Master and God (33 page)

This, Lucilla bitterly decided, accounted for the man’s swift rejection of her gauche invitation.

She tried to forget what had happened, yet she went over the incident obsessively.

Vinius had no need of her. For sex he could freely associate with any prostitute, waitress, actress, gladiatrix or slave. If he wanted a regular arrangement, he could remarry.

Neither of them had mentioned Alba. Lucilla never supposed Vinius regretted that. Yet for him, it was a once-only. An opportunity to grasp, but a relationship to shun. He might still speak of Lucilla as attractive and beddable, but men always defined women in those terms. A man with a strong will, who guarded his position and was particularly careful about his money, would not repeat the experience, however powerfully he gave himself up to it at the time.

As he had done. Lucilla knew that. Gaius had been completely overcome, just as she was. If she had stayed in his arms the next morning, she could have asked him for anything.

But Alba would remain just a memory, and not solely because it happened five years ago. He could tick her off. A conquest. Wonderful, but done with. To sleep with Lucilla again was now far too risky.

Only one aspect puzzled her: his loyalty whenever she was in trouble, together with the effort he was prepared to expend on rescuing her. Of course he had saved her from Orgilius. As soon as he unlocked the front door, such a decent man was bound to. Then there was no obligation to involve himself; he could have,
should
have, passed the culprit to her husband for punishment. He need not have made Lucilla dinner; calmed her with his quiet conversation; left his door open because she was terrified; provided a watchdog, at his own cost.

Sometimes he seemed so affectionate. They had an odd friendship, and the only way Lucilla could make sense of it was to think Vinius was drawn to her, but that he did not want to be.

She had to avoid him. She considered giving up their shared apartment, but because of her lease on the ground floor shop, where Glyke and Calliste did so well now, a move would be too complicated; it was not worth doing just to escape her embarrassment.

The awkward incident, combined with unwelcome memories of her early years that Orgilius had brought back, made Lucilla reassess her current life. Men and their deficiencies had put her in a hard mood. She needed none of them. She would be better on her own, which she could tackle now with more confidence than when she was younger.

This, then, was when Flavia Lucilla took her decision to leave her husband.

L
ucilla went to tell Nemurus face to face.

Various scenarios occupied her head before she tackled him. Mainly she feared an argument, imagining that Nemurus would show how vicious he could be when thwarted. She wondered if he might even hit her.

It was quite unlike that. Nemurus behaved as if expecting her to leave him. Lucilla had forgotten he was a philosopher. Normally she gave it little thought but she knew that every day he practised accepting whatever fate dumped upon him. To endure her departure without anguish was, for him, an exercise in making himself at one with Nature. For a stoic, a useful test in leading a good life.

‘I spoke to your father just now, Nemurus; he is sending someone with a handcart and I shall return all the books you lent me. I do thank you for everything you taught me. I am grateful that you married me. But marriage requires the willingness of both parties to live together; I am afraid I no longer wish to do so.’

‘What caused this?’ The slight peevishness was regrettable in a stoic.

Lucilla described Orgilius’ attack. To explain her escape she said only that ‘someone conveniently arrived’. Nemurus looked suspicious, though did not query this. ‘I spoke to you of my fears, Nemurus, but you brushed my pleas aside. The most terrible thing was that you actually told that man where to find me.’

Pity the poor woman who had to give a notice of divorce to the man who had taught her literary criticism. He was bound to be thinking about vocabulary, style, tone, imagery, arrangement and presentation of material . . .

But all Nemurus said was, ‘Yes. That was unforgivable.’

Then he surprised her, surprised himself perhaps. He spoke with a warmth he had never shown before of his regard for Lucilla; he declared he would miss their companionship.

It was too late. Lucilla knew that if there had been children she would have struggled on with this marriage, but as things were she saw no point. ‘Try again,’ she urged him. ‘Find someone rich, so you have no worries to distract you from your work.’

Finally Nemurus did snap: ‘While you pursue your affair with that Praetorian!’

