“Lucius Oppius was one of the first Romans I ever encountered. During Caesar’s invasion of my homeland our village was attacked by a mutinous group of legionaries. Oppius helped restore order and was responsible for saving my mother and me. The light shines in the darkness - and I can remember his kindness towards me, as if it were yesterday. The following morning, after the attack, during which my father had been murdered, Oppius checked upon my mother and I and spoke to us through a translator. I asked him what would happen to us now? He said that he was too tired to lie to me. That we would be sold as slaves. “But do not despair,” he said. “Just because you may be a slave tomorrow that does not mean that you will serve as a slave forever. And even if you are a slave you can still be the noblest thing a man can ever be. You can be honourable.” I believe that you still value duty and honour, otherwise you would be conspiring with, not against, the likes of Lucius Scaurus. I have not just come to you because there is no one else to turn to. You are wearing the tunic of a soldier, instead of donning the toga of a politician. Your sword and armour hang on the wall, not some portrait of some pompous ancestor, who was quick to claim glory but slow to join the battle. Honour and hope still, just about, exist in Rome. Rufus can be saved.”
Manius let his, or rather Lucius Oppius’ words, hang in the air. He knew he was in no position to bribe or threaten the consul. The only option left to him was to try and inspire, or shame, Agrippa into action.
Be honourable.
He doesn’t give up easily, in or outside the arena, Agrippa thought to himself. He remembered watching the gladiator fight, many years ago. He was both dogged and skilful. He kept moving forward, like a boxer. Bloodied but unbowed. Agrippa suspected that part of the bodyguard’s dogged determination now stemmed from the guilt he felt at having been absent from his friend’s side, when he was taken. When, not if.
Agrippa turned his back on the desperate man standing before him, either through shame or from wishing to signal to Manius that their meeting had come to a close. Sunlight glinted off his sword on the wall and caught his eye. Agrippa also found himself staring at a portrait of Caecilia. He knew what she would have wanted, expected, him to do.
Be honourable.
Agrippa remembered sitting by the fire with his wife one evening, after she had dismissed the servants and cooked him a meal. His features were as taut as a bowstring, as he dwelled upon the death of Cicero and Octavius’ assertion - that it was impossible to be both good and happy in this world. Caecilia, noticing that her husband was troubled, asked him what was wrong. Agrippa recounted his friend’s words to her.
“Octavius has got it wrong, as much as you may think I’m blaspheming to say such a thing,” Caecilia replied, as the light from the purring fire danced in her eyes and gilded her sage expression. “It is not a question of either/or. Goodness is happiness. To be good is to be happy… And even if to be good means to be unhappy, it is a price worth paying.”
The tension fell from his features and his heart lightened as he kissed his wife and they made love.
Manius was halfway out of the door. But he glanced back after hearing the scraping sound of the consul retrieving his sword from the wall. Agrippa may not have been all-powerful. But he wasn’t powerless.
Aulus Sanga gripped his stylus and caressed it with his thumb as he scrutinised a roll of parchment containing his accounts for the month. Costs could always be cut. Margins could always be widened. The consummate merchant ceased working however when he noticed that Milo had entered the room.
The attendant breathlessly made his report. Sanga breathed a sigh of relief. The Briton had taken the bait. He had fought as a gladiator again.
Once a brute, always a brute.
A self-satisfied blade-thin grin appeared across his face - wider than what it seemed was natural or possible, as if his face were being stretched out on a rack.
“I am a happy man, Milo. My daughter will now come to her senses and see the Briton for who, or what, he truly is. We can put this unseemly episode behind us. Instruct the cook to prepare some of Camilla’s favourite dishes tonight. You can also accompany her to the dressmakers tomorrow. Treat her to whatever she wants, within reason… Do you know the result of the match by the way, not that it matters much? Once he stepped out to fight, he lost. I beat him. Ah, this news pleases me greatly. She may still pine for him for a week or so, although once she has heard how he has betrayed her, lied to her, her sentiments may end as quickly as the affair started. Perhaps we should visit our villa in Etruria, until she is fully cured. This Manius may attempt to contact her one last time. He could prove desperate or violent - so it will be best if we are away from the city… I have no wish to meet with the grubby promoter again. If you could arrange to pay Dio the remainder of his fee. When he shook my hand, to secure our arrangement, I duly washed it, thoroughly, afterwards… The beauty of this outcome is that Camilla cannot hold me responsible for ending or forbidding the relationship. She will spurn the undesirable of his own accord. I cannot be blamed for his faults and barbarous nature. He made his choice to fight again - and will have to respect her choice not to see him. That said, if you ensure you intercept any mail or messengers who arrive at our door. Do not let her out of your sight tomorrow either. I am about to get my little girl back. I do not want to lose her again,” Aulus Sanga remarked, pouring himself a measure of wine, to celebrate the good news. His authority would be re-established. Time spent at their villa in the countryside would restore his daughter’s health and humour too. She could press flowers, sew and bake honey bread, like she used to.
