Master and God (22 page)

A problem was the subtly unreal atmosphere. Much as Lucilla loved the vast villa complex, she recognised its falsehoods. Alba lay twenty miles from Rome, which was just near enough to make the journey down the Via Appia in one day with the best transport. It seemed accessible; yet was remote. It seemed cosmopolitan, yet was intimate. Everything suggested simple country life, though a life suffused with luxury. Attendants padded everywhere in their resplendent white uniforms with gold decoration; white roses were brought in enormous quantities from Egypt to adorn and perfume the marble halls. Reality died at the entrance gates.

Domitian aimed to prove that ‘Rome’ was the Emperor. Power no longer resided in the Senate, which was physically tied to the Curia in the city Forum; power now centred on him. He had not retreated to Alba in the same way as Tiberius, the emperor he most studied, a grim figure who had exiled himself in Capri in order to lead a life of morose perversion, set apart from Roman society. Instead, Domitian made Alba the heart of things that mattered.

His villa was regarded as a gloomy citadel, full of suspicion and menace. Its beauty and amenities belied that. His architect, Rabirius, who was now creating a staggering new palace in Rome too, had devised at Alba a building with sophisticated use of space and materials. Domitian’s personal pleasures were cultural. He surrounded himself with music and poetry, plays and readings in his theatre, athletics and gladiating in his arena. He also loved hunting. Despite spindly legs and a pot belly, he had become a notably good archer, capable of shooting two arrows into the skull of a deer so they looked like horns. Once he made a slave hold up his fingers, and shot arrows through them, causing no wounds. And he spent many hours walking in his magnificent gardens.

In addition to outdoor activities he gave dinners, dinners which were almost a chore to him because he preferred to eat his main meal at lunchtime in private. In the evening he merely watched others, blighting their enjoyment as he stared and munched an apple glumly. His social reticence stood for his austere moral authority. Even so, for those privileged to share his life at Alba, he kept a famously elegant table, though he tended to terminate banquets early then retreat to his private quarters.

Once Domitian was out of sight anything went. Each evening came a sense of restraint being lifted. Lucilla felt temptation, though usually she shied from the decadence. Yet sometimes her loneliness became too much to bear.

It was late summer, the days already shortening though they were very hot and their evenings sultry. The Emperor was gathering an army for Moesia. Domitian was heading there in person, soon. His advisers, his freedmen, his Praetorians would accompany him. The Guards’ Commander, Cornelius Fuscus, had been given overall command.

They were all keyed up. The court’s impending shift had imposed an end-of-term atmosphere that unsettled both those who must go and those who would remain in Rome.

Lucilla became unbearably restless. Last time, when the Emperor went to Germany, her sister had still been alive and in order to spend time with Lara she had accepted that the removal of the court simply meant the sisters would for a time exist more quietly in Rome. Now a greater sense of loss hung over her. Not only was her domestic life solitary, but with the big masculine exodus she lost all chance to make connections. In over a year she had made
no
connections that she valued. She had no lover. She could not envisage ever acquiring one. Looking around at the men she encountered, she was as half-hearted about them as they were towards her. Her faith in herself diminished. She was not only frustrated, but intensely lonely.

On one particular evening, any man who deployed a scruple of charm could have had her. A few shared jokes would have done it. A gift of half a bowl of cherries, some tame philosophical theory, caressing the arch of her foot as she sat on a flight of steps, all would have been sufficient. Perhaps luckily for her, this wild mood that laid her open to seduction was too scary for most of them.

On the main terrace the Emperor was attending a concert in his miniature theatre. It was a perfect gem, marble-decorated, intimate and exclusive. Twenty or so tiers of stone seats formed a tight semi-circle, so close that friends on one side could converse across the centre with others opposite, while from his marble throne midway, Domitian could preside and feel himself the centre of a sophisticated gathering.

Tonight’s elegant music was too refined for many hangers-on, who had stayed outside, too rowdy, too impatient and shallow to appreciate measured cadences of lyre and flute. People had clustered in small groups on a terrace with an enormous fountain bowl, waiting for Domitian to emerge with his immediate coterie. They were quiet but louche. Flagons were being passed around, strong perfumes filled the air, lewd jokes flickered through every verbal exchange and it was blatantly assumed everyone present had world-weary hopes of copulation.

