Chapter One
Whatever was that?
The young man arrested his stride. He halted. At his shoulder his brother drew up equally amazed. An incongruous scent was beckoning them. They both sniffed the air.
Incredible! That was a pig's-meat sausage, vigorously frying.
Everywhere lay silent. The echoes of their own footfalls had whispered and died. No other sign of occupation disturbed the chill, tall, marble-veneered corridors of the staterooms on the Palatine Hill from which the Roman Empire was administered. Under the long-absent Emperor Tiberius these had never offered much of a homely welcome to strangers. Today was worse than ever. Arches that were meant to be guarded stood framed only by forbidding drapes whose heavy pleats had not been disturbed since they were first hung. No one else was here. Only that rich odour of hot meat and spices continued its ravishing assault.
The younger man set off walking faster. He wheeled around corners and brushed along passages as if he had just discovered the proper route to take until, after a fractional hesitation, he whipped open a small door. Before his brother caught up with him he ducked his head and strode through.
A furious female slave exploded, 'Skip over the Styx; you're not allowed in here!'
Her hair hung in a lank, sorry string. Her face was pasty, a sad contrast to the tinctured ladies at court. Yet despite her grubbiness, she wore her dull frieze dress with courageous style, and although he knew better he threw back at her drily, 'Thanks! What an interesting girl!'
Afterwards Caenis could never quite remember which festival it had been. The time of year was certain. Autumn. Autumn, six years before Tiberius died. The year of the fall of Aelius Sejanus, the commander of the Praetorian Guard. Sejanus, who allegedly kept a pack of pet hounds he fed with human blood. Sejanus, who had ruled Rome with a grip of iron for nearly two de cades and who wanted to be Emperor.
It could have been the great ten-day series of Games in honour of Augustus. The Augustales, which had been established as a memorial to Rome's first Emperor and were now conducted in honour of the whole Imperial House, would have been an occasion which explained why Antonia had given most of her slaves and freedmen a holiday, including her Chief Secretary, Diadumenus. Even more likely would have been the actual birthday of Augustus, by then a long-established celebration, a week before October began. Thinking of Augustus, the founder of the Empire, could well have stirred Antonia to what she was about to do.
Foolish, at any rate, for anyone to attempt business at the Palace on such a day. On any state holiday the priests of the imperial cult led the city in the duties of religion while senators, citizens, freedmen and even slaves, from the most privileged librarians to the glistening bath house stokers, seized their chance and piled into the temples too. Here on the Palatine the slop-carriers and step-sweepers, the polishers of silver cups and jewel-encrusted bowls, the accountants and secretaries, the chamberlains who vetted visitors, the major-domos who announced their names, the lifters of door curtains and carriers of cushions, had all disappeared hours ago. Sejanus would be lording it at the ceremonies; the Praetorians, who ought to be guarding the Emperor, would be guarding him. Caesar's palace complex, which even during Caesar's long absence from Rome thrummed with occupation every day and rustled with innumerable murmurs of life into the dead of night, for once lay hushed.
So the door flew open. Someone strode in. Caenis looked up. She scowled; the man frowned.
'Here's somebody— Sabinus!' he called back over his great shoulder, as he loomed in the low doorway. The fat spattered dangerously beneath the girl's spoon.
'Juno and Minerva—' coughed Caenis, as she was forced back from her pan while the flame lapped sideways across the charcoal brazier in a palely whickering sheet. 'We'll all go up in smoke; will you shut that door!'
A second man, presumably Sabinus, came in. This one wore a senator's broad purple stripe on his toga's edge. 'What have you found for us?'
The fat went wild again. 'Oh for the gods' sake!' Caenis swore at them, forgetting their rank as she was nearly set alight.
'A bad-tempered slavey with a pan of sausages.'
He had the sense at last to close the door.
