Rome's Sacred Flame Read online

  Sabinus spun round. ‘Yes, Princeps.’

  ‘For how long have they been in your custody?’

  Sabinus swallowed. ‘Paulus of Tarsus was originally under house arrest when he came here almost four years ago to exercise his right, as a Roman citizen, to appeal to you. You heard his appeal two Novembers ago and passed a sentence of death upon him but, in your wisdom, ordered that it should not be carried out immediately but instead that he should be kept in the Tullianum.’

  Vespasian closed his eyes and was relieved when Sabinus was adroit enough at the farce being acted out not to add: until it suited Nero’s purpose to have him executed.

  Nero, resplendent in purple and gold, stepped into the chamber, his expression one of melodramatic shock, his arms raised and his mouth and eyes wide open. ‘And so you took him back into custody and whilst he was under your jurisdiction he and his accomplice organised the destruction of our city!’ Nero looked aghast and raised his hands to the heavens in appeal to the gods that this appalling fact may not be true.

  Sabinus stood silent; Vespasian could see that there was very little point in him trying to defend himself against the charge that he was in some way responsible for the fire by his lack of watchfulness. That it was improbable that Paulus could have organised anything from within the depths of the Tullianum was overlooked by all.

  ‘And what about his accomplice?’ Nero continued once he had received assurance from the heavens that the appalling fact was indeed true. ‘Is he a citizen too?’

  ‘No, Princeps; he comes from the province of Judaea.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He is also in my custody.’

  ‘And for how long has that been the case?’

  Sabinus swallowed again. ‘A couple of days, Princeps.’

  ‘Two days! Two days and he’s still alive. He should have been brought to me so that I could order his crucifixion as soon as you apprehended him.’

  ‘They will both be before you in the morning.’

  ‘No, that’s not quick enough; bring them to my gardens on the Vatican Hill this evening. I will judge them then before the people he caused to be homeless living in the refugee camp there. I want them to see their guilt. In the meantime make sure that notices go up around the city proclaiming the culprits so that all the people know who was responsible for the destruction of their city; and then get rid of that malicious graffiti accusing me! Me!’ Nero shrieked the last word and had turned puce; his eyes flashed about the chamber as if he suspected everyone within of daubing new-built walls with accusations against him. It was a few moments before he collected himself and drew a few deep breaths. ‘And send me as many of these miserable creatures as you have; it’s time I started making an example of them. And have that Jewish delegation from Jerusalem that have been waiting to see me since before the fire come to witness it; I want to send them back to Judaea, with their plea dismissed, left in no doubt as to what I do with intolerant religions.’

  As Nero strode from the chamber, Sabinus regained his seat, his forehead beaded with sweat. ‘That bastard Epaphroditus! He’s played me for a fool.’

  Vespasian could but concur. ‘But that was a hard one to see coming. What are your options?’

  ‘Options? That would be a luxury. If I don’t ensure that the people direct their hatred away from Nero then I might as well open my wrists now. I’ll have the notices say that it’s every citizen’s civic duty to round up these atheists and bring them to the forum.’

  ‘That went well for your brother.’

  Vespasian looked around to see who had addressed him, as he filed out of the Senate House at the close of business, to see a tall, spindly-legged middle-aged senator, standing next to Titus, with a beak of a nose and a wide forehead with thick brows all combining to give an avian impression. There was no indication that the remark had been facetious.

  ‘This is Quintus Marcius Barea Sura, Father,’ Titus informed him.

  ‘Yes, we’ve seen each other in the Senate.’ Vespasian gripped Sura’s proffered arm. ‘I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Sura; and, no, I thought that it didn’t go too well for my brother at all. But why is it a concern of yours?’

  Sura’s head jerked a couple of times in a creditable impression of a bird pecking seed. ‘No concern of mine, my dear Vespasian; it was just an observation.’ He came closer and lowered his voice. ‘We all know that it was a farce but none of us would say so out loud. However, the fact that Nero chose Sabinus to act in the farce with him can only be good for your brother as Nero will see him as an accomplice and therefore very much on his side rather than against him; very handy in this climate, I think you’ll agree. I only share this with you so that you can understand my thoughts and perhaps we shall find common ground considering that our families may well unite.’

