by Simon Turney
Cleander did not move. Commodus watched him for a long moment, and then struck. I was surprised. The prince was not quite five years old yet, but still he struck with force and speed. The blunted wooden tip slammed into Cleander’s upper arm and sent him spinning away with a yelp.
‘Fight me,’ Commodus said, excitedly. The slave struggled back upright. There were tears in his eyes and I almost felt sorry for him. But I could not, for I knew he hated me. Cleander stood, gripping the sword, his bruised arm hanging limp. Commodus struck again. His second blow was a swipe that hit the already injured arm near the wrist. Cleander cried out again.
‘Come on,’ Commodus urged him, beginning to sound angry.
His third blow was stopped. Cleander’s wooden sword clonked against the prince’s weapon and pushed it aside. Commodus laughed, though the slave stared at the sword in his hand in horror, as though it had moved of its own volition.
The slave’s sudden involvement just increased Commodus’ desire to fight, and he swung again. This time Cleander deliberately placed the blade in the way, parrying the blow. Another strike. Another parry. I realised suddenly that I’d not been playing lookout at all but had been watching the energetic young prince and his slave fight. I dragged my attention from them and noted with dismay the array of slaves standing rigid, shocked and silent around the gardens, watching this diminutive display of prowess. There was little hope of the tale of this fight not circulating throughout the palace within the day. My watching for adults was largely moot. Still, my gaze raked the arcades and doorways. I was drawn to the fight once more by a cry of pain, and I glanced back to see Commodus clutching his leg with his free hand. Cleander was ashen-faced, looking back and forth between the weapon in his hand and the prince he’d hurt.
I hurried across, heart in my throat, but before I got there Commodus was standing straight again, weapon out ready. I could see the red mark and graze from the slave’s blow and knew that it would soon blossom into an impressive bruise. While he might ordinarily have been able to explain such a mark away as accidental, it would be difficult not to connect it to the inevitable rumours that the prince had been sword fighting in the stadium garden.
The combat began again, and Commodus was relentless, his miniature sword swinging with little true skill but a great deal of intent, Cleander parrying desperately, unwilling to risk bruising the imperial flesh any further. I felt cold to the bone; this was wrong. And despite the chasm of animosity that lay between Cleander and I, truly I pitied him now, for Commodus’ blood was up. He was enjoying himself entirely too much, and I had a feeling that the only way Cleander was going to get out of this without a broken limb was to actually hurt the prince. And if he did that, the lash awaited, almost certainly with a fatal conclusion. He was trapped in a fight he could neither win nor lose.
Curse me for a fool, but for the first, and only, time in my life, I came to Cleander’s aid. I hurried across and stepped between the two of them, earning a look of narrow-eyed confusion from Commodus. I turned and tried to take the sword from Cleander’s hand, my intention to end this mess and save him from punishment. To my amazement, the slave gave a low growl, clung on to the blade and heaved me aside.
I staggered and almost fell into the flower bed, and by the time I righted myself they were fighting again, Commodus laughing gleefully, Cleander doing little more than constantly pushing aside the prince’s blows. It was pure chance that my gaze happened to wander up to the balcony of the level above in time to see the gangly figure of Nautius Costa emerge into the light.
‘Trouble,’ I hissed.
I was impressed. One moment Commodus was there, fighting and laughing carelessly. The next, there was no sign of him, just Cleander standing alone, staring at the wooden sword in his hand, still a little shocked. A shaking movement among the hedges betrayed Commodus’ location to me as he scurried away to the arcade and safety. Cleander dropped the sword as though it burned his fingers.
Commodus was gone. The slaves around us, deprived of the spectacle of a prince fighting a slave, had gone back to work on the gardens, and Costa, at the balustrade above, swept the grounds with his birdlike gaze and, seeing no sign of his student, stalked off elsewhere in search of the errant prince. Suddenly I was alone in that corner of the garden with Cleander. The slave, finally comfortable that he’d got away with it, turned to me.
‘You’d better hope that the prince doesn’t blame you for his bruise,’ I said. ‘You know word of this will get to the emperor.’
