by Simon Turney
‘I imagine you are as appalled as I?’ he said quietly as he closed on me and painted a smile on his face.
I frowned. ‘Over what?’
‘You know he plans to change the colossus. After a century he wants to make it Hercules. Or at least, himself as Hercules. Do you realise he’s in animated discussion as to how they can attach a beard to make it look more like him? It’s going too far, Marcia. I don’t know whether it’s sacrilege to tear away the image of a god if you’re replacing it with another god, but I cannot see any good coming of it. It’s appalling.’
‘I think you overestimate my concern,’ I sighed. ‘You know what I am. What should I care which pagan idol stands guard here? They are all equally meaningless to me.’
‘A strange attitude for a woman who oscillates between being an Amazon and the goddess of war and wisdom.’
I could not tell whether he was mocking me, or being serious, so I ignored the comment. Eclectus sighed and turned, gesturing to the great arcade of the amphitheatre. ‘It did not take too long for people to start calling it the Colosseum. How long d’you think before it becomes the Commodium? Whether through public assimilation or by imperial design, I can see it happening. How long before we all have to discard togas and wear a Greek chiton, Marcia?’
I looked about me in consternation. This sounded like a dangerous conversation to be having in the open, even these days without men like Cleander around to clamp down on dissent. But the problem was that Eclectus was right. This was all a little bit much. The world had that pre-thunder feeling. You know when a storm is nigh and the pressure builds in the air. You can feel it in your ears, applying force, making things tense. Your hair begins to crackle. There is lightning in the very air. In some odd, indefinable way, this felt like that: as though a giant storm were building. I was not sure I wanted to be in the open when it broke.
An officer called to Eclectus and he made his apologies and hurried off to discuss some nuance of administration, leaving me to my own devices. By coincidence, at that moment Commodus’ engineers and architects came to a decision and wandered off with a slate containing a set of technical drawings. Commodus stood on his own, hands on hips, gazing up at that impressive, clean-shaven bronze countenance that lorded it over the square.
I took my opportunity and hurried over.
‘This is too precipitous,’ I said. Perhaps not the gentlest way to begin, but I think the words of Eclectus had sunk in and lodged.
Commodus turned and I took a step back. There was something in his eyes that worried me. Something manic and wild, like the intoxicated, crazed look the worshippers of the wine god get during Bacchanalia.
‘What?’ A sharp retort.
‘This. It’s all acceptable, of course, but you’re pushing it too far, too quickly.’
‘No.’
I sighed. ‘Dies Commodianus was a political masterstroke, I admit. A complete new beginning, and people are adjusting, some more readily than others. But your plans continue to gain momentum like a runaway cart on a hill. Perhaps you could just apply the brake a little and slow the process. Let people become used to what has already happened before they are presented with the next change. I know I said there needed to be a line drawn to mark the beginning of it all, but not everything has to begin at the same time.’
Commodus was glaring at me, a strange, faraway mania dancing in his eyes like motes of dust in the light. It was extremely unsettling. I had seen that look when I first proposed these ideas on the way to Surrentum. I had seen similar when he raced chariots around the circus, when he fought in his private arena. This was the Commodus of Cleander again. It distressed me to realise that though the bastard had now been gone for years, I would never be rid of his influence. Just as I had managed to develop a way to calm his melancholia, Cleander had awoken something manic in him and instead of calming it and reining it in as he had in the early days, he had later begun to guide and exacerbate it. And though he was gone, his work lived on. I had no idea how to deal with it all.
‘This is a new foundation,’ he said in a flat tone, though his lip twitched. ‘This is no longer Rome. Rome had become corrupt and chaotic. Driven by fat senators who want only war and conquest. Driven by men who want only what they do not yet have. Driven by greed, beset by war and poverty and disease. But I am changing it, Marcia. Dreadful Rome is gone. Colonia Commodiana is here. And in this new world there is no costly, endless war. Disease has fled and peace reigns. Grain comes in abundance with the new fleet I built. I have men prospecting – looking for new deposits of silver and gold. We need not rely on putting the barbarian to the sword to fill our coffers when new wealth lies under the earth. All will be glorious in this golden age.’
