The Furies of Rome (4 page)

‘You’re going to thrash me anyway for what I did this afternoon, so why should I?’

‘I’ll thrash you twice as hard and for twice as long if you don’t.’

The child responded to this threat in an age-old fashion: he stuck out his tongue and then tried to wriggle free of his nursemaid’s clutches. Phyllis, although no more than twenty, was wise to the tricks of young boys and had the child by the hair before he had gone two paces.

‘Bring him here,’ Vespasian said, unbuckling the belt about his waist.

Phyllis, sturdy and with an attitude that would brook no nonsense from children, hauled the writhing Domitian over to his father who pointed at a table. ‘On that.’

Grappling with the twisting child, Phyllis managed to manoeuvre him so that he lay on his belly on the table; she had him pinned down by the shoulders, in what was almost a wrestling move, but his legs were free to kick. But Vespasian did not care, such was his anger with his son; it was an anger that was not novel, due to Domitian’s constant wilfulness. He wrapped the buckle end of the belt about his right wrist, grasped the other end in his hand, doubling it over, and caught the flaying legs with his other hand, holding them down. With the combined grief of mourning a mother and the outrage at his child for refusing to show due respect to her in death, he thrashed Domitian until the boy’s howls brought concern to Flavia’s eyes and he restrained himself.

Panting, Vespasian lowered the belt. There was a giggle from behind him and he turned around to see his daughter, Domitilla, peering through the curtains that separated the room from the atrium.

‘Thank you, Father,’ Domitilla said, favouring him with a radiant smile that put him in mind of Flavia when he had first met her in Cyrenaica, ‘that served the little beast right.’

Crowded around the body in the death-chamber, Vespasian stood with Sabinus, Flavia and his three children – Domitian snivelling quietly and Titus, his eldest son, still in his hunting clothes – in contemplation of the deceased, who remained exactly as she had died, untouched until the ritual of death could commence. Outside the room all the family’s freedmen and slaves had gathered in the dusk-swathed courtyard garden, ready to play their part in the lamentation.

After a respectable period of reflection, Sabinus, as the eldest blood relative present, stepped forward and knelt down next to Vespasia. ‘May your spirit pass,’ he whispered before leaning over her, kissing her lips and then pulling the palm of his hand over her eyes, closing them for the last time, thus sealing the passing of the spirit. ‘Vespasia Polla!’ Sabinus cried, ‘Vespasia Polla!’

Vespasian and the rest of the family joined in the calling of the deceased’s name and were soon followed by the men in the household outside as the women began to wail in grief, the sound echoing around the house as it grew in intensity and conviction.

Vespasian shouted himself almost hoarse calling his mother’s name, but to no avail as she had already begun her final journey and was now beyond hearing.

When Sabinus deemed the grieving to be sufficient, he got back to his feet and placed his hands under the arms of the corpse as Vespasian took hold of the ankles; between them they lifted Vespasia from the bed and laid her on the ground. This final duty done, the menfolk left the corpse in the charge of Flavia and Domitilla, along with the rest of the women for washing and anointing before being dressed in her finest attire and then brought into the atrium to lie in state with her feet pointing towards the front door.

‘So it’s to be tomorrow then,’ Magnus, Vespasian’s friend of many years despite their very different social status, said as Sabinus concluded the final prayer at the household altar in the atrium, having placed a coin under the tongue of his dead mother.

‘Yes,’ Vespasian replied, pulling down the fold of his toga with which he had covered his head during the religious ceremony. ‘Pallo is going to have the slaves work all night to build a pyre for her and assemble her tomb.’

Magnus’ lined and battered face, moulded over sixty-eight years, creased into a questioning aspect; his left eye, a crude glass replica, stared at Vespasian with the same intensity as his real one. ‘Assemble her tomb? Do you mean you’ve already commissioned it? Before she was even dead?’

‘Well, yes, evidently, otherwise the slaves wouldn’t be able to put it together tonight.’

‘Wasn’t that a bit previous, if you don’t mind me saying, sir? I mean, what if she had got better? Might it not have looked as if you were actually hoping that she would die and were so keen on the idea that you’d got everything ready because you couldn’t wait?’

