The Alexandrian Embassy (2 page)

Marius made a show of putting the poker back into the mobile brazier that, along with an oil lamp on a table next to it, lit the chamber. Sextus' bulk lurked in the shadows by the door, under which flickered the dim light from the adjoining corridor; Postumus stood behind the prisoner to prevent him from rotating.

‘Perhaps he's lost his voice,' Magnus mused, scratching his chin. ‘Why don't you check, Marius?'

‘Right you are, Magnus.' He withdrew the poker, its tip now orange. Within an instant the stench of burnt flesh was accompanied
by a piercing shriek that brought a happy smile to Magnus' face.

‘His thigh doesn't look too nice but I can't hear anything wrong with his voice,' Magnus observed, turning back to Sextus, ‘can you, Sextus?'

‘What's that, Magnus?'

‘I said: can you hear anything wrong with his voice?'

‘Er … no, Magnus; it sounded fine to me.'

‘I thought so. What about you, Postumus, did you hear anything wrong?'

‘It sounded sweet to me, brother.'

‘In which case it's time to stop being nice. Hold the gentleman's buttocks apart for him, would you?'

Postumus grinned with genuine enjoyment at the prospect. ‘My pleasure, Magnus.'

Magnus squatted down and thrust his face close to the prisoner's as Postumus pulled his legs apart. ‘Now listen, you piece of rat shit. I'm in a very bad mood and I don't give a fuck how much or for how long I hurt you. Two of my brothers are dead and a lot of my money is missing so I'll do whatever it takes to redress those facts. Answer my questions and Marius here won't use your arse as a scabbard for his poker.'

Still the man shook his head, his eyes bulging at the sight of the glowing terror coming towards him.

‘That's a silly decision.' Magnus nodded at Marius. ‘Just in the crease and then, Postumus, squeeze.'

The red-hot tip was placed between the man's buttocks as Postumus pushed them together. Smoke rose to the hiss of burning hair and skin and, after a moment's delay, the prisoner issued a scream that made his last effort seem pathetic in comparison; on it went, rising in timbre and getting rougher as it grated, drying in his throat.

At Magnus' nod, Marius withdrew the object of torment and pressed it back into the brazier; the prisoner started to hyperventilate.

‘He's going to have to be careful how he sponges his arsehole for a few days,' Magnus opined, peering at the damage before
squatting back down and grabbing the prisoner's chin. ‘Now how would you like that done to your scrotum, maggot? I can assure you that we'll all enjoy watching and listening.'

The man's chest heaved and tears rolled down his forehead; his swollen lips drew back to reveal shattered teeth. ‘Se … Sem …'

Magnus put his ear closer to the man's mouth. ‘Who?'

‘Semp …' He struggled for breath for a couple of moments. ‘Sempronius.'

The name came out as a wheeze but it was clearly audible; Magnus' face darkened. ‘Sempronius,' he growled, chewing on the word. ‘He of the West Viminal Brotherhood?'

The prisoner nodded feebly, his eyes closed.

‘How did he know about the cash?'

‘I don't … I … I don't know; he just …' He winced and spat some blood from his ruined mouth; a globule rolled into his nostrils. ‘He just told us to track you back from the house on the Esquiline and attack you as you neared our territory so we'd not have so far to go with the box.'

‘So he knew about the box?'

The man nodded, his eyes still closed.

Magnus stood, his face set grim. He paused for a few moments in thought and then wrenched the glove from Marius' hand, pulled it on his own and grabbed the iron from the fire. ‘As you've been a good boy and answered the questions as best you can I'll make good my promise: Marius won't use your arsehole as a scabbard for his iron.' He pushed Postumus aside and, brandishing the searing bar in his right hand, he exposed the man's anus with his left. ‘But I will!' With a jerk he forced the poker into the sphincter and thrust it, with the palm of his hand, as deep as it would go. With a howl that would have drowned out both the previous ones combined the prisoner convulsed, almost doubling up, so that his face stared, eyes brim with horror, over his scrotum, directly at Magnus for an instant, before slumping back down, swinging limply, dead from shock, pain and horrific internal injuries.

