The Blood of Caesar Read online

  “I needed to get away from my wife, and I wanted to see if you had given any more thought to our dinner with the princeps last night, particularly the ... entertainment.” He glanced suspiciously at his slaves and at Moschus.

  “How can I think about anything else?”

  “Do you still think it was staged solely for our benefit?”

  Before answering I considered Moschus too. He lowered his eyes. He had been my uncle’s doorkeeper for my entire life, so I could hardly assign him another position, but I suspected that in his old age he was finding it as difficult to control his tongue as his bladder.

  “Let’s talk in the tablinum.”

  “Good idea,” Tacitus said. I stepped back to avoid a shower as he tossed his cloak and hat to Moschus. Tacitus’ slaves took seats on the benches in the atrium.

  “Have you had anything to eat?” I asked. When Tacitus shook his head I instructed Moschus to have leftovers from last night’s dinner brought to us and to the slaves. We entered the tablinum and, as Tacitus sank into a chair, dripping all over everything, I closed the folding door, which I had installed upon my return from Syria. Before that, my tablinum, like any other, had only a curtain over the entrance. Some things that happened on that trip had sowed enough seeds of suspicion in my mind that I wanted to be able to close and lock the room where I kept my most personal records.

  “You look tired,” I said. “Were you awake all night, like I was, worrying about what Domitian is up to?”

  He yawned monstrously. “I hardly slept last night, but Domitian was only part of my problem.”

  “Oh? What else is bothering you?”

  “It’s Julia.”

  “What’s wrong with your wife? I hope she’s not ill.”

  “No, she’s her usual energetic self. The problem is, I couldn’t satisfy her last night.”

  “Couldn’t satisfy ... ?” Tacitus’ exploits in bed were the stuff of epic, at least as he related them to me. I could not imagine him being unable to satisfy his young wife.

  “Don’t take that the wrong way,” he said. “I couldn’t satisfy her curiosity about our dinner. She kept throwing questions at me.” He mimicked a girl’s voice. “‘What did you eat? What was the princeps wearing? What did his triclinium look like? How were his slaves dressed?’ She wanted me to chatter with her like a couple of slave girls in a Greek comedy.”

  “That must have been awkward, considering how much her father and Domitian hate one another.” Tacitus’ in-laws were living with him and his wife until they could find a house of their own in the city.

  “That’s just it. We couldn’t talk about it in front of Agricola, but once we were alone, she unleashed the torrent. I felt like Pyrrha and Deucalion clinging to their raft for dear life as the flood waters raged about them.”

  I nodded sympathetically. “At least she wasn’t asking you political questions.”

  “My dear Pliny, for Julia the issue isn’t politics; it’s fashion. Did you know that the way an imperial slave wears her hair—a slave, mind you—can influence how every woman in Rome wears hers? And there seems to be some sort of prize for being the first in our circle to ape a new style from the Palatine. She’s planning a dinner now just so she can serve oysters on ice.”

  Someone knocked on the door, a hard rap followed by two soft ones, a signal used by only one of my slaves.

  “Come in, Aurora,” I said.

  Aurora, the slave girl who attends to my personal needs, stuck her head in the doorway. “My lord, you asked for something to eat?” At my nod, she brought in a tray and set it on the end of my table that I hastily cleared. She departed with our thanks and an appreciative gander from Tacitus.

  “I still can’t believe how beautiful that girl is,” Tacitus said. “Pygmalion’s creation could not have been any lovelier, any more perfect. And she never talks. What more could a man ask?”

  Aurora is easily the most beautiful female slave in my household. Tall, with dark hair and eyes and olive skin and an exquisite figure, she is the daughter of a slave woman who was my uncle’s mistress for many years, but she is not his daughter. We played together as children, but I find myself now in awe of her beauty. Since we outgrew the easy familiarity of childhood, she rarely speaks to me except to answer a direct question, and I find it difficult to converse with her about anything except her household duties.

  “Have you coupled with her yet?” Tacitus asked in his usual direct fashion.

  “I’ve told you I would never force myself on a slave woman.”

