Caligula (17 page)

Rufus gasped.

Lucius.

'Kill me.'

It was not a plea – he was too proud for that. The words were addressed to Cupido, but Lucius's eyes were fixed on Rufus's. He knew his fate if he fell into the hands of the Emperor's torturers.

'Kill me,' he repeated, and Rufus knew one of the names screamed out when the hot irons were applied again and again would be his own.

Cupido heard the words also, but he knew his duty, and it was not to grant a merciful death to a man who had just tried to kill the Emperor. He took the sword away from Lucius's throat.

'Your fate was written the moment you crossed the line of guards. How did you do that? It will be the first question they ask and I will be interested to hear your answer. Because you will answer, friend. Brave man or coward, they always answer.'

Lucius dropped his eyes, but not before Rufus recognized the despair in them.

'Look out, he has a dagger.' The words were out before he realized he had said them. Cupido stepped back and his sword came up, but it was Rufus who moved first, plunging his blade deep into Lucius's chest. The young tribune opened his mouth as if he had something important to say, but a flood of crimson filled it and he fell forward, dragging Rufus's sword from his hand.

Rufus turned away, to find himself looking into Cupido's accusing eyes.

'There was no dagger.'

Rufus drew out the ornate knife Lucius had given him beneath the tree in Drusilla's garden. Using Cupido to shield his movements from the occupant of the carriage, he bent down and placed the weapon in Lucius's lifeless fingers.

'There is now.'

Cupido stared hard, but did nothing to stop him. 'We will discuss this later.'

A shattering roar reminded Rufus that he had abandoned Bersheba. As he walked painfully back towards the elephant, he was forced to pass beneath the shocked gaze of the consuls and senators who had watched the combat in impotent horror. His eyes caught those of the Emperor's uncle. Claudius was blinking nervously, like an elderly owl caught in bright sunlight.

'Send for Nestor and tell him to bring his most fearsome instruments.' The shouted order was accompanied by a clatter as Caligula kicked back the door of his carriage, his face almost scarlet with fury and suppressed fear. 'We will set up the triangle and the forge here, in open show, and Rome will see how an Emperor rewards those who would do him ill!'

Rufus shuddered, but kept walking. Nestor was Caligula's most experienced and refined torturer. Was it his imagination, or did Claudius's face go a little paler at the mention of the name?

XXIX

He had killed a man. No, he had killed two men.

This air he breathed seemed more of a privilege now he had robbed Lucius of its gift. Yet the very fact of the deaths seemed to diminish him. Was this how Cupido felt each time he left the arena? Did he experience this emptiness, as if some part of another man's going had taken with it an essential element of his killer?

Rufus sat at the rough wooden table. He had spent an hour at a public fountain trying to wash the blood from his skin and his clothing, but it seemed to leave an indelible stain. From time to time he would rub his fingers absently over patches on his arm only he could see. Livia watched her husband anxiously. She had heard of the assassination attempt, but not the details. She could see he was affected by what had happened and she wanted to comfort him, but Rufus had created a barrier around himself that she could not penetrate.

She had another reason for wanting to speak to him. She had news of her own. But there would be another time.

Eventually, he broke the silence. 'Why did they do it?'

'Who?'

'Lucius must have known he would fail. It was as if he expected the guards to stand aside. Some of them did, but not Cupido. Not me.'

'Who is Lucius?'

'I killed him. I think he might have been my friend, but I pierced his heart with my sword and he died thanking me for it.' He shook his head and looked at her with empty eyes. 'I killed them both. To save the Emperor.'

Livia's eyes lit up. 'You saved the Emperor?'

Rufus stared at her in confusion. He found it difficult to remember the details. Everything had happened so quickly. The dazzling patterns as Cupido's long sword carved the air, the terrible certainty as he drove the point home into another victim. The accusing eyes. Had that been Cupido or Lucius?

'It was Cupido. Cupido saved the Emperor.'

'And you?'

'Yes. And me.'

'Then there will be a reward.'

Rufus suddenly felt sick. 'I want no reward.'

