‘ Ave, Princeps.’
Claudius straightened with a start. ‘Pliny? My dear friend. I told you to stop calling me that. We have known each other well since you were a young cavalry officer with my legions in Germany. You have been my closest companion since I summoned you to visit me here when you took up your appointment with the Fleet. I stopped being Princeps when you were still a young man. It is I who should be honouring you, a veteran and an admiral. But we are both citizens of Rome, no more, no less, for what that is worth these days.’
Pliny came quickly in and helped Claudius back to his seat, taking his cup and filling it. He passed it over and poured himself one, holding it up formally. ‘The gods give you salutations on your ninetieth year.’
‘That was three weeks ago.’ Claudius waved his hand dismissively, then looked at the other man with affection. Pliny was tall, unusually so for a Roman, but then he did come from Verona in the north, the land of the Celts. Rather than a toga he wore the emblazoned red tunic and strap-on boots of a naval officer, and he had a sinewy toughness about him. He was everything that Claudius most admired, a decorated war veteran, a natural leader of men, a prodigious scholar who was author of countless volumes, and now the new encyclopedia. Claudius clenched his fist to stop his stutter. ‘Have you b-brought me the book?’
‘The first twenty volumes. My present for your birthday, Princeps , even if a little belated. I could not imagine a more auspicious occasion or a more exacting reader for my work.’ Pliny pointed proudly to a leather basket beside the door, carefully placed away from the wine, brimming over with scrolls. ‘A few details on the flora and fauna of Britannia I want to check with you, and of course the space you asked me to keep in the section of Judaea. Otherwise complete. The first natural history of the world not written by a Greek.’
Claudius gestured at the half-empty shelves in the room, then at the scrolls lying in bundles on the floor. ‘At least now I’ve got space to store them. Narcissus has been helping me to box up these other scrolls. I’ve never been able to bring myself to throw any book away, and I never had the heart to tell old Calpurnius, but these ones by Philodemus aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.’
‘Where do you want them? My books, I mean. I can shelve them for you.’
‘Leave them where they are by the door. Narcissus is making space in my library tomorrow. Yours will have pride of place. All of that Greek nonsense will be removed.’
‘Narcissus still does all your writing for you?’
‘He castrated himself, poor fellow, so he could serve me, you know. It was when he was a boy, a young slave. I was going to free him anyway.’
‘I’ve never quite trusted Narcissus,’ Pliny said cautiously.
‘You can always trust a eunuch.’
‘It’s always been your Achilles’ heel, if I may say so. Wives and freedmen.’
‘Achilles is one thing I’m definitely not. I may be a god, but I’m no Achilles.’ Claudius stifled a giggle, then looked serious. ‘Yes, Narcissus is a bit of a mystery. I sometimes think his fall from being Prefect of the Guard in Rome to being little more than the slave of an old hermit must be hard for him to bear, being part of my own disappearing act. But Nero would have executed him if he hadn’t faked his death too. Narcissus has always been a shrewd fellow, with his business interests in Britannia. And his religion, the quirky stuff he picked up when he was a slave. He’s a very pious chap. And he’s always been very loyal to me.’ Claudius suddenly smiled, lurched up, and caught Pliny by the arm. ‘Thank you for your books, my friend,’ he said quietly. ‘Reading has always been my greatest joy. And there will be much to help me with my own history of Britannia.’ He pointed to an open scroll pinned on the table, one edge splattered with wine. ‘We’d better get to work while I’ve still got a modicum of common sense left in me. It has been a long day.’
‘I can see.’
The two men hunched together over the table, the curious hue of the moonlight giving the marble a reddish tint. It was unseasonably hot for late August, and the breeze wafting over the balcony was warm and dry like the sirocco that swept up from Africa. Claudius sometimes wondered whether Pliny the great encyclopedist was not just flattering him by calling on his expertise on Britannia, a hollow victory if there ever was one. Claudius had been there, of course, had ridden out of the freezing waves on a war elephant, pale and shaking, not in fear of the enemy but terrified that he might have a seizure and fall off, bringing dishonour to his family name. Yet Britannia was his one imperial achievement, his one triumph, and he had devoted himself to writing a history of the province from the earliest times. He had read everything there was to read on the subject, from the journal of the ancient explorer Pytheas, who had first rounded the island, to the blood-curdling accounts of headhunting that his legionaries had extracted from the druids before they were executed. And he had found her, princess of a noble family, the girl the Sibyl had told him to seek out, she who would rise and fall alongside the warrior-queen.
‘Tell me,’ Claudius suddenly said. ‘You saw my father in a dream?’
‘It was why I wrote my History of the German Wars,’ Pliny replied, repeating the story he had told Claudius many times before. ‘It was while I was stationed on the Rhine, in command of a cavalry regiment. I awoke one night and a ghost was standing over me, a Roman general. It was Drusus, I swear it. Your revered father. He was committing me to secure his memory.’
‘He d-died before I even knew him.’ Claudius glanced at the bust of his father in the room, then clasped his hands together in anguish. ‘P-poisoned, like my dear brother Germanicus. If only I had been able to live up to his legacy, to lead the legions like Germanicus, to earn the loyalty of the men.’
‘But you did,’ Pliny said, looking anxiously at Claudius. ‘Remember Britannia.’
‘I do.’ Claudius slumped, then smiled wanly. ‘That’s the trouble.’ He began fingering a coin on the table, a burnished sestertius with his portrait on it, turning it over and over again, a nervous habit Pliny had seen him indulge many times before, but he let it slip out of his fingers and roll towards the scrolls by the door. Claudius sighed irritably and made as if to get up, but then slumped down again and stared morosely at his hands. ‘They’ve built a temple to me there, you know. And they’re building an amphitheatre now, did you know that? In Londinium. I saw it on my secret trip there this summer, when I went to her tomb.’
‘Don’t tell me about that again, Princeps, please,’ Pliny said. ‘It gives me nightmares. What about Rome? Your achievements in Rome? You constructed many wonderful things, Claudius. The people are grateful.’
‘Not that anyone would see them,’ Claudius said. ‘They’re all underground, underwater. Did I tell you about my secret tunnel under the Palatine Hill? Right under my house. Apollo ordered me to make it. I worked out the riddle in the leaves, in the Sibyl’s cave. Let me see if I can remember it.’
‘And Judaea,’ Pliny said quickly. ‘You granted universal toleration for the Jews, across the empire. You gave Herod Agrippa the kingdom of Judaea.’
‘And then he died,’ Claudius murmured. ‘My dear friend Herod Agrippa. Even he was corrupted by Rome, by my vile nephew Caligula.’
‘You had no choice,’ Pliny continued. ‘With nobody to replace Herod Agrippa, you had to make Judaea a Roman province.’
‘And let it be ruled by venal and rapacious officials. After all that Cicero warned a century ago about provincial administration. The lessons of history,’ Claudius added bitterly. ‘Look how I learned them.’
‘The Jewish Revolt was inevitable.’
‘Ironic, isn’t it? Fifteen years after Rome grants universal toleration for the Jews, she does all she can to eradicate them from the face of the earth.’