Rome's Lost Son(78)

However, he could review without ardour the lessons he had learnt from Caenis in her privileged position at the heart of imperial politics. As secretary to the Lady Antonia, his benefactress before her disappointment with her grandson Caligula had led her to take her own life, Caenis had acquired the political skill to negotiate her way adroitly through the tangle of self-interest that prevailed within the ruling élite. She understood the importance of attaching oneself to one faction without distancing others. With her it was never personal, only business, and thus she had retained a position of influence after she had been freed in Antonia’s will. She had survived the remainder of Caligula’s reign and the turmoil following his assassination and Claudius’ elevation. During the subsequent years her ability to remain of use to both Pallas and Narcissus had enabled her to ride the infighting between them and, as secretary to first Narcissus and then Pallas, she had made a fortune by selling access to them; no one got to the seat of power other than through her. Vespasian might have smiled in the darkness as he remembered the shock that he felt when Caenis told him how she used her position to enrich herself; he might then have laughed as he recounted the ways that he had put that lesson to use since. Money was all important to him and through Caenis he had learnt how … the light again; how long had it been since the last visit that he remembered?

This time there were more of them; how many he did not bother to count. Screams raged in one of the cells as his grille was opened. He went through the routine of the bowls and jug and was vaguely aware of a loud, wet thump as if a butcher’s cleaver had rent a joint. The wail and then piercing shrieks that followed it did a little more to impinge on his consciousness; the smell of burning flesh that accompanied them he barely noticed as he focused on the straw being thrust through the grille. So more time had passed in the world outside … if it still existed, that was.

He refrained from burying his face in the straw because, although it was damp and old it was the freshest thing he could smell and reminded him of … no, he would not make that mistake again. The last and only time he had, despair had smiled at him, cold and grim, a false friend looming above him in his void of a cell, and he had felt the tears rise that, had they not been checked, would have driven him into the grasping arms of that fraud.

He stirred the gruel to soften the bread; the shrieks had subsided into mournful groans but seemed now to be coming from the other end of the corridor, Vespasian noticed dully. He took a bite and chewed with deliberation. A different inmate in a different cell? A different moment, perhaps? Possibly, for the last delivery of straw seemed distant; but it was certainly not a different place as it was still dark and the gruel still tasted the same. But the air did feel warmer as if there was heat in the world outside … if that still existed.

He nodded slowly to himself as he remembered that when the gruel had arrived he had been contemplating his uncle’s reaction to his wild theory concerning what had been predicted for him. He was aware that this was not the first time since he had been confined to this moment that he had been over that conversation and had mulled through the meaning of every sign, portent or auspicious happening concerned with what once may have been his destiny. That word meant nothing; where was destiny in a single moment? What room could there be for it? He was almost sure that when he had thought about these things during another part of this moment that he inhabited he had put all the clues together, but then he had discarded the conclusion because it had meant reaching forward; and that he would and could not do. But the memory of his uncle being unable to finish his sentences, to say ‘emperor’ or ‘purple’, because he felt the words would automatically make him too conspicuous, even though no one could hear them, pleased him as he stirred his gruel and took bites of bread without haste, immersed in thought.

And thought threaded through his mind as his only sensation until, with a shock, he was tapped on the right shoulder. He opened his eyes and stared ahead, unseeing in the gloom, mystified as to how such contact could have come about. Then there it was again; but this time it was a double tap. He turned his head slowly but saw nothing; instead, he heard a distant sound, a sound that seemed to come from the world outside … if it really was still there. Then it died away, as if it had never been. But it had forced Vespasian to listen, to be aware of the world, to climb out from his inner tranquillity. He tensed in the dark, feeling a strange calmness as in the moments just before a storm breaking. Then he was tapped again but this time he realised that it was him doing the tapping: his right shoulder was knocking against the wall and it was knocking against the wall because the ground was moving. The sound from beyond rose again but this time it did not recede but grew, and it grew commensurately with the shaking of the earth until his senses were filled with only sound and movement. And then things started to clatter down from above, crashing onto the stone floor all around him, but he remained squatting where he was, squatting on his blanket on its pile of rancid straw; squatting where he always squatted as cries came from the cells down the corridor and the whole world shook with the anger of the gods below as they bellowed their wrath.