They were lost. Caenis guessed it at once. Even the open spaces and temples among the homes of imperial family members above the Circus Maximus were deserted. The public offices on the Forum side of the Palatine were closed. Stupid to come today. With no guards to cross spears in their faces these two had blundered down a wrong passageway and ended up bemused. Only people who wanted to indulge in sad habits alone were lurking in corners with their furtive pursuits. Only eccentrics and deviants, misers and malcontents: and Caenis.
She was one of the group of girls who worked with Diadumenus, copying correspondence for the lady Antonia. Today he had ordered her to remain quietly out of trouble; later she must go to the House of Livia, where their mistress lived, and ask whether any work was required. Caenis was junior but capable; besides, Diadumenus had really not anticipated that anything significant would occur. In most respects Caenis was, like everyone else, on holiday.
Hence the sausage. She had been enjoying both her solitude— rare for a slave— and the food too. She had scraped together the price by writing letters for other people and picking up lost coins from corridor floors. She had crept in here, sliced the meat evenly and was cooking it in a pan intended for emulsifying face creams before she ate her treat deliberately, on her own. She craved her sausage with good reason: her starved frame needed the meat and fat, her deprived senses hankered after nuts, spices and the luxury of food fiercely hot from a pan. She hated being interrupted.
'Excuse me, sirs, you are not allowed in here.'
Warily she tried to camouflage her annoyance. In Rome it was wise to be diplomatic. That applied to everyone. Men who thought they possessed the Emperor's confidence today might be exiled or murdered tomorrow. Men who wanted to survive had to inveigle themselves into the clique surrounding Sejanus. Making friends had been unsafe for years, for the wrong association clung like onion juice under a chef's fingernails. Yet so many promising careers were ending in disaster that today's nobodies might just survive to ride in tomorrow's triumph beneath the laurels and ribbons of the golden Etruscan crown.
For a slavegirl it was always best to appear polite: 'Lords, if you are wanting Veronica—'
'Oh, do cheer up!' chaffed the first man abruptly. 'We might prefer you.'
Caenis gave her pan a rapid shimmy, agitating the spatula. She chortled derisively. 'Rich, I hope?' The two men glanced at one another, then with a similar slow regretful grin both shook their heads. 'No use to me then!'
She saw their veiled embarrassment: traditionalists with good family morals— in public, anyway. Veronica would shake them. Veronica was the one to astonish a stiff-necked senator. She believed that a slavegirl who was vivacious and pretty could do as well for herself as she pleased.
Caenis was too single-minded and intense; she would have to make a life for herself some other way.
'We seem to be lost,' explained the cautious man, Sabinus.
'Your footman let you down?' Caenis queried, nodding at his companion.
'My brother,' stated the senator; very straight, this senator.
'What's his name?'
'Vespasianus.'
'Why no broad stripes too?' she challenged the brother directly. 'Not old enough?' Entry to the Senate was at twenty-five; he was probably not long past twenty.
'You sound like my mother: not clever!' he quipped.
Citizens never normally joked with slavegirls about their noble mothers; Caenis stared at him. He had a broad chest, heavy shoulders, a strong neck. A pleasant face, full of character. His chin jutted up; his nose beaked down; his mouth compressed fiercely, though he seemed good-humoured. He had steady eyes. She looked away. As a slave, she preferred not to meet such a gaze.
'Not ready for it,' he added, glaring at his brother as if it were a matter of family argument.
Against her better judgement she replied, 'Or is the Senate not ready for you?' She had already noticed his obstinate roughness, a deliberate refusal to hide his country background and accent; she admired it, though plenty in Rome would call it coarse.
He sensed her interest. If he wanted it (and she reckoned he did), women probably liked him. Caenis resisted the urge.
'You have lost yourselves in Livia's pantry, sir,' she informed the other man, Sabinus.
There was a sudden stillness, which she secretly enjoyed. Though the cubbyhole looked like a perfumery, the two men would be wondering whether this was where the famous Empress had mixed up the poisons with which, allegedly, she removed those who stood in her way. Livia was dead now, but the rumours had acquired their own momentum and even grew worse.
The two men were nervously surveying the cosmetic jars. Some were em...
