Some party, thought Quintus. Not only did the Emperor have his designated official who must routinely test everything before it can touch the imperial lips, but a guest had smuggled in his own taster. It would, of course, be seen as an unforgiveable insult if Domitian found out they too were checking on the food, his gift, in case he was intending to poison them. Etiquette ordained that you must always pretend to trust a host. Perhaps that was why murders at banquets were so common. And so successful.

  “What shall we do, anyway, if Toutou groans and drops? We have to eat what we’re given.”

  “Shut up, bro! You sound like my mother.” However, Aulus thought about it. Yes, what would he do? If Toutou’s small body succumbed, as it would do very quickly if a fatal drug was present, what alternative did they have? One thing: Before he himself was carried off, Aulus Camillus would stand up and accuse their host. You only die once. May as well go out shouting defiance. Denounce the bastard. Make your own justice. Get your name recorded in history as crazily courageous.

  Quintus saw it in his eyes. “Make sure first! Don’t say anything too soon, in case that grumble in your tum is only a touch of colic.”

  “Trust me.”

  “Fat chance! Look out—black plates on the horizon.” Sharp-eyed, Quintus had spotted the next treat: the black serving plates that would become famous. Each diner was allocated his personal heavy comport.

  Aulus scoffed quietly. “You have to admit, the theming is superb. If we ever escape, I’m going to ask for the name of his orgy planner.”

  “I only wish someone had told us the big idea, so I could have brought a black-dyed napkin to wipe my fingers on.”

  The food brought upon the black platters had been coloured black. Black food is unappealing, many would say.

  10

  Back at the Capena Gate, the Justinus home was as well-lit as could be, given that its mistress was an oil heiress. Claudia Rufina budgeted well, sitting for hours with a small abacus while she listed expenditure, carefully balancing their outgoings against future requirements plus the need to maintain and invest in those olive orchards back in Baetica. But once she saw the results, she was not mean.

  Rome sucked up the precious olive oil. The rich commodity was used for so many purposes, demand was never-ending—luckily. Whenever amphorae from her estate were transported from Spain and brought to the city for sale, Claudia received a consignment. Growing up among family olive groves, she expected to use copious quantities, never troubled by the cost. Here in Rome, there was no shortage in her kitchen, nor did she stint on pottery lamps once twilight fell. Their run-down porch became a beacon after dark, the only entrance in the street with lanterns hung on brackets, lit every twilight. It showed up that the wood needed a repaint, not that anybody ever got around to that.

  The house was quiet now. With their father out for the evening, the children would normally play their mother up, thinking it safe to be naughty. Not tonight. They were subdued. They knew.

  Hosidia Meline came in through the communicating door, in search of mutual support. Secretly, she found the Justinus children overwhelming, so she had waited until she could be fairly sure Claudia had sent her romping mob to bed. Nurses would watch over them. Claudia, a thoroughly good mother, would go up first to say goodnight. If any child was sickly, it would be her role to administer medicine and cuddles, but if not, she would soon return to her visitor. That was only polite.

  On the surface, the two women shared little in common, apart from that they were both provincials and had, at different times and for different reasons, both experienced marital tension. Coming from outside Italy especially coloured their view of Rome. They were in a precarious position as overseas brides, having no family to fall back on. Marriage was supposed to make them Camilli too, but if Aulus or Quintus was difficult, Claudia or Meline were cut off from grandparents, parents and any siblings who might have argued for them. Claudia’s relatives had all died, in any case. So within the Camillus family they had bonded as outsiders. Their niece, Flavia Albia, came from Britain, though they tended not to include her. To them, Britain was beyond acceptable.

  * * *

  Now they lived with their slightly unreliable husbands in a city that was growing ever more dangerous because of its cruel ruler. Both could only nervously acknowledge that. If the Camilli were disgraced, they might find themselves wobbling on their perch in Rome. There were wide, dangerous seas between Italy and Spain or Greece.

