‘Now, sir, that ain’t fair, we all have to make a living. By the way, aren’t you the road aedile this year?’
‘You know I am.’
Magnus pointed to his feet, covered in mud and ordure with pieces of rotting vegetation sticking to them. ‘I call that a fucking disgrace; some parts of the city are ankle deep in shit — which makes you look stupid.’
Vespasian gestured helplessly. ‘There’s nothing I can do about it. My foremen won’t supervise the public slaves cleaning the streets; they all claim to be too busy making sacrifices to Jupiter and Juno and praying for the Emperor.’
‘Well, while they’re about it perhaps they could sacrifice to the god of arseholes and pray for man and beast to stop shitting as well.’
‘Shhh,’ Gaius hissed with a pained expression on his face, putting a hand up to his mouth and moving away from treasonous talk.
Vespasian grinned. ‘Have you come here just to give me advice on the religious practices of my staff?’
‘No, it’s a bit more serious than that,’ Magnus said, looking around and lowering his voice. ‘There was someone snooping around Caenis’ house this morning for an hour or so, and then he buggered off. One of my lads watching the place followed him to the Aventine; he went into a nice new house on the same street as Sabinus.’ Magnus raised his eyebrows.
‘And?’
‘And after making some enquiries he found out that it belongs to your good friend, Corvinus.’
Vespasian felt a chill crawl through his body. ‘How did he find out about her?’
‘Probably by having you followed, what does it matter? But being as I know that he ain’t too keen on you and yours, I’ve doubled the guard in the street.’
‘Thank you, Magnus.’
‘I wouldn’t worry too much; he just knows that you go there, he won’t know who’s inside. She should be safe enough if she doesn’t go out.’
‘She doesn’t, except to visit my uncle a few score paces away.’
‘If she wants to do that, I suggest that she sends a slave to my lads and they can escort her in a covered litter.’
‘I’ll tell her; thanks.’
‘Yeah, well, it looks like you’re all moving off; I’d best be going. I’ve got more lucrative ways to pass the time rather than worry about the sick, if you take my meaning?’
‘What was that all about?’ Gaius asked, rejoining Vespasian as they began to shuffle out of the Forum.
‘Nothing, Uncle,’ Vespasian mumbled, lost in his thoughts, ‘Magnus has it covered.’
The procession of more than two thousand of the most prestigious men in Rome arrived in front of Augustus’ House. Cassius Chaerea was already waiting under the portico to address them; the smile on his face was enough to tell Vespasian that death had indeed kept its door firmly closed to Caligula.
‘There is at last good news,’ Chaerea announced in his falsetto voice, ‘one hour ago the Emperor made a miraculous recovery; I have just come from his room where he is sitting up in bed and eating. The crisis is over!’
A roar of cheers erupted from the rain-dampened crowd, carrying on until they were almost hoarse. The noise of the celebrations and the news of its cause filtered down from the Palatine and on throughout Rome, and by the time Chaerea was able to speak again the sound of joyous cheering echoed back up the hill from the city below.
‘The Emperor thanks you all for your prayers and sacrifices and bids you to…’ The doors behind him opened and the crowd gasped as Caligula walked out unsteadily but unaided. Unshaven for a month and palpably thinner with his eyes sunk even further in their sockets, he still looked ill and yet there was strength in the way that he held his head. He lifted his arms in the air to the raucous cries of ‘Hail Caesar!’ that greeted him.
Eventually he signalled for silence. ‘It is not your fault,’ he declaimed in a surprisingly loud voice, ‘that you hail me only as your Caesar. You do not know what has happened to me in this past month.’ He indicated to his emaciated body. ‘This body, this weak human body, nearly died as I ravaged it with the agony of transformation. Had it died I would still be here but not as you see me now, because, my flock, I am not only your Emperor, I have now become your god. Worship me!’
At this stunning piece of news and outrageous order a few of the more quick-thinking senators immediately pulled folds of their togas over their heads, as if officiating at a religious ceremony. The rest of the gathering quickly followed their example and Caligula burst out laughing as he surveyed the crowd that was now swathed from head to toe in wool.
‘You are truly my sheep; what a shearing we shall have. I believe one of you was good enough to offer his life to my brother Jupiter in return for mine; who was this noble sheep?’
‘It was I, Princeps,’ a voice oozing with pride came from behind Vespasian, who turned to see a well-built young eques smiling smugly at those around him, pleased to be the object of the Emperor’s attention.
‘What is your name, good sheep?’
‘Publius Afranius Potitus, Princeps.’
‘What are you doing here, Potitus? Don’t keep Jupiter waiting; we gods expect promptness.’
Potitus’ face fell as the hope of reward was replaced by the hideous realisation that Caligula was in earnest. He looked around at his companions for aid, but how could they countermand an order from their new god? They moved away, leaving him isolated in their midst. His shoulders sagged and he turned without a word.
‘What a good sheep he was,’ Caligula said, grinning approvingly as Potitus trudged away to his unnecessary death. ‘Now that I’m back among you the business of the city shall resume and the Plebeian Games, which should have begun five days ago, will commence immediately; all those of you who swore to fight as gladiators in return for my health will get the chance to fulfil your oath in the arena tomorrow.’
‘Save him, Caesar! Save him, Caesar!’ the twenty-thousand-strong crowd filling the stone-built Statilius Taurus Amphitheatre on the Campus Martius chanted in unison. An all-pervading stench of urine filled the atmosphere from where people — for fear of losing their seat should they go outside — had relieved themselves where they sat, so that it trickled down to be soaked up by the tunic of the person sitting below them on the stepped-stone seating.
The victorious retiarius, the last man standing in what had been a six-man free-for-all, kept the points of his trident firmly pressed on the throat of his last defeated opponent, a secutor entangled in a net, and looked up at the Emperor. Vespasian glanced over at Caligula, sitting next to Drusilla, in the imperial box adjacent to the senators’ seats, and wondered if he would grant the crowd’s wish; he had on every other occasion during the long four days of combat, but they had always been demands for death.
Caligula removed his fingers from the anus of a youth kneeling between him and his sister and extended it forward, still clenched in the signal for mercy, tilting his head against his shoulder. The crowd’s applause at their Emperor’s clemency turned to jeers as his thumb suddenly jutted up in mimicry of an unsheathed sword: the sign for death.
The summa rudis — the referee — withdrew his long staff from across the retiarius’s chest, who then pulled back to allow his opponent the dignity of a gladiator’s death, kneeling on one knee before his vanquisher rather than lying like a wounded stag on the reddened arena sand.
The crowd’s fury at their wish to spare a gladiator who had put up a brave fight escalated as the secutor, once free of the net, grasped his opponent’s thigh in preparation for the killing stroke. The retiarius dropped the trident and unsheathed his long, thin knife and placed it, point down, on the secutor’s throat just above his collar bone. With a nod of his head, completely encased in a smooth bronze rimless helmet with two small eye-holes in the face mask, the doomed man consented to the knife. As the two men tensed for the ritual killing the staff of the summa rudis abruptly slammed across the retiarius’s chest, stopping him.