Murder in Hadrian's Villa

by Gavin Chappell

  Flaminius wondered what Hadrian would think of Probus using his name so freely. It impressed the slaves, though, and they led Probus and Flaminius up the marble steps, through a peristyle garden and into the house.

  ‘Please wait here,’ said the tall slave, as they came out into an atrium. ‘I shall call the mistress, Octavia Agrippina.’

  Both slaves vanished deeper into the cool, airy, well-furnished house. After Hadrian’s Villa, the house of the Rufini Crassi was something of a comedown, but it still possessed a distinct air of opulence. Certainly it was in an entirely different league from the farm where Flaminius had grown up, in the hills not far away.

  Idly, he inspected the busts that stood at each corner of the atrium. Each one showed a hero of the Republic: Brutus; Horatius; Camillus; Cato. Flaminius groaned inwardly, remembering how dull he had found Roman history as a boy.

  He heard the swish of a curtain from further inside the house and in stepped a tall, dignified, horse-faced woman clad in the deep blue of mourning. A slave woman followed her. The tall woman approached her guests, looking at each in turn. On seeing the plumed helmet Flaminius carried under his arm, she trembled a little, but she did her best to conceal her feelings.

  ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ she said gravely. ‘I am Octavia Agrippina, relict of Lucius Rufinus Crassus. My slaves tell me that you are here on imperial business. I do not know what business the emperor has with me. Since my husband’s death the members of my family have kept away from Rome and concerned themselves with domestic affairs only. We take no interest in politics, not even the local politics of Praeneste.’

  Probus nodded respectfully. ‘My commiserations on your husband’s death. I have no wish to rake up bad memories, but it’s on that subject we come to speak to you. I am Commissary Centurion Julius Probus; this is Praetorian Tribune Gaius Flaminius Drusus .’

  She gave Flaminius a haunted look. ‘I recognised the Praetorian uniform.’ She wrung her hands. ‘What can I say? My husband was an idealist, obsessed with the Golden Age of the Republic.’ She gestured at the busts in each corner. ‘He was descended from several of the old families. He saw the age of silver to which we have come, where the Senate is powerless and mere provincials rule over us with the backing of the legions, and it saddened him. He fell in with bad company—idealists and historians such as himself, who hoped for a return to the old days. Ultimately, he made the mistake of attempting the life of the emperor.’

  She shrugged. ‘I knew nothing of this, of course, before the empress’ birthday. He seldom confided in me except on domestic matters.’

  ‘That’s very interesting, ma’am,’ said Probus. ‘I’d like to ask you a few more questions about these idealist companions of his, but the real reason I came here was to inquire about his death itself.’

  She took a step backwards and looked searchingly from Probus to Flaminius. Her eyes settled on the tribune. Gazing at him, she spoke to Probus. ‘I am forgetting my manners. Though a young man when he died, my husband always insisted on keeping up the manners of the Republican age. Come with me.’

  She led them into another chamber and asked them to sit on well upholstered couches while she called for a slave to bring them wine and refreshments. As they drank and ate, she stood beside a bust that Flaminius recognised as that of Rufinus Crassus himself.

  ‘I should have thought you would have known more about my husband’s death than I! It came as a shock to me, that he should be killed without a trial, but what can one expect from a despot…’ She caught herself, and looked nervously from one to the other. ‘It would not have benefited the family if he had been put on trial in public, but even that would have been better than to murder him. He went to the shades without his killer’s name being known.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, ma’am,’ Flaminius said, ‘we believe that his killer has also been murdered.’

  Probus shot him a quelling glance.

  ‘Ma’am, the official story was that your husband died from a sudden distemper,’ he told her.

  She forgot her good breeding so far as to snort. ‘Distemper? Surely you don’t believe that? He was in perfect health. There was no man his age healthier. Besides, there was what the Praetorian said.’

  Probus and Flaminius looked at each other.

  ‘What did this Praetorian say?’ Probus asked.

  ‘I swore by the Magna Mater,’ she said, ‘never to speak of it.’

  Flaminius glanced at Probus, to see the centurion completely nonplussed.

