‘They’ll be dead in a few days; they’re not citizens. Rufinus will make his report very damning once he’s seen how much he stands to gain by their execution. I wouldn’t worry about it, brother, and it’s no more than they deserve after killing Vahram. We need to concentrate on more important business: it’s time I took a gander at Fabricius’ house.’
‘You can see right into it!’ Magnus muttered in surprise as he looked down from the Servian Wall into the torch-lit courtyard garden of Fabricius’ house, just fifty paces away.
Servius smiled and patted Magnus on the shoulder as they strolled along the walkway. ‘Only because Fabricius burned down the house between here and the wall a couple of months ago; they haven’t started rebuilding it yet.’
Magnus glanced down at the burnt-out ruin below, just visible in the weak moonlight. ‘Silly man, he doesn’t realise just how much that bit of extra sun is going to cost him.’ He stopped and scrutinised the house. The courtyard garden, surrounded by a portico with a sloping, tiled roof, was a decent size for the tightly packed Caelian Hill, stretching forty paces by twenty; although the wall surrounding it was a good twelve feet high, from where he stood, thirty feet up, Magnus could see the door that led into the tablinum and on into the atrium of the house. ‘From here to the door must be almost a hundred paces; if Fabricius walked out of it, it wouldn’t be an impossible shot for a good archer. Tigran’s our man, he’s an easterner; they’re born to the bow.’
‘My thoughts entirely; but he’s not going to come out at night at this time of year and it would be too dangerous to try during the day; Tigran needs the dark to be able to escape cleanly.’
‘Then we’ll have to come up with something that’ll bring him out from under his fat slaves and into the garden. Have Marius and a couple of the lads watch the place for the next few days; we need to get an idea of the household’s routine. In the meantime we’ve got to work out how to prevent three Blue teams and three White teams finishing ahead of the Reds.’
‘What about our Greens?’
‘That’s the easy part, brother; I saw how to do that this afternoon.’
Magnus’ face fell as he walked through the tavern door. A Greek in his late twenties, with a thick black beard and dark, expressionless eyes, sat at his table in the corner. ‘Does she want to see me, Pallas?’
‘She does, master,’ Pallas replied, getting up and bowing his head.
‘There’s no need to do that.’
‘I am a slave and you are freeborn.’
‘Maybe, but you’re also steward to the Lady Antonia.’
‘But still a slave.’
‘Which is what I’m going to be for the rest of the night.’
‘That’s a matter of perception, master. If she demanded it of me I could not refuse to go to her bed; you, on the other hand, could.’
‘And if I did that, then I wouldn’t benefit from her favour.’
The Greek steward raised an eyebrow a fraction. ‘But that would be your free choice, whereas if I refused she’d be within her rights to have me crucified.’
Magnus turned and headed for the door with Pallas following. ‘Yeah, well, however you argue it there’s no getting around the fact that she’s a powerful woman and we all have reason to do her bidding.’
‘And some of her requests are a little more demanding than others, which is why she sends me to fetch you so that she can preserve her dignity and as few people as possible know that she . . . er . . .’
‘Likes to get a hard fucking from ex-boxers?’
Pallas cleared his throat. ‘Precisely.’
*
‘You may go now, Magnus,’ Antonia murmured, lying back on the pillow and staring up into the gloom of the ceiling high above, beyond the reach of the few oil lamps placed around the bed. ‘And take your things.’
‘Yes, domina.’ Magnus looked down at the most powerful woman in Rome and wondered how it had come to this. During his two years as a boxer, after leaving the Urban Cohorts, she had often hired him to fight as an after-dinner entertainment for her friends; like many other respectable Roman matrons, she would sometimes retain him for services of a different nature after the party broke up. He had always performed his duty with diligence, acceding to all her demands – which were numerous and sometimes not for the faint-hearted. However, once he had retired from fighting, the massive difference in their social status precluded any liaison until he had met his patron Senator Pollo’s nephews, Vespasian and Sabinus. They had been favoured by Antonia and because Magnus’ loyalty was to Senator Pollo and his family, his and Antonia’s paths had crossed a few years previously; since then she had made regular demands on his services. It was not so bad, he reflected as he retied his loincloth; for a woman in her mid-sixties she was still attractive. Her skin remained smooth with only a few wrinkles around her sparkling green eyes: eyes that never missed a single detail. She wore very little make-up; her high cheekbones, strong chin and full lips needed no embellishment. Even with her auburn hair loose and dishevelled she still managed to look like the high-born patrician that she was; an image helped by the fact that she had not run to fat and her body had not yet creased and sagged.
Magnus slipped on his tunic, gently rubbing the bite-marks on his shoulder. ‘Domina?’
‘Are you still here?’
‘I have a favour to ask, domina.’
‘What is it?’
‘I would like you to give someone a racing tip.’
‘To whom and why?’ Antonia turned over languidly to lie on her belly, her eyes closed and her face nestled into the pillow; the sheet fell away from her buttocks.
Magnus admired his handiwork. ‘To your nephew, Ahenobarbus.’
‘You don’t want to get involved with him; he’s probably the most unpleasant member of my family. I’m just pleased that he and Agrippina haven’t managed to breed yet; a child of that union would be atrocious.’
Magnus knew enough about the imperial family to understand that was condemnation indeed.
‘I don’t want to get involved with him; I was hoping to do this without him ever knowing where you got your information from – until it’s been proven reliable, if you take my meaning?’
‘Why do you want him to win at the races?’
‘I don’t want him to win as much as I want him to place a bet with a bookmaker called Ignatius, big enough to ruin Ignatius when he does win.’
‘If he wins.’
‘Oh, he’ll win all right; it’ll be a sure thing.’
‘How much do you want him to put down?’
‘A thousand aurei on a Red one-two-three at odds of around fifty to one.’
‘And if he wins then the bookmaker will owe him over a million denarii; it would probably break him.’
‘Yes, domina.’
‘This bookmaker has upset you, I take it.’
‘Very much, domina.’
‘Ahenobarbus might not believe me.’
‘I know, so before he places the big bet we’ll have a practice run on the races on the calends of March; then he can judge just how good the information he’s getting is. If you’re willing to grant me this favour, have Pallas meet me at the Temple of Mars in Augustus’ Forum that morning at the third hour.’
‘I’ll think about it, Magnus; now leave me.’
‘Yes, domina.’ Magnus scooped up his sandals, took the short black-leather whip from off the bed and left the room.
‘The Whites bring their teams out of their stables’ gates and turn right, past the Pantheon and the Baths of Agrippa; they then pass between Pompey’s theatre and the Flaminian Circus and on to the Fabrician Bridge and over the Tiber Island,’ Servius informed Magnus as they stood in the rain outside the Villa Publica on the Campus Martius, three days later. ‘They cross the river, turn left along the Via Aurelia and go across the Aemilian Bridge and then through the Porta Flumentana and into the Forum Boarium, the race-day camp for all four teams. The Reds also take that route; however, the Urban Prefect never lets the Reds go at the same time as the Whites – that way he avoids any faction trouble.’