Rome's Lost Son (12 page)

Sabinus sighed. ‘We demand that Mithridates is restored but we’re probably too late as he would have been murdered along with his family. Then we negotiate with Radamistus, who refuses to go. Parthia sees the new King as too pro-Roman because of his blood-tie with Tryphaena and demands that he is removed, which confuses us so we decide to let matters rest. This will then prompt a military response from Parthia that we will, in turn, have to counter with a proven general who just happens to be in the region, and before we know it we have a war with Parthia.’

Vespasian spread his hands to emphasise the simplicity of the scheme. ‘Exactly; and at the same time the northern tribes swarm over the Danuvius as arranged by the embassy and the situation starts to look very bleak, and who will be blamed? The Emperor; old, drooling, drunk most of the time and not at all popular with the Senate; time for him to go and no one will look too closely if he just suddenly drops down dead. And if he does that soon then there’ll be only one choice to succeed him: Nero. That’s what this is all about: it’s ensuring that Claudius is removed before Britannicus comes of age and blurs the inheritance issue. Nero comes to the throne, Corbulo wins a great victory and Nero, the grandson of the great and martial Germanicus who also famously prevailed in the East, takes the credit, celebrates a Triumph in the first year or so of his reign, making him very popular and securing his position. Brilliant.’

‘So the evidence of Agrippina’s treachery is with Tryphaena,’ Gaius concluded.

‘Yes, we need to talk to her.’

‘She’s at Cyzicus on the Asian coast of the Propontis,’ Sabinus informed them glancing around at the window onto the courtyard; hobnailed boots clattered across at an urgent speed. ‘I’ll organise a ship for you.’

‘Then we can pass by on the way to Armenia.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

‘Why would you want to do that? You’ll spend the whole voyage vomiting.’

‘I need to talk to her about putting down all resistance in Thracia to Rome once and for all; if we’re threatened by the northern tribes, I cannot afford to have disloyal nobles in the south. She will know who they are, their weaknesses and what to bribe or threaten them with. After we’ve spoken with her you can drop me at Byzantium; it’s time I visited the city and gave it a taste of Roman justice. You can sail on up through the Bosphorus into the Euxine and then along the northern coast of Bithynia to Trapezus in Pontus. From there it’s about two hundred miles over mountainous terrain to Armenia.’

Magnus held out his cup for yet another refill as a slave entered with a platter of grilled diced lamb on skewers. ‘There is one thing that doesn’t fit: for all this to have worked, Agrippina would have had to know the timing of the Parthian embassy; how could she have known that?’

‘That’s the fact that proves her treason: she couldn’t have known about it unless she instigated it. It’s what Narcissus suspected but couldn’t prove: she’s been in contact with the Par—’ Vespasian was cut short by the auxiliary centurion who had allowed him into the city bursting into the room; Vespasian’s senior lictor was close behind him.

‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Sabinus almost shouted.

‘I’m sorry, sir, excuse me,’ the centurion puffed, his eyes darting around the occupants of the room, ‘but you need to come to the western gate; there’s been an attack.’

Vespasian and Sabinus walked at a dignified pace behind the centurion who was doing his best to restrain himself from breaking into a run. Vespasian’s lictors carried torches to light the way through the city that was now muffled by a blanket of snow.

‘I apologise for the meal; the cook is local,’ Sabinus said, trying to keep an air of nonchalance in his voice. ‘I left my cook behind in Thessalonike when I raced here a few days ago to round up those idiots who’d started a riot rather than make their annual sacrifice.’

‘What makes them think that they have the right to change their oath of loyalty?’ Gaius asked, gnawing on a skewer of lamb
as he waddled along behind, evidently not sharing the same reservations as Sabinus about the local cook’s ability; Hormus followed him with some reserve skewers.

Sabinus sighed. ‘Paulus has convinced them that the highest power is not the Emperor – or his wife and freedmen – but this Yeshua and his father, who was the Jewish god but now seems to be everybody’s god. Anyway, after things had come to a head I gave them the choice between obeying the law or opting out of society on a permanent basis.’

