‘I?’ The empress glanced back in shock at Septicius Clarus. ‘I gave you no help. This is a tissue of lies.’
Flaminius smiled grimly. ‘You said that the prefect ordered Rufinus Crassus’ death. I knew this must be true, but hearing it from your lips made me realise that you, ma’am, must be implicated. When Rufinus Crassus was reported to have died—from a conveniently sudden distemper—nobody knew that he had been killed by Centurion Messalus, the Praetorian who supposedly found the body, and at the direct orders of Septicius Clarus. And who gave the prefect his orders, but his imperial lover? The emperor’s neglected wife. You, ma’am.’
She shook her head. ‘You know nothing,’ she said. ‘It was you who killed Centurion Messalus. Messalus killed no one.’
Flaminius laughed. ‘It’s you who knows nothing, ma’am, if you believe that. Centurion Messalus was an assassin. At the orders of the former prefect, Attianus, he murdered one of Hadrian’s rivals when your husband had assumed the role of Trajan’s successor—whether he did so with his predecessor’s blessing, as he claimed; or not, as many of the senators claimed, I don’t know yet. But Centurion Messalus admitted to me that he was the killer of Senator Nigrinus. And shortly afterwards he was killed.’
‘I heard you talking to him,’ Septicius Clarus said. ‘You were pumping him for information in the officers’ mess. I was already keeping my eye on you. We knew that you were an agent of the Commissary.’
Flaminius stared at him. ‘You knew?’ he said. ‘You knew all along?’
‘Of course we did,’ said the empress haughtily. ‘We knew that you had to be dealt with. The prefect was all for having you murdered. I believe he made the attempt on one or two occasions, but I told him that it was better to let you run your own sweet way, so we could learn what you could find out. Then we would know how watertight our conspiracy was. Centurion Probus had to be removed, of course; he was getting much too close, but your feeble attempts have provided us with much amusement. In the end, however, even I agreed that you had to die. So Medea agreed to poison you.’
‘But how did you persuade her?’ Flaminius demanded. ‘I thought… she and I were lovers, once. That innocent, lovely girl. How could you turn her into a poisoner?’
The empress smiled at his distress.
‘She was not completely new to the game,’ she said. ‘Innocent? Hardly.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Flaminius demanded. Realisation struck him. ‘It was her—it was her who murdered Messalus! Wasn’t it? That was why she was late for her meeting with me.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘She must have been in Messalus’ chamber. She slipped the poison into his wine when he wasn’t looking.’
‘I gave it to her,’ Septicius Clarus said. ‘I kept Messalus talking while she entered his chamber and poisoned the wine—with the cantharadin you had obtained from Erichtho.’ The Marsian woman gasped at this. Septicius Clarus went on. ‘Then I sent her to find you, or your body. We had hoped to kill you.’
‘I was opposed to the idea,’ the empress protested. ‘Two deaths in one night would be too many, which would be too suspicious, and suspicion was the last thing we wanted while we were planning the new phase of our little conspiracy.’
‘But we agreed that you needed to be dealt with,’ Septicius Clarus said. ‘We didn’t want a commissary agent getting in our way.’
‘How did you know that I worked for the Commissary?’
‘Medea told us, of course,’ the empress said.
‘She betrayed me! But why?’
‘Need you ask?’ The empress laughed. ‘She told me the whole story when you arrived. I’ll admit it took some persuasion to get the truth from the little bitch. But when I found out what had happened between you two in the past, I saw my opportunity and seized it.’
‘The whole story?’ Flaminius asked.
‘How you seduced her behind her master’s back,’ the empress said. ‘How callously you used her and then abandoned her, how her master beat her and finally cast her out. If I had not been willing to take her on, who knows what would have happened to her. She loved you, and you betrayed her.’
Flaminius’ face went white. It was true, he had treated her badly. But it had all been necessary, all part of foiling Falco’s plot and saving the emperor—an emperor who was a murderer himself, it transpired. And yet it had all been for nothing. The plot continued in a new guise. ‘You used that knowledge to manipulate her?’