‘I’m his friend,’ Cleander spat back. ‘He’ll look after me.’
I bridled. This sneering jackal of a slave? A friend of princes? Somewhere inside I was rather worried that he was right, but I had already lost some of my closeness with Commodus to little Annius and I was damned if I was going to admit that Cleander had a share.
‘You’re a slave,’ I said unpleasantly. ‘You can never be his friend. At best you’re a toy.’
I thought that had won the argument, especially given the colour of his face and the fact that he seemed to be lost for words. I turned my back on him, partially for the meaning of that very gesture, and partially so he couldn’t see the smug grin I wore. That smile slid away instantly as the slave’s next words thudded into my back like knives.
‘You love him. You’re in love with him.’
I stopped, frozen in place, shocked. It was a common jibe among playful children, of course, a sly mockery to put friends in their place, but the tone of his voice made this remark something different. It was said almost as an insult.
‘But you’re the daughter of a freedwoman. Your father was a slave. And he’s a prince.’
Was he being serious? I shook it off and turned, narrow-eyed. ‘You’d best keep your opinions to yourself, slave,’ I snapped. ‘I may be a pleb, but even that is more than you can ever hope to be.’
It was an equally childish jibe, but it felt good and it shut him up long enough for me to walk away. For the next few hours I sat somewhere secluded where nobody would find me and worked furiously on my sewing. Of course I loved Commodus, but like a brother, or a friend. To suggest anything more was clearly Cleander just trying to annoy me.
The days continued to pass, and Commodus was confined to his lessons, two slaves given the specific duty of keeping tabs on him so that such a thing could not occur again. He had blamed a trip on the steps for the purple welt on his leg, but no one was fooled. He was suddenly trapped in education and, as often as possible, the emperor himself sat his wayward son down and oversaw his education. Consequently, Annius and I spent our time working and learning too. Cleander and I avoided each other at all costs, taking wide and complex routes through the palace so as not to cross paths.
The mood on the Palatine became subdued, for the plague had struck Rome at last. Annius’ birthday celebration passed, and though the imperial family and the entire court enjoyed feasts and plays and entertainers, the atmosphere remained tainted by the conditions all around us. Initially there were just a few cases of the poor coughing up blood and it was brushed over as a normal illness typical of the sort that bred in the squalid conditions of Rome’s poorest areas. Soon, though, shopkeepers were closing their stores and public servants were choking and dying in the suburbs. The bodies of the dead began to be hauled to burial pits outside the walls by the cartload. Physicians were working flat out, earning huge amounts of coin from people who were clearly past saving and, though I did not yet know him, it was then that the great medicus Galen fled the city for his homeland in the east, escaping the worst of the plague-ridden streets. While the spacious, wealthy areas of the city remained as yet untouched, it was becoming hard not to feel worried and threatened by contagion so close to our doorstep.
I was more oblivious to the true horror of the disease than many, locked away as I was in the palace, safe among the rich. I knew what was happening, and the gloom of the Roman mood had settled on me, but I did not
truly understand the threat until the day Verus returned.
A courier reached the city one afternoon with the news that the absent emperor was but two days from Rome. He had landed at Puteoli rather than Ostia in order to proceed in a stately procession up the Via Appia to Rome, drinking in the adulation of the cities on the way and indulging in wine and banquets at each stage. Once it was known that the emperor was approaching, men were set to watch for him, and when we heard he had reached Albanum, the palace became a blur of activity. The resident emperor had decided to march out to meet his brother at the city limits alongside the senators who traditionally welcomed heroes home by issuing forth to greet them.
Marcus Aurelius, divine emperor of Rome, was at the head of the column on his fine white mare, bedecked as though for war. He was quite a sight. Of course, I say he was at the head, but that is not quite true. A sizeable unit of Praetorians moved in front, clearing the path and securing the route for their emperor, others of the Guard moving out to the sides in a protective cordon, and behind them, the ever-present imperial lictors with their bundles of rods and axes stepped ahead of the emperor’s horse in two lines.
