Rome's Sacred Flame

by Robert Fabbri

  ‘He didn’t reign long enough to come up with the idea. Perhaps he would’ve done had he survived.’

  ‘It’s possible, but he was more interested in humiliating the Senate in revenge for their complicity in the extermination of much of his family. His bridge across the bay was the grandest scheme that he ever had and that was just to take his mind off the death of his sister, Drusilla. No; this has got to be stopped.’

  ‘And you’re the man to stop him?’

  ‘Of course I’m not!’ Vespasian breathed deeply. ‘I’m sorry. I still find the whole thing so outrageously hard to believe.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘I need to make sure that people get to know the truth.’

  ‘Without the source of that truth becoming obvious.’

  ‘That goes without saying, my love.’

  ‘Well, you know that the best way to appear innocent is not to be anywhere near the scene of the crime.’

  ‘Leave Rome? I plan to anyway in order to squeeze some more money out of the estates; I thought you might like to join me at Cosa.’

  ‘I’ll leave very soon; everything is ready and I’ve hired an escort.’

  ‘I’ll be with you once I’ve spent some time at Aquae Cutillae.’

  ‘With Flavia?’

  ‘Of course with Flavia!’ Again Vespasian took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry.’ He sat down on the couch next to Caenis and put an arm around her. ‘I’ll come to Cosa as soon as I can. But if I’m going back and forth between the estates how can I spread any rumours?’ He kissed her on the forehead.

  Caenis responded by lifting her face and kissing him full on the lips. ‘Graffiti, my love.’

  Vespasian pulled away, cupping her head between his hands, looking into her eyes. ‘Graffiti?’

  ‘Of course; on the first few new buildings that go up have people write on it just who was responsible for the fire; it won’t take long for the idea to spread. I’m sure you know who can organise that without you being in the slightest way implicated.’

  Vespasian smiled and kissed her with passion. ‘You are the most brilliant woman I know.’

  ‘That’s not saying much.’

  ‘In the world, then.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  An urgent knock on the front door interrupted the praise. Caenis got to her feet as the doorkeeper checked who was requiring ingress. ‘It’s Magnus, mistress.’

  Caenis nodded and the door was opened.

  ‘You’d better come quickly, sir,’ Magnus said with just the briefest of nods to Caenis. ‘The fire is spreading up the Quirinal. Senator Pollo is leaving and Domitian has turned up so Flavia is desperate to go too.’

  *

  ‘You go with Gaius, Flavia,’ Vespasian urged, looking south to the approaching fire that was now no more than half a mile away; tackling it were men from the Third Cohort Vigiles and they did not seem to be making a very good job of it. ‘And take Domitian with you.’

  Flavia put an arm around Domitian who immediately shrugged it off. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Magnus and I will stay until the last moment; we’ll help try to fight it. Better that than just allow the house to be burnt down.’

  ‘I want to stay too,’ Domitian insisted.

  Vespasian resisted the urge to box the boy’s ears. ‘You will do as I tell you; go with your mother and try to make up for the distress that you caused her for going missing for five days.’ The glare he gave his son silenced any cheek or insubordination that may have been brewing within him.

  Domitian turned and mounted his horse as if it were exactly the thing he wished to do at that moment.

  ‘Say nothing to him about the pearls, my dear,’ Vespasian whispered as he helped Flavia up into the raeda, the covered, four-horse carriage in which she would travel surrounded by slaves and cushions.

  ‘As you wish. You’ll come soon?’

  ‘Magnus is getting the horses ready; we may even catch up with you this evening if the fire carries on spreading this quickly and overruns this whole area. Otherwise I’ll come as soon as I know the house is safe.’

  Flavia surprised him with a kiss on the cheek. ‘Take care, husband; you know I love you.’

  ‘Come on, dear boy,’ Gaius called back from his raeda, just in front of Flavia’s. ‘Put the woman down so that we can be off.’

