A Comedy of Terrors Read online

  One of them had a message from Morellus. He could not be with us; he was tied up with a vigiles exercise ordered from on high. But his men watching the Cornellus homes in Greater Laurel Street and Cowrie Court had reported that the two brothers were in; Laetilla was with them, a family celebration. Greius had not been seen; amused locals reckoned he was in trouble with his father and his uncle, while another rumour claimed a determined goldsmith was holding the great Greius to ransom in a chicken shed.

  First, we concentrated on Terentius. I provided the address, taken from Sagax before I even knew why I needed it. I admitted a qualm that the slave might have lied. But as Paris said, while he came along with us in case we needed a messenger, Sagax had thought there was no risk because his master’s reputation meant I would never dare visit.

  The streets were quiet. Behind their shutters, homes sounded livelier than usual. Businesses were closed; stalls either stood deserted with their awnings dropped or had been completely towed away; shops were locked. A few bars served customers who had nowhere else to go, but these were places that lacked character, with drinkers who barely looked up to notice us march past. There were occasional lights, but most lights were indoors.

  From the outside his house was like so many in Rome: it offered no clues to its significant owner or his grand facilities. A dark, industrial-looking wall on the street-side had relatively small, high-up windows, all with bars. A forbidding door seemed unlikely to open to knocking. There was a stone ledge for waiting clients to perch on, but it looked dirty and unused. Anyone could see this was not a tenement, yet the place gave no impression that behind its plain exterior there would be spacious, luxurious living quarters. The building sounded deserted. It was not.

  Our arrival was quiet. No bombast. No advertisement. Our men lined up on either side of the entrance where they would not be seen through the squint. Someone knocked, as mildly as a sad travelling salesman who expected a no-sale. We waited. Surprisingly, after not too long, someone answered.

  As soon as the door swung open, spilling out light and sound, our sturdy men piled in. They moved aside the boy who had acted as porter. Their actions were sure; he made no resistance. We all went straight past him, then crossed an empty atrium as a single party.

  Indoors, it all looked masculine: a sybarite’s mansion. Noise hit us. Lights were everywhere, regardless of the cost of lamp-oil. Fringed curtains swooped around, in places mismanaged and sagging off their hanging-ropes. Stone couches in a winter dining room were currently upholstered with splayed figures in stages of collapse. They were slaves but had had food, and much wine from cellars they had raided. Chaotic celebration was occurring and would presumably continue for as long as they dared. The harsh ruler of this palace had gone out to a different party.

  In the absence of Terentius, his slaves had been rioting around courtyards and salons. Left at home, his mob of unsavoury staff were enjoying their rare opportunity for excess. They were ruled over by a familiar figure. Red in the face, sweating in his master’s toga but wearing little else on his grubby body, their liberty-capped King-for-the-Day was Sagax.

  Our men began a cursory ground-floor search, met with very feeble protests. There were more people in that house than we had, but most were absorbed in guzzling the best wine Terentius owned before he came home to stop them. A few engaged in more sordid acts. No doubt they could bugger each other in broom cupboards even if he was here, though quietly, in case it gave him the same idea.

  In general this household must run more smoothly than today, but it was barely domestic. Female influence was absent. This was a crime headquarters, always a haunt of men, men with no claim and no desire to be fashionably civilised. No one who visited was meant to feel comfortable: they were kept nervous. The master would probably be served lavishly off massive silverware, but his bearers would not put neat napkins on hospitality trays for other people. The latrine would be unspeakable.

  We never saw Terentia Berenike, the sister still living at home. Perhaps she was locked in her room on some upper storey, reading or writing letters to take her mind off the commotion downstairs. I presumed she had no rights of protest, even outside the festival of riot. I could understand why she was ready to be married off, to end what must be a bleak existence here. I could see why the thought of Nephele destroying that hope made her desperate.

  Sagax, who must have been swigging like young Dionysus ever since Terentius left, made one banal attempt to act out his role as King. It was completely predictable. He instructed me to stand in a bucket of water and sing, naturally while naked. He did not know who I had with me, though I doubt it would have made any difference.

