Caligula’s anticipation of the evening revelries was evidently enough to distract him from the business of being flattered and he signalled his bearers to set about their duty. ‘You will come, Vespasian?’
‘With utmost pleasure, Divine Gaius.’
‘Excellent.’ He turned to Corbulo. ‘And perhaps you too, Corbulo? Wait, no, no, what am I thinking? You’re far too dull.’
Dullness was, plainly, an attribute that Corbulo in this instance was very grateful for, Magnus assumed, judging by the expression on the Junior Consul’s face.
Caligula was swept from the chamber before the senators could even hold a vote on whether to commission another bronze statue in thanks for his safe return.
‘Thanking the Emperor for inviting you to dinner,’ Magnus said as Vespasian and Gaius joined him at the bottom of the Senate House steps, next to Vespasian’s lictors, ‘that was sycophancy of the highest degree.’
‘Yes,’ Gaius agreed, ‘and very good it was too. And you managed to get yourself another invitation for this evening. Excellent work, dear boy.’
Vespasian closed his eyes and massaged his temples with a thumb and a middle finger. ‘There is nothing excellent, Uncle, about dining with a living deity who finds the dismembering of criminals amusing entertainment between courses.’
‘Then you shouldn’t have said it was amusing,’ Magnus observed.
‘Magnus, have you any idea what it’s like trying to please the Emperor just so as to stand a chance of still being alive at the end of the day? Sometimes I think that the only reason I’ve escaped his purges is because he doesn’t consider me rich enough to execute.’
Gaius’ jowls wobbled in agreement. ‘Yes, poverty, or at least the appearance of it, can be a life-saving condition.’
Vespasian scowled at his uncle, ordered his lictors to proceed to the Palatine and then turned back to Magnus as they started to move. ‘So, have Philo and his embassy escorted to the Palatine tomorrow just before the fifth hour. I’ll meet you there – if Caligula doesn’t confuse me with a criminal and I survive dinner, that is – and, hopefully, by then I’ll know where Caligula will receive them.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Magnus affirmed. ‘In the meantime, sir, I’ve got a favour to ask in return.’
Vespasian looked wary but could not refuse his friend. ‘What is it?’
‘Well, as one of the Urban Praetors could you use your influence with the Urban Prefect to take some action over a highly illegal piece of equipment that would have recently come to his notice?’
‘What have you done, Magnus?’
‘Now that’s not fair, I ain’t done nothing. No, it’s Quintus Tullius Tatianus …’
‘He who can procure any weapon ever conceived and have it smuggled into the city?’
‘That’s the one,’ Magnus said, shaking his head. ‘You all seem to know about him. Well, I believe that he is just about to supply Sempronius, the leader of the West Viminal, with a Scorpion. I mean a bolt-shooter, not those nasty little things with a sting in their tail.’
‘That would be a very illegal transaction. When did the item arrive?’
‘Last night.’
‘Then I assume that the Urban Cohort centurion has already informed Lentullus, wouldn’t you say, Uncle?’
‘Undoubtedly, dear boy; unless he’s grown tired of his wife and children.’
Magnus shook his head again. ‘Ain’t nothing secret?’
‘Not when it comes to a dangerous man like Tatianus,’ Vespasian said. ‘So what would you like me to get Lentullus to do?’
‘Well, I assume that now he knows about the Scorpion he will take steps to confiscate it?’
‘I’m sure he will.’
‘In which case could you ask him to do it at the third hour tomorrow morning?’
‘Why so precise?’
‘Let’s just say that I’ll be in conference with an interested party at that time and that type of information would be exactly the sort of thing that I could use to bring him down a bit.’
Vespasian sighed. ‘So I’m supposed to get the Urban Prefect to enforce the law at a time that suits your criminal agenda, is that it?’
‘Well, if you put it like that then I suppose so, although there’s nothing criminal about it.’
‘I doubt that very much.’
‘And then, what happens to things like Scorpions when they’re impounded?’
‘That’s up to whoever is in charge of the raid.’
‘The centurion?’
‘No, a centurion will lead it but a magistrate will oversee the whole thing.’
‘An Urban Praetor, perhaps.’
Vespasian raised his eyebrows. ‘It has been known. I’ll see what I can do. You just make sure that Philo’s there at the fifth hour.’
‘That I will, sir,’ Magnus said, taking his leave. ‘I wonder what the punishment is for being caught in possession of a Scorpion? Whatever it is it’ll give Sempronius quite a sting, if you take my meaning?’
‘There they go,’ Magnus said, looking down at a wagon being unloaded by torchlight in a narrow side street off the Vicus Patricius. ‘I knew the bastard would do it.’
‘Do what, Magnus?’ Sextus asked, pulling his cloak tighter around his shoulders as the temperature fell with the deepening of night.
Magnus did not bother to answer his bovine brother as he felt sure that the short answer would prove too baffling and a longer explanation would be beyond his attention span. Instead he counted the number of components brought out from beneath the leather covering of the wagon until he was satisfied that it was indeed the Scorpion being delivered to the back door of the West Viminal Brotherhood’s headquarters.
Magnus eased the weight off his cramped buttocks, which had transferred most of their heat to the flat, tiled roof on which he and Sextus had been concealed for their three-hour vigil, and then ran his eye over the building that housed his bitter rivals. Unlike the South Quirinal, the West Viminal chose not to base themselves in the tavern built at the junction of the Vicus Patricius and the Carpenters’ Street, the road leading to Magnus’ territory, but, rather, in a four-storey building built around an inner courtyard some fifty paces from the crossroads. It was a wise decision, Magnus conceded: apart from the minor inconvenience of the crossroads’ lares altar not being a part of the building, it was far better situated than his own tavern as it only had one wall facing the main street, with the other three backing onto narrow side streets, in one of which the wagon was being unloaded. This meant that it was that much harder to attack as the narrow streets on three sides could be blocked to prevent access, leaving only the possibility of attacking through what would be a very well-defended front door. As he rued the ease with which his defences had been breached the previous night something stirred within Magnus’ scheming mind and he raised his gaze to the roof of the building, some ten feet higher than his position: it was, like the one that he was crouched on, flat. However, there was a structure built atop it, a structure that Magnus knew to be solid because it was where the West Viminal liked to keep their captives. ‘Unless one had a Scorpion,’ Magnus muttered to himself.
‘What’s that, brother?’ Sextus asked.
Magnus smiled in the dark. ‘I meant, Sextus, that I’ve just seen a less lucrative but more satisfying use for a Scorpion.’
‘I didn’t think we had one any more on account of the money being nicked and such.’
Magnus began to ease his way back, keeping low so that his silhouette would not rise above the parapet. ‘Never you mind, brother; you just kill who I tell you to and leave the thinking to me.’
‘Kill who you tell me to and leave the thinking to you,’ Sextus said, digesting the suggestion as he followed. ‘Right you are, Magnus. I’ve always found that to be the best course for me.’
‘Good lad, Sextus, good lad.’
‘You know my policy,’ Tatianus said, shrugging his shoulders and opening his arms as if he were helpless to change something of his own making. ‘If you don’t come with the money within a few hours of the item being on my premises then I sell it to the first one who does. And you were meant to come at the third hour yesterday, not today.’