Rome's Lost Son (4 page)

But first, in the absence of his imperial senior colleague who waited at the Praetorian camp, outside the Viminal Gate, it was Vespasian’s task to make the sacrifice and read the auspices; it was important that the gods declare the day auspicious for the business of the city to be carried out. Vespasian had no doubt that it would be so.

Blood spurted in heartbeat bursts into the copper basin beneath the white bullock’s gaping neck. The beast’s eyes barely focused, stunned as it was by the Father of the House’s mallet blow to its forehead made an instant before Vespasian, a fold of his toga covering his head, wielded the knife. Its forelegs and shoulders began to shudder, blood flowing down them. Its tongue lolled from its mouth and it voided its bowels with a steaming splatter as the juddering limbs collapsed, bringing the victim to its knees in front of the Senate House. Standing arrayed on the steps in order of precedence, the five hundred senators currently residing in the city looked on with a solemn dignity as this ancient ceremony was enacted, as of time immemorial, in the very heart of Rome.

Vespasian had stepped back, keeping well away from the various discharges emitting from the bullock – it would be
considered a bad omen for the presiding Consul to have his toga sullied and the whole ritual would have to be repeated. The Father of the House supervised the removal of the filled basin by two public slaves just before the animal slumped to the ground, its heartbeat fast diminishing as it made the transition from living flesh to inanimate carcass.

Vespasian repeated the formulaic words over the dead beast, entreating Jupiter Opitmus Maximus’ blessing on his city, just as they had been intoned by incumbents of his office since the founding of the Republic. Four more public slaves rolled the body onto its back and stretched its four limbs in preparation for the belly incision.

The stench of steaming, fresh viscera assaulted Vespasian’s nostrils as his honed blade slit open the gift to Rome’s guardian god; the crowd, packing the Forum and beyond, held its collective breath. After a series of careful, expert incisions Vespasian lifted out the still warm heart and, having presented it to his fellow senators and then to the equites at the front of the huge throng, placed it to sizzle and hiss in the fire burning on Jupiter’s altar before the open wood and iron doors of the Curia.

Two public slaves on either side pulled back the ribcage and Vespasian began the tricky task of detaching the liver without staining his toga. Having presided over many sacrifices he knew that the key to this was steady work; with methodical patience, the organ was soon removed intact and placed on the table next to the altar. Using a cloth put there for the purpose, Vespasian wiped the liver clean of blood and ran his hand over the surface. In an instant he froze and felt his heart attempt to leap into his mouth; his chest heaved with a couple of laboured breaths and his eyes stared fixedly at a blemish, almost purple on the red-brown flesh. But a blemish has no regular or specific shape and that was not true of the mark on the liver’s surface caused, it seemed, by two veins coming almost to the surface together; it had a well-defined form, almost as if it had been branded on, in much the same way as a slave-owner would brand his possession: with a single letter. And it was the letter that had startled him; small but prominent, it was the letter with which his cognomen
began. What he saw before him was the letter ‘V’. But more than that, the mark was in almost the exact centre of the liver just to the left of the thin central lobe; in the area that the ancient Etruscan diviners considered sacred to Mars, his guardian god.

Knowing that an omen, found on a liver gifted to Jupiter in Rome’s name, so blatantly referring to him, as the master of the sacrifice, could be open to many interpretations – most of them incurring the jealousy of those in power – Vespasian turned the liver over and examined a reassuringly unblemished underside. Then, taking care to place his thumb over the potentially treasonous mark, he lifted the organ and showed it to the Father of the House and declared the day propitious for the business of Rome. But the image of the mark played before his eyes.

‘So be it,’ the Father cried in an aged, reedy voice as Vespasian placed the liver on the altar fire. ‘Bring out the prisoners!’

There was movement around the Tullianum, the prison at the foot of the Capitoline Hill, next to the Germonian Stairs, in the shadow of the Temple of Juno on the Arx above it. Soldiers of the Urban Cohorts cleared an area in front of the single door before a centurion, with the transverse white horsehair crest on his helmet fluttering in the light breeze, rapped on the door with his vine cane.