That wild, agitated look in his eyes was increasing with every word.
‘There shall be games and races every day. Food for all. Peace and glory. A new golden age. And it will be in my name. All in my name. The greatest emperors brought loot and expansion to the empire. I shall bring peace and contentment. Who could ask for more?’
And the problem was that, despite the strange wildness of his manner, he was speaking what sounded like absolute sense. Who would wish for war when they could have peace? No wonder the people were so ready to accept his changes. But the senate would still baulk at such a notion.
‘It is all a good idea,’ I said, soothingly, touching his elbow with a brush of my fingers. ‘It really is. But if you want it all to settle in smoothly, you must introduce it slowly. Like a trickle from a leaky pipe that slowly floods a room, rather than a tidal wave that smashes down walls.’
His eyes narrowed and I felt a tinge of nerves then. ‘This was your idea, Marcia. All your idea. When I struggled to keep Rome content, I did it all on my own, with bread and circuses, while you pottered along happily in your own world, no help at all.’
I started in shock. He sounded angry. And yes, he had kept the people happy with entertainment. But he had not needed my help at the time, nor asked for it.
‘Then,’ he continued, jabbing a finger at me, ‘you come to me with this idea. This notion, totally unlooked for. And it was seductive. It was a good idea. It built on my own expansion of the Hercules emperor. I took your advice yet again, as I ever did, and made it happen. And now that I do precisely what you yourself advocated, you want me to slow? To stop, even?’
I recoiled from the anger in his tone.
‘I did not mean to provoke you. I have only your welfare in mind, my love. I am trying to protect you from—’
He snarled and my voice died in my throat. I became aware that guards and engineers were all watching us. He seemed not to care.
‘Is it not enough, Marcia, daughter of a freedwoman, that you control the very direction I take at every turn, but now you must control the pace at which I take it?’
I shuddered. What was this?
‘I sought only to help. You came to me for advice all our lives, ever since we were children.’
‘They were right about you, Marcia.’
‘What?’ My blood ran cold now. What was he talking about?
‘Cleander. Just as you spent every moment you could pouring your poison into my ear, telling me that Cleander was wicked and sought only his own power, yes, he did the same. He warned me over and over again that you sought power and influence. That you would control me if you could. Not just guide, but control. I dismissed it. I loved you. I always did, but love is dangerous. Love is blind to fault. Love hid from me the controlling nature in my Marcia. I saw only the woman who aided me, never the puppet mistress tugging on my strings.’
No. This was not true. This was not happening. I realised with dread that this was the culmination of that gulf that had been widening ever since his visit to Capri. This was what lay at the root of all that distance between us. I had so longed to bring that matter to a head, out in the open, and discuss it. And now that we we
re, I changed my mind. I didn’t want to hear this. Despite the discomfort, I suddenly wanted the strained silence back.
‘What you said about Cleander might be true,’ he went on, growling. ‘He might only ever have had his own destiny in mind, but never once did he set himself against me. Never did he steer me or push me. He helped. He supported. Maybe he was not the best person for Rome, but, by the gods, he was better for me than you.’
I lurched back. I felt as though he had jammed a blade through my heart. This was not true. I was always better for him than Cleander. And I never sought to control or to master him. Just to guide and encourage, surely? But somehow, even deep in my heart, a realisation was dawning that perhaps that was not quite true. I had once been encouraging and guiding, but I had learned things in my time with Quadratus. I had learned how to stop being a victim, or at least how to stop seeing myself as the victim. Had I done that with Commodus without even realising it, so used to it was I?
The emperor was not done. His ire was in control now.
‘And I may never have realised the truth of Cleander’s words, but that I went to Capri. I went to sever my final ties with a wife I never loved so that I could be with a woman I did. And she laid bleak truths before me. And I knew them for truths. You know why?’
