Rufinus drew a deep breath. ‘I have already made a report, mentioning those involved. Your name did not appear on my list and I will make every effort to keep you out of the entire affair. I suspect that the known rift between you and the domina will not make that too hard. But other connections might be more damning.’
The former general frowned and Rufinus took another breath. ‘Your nephew, Quintianus.’
‘I have seen him keeping bad company in his visits’ agreed Pompeianus sadly.
‘He is doing more than keeping bad company’ Rufinus added quietly. ‘From what I have heard, I very much fear it is your nephew who is destined to wield the knife.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Why would he agree to such a thing? Why would Lucilla even ask him to do such a thing?’
Pompeianus wandered across to a stone bench and sank down onto it, Acheron still slavering and fawning at his side. ‘The young man’s motives are not too difficult to guess, my friend. He has finally achieved senatorial position and had a tiny taste of power in the capital. With links to myself and Lucilla, though, he is hardly likely to see any further power. I would think that he sees the death of the emperor and the rise of Lucilla and our family to the purple his only hope of advancement. After all, if Lucilla succeeds in placing our son on the throne, Quintianus will be a cousin of the emperor, rather than an obscure Syrian nobleman.’
He leaned back and patted Acheron. ‘As to why Lucilla would involve him? I would think that was obvious. Deniability. Quintianus is useful to her. He is a relation and so, when he is successful, she can claim it as a blow against the tyranny of her brother on behalf of her son. Should things go wrong and the attempt fail, however, Quintianus is obscure enough to her that she can distance herself from him and denounce the attempt as the act of an individual madman.
Rufinus nodded his agreement and took the seat next to the general. ‘You know what that means, sir?’
Pompeianus nodded unhappily. ‘To win the game, sometimes you have to sacrifice lesser pieces to preserve more important ones.’ He smiled sadly and pushed Acheron away playfully. The dog barked excitedly and pushed back at him. ‘I must sever all ties between Quintianus and myself if I am to survive this.’
Rufinus stared at the gravel path between his feet. ‘I am sorry. Rarely does a day pass now when I don’t wish I was still an excused-duty legionary on the Danubius. I loathe the game you introduced me to. I yearn for my days in the army, when everything was simple and only criminals lied and murdered. I am not cut from the right material for this sort of work.’
Pompeianus let go of Acheron and turned to Rufinus, clapping a hand on the young man’s shoulder and shaking him gently. ‘And that is the very reason that you must persevere in the role. Rome is a seething pit of vice, decay and death and, left to his own devices, our young emperor must soon fall into those ways unless those few who wish for a better Rome can save him. You, Gnaeus Marcius Rustius Rufinus, may very well be the last honest man in Rome. Whatever happens to my nephew or myself, it would be a shame for the Empire to lose your talents.’
Rufinus reflected on those words in the following days. He was not sure how far he agreed with the general’s assessment, but he did know it gave him no comfort.
Summer gave its glorious sun over to autumn in an almost magical afternoon, when the leaf-fall became an impediment to the narrow paths of the villa and a thunderhead cloud rolled ponderously out from the mountains to the east, bringing with it the bolts of Jupiter and the ringing of the hammer on Vulcan’s anvil.
For more than a week, the weather followed the same pattern: a muggy and unpleasant morning, leaving everyone drenched with sweat even if they had done nothing, and then the thunderhead would roll out and bring the crash, boom and flash, drenching the land. The afternoon would experience a three-hour torrential downpour that would flood the roads and dips before drying out and moving on. Slowly the air would clear to a breathable coolness and then night would fall and the air would begin to warm, beginning the process all over again.
And then, in the second week of the jarring weather, the heat left the cycle and the thunder dissipated, leaving a shivering cold and regular damp. Rufinus returned to his daily duties, once again desperately testing the surroundings of the enclosed triclinium for any way to overhear the conversations held therein, and pacing around the guest accommodation, rearranging guard duties so that he would have almost exclusive access to the dining area on those occasions when it was used for plotting.
It was a dismal time for the young guardsman, aware of the futility of further investigation, but equally conscious of the sand running through the hourglass toward an unspecified time when the emperor would face a bloody and violent end. The weather did nothing to improve his mood, and things would have been thoroughly unbearable, were it not for Senova.
The pale-skinned and dark-haired slave girl seemed to have endless duties around the palace that kept her busy throughout the day and night. Rufinus honestly couldn’t see when she found time to sleep. He would bump into her while on night-shift as she scurried through the gilded marble corridors with armfuls of clothing or bedding or snacks, or empty-handed in a desperate rush to collect something. Then he would find her in the early afternoon, delivering the lady’s instructions to the other servants and slaves. Sometimes she was out at dusk, lighting lamps in rooms her mistress intended to use. Sometimes she rushed at dawn to make sure the baths were warmed, stocked and prepared for Lucilla’s morning relaxation.
While he couldn’t believe a person could survive under such circumstances, and struggled with a staggering admiration for her stamina and ability, he was grateful to the fates for the repeated encounters they shared.
In a way, it was bliss.
Though his mission here had once more drifted to an uncomfortable halt, the regular chance meetings he managed with Senova became increasingly lengthy and were a balm. He considered them close, though hesitated over the word ‘intimate’ as he thought about them, partially because it was not quite accurate, but mostly because of the deep stirrings of desire it raised within him.
In another way, it was torture.
After each such meeting, as Senova laughed at his feeble jokes with a throaty, intoxicating chuckle and told him humorous anecdotes from the servants’ area that would otherwise never surface, Rufinus would return to his solitary patrol or to his room, acutely aware of the vast gulf that would always separate Senova and himself. It mattered not that the slave girl was the bound woman of his secret enemy, or that guard and slave could hardly consort even if the domina allowed it; there was a deeper, blood and bone rift:
He was scion of a patrician family. His ancestors had been governors and senators. She had been a poor farm girl from a conquered nation who had failed to pay her taxes and been sold to the nearest slave trader. Or perhaps she had been arrested and sold following some revolt? He had heard that the people of Britannia were unable to mark a decade without launching themselves into violent rebellion. Whatever the case, he and Senova were destined to remain apart, if parallel, for their span in this world.
It cast something of a pall on their meetings; a pall that he tried desperately to keep out of his voice when they spoke. And yet it seemed that somehow the closeness and ties between them grew with every meeting. By the time the first snow hit, they had reached a point that they only had to lock eyes across a courtyard and they both laughed, kicking straight back into the conversation they last had as if they had never been apart.
Galla, however, who seemed to show up among the other slaves and servants almost as often as Senova, remained a mystery that bothered him. There was a constant nervous tension about the girl that kept him distant and slightly on edge, unable to relax in her presence. Time and again he saw her dashing across open spaces as though she expected to be attacked. He had seen similar looks in people’s eyes in his early days at the villa among the servants and guards, living in fear of Dis’ vicious hounds.