‘And them that made the wrong decision are the ones hanging around outside the gates, if you take my meaning?’ Magnus observed, pulling his cloak tighter around his shoulders as Gaius handed a finished skewer to Hormus, receiving a new one in return.

‘Yes, about half of them made that choice. It’s beyond me; perhaps they like the idea of dying in the same manner as their beloved Yeshua.’ Sabinus shivered. ‘He was a hard man; I don’t think I’ve ever met somebody with such strong will. It was as if he could push you over with just one look from his piercing eyes. But somehow I couldn’t dislike him. I had to order that his death be hastened so that his body wouldn’t still be on the cross on what the Jews call the Sabbath, which is their sacred day every seven days; but rather than have his legs broken, I ordered merciful death and had him speared instead. I don’t know why but I just didn’t want him to suffer. Then I allowed his mother, wife and his kinsman Yosef to take his body even though the chief priest had sent his men for it, mainly just to annoy Paulus.’

‘But it also put Yosef in your debt,’ Vespasian pointed out as they approached the closed western gate, ‘and without him you would have died at the hands of the druids.’

Sabinus blew on his hands, rubbing them.‘True, but now I wish that I’d given it to the priests to bury in secret; then we wouldn’t be having all this rubbish about Yeshua coming back to life three days later, just as my Lord Mithras did, to show that death could be beaten.’

‘It would be a potent message if you could believe it.’

Sabinus signalled for the gate to be opened. ‘From what I’ve seen, it is a potent message for the poor who have nothing in this world.’

‘We’re promised all in the next.’

The gate swung opened but neither Vespasian, Sabinus, Gaius nor Magnus walked through; they just stared in shock at the source of the remark. Hormus lowered his eyes, his pallid face coloured.

‘Are you one of these, Hormus?’ Vespasian asked, recovering himself.

‘I know of them, master; there are growing numbers amongst the slaves in the houses on the Quirinal but I have not joined their sect.’

‘What do you know about the sect?’

Hormus held the lamb skewers close to his chest with both hands as if seeking protection from them. ‘Only that God loves us all, even someone as irrelevant as me, and the way to him is by following the teachings of his son, Yeshua, the Christus, who died for us.’

‘My Lord Mithras is the way to God,’ Sabinus asserted dismissively, turning and walking through the gate. ‘We follow his light and at the Lord’s Supper we are cleansed by the blood of a bull and nourished by its flesh.’

‘They are cleansed by the blood of Yeshua, the Lamb of God, and gain sustenance by eating his body.’

Gaius wrinkled his nose. ‘That’s disgusting.’

Vespasian shook his head as he followed his brother out through the gate. ‘I don’t think it’s literal, seeing as he died nineteen years ago; it’s symbolic. Magnus and I have seen it done.’

‘We have?’ Magnus looked puzzled.

‘Yes, with Yosef in his house on the Tor in Britannia. He filled a cup with wine, remember? He said that the cup had belonged to Yeshua.’ Vespasian looked up at the line of sillouhetted, occupied crosses. ‘Then he shared a loaf of bread and made us drink and eat. I thought that it was strange at the time but then I remembered in Alexandria someone saying that Paulus claimed to turn bread and wine into Yeshua’s body and blood, and I realised that Yosef had just done the same thing.’

‘Well, he didn’t do it too well, did he? I ate bread and drank wine.’

‘I know, you drained the cup. But the point is it’s symbolic.’

‘So what happened here, centurion?’ Sabinus asked, coming to a halt at a cross lying on the ground, its occupant missing; two bodies lay close to. He signalled to one of the lictors to come closer with a torch.

The centurion swallowed. ‘I don’t rightly know, sir. I had the gate closed at the sunset curfew as usual and left a couple of the lads outside just to keep an eye on the crosses.’

‘Just a couple?’