  ‘I see,’ Probus said. ‘I can’t ask you to break a vow made to a goddess, even a Phrygian one. But I can only assume that this Praetorian told you something that made you certain that your husband had been killed.’

  ‘On the orders of the emperor!’ she said, then put her hand to her mouth, as if to push the words back inside. ‘But I vowed not to speak of it.’

  ‘The emperor ordered your husband’s death?’ Flaminius said incredulously.

  She glanced at him, her eyes wide with fear. ‘I can’t speak of it.’

  ‘Of course not, ma’am,’ said Probus, smiling uncomfortably. ‘This Praetorian who spoke to you. Was he a burly centurion, about my age?’

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘He was an officer, like your friend.’

  ‘I see. Was there anything about the body to suggest how your husband died?’

  Octavia put a hand to her temples. ‘I don’t wish to discuss this anymore,’ she told him. ‘He made a mistake; he is dead. Why should anyone want to know more? We didn’t bring any charges, who would we charge? The emperor? Ha! No. Let the dead lie in their tombs.’

  ‘Of course, ma’am,’ Probus said respectfully. ‘We shall leave you now.’

  He beckoned to Flaminius, turned, then stopped and looked back.

  Octavia looked up. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘You may depart.’ She clapped her hands, and the tall slave appeared in the doorway. ‘Please show these visitors from the house.’

  Dusk was falling as they rode down the drive.

  ‘Rufinus’ widow seemed to think the emperor was responsible,’ said Flaminius. ‘And what was all that about a Praetorian speaking to her?’

  ‘I should think that she was threatened,’ Probus said. ‘Someone told her that the emperor had ordered her husband’s death. Perhaps that was why she had him taken away for burial so quickly that the cause of death couldn’t be established.’

  They turned onto the Praenestine Way. Like most Roman roads outside towns, it was lined with tombs. Flaminius assumed that Rufinus Crassus’ own tomb was somewhere along here, containing his ashes. No point in looking for it. They’d get no answers to their questions that way, not without resorting to witchcraft. He smiled darkly. Perhaps Erichtho could help!

  ‘But who could it have been?’ he said as they reached the intersection where the track led off northwards. ‘She said an officer. It must have been a tribune.’

  Probus grunted. ‘Or the Prefect himself,’ he said, reining his horse.

  Flaminius copied him. ‘I told you that Prefect Septicius Clarus took a close interest in my love philtre when he visited me in my office.’ Probus nodded. ‘It must have been him who took it and poisoned Chief Centurion Messalus!’ Flaminius added. ‘Of course! He had overheard Messalus about to confess to murdering Rufinus Crassus and wanted to stop his mouth!’

  ‘Except,’ said Probus grimly, ‘he has an alibi. He is known to have been in the palace at the time of the murder.’

  Flaminius’ face fell. ‘True,’ he said.

  It had all been fitting together neatly up until that point. He had been positive that the Prefect had been part of the conspiracy. After all, it would make a lot of sense. The plot had revolved around the assassination of the emperor and his replacement with another one. In the past it had been the Praetorian Guard that made and unmade emperors; the man who led them possessed immense power. Septicius Clarus would have made an invaluable member of any such plot.

  But it see
med he had an alibi for Messalus’ murder. In which case there was no real reason to assume he was the murderer of Rufinus Crassus, either. So who was?

  They rode through the night.

  It must have been past the third watch when at last they returned to the Villa, to find it apparently deserted. Flaminius marched into the barracks but found no sign of his cohort.

  ‘Anyone there?’ he called. The echoes of his voice disturbed an owl, which flew hooting from the roof.

  After lighting an oil lamp that he had found in his office, Flaminius went back outside to where Probus waited with the horses. Moonlight shone down on the colonnades and temples on every side. Nothing moved. Occasional bird and animal cries from the surrounding parkland broke the night still.

  ‘The whole cohort has vanished,’ Flaminius reported, incredulous.

  ‘Never mind the cohort,’ Probus said. ‘There’s no sign of life anywhere.’

  ‘So they’ve all run,’ Flaminius said. ‘Feeling illuminated, centurion?’

