Rome's Sacred Flame Page 22

  With a cry of triumph one man pulled a copper cooking pot from the wreckage and stuffed it into a hessian sack slung over his shoulder.

  ‘Out! Vespasian shouted. ‘All of you!’ He moved as fast as the uneven surface would allow towards the group, his sword at the ready for an underarm, military thrust to the gut.

  Magnus stooped to pick up a cracked brick before coming on in support.

  The group, four men and two women, edged back at the shock of the sudden materialisation of two armed men so close by. They shared quick glances as Vespasian and Magnus advanced and came to a mutual agreement upon seeing that there were just two adversaries trying to move them from their lucrative find.

  ‘Make us,’ the man with the cooking pot said, unslinging his sack and swinging it with menace as his three comrades moved towards him, ready to stand shoulder to shoulder, all brandishing improvised weapons in one hand and daggers in the other.

  Vespasian was not in the mood to ask twice and Magnus had never seen the point in doing so. The brick hurtled through the air, felling the man, ripping open his right cheek; the women screamed as Magnus came on. Vespasian lunged forward, grabbing a knife-wielding fist and then, ducking under the swipe of a smouldering baton, he rammed his blade, lightning-quick, into the entrails of the looter, pulling him onto it with a jerk of his hand clamped around his wrist. Punching his right arm forward and to the left he pushed the doubling-over, skewered man, grunting gutturally, into the path of a comrade’s blade; with a dull thump the tip sliced into a kidney, reversing the looter’s direction as he now arched back, pierced both front and back, the low bestial noises morphing into a scream of intense agony. With a swift stroke and a stab, Magnus opened the throat of the fourth looter, spraying blood onto the women who turned and fled along with the last male whose knife remained buried in his dying comrade’s back. Angry that it had had to come to this, Vespasian finished off the two wounded men with petulant thrusts to their hearts as Magnus examined their loot.

  ‘Anything?’ Vespasian asked as Magnus rummaged through the various sacks and bags.

  ‘No, just cheap rubbish in here, sir,’ he said, tipping out a bag, its contents clattering on the rubble. ‘Anyway, I would reckon that if they’d found what we’re looking for they would have been long gone.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’ Vespasian moved forward over the wreckage and down into what was once the rectangular courtyard garden.

  Despite it having had no roof other than a colonnade around all four sides, now totally demolished, it still looked as if a ceiling had fallen into it such was the mess strewn about.

  ‘The pond is almost choked,’ Vespasian said, looking at the bricks and roof tiles lying in the green water that was much reduced in depth. ‘Which corner?’

  ‘The one nearest the Forum Boarium,’ Magnus replied, pointing at the northeastern corner.

  Vespasian knelt down and began removing the loose remains; the water, what little remained of it, was unsurprisingly hot and each piece had to be grabbed and pulled out with a quick continuous motion. Magnus joined him and together they worked, all the while aware of shouts and screams from round about as others fought over booty in a city whose law and order had completely broken down.

  ‘This’ll take both of us, sir,’ Magnus said as he tried to lift what must once have been a segment of a column, the last remaining stone in the corner.

  Vespasian leant over the rim of the pond and took a firm grip, wincing as the water scalded the soft skin of his wrists and the underside of his forearms. With a quick look between them they heaved; slowly the stone was raised and then with huge effort they pushed it away towards the middle of the pond.

  Vespasian glanced at Magnus before looking down into the water, unwilling to reach down into it and feel around for fear of bitter disappointment.

  Magnus stuck his hand in and swirled it around; his face suddenly lightened as the atmosphere all around darkened with the sinking of the obscured sun into the west. ‘There’s something here.’ He pulled out a dripping bag.

  Vespasian recognised it immediately. ‘That’s the old saddlebag that Decianus brought out of Garama.’

  Magus unclipped a fastener and opened it for Vespasian to explore. He put a hand in; deep down at the bottom he felt many smooth spheres that clacked together as he ran a finger through them. He grinned at his friend. ‘You were right.’

  ‘I normally am.’

  ‘Don’t move!’

  Vespasian and Magnus froze.

