Caligula stared at Vespasian uncomprehendingly. ‘Time? Time? No, time goes too slowly. Chaerea, go and cure my cousin of his cough; permanently.’
‘Is that wise, Princeps?’ Macro asked. ‘Gemellus is very popular with the youth.’
‘Then his funeral will be well attended,’ Caligula snapped. ‘That’s the second time today that you’ve questioned me, Macro, don’t let there be a third. Now get out of my sight.’
Macro opened his mouth to argue, then, thinking better of it, bowed his head and walked away.
‘What are you still doing here, Chaerea?’ Caligula shouted. ‘Didn’t I give you an order?’
Chaerea snapped a salute and, keeping his face neutral, turned and led his men off.
Caligula closed his eyes slowly, drew a luxurious breath and kissed Drusilla on the mouth. ‘Isn’t she beautiful, Vespasian? I will have a theatre built in the Forum so that I can display her properly. Would you like to be displayed, my sweet?’
‘If it pleases you, dearest Gaius,’ Drusilla simpered, tracing the outline of his lips with her finger.
Caligula looked lovingly at her and stroked her throat. ‘Just think, Drusilla, I could have this pretty throat slit any time I want.’
Drusilla sighed with ecstasy. ‘Any time you want, dearest Gaius.’
Caligula licked her throat and then put his arm around Vespasian’s shoulder in a friendly fashion and began to walk him away, much to Vespasian’s relief. ‘I have a problem, my friend, it’s like a persistent itch but if I scratch it I know that it’ll get worse, but I must rid myself of it.’
‘Surely you can do anything you want,’ Vespasian replied, adjusting his arm to take the weight of the filth piled in his toga’s fold.
‘I can, but sometimes there might be a consequence that not even I can control.’
‘What consequences?’
‘I’ve tired of Macro’s wife and I’ve tired of him, he’s started to give me advice. Before my transformation he actually told me that it was not fitting for an emperor to laugh loudly at a joke in a play; it was Plautus, how can you not laugh at Plautus?’
‘Impossible.’
‘Precisely. And now today he questioned me; so he must go.’
‘But the consequence would be upsetting the Guard.’
‘Oh my friend, how well you understand me, that is the consequence; if only I could kill them all. What do you advise me to do?’
Vespasian thought for a few moments, wondering if giving Caligula advice would prove as fatal for him as it was going to be for Macro. ‘If he’s not the Praetorian prefect, then the Guard won’t feel threatened.’
Caligula turned to him with a pained expression on his face as if he were dealing with a retarded child. ‘But he is the Praetorian prefect, you idiot, and if I try and remove him it would have the same consequence.’
‘You don’t have to remove him, he’s already asked to be removed and you, in your wisdom, have already granted it.’
‘Have I? Oh good. When?’
‘The moment the sailing season opens up again in the spring.’
Caligula frowned. ‘Stop talking in riddles.’
‘Princeps, you have very cleverly promised Macro the province of Egypt. The moment he sets foot on the ship in Ostia he will be prefect of Egypt, not prefect of the Praetorian Guard.’
Caligula beamed with understanding and slapped Vespasian on the shoulder. ‘And I could have him killed then without fear of the consequence.’
‘You could, but wouldn’t it be better if you ordered him to commit suicide? That way there could be no possibility of anyone being accused of murder.’
‘Oh, how fortunate I am to have a friend like you, Vespasian. You will tell me what the expression was like on his face after you’ve told him, won’t you?’
CHAPTER XVI
The small flame sputtered into life illuminating five bronze statuettes, standing on the lararium, representing Caenis’ household gods; the reflected glow played on their polished forms giving them the ethereal quality of the deities they symbolised. Vespasian placed a fold of his toga over his head as Caenis set the oil lamp down onto the altar and took her place beside him; behind them stood the household slaves faintly lit by a small fire in the hearth next to the lararium — the only other light in the atrium.
Vespasian poured a wine libation onto the altar and sprinkled a handful of salt into the puddle before spreading his arms and turning his palms upwards. ‘I call upon the lares domestici — or whatever name by which you would like to be called — to ensure that I and my household enjoy what we already have in good health, just as you have done for me before; and that you preserve us and this day safe from all dangers, if there are or shall be any on this day. If you grant a favourable outcome in the matter that we deem that we are speaking of and you preserve us in this present condition or better — and may you so do these things — then I vow that you shall have, in the name of this household, the tokens of our gratitude after the setting of the sun. Nothing more do I ask.’
Caenis then turned to the fire and completed the female part of the morning ritual by offering up a prayer to Vesta, goddess of the hearth, and throwing sweet-smelling incense into the flames. Vespasian watched her, as he had done every morning for the past six months, with an ache in his heart as she performed the duties of the wife that she could never be to him.
The morning prayers complete, the household slaves dispersed to their various duties as pale light seeped in through the windows looking out to the peristylium announcing the beginning of another cold, early April day.
Vespasian pulled the fold of his toga from his head and adjusted it around his shoulders. ‘Our household gods will have another busy day ahead of them,’ he observed with a wry smile. ‘Caligula’s due to inaugurate the theatre that he’s had built in the Forum to display Drusilla to the mob and he wants me and a few others of his “friends” to be present; he said that he might want us to lend a hand. If the large bed with purple sheets in the middle of the stage is anything to go by, then I believe that it’ll be more than just a hand we’ll be having to lend.’
‘Then don’t go, my love.’
Vespasian looked at her with raised eyebrows. ‘You know that he can’t be refused, so don’t make unhelpful suggestions.’
Caenis smiled sorrowfully. ‘I’m sorry, I should know better; it’s because he can’t be refused that apart from a couple of visits to your uncle’s house I’ve not set foot out of here since you carried me over the threshold.’
Vespasian looked deep into her sad eyes, beautifully set off by a necklace of clear, blue-glass cylindrical beads that shimmered softly around her throat in the pale light. He sympathised with her frustration at her virtual captivity, but, although Caligula believed her to be in Egypt and Magnus’ brothers had not reported any more sightings of Corvinus’ man or any other suspicious goings on, he still felt it best to keep her inside. He kissed her.
A loud knock at the door cut through the moment; the huge Nubian opened up and Aenor came nervously through the vestibule into the atrium and stood waiting to be spoken to.
‘What does my uncle want, Aenor?’
‘He has asked that you should come to his house at once, master,’ the young German slave boy replied in his guttural accent.
‘Did he give a reason?’
‘He said to tell you that there was an important person waiting to see you there.’
‘Who?’
Aenor scrunched up his face in an effort to remember the exact title that he had been told to pass on. ‘The prefect of the Praetorian Guard.’
It was with great trepidation that Vespasian entered his uncle’s house, passing through the cluster of clients, with their breath steaming in the cold, dawn air, waiting outside to greet their patron. He had allayed Caenis’ fears that he was to be arrested with the logical argument that it would be beneath the prefect’s dignitas to come in person to apprehend a junior senator. Nevertheless he felt a sense of foreboding as he stepped through the vestibule and into the atrium.