Chapter 54
Rome, 18 December AD 69
Caenis
I rose early on the eighteenth of December: this day was like none other.
Pantera and his men had not carried my litter for some time by then, but Matthias had hired me another team for the day and I was transported to Sabinus’ house before the first dunghill cocks announced the dawn. Matthias himself I left behind in case Domitian came; I wish now that I hadn’t.
At the top of the hill, men were already gathering, stamping their feet, blowing into their hands against the December frosts, watching Sabinus’ door in the torchlight, just as they would have watched the emperor’s, wanting to be among the first to hail him as he emerged.
It was still dark when Sabinus walked out amongst them. He didn’t yet accept their homage, but progressed through the growing crowd, greeting each by name. All eighteen senators who had attended the meeting at my house the day before were there, and each had brought along a dozen friends at least.
In their hundreds, therefore, they filled the street, a slow river of white togas and greying heads. Of the two consuls, one had gone to be with Vitellius to take his abdication, while the other — Quinctillius Atticus, famed for his fish-pool — remained here, and moved through the crowd, distributing pamphlets.
He pressed one into my hand. It bore an image of Vespasian that underdid his nose and overstated his chin, with, beneath: THE SUPERIORITY OF VESPASIAN AS EMPEROR
There followed a rambling list of reasons why Vespasian was the only rational choice for emperor. I’m sure they were perfectly valid, but I couldn’t bring myself to read them. In any case, Sabinus was there.
‘Caenis!’ He embraced me, his gaze sliding over my face as he glanced over my shoulder at more important men. He pulled himself back and looked me in the eye. ‘Where’s Domitian?’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t come home last night.’
‘Is that unusual?’
‘Not really. He’s free to do what he wants.’ It was immensely unusual, actually, and on the first night of Saturnalia doubly so, but it was not out of character for how he had been behaving recently, and in any case I didn’t feel that Sabinus needed to know all the boy’s secrets.
I said, ‘He’ll be home by noon. He won’t miss Dino’s poppy-seed cakes.’ I believed this to be true, and had no way of knowing that by noon I would have no home for him to return to.
Sabinus was still looking at me, frowning. I pointed behind him, saying, ‘The Watch is here,’ and Sabinus strode off to meet the commanders of the Watch and the Urban cohorts who had brought their men in their entirety to offer their oath of fealty to Vespasian. Within moments, their standard-bearers lined the street and Sabinus was standing at their head in his brother’s place.
He needed no written copy of the oath: he had been enough of a soldier to know it by heart and to know that he must be seen to be competent for his brother’s sake.
‘Men of the empire: in the name of Jupiter, Best and Greatest, do you now take the oath to honour and to serve, as long as you may live, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, to give your lives in his defence and that of the empire?’
They did. All of them. Unanimously and with enthusiasm.
It was done swiftly enough and the men were sent back to their barracks to await orders: Sabinus did not wish to be seen to have taken Rome by force.
That, at least, was what he told Pantera some short while later, when the spy turned up, clean, calm, damp-haired, with the rosemary scent of a man who had recently bathed, or at least seen the attentions of a sponge.
‘You let them go?’ Pantera clearly thought Sabinus insane.
Sabinus, for his part, was brother to the man just named emperor by three Urban cohorts and the entire city Watch. He had no interest in Pantera’s opinion.
‘Vitellius has abdicated. What need have I of the cohorts?’
‘Nothing, if that were true, but it is not. Vitellius has not abdicated. The Guard refused to let him. He has returned to the palace, and has sent his wife and son to safety. These are not the actions of a man planning to leave office in the immediate future.’
‘But he gave his word!’ Sabinus flushed an unmanly purple. ‘He swore before the altar in the temple of Apollo…’
‘He has reneged on that oath.’
It’s amazing how fast a single sentence can spread. Within four breaths, the crowd was buzzing like a kicked hive.
Pantera took Sabinus’ elbow. ‘Geminus and his Guards know exactly how much they have to lose when Vitellius goes. Having put him on the throne, they are not inclined to let him give it up. You need to call back the cohorts and march on the palace.’
‘And begin a war of my own? I think not!’
Sabinus drew himself up to his tallest; he was not impressive, but he was the centre of attention and that conferred its own authority.
‘We shall walk to the forum ourselves and explain to the people of this city how matters stand. The Guard are only three thousand. In a city of a million souls, they do not make the majority.’
Chapter 55
Rome, 18 December AD 69
Trabo
I didn’t expect to see Jocasta in that gigantic litter; truth be told, I hadn’t thought of her since we got back to Rome. When your friends are dying, thoughts of women fade away like morning mist and Julius Claudianus and the rest had become friends, that summer.
Anyway, her appearing out of the blue like that was a shock. I was so happy, just for a moment, until she cut me dead. The flat edge of her gaze hit me in the guts as if she’d jabbed me with the dull end of a spear.
Then she invited Pantera to join her inside, and I was left with the choice of following the painted catamite back to the inn or following behind the litter like a whipped hound. I followed the litter and heard the sounds of Pantera’s ablutions as he transformed himself from renegade into respectable citizen. I learned nothing of Jocasta’s motives, or her plans.
At Sabinus’ house, I stood back while she and Pantera paid their respects and joined the slow-moving avalanche of nobility that was making ready to slide down the hill towards the forum.
It was a stratified crowd, each layer determined by class and station: every Roman knows where his place is, or hers, and they segregate by instinct, the way great flocks of birds mesh in flight.
Jocasta was somewhere in the middle while Sabinus and Caenis were the almost-royal almost-couple at the fore, although I knew by then that all was not well with them. Right at the start, just before they set off, Caenis had signalled to Pantera, calling him over.
‘Domitian is gone.’ She was small amongst all these big, overweight men. Her nose was blue with cold, her hands white about the fingers. She pushed them up her sleeves as much to hide them from view as to keep them warm. For all that, she looked proud until he asked her where she thought the boy was. She looked worried, then. ‘I don’t know. He went out last night and didn’t come home.’
Pantera, of course, couldn’t tell her what he knew; she was worldly wise, but Domitian was as a son to her, and nobody wants to learn that their son has spent the night with Mucianus’ catamite.
I could see now why Pantera had sent Horus away. If the boy had been there, you’d have known, wouldn’t you, what they’d done? A boy doesn’t know how to hide these things. And this was Caenis’ big day. You wouldn’t want some filthy Alexandrian whore spoiling it.