Lucilla stopped and looked back. Since people had told her he was still married to Caecilia, this soul-baring did not endear him. ‘Never!’
‘You might give it thought.’
The last thing Gaius wanted as he strode away in the opposite direction was for a wraith to manifest itself among the monumental architecture, then to be confronted by her bloody husband.
‘Clodianus!’ cried the ghastly Nemurus, as he popped up like a ghost in a bad Saturnalia story. ‘I take it amiss that you destroyed my marriage, stole away my wife — yet you have not had the decency to make her happy.’
The man was ludicrous. When seen close up he was also much younger than the fusty, self-neglecting academic that Vinius wanted to envisage. Nemurus must be similar in age to Lucilla. He looked as if he might even throw a ball around at the gym, though probably one stuffed with feathers. He bit his fingernails, perhaps absent-mindedly while reading.
‘Not my fault!’ retorted Vinius. ‘I would have taken her on — the poor girl deserves some excitement — but she loathes what I stand for.’
‘I heard that,’ Nemurus exulted. Vinius cursed. It was doubly annoying for a spying Guard to discover he had been spied on. ‘You need public speaking lessons. Decorum, man! Telling a woman you love her ought to be an act of worship — not hurled at her as a punishment.’
This was where Vinius became tempted to abuse his power. He was too frustrated to hold back. He lowered his voice and threatened Nemurus: ‘ I have seen your name on a list. ’
Nemurus, no actor, was visibly perturbed.
‘Luckily for you, it is not my list.’
Nemurus could not know whether to believe this: if any list really existed; if so, what list it was, or whose; or what Vinius proposed to do about it. That was how fear worked these days.
Whether or not Nemurus had been denounced, his panic told Vinius that he must be guilty of something, even if it was unprovable chicken-stealing. Nemurus had just given himself away before he was even under suspicion.
‘I do not descend to the personal,’ claimed Vinius piously. ‘If I am ordered to exterminate you, you’re done for. But I don’t lean on people without evidence. What is your secret, by the way? — I bet I know. I bet you are an undercover republican. Or are you a conspiratorial philosopher? What’s your fancy? Cynic? Sophist? Stoic?’
‘I am slightly unnerved to think of the Guards studying ethics.’
‘You would be surprised!’ Vinius boasted with relish. ‘Know yourself, the old sphinx said — and I say, know your enemy. I produced a memo only the other day to warn my troops that not all philosophers wear convenient beards, so watch out for a devious mentality too. For example, we know the stoic creed is avoidance of anger, envy and jealousy… Would that apply to you?’
He had guessed right — not difficult, because most educated Romans with a liberal outlook were apt to call themselves stoics.
‘How can I look at you and set aside those regrettable emotions?’ Nemurus fought back.
‘Believe me, I see you and feel anger in enthusiastic quantities — though I am not troubled by envy and jealousy,’ returned Vinius as spitefully as possible. ‘Sadly, Flavia Lucilla has enough reasons to despise me. Perhaps I shall not add another by arresting you.’
Perhaps…
Nemurus tried to engage him: ‘Flavia Lucilla assures me you are not malicious.’
This was what nobody could know about anyone any more. Who would act ethically? Who would destroy others before others could destroy them? Who would do it for a vengeful reason? For amusement? For the Emperor’s favour? For money? Or to save their own neck? Who for no reason at all?
Vinius laughed bitterly. ‘Oh she thinks me a dumb soldier.’
Nemurus looked him up and down. He raised one eyebrow; he did it far too archly, being awkward socially.
‘ Does she?’
He taught oratory. As a young man, he himself had taken lessons at the fine Quintilian school. He knew how to pose a rhetorical question to be subtly destructive, causing doubt to linger with his hearer for a long time afterwards.
25
It was the Cornelia case that finished the cornicularius. Until then, he had been refusing to give up. He had served his time, his sixteen years as a Guard. He just could not bear to leave the military life. With this trial, the unpleasant aspects proved too much for him. He did not care that the evidence was minimal, but hated a crisis involving a woman, especially the Chief Vestal Virgin. The cornicularius was not alone in loathing what happened, which would become notorious. Once proceedings against Cornelia began, he got out fast, leaving Vinius Clodianus as the proverbial safe pair of hands.
Clodianus had been waiting, with surprising impatience, for his superior to go; he found he fancied the job. Also, his own position had become awkward. His association with the Urban Cohorts had gained their admiration. They wanted him on full secondment and Rutilius Gallicus officially applied for him to be transferred. Naturally, that made the Praetorian command more determined to hold onto him. A tussle ensued. Rutilius was of senatorial rank, the Praetorian Prefects only equestrians — although there were two of them. Even when Rutilius emphasised his personal gratitude to Clodianus, the transfer request failed. As the Praetorian Prefects recognised: Domitian invariably dug in his heels over anything somebody else wanted.
Then Gallicus died, apparently of natural causes, nothing to do with his mental problems. Clodianus waited cynically for some mannerist poet to write an elegy sobbing, ‘Gallicus is dead! Curse you, gods; you cannot exist after all!’ With his maverick streak, he even told the seditious materials team to watch for such dangerous verse. This team was composed of soldiers who claimed to be poetry-lovers and playgoers, though Clodianus suspected they all knew exactly what they were doing when they volunteered for the undercover censorship job; it would get them off fatigues. On receipt of his order, they devoted much time to listening for atheism at public readings. Disappointingly, the god-cursing lament failed to materialise. Rutilius was old news.
‘Wise Minerva!’ cried Clodianus in a mock strop. ‘What is wrong with authors today? If someone doesn’t get a move on, I may have to write the putrid ode myself.’
He was cheerful for a reason. For him, the death of Rutilius Gallicus removed the Urbans’ hope of poaching him. Their new Prefect was bound to reverse all requests made by his predecessor. Anyway, the cornicularius had at last asked to retire, and it was confirmed that Clodianus would replace him. The cornicularius must have put a word in. Like Decius Gracilis, here was yet another patron who had known his father. Gaius went along with it. He was older now. He wanted the job and he submitted to the system.
He was briefly an optio, a man chosen for promotion. That supplied a clarity he liked, for he hated hints and supposition. It also meant that at their monthly nights out in the Scorpion, it became ‘Gaius’ and ‘Septimus’. Well, sometimes it was still ‘Gaius’ and ‘Sir’, but it was good to show respect, especially when a senior soldier was right: you really were after his job.
‘ Septimus ’ was after something else, and with an adroit manoeuvre obtained it. When, just before the Cornelia trial, the cornicularius applied for his discharge, he set himself up with a complete retirement package. He would receive the bronze leaving diploma, signed by Domitian himself as a sign of the Emperor’s personal relationship with members of his Guard. He would have the notably attractive financial grant. And, since senior officers in the Roman army were the world’s greatest schmoozers, he organised an extra little treat for himself.
The fifth wife of his much-married optio had called at the Camp one day (because the optio never called on her) to confirm that she had finally obtained her longed-for legacy. Since Clodianus had hidden in the clerks’ room until he was sure of what his wife wanted, the cornicularius dealt with her. The nervous optio emerged to hear ‘Septimus’ uttering the ghastly chat-up line, ‘Caecilia — that’s a pretty name!’ To this he coupled a technical explanation that although the authorities turned a blind eye, no serving soldier could legitimately be married (thus putting her legacy in jeopardy), whereas a soldier taking his discharge would be given that privilege legally (thereby, if she wanted, rescuing her money for her).