For my cousin, Aris Caraccio, his wife, Nathalie, and their children, Mathilde, Arthur, Victor and Margaux; as well as my uncle, Giuseppe ‘Pino’ Caraccio, with much love.

Also to George and Ice, their Corsa hounds upon whom – with a lot of latitude! – Castor and Pollux are based
.

FEW ENJOYED NERO’S
feasts; each seemed interminable and this occasion was no exception.

It was not because of the endless courses, all exquisitely presented, paraded out by dozens of scantily clad – if clad at all – slaves of either sex or none. Nor was it the conversation: anodyne, occasional and humourless; neither was it the entertainment, which had been a repetitive series of heroic odes in the Emperor’s favourite styles, both in Greek and Latin, performed with the sickening smugness of a lyre-player who doubted not his own ability and knew himself to be high in the Emperor’s favour. Even the vulgarity of the size of the dinner – thirty couches, each with three guests reclining at their own low table, arranged in a ‘U’ shape around the entertainer – could be forgiven as it had become the norm in Nero’s reign.

No, it was none of these things that made Titus Flavius Sabinus loathe every moment of the gathering and pray to his lord Mithras for its end. It was a completely different factor: it was the fear.

The fear swathed the room like an invisible, gladiatorial net, with lead weights holding it down to the ground and the
retiarius
, wielding it, pulling on the drawstrings so that it entrapped all within its grasp, making escape impossible. Most of the guests were entangled in this net of fear although none would let it show in their outward behaviour; recently, after four and a half years of Nero as emperor, the
é
lite of Rome had begun to learn that to show fear in front of him was to encourage him into worse excess.

It had not always been so: in the early years of his rule Nero had shown restraint – at least in public – although he had raped and then poisoned his adoptive brother, Britannicus, the Emperor Claudius’ true blood heir who had been passed over because of his youth. However, that outrage, or the fratricide part of it at least, could be justified by political necessity: had he lived, Britannicus could have become a figurehead for dissension that may have turned into conflict; his death, it was argued, prevented the possibility of another civil war and therefore his sacrifice was made for the good of all. Because of that, people were willing to overlook the boy’s murder on the eve of his becoming a man on his fourteenth birthday.

After the death of his only serious rival – as well as the elimination of a couple of lesser ones – Nero had settled down to a life of pampered luxury, leaving the running of the Empire mainly to his former tutor and now advisor, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, and also the prefect of the Praetorian Guard, Sextus Afranius Burrus, preferring instead to indulge in his two passions, chariot racing and singing, both of which he, naturally, conducted in private. It was unthinkable for a patrician, let alone the Emperor, to be seen indulging in either of those demeaning pursuits in public, and so Nero, aware of the dignity of his position, had not displayed his taste for the activities of freedmen and slaves to anyone outside a very tight inner circle on the Palatine Hill. As far as the people of Rome were concerned, the Golden Emperor, as they liked to think of their Princeps, whose hair blazed with the colour of the dawn, was an upright and generous ruler – as witnessed by the magnificence of the games and public feasts that he provided. Outwardly he was soberly married to Claudia Octavia, Claudius’ daughter, and conducted himself in a very worthy and Roman fashion – the fact the marriage was technically incestuous was quietly forgotten, again for the greater good – but inwardly it was quite a different story.

However, now, to those close to Nero, it had become clear that only he could curb his own behaviour; but if he chose not to then that was his prerogative. Seneca and Burrus, who between them had taken on the task of moulding the young Princeps into a temperate and just ruler, could do nothing to restrain the desires within Nero that had grown with each of his twenty-one years.

And his desires were great.

Too great to be satisfied by the patrician rigidity of his young wife, reclining to the left of her husband with the blank look on her face that she had worn for the past four years since Nero had humiliated her by taking a freedwoman to his bed and withholding from her the chance to produce an heir. But even the charms of the freedwoman, Acte, had not been enough to fulfil the lust of a young man who had come to realise that he could do anything that pleased him to anyone he chose.

It was now becoming clear that many things pleased him and ordering the
é
lite of Rome to join him for lavish dinners at a few moments’ notice was, however inconvenient, the most innocuous; there were far darker activities that pleased Nero even more. One of those activities, Sabinus guessed, as Tigellinus, the prefect of the Vigiles, approached his couch, the Emperor was going to indulge in, yet again, later.