  ‘I’ll see you in Aquae Cutillae, Uncle. And you too, Flavia.’ Vespasian returned his wife’s kiss as Gaius settled back down into the comfort of his carriage with a couple of his boys for company; the rest of his household joined Vespasian’s slaves behind the two raedae as the drivers cracked their whips and the little convoy moved off – the injunction against wheeled vehicles within the city in daylight being universally ignored.

  Vespasian watched them go for a few moments before the smell of burning brought his attention back to the fire that he and Magnus must now face.

  ‘Pull back!’ the Vigiles centurion ordered his men as Vespasian and Magnus arrived at the face of the fire raging in the Temple of Quirinus, the spear-wielding god of the Sabines.

  The eighty men under the centurion’s command pulled their pumps back and ran with their buckets as the roof, wreathed in flames, began to buckle. For three hundred and fifty years the temple had stood, brick-built around a wooden frame; now that ancient timber blazed out of control.

  ‘Back! Back!’ the Vigiles centurion yelled again, signalling to Vespasian and Magnus to turn about.

  Roof tiles cracked and splintered in the heat, sending razor-like, super-heated shards flying in all directions as the blaze raged in the roof beams, now sagging to the point of unsustainability.

  ‘Back! Back!’ the centurion repeated, urging his sprinting men past him and then rushing to help two of them wheel the last of the pumps away.

  With a surge of incendiary activity bursting from it, the roof collapsed in gradual stages as if Time’s chariot had again slowed for the few moments it took, extending them. Thunderous was the shattering of tiles and the cracking of beams hitting the floor as a jet of flame shot through burning doors to explode up the street. With terrified cries, the Vigiles handling the pump were projected forward, such was the force of the eruption. Vespasian felt his eyebrows singe as he shielded his face, bending over, the heat scalding his bald pate.

  ‘Fuck me!’ Magnus cursed as he slapped his knee repeatedly to extinguish the burning hem of his tunic.

  ‘Quick!’ Vespasian shouted, dashing forward as burning debris fell all about. He cradled an arm over his head as he sprinted to where the pump now burned. Beside it writhed and rolled the centurion and his two men, their tunics afire. Vespasian beat at the flames on the centurion’s back as Magnus attempted to help the other two. ‘Pull it off!’ Vespasian shouted over the screams, going for the man’s belt buckle. Roasted flesh and sizzled hair clawed at his nostrils as he pulled the belt free; through his agony the centurion realised what was being attempted and with a fleet jerk pulled the flaming garment over his head, flinging it away. Vespasian beat the flames from the man’s hair as Magnus managed to get the tunic from one of the Vigiles; the second was beyond help, a crazed fireball on two legs running about as if a decapitated chicken.

  They hauled the centurion and his man away from the burning debris of the temple, leaving their comrade screaming in its midst. Their skin raw and their hair gone, they hyperventilated with the pain.

  The rest of their century came running as Vespasian and Magnus dragged, more than led, the injured men back up the hill.

  ‘Two of you, get them back to your quarters to be seen to,’ Vespasian ordered. ‘The rest of you come with me.’

  Such was the authority in his voice that no one, not even the optio, questioned his right to command; besides, he had just saved two of their number from a certain and unpleasant death.

  Vespasian addressed the optio. ‘Have you got ropes?’

  ‘Yes, back there, sir.’

  ‘Get them. It’s pointles
s fighting it so we’ll make a fire-break instead. We’ll fall back to the Quirinal Gate, where the walls project in a few dozen paces; we’ll do it there.’

  Three men lay dead in front of the two houses, heads cracked and bleeding, bludgeoned to death by the clubs of the Vigiles when they tried to prevent them from tearing their houses down. There had been no time to reason with them and Vespasian had given the order willingly seeing as the break was but a hundred paces from his uncle’s property and it was the best chance of containing the blaze that he could envisage. Other citizens screamed at them to move the break forward so that their houses would be saved, but Vespasian knew that here, by the Quirinal Gate where the wall pushed into the city, was the obvious place as a third of the work had already been done and the street from the gate to the Alta Semita and beyond was the width of two carts.

  Screaming, fleeing citizens raced past, carrying what they could; a few occasionally turning back to search for a loved one or risk a bit of looting before the flames surged forward across another block. Some did not return.

