Varro gazed outside. Vulso was reminded of the vacant, long-distance stare of veteran soldiers he had witnessed over the years. Usually the nobleman could see a vista of pearlescent stars, or the outlines and faded colours of the flowers Lucilla planted in her garden. But the swollen darkness swallowed everything up, like a leviathan gulping down a fleet of fishing boats. The lamps on their bows extinguished. The night was blacker than the most violent bruise. Blacker than a widow’s garb. Blacker than a god’s humour. Unlike previously, when Agrippa summoned him, his heart failed to beat with any atom of intrigue. Duty no longer stiffened his sinews. He didn’t feel that the shade of his father would be proud of him. Varro felt as if he were Odysseus, being ordered again to Troy, after finding his way back to his wife and home. He was Sisyphus. Having struggled to roll his boulder up a hill, it had just rolled back down again. The past year had been akin to a pleasant dream. But he was about to be dragged back to reality. Varro grimaced, recalling some of his previous assignments and experiences. Priests had defiled virgins, vestal or otherwise. Guilds formed themselves into riotous, rapacious gangs. Tax officials bled provinces dry, filling their coffers to fund political campaigns. Siblings poisoned one another – bitter rivals, competing over a mistress or, more often than not, over an inheritance. Slaves were beaten to death, their bodies burned. Sometimes they were burned alive. Gladiators were forced to fight when wounded. The practise was tantamount to a death sentence. Advocates colluded with criminals to bribe or assassinate witnesses. The city was infested with rats, cockroaches and, worse, politicians. The air was rib-thick with cheap perfume and vanity. Nausea was normal. Varro was sick of Rome already, and he hadn’t even stepped inside its walls again. Whether they knew it or not, every soul there was guilty of something: folly; theft; dishonour. Innocence was an even rarer commodity than honesty. Some forms of innocence could be bought, via expensive advocates or rigged juries. But, all too more frequently, innocence was sold - and not even to the highest bidder. It was often given away, as freely as an exhalation of breath. A sigh. Varro wasn’t quite sure if he thought less of Rome or Man. The race to the bottom between them was close to a tie. The gods only knew how he would have scorned Rome and Man even more, if not for Manius and Lucilla.
The spy hadn’t seen it all, but he had seen enough. Agrippa had pimped him out enough to vulnerable wives. He had seduced them in order to gain incriminating intelligence, against their husbands. But he would not now be unfaithful to his wife. Even if the fate of Rome - sordid, pernicious Rome - depended on it. Varro had given a solemn vow that he would remain true to Lucilla. His past behaviour would remain in the past. The spy wanted to be at least half as honourable as Manius and Vulso. Agrippa, Rome, owed him more than he owed them. If Caesar was all powerful, a demi-god, then why did he need the help of a crapulent, failed poet?
Manius entered the triclinium. Like Varro, he greeted the praetorian warmly. And like Varro, he knew Vulso’s presence presaged the news that they would need to return to Rome. Manius suspected Agrippa would call upon them again. He just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon. Despite having retired too from Agrippa’s employ, despite his wife being due to give birth, the bodyguard would loyally accompany Varro back to the capital. It had been some time since Manius had needed to protect his friend. The spy had ceased to put himself in harm’s way or conduct adulterous affairs. Nights spent drinking and gambling in the Subura were few and far between, since he had remarried.
“You may no longer need my services anymore,” the bodyguard posed, a few days ago.
“I am sure I’m still capable of offending people and getting myself into trouble. I don’t altogether like me, Manius. I don’t see why others should either,” Varro drolly replied, a smile flickering on his lips. “Given that I will be spending half my time in the country now, you may wish to consider yourself semi-retired. The greatest threat to my life under this roof is Diana’s cooking.”