Behind Aurelius, the empress Faustina was carried aloft in a litter of gleaming wood and gold, draped with white and purple that had likely come from my mother’s hands. The curtains were drawn back enough for the crowds to catch tantalising glimpses, but not enough to give too clear a view. Faustina was far from shy and withdrawing, but streets crowded with plague-riddled beggars were not to her taste.
Then came the imperial children. Commodus and Annius were in a biga driven by a dedicated charioteer, their only unmarried sister following on in a litter of her own. Whenever the column rounded a bend, and I could see far enough forward to catch that biga, I saw Commodus and Annius leaning precariously out over the side, laughing and pointing, daring one another to lean further and further until finally one of the Praetorians was forced to have sharp words with the princes, after which they remained out of view inside the vehicle. As if to separate the important ruling family from the rest of us, a small squad of the imperial horse guard came next, then the household with its servants, freedmen and slaves. At the rear came more Praetorians, keeping the column safe and simultaneously maintaining an eye on the slaves and lower-class attendees.
We descended the Clivus Palatinus in a flood of colour and grandeur to the clamour of the crowd. The people of Rome love spectacle and no mere threat of lingering, rotting death was going to put them off watching their emperor in all his pomp riding out to meet his brother. I, of course, shuffled along in the rear with that part of the procession that no one cared about, and it was on that one occasion that I realised two things. Firstly, that no one looked at the unimportant, and they were overlooked enough to be granted a certain freedom. Secondly, that I had no wish to be so overlooked and unimportant, no matter how much freedom it granted me. Oddly, that procession gave me a taste of what it must be like to be one of the imperial family.
The procession flowed down the hill and through the streets, heading south and past the end of the Circus Maximus. Turning there, we followed the Via Appia between the tombs of ancient heroes, once outside the city walls and now crammed between garden walls and city blocks, as far as the grand Temple of Mars and its sacred grove.
It was at the same time fabulous and harrowing, that journey. Travelling as part of the imperial procession and just being part of what the population adored gave me a glow, but it also opened my eyes to the reality of what was happening outside our gilded rooms and delicate surroundings. We passed one street in particular that shocked me. I had caught the heady, rich scent of garlands and bouquets and had presumed them to be something to do with our procession until a chance parting of the folk beside me allowed a clear view of that narrow alley. With revulsion, I saw the bodies of the poor lying in the gutters and the filth, white-faced and spattered with their own coughed-up blood, and I realised that strong flowers had been deliberately gathered near the scene to overpower the scent of death and decay.
Once I understood that, I realised I could also smell the putrefaction beneath the flora. Two miserable-looking men in long leather aprons with garlands of flowers slung beneath their chins moved about the street, picking up the dead and throwing them gracelessly into the cart. It was death on a grand scale, something I had never seen before. I wondered what the emperor thought as he watched his people dying while we travelled out to meet the man who’d unwittingly brought this pestilence back to Rome. Mother often voiced, in private whispers, her opinion that God was punishing Rome for its pagan ways.
The Temple of Mars was busy. Senators and the rich knights were there to welcome back the conquering hero. They moved to the sides in response to the arrival of the great Marcus Aurelius and we waited as functionaries moved along the lines, settling the less important into a pleasing array in the background. By dint of being smaller than the adults, I ended up at the front of my part of the crowd so I could see, behind only the imperial family and a few soldiers. I watched eagerly, eyes raking the hazy distance.
It did not take long. We had been waiting less than half an hour when the victorious column came into view, led not by soldiers protecting their master, but by golden Verus himself on his magnificent steed, heedless of any danger, drinking in the glory of his arrival. A modest man Verus was not, but a glorious one he certainly was.
Seemingly mere moments later, the emperors were reunited, Aurelius stepping his horse out to meet his brother and clasp hands with him warmly.
‘Welcome back,’ the resident emperor said simply, and Verus laughed.
‘I bring you peace with Parthia and all I get is “welcome back”?’