The centurion winced. ‘Well, what with the weather and all I didn’t think—’

‘No, you didn’t, did you.’ Sabinus bent down and looked at the bodies of the two dead auxiliaries. ‘They’ve both had their throats cut, so I suppose they were taken by surprise from behind by whoever took down this cross.’ He touched one of the wounds. ‘The blood’s drying so they’ve been dead for at least half an hour or so. When did you find them, centurion?’

‘When their relief went out. I came straight to you to report it myself.’

‘As if that would help excuse your slackness; a patrol of just two men outside the gates at night.’ Sabinus shook his head in disbelief as he looked at the empty cross; the nails had been wrenched out but their positions were marked by blood glinting in the torchlight. ‘Who did they take down?’

‘The young lad, sir; I don’t know his name.’

Sabinus took the torch from the lictor and walked along the line of crosses touching the flame to the torso of each victim; a few groaned but none showed any sign of strength, their breath was forced and shallow as the last of their life slipped away. ‘Well, he won’t survive the night and anyway he’d be a total cripple if he did.’ He looked back down at the vacant cross. ‘That seems to be wanting an occupant, centurion.’

‘Er, yes, sir.’

‘Get that woman Lydia and nail her up instead.’

‘What, now?’

‘Yes, now! I’ll not have people interfere with Roman justice and I’ll show them what happens if they try to.’ Sabinus thrust the torch at the centurion and turned on his heel. ‘Just who do these people think they are? You’re the expert, Hormus, tell me, what do they really believe?’

‘They believe that through Yeshua the meek will gain strength in the next life.’

‘Who the fuck are the meek?’ Magnus asked, taking one of Gaius’ lamb skewers from Hormus. ‘I’ve never heard of them. What have they got to do with it?’

Vespasian was thoughtful. ‘I think that in the context of Paulus’ religion the meek are just about everybody in the Empire who’s not of magisterial rank, a merchant or in the army. Comparatively few other people have any wealth to speak of, so aiming a message promising more at the meek who want more is clever.’

‘Fucking meek!’

Gaius pointed a half-finished skewer at Sabinus. ‘The one thing that I can see from all this is that it’s a very dangerous new movement. If you start having these meek people believe that everything is going to be far better in an afterlife so that they stop worrying about what they get up to in this life, thereby lies chaos, dear boys.’ He waved his skewer at the crucified men. ‘Look at those idiots you had to deal with yesterday: they practically nailed themselves to their crosses judging by what you said. Granted, it can’t be a very pleasant way to die, not like lying in the bath with an open vein, but if they think that they’re marching off to another world where they’re not going to be meek any more then we’ll be getting a whole underclass that has no fear of death, and then how will we control them and who will do the work? It’ll be like another slave revolt; there aren’t many people who don’t shudder at the name of Spartacus. If this carries on, the names of Paulus and Yeshua will resonate just as nastily as his still does.’

‘What would you recommend, Uncle?’ Sabinus asked, heading back towards the gate.

‘Kill the lot of them; get them off to their non-meek world as soon as you can before this thing starts to grow. Don’t imprison
them or send them down the mines because they’ll just infect other unsuspecting meek people with their twaddle. But most of all you’ve got to find and execute this Paulus and put a stop to the filth that he’s spreading.’

CHAPTER VI

V
ESPASIAN ADMIRED THE
fortified walls of Abydos on the Asian shore, just half a mile off to starboard as the trireme rowed by, struggling against the current of the Hellespont and a contrary wind. For what was once such a strategic town positioned at the junction of Europa and Asia it was now a city of little importance, as Roman peace had negated the need to guard against invasion from one continent to the other. Looking to either bank of this mile-wide channel he tried to imagine the bridges that Alexander, Darius and Xerxes had used to transport their armies across and found himself recalling his one-time friend Caligula’s bridge across the Bay of Neapolis; that had been three times the length needed to bridge the Hellespont. The brash young Emperor had ridden across it wearing Alexander’s breastplate in an attempt to outshine those colossi of history. However, the bridge was to be a memorial to Caligula’s folly rather than the proof of his military prowess. Vespasian smiled as he recalled his thoughts on seeing the Pharos in Alexandria for the first time: if you want to be remembered, build something that’s of use to the people. Caligula’s mistake had been to build something that was of no use to anyone – not even himself.