Accompanying Manius inside, after the two men had attended to the horses, was a young, fresh-faced soldier. Titus Macer. Bright green eyes glinted beneath his smooth brow. As boyish as his countenance was his chest was as broad as a scutum, his arms knotted with muscle. Varro, who had encountered Macer a few times back in Rome, thought how life had yet to sow worry lines into his features. Wine had yet to redden his nose. A woman had yet to sour his heart. He still might have faith in the gods or ruling class. He still believed war was a source of honour and glory. Varro wasn’t sure if he envied how the adolescent had most of his life ahead of him - or pitied him for it. Life was largely unpleasant.
Agrippa spotted the youth on a training ground, practising his archery, last year. Much to the consternation of the aristocracy in Rome the consul believed in promoting talent over lineage. Remembering how Lucius Oppius had taken him under his wing, back in Apollonia when he was nineteen, Agrippa instructed Vulso to mentor the archer. Hopefully some of the veteran’s virtues would rub off on the young soldier.
“What’s the news?” Manius asked. The bodyguard cut an imposing figure. But despite suffering all manner of privation and anguish, he was still able to smile in the face of an iniquitous world. The Briton had seen his village burn and had been sold into slavery as a child. He had then been forced to fight in the arena, as a gladiator. Yet he had endured, retaining a sense of decency in an indecent world. Appius Varro had bought his freedom one day, after watching him fight. He brought Manius into his household. The gladiator was charged with tutoring the nobleman’s son in swordsmanship, before serving as his bodyguard.
The thunder grew louder, as ominous as an augur in a grouchy mood. Lightning would soon slap against the earth, like a master whipping a slave.
“We’re being summoned to Rome,” Varro replied, devoid of enthusiasm.
“Do we know why?”
“I’m not sure yet. But it’s unlikely Agrippa wants to call us back just to tell us that all is well.”
Varro went to bed, but the storm woke him and his wife up. A couple of candles illuminated the chamber. Landscape paintings, by Lucilla, awash with light and colour, decorated the walls. Marble busts, of Sophocles and Plautus, sat on a table opposite the bed. The busts were a present from Lucilla to her husband, to help serve as an inspiration as he wrote his plays. The poet had become a playwright, after encouragement from his wife. Varro had composed both a comedy and tragedy in the past year. The Honest Aedile and The Tragedy of Hector had been staged, in and outside Rome, and theatre managers constantly badgered him, asking when he would be able to finish his next work.
As much as Varro tried to act as if all was well, as he reported on Vulso’s arrival and his message, Lucilla remained unconvinced. She didn’t know her husband completely. But she knew him enough. His body was taut, like a bow string. His features pained. Lucilla wrapped her slender leg around his and she rested her head on his chest, as if it were a pillow. She laced her fingers in his. Varro couldn’t quite tell if she squeezed his hand from consolation, anger or frustration. Lucilla desperately didn’t want him to leave. But she knew he needed to. She respected Agrippa but wasn’t particularly fond of him right now.
Above the clamour and clap of thunder – and the thrum of rain against the tiled roof – Lucilla spoke to her husband:
“Would you like me to come back to Rome with you?”
“I would prefer to have you with me in Rome – and of course in my bed. But Camilla needs you here even more. The baby may arrive early. I will write to you every day, if I can. You know that, if I have a choice, I will refuse any assignment.”
A fork of lighting plunged down upon the earth, like Neptune’s trident, and for a moment the darkness rescinded. Varro could see the contoured landscape again, its farmsteads, streams and trees. But the moment, an aberration, ended.
“You will be my hero if you behave like a coward and run away from any danger.”
“What do you think I’ve been conditioning myself for? I can run – and swim – faster than ever. Manius will also
be with me. I am too cowardly to stop him. I may be back before you know it, however. This could all prove to be an anti-climax,” Varro remarked, reassuringly. “Most things are in life.”
“You know that won’t prove to be true.”
“I know. But I thought I might start lying to myself and others again. I need to rehearse, before I return to the stage. Spies are not renowned for their honesty.”
“I appreciate how Agrippa may ask you to deceive someone. But remain true to yourself. You have changed a lot over the past two years,” Lucilla remarked, raising her head to look her husband in the eye.