Sanga rubbed his hands together and thought, for once, that his accounts could wait. He ascended the stairs, up to his daughter’s room, mindful of removing the smile from his face and donning an air of sympathy and regret. He started to compose his lines too. He would try and soften the blow. He needed to resist the urge to say, “I told you so.” She needs love, not a lecture. Sanga didn’t want to see his daughter hurt, too much.
“It gives me no pleasure to tell you this Camilla, but…”
27.
The air rippled with heat. An unforgiving sun beat down on Varro as he sat, ironically in a birthing chair, waiting to die. It was an even more unforgiving Lucius Scaurus who instructed an all too willing Vedius to beat his prisoner again. The gladiator had targeted the pretty poet’s mouth before, busting his lip. The second blow cracked open his nose like an egg. Blood gushed. Tears welled in his eyes. His throat was parched. It hurt when he spoke or swallowed. His eyelids felt leaden, like he was suffering a hangover. The back of his head still ached, like a giant throbbing bee sting.
Scaurus hadn’t even begun to interrogate his prisoner yet. The senator just took pleasure in seeing the younger man suffer. Scaurus didn’t want to confine the experience to himself however. Varro sat in the birthing chair in the middle of the theatre, surrounded by dozens of gladiators enjoying the spectacle. Some appreciated the respite in their day’s training, some enjoyed the raw cruelty on display.
Sharek was also present. He winced at each blow the brutal Vedius inflicted on the man he had, yesterday, called his friend. The theatre director thought to himself what a waste of an attractive face, as opposed to mourning the imminent potential loss of life.
Berenice stood next to Sharek, leaning into him, dressed in a sky blue linen dress which showed off the top of her shoulders - and breasts. The actress was flattered and repulsed by the attention she received from the ogling gladiators clustered around her.
“I liked him. I believed him,” she remarked, wistfully.
“I suppose I was right, in saying he would have made a fine actor,” Sharek replied, sighing ruefully whilst deciding which vintage he would liberate from his employer’s wine cellar that evening - and take into Myron’s tent.
A delectable smile danced across Berenice’s red, glossy lips. Although tinged with sadness, concerning the fate of the likeable and handsome poet, she couldn’t help but be pleased when Sharek told her the news:
Scaurus’ wife was dead. Berenice knew she would ever play the mistress, never the wife. But with the other woman out of the way she could command more of his attention. Scaurus might even assign some of his late wife’s staff to her and grant her first refusal on items from her wardrobe and jewellery box.
Varro remained unconscious whilst Scaurus questioned and tortured his wife in a basement chamber at his villa. She remained in the dank, mold-ridden room still. Her throat cut, using the same ritual dagger Cassius Longinus had used to murder Caesar. Part of her tongue hung out of her mouth, like a dog. Flies began to buzz around the dead woman and landed on her still glistening wounds. Her hand still cradled the silver dove-shaped brooch Varro had given her, when they had first met. The more they tortured her, the tighter she had clasped it.
As soon as the carriage pulled up at the residence Vedius dragged his master’s wife down into the basement. Cassandra’s appeals for her husband to forgive her, to act mercifully, fell upon deaf ears.
“You must have loved me once,” she protested, as Vedius bound her to a chair.
“I loved you like a whore, that I didn’t have to pay for. Your only task in life was to become the mother of my children, which you failed miserably at. I blame myself, in part. I should have chosen someone with more noble blood to serve as my wife. You have slop running through your veins,” Scaurus responded - telling himself that his wife was already dead to him, before he killed her.
Vedius first beat her, disfiguring her. On more than one occasion, during his time torturing the terrified woman, the gladiator revived her with smelling salts when she blacked out. He stuck hairpins through several parts of her body, including her cheeks and breasts. He cut open her dress and seared her thighs with a branding iron. Scaurus grinned as her skin sizzled. He seemed fascinated by her reactions to different forms of pain, like a scientist conducting an experiment.
Both Scaurus and Vedius interrogated the woman. Cassandra revealed everything she knew, which was enough to condemn her and yet leave her husband unsatisfied too. She told him the details about her affair, how when Rufus had stayed the night she noticed him leave the room and enter his study. How, when she had visited Varro at his home, she had overheard him talking about delivering a message to Marcus Agrippa. Words tumbled out of her bloody mouth like broken teeth.