Dark-eyed and sharp-featured, Tigellinus leant down to whisper in Sabinus’ ear. ‘The Quirinal from the fourth hour.’ With a smile like a rabid dog’s snarl, he patronisingly patted Sabinus on the cheek before walking away.

Sabinus sighed, reached for his cup, downed its contents then held it behind him for a naked slave boy, smeared all over with silver lacquer, to refill as he turned to his corpulent neighbour, keeping his voice low. ‘You should get home quickly as soon as the dinner finishes, Uncle, if it ever does. He’s planning on going out again tonight; Tigellinus just informed me that there are to be no patrols of his Vigiles around the Quirinal Hill after the fourth hour of the night, apart, of course, from the one that shadows Nero to keep him safe.’

His uncle, Gaius Vespasius Pollo, flicking a carefully tonged ringlet of dyed-black hair away from his kohled eyes, looked at Sabinus, alarmed at the lack of Rome’s Night Watch in his neighbourhood. ‘Not the Quirinal again, dear boy? The area is still reeling from his rampage through it last month.’

Sabinus nodded, thoughtfully sipping from his replenished cup. ‘One tenement block and two houses burnt to the ground, half a dozen rapes, countless broken bones and several murders as well as the forced suicide of Julius Montanus for daring to try to defend himself when set upon by what he thought was a slave in a ridiculous wig.’

Gaius’ jowls and chins wobbled in indignation; he reached for another anchovy pasty. ‘A man of senatorial status ordered to kill himself for apologising when he recognised that his attacker, whom he now had in a headlock, was in fact the Emperor; it’s too much. It’s been going on for more than a year now; how much longer will we have to stand for this sort of thing?’ The pasty disappeared whole into Gaius’ mouth.

‘You know the answer to that: as long as Nero subjects us to it. It’s his idea of fun, and with his friend Otho and other young bucks encouraging him it can only get worse.’ Sabinus looked over at the tall, well-built and exceedingly handsome man reclining to the right of the Emperor: three years older than Nero, Marcus Salvius Otho had been the Emperor’s lover on and off since Nero’s tenth year.

‘And as the Urban Prefect, responsible for law and order in Rome, it’s you who’s made to look stupid, dear boy.’ Gaius joined in the rapturous applause led by Nero, weeping freely, for the conclusion of the performer’s latest rendition.

Sabinus raised his voice over the exaggerated adulation. ‘You know perfectly well there’s nothing I can do about it. Tigellinus tells me where he’s withdrawing his patrols from so that I can order a century of one of the Urban Cohorts to be on standby in the area in case Nero needs to be extracted in a hurry or his activities cause a riot. He claims he tries to keep the violence to a minimum.’

‘My flabby arse he does!’ Gaius scoffed and reached for another pasty. ‘The more violent it becomes the happier he is because it adds another element of fear for us all and the more we fear Nero the more secure his position becomes and Tigellinus’ with it. Thankfully, I’ve got four of Tigran’s lads waiting to escort me home; although since he took over from Magnus as the leader of the South Quirinal Crossroads Brotherhood I’m obliged to do more favours in return for the service. And it’s all because you’re failing in your duty.’

A disturbance at the far end of the room saved Sabinus a blustered answer; to the not-that-well-hidden outrage of most present, the Emperor’s mistress, the freedwoman Acte, entered, garbed, coiffured and bejewelled with a vulgarity that was unsurprising in one newly come to money and position. Pausing as her entourage of attendants – and again there was vulgarity in their number – unnecessarily adjusted her costume and her intricate and towering arrangement of blonde hair as well as putting a final touch to her excessive make-up, she glanced around the chamber with a haughty triumph, until her eyes fell on Nero. Slapping away the women surrounding her, she glided towards the Emperor.

A tense silence fell on the room; all eyes went to the Empress.

‘I feel that it is time to take my leave, dearest husband,’ Claudia Octavia said, rising with fluid elegance to her feet. ‘I caught a faint whiff of something that doesn’t agree with me and it would be best if I were to lie down and let my stomach settle.’ Without waiting for Nero’s leave, as his attention was on the sheerness of Acte’s attire and the lack of anything beneath it, Claudia Octavia progressed with rigid-backed, patrician dignity from the room.