  ‘Stand up slowly and turn around.’

  They did as they had been ordered and ended looking up at a Praetorian centurion standing on the wall of rubble above them; to either side of him were four Guardsmen with javelin-like pila aimed directly at their chests.

  ‘Looting, are you?’ the centurion asked in a light manner.

  ‘I’m Senator Titus Flavius Vespasianus and this man here is a part of my household. We have a perfect right to be in the city as the exclusion order did not apply to senators, as you well know.’

  The centurion indicated to his men to lower their weapons and crashed to attention. ‘Centurion Sulpicius Asprus, sir. I’m afraid that we’ve had specific orders that the injunction against looting applies to everyone; senators and all. I have orders to round up anyone I catch. But seeing as you are a senator it’s beyond me. Come with me, sir; I’m obliged to take you before the Emperor.’

  CHAPTER XII

  IT WAS A tortuous route to reach the Gardens of Maecenas; they were forced to retrace their steps to the Fora Boarium and Romanum and then pass between the Senate House and the Aemilian Basilica, where much of Rome’s business was conducted, before heading along the Argiletum and traversing the Subura on the way to the Esquiline.

  ‘Typical, ain’t it,’ Magnus said as he surveyed the burnt-out wrecks of tenement blocks to either side of the Argiletum. ‘All those with next to nothing lose what little they had and then the premises of people like the Cloelius Brothers in the Aemilian Basilica don’t get touched; how does that happen? It ain’t natural.’

  Vespasian shifted the saddlebag to the other shoulder, its warmth excessive in the conditions. ‘I’m afraid that it’s one of the most natural things in the world, Magnus.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’d still like to know how it happens.’

  ‘I don’t suppose it’s got anything to do with the fact that Tigellinus owns the Aemilian Basilica; that would be far too cynical.’

  ‘Tigellinus owns it?’ Magnus was surprised.

  ‘Yes, Nero gave it to him as a present for services rendered a few years back; he makes a fortune out of the rents.’

  ‘I’m sure the Cloelius Brothers pay very handsomely for one of the best addresses in Rome.’

  As they passed on through the Subura the devastation was everywhere and, for the most part, complete. It had been here that the fire had burnt strongest as most of the buildings had been cheaply put up, using much timber, and crowded together. The firestorm that had swept through, fed by the wind funnelled between the Viminal and Esquiline Hills, had been so intense that much had simply disappeared, incinerated, so that there was less wreckage than there had been on the Aventine, but it was ankle-deep in the cloying ash that covered everything. The wrath of the flames, burning at such high temperatures, had had the result that the Subura fire had burnt itself out very quickly, in a matter of a couple of days, and now it was just a grey-sanded desert.

  Up the Clivus Suburanus, on the Esquiline, the damage was more similar to that of the Aventine on its western side but, as they progressed further up the hill, on its eastern side it was very different: for fifty paces there was just rubble, uncharred rubble. For it had been along the course of this road that the main fire-break had been constructed to protect the Gardens of Maecenas and Nero’s property within.

  And inside the garden’s walls there was no sign of the fire. As Vespasian looked at the lush vegetation, carefully arranged on the garden’s many terraces to give such a variety of colo
ur and shape, he could scarcely believe, despite the ash that dusted some of the plants, that had he turned around he would have been presented with a scene of devastation such had never been witnessed before in the eight hundred years of Rome’s history.

  It was to the long, round-ended building that was known as Maecenas’ Auditorium that Centurion Sulpicius led Vespasian and Magnus.

  ‘Wait here with them,’ Sulpicius ordered his men as he went in, passing the two Praetorians guarding the entrance who snapped to attention.

  ‘You seem very calm about the whole thing,’ Magnus observed.

  Vespasian grinned and looked at the saddlebag. ‘That’s because I’ve a feeling that I’m going to rather enjoy this.’

  A raised voice came from within; it was that of the Emperor. ‘Don’t ever dare to defy me; you will be recompensed. Now go!’

  Magnus sucked the air between his teeth. ‘He don’t sound in the best of moods.’

