David Wishart - Sejanus

Someone pulled me up and a hand slapped me hard across the mouth. I opened my eyes. A leather breastplate with bronze facings. Praetorian.

'Come on, you bastard, you're not dead!' The guardsman slapped me again, backhanded this time, and even harder. 'What the hell was going on here?'

'We were discussing Aristotle's Analytics ,' I mumbled. 'What did it look like, chum?'

He dropped me like I was red hot. I stood. Just.

'You're no slave.' He was staring. Shit, I'd forgotten the accent. 'So who are you?'

'Where's the man who attacked me?' I wiped the blood from my split lip.

He jerked his thumb at the wall. 'He went that way. Five hundred feet, straight down. Pure accident. Now.' Slowly and deliberately, he drew his sword from its sheath. 'I asked you a question. Sir.'

I sighed. Well, it was done and there was no point flogging a dead horse. 'Would you believe a hairdresser? Tonsorial consultant, rather.'

He gave me a long, considering look and then spat carefully onto the grass.

'No way,' he said. 'You'd better come with me so we can clear this thing up.'

The cubicle he put me in was even smaller than the one I shared with Felix. Had shared with Felix. It didn't even have a cot, just some mops and buckets and a foot-square window three quarters the way up the wall. I tried pushing at the door but there must've been a bar across the outside. Great. I'd got the only prison cell in the empire that doubled as a broom closet.

I had plenty of time to think. Maybe the guard-commander responsible for dealing with purple-stripers who pretended to be hairdressers didn't come on duty until a reasonable hour. Maybe they were just waiting for it to be light enough to see the splash when they threw me off the cliff. It was pointless appealing to Gaius. He wouldn't help me, I knew that, not if he could wriggle out of it; in fact, if he knew I was here already then he was probably messing his privileged pants, because together we'd almost managed to duplicate Sejanus's plan with Appius Silanus. The lack of a dagger proved nothing. To a paranoid old bugger like the Wart that would be a side issue.

Nevertheless, I reckoned my best and only chance was a direct appeal to Tiberius in my own name. It might get me a hearing, at least, and if I could put a spoke or two in Sejanus's wheel before I was chopped then that was all I could expect. Of course, the chances were that whoever commanded the troops was Sejanus's man and knew damn well who I was already. Or could make an informed guess. In which case Tiberius would never even get to know I existed…

The sun was streaming in through the window when the door finally opened: the cubby must've faced almost due south, because it'd been light for hours. I stood up from where I'd been crouching on the floor, stretched the stiffness out of my bones and rubbed my swollen lip.

It was the same squaddie who'd arrested me the night before, plus two of his mates. All three had drawn swords and no smiles. This looked bad.

'Come out of there and follow me,' he said.

'You care to tell me where to?' No answer. I'd seen more animated expressions on a set of tree stumps. 'Listen, pal, my name's Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus. I'm a Roman knight and I demand — '

He reached over and, very carefully, put the point of his sword against my throat. I swallowed and shut up fast. Yeah, well, some you win, some you lose. You never know unless you try.

'Now listen to me,' he said. 'I don't want to hear any fancy lawyer's speeches, and I won't tell you to do something twice. You understand?'

'Yeah, sure.' My eyes were still on the sword. It hadn't moved an inch. 'Got you.'

'So let's go, then.' He took the sword away but didn't sheathe it. The other two squaddies fell in behind me.

We went along corridors, through peristyles and halls and up staircases, always climbing. So it was going to be the cliff for me after all. Well, at least it would be quick. I wished I could've got a message to Perilla, though. Maybe Felix would make one up that didn't sound too unconvincing. I had an idea that the smart little cookie would be good at something like that. All the way through the villa people we passed took one look at us and decided we didn't exist. It was like being a ghost. Well, I could use the practice.

We stopped outside an oak-panelled door at the top of a flight of stairs. My pal from the night before rapped smartly on it with his knuckles, then stepped aside as the door opened.

The walls of the room were made of translucent glass shutters, something I'd never met with before, even in Asia. Most of them were open, and we must've been high up because I could see not only Cape Minerva but all the way across the bay towards Naples. There was only one person present, apart from the slave who'd answered the door: an old man lying on a couch.

'Come in, Valerius Corvinus,' he said. 'I understand that my friend Sejanus is looking for you rather urgently. On a charge of treason.'

Tiberius had been a big man in his day. He was still a big man, even in his seventies, with huge bones, a strong face and massive hands that looked like they could crush marble. He must've given up on the boil plasters, though. Maybe he'd decided just to let his skin erupt and be damned. If so, it was doing a thorough job.

'On the other hand,' he went on, 'my grandson Gaius tells me you've proof that Sejanus is plotting treason himself, and has been for years. A paradox. Do you think we might resolve it together, perhaps?'

I stood gaping. The slave — he looked like a German — softly closed the door, led me to a chair and sat me down. Tiberius watched, scowling. Neither of us moved. Finally, he said:'Corvinus. I had you brought here to talk. Now I appreciate that you've gone to a great deal of trouble to reach me, and it would be a shame if I simply handed you back to my guards unheard.' His mouth lifted into something that wasn't quite a smile, showing a single yellowed incisor. 'Delighted although they'd be if I did. So talk, please. Now.'

He waited. I swallowed and opened my mouth, but no sound came out. Finally the emperor shifted irritably on his couch.

'Good Jupiter, man!' he snapped. 'I haven't got all day to waste! Sigmund, put some wine into him!'

The slave poured from a jug on the table and held the cup out to me. I drained it in two gulps and felt the warmth hit my stomach like a velvet club.

'I'm sorry, sir,' I said at last. 'I thought I was going to be executed.'

'What makes you think that you won't be?' The old mouth twisted again, like a pike's. 'In fact, I'd say it was almost a certainty.' He made a sign to the German. 'Pour me one too while you're about it, Sigmund, and damn the doctors.' He waited until the order had been carried out. 'So, then. How did my lads get you, exactly? A fight on the cliff edge, wasn't it?'

'I was attacked, sir. Attempted murder, by a slave. Or possibly a freedman.'

'Whose slave?' The question came fast and hard as a catapult bolt. 'Why?'

'I don't know.'

'You don't know?' Tiberius's boil-ridden face flushed and he made a ttch! of disgust in his throat. 'Sigmund! Talk to Macro.' The guard commander. 'Find out the truth.' Then, when the slave hesitated: 'Go on, man, do as you're told! Valerius Corvinus isn't likely to murder me while you're away.' He turned back to me. 'Or are you, Corvinus?'

'Uh…no, sir,' I said. I wouldn't like to try it, either. I'd never experienced Tiberius at short range before, and now I could see how the leathery old bastard had managed to hold the empire together for seventeen years as emperor and almost twice that as Augustus's best general. The Wart would take some killing, and he wouldn't die easy.

The big German left, and Tiberius smiled his fanged not-quite-smile.