‘He was stupid,’ Clemens shouted in Vespasian’s ear, ‘he had been warned to drop the sword as soon as he’d cut off the other man’s head; if he’d listened he wouldn’t be dead. The other two will be fine so long as they don’t go near the sword.’
Vespasian could not think of anything to say and just stared dumbfounded between the Emperor and his sister smearing blood over their bodies and the crowd who had started to play catch with the decapitated gladiator’s head. Where was the honour? What had happened to dignitas? Was this to be the tone of the new age, filth and degradation until the Phoenix returned in five hundred years? And yet this was the Rome that he had worked for in his support for Antonia; this was the Rome that she had unwittingly preserved while keeping her family in power. He had seen it in its infancy on Capreae in the court of Tiberius. He had seen the debauched Emperor’s ‘fishies’ — dwarves and children copulating freely in the water — and had heard Caligula describe them as fun. He had witnessed Caligula’s behaviour with his sisters and knew that incest was committed regularly; he had watched Caligula enjoy his troupe of dwarves and seen him service whore after whore in a public tavern. He had hoped that these were the heights of his excesses; but no, they had just been eclipsed. Vespasian feared then that the height had not yet been achieved.
Eventually the siblings came out of their private world; Caligula rose to his feet and signalled for silence. ‘Who has the head?’
A young man dressed in a threadbare tunic and worn cloak held up the grisly item by an ear. ‘I do, Caesar.’
‘Then you win the game and one thousand aurei when you bring it to me.’
The young man’s neighbours immediately set upon him, each desperate for such a sum that would raise them out of poverty for life. Caligula laughed and the fight quickly spread as more and more people tried to get close to the prize; he turned on his heel and offered his hand to his sister. Naked and red with blood, the two siblings walked from the stage, with heads held high, at a sedate pace as if they were a newlywed couple from an old and dignified patrician family making their way to the bridal feast. Behind them they left escalating chaos and death.
‘We had better present ourselves to him now,’ Clemens said, ‘he was most insistent that we come and see him immediately after the…the…’ He left the last word hanging and waved his hand vaguely towards the stage as if he could not find the right way to describe what they had just witnessed.
Vespasian understood his difficulty perfectly.
‘Wasn’t she wonderful?’ Caligula enthused, licking blood from Drusilla’s face as Vespasian and Clemens were ushered into his presence. They were standing in the centre of a pavilion of soft, purple fabric that let the sun’s rays gently through. ‘And was I not more potent than that mere demi-god Hercules?’
Looking at Caligula, Vespasian found it hard to find any similarities between the spindly legged Emperor and the immensely strong Hero. He tried to banish from his mind everything that he had seen and concentrated on keeping his face neutral. ‘You outshone every one of the gods with your prowess, Princeps,’ he lied blatantly in his most reverential voice, ‘we mere mortals can only dream of stamina and vigour like you possess.’
‘Yes,’ Caligula agreed with a sympathetic look, ‘your women must be very disappointed; it’s no wonder that Caenis has spent so much time in Egypt. When’s she due back?’
‘I don’t know, Princeps. I believe that you require a service of me?’ Vespasian replied, anxious to change the subject.
Caligula cocked his head, looking momentarily confused; he ran a hand through his matted hair. ‘A service? I always require service.’ He snapped his fingers and Callistus brought forward a scroll that he handed, with much bowing, to his master. ‘Macro and that slut wife of his, Ennia, are due to leave for Ostia at midday. I want you and Clemens to be at the port waiting for them to give them this; they should find it fairly self-explanatory.’ He handed the scroll to Vespasian and looked at him thoughtfully for a few moments. ‘I think that you should be a praetor next year; I like my friends to do well.’
‘If you believe me to be worthy of it, thank you, Princeps,’ Vespasian replied, hiding his unease at the thought of not being able to leave Rome for a whole year with Caligula out of control.
Caligula slapped him on the back and started to lead him from the pavilion. ‘Of course you’re worthy, your god and Emperor deems you so.’
A roar from the crowd gathered at the entrance greeted them as they emerged into the sun-lit Forum. Caligula — still naked, still sticky with gore — spread his arms and acknowledged them before taking Vespasian’s hand and raising it. ‘This man is about to do a great service for me and for Rome,’ he called out. The crowd quietened to hear his words better. ‘His name is Titus Flavius Vespasianus and despite being a senator he is favoured by me.’
Vespasian tensed his face into a strained smile and managed to hold himself with dignity as the crowd cheered.
‘That’s enough,’ Caligula shouted; he turned to Vespasian as the noise died down and looked suddenly surprised. ‘What are you still doing here? Go on, get on with it.’
‘Yes, Princeps.’
‘What about an afternoon’s racing, Caesar?’ a voice from the crowd called out as Vespasian and Clemens turned to leave.
‘What an excellent idea,’ Caligula replied enthusiastically. ‘I shall summon the racing factions to the circus immediately, the racing will start in two hours and we shall see my new horse, Incitatus, race for the first time, so make sure that you bet on the Greens in the first race.’
Vespasian looked at Clemens as they tried to battle their way through the horde of people surging across the Forum to get the best seats in the Circus Maximus. ‘Now he’s going to spend even more money on a day’s racing because of a whim. After what we’ve seen today, Clemens, how’s your loyalty?’
‘Under strain,’ Clemens admitted.
Gulls quarrelled with each other as they soared overhead on a warm breeze blowing in from the gently swelling sea; it thrummed stays and sheets and caused the timbers of the large assortment of bobbing trading ships, straining on their moorings at busy stone quays and wooden jetties, to groan and creak.
Vespasian and Clemens sat on a couple of barrels eating a meal of dried fruit and meat in the shade of a flapping awning. Neither spoke, both being busy with their own thoughts. A few paces away a tubby merchant inspected his newly arrived cargo of Egyptian enamelled-glass bowls and drinking vessels that had been recently offloaded from the large trader due to sail back to Egypt, with Macro aboard, later that day. Evidently unhappy about the state of some of his shipment, the merchant began a tirade of abuse at the ship’s master that was met with a great deal of shrugging and waving of hands until the port aedile arrived to adjudicate. Just behind the arguing group the business of reprovisioning the vessel and loading the freight destined for Egypt carried on apace; a quick turnaround being vital to maximise the profits from the voyage. In the low-margin business of merchant shipping, time, as ever, was money and a prolonged stay in Ostia with its high port tax would not be something that the ship’s owner would thank the master for upon his return to Alexandria.
‘I’m amazed that anything made of glass can survive a voyage from Egypt, no matter how much straw it’s packed in,’ Clemens observed, breaking the long silence. Taking a generous swig at a goatskin of well-watered wine, he passed it to Vespasian.
‘It does look to be very delicate,’ Vespasian agreed, looking at the chipped ewer with a colourful depiction of Dionysus enamelled on its side that the merchant was showing the aedile as evidence of his case.