  “I am Manlius Faustus,” he was told. “Flavia Albia’s husband. I can endure seasonal licence, Sagax, even such a time-worn old cliché. I am always up for a bit of fun. Let’s have a bucket, shall we?” He told a boy to fetch one, which the bemused factotum did. Then it was Sagax himself who was suddenly seized and stripped. “Turn him upside down. Now, Sagax,” said Tiberius. “A wise man once told me a good ruler should never give orders unless he is willing to follow them himself. So, King-for-the-Day, you must set an example. We are going to put your head down in this bucket, Your Majesty—then you are going to sing for us.”

  They made the plan seem real. Swung upside down by sizeable men with eager grins, the slave screamed. As his head neared the water, I stepped in. “Hold on, lads. Perhaps we can manage without cruel water play. I think Sagax is going to sing for us anyway.”

  And Sagax did. He told us all we needed to know. Terentius had gone out earlier, along with Greius.

  “Cornellus Greius is in captivity!”

  “That’s bollocks. He soon managed to escape.”

  Hightailing from the goldsmith’s custody, Greius had dared not go to his father’s house but came here, pretending that nothing was wrong. I knew that his disputed debt had been for jewellery, intended for both Terentia sisters, but of course he did not reveal it to their frightening brother. Mobsters never expect to pay their way, so Greius could simply laugh off his situation with Hieronymus; in any case, chief and sidekick had been too concerned with their plans for tonight.

  Terentius and Greius had bathed and been barbered. Then they put on suitable outfits and were taken off in chairs this morning. They had gone to the all-day religious rites and banquet that were being given to Rome by the Father of his People in his unaccustomed role of a fun-loving host. They must now be at the Amphitheatre.

  Terentius and Greius intended to begin slithering in among the establishment. This was the start of a major exercise to grapple important figures close to them. Soon the great and the good would be put under pressure. The mobsters would be smiling, acting as if they themselves were prominent people; their moves would include supporting athletes, chariot faculties and gladiators, giving helpful offers and cynical gifts—use my villa, let me send my musician, borrow my yacht … (I thought of the Pinarius family: had they already been suborned?) Top of their list to be drawn into a mesh of corruption was Our Master and God, the lord of the civilised universe, chief god Jupiter’s sinister rival on earth: Domitian.

  Tiberius and I looked at one another. “Let’s go!”

  * * *

  “How’s your sheep?” the cheeky slave Sagax yelled after us obnoxiously, after he had been turned right way up. He assumed any personal danger was over.

  “Cooked,” answered Tiberius, stopping and turning back. It sounded as though he had accepted what had happened to the beast, but anyone less drunk might have noticed his tone grew ominous. “Sagax, what do you know about my sheep?”

  Sagax then showed he was really stupid. “It was me!” boasted this soiled, slurring, ridiculous King-for-the-Day. “I was the one who grabbed it and I cut its woolly head off. What are you going to do about that, Aedile?”

  “Not sensible to tell me.”

  “I am a slave. I can’t give evidence.”

  “You just did, boy! Take him,” said Tiberius
, to the men who had accompanied him. “March him to the aediles’ office—and keep him in fetters until I come to deal with him. This one’s day of liberty is ended.”

  With that, he and I set off again, still intending to find Terentius and his companion Greius. Paris ran to the station-house in case Morellus was there.

  We faced some problems. Crossing the top of the hill, we discussed options. Even if we could ever locate the pair, in the biggest amphitheatre in the world, once they saw us coming for them, they were bound to flee. That assumed we even managed to arrive: getting down to the end of the Forum on foot would be difficult and exhausting. We had to expect merrymaking crowds, unless the whole of Rome had gone to the Emperor’s party.

  I am not the adopted daughter of jokers and chancers for nothing. First, I told Tiberius we should drop back down to the Embankment. At my parents’ house, we should borrow his litter from Uncle Tullius. By now he would have emptied his flagon of extremely nice wine and would agree to anything. Taking his luxurious transport, bearers would do the hard work, so we could arrive at the Flavian Amphitheatre with minds and bodies rested. As well—and this in my husband’s opinion was my craziest idea—inside its capacious curtains we could change into disguises that would hide our identities. I knew just the costumes we could pick up at the house to use.