Once Scaurus had extracted as much information out of his wife as he could he passed the dagger to Vedius and gave the order to kill her, not wanting to do the deed himself and stain his recently laundered toga.
“Where’s Camilla?” were Varro’s first words to his captor, as he blearily took in his surroundings and attempted to wipe away the blood pouring from his nose.
“It’s touching and futile that your first thoughts should be for her, especially when you have enough to worry about yourself. I thought I would widow myself, rather than suffer the ignominy and expense of a divorce. Should you miss your whore though you will see her again anon, in the next life.”
Anger welled up in Varro’s hobbled heart, but he was too weak, despondent, to leap out of his chair and attack his enemy - although the temptation to grab the knife on the table by the senator and plunge it into his throat was tempting. Unfortunately, Vedius remained close by, wearing a gore-stained tunic and cruel, rictus grin. His odious face was also freckled with blood. Her blood, Varro surmised. No one is wholly innocent in this world - but Cassandra was more innocent than most. He couldn’t quite decide whether he felt more guilt than sorrow. All Varro knew was that her death just added to the pain of life. The next world can’t help but be preferable to this one, he wryly considered.
“At least Cassandra can take comfort that in the next life that she’ll never see you again,” Varro asserted.
“She may not be as fond of you, as you think, should you see each other again. You used her, to get closer to me. You were responsible for her torture and death. But she talked, betrayed you, before she died. She told me about your spying - and how you report to Marcus Agrippa. It is a crime against nature for you to turn on your class and the bloodline of your family - and support Caesar, a man intent on destroying the thing that your ancestors held most sacred, the Republic. Your father would disown you. In his absence however, I will disown you,” Scaurus remarked, smirking - as he thought again of his plan to have Varro sign over his estate to him, before his death.
The knuckle-faced gladiators around him were legion. Doubtless a number of them welcomed the fact that, for once, it was a member of the aristocracy who was being tortured for the enjoyment of gladiators, rather than vice-versa. If only the audiences to his evenings performing his poetry were as well attended. There were few members of Sharek’s company present however (although Varro put that down to their squeamishness and propensity to gossip). It wasn’t even worth thinking of a plan to escape. There was none among the crowd who would not put a knife in his back, Varro judged. Even if Manius had worked out what had happened and where he was, he would perish in any attempt to save him. Manius. May he - and the gods - forgive me for not placing his wager. At least his friend would inherit a large portion of his estate and he could afford to then marry Camilla, he consolingly thought. Varro closed his eyes and offered up some brief, but heartfelt prayers, for his bodyguard, Fronto and even Viola. He wished them well and asked Jupiter to watch over them. He couldn’t remember the last time he had prayed in such a way. Jupiter had probably forgotten all about him. It could be argued that the gods seemed somewhat indifferent to his fate, given his current predicament. But had not Varro been indifferent to the gods, in return, for so many years?
Varro also spared more than one thought for Lucilla. If he could compose one last poem, he would dedicate it to her. He wanted to visit Arretium again with her, even if it was just as friends. He remembered his Horace. Happy is the man who… If he could make love one last time, he would make love to her. If the gods did, or could, play matchmaker to their charges then he hoped Lucilla would be granted someone who was worthy of her. He hoped she would marry again. Lucilla had been a wonderful wife. She would make an even more wonderful mother. The world would somehow be a finer place, if she could live on through her children. When Varro had asked himself, during the carriage ride home the day before, what he would miss most about Rome should he be sent into exile - the answer had been pure and simple: Lucilla.
“As you may already be aware, you are not the first agent to attempt to ingratiate himself into my confidence,” Scaurus pointedly remarked, standing over Varro. The prisoner welcomed the old man standing in front of him however. He was in the shade and no longer had to squint. “Know that you will suffer the same fate as your predecessor. I got close to Quintus Verres before he could get close to me. I had him followed, as I had my wife followed too. One of our actors here is a trained acrobat and he was able to scale the wall of Verres’ building. He let down a rope and Vedius made him wake to a nightmare. Verres died ignobly, blubbing like a child and emptying his bowels in fear. What do you think of that?”
“Shit happens,” Varro replied, drolly. Even beneath the blood, swelling and bruising he still retained the remnants of his mocking expression.
The corner of his mouth twitched in anger and he balled his hand into a tight fist but Scaurus’ temper simmered rather than boiled over. He wanted to remain calm and collected, superior - and not show any weakness in front of his men or give Varro the satisfaction of riling him.