‘You seem pleased with yourself,’ Sabinus said, joining him at the rail looking very wan; he had spent the first two days of the voyage from the closest port to Philippi, another Neapolis, proving yet again just what a bad sailor he was.

‘I was thinking about Caligula.’

‘That’s nothing to smile about; it’s something that I try to avoid doing. I see Clementina’s face as he dragged her off to rape her and then I see her as she lay dying in our house, flayed by a malevolent god.’

Vespasian shuddered and was silent for a few moments as he remembered the confrontation with the god, Heylel, conjured by druids in the garden of Sabinus’ Aventine villa; Sabinus’ wife had suffered a hideous death at its hands. ‘Yes, I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be; I’ve got used to it now. And it’s a comfort having my son serving as a military tribune with the Fifth Macedonica. It means I get to see him three or four times a year.’

‘Which reminds me, I need you to take the son of a client of mine on as a military tribune.’

‘Whose son?’

‘Laelius.’

‘The chickpea contractor?’

‘That’s the one. I had Pallas get the Emperor to restore him to the equestrian order as part of the deal to come out here.’

‘What’s in it for me?’

‘Call it repayment for having you exonerated of all blame for missing those Parthians.’

Sabinus leant heavily on the rail and breathed deeply to control his churning innards. ‘I’m never going to live that down, am I?’

‘So it’s a deal?’

‘Yes, it’s a deal; I’ll write to Laelius offering the lad a position as soon as I’m back in Thessalonike.’

‘I’m sure his gratitude will be expressed in chickpeas.’

‘As long as it’s expressed I don’t care.’ With a sudden heave Sabinus lost the battle with his guts and shot a thin stream of pale liquid over the side.

Vespasian slapped his brother on the back. ‘I just hope that whatever Tryphaena manages to tell you about the Thracian nobility is worth all this discomfort.’

‘It will be,’ Sabinus said in a high voice as he convulsed again. ‘When we apprise her of the situation she’ll be very anxious to convince us of her total loyalty to Rome so that we will vouch for her if Agrippina’s ever exposed. That’s got to be worth a few potential traitors’ names and suggestions on how to deal with them.’

*

The arrival of two men of proconsular and one of propraetor rank caused a flurry of activity in the recently modernised port of Cyzicus the following day. The two customs officials who waited on the quay for the gangway to be lowered looked at each other in alarm at the sight of senatorial togas surrounded by so many lictors. After a brief enquiry as to the names of such distinguished visitors the paperwork was suddenly deemed to be unnecessary and all thought of searching the ship or charging the exorbitantly high mooring fees disappeared from the officials’ minds, as they tried to outdo one another in their attempts to ingratiate themselves with their illustrious guests. Messages announcing their arrival were sent to Tryphaena and all the other worthies of the city, refreshments were called for as suitable transport was arranged, and flattery and obsequiousness oozed out of every sentence in the firm belief that one can never fawn too much to men of high rank.

Eventually two suitable carriages were procured and the brothers and their uncle were aided into one by many willing hands as Magnus and Hormus were obliged to climb the small gap between the ground and the other vehicle’s step using nothing but their own exertion. The two officials then insisted on guiding the lictors through the town, which was situated on the south coast of an island in the Propontis and connected to the mainland by a causeway a third of a mile long. With expressions of sincere gratitude for having been allowed to be of service, and with heartfelt requests that the Cyzicus customs service should be spoken of in a positive tone should their excellencies ever find occasion to mention it in the high circles that they surely inhabit, the two officials delivered their precious charges to the impressive building that was Tryphaena’s residence. They watched Vespasian, Sabinus and Gaius being received by the great lady herself without noticing Magnus and Hormus emerging from the second carriage, and therefore missed the chance of a purse of silver that Vespasian had instructed Hormus to give them should a tip be appropriate. In mutual agreement that they had done their finest crawling to persons of much importance, they walked away, convinced that they had shown the Cyzicus customs
service in its best light, oblivious to the fact that they had totally failed in their duty to collect revenue for the province of Asia in the presence of three of Rome’s élite.

