Emperor of Rome Page 31

  ‘And yet you still accepted the consulship from Vitellius?’

  ‘I had been promised it by Otho; Vitellius honoured Otho’s appointments and I saw no reason to refuse just because he had executed my father.’

  Vespasian considered this for a few moments as the final senators came over to support the law. ‘You were right, of course, Sabinus; one must not mix the personal with business.’ Vespasian frowned as a lone figure, unknown to him, standing on the other side of the chamber, caught his attention. ‘Who’s that?’

  The younger Sabinus looked over. ‘That’s Thrasea’s son-in-law, Helvidius Priscus, one of this year’s praetors.’

  ‘I wonder which of the two is motivating him then: politics or business?’

  It was a sea of jubilant faces and a cheer that would drown the howl of any storm that greeted Vespasian as he emerged from the Curia into the Forum Romanum. Waiting for him, as had been previously arranged, was Caenis. Raising his arms to acknowledge the crowd’s deafening accolade, he turned to the woman he had loved throughout his adult life and smiled. ‘Come, my love.’

  Caenis did not hesitate, but stepped forward, passing through his lictors, and took her place at his side; Vespasian slipped an arm about her and gestured to her with the other hand and the people of Rome responded, accepting the former slave as their Emperor’s de facto wife, raising more than a few eyebrows of the senators witnessing the event. ‘They were hoping to marry their daughters to me I should guess,’ Vespasian said as he noticed some of the looks that the people’s acceptance of Caenis had engendered. ‘But don’t worry, my love, you are safe; after all, the Senate has just voted me the power to do what I deem to be best for the state and I deem it best that you be by my side.’

  Coquettish, she looked up at him. ‘Is that the only position you deem it best for me to be in, my Emperor?’

  Vespasian laughed and turned back to the crowd and with an extravagant overhead gesture signalled that they should follow him up to the burnt-out Capitoline.

  Vespasian, standing between the blackened stumps of the columns of the Temple of Jupiter, pulled a fold of his toga over his head, in deference to the deity about to be invoked, and stretched his arms out, palms up. ‘Jupiter Optimus Maximus, or by whatever name you wish to be called, whether you, for whom this precinct is sacred, are a god, or if you are a goddess, it is right to make an offering of a pig to you in atonement for clearing and enclosing this sacred place. Therefore and for these reasons, whether I or someone who I designate shall make offerings, may it be considered rightly done. I pray good prayers to you in regard to this endeavour, offering this pig in atonement, in order that you may willingly favour me, my house and home, and my children. On behalf of these things, may the offering of this pig in atonement honour and strengthen you.’

  Mucianus’ mallet slammed into the pig’s head, stunning the beast, an instant before Vespasian slit its throat with a sharp tug of his blade. Blood gushed, splattering into the bronze bowl at the animal’s feet. Stepping back to avoid an ill-omened splash on his toga, Vespasian watched the pig give itself up to death.

  As its heart gave out, the pig was rolled onto its back by two acolytes from the temple and stretched out for Vespasian to make the incision and remove heart and liver.

  With the heart sizzling in the altar fire, Vespasian placed the liver on the table next to it. With a damp cloth he cleaned the organ of blood and then leant down to scrutinise it. And there, just as it had been all those years ago on a sacrifice he had made as consul, was the mark he had half expected. Two veins rising to the surface and joining to form the letter ‘V’; it was beyond a coincidence and now it made sense of all the signs and portents that had followed him – or, more probably, led him – all his life.

  Vespasian lifted the liver and showed it, bearing its mark, to those members of the Senate closest to him, causing more than a few eyes to widen in religious awe. He then placed the liver down and turned to the crowd. ‘Jupiter Optimus Maximus has given his blessing to our endeavour: today we commence the rebuilding of his city beginning with his temple and I, your Emperor, shall take the lead.’ He crossed to where Caenis stood by an almost-full hod of rubble held upright by a public slave.

  Caenis stooped to pick up a charcoaled piece of timber and held it in the air so that all could see before symbolically placing it in the hod.

  Vespasian took the hod from the slave and smiled at Caenis. ‘If only this moment could be the reality of what we have achieved, my love; but I fear that the mood will change as the practicality of what must be done to bring financial stability and to rebuild the city becomes clear. They think I’m bringing them peace, and so I do, but alongside it I also bring austerity.’ He lifted the hod onto his shoulder and, staggering under the weight, carried the first load of rubble away from the blackened and ruined Temple of Jupiter.