‘She reported back to us everything you told her,’ Septicius Clarus said. ‘I must admit that she was difficult at times. In the end she paid the price, when you switched those goblets.’
‘So you admit that she was trying to poison me?’
‘But it was you,’ the empress said, ‘who poisoned her. And we want this kept quiet. If you plead guilty, we will ensure that your death is an easy one.’
Erichtho had been pacing up and down throughout this last interchange. At this point she broke in. ‘I knew nothing of this! I’m a perfumer, with some medical knowledge—not a poisoner! I’m horrified—sickened—to learn how you’ve abused my expertise.’
Suetonius Tranquillus also spoke.
‘Please don’t be naïve,’ he told her firmly. ‘Ma’am knows what she’s doing. All this is for the good of Rome, and the Republic.’
‘You call Erichtho naive,’ Flaminius said, ‘and yet it’s through your own naivety, imperial secretary, that you have been dragged into this—not to mention the way you’ve been manipulated by the empress ever since she became your lover.’
‘What’s this?’ Septicius Clarus demanded, rounding on the empress. ‘You said you had no regard for what you called “this ink stained librarian”.’ He turned to Suetonius Tranquillus appealingly. ‘Old friend, how could you do this to me?’
‘How could you do this to your emperor?’ Flaminius asked quietly.
Suetonius Tranquillus glared at the empress. ‘Ink stained librarian? You were interested in my researches! You listened to all my histories avidly.’
The empress stifled a yawn. ‘I took some interest in them,’ she admitted. ‘They’re really quite lurid. You’ve made yourself quite the expert on the murderous antics of my husband’s predecessors. All that gratuitous violence…’
‘It’s artistically justified!’ Suetonius Tranquillus insisted. ‘I included that level of detail to show how much better the Republic was than Rome under the Twelve Caesars! Gratuitous indeed…’
‘Indeed, it’s compelling,’ she told him, ‘if a little long winded at times. But I came to value for your knowledge…of murder. We knew all along that it would be necessary to remove a few inconvenient people. My husband began his reign in blood and murder. Well, a little murder would be necessary to oust him.’
‘I don’t understand why you want to depose him,’ Erichtho said. ‘Surely you’ve prospered from being the emperor’s wife.’
‘Your expertise also proved valuable to the cause,’ the empress told her, ‘but beyond your perfumes and medicines you know very little. My husband married me for ambition, because I was the ward of the Emperor Trajan. He hoped to secure the succession by marrying me. After the wedding he neglected me shamefully, and when he learnt that Trajan had no intention of making him emperor, he had to use dreadful methods to ensure he remained in power, death squads and the like. And now he maintains himself in power by employing common spies like this corrupt tribune, who used and abused my handmaiden.
‘Hadrian no longer has need of me. Even in the early days of our marriage he would abandon me to run after boys and other men’s wives, the degenerate. All I have learnt from my time with Hadrian is to despise the Rome of today and to yearn for that time of piety and simplicity that existed before the Caesars.’
‘You despised it so much,’ Suetonius Tranquillus observed, ‘yet you have aped its worst excesses!’
‘We will tear down the world that Caesar made,’ the empress announced, ‘and replace it with the Republic of old. All this foolishness began wit
h those demagogues who preyed upon the discontents of the plebs, encouraging them to rise up against their patrician superiors. We will return to a world where the senate rules wisely over the people, not a single tyrant bolstered up by the legions.’
‘As long as Rome rules the known world,’ Flaminius said quietly, ‘your dream can never come true. I’ve learnt something about history in recent days, and one thing I know is this; the Republic collapsed because it was only designed to rule a single city; perhaps it was able to rule the whole of Italy, but not the world. Rome, under the emperor, rules the world, apart from a few barbarian nations like the Caledonians and the Parthians. That takes strength tempered by wisdom, and that’s what a good emperor like Hadrian gives us. If he has been forced to be ruthless in the past, or to employ spies in the present, it’s all worthwhile if he’s to maintain the Roman peace for as long as possible.