  “I don’t think there would be any force involved, my friend. You apparently don’t notice how she looks at you. Your uncle was quite happy with her mother. Why couldn’t you ... ?”

  “No.” I poured us some wine and mixed in the water to avoid looking at Tacitus. Of course the thought of making love to Aurora occurred to me at least a dozen times a day. No man, not even a eunuch, could look at her without having such thoughts. But, knowing how much my mother had disapproved of the relationship between my uncle and Aurora’s mother, I did not want to prolong that kind of conflict in the house for another generation.

  “So you’re just content to look and dream?” Tacitus said. “You ought to at least get her one of those gowns like Domitian’s slave women were wearing last night.”

  Without answering I slid the tray of food toward him. I usually don’t have much appetite in the morning, but the stuffed mushrooms, bread, and cheese Domitian sent home with us enticed me to take a few bites. My mother would be pleased. She often expresses her concern because I’m not as round as my uncle was. Corpulence will be my fate, I suppose, but I’d rather let it overtake me gradually and not rush to embrace it.

  We ate in silence until Tacitus said, “I was afraid Julia would start up again this morning, so I left as soon as I could.”

  “Getting away from your wife is worth walking all this way in the rain?”

  “Spoken like a man who’s never had a wife.”

  “Come now. I don’t know Julia well, but she strikes me as charming. You make her sound odious.”

  “Not odious, just boring.” He wiped rain off his forehead with his arm. “A sweet but boring child. She was quite young when we married, you know, perhaps too young.”

  “Thirteen, I believe you said.”

  “Exactly. And for two of the five years we’ve been married I’ve been away on service. I feel like I hardly know her.”

  I had to laugh. When it comes to sex, Tacitus’ only inviolable rule is that he won’t couple with another man’s slave. As he puts it, he won’t plow in another man’s field. “My dear Tacitus, you hardly know any of the women you sleep with. To say nothing of the boys.”

  “But that’s entirely different. They don’t expect anything of me.”

  I hated to ask, but I had to. “What does Julia expect?”

  “Love notes.” He grimaced. “Gifts given for no reason. I think she’s been reading Ovid.”

  “Can’t you do that sort of thing? You have a gift for words.”

  “What’s the point? We’re married. She doesn’t understand that Ovid is talking about how to seduce someone else’s wife, not your own. That’s why Augustus banished him.”

  “What did you tell her about our dinner?” That question killed all the playfulness.

  “There wasn’t much to tell, was there? We barely had time for the gustatio before we were called away. And I certainly couldn’t tell her about the dead man in the archives. Do you still think Domitian had him killed just to test you?”

  “I think the whole evening was a test. What did we talk about at dinner?”

  “Well, let’s see. We started with the situation in Syria. Then we turned to the Jews. Then there was the business about cities rising from the dead and that ridiculous syllogism. That led to whether men can rise from the dead.”

  “And who turned the conversation to each topic?”

  He studied the ceiling. “Domitian, now that you mention it.”
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  “And it was all pointed toward that business of whether or not Nero was dead.”

  “But what does the dead man in the archives have to do with that?”

  “That’s what I’m still puzzling over.”

  “You don’t think Domitian thought you could actually bring him back to life, do you?”

  “Don’t insult me or the princeps. I’m sure he’s seen enough dead men to know they stay that way.”

  “Titus certainly did,” Tacitus said.

  “Do you believe the stories that Domitian killed him?”

  Before Tacitus could answer Moschus knocked heavily and stuck his head in the room. “Excuse me, my lord, but three men are asking to see you.”

  “Do you know them?” One of his primary tasks was to be able to recognize people who have a valid claim on my hospitality.

  “No, my lord. But one of them pressed his seal in this.” He stepped into the room and held out a wax tablet for me to examine.

  I gasped when I saw it. “Where is he?”

  “Standing at the door, my lord. All three of them are.”

  “In the rain? You doddering old fool! Bring them in immediately!” He turned and started to walk out of the room. “Run!”

