Rome's Lost Son (21 page)

And that was just one of the many things with which he kept his mind busy at the slowest pace possible. It was not thoughts of escape or life after release that preoccupied him, but memories of life enjoyed and abstract questions to which there could be no answer or a multitude of answers. Slowly he dipped small hunks of bread into the gruel, stirring them with infinite care in the chasm-dark as he replayed scenes from his life, chewing his food methodically and at the speed of some drugged bovine; his expression, if it could have been seen, changing in accordance with the mood of each episode. Wincing, he recalled at great length the hideous bullying and beating that Sabinus had subjected him to as a child. A tender smile as he remembered the loving tutelage of his paternal grandmother, Tertulla, the woman who had raised him on her estate in Cosa, while his parents had been in Asia for seven years. Regret while the decline of his friend Caligula from a vibrant youth to crazed despot flickered in
degenerating episodes across his inner eye. As his three children flashed through his mind he felt growing pride that culminated with Titus’ face, so much like his own, smiling at him, only to be dashed as Flavia appeared to make another demand. Contentment came in pulses as his passion for Caenis fired within him, although he was aware that he had to ration those thoughts as he sensed that masturbation in these circumstances could become addictive and sap what little strength remained to him.

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.

The stillness was abrupt and for a moment all was quiet, even the wails of despair from the other cells. But the lull did not last for long and the next sound surprised Vespasian: it was a shout of exhilaration, a shout from close by. And then he remembered the story that Sabinus had told him, the one about the earthquake tumbling down the gates of the prison in which Paulus of Tarsus had been incarcerated, and he wondered vaguely if his guardian god, Mars, had come to his aid in the same way that it had been said that Paulus’ god had come to his. With that thought he looked around and saw a sight that he had not seen since he had been placed in the moment in which he lived: he saw a dark grey rectangle in the otherwise Stygian black, he saw the dim outline of an open door. He stared at it incredulously
until he was able to form a prayer in his head to Mars for his deliverance.

Vespasian got to his unsteady feet and, with his hands outstretched before him, moved towards what to him seemed like a beacon of light. Through the doorway he went, stepping over the fallen door, and out into the corridor in which a few dim figures scampered towards the steps at the far end. The shouts of those not fortunate enough to have had their confinement ended by the earthquake were ignored by the lucky few fleeing up the steps and on through the broken door at the top and out into the dark beyond.

Vespasian shuffled as fast as he could down a dark, debrisstrewn corridor, not knowing in which direction the outside world lay but aware where he had come from and wary of returning there.

Dust stung his eyes and fallen masonry threatened his ankles but the earth’s convulsions had stilled and he felt a glimmer of hope, a thing that he had denied himself for so long, grow within him and he dared to think beyond the moment. He dared to think of escape.

Suspecting that his fellow escapees had as little knowledge of the subterranean geography of Arbela as he, he decided not to follow them up a narrow spiral staircase and, instead, to use his own instincts. On he went turning left and then right, using his nose as a guide, sniffing for the cleaner air, always taking flights of steps up if they presented themselves and were not blocked.

And then there was other life, other people and Vespasian realised that he must avoid them for he was vaguely aware that his appearance and stench would mark him for what he was. He pressed on with caution, ensuring that he never got too close to anyone, through what was evidently chaos in the aftermath of a massive shock, all the time heading up towards lighter, sweeter-smelling levels.

With gut-wrenching realisation as he strained weakened muscles pulling at a door-ring there was, suddenly, nowhere to go; suddenly he was trapped. The corridor ended in a locked door and he had no key; he began to panic, he had allowed himself to think of escape
and now he was trapped. He knew that he must calm himself; it was only one locked door. He must think, yes, think; and it was obvious: he must turn around. And so he began to retrace his steps to find another corridor that did not have a locked door at its end. Now he seemed to be going against the tide of people but he did not care for he knew that he was going away from the locked door and they were going towards it. He took another left turn and shuffled along a passage in which a guttering torch burned; he passed through its glow, shielding his eyes as he did, and then on to the end to meet only with another door: it too was locked. Panic welled ever higher within him and he turned and began to jog back through the torch’s glow, back the way he had come. He tried to think but he could not; every thought he had seemed to end in a locked door. He tried another and then another; all seemed to be locked. He became increasingly frantic as he dashed from door to door up and down corridors that all seemed familiar and then, as the shout of ‘There he is!’ pierced his panic, followed moments later by a fist flying towards him, he realised that they were, indeed, all familiar because they were all one of the same two corridors.