  He heard hurried footsteps from a nearby garden. He followed the noise out across a plaza to see a dark shape vanish into the shadows on the far side of a moonlit slope. Drawing his sword, he sprinted after it.

  Probus hitched the horses to a pillar topped by a caryatid, and followed the tribune. He found him in the empty courtyard of a bathhouse. Flaminius turned at the centurion’s approach, face creased with puzzlement.

  ‘They just vanished,’ he said.

  ‘Of course they did,’ said Probus shortly. He took his vine staff and tapped on the flagstones. The third one gave back a hollow ring. Probus looked up at Flaminius, then stooped and hauled open a trapdoor. ‘You of all people should remember that there is a world beneath the world of Hadrian’s Villa.’

  Flaminius peered wide eyed into the darkness, remembering his dramatic journey through the tunnels of Hadrian’s underworld when he foiled Rufinus Crassus’ assassination attempt. From far off came the echo of running feet.

  —9—

  ‘A slave,’ he surmised.

  The tunnels beneath the Villa had been built on the Hermetic principle of as above, so below. Just as the Villa represented the entire world, with its Greek and Egyptian areas, so the tunnels represented Hades. But they also served a more practical purpose, providing slaves with routes between the various buildings, so they could perform their duties without offending the eye of the emperor and his guests. It was easy to forget that a place this size required an entire army of slaves to keep it running smoothly.

  ‘Maybe down in Hadrian’s underworld we’ll learn what’s happened.’

  Flaminius held his lamp high as Probus descended the ladder, then he followed him, climbing clumsily, one handed, as he carried the terracotta lantern in his other hand. Twice he spilt hot oil on himself and cursed under his breath. The cold hard stone of the shaft he was descending caught his whispering and magnified it, sending it echoing down into darkness.

  At last he reached the bottom where Probus waited for him, a sardonic look on his bearded face.

  ‘I didn’t know your vocabulary was so colourful,’ he commented, then turned and led him up the wide, echoing tunnel. It was cold and Flaminius shivered in his armour.

  ‘Where’s that slave?’ he whispered as he caught up with the centurion.

  Probus shrugged. ‘No doubt we’ll find him, or one of his fellows, soon enough,’ he said. They walked on.

  The tunnel opened out into a larger space, gloomy beyond the radius of Flaminius’ lamp. Dark figures surrounded them. Flaminius held his lamp high and drew his sword. He saw several slaves, clad in drab tunics.

  Probus drew his own sword. ‘Move away,’ he said curtly. Awed by the blade, the slaves drew back. One of their number pushed his way through the others and confronted Probus.

  ‘Apologies, master,’ he lisped. He was a bald, fat man with a high voice and a Greek accent; Flaminius thought he might be a eunuch. ‘We reckoned you must be thieves. We did not know any of the imperial household had remained in the Villa.’

  ‘Where’s everyone gone?’ Flaminius demanded. ‘Aboveground, the place is deserted.’

  ‘No slave would dare show his face above the surface without permission,’ said the eunuch. Flaminius was about to inform him that one of his fellow slaves had been seen aboveground, but he added, ‘Although the rules have been slackened now the empress has taken her household back to the palace in Rome.’

  Probus cursed. ‘Openly defying me,’ he said.

  ‘What did you expect?’ Flaminius said. ‘An empress is hardly accustomed to taking orders from a common centurion. Do you intend to apprehend her?’

  Probus grimaced. ‘She’s only throwing suspicion on herself with this action.’

  Flaminius laughed. ‘The empress? You think she could have murdered Messalus? You think Hadrian’s wife set that lion on me?’

  Probus scratched his chin, face creased in thought. He turned to the eunuch. ‘What do you know about the amphitheatre?’

  The slave pursed his lips. ‘It’s seldom in use now that the emperor is away. One of the lions escaped from its pen but didn’t manage to get beyond the arena. A slave was badly mauled when they tried to get it back into confinement.’

  ‘Did you see how the lion escaped?’ Flaminius asked.

  The eunuch shook his head. ‘I wasn’t there. I only heard about it. But they said someone had left the gate to the pen open. The slave in charge was beaten, but he swore that he had locked it after feeding time.’

