Family Commitments (Marcus Corvinus Book 20)
Page 24
‘Mmaah! Yes indeed, Vipsania.’
Well, here it came. I steeled myself for what evidently was intended to be a surprise revelation, and I noticed that Perilla was doing the same.
‘It appears that a month or so ago Titus discovered, completely by accident, that the granddaughter of a very old and dear friend from his time in Athens had opened a small antique shop on the Sacred Way.’ Mother fixed me with her eye, daring me to comment. I said nothing. ‘He has been visiting her and her husband regularly ever since. Clandestinely, since the silly man had got it into his head that I might suspect him of, well...’ She hesitated.
‘Hanky-panky,’ I said, keeping my face straight. I glanced at Perilla. There were bright spots of red on her cheeks, and her lips were firmly pressed together and trembling.
‘Indeed.’ Mother sniffed. ‘Complete nonsense, of course. As you well know, it would never even occur to me to suspect Titus of that sort of behaviour, not for one second.’ Another gimlet stare at me. ‘Anyway, he took me round to the shop to meet the girl. Polyxene, her name is. She really is quite charming, although hopelessly rustic for an Athenian. Breeding, probably: Titus didn’t go into details concerning the old friend, but reading between the lines I suspect he was in trade.’ I shot a look at Priscus; he had his head down, and he was communing with his knees. ‘Nevertheless, once I take her in hand I believe I might be able to make something of her socially. Time will tell.’
‘That’s splendid, Vipsania.’ Perilla had herself under control now, although she was still looking a bit frizzed at the edges with the effort. ‘Bring her and her husband round here for dinner some evening. We’d love to meet them.’
‘Actually, dear, you’ll see them before that. I’ve invited them to dine with us tomorrow, so you can come along then. Phormio has promised to cook something extra-special for the occasion.’
I winced. Fuck. Double fuck. Well, we’d just have to batten down the hatches, reconcile ourselves to a seriously-disturbed post-dinner night, and lay in a decent supply of our family doctor Sarpedon’s patent indigestion mixture, that was all.
‘Oh, what a shame!’ Perilla gave her a dazzling smile. ‘We’re planning to leave for Castrimoenium tomorrow, and Clarus and Marilla will be expecting us.’
Beautifully done, and I couldn’t’ve lied more convincingly myself. I breathed again.
‘Now that is disappointing.’ Mother frowned. ‘Never mind, it can’t be helped. You’ll simply, as you say, have to meet them when they come here.’ She glanced at Titus. ‘And now we’ve taken up quite enough of your time. Have a lovely holiday, won’t you, and do give our love to the family.’
They left.
‘The crafty old devil!’ I said admiringly. ‘He’s weaselled out of it!’
‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that, dear,’ Perilla said. ‘I never am completely sure where your mother’s concerned. She’s a very intelligent woman, and I suspect she might well just be playing along for the sake of peace.’
‘You think so?’ I shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, maybe. In any case, Priscus’s by-blow has got her feet under the table pretty nicely.’
‘Literally, too.’ Perilla smiled. ‘Although I don’t envy her the dinner invitation, particularly if Phormio is going to be especially creative over the menu.’
‘She’ll survive, lady.’ I reached for the wine jug and topped up my cup. ‘Besides, it’s a cheap price to pay for acceptance, even if she and her husband do spend the next twelve hours throwing up and dumping down as a result.’
‘Don’t be crude, Marcus.’ She got up. ‘And now I really must finish talking to Bathyllus about the Castrimoenium trip. I had actually planned on the day after tomorrow, but under the circumstances we’d better leave when I told Vipsania we would. Just in case she checks.’
‘Fair enough. Tell him to let me have that bagful of stuff as soon as he likes and me and Damon will get off.’
She went upstairs, and I stretched out on the couch with the cup of wine. Yeah, well; things hadn’t gone too badly this time around. If I hadn’t scored an outright win I reckoned I could at least claim an honourable draw. And Vinicianus’s document was in the best of hands, of that I was sure: it’d do the job it was intended to do in the end, whenever that might be, or at least when the time came it would serve as one hell of a contributing factor to back up whatever ammunition Narcissus had to put the skids under Messalina. On the family side, Bathyllus was up one brother, warts and all, and Priscus had sneaked a surprise granddaughter under the fence. Even Damon, if everything panned out well with Secundus and Helena, was back in the Sentius family fold, and in a position that was a lot more secure than he’d been used to for the past twenty-odd years. So not a bad result there, either. And to put the cap on it, last but by no means least, we’d successfully evaded one of Mother’s dinner invitations. All in all, I’d say that where family commitments were concerned all of us had done okay.
Life might not be absolutely perfect, but me...well, I wasn’t complaining too hard.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
The story is set in May AD44.
As with all the ‘political’ Corvinus books, I’ve tried to integrate my purely fictional plot with actual historical events. It’s only fair, then, to distinguish fact from fiction here, and also to give a brief rundown of what happened subsequently to a few of the historical characters.
The treason trials are all factual, as are the charges involved. It may come as a surprise that Claudius, who was of course a very intelligent man, would countenance for one moment the ‘dream’ evidence put forward jointly by Messalina and Narcissus to convict Junius Silanus, but he did, and Silanus was duly chopped. It’s also true that Suillius Rufus served as Messalina’s tame prosecutor, at least in the prosecution of Julia Livia, although I must admit I’ve extended this function unilaterally to the trials of Messalina’s other victims. My only excuse is that in their case no prosecutors are named, and for Rufus to reprise the role – at least, as far as my plot was concerned – would make perfect sense. On the other hand, laying the deaths unequivocably at Messalina’s door in the first place and citing as her motive a wish to secure the succession of her son Britannicus are purely devices of my own invention. They do, however, fit very well with the historical facts and dates involved, so I don’t feel too guilty.
Factual, too, are the background circumstances of the Scribonianus revolt; but except for the fact that the historian Cassius Dio says that Scribonianus was encouraged to rebel by Vinicianus, citing as the latter’s motive disgust at the execution of Silanus, this part of the plot is cut from whole cloth: Gaius Sentius is an invented character, and neither Vinicianus’s document detailing Messalina’s crimes nor Narcissus’s framing of him as agent provocateur have any historical justification whatsoever.
Now for the characters. Just three of them will do.
Pomponia Graecina
A close friend of the executed Julia Livilla, she never forgave Claudius for condemning her, and mourned her for the whole of her long life (she died in AD83, in the reign of Domitian). Tradition makes Graecina one of the earliest Christians, and although this side of things would be too late to figure in my story I have tried to foreshadow it by giving her an interest in the occult and mystery religions in general, with which early Christianity had strong links
Narcissus
He was instrumental in the destruction of Messalina in AD48, but lost a large part of his influence with Claudius because of his opposition to the latter’s proposed marriage to Agrippina. It’s interesting, from the point of view of my story, that another reason given for his decline in significance was that, at this point, he supported Britannicus’s claim to the succession; but since the looming alternative was Agrippina’s own son Nero perhaps this isn’t quite the anomaly it might appear. Besides, his quarrel had been with the mother, not the child, and Britannicus was as much Claudius’s as hers. Predictably, following Claudius’s assassination in AD
54 he was forced into suicide.
.
Publius Suillius Rufus
Rufus went from strength to strength under Claudius, but eventually (AD58) fell from grace. A head-to-head quarrel with the emperor Nero’s advisor, the philosopher and playwright Annaeus Seneca, resulted in his prosecution on a variety of grounds including maladministration of his province when governor of Asia, the embezzlement of public funds, and involvement in Messalina’s crimes. Half his estate was confiscated, and he spent the rest of his life in self-indulgent exile.
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