  “You’re mad!” said Tiberius, but Saturnalia was getting to him. He went along with it.

  LXI

  If your father and brother have left you the best amphitheatre in the world, you may as well play with it. “Oh, oh,” I had joked a few days ago, pretending to be one of the imperial hacks who greased up the Emperor. “Our Master has graciously asked me to dinner—me and a thousand nobodies he calls his friends…”

  I was wrong. The fabulous Flavian Amphitheatre had seating for fifty thousand. What was more, some of the guests were definite somebodies. Friends and general freeloaders included not only senators and middle-rankers, who were quietly dying in their hot woollen togas or freezing in fragile Greek syntheses, but also women, children and the labouring class. Now everyone, whether rich or poor, can boast they have dined with Our Leader.

  They could boast, but would they bother? Even with perfect eyesight he could only be a tiny figure, many, many yards away. A vague purple dot, not too tall, never as handsome as he wanted, overweight, balding under his wig and wreath, yet the centre of attention amid the clutch of courtiers and favoured toadies who had special permission to muscle in and praise him. Even if they were interested in his crabbed opinions, most other people would have heard nothing he said. That was if he deigned to speak: Domitian was famous for gloomy silences while he stared and let everyone assume he was privately planning executions. This host was better at a distance. Anyone who risked approaching tonight to thank the solitary tyrant for his hospitality would find twenty-four lictors and massed Praetorian Guards in their way, sneeringly ordering, “Back to your seat, sir.”

  Why was he doing it? He had held the notorious Black Banquet, where he petrified senators in order to demonstrate his tyrannical control. Now he was winning over the rest of Rome by seeming free-hearted and convivial instead. He was neither. But he would play the host—and, by Jove, this bash of his would have everything.

  Everything, and even a court poet, up in the stands, scribbling it all down. Let them come cluttering up my new note-tablet—unfettered Saturn and wine-soaked December, Laughing-boy Jokester and Impudent Rudeness—I am recording our blithe Caesar’s holiday of drunken feasting. Tumptity tumptity hendecasyllables.

  Watch out: here comes imperial poetry!

  Oh, no, I’ve got a pain in the fundament.

  Get him: and then stuff that tiddly old Statius

  Where he can scribble no ghastly versicles …

  Never invite a poet to free drinks; he will get hendecasyllabically blotto.

  By the time we arrived, events were at their height. Full-throated noise said the seats were all filled. The Amphitheatre can famously be emptied in only a few moments, via its well-engineered easy stairs and corridors. Less often remarked is that packing in citizens, who never know the time and never care that they don’t, takes hours. Announcing the start with trumpets won’t help Romans arrive properly; it only makes them remember they left their handkerchiefs at home, so they have to go back for them. This is vital when travelling to a big feast, because you need something to carry away any goodies you can pinch.

  Even when properly equipped with their serviettes, the laid-back Romans amble through their streets having discussions with neighbours they may not have seen recently, dodging their accountants or their mistresses or their mothers, after which their children demand toilet facilities (closed for the festival), and everyone stops to watch a dog fight (it always happens: the little black terrier tries to take on that one-eyed scraggy lurcher who hates anything else that moves). Visiting foreigners do not know the way: they cause blockages while havering over their upside-down street maps, even though the entire population is obviously heading there so they need only to walk along with us. In recognition of the problem, for Saturnalia the arena had been open since morning. Our way here had been fairly unimpeded: districts were sucked dry of population. The celebrating Romans were finally all in the stands, where much had already been happening.

  Rather than run out of food before Domitian even turned up with his festive entourage, people had been bombarded with treats to keep them happy. Allegedly the showers of nuts were first-class hazels from Bithynia and Pontus, although for those of us with an interest in Saturnalia nut-scams, this claim rang hollow. Tiberius and I may also have doubted the luscious Judaean dates, Damascan plums and Balearic figs. But if it’s free, who quibbles? Whenever the atmosphere dulled there had been more pastries, spiced cakes, baked figures, apples and pears and berried biscuit fancies, all hurled down by mysterious processes from overhead at the crowds, who happily and stickily reached for them.