  ‘Indeed, they may, Sura; shall we walk?’

  ‘But why so quick?’ Vespasian asked Sura as they strolled past the newly completed House of the Vestals. ‘The dowry of a million is more than acceptable but surely it will take you some time to raise that amount in cash? Do you really think that you can have that by the day after tomorrow?’

  ‘I have it now, in gold, ready waiting at my house; the result of my year as Governor of Hispania Baetica. I’d press for the wedding to be tomorrow if it wasn’t for the reopening of the Circus Maximus and the racing in honour of the festival of Ceres. Having such a sum in cash there is one of the reasons I wish the wedding to happen hastily, if you understand me?’

  Vespasian could see the point. ‘If you try to put such a sum in a bank then Nero would hear of it?’

  ‘It’s always best to keep news of one’s good fortune from the ears of the Emperor when he is so enamoured of cash.’

  ‘When is an emperor not enamoured of cash?’

  ‘Precisely; my elder daughter’s husband’s family, the Ulpii, do more than their share of keeping Nero’s attentions away from our family by regular interest-free contributions, shall we say, to the imperial purse.’

  Vespasian turned to Titus. ‘You’re happy that this should happen so quickly?’

  ‘Of course, Father. I want to get remarried as soon as possible; my future father-in-law is keen that his daughter should be a senator’s wife.’

  ‘Ahh.’ Vespasian gave a questioning look to Sura.

  ‘Titus is of the age to be eligible for a quaestorship but they come at a price at the moment and there are not many families who can afford them. However, my elder daughter’s husband, my son-in-law Patruinus, is willing to request a quaestorship for Titus next time he makes over a loan to Nero, which will be in a couple of days’ time.’

  Vespasian was astounded. ‘Why would he do that for my family?’

  ‘Not for your family but for mine.’

  ‘And why, therefore, have you chosen Titus to be the recipient of such good fortune?’

  Sura’s head jerked again in its pecking-like way. ‘Well, I would have thought that was obvious, Vespasian; dark days are coming with Nero lacking an heir – granted, the Empress is pregnant again, but even if the issue survives it would firstly have to be a boy and then manage to live fourteen years to be of an age to succeed his father.’ Again Sura’s head came forward and he lowered his voice. ‘That may be possible for the child, Vespasian, but do you think that it would be possible for, well, let’s not stoop to treasonous thought, but you get my drift, don’t you?’

  ‘I do; and I share that analysis.’

  ‘I knew we could find common ground. You see, Vespasian, in these dark days to come we will all be looking for allies and support and I’ve singled out you and your family as being one of potential; you, a hero of the invasion of Britannia and a crucial part of the suppression of Boudicca’s revolt; brother to the prefect of Rome, at least for the time being. And also you have the pleasure of the lovely Caenis as your mistress and what she does not know of imperial politics is not worth the knowing. All in all when the dice are cast and the dark days begin, I, as
a betting man, would say that you could have quite an impressive throw. I think that they are reasons enough. Now, shall we agree to the match and set the wedding for the day after tomorrow, the day Patruinus takes his money to the palace?’

  Vespasian did not need to think too long. ‘It’s a deal, Sura; the day after tomorrow it is.’

  Sura grasped Vespasian’s forearm. ‘Excellent, excellent. One piece of advice before I go: take advantage of Sabinus taking the prisoners to the Emperor this evening; if you go with him Nero will associate you in his mind with the deception that he’s trying to create. That can only be good if he thinks of you as a part of his scheming; it would give him more reason to believe that you love him, and you know just how important that is for Nero.’

  Vespasian smiled at Sura, impressed by his shrewdness. ‘I do believe you might be right; thank you, Sura, for the good advice.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll repay me one day.’

  ‘I’m sure I will.’