He walked out of the room to sit with Bersheba . . . and wait for Cupido.

The Cupido who came to the barn at dusk the following day was almost unrecognizable as the young man he had watched dazzle his opponents in the arena, or even the hard-eyed killer he had fought beside in the shadow of the Rostrum Julium.

The gladiator stumbled against the barn door and would have fallen beneath Bersheba's feet if Rufus hadn't stepped forward to catch him. His eyes were glazed and his breath was heavy with the fumes of the rough red wine they served in the worst type of tavern. Rufus attempted to support him, and lead him through the barn to the living space, but the gladiator shrugged him off, mumbling wearily to himself.

'We were betrayed.'

Rufus opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it.

Cupido blinked at him, and brought his face close, as if his eyes were having difficulty focusing.

'The Praetorians were tricked,' he slurred bitterly. 'Tricked! A legionary officer of the palace went to the barracks and warned the centurion in charge of the guard that the Emperor had ordered a test to entertain the mob. He must tell his men to stand and let certain men pass – certain men who could be identified by their hoods.'

Rufus winced as the gladiator continued.

'The centurion was surprised, but such things have happened in the past. He was a good officer, and he checked the order diligently. He recognized the hand, which was that of Callistus, the Emperor's secretary, countersigned by Cassius Chaerea, of the Guard. So he gave the order.' Cupido shook his head to clear it. 'Naturally, the order was a forgery. How he must now wish he had been more suspicious, if he is not already dead.'

'The legionary officer?' Rufus spoke for the first time, already knowing the answer to his question. 'Lu – arrgh.' He fought for breath as a hand like an iron claw gripped his throat.

'Yes, Lucius. Lucius who betrayed his Emperor. Lucius who could have condemned another hundred, or another thousand, if he had lived. Lucius . . . who . . . you . . . killed.' With the final four words the fingers tightened on Rufus's windpipe and the hand raised him until his feet dangled inches from the floor. He tried to speak, to explain, to plead for his life, but not a single word came out. His vision first blurred, then faded . . .

He felt himself flying through the air, and for a second he truly believed he had been summoned by the gods, before the flight ended with a bone-rattling crash.

He opened his eyes to see Cupido in a crumpled heap among the straw by the barn door and Bersheba standing over him with her trunk swinging menacingly. There was something in her posture that told him she was preparing to step forward and crush the gladiator beneath her massive pads.

'Easy, girl,' he croaked, massaging his throat. 'Easy.'

He crawled over to the prone body and raised Cupido's head, his hands finding a pronounced lump behind the left ear beneath the golden hair. He looked up to find Livia standing over them, her hands held protectively over her stomach and her eyes wide with fear. Between them, they settled Cupido on the bed and waited.

He opened his eyes two hours later, but it was clear he wasn't aware where he was or how he arrived there. Rufus brought water from the cistern and the gladiator drank it, sitting on the bed. He lifted his head, and the look he gave Rufus was haunted by demons that could not be explained by the events they had witnessed together.

Then, in a voice devoid of emotion, he told them of Caligula's vengeance.

'First they broke the legs of the surviving assassins, so they should be brought low before their Emperor. Not just one break, mind, but smashed up and down with iron bars, so there was no possibility they would ever walk again.

'When this was done and they writhed on the ground below him – for they had brought his throne so he should see the spectacle more clearly – they took the first and hung him from the triangle. He was a young man, well set and handsome . . .' Rufus remembered the scared eyes beneath the hood and wondered if it was the opponent he had faced. 'The Emperor joked he would be favoured by the ladies. Then he ordered Nestor to remove his manhood, since he would have no further need of it. This Nestor did with a single cut of his razor, and the youth's squeals chilled the blood. There were no questions, you understand, for this was mere instruction for those who watched and waited their turn.'

Caligula had discussed the next entertainment with Nestor as the young man bled to death within feet of him.