Lucilla drifted among them, in a set centred on Earinus, Domitian’s eunuch. He was an exquisite youth, selected in Pergamum to be sent to Rome for the Emperor, then too beautiful to be sent back after the Emperor took a new moral stance. Domitian had decided to shame his brother Titus, who had once kept eunuchs, by banning male castration as an unnatural outrage; even so, he ignored his own strictures by favouring this smooth, scented boy in his bracelets and necklaces. Earinus tasted the Emperor’s wine, then passed him his rare fluorspar cups like Ganymede attending Jupiter, an analogy Domitian adored since it made him godlike.

As ever, prurient talk dwelt on just how much the cup-bearer had lost in his castration, and what sexual acts Earinus could still perform. People harped on his painful snip obscenely. Unabashed, he lapped up attention. According to him, he was much in demand among senators’ wives, especially as there was no risk of pregnancy. Despite any diminution of his sexual drive, he slept with anyone. He even offered himself to Lucilla, not entirely joking.

‘Do you want a bunk-up – half price to you?’

Lucilla was exasperated by the self-centred toyboy, who she knew had actually cut off his hair and sent locks to his hometown of Pergamum in a gold box; he had begged a poet to write a celebratory lyric about it, as if he were a person of account.

‘Wobble yourself, Earinus. I like a lover with balls.’

Just at that moment she saw Gaius Vinius.

Vinius, who had a true love of music, had emerged from the theatre. Off duty and unarmed, he came at a fast clip up a short flight of marble-veneered steps to where Lucilla and her companions were noisily clustered on the flat terrace. He must have left the concert early, apparently overcome by tristesse. Lucilla thought she even saw him wipe away a tear.

She knew he had spotted her. He obviously heard the conversation. His expression of contempt was searing. They did not speak. Vinius disappeared. Lucilla felt cheap – then annoyed, because what she did and who she knew were her own affair, whatever the Praetorian thought.

What he thought suddenly mattered to her. That made her more angry.

When Domitian emerged and his party flocked after him out of the theatre, Lucilla severed herself from the group she had been with. Her mood was sour, not least because she had been drinking wine after little to eat. Wine had a crazy attraction that night, so she was carrying a flagon as she walked off by herself. She went just fast enough to deter anyone from trying to speak to her.

There was a long promenade, sheltered by a high hillside wall, which led away from the theatre. On her left, a line of narrow flower beds with low walls carrying water channels was graced at intervals with grottos, statues and fountains. More formal planting with topiary lay to her right. Everywhere seemed to be full of entwined couples and people laughing, with distant screams that were impossible to interpret: silliness, feigned protest, or even real cries for help, though nobody took any notice. Part way along this terrace a tunnel under the hillside had steps leading down, then a passage wide enough for four abreast that went to the upper terrace and living quarters. Her original thought had been to head back to her room that way. Furious, wretched and befuddled, Lucilla missed the entrance.

Someone, a man, started following her.

After a lurch of panic she recognised that level tread. Surreptitiously, she confirmed it was Vinius. Lucilla flounced off. His slow footfall continued.

At the farthermost end of the promenade, where hardly anyone else had wandered, she reached a small garden room enclosed by high walls and foliage, with a petal-shaped pool decorated with ornamental shrubs. Lucilla stopped and waited, with a pitter-patter of anticipation, for Vinius to catch up.

He was not happy with her. ‘What in Hades are you doing?’

‘Walking.’

‘Crap. For what reason are you tripping around in a dream by yourself, carrying a wine flagon?’

‘I want to get away from people.’

‘By inviting the wrong attention? These gardens are my bored colleagues’ domain. They judge women on a sliding scale – that’s from slag through slut, via filthy tambourine dancer, and ending up only with eminently fuckable –’

‘None of them came near me.’

‘Only because I gave them all the evil eye.’

Vinius was right. A number of the men sauntering on the terrace were Praetorians, enjoying their regular evening haunt. It was an empty kind of recreation and they might well be looking for trouble. A woman could tell herself the Guards didn’t frighten her; any woman who genuinely thought that was stupid. Yet here Lucilla was, a long way from other people, and alone with one of them. ‘I don’t need your protection.’