‘Cut him down, Marius,' Magnus ordered, heading out of the room, ‘and then dump him on the West Viminal's border; you
can use Sextus and Postumus for the job.' Magnus walked through the door and then put his head back round. ‘And make sure that the poker is pulled out a bit and clearly visible. I want Sempronius to know exactly what I think of him.'

‘Your tame senator sent a boy round,' an old man with gnarled fingers and a sagging throat said, not taking his eyes off the scroll that he was perusing in the light of two lamps.

Magnus took a seat next to him at the table in the corner of the tavern with the best view of the door through the fug of the crowded room. ‘Which one, Servius?'

‘Which boy? I don't know, I didn't ask his name.'

‘No, you old goat; which senator?' Magnus took the cup and wine jug brought to him by the man serving behind the bar. ‘Thanks, Cassandros.'

Servius looked up, his eyes awash with milky patches. ‘Oh, the older one.'

‘Senator Pollo?'

‘Yes.'

‘And?'

Servius looked back at his scroll. ‘It's no good, Magnus; I'll be blind before long. Already everything is vague and dimming.' He shook his bald head and placed the scroll down on the table. ‘I didn't want to disturb you whilst you were … in conference but the senator is very keen that you should attend his
salutio
in the morning and then accompany him to the Senate House; his nephew, Vespasian, has a job for you.'

‘What sort of job?'

‘The boy couldn't say but Senator Pollo said that you were to keep the next three days or so free.'

‘Three days?'

‘Or so.'

Magnus kicked the nearest stool. ‘Shit! Just when things are getting busy.'

With a fold of his plain white citizen's toga covering his head, Magnus crumbled a flour and salt cake over the flame of the small
fire that was kept continuously burning on the altar of the crossroads
lares
, embedded into the tavern's exterior wall. The upkeep of these shrines was the original reason for the formation of the brotherhoods all over the city, centuries earlier. In the intervening time, however, the function of the brotherhoods had expanded to looking after the interests and welfare of the local community, for which they received remuneration from the locals commensurate with the amount of protection they needed. Their word, therefore, was law in the area in which they held sway.

As the crumbs flared in the flame, Magnus muttered a short prayer to ask the gods of the junction of the Alta Semita and the Vicus Longus to hold their hands over the area. That done, he raised a bowl and poured a libation in front of the five small bronze figures that represented the lares, promising the same offering that evening should they keep their side of the religious bargain. Pulling the toga from his head, he patted the brother, whose turn it was to tend the fire, on the shoulder before heading off down the wakening Alta Semita, with the first indigo glow of dawn to his back and with Cassandros and a bearded, betrousered easterner, both of whom carried staves and sputtering torches, to either side.

It was but a short walk to Senator Gaius Vespasius Pollo's house and, although Magnus arrived there just shy of sunrise, there was already a goodly crowd of the senator's clients waiting outside for admittance to his atrium in order to wish a good day to their patron, receive a small largesse, enquire if there was any way that they could be of service to him that day and, perhaps, occasionally take advantage of the symbiotic relationship and ask a favour of the senator themselves.

‘Cassandros and Tigran, you stay here.' Magnus did not care for order of precedence and pushed his way through the crowd to the front door, leaving his two companions waiting on the fringe of the gathering. No one objected to his progress as all were aware that this battered ex-boxer, although low on the social scale, was high in their patron's favour.

As the sun crested the eastern horizon, bereft of yesterday's clouds, bathing the Seven Hills in a spring morning glow, the
door was opened by an exceedingly attractive youth with blond hair, the length of which was countered by the shortness of his tunic. Magnus was first through the door.

‘Magnus, my friend,' Gaius Vespasius Pollo boomed, not getting up from the sturdy chair set in the centre of the atrium in front of the
impluvium
with its spluttering fountain. He brushed a carefully tonged ringlet of dyed black hair away from his porcine eyes glittering in a hugely fat face.

‘Good morning, sir; er … you require a service, I believe.'

‘Yes, yes, but I'll talk to you about it later. In the meantime my steward will give you a list of Jewish requirements and customs.' Gaius gestured to a slightly older version of the youth on the door who bowed his head to Magnus. ‘Oh, and he'll also have one of my lads read it for you seeing as you, well, you know.'

