Robert Fabbri: Rome's lost son

Xenophon repeated the procedure and the Emperor vomited again; Nero shrieked again.

‘That should do it,’ Xenophon said. ‘He should be moved to his bed now.’

‘Thank you, doctor,’ Agrippina said as if a huge weight had been lifted. She signalled to the slaves, who lifted Claudius from the couch. As they bore him away he suddenly spasmed a couple of times and cried out in a strangled cry before his arms flopped down beside him, touching the floor.

Agrippina screamed and rushed to his side; Xenophon followed as Vespasian and the rest of the senators watched the dumb-show. Nero howled at the gods, reaching up with his right hand in desperate supplication. Xenophon grabbed Claudius’ wrist, checking for a pulse and then put his fingers to the side of his neck. After a few moments he looked at the Empress and shook his head slowly.

Agrippina drew herself up to her full height and with the most regal expression on her face turned to the witnesses. ‘The Emperor is dead; we shall prepare for the succession.’

Nero stood, his hands half-raised and his eyes staring from beneath arched brows as if miming shock. ‘But Mother, I’m not ready for such a burden.’

Behind her in the shadows the slave woman showed a hint of a smile and slipped away as Burrus and Seneca appeared with an escort of Praetorian Guardsmen. ‘Come, Princeps,’ Burrus said, addressing Nero; a half-smile of triumph flickered briefly across Agrippina’s face.

Nero fell to his knees, his hands clasped between his legs. ‘Oh, to be worthy of that title. Where would you take me?’

Seneca held a hand out and helped Nero up. ‘We shall escort you to the Praetorian camp where you can await the Senate’s confirmation of power.’ He turned to Pallas. ‘Is everything in place?’

Pallas looked at Vespasian and the other senators who had just witnessed the completely deniable public assassination. ‘Yes, Seneca; Galba will summon the Senate soon after dawn and Vespasian will lead their call begging Nero to accept the heavy burden of the Purple.’

Vespasian parted with Gaius at the latter’s front door at the eighth hour of the night and headed, despite the lateness of the hour, to Caenis’ house. He was admitted immediately by the huge Nubian doorman and was surprised to find lamps still burning and the household still up as he walked through the vestibule.

‘The mistress is in her study,’ Caenis’ steward informed him with a deep bow. ‘She said that you were to go straight in.’

Vespasian thanked the man, walked to the last door on the right-hand side of the atrium and opened it; light flooded out.

Caenis looked up from behind her desk; it was covered with scrolls. Crates of scrolls and wax writing tablets were piled all around the room. Without a word she jumped up and ran to him, throwing her arms about his neck as he lifted her off her feet. With their lips glued firmly together he walked her back over to the desk and lay her down, scattering scrolls left and right. Still without saying a word they ripped at each other’s clothing until they were unimpeded and then, with no pause for any intricate delicacies, began the urgent business of pleasuring each other.

‘Narcissus had them sent over just before he left Rome,’ Caenis said in answer to Vespasian’s question about the scrolls, none of which remained on the desk. ‘They contain his entire collection of information on senators and equites as well as his correspondence with all his agents throughout the Empire.’

Vespasian kneeled up on the desk and looked around the study, which resembled a well-used storeroom. He shook his head in amazement. ‘This is invaluable. Why did he trust you with it?’

Caenis sat up and kissed him. ‘Because, my love, I wrote a lot of these whilst I was his secretary; he concluded that he’d be giving away fewer secrets if I looked after them for him than anyone else.’

‘Look after them?’

‘Yes; he knew that they would be stolen if he left them in his apartments at the palace after Agrippina advised him to leave Rome; he didn’t have time to hide them properly so he arranged to have them sent here in secret. He asked me to keep them safe either until he comes back to Rome or until his execution, in which case I’m to burn them to prevent them falling into Nero’s or Agrippina’s hands.’

‘Or Pallas’?’

Caenis raised a conspiratorial eyebrow. ‘That could be up for negotiation.’

‘So you won’t burn them?’

‘I’ll burn most of them; it’ll be too dangerous to keep it all. But you’re assuming that Narcissus will be executed.’

‘Agrippina won’t let him live now she’s had Claudius murdered.’

Caenis took the news calmly as she stood and began to try to bring some sort of order to her dress and coiffure. ‘Already? That was quick; Narcissus thought he’d have another half a month or so.’

‘No, she did it just over an hour ago; a poisoned mushroom to incapacitate him, as if he’d had a seizure after eating and drinking too much, followed by a poisoned feather stuck down the fool’s throat by the doctor pretending to be treating him. It was perfect; made to look like he died of overconsumption. I could even swear to that myself.’

‘Then we’d better get to work.’ Caenis indicated to Narcissus’ intelligence. ‘I want to find some material worth keeping before we light the bonfire.’

Vespasian was exhausted by the time the twelfth hour of the night commenced but the loss of sleep had been more than compensated by a small collection of very revealing documents that both he and Caenis judged would be rash in the extreme to burn. He rolled up a scroll concerning the enormous bribe paid by the Vitellius brothers’ father, Lucius Vitellius the Elder, to have a treason charge dropped just before his death from paralysis three years before.

With a yawn he put it back in its crate. ‘I should go, my love; I need to freshen up before my clients arrive.’

Caenis looked up, with tired eyes, from a wax tablet. ‘Did you know that Narcissus planned to have you executed along with Sabinus if you failed to find the Eagle of the Seventeenth in Germania?’

‘Nothing surprises me. I can’t say that I’ll mourn Narcissus after he’s gone; he enjoyed using his power too much and made my life very difficult on a number of occasions.’ He leant over and kissed her on the mouth; they lingered a few moments before breaking apart. ‘I’ll see you later, my love, after Gaius and I have persuaded the Senate to seal the fate of the Julio-Claudian family.’

Vespasian and Gaius walked down the Quirinal in the thin light of a damp October dawn, two days before the Ides of that month, escorted by their clients; members of the South Quirinal Crossroads Brotherhood preceded them armed with staves ready to beat a way through the more crowded parts of the city.

‘The lads managed to regain control of the area,’ Magnus informed Vespasian. ‘Tigran told me that it didn’t take long; it’s hard for a brotherhood to hold two areas because the locals don’t believe that they would show enough respect for their crossroads lares and start to become obstreperous.’

Vespasian grunted in an attempt to sound interested in the doings of Rome’s underworld but his tired mind was busy with the speech he knew that he must soon deliver and with the order and purpose of all the other speeches as explained to him by Pallas the night before.

Magnus pressed on unperturbed. ‘But, strangely, this lot didn’t make any effort at all to secure their position. After a couple of days it wasn’t safe for them to walk around after dark and then it was just a question of a couple of well-chosen murders followed by an attack very similar to what they did to us and they were forced to fuck off back whence they came.’