The two men laughed then, and the crowd around them joined in, gradually subsiding to an expectant silence. ‘Peace carries a high cost,’ Aurelius said finally with a sigh. ‘Rome suffers, brother. Parthia sent your men back with a last shot to the heart, it seems.’
Verus shrugged. ‘Disease. It’s always rife out east. It will soon end here. Parthian rot cannot survive in Rome, I am told, so we just wait it out.’ I was, I admit, somewhat surprised by the emperor’s blasé attitude, so different to the man I remembered on the night of the great flood, rushing around to avert the disaster for his people. Clearly Marcus Aurelius also disapproved, for something in his expression caught Verus, and the junior emperor was taken aback. ‘Physicians will keep the city functioning until it passes,’ the younger man added with another shrug.
Aurelius’ expression remained dark. ‘Word is that your men destroyed the Temple of Apollo in Seleucia. Some are saying it is his anger that brought the plague on us.’
An admonishment, rare between the loving brothers.
Verus frowned. ‘Avidius Cassius’ men destroyed the temple. But we made reparations and enormous donatives to the god in response. Apollo is satisfied, so the priests say. This is not a divine punishment, Marcus, it is just an illness, like a winter cold or a bout of the flux. Winter will see it end. In the meantime, we should make sure to stay clear of it. I find it strange that you remain in the city.’
‘There has been much to do.’
Verus rolled his eyes and leaned a little closer, his tone quiet enough not to carry to the bulk of the crowd, though I could just hear him, and I suspected from Aurelius’ expression he considered it still far too loud. ‘You do not have to mollycoddle your people so, brother. Let them do the work for you. That’s what they’re for. Retire to Tibur, or Praeneste or some other imperial estate until the worst passes. I have a mind to expand my family’s villa on the Via Cassia outside the city. Far enough to be away from the rot, but close enough for my triumph, eh?’
‘Triumph?’
I saw the confusion in Verus then. ‘I am not to have a triumph?’
Aurelius sagged a little in his saddle. ‘You deserve one, brother, I shall not deny, but with the dead filling the streets by the cartloa
d I do not think one prudent at this time.’
Verus nodded, all energy again. ‘Quite right. After winter, when the rot is dead and the streets are clear. That is the time. Come, we have much to discuss, and I should introduce you to your granddaughter.’
And with that the mood lifted once more and all was right for a shining moment. Our glorious, happy column combined and returned to the city.
IV
AN OASIS OF PEACE
Rome, ad 166–167
Much as the procession had been, the following months were a time of high and low points for me, though blessedly more of the former. As the daughter of Verus’ favourite seamstress, I was dragged along at imperial whim, which in this case meant to relative safety and glorious abandonment in the countryside. The junior emperor had inherited a somewhat ancient villa on the Via Cassia a few miles north of Rome and, upon his return and the terrible visible reminders of the pestilence that his legions had brought to the capital, he made that rural sanctuary liveable and moved his court there immediately.
The more austere Marcus Aurelius was, I think, somewhat derisive of his brother’s decision to abandon Rome for his own safety. He never openly said as much, yet he remained on the Palatine in the heart of the world’s most afflicted city despite the danger. The disease had reached even the imperial palaces now – one of the Praetorians had fallen prey to it. Aurelius’ constitution having never been the strongest, there was an undercurrent of worry among the more serious courtiers that Aurelius might succumb to the illness himself.
I look back fondly on my months at the Via Cassia villa. Life was a delight, an oasis of peace, and it was surprisingly easy to forget for a time the plight of the people just a few miles away, especially since Commodus was a habitual and long-term visitor to his uncle’s haven, giving me a welcome distraction. Verus languished there, hunting anything larger than a mouse, watching gladiator pairs fight for his entertainment and riding a chariot around his estate as though he had not a care in the world. We passed the autumn and the winter entertained by a constant stream of expensive games, hunts, plays, performances and races, all paid for with spoils Verus had brought back from Parthia. Commodus was in a good mood, and with Cleander still serving at the palace back on the Palatine, his rotten influence had dissipated like a bad smell in a breeze.