  *

  ‘So to pay the troops off and send them back to their provinces without them feeling hard done by will cost one hundred sesterces per man,’ Vespasian said, contemplating the problem whilst lying on a couch with his eyes closed and a damp cloth on his forehead. ‘That is roughly half a million per legion so therefore fourteen million for all twenty-eight. And then there is the Praetorian Guard, the Urban Cohorts and the Vigiles, all of whom will expect something.’

  ‘Don’t forget the auxiliary cohorts,’ Magnus said, rubbing a balm into his ankle which had begun to swell up as, through the window, a light rain fell on the Circus Maximus standing, resplendent and new, below the Palatine.

  ‘I was coming to them. So if I give three hundred sesterces each to the guard and two hundred to the Urban Cohorts and fifty a piece to the Vigiles and auxiliaries, that is roughly another three million, plus eight hundred thousand plus three hundred and fifty thousand and then another seven million for the auxiliaries, making a total of … Hormus?’

  Hormus did a brief piece of arithmetic. ‘Twenty-five million, two hundred and fifty thousand sesterces, master.’

  ‘Let’s call that thirty as there will inevitably be more, and that is just the army; we haven’t begun to consider the fleets.’ Vespasian sucked the air through his teeth in disbelief. ‘Have they finished the inventory of what was left in the imperial treasury yet, Hormus?’

  ‘It’s still being done, master; but it shouldn’t be much longer.’

  ‘Unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to take as long as you might have wished for, if you take my meaning?’ Magnus said, turning his attention to his other ankle.

  ‘Indeed I do, Magnus,’ Vespasian replied, rubbing his eyes and sitting up; the damp cloth fell into his lap. ‘Tax, tax and more tax, but on what without slowing commerce? If I raise the purchase tax too much then fewer transactions are made and even more transactions are hidden. I can do a one-off poll tax as I did in Egypt but that is only a stopgap. Taxing luxuries brings in so little as, logically, only a few can afford them. I’ve written to all the governors ordering them to squeeze their provinces, and I’ve made sure that their procurators are of a rapacious disposition on the basis that more than a few of them will be too greedy and I’ll be able to prosecute them and get their ill-found wealth off them when they return to Rome.’

  Magnus grinned. ‘I like that one; I think that’s very clever. It’ll be only what they deserve and quite lucrative.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not going to fill the treasury.’

  ‘No, so it won’t. I think, sir, that you’ve got to start thinking a bit differently.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’re taxing purchases of everything from slaves and garum to statuettes of gods and glass beads, all the normal stuff that people buy, and you’re right – if you raise the tax too much then they buy less or, at least, pretend to. No, sir, you’ve got to tax the stuff that people can’t do without, so no matter what the tax is they will still pay it.’

  ‘Like what? Water? Grain? A seat at the circus? There would be riots.’

  ‘And righ
tly so if you were to bring in such foolish measures. But I’m sure there are some things.’

  ‘Urine,’ Hormus said.

  Vespasian looked at his freedman in disbelief as Caenis came into the room carrying an armful of scrolls. ‘What? Tax everyone for using the public lavatories? Make them pay each time they go? Or even better, tax their turds as well; make them shit on some scales and charge by the pound; or would it be easier to tax them on their length and width; or, perhaps, have a sliding scale of weight versus volume. Don’t be silly, Hormus.’

  ‘I was being serious, master; but you misunderstood me. I meant: tax the people who collect the urine: the tanners, the bleachers and the laundries. Every street has a barrel in which people piss and these traders take it away for free as well as emptying the cisterns of the public lavatories that don’t have a drainage system. Why should they have one of the main tools of their trade for nothing when it’s actually the city that provides it? They should pay a tax.’

  A slow look of comprehension crept across Vespasian’s face. ‘Of course they should; they’ve been getting away without being properly taxed for years. Naturally, they’ll pass the tax onto their customers and so their goods and services will become more expensive but then that will mean I’ll raise more in the purchase tax and therefore gain both ways. The people’s anger will be directed away from me because I won’t be seen as the one who put the prices up. Hormus, that is brilliant; I shall tax piss.’

  ‘And the good people of Rome shall piss tax,’ Magnus quipped.