  Tacitus questioned me with a look. I showed him the tablet and his eyes got even bigger than mine had when he saw CAES DOM AUG GERM encircling a figure of a fallen barbarian. “By the gods! The princeps is standing at your door?”

  “In the rain,” I said.

  “What could he possibly want?” He grabbed my arm in alarm. “Do you think he’s come to arrest you?”

  I tried to squelch the panic that question raised. “That’s ridiculous. Arrest me for what?”

  “I’m sure that’s what a lot of people have asked as they’ve been taken away.”

  “But he wouldn’t come to my door himself, with only two men. And he certainly wouldn’t knock and ask for permission to enter.”

  “Then what’s he doing here? Did you steal any silver last night?”

  With Tacitus on my heels, I hurried out to greet Rome’s ruler. Three men—or, more accurately, one man followed by two others—approached across the atrium. They wore ordinary rain cloaks over tunics without even a narrow equestrian stripe on them. If I had passed them on the street I would have taken them for working men. Or a trio of cut-throats, if I looked a little closer. Domitian pushed his cloak back off his head as he stopped in front of me and the other two followed his example. One I recognized as the Praetorian officer from the archives last night. Sword handles protruded from under his cloak and his companion’s as puddles of water began to collect around their feet. Tacitus’ slaves huddled together in awe on one end of their bench.

  “My lord,” I said, “I apologize for the stupidity of my doorkeeper. He should have recognized you and escorted you in immediately.”

  The princeps beamed like a boy who’s pulled off a great trick. “Nonsense. Isn’t that the point of a disguise, not to be recognized? The man’s doing his job. You don’t want just anybody admitted to your lovely house.” He looked around at the decorations in the atrium, which suddenly looked like a hovel to me. “These look fresh,” he said, nodding toward my frescoes.

  “Yes, my lord. Finished only three days ago.”

  “They’re lovely.” He walked over to the scene with the hippopotami and examined it closely. “Although your hippopotami aren’t right. They’re not really horses, you know.”

  “No, my lord. I intend to have them redone.” Did I dare to ask him what he wanted? Or did I just have to wait until he decided to tell me? An unannounced visit from the princeps is unheard of. The etiquette of the situation isn’t covered in the lessons given to young men of my social circle.

  “But I see you have a visitor already,” Domitian said. “I’m sorry to intrude.”

  “Tacitus was just leaving, my lord.”

  “Actually, I’d like for him to stay, even if he is the son-in-law of Agricola, that strutting, preening favorite of the senate and the people.” His lip curled. “Let’s talk in your tablinum.” He tossed his wet cloak in Moschus’ direction, not even looking back to see if the old fellow caught it, and headed for the room. The two Praetorians took up positions outside the door. There would be no eavesdropping on this conversation. Domitian ran a hand over the door itself.

  “A folding door? What do you need to keep hidden, Gaius Pliny? But, still, it’s an innovation worth considering.”

  Tacitus and I followed the princeps into the tablinum, glancing at one another in amazement as he poked around in my shelves.

  “This latrunculus board looks new,” he said.

  “It was a gift from a client of mine, my lord, upon my return from Syria.”

  “Do you enjoy the game?”

  “Yes, I do, my lord. It challenges the mind rather than depending on a throw of the dice.”

  Picking up a couple of the smooth black and white game pieces, Domitian rubbed them between his fingers. “But sometimes the throw of the dice has more effect on our lives than all our careful planning.”

  “I suppose that’s so, my lord.” What else could I say? I didn’t want to debate philosophy with the man who controlled the lives of everyone in Rome.

  Domitian took my seat behind the table. Tacitus seemed as unsure how to behave as I was. The princeps isn’t our king—although we all know he is a monarch—but Domitian insists on being called dominus, ‘lord,’ the word which our slaves use to address us. Slaves dare not sit in the presence of their masters without permission. Tacitus and I now stood before Domitian. I felt the same discomfort I had felt last night, calling him dominus to his face. Tacitus had evaded the issue, I’d noticed, by calling him ‘Caesar,’ a name that is becoming a title.