  In fact, neither fitted in completely, even though Rome was fairly welcoming to all nationalities. Both had the disadvantage that they were pointedly sober women. Each behaved with a gravity that could make them seem awkward. Italian women, as wives in Rome, might be reserved but would then be praised for modesty and quiet conversation. Foreigners were viewed differently, as wilfully standoffish. In a snobbish city with long traditions, foreigners were accepted if their rank gave them citizenship, yet they had to fight for equal treatment. Claudia and Meline coped, but they were grateful to live closely together.

  Their mother-in-law had been a strong ally. Julia Justa was an intelligent woman with the rare quality of understanding why her sons, in their separate ways, might not be performing as perfect husbands. Before she died, her home had been an enclave of feminine control. Aulus and Quintus teased her, but they did as she said. Afterwards, when Julia and Decimus passed away within a week of one another, adjustments had been hard.

  “I am glad their parents have not had to see the danger they are in tonight.” Claudia, who had known Julia and Decimus much longer, took the lead in speaking of them.

  “Let’s not talk about it.” For a moment Meline regretted coming across from her own side of the house. But she knew she could not have borne to be alone, waiting for hours for news, uncertain whether Aulus would ever return.

  So, deliberately not talking about the danger to their husbands, Claudia and Meline toyed with stuffed honeyed dates for an hour. Their refined tête-à-tête was then broken when they heard sudden loud banging at the front entrance.

  The two women pretended to hide their first alarm. It was, said Claudia, who was always so sensible, far too early for people to be released from dinner at the palace or for news of trouble to arrive. They pretended to wait while the door porter answered—though by the time he roused himself and stumbled out of his cubicle, complaining under his breath at being disturbed, the women had been unable to stop themselves scuttling into the hallway and hopping about behind him as he peered through his grille.

  They heard him grunt. It sounded an unremarkable response, as if a greengrocer had made a morning call offering a sack of curly kale, on special terms because he had somehow overbought.…

  With infinite slowness, the retainer unbolted bolts. He behaved as if he were ninety, though in fact was in his thirties. Claudia would have pushed past him and unfastened the massive devices herself, but the last time she did so, she cut her finger on the metalwork. Meline was too good mannered; this was someone else’s house. She did, however, hiss quietly to herself in a way that was plainly a Greek curse. The look in her dark eyes spoke of damage to the porter’s anatomy. So strong was the vibe, he even turned around briefly to give her a reproachful look. Meline sucked in air sharply between her teeth. Greek might be a euphonic, elastic language of enormous antiquity, but when stressed, she did not bother with it.

  As the double doors swung inwards, in poured all the attendants who had gone out that evening with Aulus and Quintus. Meline spotted they were without Toutou, from whom they admitted they had become separated. They swore that was not their fault.

  From the ensuing babble of complaints and anxiety, the two wives extracted how palace officials had dismissed everyone, steering attendants from the audience room along with any means of transport that came with them. It had been done in such haste there was no time for explanations or the agreement of their masters to them leaving. The women soon gained a fearsome picture of curt chamberlains, backed by heavy-handed Praetorian Guards. Escorts had tumbled away down the Palatine, almost tripping over themselves in the cryptoporticus. Their masters still did not know what had happened.

  “Nobody knew what was going on, or why they kicked us out like that. It was mayhem on the way down the hill. All the escorts were in total panic. What are the masters going to do without us?”

  Claudia and Meline looked at one another. They saw at once how separating senators from their entourages was a sinister ploy. It was Domitian’s prelude to some nightmare. Meline covered her face with both hands, unable even to spit plosives.

  “Dear gods, where are they? What has he done to them?” screamed Claudia, completely overcome.

  “Nothing, tell yourself he has done nothing … but if he ever lets them go, how will they get home?”