“For the better I hope.”
“Well you were in the enviable position where you couldn’t much change for the worse.”
Varro laughed. He matched, or eclipsed, the amount of devotion in his wife’s expression. Her skin glowed in the candlelight. He wanted to kiss her brow, neck, breasts and smiling lips. During the years when Varro gambled heavily, he often would pray to the goddess Fortuna for good luck. But his greatest piece of good fortune, he realised, was finding and marrying Lucilla. And then remarrying her.
“I should write this down. This is all good material for a future play.”
“A husband and a wife trading insults? People can stay at home, rather than venture out to the theatre, to play out that scene. Should you ever turn our story into a drama, will you write in a happy ending?”
“I’m far too terrified of you to write anything else. Despite the storm, despite my having to leave, let’s give this evening a happy ending,” Varro asserted, with a piratical grin, running his fingertips down her spine.
After they made love Varro pretended to be asleep. He did not want his wife worrying about him. Already he was playing the spy again. Deceiving people. He lay awake, feeling as exhausted as a pack mule. Rather than returning to Rome as a conquering hero, he felt more like a condemned man, awaiting his sentence.
Happy endings may exist in myth and literature. But not in the real world.
2.
Morning.
The skies were clear but the rain, from the storm, still soaked the ground.
“I wish the storm had never ended, so you wouldn’t be able to leave,” Lucilla said to Varro, just after she woke.
“I have often wanted for the earth to swallow me up. Today could be my chance, given the sodden earth.”
The carriage waited outside the villa. One of Varro’s attendants, Milo, sat on top, with the reins in his hands. Macer sat next to him, with his weapon and a bag of arrows stashed behind. He repositioned his sunhat, gulped down some water and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He wore a bow-shaped grin on his face as the water sloshed down his throat and the image of Sabina swished around in his mind. He pictured the slave girl’s coquettish features and satin flesh. He looked forward to returning to Rome and seeing the slave, who was attached to Varro’s household. The soldier would continue his campaign to win the girl’s heart.
Aelius Vulso sat on his horse. The chestnut mount, which he named Mars, was as sturdy and muscular as its owner. Its hooves scraped along the ground. Mars seemed keen to setoff, like Vulso. The praetorian pursed his lips, thinking how they were wasting daylight by tarrying too long – as he waited for Varro and Manius to say goodbye to their wives. If they had been soldiers, under his command, he would have given them short shrift.
Vulso was already thinking about being back in Rome. The officer had a batch of new recruits to break in. They needed to be work-hardened like a piece of iron, and then polished. They should take pride in their duties and uniform. They shouldn’t pick-up bad habits, or a pox. Vulso started to turn over, in his head, the speech he would deliver to the green recruits:
If, or when, you lie with a whore then make sure she’s as clean as your blade. Maintain your discipline, as well as you maintain your uniform and kit… Your first duty is to serve Caesar. But Caesar is Rome, so you need to serve this city – and its people – with a similar sense of duty. You cannot just cut down a Roman citizen, as if he were some whining Gaul or hairy-arsed German… No doubt some of you have joined the Praetorian Guard because the pay and conditions are better, and the length of service shorter. If you think that you have landed on your feet, I’m here to knock you to the ground. You will learn the virtues of duty and loyalty, even if I have to pummel them into you. Some of you may well wish yourself back in the legions, in some shit-filled ditch at the arse end of the empire, compared to the Hades I’ll create for you. The Praetorian Guard is the home of Rome’s elite. I don’t care whether you’re the son of a patrician or pleb, you will follow orders. You will learn how to stand in a line and fight for the glory of Rome, as well as fight for the man standing next to you. I will teach you the meaning of suffering, and the meaning of honour.
Vulso wryly smiled to himself as he noticed the small scar on his knuckle, from where he had punched the front teeth out of a recruit, a couple of years ago, for making a joke during his speech. He didn’t make any jokes afterwards. Vulso mused that it was almost worth paying a new recruit to open his mouth inappropriately, in order to make an example of him and cement his authority.