  Flaminius’ fingers were sore. He put the guttering lamp down on the ground. It was getting too hot. ‘I don’t think he was to blame. But who was?’

  ‘Where is this slave?’ Probus said. ‘I want to speak with him.’

  The eunuch led Flaminius and Probus up a flight of steps. After a muted discussion with another slave, he led them to a cramped dormitory where several slaves lay on hard paillasses. The conditions that they lived under made the Praetorians’ lifestyle seemed decadent. Flaminius had never seen the living quarters of the imperial slaves before. On first entering the dormitory sector, he had seen several rooms that were clean and well-lit by small windows looking out over the park—clearly they were aboveground now. But these dormitories were cold, dank cells.

  The eunuch shook the shoulder of one slave. He leapt from his bed and knelt cringing before the two citizens.

  ‘These soldiers wish to speak with you,’ the eunuch told him. The slave nodded without looking up from the ground. Flaminius saw that his back was bruised and lacerated.

  Probus stepped forward. ‘You are the slave responsible for the lions in the amphitheatre?’

  Still staring at the ground, the slave gave a quick nod.

  ‘You were beaten for allowing one to escape, is that right?’

  The slave cringed back and said nothing. Probus leaned forward and lifted his head up. Flaminius saw a young face that was lined with the marks of suffering and eyes that seemed to stare into the abyss.

  ‘You say you were not responsible?’ Probus asked.

  The slave stared at the ground again, not daring to respond.

  ‘Answer the centurion,’ the eunuch ordered.

  ‘If his lordship says I am responsible,’ the slave said, ‘then I am responsible.’

  ‘But you are not,’ said Probus. ‘Correct?’

  The slave raised his eyes to blink at him. ‘I know I locked the pen up before I left,’ he said resentfully. ‘I know it.’

  ‘We believe you,’ said Flaminius, surprised to find his throat was dry. ‘Did you see anyone in that area before you went?’

  The slave lowered his eyes and shook his head. Then he looked up again. ‘But after we had driven the lion back to its pen, I found a few white threads of wool caught in the lock. They smelt like a citizen’s toga.’

  ‘Smelt like a toga?’ Flaminius asked. He’d never noticed a toga having any particular smell, apart from his own which stank of sweat whenever he’d been wearing it for
any space of time. All that wool was heavy.

  ‘That ammonia smell,’ Probus told him, ‘that you men about town try to conceal with scent.’

  Flaminius put little thought into how his clothes were cleaned, but he did know that laundry slaves steeped togas in urine to clean them. A popular joke with more than a drop of truth in it claimed that the emperor Vespasian had taxed the distribution of urine for its use in industry. Flaminius knew that much of recent history, if nothing more…

  ‘Anything else?’ asked Probus. The slave shook his head.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said suddenly, seeming to grow in confidence. ‘One of the threads was purple at the end.’

  ‘Hmm. A purple stripe,’ said Probus. ‘How thick was it?’

  The slave shrugged. ‘I couldn’t say.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Probus. He regarded the slave. ‘How long until your manumission?’

  The slave shrugged again. ‘I must buy myself out of slavery.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Probus. He handed the slave a gold coin. ‘Here’s a little something towards freedom.’

  The slave fell to his knees clutching the coin, and Probus led Flaminius and the eunuch from the dormitory.

  The eunuch, whose name was Clement, showed them a way to leave the slave quarters that took them out near the Vestibule, where on busier days guests to the Villa were greeted and led to the baths or the hostelry. That night it was deserted, a great echoing space. They returned to the barracks, stabled their horses, and found somewhere for themselves to sleep.

  Tibur, Hadrian’s Villa, 10th April, 122 AD

  The following morning, after a late breakfast of olives and wine soaked bread, Probus and Flaminius wandered among the deserted buildings. Poking about in Septicius Clarus’ office, Probus found a sheaf of notes written in the same cipher as the graffiti in the cell, and slipped them into his tunic.

  Flaminius found the silence and the lack of people eerie, though not as eerie as the knowledge that beneath their very feet slaves might be passing down one of the huge tunnels of Hadrian’s underworld. There hadn’t been many people about previously, but at least his cohort had been present.