‘She has the support of many,’ Gaius whispered to Sabinus, ‘Calpurnius Piso, Thrasea Paetus, Rome’s dourest Stoic, and Faenius Rufus, for example.’

As Nero made a great fuss of greeting his slave-born mistress and Acte made it a point that all should see how favoured she was, Sabinus glanced over to three middle-aged senators on a couch opposite him, their visages clouded with disapproval as they witnessed the supplanting of the daughter of the previous Emperor by a coarsely arrayed sexual-acrobat; their wives, on the couch next to them, pointedly refused to look in the direction of such an affront to female pride. ‘I was going through Faenius Rufus’ annual report as prefect of the grain supply and it would seem that he’s hardly used his position to enrich himself, just a few kick-backs here and there.’

‘He’s always had a reputation for honesty to the point of recklessness, dear boy; he has the morality and sympathies of an upright republican of old – a Cato not a Crassus. And as for Piso and Thrasea, the gods alone know what they must think of the Emperor behaving in such a way to a daughter of the Claudii, even though her father was a fool who drooled. And what they all think of Nero’s rampages through the city I wouldn’t try to imagine, if
I
were
you
.’

Sabinus did not answer but, rather, devoted his attention to his cup, frowning at his perceived inability to keep the better quarters of Rome safe as the lyre-player launched into yet another ode. Since his recall, almost two years previously, from the provinces of Moesia, Macedonia and Thracia, where he had been serving as governor, and his surprise appointment as the prefect of Rome, the magistrate overseeing the day to day running of the city, Sabinus had been trying, to no avail, to work out who had used their influence to secure him the position; neither his uncle nor his brother, Vespasian, could help him in uncovering the identity of his anonymous benefactor. Naturally Sabinus found it disconcerting not knowing whose debt he was in and when it would have to be repaid, but he was very happy with the position and the status that it conferred on him: he was one of the five most influential men in the city after the Emperor himself – officially, that was.

Unofficially there were others who had closer access to the Emperor’s ear than he did, namely Seneca, Burrus and the consuls, but the main two were Otho and Tigellinus. Although Sabinus was his superior, in that the Vigiles, as well as the Urban Cohorts, were under the command of the prefect of Rome, Tigellinus was impossible to control. He had used his unabashed depravity to ingratiate himself with the Emperor whom he had recognised immediately as a kindred spirit; it had been Tigellinus who had held Britannicus down whilst Nero had buggered him at what was to be the boy’s last and fatal dinner in this very room. This inability to control his underling was taking the gloss off Sabinus’ status; he felt it made him look as if he condoned all the violence that had gradually increased as more and more young men realised that with the Emperor running amok in the city they too had licence to do the same.

‘I assume from that exchange earlier,’ a voice said, impinging on his thoughts, ‘shall we call it an exchange? No, we can’t because you didn’t say a word back to Tigellinus, did you, prefect? So let’s say it was a command, yes, a command, prefect, from your underling. I assume from that command, Nero’s going out again tonight.’

‘Very astute, Seneca,’ Sabinus said without bothering to look round.

‘Another triumph for Roman law and order; it makes me wonder if I was right to take the very substantial bribe I was given to have you confirmed in your post. Perhaps for the good of all I should have taken less money and got someone more competent.’

Still Sabinus did not look round. ‘When did you ever do anything for the good of all?’

‘That’s harsh, Sabinus; I’ve moderated the Emperor’s behaviour for the past few years.’

‘And now you can barely restrain him. I suppose you enjoy making me look stupid as the Urban prefect. By the way, who did bribe you on my behalf?’

‘I’ve told you before, that as a man of a strict moral code I could not possibly divulge such confidences; without the appropriate, what’s the best word … er … inducement, yes, that’s it, inducement. Anyway, that’s by the by; it’s about your enquiry that I wanted to speak to you.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Still Sabinus did not turn.

‘Yes. The consulships are all spoken for …’

‘Bought, you mean.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous; the Emperor does not buy his consulship.’

‘More’s the pity for your purse.’

‘I’ll ignore that. Three years’ time is the earliest that your son-in-law could expect one and the price is non-negotiable: two million sesterces.’

BOOK: The Furies of Rome

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