Lucilla flinched. ‘I have known Vinius for a long time, but there is no affair.’

‘Does he know that, I wonder?’ mused Nemurus theatrically.

Lucilla walked out, with no more conversation. She and Nemurus had been together just over two years, though never had a home of their own. The household gods they honoured belonged to his parents. There was neither dowry nor property to redistribute. She had no father to return to, but she had her apartment and furniture; Nemurus never made any claim on those. There she would attend to her customers and live her life quietly.

She told nobody she was divorced. It was no one else’s business.

It was a wild time to have upheaval in her life. A menacing atmosphere depressed Rome, with good events only making dark ones more terrible by contrast.

Domitian was pleasing the people. He had given them a
congiarium
, the personal gift from an emperor to his people, traditionally wine or oil in a special vessel, but now more conveniently a cash payment. He held numerous games in addition to other festivals in the traditional calendar, all adding to Rome’s carnival atmosphere. He became famous for innovation, allowing foot races for young women and freak events featuring female gladiators and dwarves; he lavished money on spectacles, with regular mock-battles between infantry or cavalry, plus naval fights in flooded arenas. He had added two new chariot teams, the Purple and Gold, in addition to the traditional Red, White, Green and Blue. He created a new Stadium and Odeum in the Campus for athletics and music. People were less than happy when he forced them to remain seated during a sudden violent thunderstorm, allegedly causing some to catch a fatal chill, but they forgave him when he feasted them with an all-night banquet for every Circus spectator, served up to them in their seats.

If the people loved him, the Senate did not. Domitian made no attempt to disguise his antipathy. He strictly controlled admission to the upper and middle ranks. Relegation was the least worry. Banishment and execution were a constant threat. It was said that the Emperor encouraged those who were under a cloud to commit suicide, to spare himself the opprobrium of murdering them; there may even have been some who killed themselves out of misplaced anxiety.

Like many men whose own behaviour is questionable, Domitian regulated everyone else’s moral conduct. Vinius had not exaggerated when he warned Orgilius that the Emperor took a direct interest in criminal accusations. Women were charged with adultery while men were just as sternly prosecuted under the law against sodomy with freeborn males. Other crimes were fiercely tackled too. Supposedly one woman was executed merely because she undressed in front of a statue of the Emperor; this caused an extra dimension of fear, because someone in her own home must have informed on her. No one could trust even their most intimate household.

In the privacy of Plum Street Lucilla’s clients, a forthright bunch of matrons, preened the immaculate curls their meek husbands were paying for and ridiculed anyone who kept a statue of Domitian in her bedroom. If it really seemed advantageous to own such a statue, the thing could so easily be relegated to a little-used library or the horrible saloon where one’s husband greeted his morning clients . . .

Even Domitian’s own household became increasingly destabilised. His removal of state servants continued. Finance and correspondence secretaries came and went for no obvious reason, as if merely to keep the others on the hop.

Recent events still weighed heavily on the Emperor. Nobody knew the full tally of reprisals after the German revolt. Severed heads displayed in the Forum had been only one show of punishment. Domitian refused to publish details of those he executed; rumours of ‘many’ senators being put to death were perhaps false, but the chief officers from the two rebellious legions, who were caught, savagely tortured and killed, were senators’ sons. Details of their torture – scorched genitals and hands cut off – were so specific it sounded true.

Some deaths certainly occurred; the governor of Asia, Civica Cerialis, was abruptly executed for unknown reasons, and without trial, possibly because Domitian believed he had encouraged the false Nero. The governor of Britain, too, Sallustius Lucullus, was put to death, ostensibly when he ‘invented a new lance and named it after himself’; that seemed absurd but Domitian may have been convinced Lucullus also supported the Saturninus revolt.

In Rome, the vengeful Emperor then played a macabre joke on the upper classes. Members of the Senate and the equestrian order received personal invitations to dine with him; he was holding a special banquet to honour those who died in Dacia. Everyone was so insecure, the mere offer of dinner with their emperor filled them with anxiety. Unless a man was on his deathbed with physicians’ notes to prove it, the invitation could not be refused. All were terrified of Domitian. The more they quaked, the more he enjoyed his power over them.