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
‘Because Bruttia Crispina was the most innocent soul I ever met in my life. She never set out to harm anyone. She knew you hated her and yet for all our marriage she only ever tried to befriend you. Still you shunned her. Estranged her. Made her feel as though she did not belong in the palace, while you did.’
I shook my head. That wasn’t true. That was not Bruttia. He didn’t know how very much like me Bruttia could be. How she had warned me off. How she could smile like a dove beneath eyes that carried daggers. But I couldn’t tell him that. How could I? I could hardly defame the dead, and even if I could bring myself to do so, would he believe me? I doubted that.
‘She had no cause to lie to me on Capri,’ he went on. ‘We were there for her death and she knew it. She was resigned. She even thought that you were somehow behind her miscarriages, though she cannot say how. But she warned me, just as Cleander had in his time. She said that she had been inconvenient and that you wanted me all for yourself and had finally found a way to get rid of her.’
I felt an utterly unmanageable wave of guilt flow through me then. Curse tablets. Silphium. Revealing her affair with Julius Alexander. I had been despicable to the empress. I had been everything she accused me of and more.
‘She told me flat,’ he said. ‘She told me that within the year you would be all but regent of Rome and I your mewling child.
‘I . . .’ How did I respond to this? Bruttia had crucified me with her final words. After a life of tame silence, she had turned on me with her last breath and destroyed me in the emperor’s eyes.
‘Bruttia was convinced that you had done away with anyone who stood in your way,’ Commodus snarled. ‘I didn’t believe it at first, but the more I thought about it on the boat back to Surrentum, the more I realised it was true. You have been at the turning point of everything. You are a catalyst that is always there when things change for me, and rarely for the better.’
Now, the Praetorians were unsure what to do. Some had begun to move closer, wondering if their services might be required. Others had backed away, widening the cordon, believing they should not be overhearing all this. I wished they were not. This was not a conversation I would ever wish for, and least of all in public.
‘Isn’t it odd,’ he said now, his tone accusatory as he took a step towards me, towering over me, ‘how all those years ago, I favoured visiting the evening race, but you wanted to see Hosidius Geta’s Arrius Varus at the theatre? And so we went to the theatre, where Perennis was denounced.’
That had not been me. Well, it had, but purely because I wanted to see the play and not more death on the racetrack. There had been no ulterior motive. ‘You like innovative theatre,’ I said defensively. ‘Geta’s reputation—’
‘That when we were in the villa on the Via Appia,’ he interrupted, ‘it was you who came to my room to warn me about my wife and Julius Alexander?’
Yes, it had been, but I had not engineered that. That was simply God’s will.
‘That was an unhappy accident. I—’
‘Cleander tried to explain his actions at Laurentinum,’ he went on, ‘but you urged me to ignore him and listen to Eclectus. That same Eclectus who now echoes your concerns over my new plan. How strange that you two should share opinions, eh? The only two of my circle of friends and advisors who have outlasted the many dead.’
‘I cannot—’
But he was in no mood to listen to my defence. He rode roughshod over me again. ‘You. All you. You got rid of Cleander. You got rid of Bruttia. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that you were somehow behind my sister’s fall, for I know you hated her too. And Quadratus. And, curiously, just after the lad tried to stick a sword in me, who do I find lurking on the stairs of the amphitheatre mere paces away? You.’
God, no. That had been pure chance. I had gone to watch him in glory, not to oversee some kind of plot!
‘You are always there Marcia. And when you’re not doing away with those who are inconvenient, you’re pushing me. Getting me to ban Christian gladiators in Gaul. To free convicted criminals in the mines of Sardinia. Using me for your impious Christian agenda.’
‘I—’
‘They were right about you. They were both right. Did you poison my unborn sons somehow, Marcia? Did you?’
I shivered. I couldn’t answer that. Whatever he accused me of, I could not face that, for I was well aware of the depth of my guilt.