  The effect of the notices was swift and brutal in its violence and surprised Vespasian not one bit as he accompanied Sabinus, escorted by his lictors, across the forum to Rome’s only public prison, the Tullianum.

  ‘Hatred is a very easy thing to stir up,’ he mused as he watched a gang of youths drag two screaming slave girls towards an almost full, temporary compound, guarded by troops from the Urban Cohorts, that had been set up in front of the rostra.

  Sabinus was unmoved. ‘That’s the second time we’ve filled that compound this afternoon. I’ve already told Marcus Cocceius Nerva, the praetor who assists me with prisoners, to take more than two hundred of the miserable creatures over to the Vatican Hill. The gods only know what Nero’s going to do with them to keep the people amused.’ He knocked on the heavy, iron-reinforced door of the Tullianum.

  Vespasian watched the two girls get pushed through the gates of the compound. ‘You can be sure that they won’t be coming back across the river.’

  The door was opened by a huge, bald man of insalubrious appearance and unwholesome smell, wearing a stained leather apron over a greasy tunic. ‘Good afternoon, prefect.’

  Sabinus stepped past the man into a low, damp room, lit only by a few oil lamps. ‘Blaesus. I’ve come for the two prisoners.’

  Blaesus gave a cracked-tooth grin. ‘I’ll send Beauty for them; he’ll enjoy that. Beauty!’

  Vespasian walked through the door and the atmosphere of close incarceration came back to him immediately from the days when he had been one of the three junior magistrates overseeing book-burning and executions; it had been in this very room that he had witnessed the strangulation of Sejanus and his elder son, Strabo. He shuddered at the memory of what had happened next when the two younger children had been condemned to the same fate as their father: as it was considered unlucky to execute a female virgin he had been forced to order the deflowering of Sejanus’ seven-year-old daughter; he could still hear her screams as he walked out of the building, unwilling to bear witness to the deed that he had set in motion. It was not a recollection that he cherished.

  A rumbling growl brought him out of his unpleasant introspection; from a dim corner appeared a hirsute man, dressed only in a loincloth, his flat face almost completely covered in hair.

  ‘Fetch them, Beauty,’ Blaesus said with a certain degree of affection for what Vespasian could only assume was a sort of pet. Evidently pleased by having been entrusted with such a responsible task, Beauty grabbed a ring of keys hanging on the wall and lumbered towards a small door in a partition at the far end of the room.

  Vespasian looked at his brother in surprise. ‘You’re not keeping them down there?’ He pointed to a trap door in the centre of the room that he knew gave access to the damp and dismal cell that was home for every prisoner he had ever known incarcerated in this place.

  Sabinus shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t think that he deserved it.’

  ‘You’ve had that partition built especially because you think he doesn’t deserve it, after all the grief and death that he’s caused. He’s really got to you in your conversations.’

  Sabinus shrugged. ‘He’s a spiritual man, like myself. He’s just misled in his beliefs.’

  ‘Are you telling me that you have so much sympathy with the bandy-legged little shit after all you’ve done to suppress him?’

  ‘Your brother has begun to open his mind, Titus Flavius Vespasianus,’ Paulus of Tarsus said as Beauty opened the door with a sharp growl to invite the prisoners to step out. Bow-legged, short and bald and with half an ear missing from when it had been cut off as he led the Temple Guards in the arrest of Yeshua bar Yosef, the man he now worshipped, all those years ago in a garden outside Jerusalem. ‘I was surprised to find out just how much we had in common. It won’t be long before I convert him to the true light and cleanse him with the blood of the Lamb.’

  ‘The Light of my Lord Mithras is the only light I need and I have bathed in the blood of the Bull.’

  ‘There is only one Light and that is the One True God whose light shines on us through his son, Yeshua the Christus, who died for our sins. I’ll soon have you acknowledging that, since you are so close to seeing the truth.’

  Vespasian could tell by the ease of their speech that it was a conversation that they had often had.

  ‘There will be no time for that, Paulus.’

