David Wishart - Germanicus

'Mmmaa! Perilla! You're next to me, my dear.' Priscus patted the couch. The guy bleats, and I won't mention it again because it's annoying as hell. But he's okay, if you like dried up mummies who spend all their free time raking around cemeteries.

Perilla hadn't batted her beautiful eyelids once, which gave me the distinct impression that I'd been conned.

'I'll speak to you later, lady,' I whispered out of the corner of my mouth. She smiled demurely as she took her place. We washed our hands and the slaves served the hors d'oeuvres.

'So what are you doing with yourself these days, Marcus?' my father asked. Straight out, no messing. Shit, I knew what was coming. It was the reason I avoided him as much as I could.

'This and that.' I kept my voice neutral. I was pretty sure Cotta hadn't split on me, if he'd known anything at all about my involvement with the Germanicus business, but it was best to play things carefully. 'The usual.'

'I see.' He helped himself to some puréed cheese with fish pickle. 'Apropos of which, I haven't seen your name on the selection lists for any of the junior state offices yet. Don't put it off too long, will you?'

Perilla gave me a quick warning glance, but I was keeping my cool without her help, and I just nodded. Which was all he really expected. Dad never gave up. If I turned out the only Valerius Messalla who hadn't made at least a city judge's chair before I hung up my mantle for keeps he'd never forgive me. Still, that was the way he was made, I suppose, and I'd stopped minding the needling long since. Which didn't mean I didn't still get it at every opportunity.

'If you ask your father nicely, Marcus,' my mother put in smoothly, 'he might recommend you for one of the minor posts on that corn commission of his. If that oily pusher Sejanus hasn't filled them with his relatives already, of course.'

Ouch. I grinned, while Dad coloured and clammed up. My erstwhile pal from the antiques shop was pushing his finger into every pie around lately. Junius Blaesus, one of Dad's colleagues on the commission, was his uncle, and whatever Sejanus's expressed opinion of Dad was he had let him marry one of his distant cousins. That was a lucky coincidence for Dad, of course — in as much as anything Dad ever did was coincidence — but the shot had gone home and he'd think twice before having another go at me that evening. Saved. I smiled at Mother and she gave me the ghost of a wink.

'Oh. Before I forget.' I handed the incense burner across to Priscus. 'Happy birthday.' I wasn't going to mention my own little run-in with Sejanus, let alone pass on his good wishes. Not even to Perilla. No way. I didn't need the hassle, and I had no intention of taking him up on his parting offer. I may have balls, but I prefer to keep them intact, and sooner or later we'd've had our differences.

Priscus took the little bronze goose and examined it like it was made of cobwebs.

'Veian,' he said. 'About the time of Servius Tullus, I should think. Beautiful, Marcus. Where did you find it?'

'Phlebas's in the Saepta. I'm glad you like it.' I was. Priscus was a nice old stick, even if he was crazy.

'The differences between Veian bronzework and the Caeran type are slight but striking,' he said. 'Notice how…'

Hell. I groaned quietly while he took us through the Etruscans before moving on to Greeks and Phoenicians. The Celts got mixed in there too, somewhere along the line, but I'd given up by then. Maybe I should've brought him a new cloak pin after all and saved us all a lecture. As it was I learned more about ancient metalwork in the next half hour than I wanted to; or I would've done if I'd been listening. If it was any consolation everyone else's eyes were glazed as well, except for Mother's. She was hanging on to the old guy's every word.

Somewhere about six hundred years back the slaves cleared away the starters. I sipped my wine and wondered how when he finally did dry up I could get Dad to talk about Germanicus's campaigns in Germany from the political side. Without showing that I was interested, naturally. Let on that I'd an ulterior motive and the guy would seize up tighter than a constipated mussel. Which was a pity, because Valerius Messallinus knew the musty back passages of politics as well as a bear knows how to scratch.

In the end it was Priscus himself who solved the problem. We were well into the main course by then — partridge in a raisin sauce, beets with leeks in wine, and pork with anise and chives — when my mother finally laid her hand over his.

'Titus, darling,' she said, 'I think our guests are just a little tired of hearing about the conjugation of irregular verbs in Oscan.' Jupiter! I'd missed that particular jump. But then as I say I'd given up listening long since.

There was an almost audible sigh of relief round the table. Priscus blinked at Mother like a surprised owl. Along with everything else the poor old bugger is blind as a bat to anything more than a tomb inscription's length from his nose.

'Really, dear?' he said.

'Really,' Mother said firmly. 'Do you think we could possibly change the subject?'

'Oh.' Another blink. 'Oh, my. Very well, then. If you're sure.' His brow furrowed and I could see him groping: as far as Priscus was concerned nothing that had happened in the last four hundred years had any relevance to human life whatsoever. 'Ah…I hear that nice young Prince Germanicus is dead.'

I stiffened. My father was slitting a beet. He looked up. Sure, it was old news, but as far as he was concerned it was streets ahead of Oscan verbs. Besides, this was his bag. I could see the relief in his face.

'A good job too,' he said.

'Oh, my dear man!' That was Mother. 'What a terrible thing to say!'

'I'm speaking politically, Vipsania.' Dad was using his pompous lawyer's voice; that put down of my mother's over Sejanus must still be rankling. 'Germanicus was a liability. He may have had his good points and in a subordinate position he was competent to a certain degree, but had he succeeded to the supreme power he would have been disastrous for Rome.'

Uh-huh.

'Really? How so, dear? I always thought Germanicus was a lovely boy.'

My father laid his knife aside. 'Oh, not through any baseness of character. Quite the reverse. The fellow was honourable, honest, charming and deservedly popular. But he was shallow. He reminds me very much of Marcus here.'

'Gee, thanks, Dad.'

He didn't smile. 'I don't mean that as an insult, son, only an observation. Germanicus didn't think things through, and as a result he overreached himself on several occasions. Take his German war, for instance. Showy, certainly, but far short of brilliant. And ultimately costly in men, money, prestige and territory.'

Priscus was grinning across the table like a delighted prune. The old guy probably reckoned he'd hit the bull's-eye in the snappy conversational stakes, and from my point of view he had. I couldn't've managed things better myself; it was pure gold. I kept my head down and ate my pork, but my ears were wide open.

'Then why on earth should the emperor have chosen him as his successor?' Mother again. One thing the couple had shared, when they were married, was intelligence. The difference was that Mother's range of interests didn't start and end with politics.

'But he didn't.' My father sighed as if he were explaining two times two for the fifth time to an idiot. 'Augustus had him adopt him when he made Tiberius his own heir.' Yeah. That fitted, once you'd worked the grammar out. The old emperor had had a soft spot for Germanicus, and his wife Agrippina was the imperial granddaughter. In a way he'd be keeping the succession in the Julian family. 'Then of course Germanicus now being the elder of the two sons took precedence over Tiberius's natural son Drusus.'