Vespasian opened his eyes unsure of whether he had just been addressed as ‘proconsul’ or whether it had been a dream.

He was lying face down on a marble floor.

‘Proconsul?’

There it was again and it seemed to be real enough. He looked up, squinting against the light.

‘Ah, proconsul, you are back with us.’

Vespasian focused slowly and the architect of his torment, King Izates, materialised, smiling cheerfully despite the fallen columns around him.

‘This is a most fortuitous occurrence,’ the King carried on, beaming happily around the heavily damaged room. ‘I expect that you thought the earthquake was a part of your supposed gods’ plan to free you?’

Vespasian had but he was not about to admit as such to this man; he did not want his first conversation for however long to be a religious discussion. So he did not respond.

‘But you didn’t escape, did you? According to the gaoler he found you running backwards and forwards up and down two corridors. But the one true God does have the power to help those who worship him and follow his laws. Tell him, Ananias, tell him of Paulus, the man you baptised in Damascus.’

A man appeared in the corner of Vespasian’s vision; he groaned as Ananias started to tell the same story that Sabinus had told about the earthquake breaking open Paulus’ gaol, but with much embellishment and exaggeration. Vespasian was in no mood for it.

‘So you see, proconsul,’ Izates said with annoying cheerfulness once the tale was over, ‘just how fortuitous this earthquake has been for you and for me. All you have to do is accept baptism into the Way of Yeshua and I can say to my nobles that God sent this earthquake to spring you from the deepest dungeon in order that you could follow him. Just think of it: my nobles would flock to the baptismal river if they knew that they could have a power like that on their side. And you would be free, free to live here as a permanent witness to the power of the one true God and his son, Yeshua. Free, proconsul, free and saved.’

Vespasian closed his eyes; he wanted none of the bewildered old King’s freedom at the price of rejecting Mars. If Mars indeed had a destiny for him then it would be Mars who eventually would lead him to it, not some jealous god who would brook no other and insisted on men mutilating their penises. He heard the King shouting at him but took no notice as he slipped back into his tranquillity that had been so disturbed by the anger of the gods below. Soon he felt himself being dragged away and he knew with certainty what he would see when he next opened his eyes: it would be the same thing that he always saw in the moment.

And it was so as the hammering on the door to his cell, fixing it back into place, disturbed his peace and forced him to open his eyes. He was back in the moment; his brief surge of hope dashed. He pushed away the offer of consolation from despair, the would-be companion who had been locked out of his cell with the repairing of the door, left in the corridor to whisper through
the grille. Back he went to his blanket and his gruel, forbidding all images of his brief foray into the outer world; more and more he played scenes from the past with his inner eye, chewing slowly on his bread and sucking on bones, occasionally nodding in the dark when certain images pleased him.

Straw came, then more straw came and then, perhaps, more straw had come. The last grains of his gruel were lapped up by his tongue as it methodically pursued them around the bottom of his food bowl. Satisfied with his accomplishment of so far ingesting every morsel of nourishment from his meal he began to suck on the bone that he had saved for last. His children again – or was it for the first time? – paraded before his closed eyes. He had planned to do something that may well endanger Titus, he was sure; it had been to do with Tryphaena. Yes, it was Nero; somehow he was helping Nero’s cause, that’s why he was here. Yes, that was it. It was because of Titus’ friendship with Britannicus that he would be in danger if … but he was sure that he had thought of the way to protect him before he had embarked on the road that led to this moment.