'When they trussed up the next he was already babbling with terror, and when Nestor placed the instruments before him – the hooks, the shears and the impaling irons – he wailed that he would tell all and they need not put the fire to him. So the clerks took down the names and the dates and all the minutiae of treason. Once he had given all he knew, he thanked the Emperor for his mercy, but the Emperor asked him reasonably how he could be certain this was all, since he had not been tested. Could he not, for instance, have omitted the name of his mother or his sister, out of love and compassion? And the assassin had no answer, for none would do. So they put the hot irons to him anyway, and he expired still listing the names of his loved ones.

'And so it went. Each one gave a dozen names, and a dozen more, and when they ran out of names, the Emperor helpfully suggested other names: the names of aristocrats and knights with land and riches who would give them up to their Emperor to prove their loyalty or to save their lives. When there were no more assassins they brought the first of the men and women they had betrayed, and it went on, and on, and on. All afternoon and into the night they screamed, sometimes one at a time, at the end in twos and threes.

'Only once did the Emperor show compassion, of a kind. When they brought the actress Quintillia to the triangle she was beautiful, perhaps the most beautiful woman in Rome. She was brave – you would be surprised how many of them were brave at first – but Nestor knows his business and in her beauty he saw opportunity. He removed it one piece at a time, and still she did not answer. So he did things which I will not speak of here, and her courage was such that the Emperor wept, and had her taken down. She could not stand, but he knelt by her side and placed eight hundred thousand sesterces in her hand, as if it was enough to buy her beauty back.'

Cupido closed his eyes then and slept. When he rose before dawn to return to his barracks, Rufus accompanied him to the doorway.

'Should we have let him die, Cupido? Think how many lives it would have saved, how much suffering it would have avoided.'

The gladiator's face was hidden in the shadows when he replied, and Rufus could not read his expression.

'If we had let him die it might have saved a thousand lives, Rufus, but not ours, and not Livia's, and not that of the child she carries.'

Rufus thought he had misheard. 'Child?'

'Are you really so blind?'

Rufus shook his head. It could not be. He was too young. He was not ready. He remembered his own childhood, before Fronto and before Cerialis. The beatings and the hunger. What right had he to bring a child into a life of bondage?

Cupido turned into the light and laid a hand on his shoulder. 'Life was much simpler in the arena.'

XXX

When Cupido left, Rufus turned back into the barn and walked past Bersheba to where Livia waited.

'Is it true?' he asked.

'Yes,' she admitted, surprised he knew without being told. 'I have consulted old Galla, who understands these things. My time will be in the spring. We have much to do.'

Her eyes shone and she took his hand and led him to their bed, where they made love for the first time in many nights. When it was over and Livia chattered her plans and hopes for the child, Rufus nuzzled her neck . . . and tried to clear his mind of Aemilia's face.

He attempted to come to terms with his new status, but his mind spun in a demented chariot race of doubts and fears. There was so much to consider, so much he didn't know. Whom could he turn to? Not Cupido, who in his own way was as naïve as Rufus himself in this area. Certainly not Narcissus. There was only one answer.

Fronto.

Cupido arranged the meeting for three evenings later at the warehouse where Rufus usually collected Bersheba's hay. Rufus was loading her cart when the flicker of torchlight on damp cobbles warned him that someone was approaching. It was the animal trader, accompanied by two men who had all the wary reserve and muscle-bound confidence of bodyguards.

Rufus ran forward to take his old friend in his arms, but his pleasure quickly faded. Fronto had changed, and not for the better. It was not only the white of his thinning hair and matted beard, or the deep lines etched in his cheeks, that made him seem older. The bulk that had reminded Rufus so much of a bear had melted away, leaving only the emaciated husk of the man he knew. The hands that held him shook like reeds in a strong wind.

But Fronto still had some of his old spark.

'So this is the reason the Emperor took you away from me,' he said, waving towards Bersheba, who stood placidly in front of the cart. 'If I had a few like her I would not have half the worries I do now. Perhaps he would sell her to me? You could come too, of course. No? No, I don't suppose he would. Never mind, never mind. We'll manage somehow.'

'Is your business going so badly?' Rufus's voice betrayed his concern. 'I was certain you would be a rich man by now.'