It had been over twenty years since Vespasian had seen Tryphaena and she had aged like wine rather than milk. Born in the same year as both Magnus and Gaius, she was now in her early sixties and had weathered the years far better than they. Her hair, gloss raven, was definitely dyed, Vespasian decided, but in a far more subtle way than Gaius’ tonged curls; indeed his use of rouge and kohl were made to seem extravagant next to her restrained application of cosmetics.

She smiled at Vespasian with dark eyes as he squeezed the fingers of her proffered right hand; her finely woven aquamarine stola accentuated, but did not flaunt, the curve of her hips and breasts – although what devices lay hidden beneath it to counter natural forces on that part of her anatomy, Vespasian could not guess. ‘Welcome, proconsul and ambassador to my nephew Radamistus, the rightful King of Armenia.’

‘You are well informed, Tryphaena.’

She inclined her head with a slight raising of her eyebrows in acknowledgement of Vespasian’s use of the familiar: the last time they had met she had been a queen and he a mere military tribune; now he was a proconsul and she just a private citizen. ‘My agents keep me up to date.’

‘Do they, though? Do they really?’ With a questioning look, he walked past her into the atrium where the city worthies waited and a steward had assembled slaves with trays of refreshments.

Half an hour later, Vespasian stood on a terrace overlooking the city of brightly painted public buildings and whitewashed, Greek-style houses. Sipping pomegranate juice from a blue glass goblet engraved with Bacchus – or more probably, Dionysus – enjoying the nectar of the vine, he rested one hand on the balustrade and looked in amazement at the huge amphitheatre that dominated the view even though it was outside the city walls.

‘Some consider that it should be ranked amongst the wonders of the world,’ Tryphaena’s voice said softly in his ear. ‘It’s over a hundred and fifty paces across and its walls are taller than your Circus Maximus.’

‘It’s an impressive building.’

‘It’s more than that; it’s a work of brilliance. It’s built on top of a river that’s covered over but can be dammed so that the arena floods and naval battles can be staged there.’

Vespasian was genuinely impressed but concealed the fact. ‘Claudius is going to stage a naval battle on the Fucine Lake before it’s drained.’

‘But, my dear Vespasian, that’s a one-off event and it’s miles from Rome; here we can entertain the people without them having a two-day journey either way. I’ve suggested to my cousin Agrippina that when Nero succeeds his father it might be a project worthy of a great emperor to be remembered by: an amphitheatre that can be flooded, as large, or larger, than this, built in the centre of Rome for the people of Rome.’

‘That could be a monument that stands forever,’ Vespasian agreed. ‘After all, who would want to destroy a place of public entertainment?’

Tryphaena took a fruit juice from a passing slave and said casually, ‘But you believe Agrippina has other plans for her son?’

Vespasian stroked the smooth white marble of the balustrade in thought. ‘So your agents do indeed keep you up to date.’

‘Yes, they do and you are both right and wrong. Right in that Agrippina wants to secure her son’s accession as soon as possible. But wrong in that you believe that she instigated the Parthian embassy and wanted to keep it secret from me.’

‘You have very good agents, Tryphaena, and fast. They must have travelled at a great speed to bring that to your notice before we arrived; I only said it three days ago. And I spoke quite quietly at a private dinner.’

The former Queen was unapologetic. ‘To survive one often needs to hear the quietly spoken private word.’ She looked over to Sabinus deep in conversation with a city worthy whose name Vespasian had instantly forgotten upon being introduced. ‘The
man to whom Sabinus is talking is furnishing him with the names of the chieftains of my former kingdom whom I would consider to be less than happy with Rome’s annexation of Thracia six years ago. You see, Vespasian, with what alacrity I press to prove my loyalty to Rome?’

