Master and God (37 page)

Lucilla said nothing.

He stared out over the courtyard. ‘That was a special occasion and we both know it. Flavia Lucilla, you could sleep with the man of your heart a thousand times and only achieve such an experience once . . . Mind you,’ said Gaius, speaking ruefully for his own reasons, ‘you could have nine hundred and ninety-nine other attempts afterwards, with at least some hope . . .’ She did not smile. ‘I thought about you every day,’ he announced baldly.

‘I was worth it then?’ Lucilla’s voice was a whisper.

He turned back. She was sitting on his left, so it meant bringing his head right around to look at her. Graceful in a light flowered gown, with rows of fine neckchains hung from two enamelled shoulder brooches, she made his blowsy wife seem common and his respectable wife seem stiff.

His smile was sad, his voice intense: ‘Oh yes, you were worth it!’

Lucilla flushed. He reddened a little. Gaius prompted, ‘You could say the same about me? . . .’ Lucilla released a scathing puff of laughter, which he hoped meant her appreciation of him as a lover went without saying. ‘Still, not anymore,’ he confessed hoarsely, bursting out with it. ‘Dacia seems to have done for me.’

While Lucilla slowly grasped what he meant, Gaius writhed unhappily. He was innocently unaware that she was thinking he had two wives, a sympathetic commanding officer and a large family; it was unfair to burden her. Still he insisted: according to his fourth wife, when he came round after that first night in her squalid lair, he had significantly failed to function. ‘Apparently, I just cannot do it.’

Lucilla exhibited very little shock. Gaius would have been amazed how often impotence was a subject of conversation with hairdressers. ‘That must be enormously distressing for you.’

Gaius swallowed, unable to say more. Broken by the relief of sharing his trouble, he dropped his face into his hands, elbows on his knees, welling up in shame and misery.

He heard Lucilla’s chair scrape as she rose and came to him. Leaning down, she put her arms around him. He smelled her own perfume, plus echoes of other lotions she had been using in her work. As if held by his mother, he was enveloped in warmth and sympathy. Clearly there was no sensual element to this close embrace; even though Lucilla stroked his hair, her touch was professional. ‘This grey over your ears . . . I could darken it for you; still, it looks distinguished . . . You are a man who has lived. Gaius, living means suffering.’

When crouching became awkward, she loosed him and resumed her seat. Gaius had recovered his composure. ‘Time, Gaius. You will have to heal. Have you talked to a doctor?’

He flared up. ‘There is nothing wrong with me!’

Lucilla forbore comment on the contradiction. ‘Were you wounded?’

Gaius was still tetchy. ‘Why is that the first question women must ask?’ Onofria had done so. ‘No. Not in the groin. I was hit on the head.’

‘But might a head wound affect you?’

He exploded again: ‘I don’t use my brain –’

Lucilla toughened up with him. ‘When fit, you used everything, including the wits you have thrown away today. Experience, observation, curiosity, ideas, responses . . .’
Alba again.

‘Hands, lips, breath, muscles, heart – but mostly the all-important dingle-dangle,’ groaned Gaius bitterly.

There was silence.

Lucilla braced up to the easier question. ‘Well you have to decide which you want. You can’t have two wives, one of them must go.’

‘Both.’

‘The loud Onofria
and
the quiet Caecilia?’

‘Both. Absolutely; both.’

‘Well Gaius, make this the last time you let your brothers boss you. Stop them pushing you around. Grow up. Take responsibility for your own life.’

Now it was the turn of Gaius Vinius to make a massive, unthinking mistake.

‘I know what I want – who I want. Get free of both these bloody nightmares and make a vacancy.’ He meant so well – for both of them. He said it so wrongly.

Lucilla was hearing unpleasant contempt in the way he spoke of Onofria and Caecilia, even though he just told her he had voluntarily made drunken promises to one and exchanged formal vows with the other. He sounded hard, coarse, a little crazy. For herself, she would never fear any harm from Vinius, yet she was glimpsing a changed man here; she understood it might be temporary but he was a man out of control, a man she did not like.

At Lucilla’s silence, he made matters even worse: ‘All right, I know I’m a mess. But you can excuse the battle flashbacks, the drunken nights, the dried-up sap . . . Here I am, darling. Battered, but now all yours.’

