Ovid

There was a knock at the door: Bathyllus with the wine. I sent him away.

Asprenas leaned forward. 'Corvinus, do you honestly think that Livia didn't know what Arminius intended to do? Yes, trouble in Germany would have damaged Augustus. But Livia wasn't interested in simple damage. She wanted to destroy him.'

I couldn't believe this.

'You're saying that Livia intended a massacre from the start?'

Asprenas was smiling.

'Of course she did. I had my orders before I left Rome. Not the details, of course, simply the broad outline. Arminius, too, although he was acting for himself just as much as for Livia.'

'You're wrong. Not even Livia is that much of a bitch.'

He stared at me. 'Think, boy! Isn't it obvious? She had to do something because her position was becoming desperate. Augustus had woken up to the fact that he was being manipulated. Postumus was still alive and a growing threat. Augustus had to be destroyed while her influence over him still held good.'

'So why didn't she poison the guy, like the rest of his family? Don't tell me she had scruples.'

'She couldn't. Augustus still hadn't formally recognised Tiberius as his successor. She had to smash the emperor's confidence in himself and make certain that it was Tiberius that he turned to. You can see that, can't you, Corvinus?'

I remembered the stories of how Augustus had reacted when the news of the massacre had reached Rome; how he had woken in the night, screaming.

'Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!'

'Yeah,' I said. 'I can see that.'

'So you believe me?'

'I don't know.' I shook my head dully. 'I don't know any more.'

He got up. 'You believe me. You have to, because it's the truth.'

'You want to swear that?'

His eyebrows rose in surprise. 'If you wish.'

'Would it mean much if you did?'

'Not a lot; but I will if you insist.'

I felt my gorge rise. 'Get out of my house, Asprenas. Get out now.'

He shrugged and turned, then paused, his hand on the doorknob.

'I'm glad I didn't succeed in killing you,’ he said. ‘I'm not a killer. Not in cold blood, anyway. Once was enough.'

'Once?' I said — and then remembered Davus, lying with his throat slit under a pile of grain. So that had been Asprenas himself. I was surprised he'd told me.

'Oh, by the way,' Asprenas was still smiling, and completely relaxed, 'there aren't many of us who know about the Varus affair, and we're a privileged group. The empress has to keep us sweet. She hasn't much influence with her son these days but she can still manage a favour or two. You're on your way up, young man.'

My fists clenched; but I couldn't've so much as touched the bastard.

'I'm not interested in politics,' I said. 'Not your sort, anyway.'

'It's your duty. You owe it to the state. Just remember I told you.'

The door closed quietly behind him. After he had gone I had the bath slaves scrub me until my flesh was raw. Then I got drunk.

45

We buried him in December, the day before the start of the Winter Festival, in the garden of his villa outside Rome. He had no mausoleum, not even a stone, but that wasn't important: the earth was Roman earth, not the hateful frost-locked soil of Tomi. There were only four mourners, if mourners is the right word on what was after all a happy occasion: myself, my father, Perilla and his widow. The Lady Fabia Camilla watched the ceremony with vacant eyes; but when I'd lowered the small casket into the narrow hole she threw in after it a single handful of dried rosebuds. I filled the hole in, laid the cut turf on top and stamped it flat.

'Rest quietly Father,' Perilla whispered beside me. 'You're home now.'

We walked back to the house through the bare-branched orchard.

'He wrote most of his poetry here in the garden.' Perilla was smiling, as if she saw not a bleak December day but the sharp yellow of narcissi against a pale blue cloudless sky. Perhaps she did. 'He would have approved. “Every place has its own fate”.'

From her tone I knew it was a quotation, but it wasn't one I knew. Maybe one of his own lines.

'Dine with me today?' My father laid one hand on my shoulder, the other on Perilla's. She smiled.

'Yes, Father.'

Did I answer him, or was it Perilla? I can't remember now. In any case it didn't particularly matter.