Rufinus’ entire experience of these visitors was gained from watching as they moved from about within the palace, escorting them to and from rooms, overhearing snatches and fragments of conversation, always social and never damning. The secretive gatherings to which they were invited were always centred in a triclinium at the heart of the palace with solid walls and no suitable position from which to observe. The visitors would arrive of an afternoon, change and bathe, then retreat into the triclinium where they would stay late into the night before retiring to bed. The next morning they would mount their carriages and return to their homes and estates.
The only people to enter the room during those meetings were two of the palace slaves, bringing food, drink and other luxuries as requested, and all matters discussed within the room were put on hold at such times. The level of privacy of these meetings was almost total.
It was frustrating to Rufinus to watch these clandestine gatherings going on right under his nose while unable to overhear any details. Even those guards Lucilla trusted were posted outside the vestibule that led to the dining room, with two doors between them and the quiet conversation within. In addition, it appeared that one of the guests played the lyre with accomplished skill, adding another layer of cover to any potential talk of sedition.
A quick investigation throughout the corridors and rooms of the palace that surrounded the private dining room had drawn a blank. There was simply no way to be in earshot of the conversation within. The room being designed for use in winter, it was buried within the complex, with no windows or outside walls.
Still, it was, to Rufinus, an advance worthy of note just to be able to name people to watch. Initially thrilled at having something useful to pass on, Rufinus had quickly engineered an excuse to visit the merchant Constans in Tibur after the second such meeting, giving him a detailed account of those present to pass on to Paternus and Perennis. He had waited tensely until Constans’ visit the next week and had been deflated to receive the reply ‘Satisfactory. Continue with investigation’.
And so Rufinus had continued to make notes of the tiniest change in any of the visitors’ entourage, their attitude, even their mode of dress, all the while fighting the frustration of failure. He had begun to feel that perhaps there was nothing to all the talk of plots and conspiracies among the Praetorian commanders and that perhaps these private meetings were nothing more than simply an opportunity for Lucilla to spit invective and complain about her brother among sympathetic people.
The turning point came with the advent of the warmest and sunniest summer anyone could remember and a party held in the Canopus to celebrate the festival of Vertumnus, the first such gathering since the days of Hadrianus. It had been a grand night with good humour, a steady flow of wine and platters of sweets, fruits, vegetables and endless roasted delicacies, all officially celebrating the God of abundance, though in Rufinus’ eyes more celebrating the wealth and position of the hostess.
The great water garden with its arbours, decorative statues and caryatids resounded to the sound of music and conversation, and flickered with the shadows of dancing girls and occasional, carefully-obfuscated romantic interludes. Lamps had been lit between the columns so that the festival could go on through the night and even the guards’ shifts had been shortened and staggered so that they and the villa’s free servants could make merry in their own separate celebration elsewhere. Rufinus knew that a similar gathering was occurring as a poor mirror of this party in the roughly-chiselled grotto of the Inferi up the hill and across the olive grove, where burning torches would be illuminating the drunken cavorting of guards and servants.
The officers of the guards, though – Phaestor and Rufinus – were permitted to attend the nobles’ festival, along with half a dozen of their more trusted men, in an attempt to restrain the more unruly guests and deter any trouble.
Rufinus had tried to keep his eye on the invitees and to make notes of those present, though only half-heartedly. While Lucilla continued to host her secretive gatherings for that select group of luminaries, the Vertumnalia was a festival celebrated across rural Latium and had clearly been organised as a social occasion, a fact attested by the sheer scale of the noise, the quantity of expensive wine brought in by cart the week before, and the unexpected quantity of sweat-prickled flesh visible among the more inebriated nobles and their partners.
The usual suspects were present, of course, in addition to men and women of importance from Tibur, a few of the senators and nobles from Rome with a grudge against Commodus, and landowners from nearby estates who were well known to the mistress.
Two hours of surreptitiously scribbling notes whenever he could find a few moments alone, watching the guests with narrowed eyes that he hoped made him look more like a guard on the alert than a spy within the ranks, and eavesdropping on endless dull conversations had grated. Talk revolved around the latest minor political appointments, new hairstyles gracing the inflated heads of Rome, the games, of which there seemed to be an almost constant run sponsored by the new emperor, the plays filling the theatres of the capital, the dearth of good fish sauce following the accidental sinking of a galley of finest garum from Baetica in the harbour in Ostia. The subjects under discussion were varied, the quality singularly pointless and dull.
In the end Rufinus had sighed, rolled his shoulders, given up all hope of subterfuge and intrigue and simply settled on relaxing and attempting to enjoy himself, lifting his cup and toasting the God of growth for the detailed attention he seemed to have paid to vines in particular this year.
With a smile, he had reached out to a passing tray bearing slices of roasted and stuffed hare and honey-glazed ham, just as the servant turned sharply and hot-heeled it away at the shout of another guest, the tray slipping out of his reach just as Rufinus’ fingers dipped in. He had had to arrest his suddenly free momentum and almost pitched into the ornamental pool with its golden fish and terrapins.
Angrily, he managed to stop himself in time, though not without dipping a boot in the edge, feeling the cold water soaking straight through the lace holes, making the leather unpleasant and raising a snort of laughter from a senator and his wife who had apparently decided the ornamental fish pond would make the perfect cross between a public bath and a marital bed.
Hobbling across the seething, writhing, heavily-occupied paved area beneath the arbour, he moved out of the hectic party and leaned against a tree in the dark recesses of the artificial valley, at the northern end of the Canopus where the crowds thinned and petered out. Here, he removed his boot and tipped it up, watching a trickle of dirty water emerge, half expecting a golden fish to flop out. It seemed that no matter how proficient he became in the military world and no matter how high he climbed in the ranks, he would never be able to shake the clumsiness that had plagued him since youth – a clumsiness that had inadvertently led to Lucius’ death that day out in the forests of Tarraconensis. His expression darkened at the memory that refused to let him rest.