‘How did you do that?’ he snarled. ‘Was it some weird Christian rite that killed my heirs? I should have your Minerva portrait reworked and your Amazon busts rechiselled to resemble Hekate.’
My shivers came again now at that name, the goddess I had once begged that Bruttia die alone and childless. He was not quite right, but, Lord, he came so close to the facts.
‘None of this is true,’ I managed in a hollow voice.
Some of it was true.
Much of it was true. But some things are difficult to admit, even to oneself.
‘Get out of my sight,’ he snapped. ‘This is my new age and I am in a forgiving mood. Be thankful for that, lest you join Bruttia’s ashes on Capri.’
I stared.
This was what had been festering beneath his veneer since those days in Surrentum. No wonder it had eaten away at him. Had he spoken of them to me earlier, I might have been prepared. I could have dealt with such accusations one at a time, but not like this. Not like a barrage. Not like that dreadful wave, sweeping along the street, demolishing my defences with ease. And it would certainly take some thinking about, for though some of his comments were wild and erroneous or simply the result of chance, there was a dangerous element of truth in some of them, and I could hardly let that knowledge out into the world. Those truths were to be shared only between me and God when I am judged.
I left shaken, close to panic. I looked back only once to find that Commodus was already in discussion with another engineer, gesturing this way and that as they planned his new world. I was shivering, cold with dread, as I climbed into my litter and gave the tremulous command to return to the Palatine.
I had lost Commodus. I only just finally had him to myself, and then I had lost him again.
I clenched my hands so that the nails bit deep into my palms and forced myself to stop trembling. What was this? A few hard words from him and I had become a pathetic girl? This was not Marcia. This was not me. I would gain control of myself. And then I would begin to work it all out. I had built plans that had brought down the serpent Cleander. I could certainly deal with this, now that I knew what I was facing. All was not a
s lost as it seemed.
There was time.
I would get my Commodus back.
XXIV
A WAVE OF POPULARITY
Rome, autumn ad 192
There was simply nothing for it. I had to prove I was anything other than what I truly was in order to stand a chance of winning back the trust of the man I loved. A tough proposition, and one that would require me to become a much better person than I had been in recent years. I prayed. I beseeched God to forgive me my many, many sins. I became a regular visitor to the services of the Bishop of Rome or any other priest I could find when I felt the need to unburden myself.
I became attentive to the emperor’s needs, which was again a difficult proposition. Now that the trouble between us had been aired, there was little need for the strained fiction we had lived. We were noticeably, publicly drifting apart now. I was not always invited to things, but where I could be with him, I was, and I played the perfect empress. I made sure to support his decisions, whatever they were. That alone made me shiver, for he seemed to be assailed by ever more adventurous and outlandish ideas. Yet still I blindly agreed and supported, making sure not to pry my opinion into matters. I would not be the woman who directed and drove Commodus. I could not be. Not only would it mean accepting the loss of our relationship for good, it might well mean much, much worse for me, remembering his veiled threat at the colossus.
Over the summer I watched as Hercules began to dominate Rome. He was going too far, and I knew it. I could see the senators bridling over it all, even if the bulk of the faceless populace continued to cheer for their divine, golden lord. Senators are to be ignored at an emperor’s peril. They and the Praetorian Guard are people with the power and influence to make or break rulers, no matter how divine their blood.
Newly issued coins now rarely showed anything other than the club-wielding, lion-wearing demigod emperor. Statues were everywhere. The ongoing disgruntlement over the archer Hercules threatening the door of the senate house caused dissent and an ever greater number of the members of that ancient body began to add their voices to the call to remove the offending artwork. Commodus’ answer was simply to exacerbate the problem. One of the most potent symbols of Rome is that of its founders. At some of the most critical places in the city, a bronze or marble wolf suckled two babes above the grand slogan Senatus Populusque Romanus – ‘For the Senate and the People of Rome’. These began to be moved out of the light and be replaced by that ever-present Hercules.