‘I’ve been on the frontiers, and I’ve seen the barbarians. They are itching to bring Rome crashing down. If they do, it will result in a dark age, an age of chaos. Right now, the emperor is strengthening the borders of the empire, but Rome will fall from within if we are not united. Your petty ambitions and dreams of a Golden Age are nothing but sentimentality.’
‘As a historian,’ Suetonius Tranquillus said, ‘today means nothing to me, nothing but vulgarity and superstition. I see only a glorious past. But to historians of the future today could seem to be as much of a Golden Age as the legendary reign of Saturn.’
‘You’re not a fool,’ Septicius Clarus told the secretary. ‘Don’t let yourself be swayed by the words of this beardless boy. The Empire is corrupt. Properly guided, we’ll ensure it regains its magnificence.’
‘Corrupt,’ Suetonius Tranquillus mused. ‘It seems to me that you should know all about corruption. You, who call yourself my friend, who have secretly seduced the woman I love.’
The empress laughed shrilly. ‘I never loved you,’ she told him, sneering. ‘I used you for my own ends, just as the tribune here used the Greek girl.’
‘So you’re no better than the people you profess to despise,’ Suetonius Tranquillus said. ‘You murder, you betray… You represent the true spirit of the age; not the old days of the Republic but this latter age of murderous, lustful, despotic emperors.’
Erichtho gazed round the room. ‘My people are only Roman on sufferance,’ she said. ‘The lives they lead are much those of the barbarians. Powerless and downtrodden, they wander the hills in small bands, selling their skills for what they can. They squabble, they steal, they lust after each other’s wives… But squalid as their existence is, and I’m forever grateful to Minerva Medica that I no longer live alongside them, I never saw such decadence amongst them as I have witnessed in this Villa.’
Flaminius shook his head. ‘Out on the frontier,’ he said, ‘the life is simpler, more violent and yet less prone to intrigue and corruption. We are weakening the Britons with our own way of life, with bathhouses and markets and luxuries. And yet, I would rather live in a house with a hypocaust than in a Briton’s mud hut. Civilisation had its advantages.’
‘Advantages you will soon be doing without,’ the empress said. ‘I asked you to investigate the murder, and now you have learned the truth. The conspiracy. What do you say now?’
‘At first,’ Flaminius said, ‘when I heard it suggested that Rufinus Crassus had been poisoned, my natural assumption was that Erichtho was involved in some way. But when I spoke with my colleague Probus, he questioned how she could have been able to get access to the senator when he was under armed guard. He said that the person most able to kill Rufinus Crassus was the guard who reported him dead. Realising that he was now my chief centurion, I spoke to him, sounded him out. I learnt that he was, as I had already heard, a professional killer. Not just a soldier who killed in the field of battle, but an assassin, who murdered for political reasons. He was on the verge of admitting to Rufinus Crassus’ murder, I’m sure, when the Praetorian Prefect interrupted us.
‘I hoped to bring up the subject at another time. Then I received the message from Medea, asking to meet. She had already shared information with me, and at that point I had no reason to suspect she was a double agent. When I went to the meeting place, of course, she was not there, and I was attacked myself.’
‘That was not my idea,’ said the empress hastily. ‘Medea was given the job of poisoning the centurion, once we knew that he was likely to betray us. Removing you as well would have looked suspicious; I preferred to implicate you in your centurion’s murder. When I heard that the plan was to murder you, I felt afraid. After Medea reported the murder, I sent her to rescue you.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Flaminius said ironically. ‘And then, of course, I was accused of murder as you had planned. Luckily, I had an alibi. That must have annoyed you.’
‘No matter,’ said the empress. ‘The plan was changed. Here was a chance to test our security. Unfortunately, you called in your more astute colleague, Probus. He got too close to the truth, dangerously close, and I had to have him taken off the case. You, however, went blundering on, making more and more of a fool of yourself, unaware that the girl you trusted was working for me.’
‘I began to suspect something,’ Flaminius said. ‘Medea became evasive. I learnt that you had spoken to her about me, and so I put it down to that. Then there was another attempt on my life…’
‘Again, not my doing,’ the empress said. ‘I was content to let you run and run until you found out the truth, if you were capable of it—then we would deal with you.’