Oh no. Calling her ‘darling’ was terrible. She had always hated the mocking insincerity of the way he used that word. But that was just the tip of her wrath, and Gaius could see how his lack of refinement was destroying their relationship.

Flavia Lucilla jumped to her feet. Deep in her eyes burned a fierce message that a man with five wives recognised: a diatribe was about to fell him like a tree struck by lightning. ‘How convenient – I can be sixth in the parade?’

The dog slid down off his lap and quailed against his chair. ‘That came out wrong,’ Gaius admitted hurriedly.

‘Really? You forget – I have seen how you treat wives. Who wants to be pushed out of the way while you grease your way off to some new refuge, your next secret “investment”, to confide in some new safe co-tenant, who may let you seduce her when she’s desperate but who will have no claim on you?’

‘I have had my faults—’

‘Yes.’

‘But you would be different.’

‘The promise you made to all those neglected wives!’

‘No!’

‘Two believe they still own you, even while you are pouring your heart out to me.’

‘
Because
you are different—’

‘Because you take me for an idiot. You imagine I am just waiting to be a substitute, the next chained captive in your pathetic triumph.’ Lucilla shuddered. ‘This is my home. Don’t come to my home and behave like a dumb soldier. I have been a wife – to a good man, who for all his faults offered affection and respect.’ She knew how to make Vinius jealous.

‘I respect you.’

‘Don’t insult me. You are a disgrace, Vinius.’

‘So my wives tell me.’

She stormed off. The dog, who knew how to make choices, slunk after her. Vinius sat on the balcony with the wreckage of his hopes, until there was no point sitting alone any longer. He left the apartment without speaking again to Lucilla.

That was that then.

He had ruined it.

Everything was over.

The Praetorian knew it would be self-destructive to spurn Lucilla’s good advice. She would have been surprised how much of it he followed. Step by step he reclaimed his life.

He said goodbye to Onofria. He took her a generous amount of money and was surprised when she good-heartedly waved him and his cash away. He left the pay-off even so.

He agreed with Caecilia that although he was retreating to the Camp, she could consider herself married to him until she received her legacy. He could be civilised about it. There was no rush; he would not be marrying anybody else. Being honest, it was a fair certainty he would never be married again. He wanted no more second best. There were financial and career penalties for unmarried men, worse for those who refused to be fathers; he would live with that.

He consulted Themison of Miletus about his dysfunction. Themison paid great attention to the wound on his head, noting with interest how irascible interest in the skull depression made Gaius, who still considered it irrelevant. Then the doctor told him this happened even to gladiators, happened to those sex gods regularly. Give it six months. Be abstemious with drink. Then stick with his best girl, relax and keep in practice. Gaius amused himself wondering what his best girl would say, if asked to make herself available for therapeutic purposes.

He returned to the Camp. He smartened up for the cornicularius. He approached his work in a mature and conscientious manner, as he always used to do. He was now assigned to investigating the public. He stuck with the task without self-loathing, though it made him twisted and cynical. That worked well as a state of mind for a Praetorian.

He drank no wine for a month. He resumed only at his old measured pace, apart from occasional evenings with Scorpus, though they tended to be more interested in the aniseed and savoury delights of Chicken Frontinian, or for Scorpus, sausage in a ring, with double fish pickle. Once a month Gaius submitted to a night in a bar with the cornicularius, which they called ‘catching up on the paperwork’. Those rather stiff occasions cemented what became a gruff friendship. Now that Gaius had to deal with Domitian’s informers, with their sour reports of adultery, sedition and treason, he needed somebody who understood his work. His duties were grisly, verging on the unacceptable.

He imposed new rules on Felix and Fortunatus.

He took them to a bar, set up the most expensive flagon to show there were no hard feelings, then announced: ‘Every time I look up from picking the fluff out of my bellybutton, you two have married me off again. Some woman I never met before, who wants intimacy five times a night and thinks I’m made of money.’

‘You know we always look after you,’ said Felix, moved by this appreciation.

‘You are our little brother,’ Fortunatus added fondly.

‘I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but there are limits.’

‘What brought this on?’ marvelled Fortunatus.

Gaius refused to answer.

‘Give him another drink,’ urged Felix.