  Eventually, hundreds of waiters materialised, walking through the tiers of seats with gigantic bread baskets, pure-laundered white napkins, and at last the long-expected and extremely lavish trays of food. Despite being held for hours in the outside corridors, this all seemed exquisite to people who normally ate much more plainly. With almost as many waiters as guests, the effect was of true generosity. Service had been slick: Domitian was famed for his well-drilled, well-mannered staff. The waiters were not only good at their jobs, every one of them looked beautiful. We could see that, even as they milled around the service areas while we were still looking in from the street.

  From the moment we got there we knew that the wine-waiters had a bottomless budget. They were serving as fast as they were asked: the people drank the Emperor’s health in many refills. Now the hubbub from the arena announced that everybody was pie-eyed and even the waiters were growing wobbly. No wonder Saturnalia was Rome’s most popular festival.

  Unfortunately, even the ushers on the gates were merry.

  Each of the eighty entrances had a reception committee to vet people. Stuck at one of them, Tiberius and I hit trouble. We had to persuade our usher not to have hysterics that we were late, we wanted to arrest someone—and we were an aedile and his wife who seemed to think the invitation specified fancy dress.

  I proffered the truth: “We are hoping to be accepted as part of the entertainment.”

  “If you are an aedile, sir, you should have your tickets for the front rows.”

  “Rather foolishly perhaps,” murmured Tiberius gravely. “I felt shy to accept after I previously had to turn down Our Leader’s kind invitations to his Triumph and the banquet for the Dacian dead.”

  “Medical advice,” I burbled. “Manlius Faustus is the aedile who, you may have heard, was struck by lightning. It was fully reported in the Daily Gazette.”

  “As an excuse,” snorted the usher, “that is about as convincing as the schoolboy who cannot produce his homework because a puppy ate his note-tablet.”

  “Lame!” admitted Tiberius
. “It is true, however. Would you like to see my scars?” he offered gamely.

  “That’s going to be difficult!” At least the usher was now laughing as he pointed at the tightly laced, non-magisterial costume. “So, Aedile, today you rose from your sickbed to bravely fulfil a mission for justice—but the only garment your wardrobe slaves had left you was a bright green knobbly gourd costume?”

  “My personal body-slave is our King-for-the-Day,” agreed the aedile, humbly. Like most masters, Tiberius was taller and sturdier than his slave, so although my sisters’ lacing would accommodate some size differential, Dromo’s gourd suit was a tight squeeze. This caused him to fidget, which is not the mark of Roman authority.

  Nobody bothered to ask why his wife’s maid had disguised her under a ghost’s shroud. I was feeling desperate. Any moth who flew near the haunting costume would die of its miasma. Underneath it, I could hardly bear to breathe, zapped by the smell of tomb dirt, plus years of Zoilus sweating in a shroud he never laundered.

  The usher was a low-grade tipsy prune, who now seized his festive chance to be difficult. He suddenly declared the Amphitheatre full, even to aediles. He had been given no orders about admitting vegetables, and in this situation, Legate, his best recourse to keep his job safe was to have us two flea-bitten tryers-on arrested.

  That might have been embarrassing. Fortunately, he called to the nearest law-and-order group—which turned out to be the Fourth Cohort. They even recognised us.

  “I thought you lads were all laid low after last night?”

  “Oh, we’re working through the pain.”

  All the vigiles had a presence here, they told us. It was partly to check faces at the entrances, taking note of any people who featured on their many watch-lists for disreputable professions. At the Amphitheatre, grave-diggers, actors and ex-gladiators were specifically banned. Others could be. I was relieved I had only announced myself as “wife of Manlius Faustus” or as an informer I might have been stopped. Those suitable for admittance were shooed inside; dodgy characters were either rejected or at least had their place noted.