‘Of course not; a lot of people order tombs in advance because you can get a better price from the stonemasons if you’re not in a hurry for it.’

Magnus scratched his grey hair and sucked the air through his teeth, nodding his ironic understanding. ‘Ah, I see, economising in death; very wise. After all, she was only your mother; you wouldn’t want her to cause you too much unnecessary expense now, would you?’

Vespasian smiled, used to his friend’s criticisms of his use – or lack of it – of his purse. ‘It makes no difference to my mother whether her ashes are placed tomorrow in a tomb or if they hang about in the casket for four or five days while a stonemason builds exactly the same tomb for twice the money.’

‘I’m sure it don’t,’ Magnus agreed as the rest of the family started to make their way, past Vespasia’s body seemingly at sleep on her bier, to the
triclinium
where the household slaves waited to serve dinner. ‘But perhaps propriety should occasionally take precedence over thrift, at least in matters concerning the death of family members; you don’t want to set a bad example to the next generation as we’re none of us getting any younger, if you take my meaning?’

‘Oh, I do, indeed; and if by that you’re implying that my children might not give me the respect that I deserve in death then you’re wrong: Titus and Domitilla will do me proud with my tomb.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I ordered it at the same time as I ordered my mother’s and got a discount for commissioning two at once!’

Magnus could not help laughing at his friend’s self-admitted parsimony. ‘I notice you didn’t include Domitian in the list of children doing you proud in death.’

Vespasian shook his head with regret as he looked over to his youngest son being led, firmly by the wrist, off to his room by Phyllis, his protests falling on deaf ears as all the family were now as used to them as they were to the spatter of the fountain in the
impluvium
. ‘I mustn’t write him off but I can’t see how he’ll ever have respect for anyone or anything that doesn’t in some immediate way benefit him.’

‘I’d have thought that was an attitude to be proud of in a son; it’d hint at a ruthless ambition.’

‘Normally I would agree with you, Magnus; why should anyone waste time on something that was going to prove of no use to them? However, you will have noticed that I used the word “immediate” and I’m afraid that is what Domitian’s real fault is: if the gain is not immediate then he doesn’t see the point of it. He has no patience and cannot take a long view. In other words, there is no innate cunning for planning and manoeuvring, which is one of the main requisites for success and survival in society; without that he doesn’t stand much chance.’

Magnus took a moment in sombre thought before turning his one good eye to Vespasian. ‘Do you want to know why I sent Domitian back to the house this afternoon?’

‘Do you think I should?’

‘It’ll probably make you angry, but yes, I think you should; but don’t punish the boy for it.’

‘Go on then.’

Magnus gestured with his head to Titus to come and join them. ‘Tell your father what your younger brother did this afternoon.’

Titus, now eighteen and the image of his father with a powerful chest, a round face with a dominant nose, large ears and eyes that normally twinkled with good humour, looked worried.

‘It’s all right,’ Vespasian assured him, ‘I’m not going to do anything about it.’

Titus seemed dubious. ‘Well, if you’re sure. It’s hard to say exactly how it came about but we’d been out hunting for a good three hours without a scent of anything and Domitian was being his usual self, complaining that the dogs weren’t trying hard enough, our horses were too slow, the slaves too loud and Magnus was useless at hunting and kept on making the wrong decisions and going the wrong way. Suddenly Castor and Pollux raised their muzzles in the air, got a scent and then bounded off up the hill covered with scrub just beyond the lower pasture.’

‘A good place for deer to hide in if they’ve been disturbed on our grazing,’ Vespasian commented.

‘Indeed, Father, which is why we went back there, having had no luck the first time around. Anyway, sure enough, a buck and his two does broke from cover and raced on up the hill with the dogs howling in pursuit. But one of the does was heavily pregnant and soon fell behind and Castor and Pollux were on her before Magnus could call them off in order to leave us with a clean kill. Magnus got there quickly and hauled his dogs away but the doe had a lot of bite injuries and the stress had put her into labour.’ Titus glanced at Magnus, who urged him on with a nod. ‘Well, neither Magnus nor I could kill the doe whilst she was giving birth, it just didn’t seem right, I don’t know why, so we withdrew a bit and waited as nature took its course. Eventually the thing was done and the fawn was tottering around whilst its mother, despite her wounds, licked it clean. So we decided that the best thing to do was to let the pair go and hope that they would both provide good sport in the future.’

