David Wishart - Bodies Politic

‘Go on.’ She was watching me closely and twisting a lock of hair around her finger.

‘ Okay. Take the Helicon plot first. The intention behind that’s pretty straightforward, at least in Alexandrian Greek terms it is: they want to screw the Jews, not just in Alexandria but in the empire as a whole. Which means a change of policy at imperial level. New imperial level. And that means persuading Gaius that they’re not just the joke he and most Romans think they are but a real threat who have to be stamped on and stamped on hard.’

‘But Marcus, dear, if you’re going to use the business in Alexandria to support this you have it the wrong way round. It isn’t the Jews who’re causing the problems, it’s the Greeks.’

‘ There’s such a thing as incitement, lady. Under the old policy – Augustus’s, the Wart’s, Gaius’s up until now – the Alexandrian Jews’ve been perfectly happy. They’re allowed to worship as they like with an indulgent eye turned to their little foibles, given their own courts and assemblies and so on outside the city’s general admin structure. Protected. Privileged. The same goes for Jews everywhere else in the empire. So long as they don’t meddle with the pax romana Rome’s got no quarrel with them, and the Alexandrian Greeks have to sit on their hands and grind their teeth. Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fine. Only recently over in Judea that’s just what happens. The Jews there start getting political, throwing rocks at the troops and generally making themselves a pain in the backside. That gives Helicon and his pals their opportunity. Judea’s useful up to a point, but who in Rome, including the emperor, gives a toss what a pack of backwoods goat-herders get up to? Especially if it’s no real threat to the safety of the empire as a whole? Alexandria’s different: it’s the empire’s second biggest city, and it’s got a thirty-per-cent-plus Jewish population. If they can stir up the same sort of trouble there then they’re really cooking.’

‘So they set out deliberately to provoke the Alexandrian Jews into violence, hoping that it’ll spread to other cities in the east and result in a pogrom and a change to a much more repressive policy.’ She tugged at the strand of hair. ‘Marcus, you’re convincing me.’

‘One gets you ten that it was Helicon who suggested that Herod Agrippa stop by in Alex on the way to his kingdom, too. There ain’t nothing like a bit of positive incitement to riot on both sides to get things moving.’

‘But it’s dreadful! Completely irresponsible! And it could wreck the peace of the entire east!’

‘Right. I’d bet that’s exactly what Etruscus thinks. Only the poor bugger can’t do anything to stop it happening, which is why he came to me. It’s working, too. If all Helicon wants to do is cause the maximum mayhem then Isidorus is the perfect agent; the guy’s a fanatic, a mad dog. You can’t reason with people like that, and Flaccus knows it. He has only two choices, to co-operate all the way down the line – and Isidorus’ll make sure it’s a very long line – or Helicon slips Gaius the packet of whacky correspondence while they’re scraping down after their matey game of handball and he finds himself chopped before you can say “Macro”. Which brings us neatly to the link between the two plots.’

‘Carry on.’ I had her hooked good and proper. She’d started on another strand of hair.

‘You said it to me yourself: you can’t use Macro twice in different roles. Helicon and his pals couldn’t do that either, and it was stymying them. On the one hand, they needed the fake treasonable correspondence with Macro to burn Flaccus, and ipso facto in that case Gaius couldn’t know about it; on the other, unless the emperor was convinced that Macro was definitely implicated in the Gemellus plot and had him chopped as a result then they’d no stick to beat Flaccus with.’

‘Oh, my!’ Perilla tugged at the tuft. ‘So they’d need another body of proof. To give to the emperor.’

‘ Right. Only – I’m guessing here – they jibbed at that. If they started, propriae personae, to mix themselves up in Palace politics it could quickly get them out of their depth. I mean, how far would they have to go before they could be sure the emperor was convinced? Besides, it was far too dangerous: Macro was the most powerful man in Rome after Gaius himself, he was no fool, and neither was Gaius. And both of them were on the spot, not half the empire away. It’d only take one of them to smell a rat and the whole thing would go down the tubes.’

‘So they needed an ally. Someone to manage the Macro side of things for them.’

‘Yeah. How they and the imperials found out about each other, like I say, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. My guess is the impetus came from Lepidus, or maybe Agrippina, because she’s the brains of the partnership like her mother was. Flaccus is on record as being a supporter of Gemellus, whatever the hell that is, he and Macro knew each other personally, it was common knowledge that he was out of favour with Gaius, and besides because he’d been instrumental in getting Agrippina Senior exiled she’d have her personal reasons for choosing him to put the knife into. He’d certainly make the top five on any list of candidates, however you slice it. And since he was currently in Alexandria sounding out the Alexandrian contingent in the civil service at Rome for a potential rotten apple would be a natural thing to do.’ I took a sip of the Mareotis. ‘In any case, that had to be what happened. Lepidus and Agrippina pulled the plug on Macro…’

‘How?’

‘Mmm?’ I blinked.

‘How exactly did they do that? I’m sorry, Marcus, but you can’t just gloss over that part. If Macro wasn’t killed because of his treasonable correspondence with Flaccus – and I’ll admit that I agree that he couldn’t have been – then why was he? What other proof could Lepidus and Agrippina offer?’

‘Jupiter, lady,’ I said irritably. ‘I don’t know. Or not exactly. The civil service guys may’ve sharked up another letter to or from Gemellus or Silanus. Or a batch of letters, maybe. They could do that without breaking sweat, and so long as they didn’t have to submit them to Gaius first hand, just give them to the imperials to use how they liked, they’d be well out of it. And remember Gaius was getting pretty jaundiced with Macro and Ennia as it was. Plus with two of his closest friends and his sister bad-mouthing the guy at every opportunity – as they no doubt did – it isn’t difficult to see he’d be more than half-way likely to believe them to begin with.’

‘Very well, dear.’ Perilla sniffed. ‘I suppose it’s possible.’

‘You have a better idea?’

‘No.’

‘Then clam up.’

She grinned. ‘All right. So what now?’

‘Now is the difficult part. Getting concrete proof that I can take to Gaius.’

‘And how do you propose to do that?’

‘ Lady, I don’t know.’ I took a morose swig of wine. ‘Oh, sure, he’d listen to me. With a great deal of attention and respect, what’s more, because modesty aside and saving my blushes he knows from past acquaintance that I don’t whistle through my ears. None the less, all I’ve got is circumstantial evidence and theory. Good circumstantial evidence and theory, sure, I grant you, but still. If I tell him that one of his best friends and both of his sisters are conspiring with another best friend and half the imperial civil service to put him in an urn, not to mention at least one of the top military legates in the empire, he’s going to ask for hard proof before he blows his wig and starts chopping heads off. Quite rightly so. And if he doesn’t, and goes ahead anyway, then the gods help Rome because we have a lunatic in charge.’