  ‘Pull!’ Vespasian roared over the chaos. The four ropes tautened and the eighteen men hauling on each strained their muscles, gritted their teeth and grunted with exertion.

  ‘Keep at it, you whoresons!’ Magnus shouted by way of encouragement. ‘Pull like you’d pull a Briton off your mother.’

  Even amidst the danger, Vespasian could not stop a small grin as he remembered the long-dead centurion Faustus use a similar expression in Thracia; it had been a favourite phrase of his ever since. He glanced at Magnus and his friend grinned back. ‘I thought that would amuse you, sir.’

  There was a sharp report and the masonry under one of the grappling hooks cracked.

  ‘Keep at it; it’s coming,’ Vespasian shouted as the whole front wall of one of the houses began to shift.

  Feeling their imminent success, the Vigiles renewed their efforts, blistering the palms of their hands on the rough hemp. For four more heartbeats the brickwork held out and then, on the fifth, the walls toppled, breaking in half as they fell, folding back onto themselves, spraying up clouds as they crashed onto the road. Terracotta tiles slipped from the listing roofs as the first floors sagged and then collapsed causing the other walls to shudder, further dislodging the roof beams so that they too came crashing down in a welter of rising dust that billowed as objects fell through it.

  ‘Take two contubernia and get as much of the wood out, and anything else flammable, as you can,’ Vespasian ordered the optio. ‘I’ll take the rest of the lads on to the next two houses.’

  Sweat poured from Vespasian and his tunic clung to him; thirst assailed him, his throat dry with ash and fumes, as he urged his men to greater efforts in pulling down the next two buildings. All the while he kept a nervous eye on the fast-approaching flames which, against all logic that he could think of, advanced quicker going uphill.

  And it was with desperation that they now worked, hauling at ropes to collapse walls, some sturdily built, others less so, as the optio and his men extracted as much timber from the wreckage as possible. In the hour that it took the flames to travel from the Temple of Quirinus to the gate of the same name, almost two dozen houses fell on the northern side of the Alta Semita, providing a break almost two hundred paces long and, including the street whose path it followed, forty paces wide.

  ‘Will it be enough?’ Magnus asked as they watched the flames begin to consume the last buildings before the break.

  Vespasian did not answer; it either would be or not and his opinion would not influence the outcome one way or the other. The entire Vigiles century now toiled to remove the wood from the wreckage, although the heat was now so intolerable that each man could only stand a few moments’ labour at a time.

  ‘Who’s in charge here?’ a voice shouted.

  Vespasian recognised it immediately and turned. ‘I am, Sabinus.’

  Sabinus came striding up, he and his lictors all bearing the marks of six days’ struggle against the flames; behind him came four centuries of one of the Urban Cohorts. ‘What are you doing here, Vespasian?’

  ‘And it’s nice to see you too, Sabinus. I’m protecting our family’s property is the answer to your question.’

  Sabinus walked past Vespasian and approached the fire-break. ‘Everyone, back; this area of the city is being evacuated. Out!’

  The Vigiles were more than happy to pull further away from the rising heat and complied immediately.

  Vespasian ran to catch up with Sabinus. ‘We can’t evacuate now; who’s going to fight the fire if it jumps the break?’

  ‘No one, Vespasian; no one. The Emperor has ordered that everyone should leave; he’s set up refugee camps on the Vatican Hill and is feeding the people at his own expense.’

  ‘Create the problem and then be seen to solve it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just that. Nero’s responsible for the fire and now he wants to make the people love him by looking after them.’

  Sabinus looked non-committal. ‘Well, whatever his motives, those are his orders. The fire has taken the Capitoline and the part of the Campus Martius that adjoins it; this is the last place that it is out of control and Nero wants to just let it burn itself out.’

  ‘That’s all very well for him to say when it’s not his property.’

