Robert Fabbri: The Alexandrian Embassy

Still the man shook his head, his eyes bulging at the sight of the glowing terror coming towards him.

‘That’s a silly decision.’ Magnus nodded at Marius. ‘Just in the crease and then, Postumus, squeeze.’

The red-hot tip was placed between the man’s buttocks as Postumus pushed them together. Smoke rose to the hiss of burning hair and skin and, after a moment’s delay, the prisoner issued a scream that made his last effort seem pathetic in comparison; on it went, rising in timbre and getting rougher as it grated, drying in his throat.

At Magnus’ nod, Marius withdrew the object of torment and pressed it back into the brazier; the prisoner started to hyperventilate.

‘He’s going to have to be careful how he sponges his arsehole for a few days,’ Magnus opined, peering at the damage before squatting back down and grabbing the prisoner’s chin. ‘Now how would you like that done to your scrotum, maggot? I can assure you that we’ll all enjoy watching and listening.’

The man’s chest heaved and tears rolled down his forehead; his swollen lips drew back to reveal shattered teeth. ‘Se … Sem …’

Magnus put his ear closer to the man’s mouth. ‘Who?’

‘Semp …’ He struggled for breath for a couple of moments. ‘Sempronius.’

The name came out as a wheeze but it was clearly audible; Magnus’ face darkened. ‘Sempronius,’ he growled, chewing on the word. ‘He of the West Viminal Brotherhood?’

The prisoner nodded feebly, his eyes closed.

‘How did he know about the cash?’

‘I don’t … I … I don’t know; he just …’ He winced and spat some blood from his ruined mouth; a globule rolled into his nostrils. ‘He just told us to track you back from the house on the Esquiline and attack you as you neared our territory so we’d not have so far to go with the box.’

‘So he knew about the box?’

The man nodded, his eyes still closed.

Magnus stood, his face set grim. He paused for a few moments in thought and then wrenched the glove from Marius’ hand, pulled it on his own and grabbed the iron from the fire. ‘As you’ve been a good boy and answered the questions as best you can I’ll make good my promise: Marius won’t use your arsehole as a scabbard for his iron.’ He pushed Postumus aside and, brandishing the searing bar in his right hand, he exposed the man’s anus with his left. ‘But I will!’ With a jerk he forced the poker into the sphincter and thrust it, with the palm of his hand, as deep as it would go. With a howl that would have drowned out both the previous ones combined the prisoner convulsed, almost doubling up, so that his face stared, eyes brim with horror, over his scrotum, directly at Magnus for an instant, before slumping back down, swinging limply, dead from shock, pain and horrific internal injuries.

‘Cut him down, Marius,’ Magnus ordered, heading out of the room, ‘and then dump him on the West Viminal’s border; you can use Sextus and Postumus for the job.’ Magnus walked through the door and then put his head back round. ‘And make sure that the poker is pulled out a bit and clearly visible. I want Sempronius to know exactly what I think of him.’

‘Your tame senator sent a boy round,’ an old man with gnarled fingers and a sagging throat said, not taking his eyes off the scroll that he was perusing in the light of two lamps.

Magnus took a seat next to him at the table in the corner of the tavern with the best view of the door through the fug of the crowded room. ‘Which one, Servius?’

‘Which boy? I don’t know, I didn’t ask his name.’

‘No, you old goat; which senator?’ Magnus took the cup and wine jug brought to him by the man serving behind the bar. ‘Thanks, Cassandros.’

Servius looked up, his eyes awash with milky patches. ‘Oh, the older one.’

‘Senator Pollo?’

‘Yes.’

‘And?’

Servius looked back at his scroll. ‘It’s no good, Magnus; I’ll be blind before long. Already everything is vague and dimming.’ He shook his bald head and placed the scroll down on the table. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you whilst you were … in conference but the senator is very keen that you should attend his salutio in the morning and then accompany him to the Senate House; his nephew, Vespasian, has a job for you.’

‘What sort of job?’

‘The boy couldn’t say but Senator Pollo said that you were to keep the next three days or so free.’

‘Three days?’

‘Or so.’

Magnus kicked the nearest stool. ‘Shit! Just when things are getting busy.’

With a fold of his plain white citizen’s toga covering his head, Magnus crumbled a flour and salt cake over the flame of the small fire that was kept continuously burning on the altar of the crossroads lares , embedded into the tavern’s exterior wall. The upkeep of these shrines was the original reason for the formation of the brotherhoods all over the city, centuries earlier. In the intervening time, however, the function of the brotherhoods had expanded to looking after the interests and welfare of the local community, for which they received remuneration from the locals commensurate with the amount of protection they needed. Their word, therefore, was law in the area in which they held sway.

As the crumbs flared in the flame, Magnus muttered a short prayer to ask the gods of the junction of the Alta Semita and the Vicus Longus to hold their hands over the area. That done, he raised a bowl and poured a libation in front of the five small bronze figures that represented the lares, promising the same offering that evening should they keep their side of the religious bargain. Pulling the toga from his head, he patted the brother, whose turn it was to tend the fire, on the shoulder before heading off down the wakening Alta Semita, with the first indigo glow of dawn to his back and with Cassandros and a bearded, betrousered easterner, both of whom carried staves and sputtering torches, to either side.

It was but a short walk to Senator Gaius Vespasius Pollo’s house and, although Magnus arrived there just shy of sunrise, there was already a goodly crowd of the senator’s clients waiting outside for admittance to his atrium in order to wish a good day to their patron, receive a small largesse, enquire if there was any way that they could be of service to him that day and, perhaps, occasionally take advantage of the symbiotic relationship and ask a favour of the senator themselves.

‘Cassandros and Tigran, you stay here.’ Magnus did not care for order of precedence and pushed his way through the crowd to the front door, leaving his two companions waiting on the fringe of the gathering. No one objected to his progress as all were aware that this battered ex-boxer, although low on the social scale, was high in their patron’s favour.

As the sun crested the eastern horizon, bereft of yesterday’s clouds, bathing the Seven Hills in a spring morning glow, the door was opened by an exceedingly attractive youth with blond hair, the length of which was countered by the shortness of his tunic. Magnus was first through the door.

‘Magnus, my friend,’ Gaius Vespasius Pollo boomed, not getting up from the sturdy chair set in the centre of the atrium in front of the impluvium with its spluttering fountain. He brushed a carefully tonged ringlet of dyed black hair away from his porcine eyes glittering in a hugely fat face.

‘Good morning, sir; er … you require a service, I believe.’

‘Yes, yes, but I’ll talk to you about it later. In the meantime my steward will give you a list of Jewish requirements and customs.’ Gaius gestured to a slightly older version of the youth on the door who bowed his head to Magnus. ‘Oh, and he’ll also have one of my lads read it for you seeing as you, well, you know.’