  Barging past the two guards, Tigellinus came barrelling out of the Auditorium, his face taut with fury and his eyes dark with hate.

  Vespasian watched him go, travelling at a walk so brisk as to be completely lacking in the dignity expected of a prefect of the Praetorians. ‘I’d say that’s a man who has just been ordered to do something that he’d rather not do.’

  ‘Senator, you must come in,’ Sulpicius said, poking his head out of the door. ‘Your man can stay out here.’

  Vespasian steeled himself and then walked into the building; immediately he choked back a cry of surprise. In the middle of the large space Nero stood next to a table, a large table, admiring what lay on it.

  Subrius, the same Praetorian tribune who had delivered the message to Nero in Antium, dismissed Sulpicius and led Vespasian forward.

  ‘Senator Titus Flavius Vespasianus,’ Subrius announced. ‘Suspected of looting contrary to your edict.’

  Nero waved his hand in a dismissive manner, unable to take his eyes from the table. ‘What do you think of my model, Vespasian?’

  Vespasian looked at the model, the model of a city: Rome. Yet it was not Rome as anyone had ever seen it, it was a new Rome, and at its heart stood a building so vast, arranged about plentiful gardens and a rectangular lake surrounded by colonnades, much like the one on which the dinner had been held, only four times the size. The whole complex took up most of the route Vespasian had just walked from the forum. It was a palace to surpass all palaces and with only a cursory glance at the exterior he could see that it would cost a fortune in gold to erect and, knowing Nero’s taste in décor, another fortune would be squandered furbishing it.

  ‘Neropolis!’ Nero said, still unwilling to take his eyes from the model and the huge statue of himself in its midst. ‘With my Golden House at its heart; the house where I will at last be able to live like a human being should. What do you think?’

  Vespasian did not know what to think except that the model was so detailed and thought through that it could not have been constructed in the five days since the fire had started and thus made Nero’s vision of a new Rome, Neropolis, possible. ‘Magnificent, Princeps. Such elegance.’

  Nero smiled to himself, with an air of abstraction, in the way that content, fulfilled people do. ‘It is; and it shall be a reality within two years.’

  Again Vespasian checked himself: to build a palace like that in two years would double the cost, such would be the intensity of the labour and the pressure on suppliers for materials. ‘Two years to build such a house, Princeps?’

  ‘The Golden House alone? No, Vespasian, no. Two years to build Neropolis; all of it.’

  Vespasian looked at the scale of the model and, as he did so, he noticed an anomaly: there were new buildings where he had seen for himself, within the last couple of hours, there had been no destruction; but nevertheless they were there, where the fire had failed to reach, both at the far end of the Forum Romanum and also on the, as yet completely untouched, Campus Martius. And as he looked at the site of the Aemilian Basilica he saw that the building was of an entirely different design and he realised why Tigellinus had been so unwilling to obey his master’s will for he was yet again to become an incendiary.

  Vespasian waited, saying nothing, as Nero continued to admire the model from all angles, bending down to look along thoroughfares, leaning over to look down at the gardens within the Golden House, and all the while humming to himself the ode of the Fall of Troy that he had sung in the competition at Antium on the first day of the fire. The tribune looked on, betraying no thoughts, as the Emperor gloried in the new city that he would raise from the ashes of the old whose demise, it seemed certain, he, Nero, was responsible for.

  ‘Subrius, here, tells me that you were caught looting, Vespasian,’ Nero said in a matter-of-fact way whilst revolving a dome on the Golden House. ‘Well? Were you?’

  Vespasian knew Nero well enough to make him the centre of any conversation. ‘Only for you, Princeps.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Indeed, Princeps; in order that I could keep my word to you. You see, I promised to bring you the pearls at the earliest opportunity but I will confess that I had told you a slight untruth: I said that I still had them but what I really meant was that I knew where they were as they had been stolen from me.’

  ‘Stolen?’ This got Nero’s attention and he looked directly at Vespasian for the first time in the interview. ‘By whom?’

  ‘Catus Decianus.’

  ‘Decianus! But he was the one who told me that you still had them.’