“You will not be laughing soon. Rather you’ll be screaming in agony.”
“Then you must be about to bring out a mime act.”
Varro told himself that he would try and die with a smile on his face, as an act of defiance towards Scaurus and life itself. Life, which couldn’t help but be tragic - because it was so comic.
Varro tasted the metallic tang of blood on his tongue. Out of the corner of his right eye he could see the glowing brazier, containing a branding iron. He also noticed a pair of tongs. His heart shuddered at the thought of being forced to swallow a s
earing coal and burning to death from inside out. Beneath the blood, swelling and bruising Varro was scared. Pride, rather than courage, prevented him from weeping and begging for his life. His plan was to try and keep Scaurus talking. But all he would be doing was delaying the inevitable. But isn’t all life just a process of delaying the inevitable and trying to avoid death?
Vedius moved towards the brazier - perhaps having seen that it had attracted the prisoner’s attention - and pushed the branding iron and tongs deeper into the pile of hissing coals. On their carriage ride back to Rome the day before Manius judged that the gladiator was unstintingly loyal to his master. And cruel for cruelty’s sake. “Sometimes the arena attracts such animals, and sometimes it rears them.”
Lucius Scaurus retrieved his dagger, which had once belonged to the famed and infamous libertore, from the folds of his tunic and wordlessly ran the blade across the top of Varro’s brow. His face briefly twisted in spite - and he gnashed his teeth like Cerberus - as the senator lashed out at his adversary. The young nobleman had cuckolded him, pretended to believe in him and his cause. The spy - Agrippa’s lapdog - had tried to undermine his dignity and authority. He deserved to die, along with the ungrateful, unfaithful, whore.
Varro clamped his jaw together, suppressing the urge to whimper or scream. He didn’t want to give his antagonist the satisfaction. He remained silent, albeit he cursed his torturer with aplomb beneath his breath.
Scaurus handed his weapon to the lanista, who wiped the blood off the blade with his tunic before returning it. The senator seethed for a few moments but then smoothed down his oiled hair, adjusted his toga and forced a polite smile. He wished to give the impression he was still fully in control.
“For as much as you think you may be aware of my plans, you still know very little. I can assure you that I will have the last laugh. Berenice and Sharek told me that you were eager to know how our play ends. The tragedy of Anthony and Cleopatra will end with the revelation that Caesarion escaped his captors. And made his way to Rome. Our “Revered One” will be ensconced in Spain when I make the pronouncement. I will give tickets away for free to the play. Come the night and morning after of the proclamation graffiti artists and posters will have spread the news like wild fire. My men will enter taverns, from the Subura to the Capitoline, to buy drinks and toast the return of the true Caesar. Rumours will abound that Caesarion will offer a donative to every citizen and soldier who swears an oath of loyalty to him. Offerings will be made in temples and people will rejoice at the news that Julius Caesar’s son - his true heir - lives. Guarded by his own personal retinue of gladiators, he will stand up and tell his story in every market square and public forum in the city. Prominent statesmen will support his claim. The narrative will be that he has only revealed himself now because he feels it safe enough to do so, with Octavius absent from Rome. Women will want to mother him or offer their daughters to him. He will promise lower taxes (except for the Jews of course) and ban foreigners from leeching off the state. Our slogan will be “For the many, not the few.” We will be for the people - and the army - but behind closed doors I will ensure that the nobility will be rewarded. Supporters will be promised favours and given their seats back in the Senate. And at the same time as Rome welcomes its new favourite son I will form a grand alliance, of all Octavius’ enemies. Loyal supporters of Antony, Brutus and Sextus Pompey will flock to my banner. Soldiers can be bought like whores, as when Octavius purchased their loyal support from Antony. When he returns from Spain it will be too late. I will win the propaganda war - and any other war. I will tear his statues down, grind them into dust or re-cast them into monuments to Cicero and Cato. Caesar’s defence, that Caesarion is an imposter, will involve him confessing to the crime that he murdered an innocent boy. Such villainy will not engender him to the people. His crown will slip somewhat. But by then I would have circulated evidence, timelines and testimony that Caesarion is who he says he is. If the gods are willing I would have Octavius stand - or kneel - before me. I will remind him of my father, who died fighting for the Republic at Pharsalus - and my son who fell at Phillipi. And then, clasping the same dagger Brutus used to slay Julius Caesar, I will look my enemy in the eye and plunge it into the would-be king’s breast. Rome and history will remember my name.”
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