‘But of course, I got closer to the truth when I learnt of the manoeuvres the Praetorians had planned for the middle of the night. And then we found evidence that Messalus had been involved in the plans for a raid on the Praetorians’ wage train. The plot began to thicken. I infiltrated the manoeuvres and learnt that a senator was “taking the place” of the emperor. Then the wages were stolen despite all our attempts, so we knew that someone in the Commissary must be a traitor as well.’
He turned to Centurion Junius Italicus. ‘Or some onewho spends a lot of time with me. Someone who’s been listening at doors.’
The centurion shook his head. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said, with a bleak smile. ‘Not me. Look elsewhere for your traitor.’
Flaminius dismissed his protestations with a sneer. He went on, gazing round the atrium. ‘You know, I think all of you had something to do with Messalus’ death. Not to mention Medea’s death.
‘I don’t think all of you were directly connected,’ he added, as Erichtho opened her mouth. ‘But without your poisons,’ he told her, ‘and without your knowledge,’ he told Suetonius Tranquillus, ‘neither her imperial majesty nor the Praetorian Prefect would have been able to perpetrate their crimes.’
‘What about Rufinus Crassus?’ Erichtho asked.
Flaminius shook his head. ‘It seems that it was with poison stolen from your pharmacopeia,’ he told her, ‘that Messalus murdered Rufinus Crassus.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s dead and burned now. I can’t be certain.’ He looked at Septicius Clarus. ‘Perhaps you could help? It was your idea, wasn’t it?’
Septicius Clarus scowled. ‘I told Messalus to kill him. I told him to make sure he left no marks, but I left it up to him how he dealt with the senator. You’re wrong, though, tribune.’
‘I am?’ Flaminius said. ‘How am I wrong?’
‘I didn’t give the order,’ the Praetorian Prefect said. ‘It was ma’am who told me what must happen.’
Flaminius turned to the empress.
‘So were you the one who decided that Rufinus Crassus must die before he betrayed your little conspiracy?’ he asked. ‘I suppose you didn’t want a chance of your husband knowing that you were plotting against him. That would have affected your comfortable position in society.’
She shrugged. ‘It certainly would have done,’ she admitted. ‘If my husband had learnt that I was plotting against him, I should think he would have exiled me to an island in the Black S
ea—at the very least. He could even have told one of his Praetorians to murder me.’ She shrugged again. ‘The imperial secretary tells me that Emperor Nero kicked his wife to death. My husband has much in common with Nero. This inexplicable love for the Greeks, for example. But no.’ She shook her head. ‘I merely passed the order on to Septicius Clarus, who I knew would do everything I said. He’s devoted to me, you know.’
Flaminius was confused.
‘If you just passed on the order,’ he said, ‘who gave it to you?’ His eyes widened. ‘The senator I saw in the Roman Forum. It was dark. I couldn’t make out his face in the torchlight… But…’ He turned suddenly.
‘You’ve been very quiet, senator,’ he said, addressing Ursus Servianus.
The old man rose from his couch. He smiled humourlessly.
‘I thought you would find out the truth in the end,’ he said. ‘That was why I agreed you should be killed. You should thank Sabina here. She was the one who wanted to preserve your life. I think she may still hold a torch for you.’ He stroked the empress’ cheek and she pulled herself away irritably. ‘She gets very bored,’ he said, ‘married to that pederast, my brother in law.’
‘You!’ Flaminius said. ‘You intend to make yourself emperor!’
‘I shall make myself emperor,’ Ursus Servianus confirmed. ‘It was I who Trajan nominated, not that young upstart Hadrian! He seduced Trajan’s wife and persuaded her to put his name forward, and even then Trajan turned him down.’
Flaminius shook his head. ‘I can’t believe that,’ he said. ‘Why would Trajan risk the empire making an old man like you his successor? Hadrian’s not a youth, but he’s got life in him yet. You’re decrepit, senator. Even with the whole Praetorian Guard at your back, bribed with gold that should be theirs anyway, will you gain the respect of the legions?’
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