  ‘Rome? No, Magnus, the whole Empire is going to piss tax.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid that you’ll be laughed at?’ Caenis asked, placing the scrolls down on a table and warming her hands over a brazier glowing in front of the window.

  ‘People can laugh as much as they like; the point is that it’s a never-ending source of money.’

  Caenis considered this for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right.’ She indicated to the scrolls, a good dozen of them, lying on the table. ‘And this is something else that’s never ending: correspondence from the provincial governors. Are you ready?’

  Vespasian picked up the damp cloth, wetted it in a bowl of water and placed it back on his forehead and lay back down. ‘Come on then, let’s get this over with, but in future I’m going to deal with correspondence first thing in the morning when I’m fresh.’

  ‘And finally from Marcus Suillius Nerullinus, the Governor of Asia,’ Caenis said, picking up the final scroll as the clouds cleared outside and a late afternoon sun emerged to shine through the west-facing window, bringing with it the smell of evaporating rain and the chatter of birds rejoicing in more clement weather. “To Titus Flavius …”’

  Vespasian waved his hand. ‘Yes, yes, my love, skip all that, and all the thanks for appointing him as well as the congratulations on my return to Rome and all the other flattery and sycophancy and get to the point of what he really wants, because what I really want is my dinner.’

  ‘Now that sounds like a fine idea,’ Magnus concurred. ‘I expect your guests are arriving and we wouldn’t want to keep them waiting, would we?’

  Caenis scanned the rest of the letter and then put it down. ‘He wants two things, Vespasian: firstly your advice as to whether he should start to limit the amount of Jewish captives being sold in the province’s slave markets as the influx is causing the prices to go down, even for virgins, and so therefore the tax revenues are falling. Nerullinus doesn’t wish you to be displeased with his efforts at raising taxes in one of the most profitable provinces.’

  Vespasian considered the matter and then turned to Hormus, sitting at a desk with a stylus in his hand and a fresh wax tablet before him. ‘To Marcus Suillius Nerullinus from Titus Flavius Caesar Vespasianus Augustus, greetings. I agree that something must be done to preserve the value of slaves and I shall write to my son, Titus Caesar, in Judaea and have him limit the amount of captives the slave-dealers can export in any one month. In the meantime impose a strict limit, as you see fit, on the number of slaves that are allowed onto the market each month in your province and ensure that the rest are kept in their pens and not shipped out to another province where the problem will just reoccur.’ Vespasian looked back to Caenis. ‘What was the second issue?’

  ‘He’s worried about the growing number of followers of this crucified Jew, Christus.’

  ‘Yeshua bar Yosef? I thought that when Nero executed Paulus of Tarsus and his friend Petrus a few years ago, after the Great Fire, that this would go away.’

  ‘According to Nerullinus it hasn’t. He was obliged to crucify a few hundred when he arrived in the province and had the population swear the oath to you. Since then he fears that the canker is growing and that when it comes to reaffirming the oath in the new year there could be more that need to be nailed up.’

  Vespasian sighed and sat back up. ‘What to do about this? I’d forgotten about it whilst I was in Judaea dealing with equally unpleasant religious extremists.’

  ‘If you want my opinion, sir,’ Magnus said, ‘kill them where you find them, these unbelievers, atheists, these deniers of the gods; it ain’t natural. We’ve watched it grow and now it’s your chance to do something about it. They won’t be satisfied until everyone believes the rubbish that they believe, that much was obvious from that little shit, Paulus. Start here in Rome and carry on the good work that Nero began – at least he got one thing right.’

  Vespasian shook his head. ‘No, I’m not going to kill people for their beliefs; only if they break the law.’ He turned to Hormus. ‘Next sentence. As to the problem with the followers of Christus, I consider that you should make your own judgement on a case by case basis. Should they refuse the oath, apply the full weight of the law upon them. If they see sense and take the oath, then, so long as they do not break the law in any other manner, they should be free to get on with their lives.’

  ‘I think you’re making a grave mistake there, my love,’ Caenis said as Hormus scratched away with his stylus. ‘They won’t reward your clemency.’

  ‘And Myrddin won’t thank you,’ Magnus said.

  Vespasian looked at his old friend and frowned, wondering what the immortal druid of Britannia had to do with the subject.