'Oh, I am rich enough,' Fronto replied airily. 'But success has brought burdens as well as rewards. Burdens I could never have imagined.'

'Is that why you must be followed everywhere by a pair of beatenup old gladiators? Look at that one. Cupido would squash him as Bersheba would a butterfly.'

'Yes, I suppose he would at that. But even Cupido, with his great talent, was eventually undone by that man.'

'That man?'

'The Emperor. I fear he has turned against me, or more precisely been turned against me. Protogenes has spies everywhere. Everything I touch, every bargain I conclude, is recorded in those two ledgers he always carries around with him.'

Rufus shook his head. 'But that should not concern you. You have always been honest in your dealings.'

'Perhaps, who knows? Did I occasionally take more than a lion was worth, or sell an antelope I knew was injured? Yes, I probably did. But so did everyone else and we all laughed about it together over some wine. But now . . .'

'Now?'

Fronto's voice dropped and Rufus could see he was struggling to avoid looking behind him like a bad actor in one of the interminable dramas at Pompey's theatre.

'Now I am dealing with Caligula's creatures, Protogenes and his like. They stink of corruption as a bull buffalo stinks in the heat and the smell lingers, Rufus. Whenever I am near them I return home and scrub myself until my body bleeds, but I can still smell that stink in my nostrils. I can smell it now and it sickens me.

'The Emperor has an insatiable appetite for the games. He can watch a hundred – no, five hundred – animals die, and he is still not satisfied. And who must replace those animals, and more like them? Fronto.' He slapped his hand to his chest.

'You understand how difficult it is to find good stock these days? But I, Fronto, always manage to find a source, and, because I have the Emperor's sanction, the suppliers have no choice but to sell them to me. It is a power I have never known before. If I had had it ten years ago I would be the richest man in Rome.'

'But now?' Rufus repeated.

'Now every bargain I make must be guaranteed by Protogenes, or one of his slaves. The money goes direct from the Emperor's coffers to the seller and I get my cut later.'

'So Protogenes is cheating you?'

'Surprisingly, no,' Fronto admitted. 'I receive what I am owed and sometimes a little more, a bonus perhaps, or more likely to buy my silence, although nothing is ever said. But suddenly people avoid me. Old friends will not look me in the eye. I hear whispers. Fronto is a thief. Fronto is a cheat. I have even been threatened, Rufus, threatened for my life, which is why I always have my companions with me these days. I think Protogenes and his gang are cheating the suppliers at one end, and the Emperor at the other. With all the stock that comes across from Africa they must be making a fortune at the expense of my honour.'

Rufus pondered this for a moment. 'But you are the key to their supply; it is in their interests to protect you. They would not threaten you?'

'No, the threats come from the suppliers they have cheated out of hundreds of thousands of sesterces, and who believe I am to blame. But protect me? I don't know. Maybe I have said too much in the wrong company. Complaints. Accusations.'

Oh, what have you done, my old friend, Rufus thought, and how can we get you out of this cesspit?

'The Emperor must know,' he said.

Fronto's eyes opened wide in terror. 'No. No. It cannot be. If Protogenes had the merest hint of suspicion that I was going to denounce him I would be dead before I could catch another breath. Have you not heard how he destroyed Proculus? And Proculus was a senator, not a mere businessman. Protogenes condemned him as a traitor within the very walls of the Curia and the poor man was torn apart by his fellows.'

'Then the denunciation must not come from you,' Rufus said. The statement hung in the air for a moment between them before Fronto realized its true significance.

'I will not allow you to do it,' he said. This was the old Fronto speaking and the command was back in his voice. 'Do you think I would ask you to endanger yourself for me? You were like a son to me, Rufus. I only wish that I had been more like a father to you. But this father's duty I will accept. My son will not die before me, if it is within my power to prevent it.'

Rufus struggled with his emotions, and they stood in silence for a while. At last Fronto said: 'But I forget. It was you who summoned me here. What did you want of me? I would deny you nothing. Your inheritance is still safe.'

Rufus smiled at him. How could he add another burden to the load already carried by this man? 'Oh, it wasn't important. I only wanted to see you again.'