  Sabinus turned tired eyes onto his brother. ‘You can stay and try to fight it single-handed if you want, brother; but I’m ordering everyone out and leaving the Urban Cohort lads here to stop any looting, so yours, Gaius’ and Caenis’ houses will all be safe provided the fire doesn’t get them.’ He gestured to the break. ‘But I would say that should hold it; so you should be fine. Go, brother; get yourself to Aquae Cutillae. I’ll show the centurions which houses to take special care of.’

  ‘What about ...’

  ‘What about what?’

  ‘The loan?’

  Sabinus shook his head. ‘Now’s really not the time. The contract was burnt along with the rest of my house. Send me a new one next month and I’ll have the money transferred up to you. Now go; I’ll send word about how your houses fare.’

  Vespasian squeezed his brother’s shoulder, turned and then walked away. Magnus followed him; between them they said nothing, not even when they reached their horses. Jumping into their saddles, they urged their mounts up the Quirinal to the Porta Collina and then bore left onto the Via Salaria, hemmed in by tombs and clogged with refugees.

  It was not until they had waded their horses through the crush and were able to travel to the side of the road as the tombs thinned out and it began to climb uphill that Vespasian turned to his friend. ‘I won’t let Nero get away with this, Magnus.’

  Magnus looked dubious as he bounced along in discomfort. ‘Oh, yes? And just what makes you think that you have the ability or power to punish the Emperor?’

  ‘I don’t personally; but I can help start to make the people aware that he deserves punishment. The time is coming, Magnus; and I’m going to need your help.’ Vespasian halted and turned his horse to look back on the city from the exact same place as he had first beheld it, with his father and brother, all those years ago; but this time all was different. The Rome that he had entered as a teenager, the Rome that he had deemed to be full of hope but had found to be brimming with darkness and fear, was no more. Perhaps she had been cleansed or perhaps she had been sacrificed.

  The mistress of the world still reclined upon her seven hills but now she was but a shrivelled carcass covered by a funeral shroud of thick fumes: the smoke, steam and other vapours that she had exhaled in her final breaths as she writhed in her agony. All about her, her people scurried like so many small ants, witnessing her death throes as the last of the fires extinguished any remaining beauty left to her; their cries rose to the air as they wailed their grief to the gods at the death of their city. And the gods were deaf to them. But the gods needed to do nothing to help for the cause of the catastrophe would also be the saviour of the h
our. Nero, still lurking in his sanctuary in the Gardens of Maecenas, overseeing the disaster from Caligula’s tower, was going to house and feed all those he had dispossessed and make them eternally grateful to him as he rebuilt the city to satisfy his vanity.

  Vespasian winced at the remembrance of the Emperor gloating in the name of Neropolis. ‘They have to find out who was responsible for this, and we can help them to do so, Magnus. And once they do know for sure then Nero will not have his dream. There will be no Neropolis.’

  PART III

  AQUAE CUTILLAE, APRIL AD 65

  CHAPTER XIII

  ‘THAT’S THE FIFTH one in the eight months that we’ve been here,’ Vespasian said, looking up at the tree on the edge of a wood and then averting his eyes from the grisly sight. It was the same wood on the eastern edge of the estate in which he and Sabinus had hidden, all those years ago, with six freedmen waiting to ambush a group of runaway slaves who had been stealing mules from the estate.

  Magnus hauled Castor and Pollux off the pile of fly-infested offal mouldering at the base of the tree to which the eviscerated carcass of a mule had been nailed. ‘You don’t want to eat that, boys.’ The two hunting dogs, sleek and black with shoulders at waist-height and wide, block-like heads that melded with thick-muscled necks, growled at being denied a free meal; their baggy, saliva-drooling lips pulled back to expose yellowed, vicious-looking teeth. ‘I don’t care what you think, you ain’t having it.’ Magnus yanked on their leashes again, causing more canine complaint. ‘More to the point, sir, that’s the second this month; they seem to be becoming more frequent.’

  Vespasian turned to Philon, the estate steward since the death of his father, Pallo, two years previously. ‘Who found it?’

  ‘Drustan, one of the freedmen, master.’

  ‘That huge Briton I freed just before I went to Africa?’

  ‘Yes, Titus Flavius Drustan,’ Philon confirmed.