  ‘Ahh.’ Paulus smiled to himself as an older man with long, dishevelled grey hair and beard came through the partition door. ‘It seems that we’re not much longer for this world, Petrus.’

  Petrus scratched at the thick hair under his chin. ‘I’ll bear no sorrow in leaving it; God’s house is preferable to Caesar’s no matter how golden he builds it.’

  ‘Indeed, brother.’

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ Petrus asked Sabinus.

  ‘To be judged by Nero in his gardens across the Tiber on the Vatican Hill.’

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE SUN WAS nearing the horizon, shining into their squinting eyes, as Vespasian, Sabinus and their prisoners, preceded by Sabinus’ lictors, crossed Nero’s recently constructed bridge across the Tiber, at the apex of the dog’s-leg the river makes at the northwest corner of the Campus Martius. Before them was a town of tents and shacks swathed in the stench of raw sewage rising from the river. Their passing drew little interest from the thousands of refugees whose daily routine was to pester the aediles from their areas for the chance of accommodation in one of the new-built tenement blocks as they reached completion; every day a few more were successful in bribing or cajoling their way out of the squalid refugee town and moving into a small room in a hastily constructed building that had been designed for short-term profit rather than long-term safety.

  Vespasian looked around in disbelief at the squalor; having left Rome on the final night of the fire and only returned just the previous day, he had no idea of the conditions that the dispossessed had had to endure for the last nine months. ‘How have they tolerated this, Sabinus? Why hasn’t there been some sort of uprising?’

  ‘Pah!’ Sabinus flicked his hand towards a group of miserable-looking older men. ‘What could they do? They have to be patient and wait upon their betters making things work again for them. We had a major recruitment drive and got a lot of the men of fighting age into the legions and the rest are just dross and women. They have no spirit left, just dull patience.’ He turned to Paulus. ‘This would be ideal ground for your tales, Paulus.’

  ‘Truths, not tales, Sabinus; and I can assure you that my followers are ministering to these poor people and they are finding it to be a fertile field in which to sow the seed of the Christus’ passion.’

  ‘As are mine,’ Petrus added.

  ‘Well, for their own sakes, they had better desist and leave Rome,’ Sabinus said, ‘because they caused the fire and now they will pay.’

  Paulus looked astounded. ‘But everyone knows who really caused it.’

  ‘Do they? It might be made to look otherwise; like someone tried to make his
prophecy come true.’

  Paulus thought for a moment. ‘The Dog Star prophecy: Rome will burn at the rising of the Dog Star.’

  ‘Yes, and you told Nero that prophecy and made it sound as if it was your own; he had never heard it before. He looked into it and it gave him the perfect opportunity and cover-story. You, the leader of your new sect, said the End of Days will be ushered in by the rising of the Dog Star and, very suspiciously, Rome burns the very night that star rose last year; the night, coincidentally, of one of the blackest days in the calendar. Of course it must have been you and your people who did it. You were a fool to yourself, Paulus, and now you are going to be Nero’s scapegoat.’

  It was as if there was a feast in preparation, for the smell of roasting meat cut through the stench of the encampment as they neared Nero’s gardens, next to his circus on the Vatican Hill. A couple of Praetorian Guards stood to attention and two more escorted them as they walked, with twilight deepening, through the gates into what seemed to be an oasis of calm after the crowded conditions of the camp.

  ‘I thought Nero said that he would open his gardens to the people,’ Vespasian observed, looking about and seeing no sign of the refugee tents that he had expected.

  ‘No, that lasted a few days until Nero realised that they would be here for a couple of years,’ Sabinus replied with a wry smile. ‘He got rid of them very quickly after that, saying that they made too much noise and he needed peace in order to be able to work harder to complete the city faster.’

  ‘In other words, he couldn’t hear himself sing.’

  Sabinus chuckled as the two Praetorians, walking ahead of the lictors, led them deeper into the gardens; the smell of roasting meat grew, as did the ambient light emanating from a dozen or so torches up ahead.