  Now was the time, Vespasian judged; now he could put his side of the story. And so he started from the very beginning, from Decianus’ seizure of Boudicca’s gold that was the initial spark that lit the flames of rebellion in Britannia, which claimed eighty thousand Roman lives, right the way through to handing the saddlebag containing the pearls over to Nero.

  ‘They’re short, Vespasian,’ Nero said after Subrius had done a tally. ‘Forty-one are missing.’

  ‘What can I say, Princeps? The centurion who brought me here will witness the fact that I had only just retrieved the bag when he came upon us; I had no time to sequester forty-one pearls. All I know is that there were five hundred when Decianus stole them from my house.’

  Nero stared hard at Vespasian, trying to detect the truth; but as one so cloaked in self-delusion he had no aptitude for it. ‘Decianus must have taken them; still, no matter. I’ll reclaim their worth from him when I take the two million sesterces that you paid him to return them in the first place. And what happened to the five million in gold and silver he took from Boudicca? I certainly never saw any of that.’

  ‘He claims that Seneca got the Cloelius Brothers to hand it over to him, whilst Decianus was in hiding in Garama, and then he gave it to you. But I don’t believe that; I expect Decianus is still sitting on the full five million.’

  Nero looked down at his model. ‘I’m going to need every sesterce that I can get if I’m to do justice to my genius. I think that Decianus will be able to play his part. Subrius, find out where he is and have him brought to me.’

  The tribune saluted. ‘Yes, Princeps.’

  ‘He’s left Rome,’ Vespasian said, trying to be helpful.

  Nero continued to admire his model; the new version of the Aemilian Basilica now seemed to particularly hold his attention. ‘You can go, Vespasian; you’re of no more use to me seeing as you seem to have very little money any more.’

  ‘Indeed, Princeps, thank you.’ Vespasian turned and strode out of the building as fast as he decently could and then on down through the gardens with Magnus scampering after him.

  ‘Well?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘Well, did he take the pearls?’

  ‘Of course he did, but that’s all he’s going to take from me; I seem to have shifted his attention onto Decianus and in the process managed to conceal my having forty-one of those pearls. Nero’s very keen that Decianus should help as much as he can to fund his new building projec
t. I’d call that a good morning’s work.’

  Magnus grinned. ‘Let’s pray to all the relevant gods that Nero has got a lot of building in mind.’

  ‘Oh, he has; I’ve just seen it. He’s got the whole city planned out and seems to have done for a while; certainly for longer than the duration of the fire.’

  ‘Do you mean?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Surely not?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Magnus, and if you want proof ...’ He pointed towards the Forum Romanum.

  Magnus squinted his one good eye in that direction. ‘Smoke; so?’

  ‘So, it wasn’t burning an hour ago and now it suddenly is and the reason is that there is a brand new version of the Aemilian Basilica and so the old one’s got to go; as well as the Senate House and all the temples on the Capitoline and a few of the older ones on the Campus Martius.’

  ‘What about the Quirinal?’

  ‘That still seemed to be residential and commercial in Nero’s model rather than public, but I think we should hurry back.’ The column of smoke rising from the Forum Romanum had thickened and had now been joined by a couple more. ‘I think no one really cares about what gets destroyed any more; if Tigellinus is having to torch his own property then why should he be worried if it spreads uphill to ours?’

  ‘Vespasian!’ Caenis exclaimed as he walked into her atrium, which was now almost completely devoid of furniture. ‘Have you seen it’s started up again, just when we all thought that it had been beaten?’

  ‘I have, my love; and I know for sure that it was deliberate.’

  ‘Deliberate?’

  He told her all that he had seen.

  ‘But that’s terrible,’ Caenis said slumping down onto the sole remaining couch, putting a hand to her mouth.

  ‘No, my love, it’s madness; and to make it even worse, I believe it’s also sacrilege: I saw Epaphroditus take an offspring of Vesta’s Flame just before the bakery was set alight; I think the fire was kindled with Rome’s Sacred Flame. Somewhere in the depths of Nero’s mind he must think that using the Flame makes it all right. Not even Caligula would have gone this far.’