Varro embraced his wife one last time and breathed in her jasmine perfume, hoping that the smell might linger in his nostrils or rub off on his clothes.
“There are worse fates than having you leave. I just cannot think of them right now,” Lucilla said, wistfully. She wanted to put on a brave face, so her husband wouldn’t worry too much.
“There is one consolation. I won’t have to suffer Diana’s meals while I’m away,” Varro replied, making reference to his wife’s attendant. Diana had served Lucilla for several years – and had never forgiven Varro for his mistreatment of her mistress during their first marriage. The crinkle-faced servant still offered up the odd expression of distrust and animus, whether she was positioned behind Varro’s back or not.
“You should be careful of your words. Diana might be tempted to poison your food, the next time she cooks for us.”
“I’d welcome her doing so. The poison may add some much-needed flavour,” he drily countered.
Lucilla laughed, although her fine eyes were moistening a little with tears. Varro forced an unconvincing smile in reply. He thought about the words he had written yesterday morning, for his latest play. The scene concerned the departure of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus one morning, on the day of the former’s murder.
“We two must set out on our goodly path,
Even if only one of us returns.
For the prize will be worth the sacrifice.
Should one of us die, then let it be me
My brother.”
Varro thought how he and Manius had cheated death before. But the odds were against cheating death forever - even if you were as immortal as Achilles. Although Varro was not one to fall prey to superstition, he still experienced a chilling presentiment and hoped that his words were just words - and wouldn’t prove prophetic.
Manius had suffered blows in the arena which had wounded him less, compared to the sight of his pregnant wife sobbing as he climbed into the carriage to disembark for Rome. Camilla’s eyes were already puffy, from having cried the previous night. She said that she understood why Manius had to accompany his friend, but her words lacked conviction. Camilla felt her baby kick in her stomach. She was close to pleading with him to stay – and argue that she was scared and needed him to be with her at the birth. But Camilla bit her tongue. Neither of them could forgive themselves should something happen to Varro, through Manius’ absence, whilst he was in Rome.
Lucilla took the hand of her friend and hugged her, whispering words of support as Milo flicked the reins and the carriage moved off. The wheels crunched upon the gravel, like a soldier’s hob-nailed boot crushing a cockroach. Comforting Camilla would help distract Lucilla from her own frustrations and sorrow. At the same time, she cursed Agrippa’s name. But as Varro reminded her the night before:
“It wouldn’t be wise to sa
y “no” to the second most powerful man in the world.”
The blazing sun began to dry-out the ground. Gulls carped overheard, either celebrating having found some food, or bemoaning the lack of it. The long grass bent over, like a throng of hump-backed old men, as the breeze passed through the fields.
When the carriage reached the crest of a hill Varro stared out the window. The expansive, serene sea bordered the horizon, framing the beautiful, bucolic landscape. The agent wished he could have spent just one last morning with Lucilla, on their secluded stretch of beach, within walking distance of the villa. He pictured droplets of water on her shoulders and back, as she came out of the sea, as elegant and captivating as any nereid. He wanted to kiss her salt-tinged skin and lips one more time. Varro told himself that he would be able to do so, once he returned. But their idyllic existence would never quite be the same, he lamented.
All things must pass.
And not all the scenes between them were perfect on the beach. Varro remembered how they rested next to one another, on the fine golden sand, just the other day. The comfortable silence between them ended when Lucilla mentioned how she had received a letter from their mutual friend Tiro.
“He writes that he has finally finished editing Cicero’s correspondence. We should invite him to stay for the weekend soon.”
Varro was non-committal in his response. The agent had yet to share with his wife the conclusion to one of his investigations last year. Tiro had murdered a man. He didn’t have the heart to spoil Lucilla’s admiration and affection for the sage secretary. But nor did he want to countenance having Tiro cross his threshold. His skin still prickled as he recalled the gruesome crime.
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