Gaius insisted: ‘It has to stop.’

Felix paused to effect his famous fart, then commented portentously: ‘Titan’s turds! Baby Brother must have found love.’

‘Shit! Is it because Caecilia is a widow?’ Fortunatus wheedled. ‘Are someone else’s nippers too much to take on?’

‘Now you’ve done it!’ muttered Felix.

Gaius stood up. His brothers assumed he was going off to order a new round of drinks, but he was leaving.

‘No,’ he announced. ‘It is because I am thirty-three years old, and I don’t need nursemaids. Next time I get shackled to some horrible mistake, I want to pick my own.’ Then he added, in a steady voice, considering: ‘But it won’t happen. Marriage is for procreating children and I cannot do it, lads. I’ve got Sailor’s Wilt, Soldier Boy’s Droop, Ex-Prisoner’s Prick. You just tell your next lovely widow that it wouldn’t be fair.’

For once both his brothers were reduced to silence. After Gaius had marched from the tavern, the horror-struck Fortunatus did fart again, but it was involuntary, caused by shock, and far from his usual heroic standard.

After a time Felix found his voice. ‘Be fair to the boy. It must have taken guts to tell us that.’

They continued to drink, without speaking, for a long time.

Gaius Vinius Clodianus lived at the Camp and got on with being what Flavia Lucilla had called him: a dumb soldier.

T
he quarrel between Gaius Vinius and Flavia Lucilla was hard and upsetting. It involved pointed, bitter silences aimed, from behind closed doors, across the corridor at Plum Street. They easily sustained the feud for a year.

Both became adept at avoiding each other. Sharing the same apartment could have been impossible, especially as Gaius now made a point of being there to irritate Lucilla with his ownership. They mastered a fine art of leaving a dish carefully positioned, to mark kitchen territory; Gaius would elaborate this by rewashing a supposedly cleaned saucepan of Lucilla’s to show how scouring was done by experts. Doors would open silently but click closed again, avoiding a face-to-face meeting. The watchdog became a constant battleground over petting rights, though Terror was in heaven, rightly thinking he now had two doting owners. Gaius brought him horrendous marrow bones, deliberately leaving them in the corridor, so as soon as the dog lost interest Lucilla would kick them out of doors furiously, with their comet-trail of flies. Gaius returned them. ‘Here, Terror – nice boney!’

Once, once only, Gaius came upon and ate two cold artichoke bottoms that were not his.

This was a dangerous moment. Lucilla spent a wrathful night, mentally planning vile torrents of recrimination, but she overslept and he hastily bought a whole netful next morning before he had to face her. She would have to prepare and marinade the new chokes, which caused plenty of bile, but Gaius kept out of her way for a month.

Once she did weaken. Coming home between visiting clients, she heard a troubled shout. From the open doorway of the sitting room, she saw Gaius had dozed off on the couch. He was frowning, his jaw clenched, one hand forming a fist. As dreams distressed him, he let out fitful gasps. Aware of his deep need for sleep, Lucilla slipped among the furniture, to close the heavy wooden shutters, muffling light and noise. After she finished lunch, she looked in again. Now Gaius slept peacefully. The watchdog had shoved in beside him. Although Baby was not allowed up on cushions, he had mastered sneaking up onto the four-foot-wide couch one paw at a time; Gaius must have woken enough to allow it and massage the loose skin under the dog’s collar, where his hand remained. She left them together.

In between were long periods when she and Gaius were in different places and so never had to meet. Lucilla was able to focus her antipathy on the distasteful work in which he was now involved, the results of which were well known at court and throughout society.

Rome had never been a liberal environment, but its atmosphere had decidedly altered. One man could not single-handedly wreak this change. Domitian relied on people’s indifference, their compliance, their complaisance. He also needed his soldiers, his undercover inquisitors, his brutal enforcers. He needed the Guards.

The Praetorians’ remit had always been threefold: imperial protection, suppression of public disturbances and discouraging plots. An emperor’s measures against plots could be as innocuous as Vespasian’s edict ordering food shops to sell only lentil and barley dishes, so boring that nobody would hang around talking politics. Or they could extend fear and betrayal like sinister tentacles into all areas of home and business life. That was Domitian’s way. Vinius Clodianus now had to work spreading the fear.