‘Can't read,' Magnus said, his confusion plain upon his face.

‘Indeed,' Gaius replied, already looking to the client next in line.

‘Philo!' Magnus exclaimed as he walked beside Gaius, processing with his two hundred, or so, clients accompanying him down the Quirinal. ‘You mean the brother of Alexander, the Alabarch of the Alexandrian Jews?'

‘The very same,' Gaius puffed; although he had set a sedate pace he was already sheened with sweat. His jowls, breasts, belly and buttocks wobbled furiously to different rhythms beneath his senatorial toga as he waddled behind Cassandros and Tigran with their staves at the ready to beat a path for him should the way become too crowded.

‘What's he doing in Rome?'

‘He's been here since the start of the sailing season. He's heading an embassy of Alexandrian Jews to the Emperor to complain about the way Flaccus, the Prefect of Egypt, handled the riots between the Jews and the Greeks in Alexandria last year.'

‘I saw them, I was there with Vespasian, stealing Alexander's breastplate from his mausoleum for Caligula because Flaccus refused to hand it over.'

‘Of course you were; so you know what the riots were like, then?'

‘Well, according to Philo, they were an outrage because, how did he put it? The Jews were scourged with whips by the lowest class of executioner as if they were indigenous country dwellers, rather than with rods wielded by Alexandrian lictors as was the entitlement of their rank.'

‘What?'

‘Yes, that was his main complaint. Forget the fact that his sister-in-law had to be put out of her misery by her own husband because she had been flayed alive and had no chance of survival, or that gangs of Greeks dragged Jews off to the theatre to crucify them and then set fire to the crosses. No, he was more concerned about the etiquette of beating and how some of his acquaintances were not accorded the dignity of the rod, as he put it. An arsehole as far as I could make out and a pompous one at that.'

‘Yes, well, he is the arsehole, pompous or not, that Vespasian wants you to … look after, shall we say, for the next few days.'

‘Why?'

‘Because no one else will. He's either refused or got rid of, on religious grounds, everyone that Cossa Cornelius Lentullus, the Urban Prefect, has provided for his safety. Not wanting to take the blame should something happen to Philo and his embassy, Lentullus passed on responsibility to Corbulo, the Junior Consul, who in turn immediately passed it down the line to Vespasian, in his capacity as one of the Urban Praetors this year. Corbulo is well aware that Vespasian has a relationship with the family from his time in Alexandria and therefore perhaps has some influence over Philo. So Vespasian, naturally, is anxious that Philo should not wander around the city unattended as he is likely to cause offence wherever he goes.'

‘Well, that's for sure. Why doesn't someone just bundle him onto a ship and send him back to Alexandria?'

‘Because, after keeping him waiting, Caligula has decided that he will receive him and his embassy and is looking forward to it; which is why no one wants to be responsible for disappointing our divine Emperor by allowing Philo to get himself killed. Apparently Caligula's curious as to why the Jews don't accept him as a god.'

Magnus scowled. ‘Well, they don't accept anything as a god. That's what the Greeks used as the reason for the riots: they didn't see why the Jews should have equal status with them if they weren't going to behave like equal citizens and make a sacrifice to the Emperor when they took their annual oath of allegiance.'

‘Which is, I believe, the very question that Caligula wants to put to Philo: why should the Jews have equal status if they don't behave like everyone else in the Empire?'

‘Tricky.'

‘Yes, so just make sure that he's kept alive to answer it. Caligula is on his way back from Antium and Vespasian is accompanying him; they should be back in a day or so as Caligula's keen to get his campaign in Germania under way.'

Magnus grunted; he did not look enamoured of the commission. ‘If you say so, sir.'

‘I don't
say
so; it's just a small favour that I'm asking.'

‘And in return, sir?' Magnus asked as they went through a colonnade that opened out into the Forum built by Augustus.

Gaius looked askance at his client and raised a knowing, plucked eyebrow. ‘Yes?'

‘Have you heard of a man named Quintus Tullius Tatianus?'

‘An equestrian from an unfashionable branch of the Tullian
gens
?'