‘You need a good hiding. You’ve gone wild here. For some dumb, ethical reason I feel called to intervene.’

Lucilla took off again, but this time with Vinius alongside. Now that they had spoken he seemed to calm down. They strode along together as if simply admiring the topiary until they reached the great viewing area, a balcony that gave a wonderful panorama with views of Rome and the sea. They fetched up by its balustrade, which bore massive plant pots, its rough stone still warm from heat beating on it all day.

To cover their awkwardness, Lucilla began asking questions. ‘I saw you come out of the music.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you go to hear concerts by yourself?’

‘I like concerts.’

‘It seemed to have upset you.’

‘I was moved. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.’

‘I don’t think of you as emotional.’

‘Then you don’t know me.’

‘No.’ Lucilla’s voice was drab, but firm. ‘And maybe you don’t know me either. You put yourself in judgement on me tonight, unfairly.’

‘Those people are trash.’ It was a harsh denunciation, a soldier’s. ‘It’s not only tonight. I’ve watched you when you didn’t know. I’ve seen you among real lowlifes here. Wallowing with the squeaky-boys. You keep atrocious company.’

‘Earinus is harmless.’

‘No; he’s vile!’

Blinking back tears, Lucilla blundered away from him, alone this time, and plunged down to a flight of steps which led into a huge underground hall like a grandiose passageway that was called the cryptoporticus. At the end where she entered, Domitian had built a great platform from which he could survey the length of the grandiose gallery. Sometimes he summoned the Senate there and glowered down at them from his vantage point.

There were few people about because most preferred to be outside, but some small groups were in the giant vaulted passage, talking quietly. To avoid unwelcome overtures, Lucilla had to act as if she was going to meet someone. She teetered down the wide, steep stairs, realising she was more tipsy than she liked. She reached the flat, a long gallery that must be over three hundred yards long. This part had small high windows, designed to flood the passage with sunlight that would reflect off the highly polished marble walls and provide almost theatrical illumination for the Emperor on his podium. With few oil lamps, the place was deeply gloomy after dark.

People stared at her. Becoming nervous, she found an exit.

A new broad terrace opened out of doors, with the cryptoporticus forming its back wall. More peaceful parterres, with neatly trimmed hedges and topiary, extended to far vistas. Statues climbed out of tangles of roses in graceful allées. Enormous trees of unimaginable antiquity reached for the sky.

She turned right and marched quickly to the end of the gardens, where a statue made a feature among a semi-circle of stone benches, with curtains of tall, trimmed cypress trees behind. She slumped on one of the benches.

Feet crunching on the path announced that Vinius was joining her again; she was not entirely surprised. He sat down a couple of yards from her, watching her disapprovingly although the mood between them seemed less hostile now.

‘You’re a strange girl.’ He said it with a half-admiring, half-troubled tone. ‘Why don’t you find yourself a boyfriend to keep you out of mischief, or get married nicely?’

‘Because I’ve had a look at what’s available.’

She heard Vinius laughing. ‘Fair enough!’

There was a silence, after which he shuffled along towards her, holding out his hand for her wine flagon. Lucilla gave up custody. He gulped, let out a disparaging noise; it was white, girlie wine, too acid. Nonetheless he drank greedily. When he stopped he offered the flagon back, but she had had sufficient earlier. Vinius sat, with his head flung back, looking up at the early stars.

‘So you approve of marriage,’ Lucilla challenged. ‘Well, I hear you’ve done it enough times.’

‘Marriage has its uses.’

‘Did you ever have children?’

‘One.’

‘Boy or girl?’ There was such a long pause, Lucilla rounded on him: ‘Juno, you are appalling; you don’t even remember!’

‘I was thinking about my daughter,’ Vinius responded coldly.
Vinia Arruntina. A grand name for such a tiny tot. She would have been, what – eight? nine? now. Her father’s little girl; his lost princess; forever his baby . . .

Lucilla watched Vinius. She was surprised that his mood tonight was so strained. When she changed the subject, intuition nudged her to ask, ‘Will you tell me about Dacia?’