  Domitian shuffled some pages of my accounts and read several. How could I ask the princeps not to pry into my private papers? Something on a page caught his eye. He picked it up and studied it more closely.

  “A note from Musonius Rufus. Are you a friend of his, Gaius Pliny?”

  “I met his son-in-law while I was in Syria, my lord. He asked me to bring a gift to Musonius when I returned. Musonius and I have been guests in one another’s homes a time or two this summer.” Actually, it was more like half a dozen times. I had grown quite fond of the white-haired philosopher.

  “You know that man’s a trouble-maker.” Domitian glared at me over the note.

  “I know some people regard him as ... eccentric, my lord.”

  Domitian snorted. “That’s being kind. My father sent him into exile. Has he told you about that?”

  “We haven’t really spoken of it, Caesar.”

  I hoped Tacitus could keep his mouth shut and his face straight. Only a few days ago I had recounted to him a long conversation I’d had with Musonius about his time in exile. Musonius’ relationship with Rome’s rulers over the past twenty years had been stormy. Nero sent him into exile twice, once on a wretched rock of an island. Vespasian at first dealt kindly with him but finally sent him away. Titus allowed him to come home. Musonius had lived quietly for the past few years, drawing a circle of admirers and students who considered him a Roman Socrates. We hoped his future would not lead to a cup of hemlock.

  “He says his return to Rome will be delayed until the kalends of August,” Domitian said. “He regrets missing the dinner you invited him to.”

  “Yes, my lord. He’s spending some time on his estate north of Rome, on the Via Flaminia.” One part of me knew Musonius’ whereabouts were no concern of Domitian’s. Another part knew Domitian had his own ways of keeping track of someone like Musonius. The sense of panic brought on just by standing in front of the man, in my own house, had loosened my tongue. No wonder people on trial before him confessed to the most outlandish charges.

  Domitian put the note down. “The farther away, the better. Be careful of your friends, Gaius Pliny. No matter how loyal a man may be, if he associates with people who foment unrest, he brands himself with their
mark.” He directed a long stare at Tacitus. “I’m sure you don’t want to do that.”

  “No. No, my lord, of course not.”

  Domitian returned his attention to me, tilting his head back and studying me under half-closed eyelids. “Your uncle was a man my father and brother could rely on. I hope I will find you as trustworthy.”

  “I take my uncle as a model in all aspects of my life, Caesar. He taught me that, when someone earns my trust and respect, he should have it without question or reservation.”

  “Good. That’s what I need to hear. Now”—he slapped his hands on the table, apparently oblivious to the subtlety of my comment—“there is something I want to discuss with you.”

  “Would you like for me to leave, Caesar?” Tacitus asked. I think he saw his last chance to escape before Domitian revealed whatever was on his mind. I wished I could go with him. Once the princeps had made us his partners, I suspected, we would not just be caught in his trap. He would have his collar on us and be leading us around like pets.

  “No,” Domitian said. “I think you can be of use to me as well, son-in-law of Agricola.” He turned back to me and asked without any prelude, “Gaius Pliny, do you think Nero has returned?”

  My mouth worked for a moment until I managed to stammer, “As I said last night, my lord, I ... I believe death is the end of our existence. And Nero is dead ... isn’t he?”

  Domitian put his hands to the sides of his large head, as if it were too heavy to stay up on its own. “That’s the question I’ve been asking myself all night.”

  “There were witnesses to his death, weren’t there, Caesar?” Tacitus asked.

  “I have a freedman in my household,” Domitian said with a heavy sigh, “who held the sword Nero ran on. He has stuck to that story, even under torture. But only a few slaves saw the body before it was burned. And they’re all dead now. ... Can I be sure Nero is gone?”

  For an instant the look of despair on his face evoked pity from me. The feeling passed as quickly as the thunder I heard rumbling in the distance.

  “I don’t think there’s anything to worry about, my lord,” I said. “It’s unlikely he would stay in hiding for fifteen years and suddenly reappear. Even if he did, the army would never support him. No one would welcome Nero back. We were well rid of him.”