Sejanus

'Jupiter! You're saying they let you near the army pay-chest? Do the lads on the Rhine know about this?'

That got me a scowl. Maybe I'd touched a nerve: all sorts of scams go on in the Treasury, even in these rigidly moral days, and Crispus was as straight as an Aventine dice game.

'Look, Corvinus,' he said, 'I haven't got either the time or the inclination for badinage. Just make sure that you and that she-cat wife of yours stay out of my life while you're here, okay?' I grinned: the last time we'd seen Crispus Perilla had almost got him blackballed from his exclusive gentlemen-only club. Evidently he hadn't forgiven or forgotten. 'And you haven't answered my question. What brings you back to Rome?'

I hesitated: information is Crispus's stock-in-trade, the more shop-soiled the better. His next question would be what was I doing up at the Treasury, and that was the one I really didn't want to answer: give Crispus the ball — any ball — and he'd run with it, straight to where he thought he could make most profit. And that could be dangerous.

'I thought you'd know,' I said at last. 'An important guy like you. My father died. I'm here for the funeral.'

'Oh.' He put on his pious expression, the one that made him look like a sick duck. 'Oh, yes, of course, I forgot. The ex-consul Messalinus. My condolences.'

I could see the next question already forming in his eyes so I got in first.

'Dad left some letters in his will to be delivered to the senate archives. Connected with the Pannonian revolt.'

Without making it obvious I showed Crispus the sheaf of documents I was carrying in my mantle-fold. I wasn't lying. The bit about the will had been true enough; the Pannonian revolt, when Dad had been provincial governor, had been his finest hour, or maybe finest five minutes, and being Dad he didn't want posterity to overlook it.

Crispus grunted, satisfied. He was already moving off. 'Archives is along the west corridor, third on your right,' he said. 'Sorry again about your father, Corvinus. I'll see you around.' He paused. 'Or perhaps not.'

'Yeah. Right.'

The shifty bugger had wilfully misdirected me before. This time I checked with a slave pushing a broom around, but west corridor third on the right it was. Archives was a huge room filled floor to ceiling with creaking bookshelves and smelling of musty paper and old glue, and Rusticus was already there waiting for me.

From Livia's letter I'd been half-expecting a little mousy guy of about ninety, with inky fingers and dust in the folds of his mantle, but the senate's archivist suited his name: a big, beefy countryman in his late fifties, with a florid face and eyebrows like overblown caterpillars. We shook hands over the cramped reading desk.

'My condolences on the death of your father,' he said. 'A fine man. He'll be sorely missed.'

'Yeah. Yeah, he will.' Unlike Crispus, Rusticus sounded like he meant it. Maybe he did. I gave him the Pannonian letters, which he pounced on.

'Excellent,' he said. 'They'll add greatly to our knowledge of the revolt.'

'You're a historian?'

'Not a true one. I have an interest in history, but I don't write. It's why I took this job. Not the most popular senatorial position, even although vital. I'll look after these, don't worry.' He called over one of the clerks and gave the letters to him. 'Now, Corvinus. Everything's ready for you, in accordance with the Augusta's instructions.'

'Uh…just what were these, exactly?' I said cautiously. Livia was thorough, I'd give her that. I just hoped she hadn't been too thorough. Rusticus sounded the keen, talkative type, and if he enjoyed his work that much I might be able to cut a few corners.

'That you be shown and given access to the senatorial records from the eighth year of Tiberius's reign up to the present, whenever that was. With no comment and no further guidance on my part.'

Shit. There went that idea. 'Is that so?'

'That is so. "Tell the young puppy to look for himself. It's all there."' He smiled. 'Her words, not mine.'

'Uh huh.' Bugger the old bitch sideways, she really was determined to make this difficult, wasn't she? 'And you're going to do just exactly what she told you?'

The smile faded. 'I am. Even although I could do more, I won't.'

Well, that was frank enough. 'You mind telling me why?'

'Not at all. I had and have a great deal of respect for Livia. She was a very clever woman, Corvinus, and I know her reasons for making the stipulation, whatever they were, would be good ones. Especially since she insisted I carry it out to the letter.' He looked me square in the eye. 'Don't mistake me, please. I can guess her intentions, and I'd help you gladly if I were free to do so. I've been waiting two years for this, ever since the emperor sent Agrippina and young Nero into exile and confined Drusus to the Palace.'

Yeah. That little nugget of information I did have, courtesy of an army pal with a penchant for booze and current affairs who'd stayed with us en route for Asia. As soon as Livia was cold Tiberius had banished his dead stepson Germanicus's widow and her eldest son. Drusus, the second son, had disappeared from public life shortly afterwards, leaving only the sixteen-year-old Gaius. Agrippina and Nero had been exiled to separate islands off the Italian coast. Nero, so the official version had it, committed suicide a year later; believe that, as my tribune pal said over the third jug, if you like. Sure, from what I already knew of her Agrippina had deserved all she got; but the Wart's treatment of the old imperial family — or Sejanus's — still left a bad taste. Rusticus obviously agreed, and I'd bet that he was that rare thing now in Rome, a Julian sympathiser. It surprised me that Livia had trusted him enough to count on his help, especially given her own track record where the Julians were concerned; but then maybe an interest in history encourages a certain degree of Olympian objectivity.

'Okay.' I shrugged. 'So give me whatever you can.'

'Willingly.' Rusticus stood up. 'If you'll follow me I'll show you the relevant shelves and leave you to it.'

There were four of them, long ones, crammed solid with papyrus rolls in their heavy protective cylinders. Good sweet Jupiter in a G-string! My jaw dropped and I could almost hear the old harpy chuckling all the way from the shades.

'You're sure that's all there is, pal?' I said at last.

The sarcasm went straight past Rusticus's head; or maybe he just wasn't rising to the bait.

'Yes, that's all,' he said. 'Proceedings of the senate, Tiberius Eight to current. Ten years’ worth. Make all the notes you want, but don't take anything away and put things back as you found them, please, otherwise you'll cause no end of trouble and my clerks will have both our guts for label-ties.'

At which point he shook hands, wished me luck and left. I felt like crying.

Okay. So I had to start somewhere. Wishing I'd had the sense to sneak in a jug of Setinian, I pulled down the nearest roll. Half a dozen others came with it, plus several pounds of dust, a dead mouse and a colony of live spiders. I checked the labels: only four months' worth, September to December, six years back. Shit. This was going to be a long hard slog. A long, hard, dry slog.

I took the rolls down and laid them in rows, earliest to latest. Then I started at the beginning and worked my way through, replacing them on the shelves as I went. Trials, Livia had said. There were plenty of these. The trouble was I had to skip through screeds of other stuff to get to them: debates on clearing waterways and repairing roads, appointments to committees, proposals, counter-proposals, counter-counter-proposals. Yard after yard of carefully-recorded hot air that no one, ever, would want to read again. Gods, how did anyone stand it without dropping dead of boredom ten times over? I felt sorry for the guy who'd taken the minutes, too. It must've been bad enough listening day in day out to this slop without having to write it down as well.