  Magnus shook his head. ‘Don’t you remember why he wanted to kill you? You told me he said that one day you would have a chance to cut out the canker that is growing at the heart of Rome and threatening to kill the old gods and that you would fail to do it. Well, I would say that this is what he was talking about: you’re doing nothing about the people who deny the existence of our gods. So perhaps you should think about that.’

  ‘It’s just a small sect, a passing fad; how can something like that destroy the true gods? No, I’ll not go after them so long as they behave themselves. Compared to the Jews in Jerusalem, they are a minor threat to our way of life; but since the news of Titus being ready to storm the Temple they shouldn’t be troubling us for much longer. Let’s get rid of one set of religious maniacs first before we start turning another sect into fanatics ready to die for their nonsense.’

  ‘Well, I’d say it’s too late for that; you’ve seen how easily they die under the illusion that they are going to a better world. Bollocks, it is. Now, I for one am going to eat.’ Magnus heaved himself out of his chair, grunting with the effort and then grimacing with pain; taking a sharp breath he supported his weight on the desk.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Vespasian asked, sitting up in alarm.

  ‘Not really,’ Magnus wheezed, clutching his side. ‘It comes and goes; I’ve a feeling that I’m running out of fight and fuck, but I ain’t complaining, I’m eighty and I’ve had plenty of both.’

  ‘I’ll get my doctor to have a look at you.’

  ‘The fuck you will. What’s he going to do? Feed me some foul-smelling concoction of crushed herbs and insects and advise me not to eat and drink so much? Where’s the joy in that? No, sir, I shall go out as I’ve lived: enjoying myself and bolloc
ks to everyone else; and if this evening’s dinner doesn’t kill me then I’ll just have to try harder tomorrow.’ Magnus straightened up, took a couple of steadying breaths, turned and walked towards the door, muttering.

  ‘Helvidius Priscus will do everything he can to prove you an autocrat,’ Mucianus said as the fruit and sweet wines were served.

  ‘And he won’t stop until he thinks that he has done so,’ Nerva added, looking with interest as the after-dinner entertainment arrived in the form of half a dozen dancing girls and a troupe of female musicians. ‘Which means that he’ll question every decree you make and look for evidence of tyranny.’

  ‘You should have him executed, Father,’ Domitian said.

  Vespasian dipped his fingers in a bowl of water and wiped them on his napkin. ‘I don’t kill a dog for barking.’ He turned to Caenis, reclining next to him on the couch. ‘Who organises the entertainment here?’

  ‘I do; as do I set the menu and choose the wine.’ Caenis rubbed his arm. ‘We may not be married, my love, but I shall do all the things that a wife should and I won’t even pester you to grant me the title of “Augusta”.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll find your reward in other ways.’

  ‘Don’t you worry, Vespasian, I do: I control access to the Emperor; that’s worth a lot more than a mere title.’

  Vespasian gave a wry chuckle. ‘If you upped your prices then I might not have so many people petitioning me.’

  ‘Don’t you believe it, sir,’ Magnus said, his one good eye fixed on the dancers as they took up their opening poses showing off lithe limbs to full effect. ‘Price was never a hindrance to asking a favour.’

  ‘Very true, Magnus; it looks like you’re going to be a very wealthy woman, Caenis.’

  ‘I already am, my love, from all the money that I made for charging for access to Narcissus and Pallas.’

  A couple of beats of a drum brought the musicians together and a slow tune ensued to accompany the elegant gyrations of the dancers. Conversation slowed as the diners enjoyed the grace of the performance. Vespasian reached for Caenis’ hand and squeezed it, taking in the magnificence of the palace triclinium. Originally built by Augustus it was then rebuilt after the fire by Nero in a surprisingly tasteful fashion, as he reserved his more extravagant tastes for the Golden House. It was a work of beauty: a high ceiling decorated with a geometrical pattern painted mainly in a strong red contrasting with sky- and deep-blue; thin bands of vibrant green and a bright yellow divided the squares and oblongs of strong colour. All four walls were frescoed with scenes from mythology containing a musical theme, reflecting Nero’s love of the art; the double door, polished cedar wood, was a wonder in itself as it had glass panels inset within it that glowed with the lamplight of the equally impressive atrium beyond. ‘It’s all ours, my love,’ he whispered in Caenis’ ear. ‘All ours. Who would have thought it on that day when our eyes met just outside the Porta Collina on the day I came to Rome, no more than a country boy with high ideals, rustic manners and a Sabine accent.’