‘So do I, Magnus; and now that Seneca has persuaded Nero to grant Malichus his citizenship I think the gods will look kindly on my team. I’ve a feeling that this is our lucky day.’
Magnus grinned. ‘I believe you may be right; after all, it’s already started off so pleasantly.’
The sight of Caratacus being admitted to the imperial box reminded Vespasian that he wanted to share, over dinner, their reminiscences of four years of fighting each other. But as the Britannic chieftain was greeted by Nero, who was enthusing about the scale model of the Circus Maximus and comparing its details to the real structure surrounding them, Vespasian returned to his inner battle and looked down at the purse in his hand, struggling with himself and his inability to part easily with money.
‘I’ve put ten aurii on them, dear boy,’ Gaius, sitting to his right, informed him, holding up the wooden bet marker that he had just received from the bookmaker’s slave with whom he had placed the bet.
Vespasian was appalled. ‘That’s five times the annual salary of a legionary, Uncle. What if they lose?’
‘Then I shall blame you because they’re your horses. But if I win, then I’ll get eight times my bet because no one fancies the Greens’ third chariot with a team that has never raced before.’
Vespasian looked back down at his purse and weighed it in his hand. Despite the fact that he had driven his team himself a few times in the Flammian Circus and was well aware of their prowess, he was still finding it very hard to lay his first ever bet.
Flavia, seated to his left, snorted in derision. ‘You’ll have as much chance of getting him to place a bet on his own horses, Gaius, as you would of getting him to pay for your upkeep if you made the mistake of marrying him without a dowry. Fortunately I didn’t make that error.’ She smiled in a goading manner and brandished her bet marker. ‘Fifteen denarii of my money on your horses, dear husband.’
Vespasian was taken by just how much his wife was becoming like his mother; given another few years, he surmised, she would stand a good chance of being just as cantankerous. He felt relief that he had forbidden Vespasia Polla to accompany him and Flavia back to Rome, after they had visited her in Aquae Cutillae for the Saturnalia, ostensibly on account of her frailty and the cold; in reality it was because of their souring natures rubbing each other. Dealing with two such women on a daily basis had been intolerable; whereas the month that he had spent with Caenis at Cosa had been very tolerable indeed.
Titus leant over his mother and rubbed Vespasian’s arm, bringing him back to his present dilemma. ‘Come on, Father, it’s just a bit of fun; I’ve put down five denarii.’
‘Five! Where did you get that from?’
‘It’s part of my allowance.’ Titus cocked an eyebrow before adding, ‘Quite a large part seeing as you’re the one who sets the level of it.’
Vespasian did not take offence at his son’s remark; he knew that, although it was an exaggeration, there was more than a grain of truth in it. He sighed, pulled a coin out of his purse and handed it to the waiting bookmaker’s slave. ‘One sesterces on the Green number three chariot. What will I get if I win?’
‘Two denarii plus your original stake, master,’ the slave replied, taking the bronze coin. With great ceremony he placed it in his bag before recording the wager in his ledger and then handing the numbered marker to Vespasian.
As the slave walked off to report back to his master, based with the other bookmakers at the rear of the senators’ enclosure, Titus handed him a silver denarius. ‘That’s for managing to keep a straight face.’
Vespasian punched the air and screamed incoherently as the leading three chariots skidded, in clouds of dust, out of the turn into the last of the seven laps, almost level. Only the Red supporters in the circus remained seated as their three chariots lay in mangled wrecks scattered around the track. The Blues, Whites and Greens, however, had jumped to their feet to urge on their teams for the last desperate effort. But those who were yelling the loudest were the people who had put their money on the outsider: the unknown Green team. The team had caused a stir around the circus during the parade before the race; supporters of all factions had marvelled at the quality of the Arabs. Even the Emperor, who was no mean judge of horse-flesh, had been impressed and had interrupted showing off his new set of finely carved ivory chariot models to Caratacus, seated with him, and summoned Eusebius, the Green faction-master, to the imperial box. Vespasian had felt Nero’s eyes rest upon him a couple of times as they discussed the team.
But now Vespasian was lost in the excitement of the race as the three leading chariots shot down the straight on the other side of the spina to the delirious roar of a quarter of a million people. The hortatores, the single horsemen who guided each chariot through the dust, wreckage and chaos of the race, reached the turning post at the far end of the spina for the last time and, signalling frantically at a party of track slaves, trying to rescue a trapped Red charioteer from his shattered vehicle, to take shelter within the tangle of wood and thrashing horses, made the turn and then pulled aside to leave the final straight clear for the three remaining teams.
With the White on the inside, taking the slower but sharper turn, the Blue and the Green charioteers whipped their teams to speed them around the outside at the fastest possible pace, negating the White’s advantage of taking the shorter route. As the three chariots levelled out they were almost in a line and with no more turns to go it was all about fitness and pace. And as the roar of the Green supporters, seated mainly on the left-hand side of the great entrance gates, increased to storm-like proportions, it was obvious which team had the most of both those qualities; qualities that Vespasian knew very well from his amateur efforts with them.
But now they were in the hands of a professional.
With seeming effortlessness the four Arab greys lengthened their stride and almost glided away while the White and Blue drivers, their leather-strapped chests heaving with the exertion, slashed their four-lashed whips over the withers of their teams to no discernible effect. The Green supporters howled their joy as the seventh dolphin tilted and the Green charioteer raised an arm in a victory salute.
‘They weren’t even at full stretch by the end!’ Gaius yelled in Vespasian’s ear. ‘That could be the best team in Rome at the moment.’
Vespasian beamed at his uncle, his thoughts focused on all the prize money that was now a very real possibility as a Praetorian Guardsman pushed his way along the row to them. With a perfunctory salute he delivered his message: ‘The Emperor commands you and your son to join him for dinner after the last race.’ Without waiting for a reply the man moved off.
‘Oh dear, dear boy,’ Gaius said, the joy of winning slipping from his face. ‘I’ve a nasty feeling that I’m not the only one who thinks that.’
Vespasian looked over to Nero and had the suspicion that his uncle was right.
‘You must understand, Vespasian,’ Seneca said, coming straight to the point, as he met Vespasian and Titus in the palace’s atrium, ‘that to keep the Emperor … how should I say? Mollified? Yes, mollified, that’s the word, exactly right; to keep the Emperor mollified we need to give him what he wants.’ He placed an avuncular arm around Vespasian’s shoulders. ‘If he gets what he wants then we find him far more amenable to acting with reason and restraint.’
‘We?’ Vespasian asked pointedly as Seneca led him at speed through the once dignified chamber designed, by Augustus, to overawe visiting embassies with Rome’s majesty rather than ostentatiously show off its wealth as Nero had evidently decided to do. Hugely expensive works of art were now scattered about the room; not garish and brash as they had been in Caligula’s time but, rather, exquisite in their beauty and workmanship. There was, however, vulgarity in their abundance.