  “Go back out there!” Claudia commanded one of Quintus’s ex-legionary guards. “Run! Run at once to the Aventine; go round the far side of the Circus, not close to the Palatine. Go as fast as you can to Helena and Falco’s house. Tell them everything that has happened, then ask them what we ought to do!”

  11

  Back on the Palatine, the beautiful naked boys were serving cheesy pastries.

  “Mmm … I always find funeral food so more-ish!” muttered Aulus, not even trying to sound guilty. It was all he could do to hold off long enough to let his little slave boy taste the cheese parcels first.

  Quintus was munching wheat cakes, even though they had been coloured black. This seemed to be achieved through charring, though the subtle palace kitchen staff had managed to avoid any taste of cinders. A crisp coating held together a luscious interior.

  With his mouth full of spiced, honeyed cake, he could not answer. Both men had healthy appetites, despite the unnerving occasion; the imperial chefs had no problem enticing them with traditional graveside concoctions, rich in almonds, hazelnuts, sesame and pomegranate seeds, currants, cinnamon and cloves, parsley and bay. There comes a point for a nut-lover, Quintus thought, where funeral food is worth taking a risk, even when you are dining with a megalomaniac who wants to kill you.

  “Dig in!” he managed to utter eventually, picking a grain from between his teeth with one fingernail. “We are honouring the dead by sharing.” He began waxing lyrical, to keep his spirits up. “Hypothetically there may be no corpses tonight, but we must imagine their presence. Just as, at a necropolis, spirits pass us unseen, a breath in the breeze that wafts by their teary mourners, we feel their unseen company as we remember them tonight. The poor sods who died at Tapae may be have been buried miles from here, assuming anyone did ever collect the bodies up, but here we are, heaping upon them the reverence they deserve.”

  “You are insufferable when you descend into mystic claptrap,” was his elder brother’s cool judgement.

  Quintus gave him a grin that was honestly infantile. They could have been still precociously five and self-consciously seven. “All right. If we have to go, better to die while chomping on the good flavours that have sustained our grief-stricken forefathers.”

  “I remain unimpressed by your ‘remembering our roots’ stuff. You wouldn’t know a root if you stumbled over it and broke your ankle.”

  “You’re just so humourless,” Quintus continued, declaiming, “Think of tonight as having a real purpose. Yes, it is dining with the dead in order to be at one with our ancestors, but at the same time, a good scoff in shared company provides solace for the unhappy, it anneals the internal stress of bereavement, it helps the living along the path of their recovery from grief.”

  “That’s a useful motto for a caterer!” Aulus dismissed the bombast. “Actually I was talking to Genius, you know that famous cook Falco bought and quickly sold on because the man couldn’t cook—in case you didn’t notice, they had him back when Albia got married. Weird people. According to Genius, you would think happy wedding guests would tuck in with gusto—yet he said they eat far less than expected. It’s mourners at funerals who scoff.”

  “Because this is food as human comfort, plus respect for the national gods. We are one with our ancestors and one with our fellow mourners. Perhaps,” suggested Quintus darkly, “this night on the Palatine, we are even one with the Emperor.”

  “Our Master wouldn’t like you saying that!” replied Aulus, lowering his voice. Domitian was not one for sharing himself with people. He thought everyone was against him, which in general they were.

  The brothers had the sense to glance around to check, but their fellow guests were lost in fearful concentration on whatever the naked servers pranced up with. Cynics, who knew the ways of rough-end slaves, were keeping an eye on the boys in case they peed in the dish they were offering. If anyone looked up, it was only to squint nervously at what the Emperor was doing.

  Domitian was not eating. He rarely did in public. It was said he preferred a hearty meal by himself at lunchtime. Tonight, he was simply watching. So, diners who dared turn in his direction found him staring at them, intent on how they received his strange banquet.

  This was not a feast where people raised a beaker to compliment their host if they caught his eye.

