, but they relaxed when they recognized one of their own.
Rufus stood over Fronto's body while Cupido fetched a pair of shovels from the barn. They dug in silence because there was nothing to say. The ground was hard and the tall Praetorian was wrong about the tree roots. They spread tentacle-like through the earth, and Bersheba was roaring grumpily for her morning feed by the time they filled the grave over the shattered remains of Cornelius Aurius Fronto.
Rufus knew there were words that should have been said, and dedications he ought to have made, but he did neither. Instead, he stood, with Cupido at his side, over the raw earth mound that was Fronto's only memorial, fleeting images of their time together flashing through his mind. Fronto and the rhinoceros. Fronto laughing as yet another circus trick ended in disaster. Fronto with the great heart and the endless generosity. That was when the tears came, dripping steadily from his chin to form small patches in the disturbed soil. As he wept, Cupido laid a hand on his shoulder.
'Perhaps Chaerea is right. Perhaps it is time.'
Rufus turned to him, his face set hard. 'Do you think Chaerea would be any different?'
Bersheba picked up his mood when he returned to the barn to replenish her hay racks, and she took to throwing trunkfuls of her food over him in an unsubtle attempt to dispel his gloom, but she eventually realized it was a hopeless task and gave up. After the elephant had been fed and watered, he returned to his wife for the first time in two days.
XXXVI
Livia came to him and took him in her arms. She held him for a moment, her face resting on his stomach and her swollen belly against his knees. When she looked up into his face he saw she knew.
Little bird. The thought came unbidden into his head.
'I am sorry,' she said simply.
He looked at her, unsure how to reply; caught somewhere between the extremes of physical collapse and terrible violence. 'You did not know him.'
'He was your friend.'
'No. He was more than my friend.'
'Then I am sorry.'
Did you betray him? The words touched his lips, but went no further. 'He once promised me my freedom. But when I was with him I was always free, so it did not really matter. Do you understand?'
Her face became a blank wall. 'No, and neither do you. He bought you and sold you. He was not some kindly old man who put a roof over your head and fed you because he loved you. He used you.'
'He would have freed me and I would have been his partner in business.' Rufus shook his head in frustration. 'He saved money for me.'
'Then where is this great fortune?' she demanded. 'Where is the legacy of Cornelius Aurius Fronto to Rufus, the slave? Perhaps I have missed something, but we do not appear to be rich.'
'He would have given it to me, but –'
'But? But? But he cheated the Emperor and now he has died for it. I am sorry, truly sorry, that Fronto is dead, Rufus, but he died because of his greed. Would you rather have been the victim? He was not your father. He was a rich merchant who wanted to be richer, and he used everything he could, including you.'
'No. He would have freed me,' Rufus insisted, but his voice had lost its certainty.
Livia continued her attack. 'What is freedom to you and me, Rufus? Perhaps it is different for you, but for me freedom is just a word. Do I need freedom to starve? Freedom to sell my body until some dogbreathed pervert decides it would be more fun to squeeze the life out of me than fuck me? We are slaves and we must live with that. We must make the best of what we have. For our child's sake we must bend like trees in the wind, not invite those who have power over us to break us. Do not risk your life again, Rufus.'
'Fronto was my friend.'
'Yes, he was your friend, but he is gone. We remain. We must survive.'
She made as if to take him in her arms, but he eluded her grasp and stumbled from the room, past the huge bulk of Bersheba and out into the sunshine where the air was cleaner and the world less confusing.
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