Flavia Lucilla had joined the background team for this carefully managed occasion. Arrangements were on a theatrical scale. A master of ceremonies had sounded her out on the subject of dyes and skin paints, with which they conducted experiments. She was primed to attend with the necessary equipment, but sworn to secrecy.

One afternoon shortly after her divorce, she was collected in a litter. With her baskets of materials, she was taken down the Vicus Longus, through the new imperial forums, across the ancient Forum of the Romans, and up the steep covered entrance to the top of the Palatine, where she had her first real experience of Domitian’s fabulous new palace. Work was still incomplete but already she could see that this was a building of staggering style and innovation. Crowning the Palatine Hill even more majestically than its predecessor, the new palace was designed to give the impression its halls were those of gods.

After the steep climb up from the Forum, the entrance had been positioned close to the ancient Temple of Apollo and House of Augustus. An octagonal vestibule, which had curvilinear anterooms, gave a preliminary hint of magnificence and led to the first inner court. A portico of fluted columns in Numidian yellow marble surrounded a huge pool; it contained a large island over which water continually splashed via complex fountains and channels. Every surface was veneered in expensive marble.

To the left was a staggering audience chamber, roofed with ninety-foot beams of Lebanon cedar; the vast space featured fabulous purple columns and niches which contained massive statues of demigods, hewn from metallic green stone brought from the far Egyptian desert. A monumental outside porch where the heavy columns were grey-green Carystian provided the daily setting for Domitian’s formal appearance to be saluted by his people.

To the right of the entrance, Nero’s dining hall, once beautiful in itself, had been superseded by a stupendous banqueting suite that would seat thousands at great public feasts. A hundred feet high and lined with three orders of columns, the main hall boasted enormous picture windows which gave views to fountain courts where intricate oval water features stood among yet more multicoloured marble pavements.

Beyond these first formal public rooms lay areas where most people would never penetrate: astonishing second and third courts, exquisite suites, deliberately confusing corridor links, sudden changes of scale or form or level, sunken gardens, bath houses, and a private interior which formed a palace within a palace for the Emperor and his family.

Marble was the principal material – cut, carved, polished, veneered, mosaicked – but Rabirius had been allowed to spend endlessly on gold too. Everywhere glimmered and shone until the interplay of light with the musical counterpoint of water from the fountains dazzled and entranced the senses.

Amidst so much glimmering beauty, Domitian’s guests tonight were to have a very different dining experience. None of the glorious banqueting halls for which the palace would become famous were used for the Dacian dinner. A large room had been repainted entirely in darkest black: floor, ceiling, all four walls, plus cornices, architraves, door furniture and dados. On the bare black floor stood bare black couches.

Wives were not invited; each man had to endure the night alone. On arrival, all were separated from their attendants too. No friendly slaves from home would be removing their shoes and handing them napkins tonight. In the hall, they found a formal funeral banquet like those families held for their deceased relations outside necropolis mausoleums. By the dim light of cemetery lamps, each diner found beside his couch a grim black slab that looked like a tombstone. It bore his name.

As guests nervously settled, a stream of beautiful naked boys slipped into the dark room, all painted head-to-toe in black. These creatures performed a ghostly dance, winding around the couches like shadows, ebony against pitch, so only occasional movements and the whites of their eyes showed. The undulating shades finished their performance by stationing themselves one to each diner.

All the solemn sacrifices associated with funerals were made. Black serving dishes were set on low ebony tables. Each spectral pageboy served his diner with strange dark food. Cinnamon and myrrh, the spices thrown on cremation biers, stuffily perfumed the room.

There was no music. No nervous chatter broke the silence. Presiding, more gloomy than Pluto enthroned in his Underworld caverns, only Domitian talked. The sardonic host chose topics all relating to death and slaughter. Throughout the nightmare dinner, his guests expected to have their throats cut.