  There was wine, however. Dark red-black vintages, heavy in tannin, served in ebony goblets. Domitian was not drinking. His young eunuch cupbearer, Earinus, spent more time preening than presenting drinks. Some world-rulers and empire-builders drown themselves in liquor until their reddened bloated bodies expire in alcoholic excess. Others never drink. They will not risk loss of self-control. Domitian was one of those. Inevitable, really.

  Still, wine was one of the traditional beverages served during feasts at tombs. At first, the Camilli tried sticking to water because wine was the obvious carrier for any poison with which the Emperor hoped to purge large numbers from the Senate. Eventually, Aulus reminded Quintus that when Nero murdered his stepbrother, his young and popular rival Britannicus, the taster passed the wine as safe but Nero’s fatal drug, reputedly supplied by the famous palace poisoner Locusta, was hidden in the cold water for mixing. One sip and the princeling was done for.

  “Do we think Locusta is still alive?”

  “If so, she would have to be about two hundred.”

  “Sipping at the Fountain of Youth?”

  “No, I think she was killed in the Year of the Four Emperors.”

  “Poison?”

  “Natural causes—execution.”

  “Did she train up apprentices?”

  “Yes, but the old crafts are dying. No one wants to be bothered. These days you can’t find suppliers with the expertise, however big a bribe you offer. The fine art of removing enemies has been allowed to fade; commercial drug-dealing is all pastilles for breath-freshening and pods of wax to push up your arse for your haemorrhoids.”

  “I wouldn’t know!” Quintus demurely pretended, with a smile he intended to annoy his brother. Aulus ignored him.

  They decided to move on to wine, taking it neat as a safety precaution.

  12

  Although the room had always been hushed, now an even denser silence fell. All the guests lay rigid with anticipation. Domitian began speaking.

  The Camillus brothers listened to him with a quiet, respectful air, both wearing the faint smiles of men who had learned during various careers how to brace themselves to last out until the full story had been heard so the real truth behind it was revealed. Aulus had a fistful of funeral nuts, through which he chewed gloomily, screwing up his eyes. Quintus folded his hands and put himself into a private trance.

  Dictators love to talk. It is remarkable how men who wield excessive sole power will be consistent in this: Given a captive audience, they all drone on for hours. And hours. The human brain can only concentrate for twenty minutes, ask any teacher. Dictators have rarely been despatched on a training course to learn that simple fact. Many dictators are completely untrained; tyranny comes to them naturally.

  When they speak, everything else stops. Nobody dares interrupt. Everyone sits looking rapt, hanging on these words of wisdom even while they are wondering what the flowing tirade really means. Clearly it is their own inadequacy if they are not transported into astounding inspiration by the demagogue’s words of wisdom, so many words, so long in the delivery.… No one can leave. Dictators never pause for a comfort break, nor may any listener abscond, not even with the anxious expression of someone desperate for the lavatory. Go before you come. Never was the adage so appropriate. Leaving the scene prematurely is the fast route to dying. It may feel like the anteroom to hell if you stay, but you’d better remain and look happy.

  Dictators have no use for notes, for they are borne up by self-conviction. Besides, they wave their arms a lot for emphasis and to wind themselves up. They start, then continue until they have finished, which you know is going to be a long time later. They know what they have to say, and they most certainly will get through it. All of it, then any more that may come to them during the endless process of the speech.

  Keep smiling. Keep smiling and whenever you have the chance, applaud enthusiastically. At one level, clapping will lengthen your misery by making the speech last longer—though of course it’s extending your good fortune if you genuinely like their philosophy. That has been known. On the other hand, drowning him out with cheers provides a respite from the ceaseless continuance of the notable personage. He has grasped this gathering by the throat while he is telling you what he has done so gloriously, then, mentioning the foolish mistakes of others who are not favoured by history in the unique way that he is, and haranguing you with how the future will be glorious because he gives this speech, you listen to it, and that is how it has to be because he has his special understanding, which you are privileged to be sharing.

 

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