Vespasian felt himself starting to tense up, hoping that what he had just imagined was not going to be the end of the story.

‘We hadn’t been gone long when Magnus noticed that Domitian was no longer with us; none of the slaves had noticed him go so he must have just let his pony slow so that the hunting party gradually outpaced him.’

Vespasian felt his stomach start to churn now he began to be sure that the story would sicken him.

‘Well, we rode back to where the doe had given birth and sure enough Domitian was there, but there was no sign of the doe.’ Titus paused and looked at Magnus again.

‘The truth, Titus,’ Magnus said, ‘don’t spare him.’

Titus swallowed. ‘But the fawn was there, stumbling around; and we could hear Domitian laughing and as we got closer we could see what was amusing him so: he had taken the creature’s eyes. It had been alive for less than half an hour and it had been blinded.’

Vespasian fought to contain the rage that welled within him. His throat tightened; the ending was even worse than he had imagined. ‘How?’

Titus grimaced and again looked at Magnus, obviously unwilling to go on.

‘With his thumbs,’ Magnus said in almost a whisper, ‘they were covered in blood.’ He grabbed Vespasian’s arm to restrain him. ‘Don’t! We told you because you promised to do nothing about it.’

Vespasian struggled against Magnus’ grip. ‘I’ll thrash the little shit to within an inch of his life.’

‘No you won’t, sir; he’s been thrashed enough today from what I hear. But I agree he does need to learn a lesson.’

Vespasian ceased fighting Magnus and let his body relax; his face, however, remained in the strained expression that he had developed during his time as legate of the II Augusta. ‘What would you suggest?’

‘After the funeral tomorrow morning we should all go out hunting; is there a decent-sized wood on the estate?’

‘Yes, over on the eastern edge.’

‘Good, because I reckon that with the help of a wild boar we could show him the difference between taking life for amusement or sport and wanton cruelty.’

‘Seneca?’ Vespasian spoke the name aloud for the second time since hearing it from Sabinus; and still it made no sense.

They were sitting in his private study – a room off the atrium – and were enjoying the warmth of a brazier and a fine vintage of their own estate’s manufacture after what had been a subdued meal for obvious reasons.

‘That’s what he said,’ Sabinus confirmed, ‘and I’ve got no reason to suspect he was lying. He was being eaten at the time, after all, and by a creature that would make you believe that it wouldn’t finish until every last morsel was tucked away.’

‘But why would Seneca want to finance a rebellion by the Brigantes?’

‘Venutius didn’t say that he financed the rebellion as such; he said the rebellion was financed by a loan from Seneca. I don’t imagine that our Stoic friend questioned Venutius too closely as to what he was planning to do with the loan; he doesn’t care for niceties like that. All he’s concerned about is the exorbitant interest that he charges. He seems to think that he can get away with even higher rates if he lends to provincials.’

‘I know; and from all accounts he does.’ Vespasian took a sip of wine and remained for a few moments in contemplation. ‘What have you done with Venutius?’ he asked eventually.

‘Nothing; I left him with Blaesus and his pet. I imagine that he’ll behave himself with the threat of being Beauty’s supper hanging over him.’

‘And no one else knows that he’s there?’

Sabinus shook his head. ‘So, are you going to tell me what this is about?’

Vespasian shrugged and placed his cup down on the desk between them. ‘As I told you, I’m doing a favour.’

‘Who for?’

‘Domitilla’s future husband, Quintus Petillius Cerialis.’

‘Cerialis?’

‘Well, his older brother, actually.’

‘Caesius Nasica? Wasn’t he the one who defeated and captured Venutius in the first place with the Ninth Hispana? If he had him then why didn’t he ask him anything he wanted to know in Britannia rather than send him all the way to Rome? I’m sure they’ve got plenty of hairy beasts that are only too happy to rip chunks out of people there.’

‘I’m sure they have, and worse, as we both know. But the new Governor of Britannia wanted Nasica to get Venutius away from the province as soon as he could because he knew that Cartimandua would find a way to murder her former husband, even if he were kept in secure custody. She’s a woman who will never relent until she’s had her way.’