‘So you did have a hand in removing Mithridates and replacing him with your nephew? Otherwise you wouldn’t feel induced to make such a swift protestation of loyalty before it’s even been questioned.’

‘Oh, but it has been questioned, quietly and in private. I had more than a hand in the coup: I got my brother-in-law to suggest it to my nephew and provide him with the army. It was easy to do: I just made him think that Radamistus was plotting to murder him and take his throne, which I did without difficulty as it was the truth.’

Vespasian shook his head in disapproval. ‘Is this how eastern politics work?’

‘It’s much the same as Roman politics, proconsul: power and position. The only real difference is that we have fewer families fighting each other, which means that there’s a much higher incidence of patricide, fratricide, infanticide and any other type of family “cide” that you can think of.’

‘Charming.’ Vespasian’s gaze wandered over to the dun-brown mainland strewn with rugged formations of rock and copses of leafless trees housing hundreds of birds; the sun was weak and the land was still in winter’s grip. Goats tore at rough grazing watched over by small boys wrapped in cloaks made from the skins of their charges. Here and there a slender spiral of smoke rose to the sky, marking the position of a mean dwelling where the boys’ elder brothers and fathers worked with their hands, chopping wood, repairing tools, roofs and fencing, while sisters and mothers fetched, carried, cleaned, mended and cooked as the family struggled to survive the winter. It was a view, Vespasian surmised, that had not changed in centuries: the common man scraping a living. ‘But I imagine that it was ever thus for the royal houses of the East just as it was ever thus for those farmers.’

‘Do you disapprove?’

‘Who am I to judge?’ As he looked back to the mainland all the birds rose as one from the trees and flew off, out to sea. ‘The rural poor have the same choice everywhere inside and outside the Empire: stay where they are and work the land or join the army and fight for the powerful. Whereas for the powerful families it’s the opposite: fight to maintain your position or eventually become a part of the rural poor. If that means killing your father, son, uncle or whatever, so be it; but we try to do things differently in Rome.’

‘Do you, though? Do you really?’

A trembling in Vespasian’s legs distracted him; all conversation on the terrace died off as people looked around, startled. Vespasian felt the tremble grow, accompanied by a deep bass, distant rumble and the closer rattle of cups and plates shaking and clinking on vibrating tables; his drink formed concentric circles, the waves moving outwards with increasing rapidity.

Tryphaena put a reassuring hand on his forearm. ‘It’s just a tremor, nothing to worry about. We have them all the time in this area; the people believe that it’s because we live close to an entrance to the underworld. I should have read the signs; the gods always warn the birds. I’ll offer a sacrifice to Hades and Persephone; perhaps that will help to restore harmony between them before she returns to this world to bring spring and summer back to us.’

The sea seemed to shudder, waves breaking irregularly; beyond, on the mainland, the goats ran in fluid groups, changing direction at random, flowing hither and thither as their small minders huddled for safety beneath trees and boulders, terrified of the wrath of the gods that the tremor might well presage.

But the gods’ anger did not boil over and calm soon returned; the conversation on the terrace picked up with the forced nonchalance of people wishing to mask their fear.

Tryphaena breathed a deep sigh as if she had been holding her breath; she looked over to her steward who had noticeably paled. ‘Have a pair of the blackest bulls brought to the priests of the chthonic gods. They’re to sacrifice them to Hades and Persephone
in the name of the citizens of Cyzicus; but let it be known that it is at my expense.’

The steward bowed and went about his errand.

‘Displays of piety have a twofold benefit if they are made publicly,’ Tryphaena remarked, ‘wouldn’t you agree?’

‘In that they gain the favour of the gods and the popularity of the people?’ Vespasian was relieved to see that his pomegranate juice no longer vibrated.