The crowd hushed in anticipation.

A few moments later the door opened and a line of manacled prisoners shuffled out and still the crowd stayed silent, waiting for the one man they had all come to see.

And then a bulky figure filled the open doorway to Rome’s only public prison, his head bowed as he passed through into the open. There was a massed intake of breath; he was not miserably clad and beaten down like the wretches before him. Quite the contrary; he wore the clothes and held the demeanour of a king.

‘Very clever,’ Gaius murmured, ‘the grander you dress him the higher you elevate him, and the greater Claudius looks when he tears him down and humbles him.’

Vespasian gazed at the prisoner standing there, his bronze winged helmet reflecting the weak sun, his hands manacled but his chest blown out and proud beneath a weighty chain mail
tunic as the crowd’s reaction grew into a cacophony of booing and hissing. There stood the man whom he had not seen since that night, five years before, when he had led his army out of the shadowed north and come within moments of catching the II Augusta manoeuvring into position. There stood the man who had almost destroyed a legion, Vespasian’s legion.

There stood Caratacus.

CHAPTER II

T
HE PEOPLE OF
Rome jeered and hurled abuse and missiles at the captives as they were driven across the Forum Romanum. Yet Caratacus feigned not to notice as he looked around like a tourist on his first visit to the greatest city on earth. However, it was not with an overawed countenance that he observed the arched facade of the Tabularium and the majestic columns of the Temple of Jupiter perched above it, nor did his round, ruddy face betray any wonder as he passed the Temples of Concordia and Saturn. And it was with grey eyes devoid of admiration that he arrived at the steps of the Senate House. His magnificent, drooping moustaches rippled in the breeze as he surveyed the grave faces of the five hundred leading citizens of Rome draped in their chalked-white togas edged with a thick purple stripe, shod in red leather and with all those eligible wearing military crowns or surrounded by lictors according to rank.

Vespasian stood at the top of the steps, at the very centre of the senatorial throng, as Caratacus was brought to a halt at their foot. He raised both hands for silence, which was slow in coming but eventually manifest as the people realised that the proceedings of the day would not progress unless there was order. ‘Caratacus of the Catuvellauni,’ Vespasian declaimed in a clear, high voice, pitched to carry over the expanse of faces looking at him. ‘You have been defeated in arms and captured by Rome; now you have been brought here for the Senate to take you to your Emperor for sentence. Do you have anything to say?’

Caratacus drew himself up and looked Vespasian in the eye. ‘Titus Flavius Vespasianus, Consul of Rome and erstwhile legate of the Second Augusta, whom I had the honour to face in battle, I greet you as a brother-in-arms and congratulate you on the skill
that you showed in saving the lives of your men on the night I ambushed you. Consul, I salute you.’

To Vespasian’s surprise and the surprise of all else present, the Britannic King snapped a Roman salute, slamming his fist onto his breast.

‘I have two things to say to you before I go before the Emperor: firstly, although Rome did defeat me in arms, Rome did not capture me; I was betrayed by the witch-queen Cartimandua and her husband Venutius of the Brigantes, who broke the laws of hospitality in a way that would shame even the most primitive of peoples. And secondly, Claudius is not my Emperor; if he were so then I would not be here but, rather, at home where I once happily lived. However, I would be pleased to meet the man who desires to possess more than all this.’ He gestured around the expanse of the Forum Romanum before turning back to Vespasian. ‘So lead on, Consul, I am curious to meet your Emperor.’

Vespasian’s twelve lictors led the procession along the Via Sacra, past the House of the Vestals and the Domus Publica and many other sights, to no more than a rumbling murmur from the crowd. Gone were the jeers and the insults and not even a crust of stale bread flew towards the Britannic King as he strode behind Vespasian and the other leading magistrates, erect and dignified, a full head taller than most of them and their lictors. News of his words had filtered through the crowd and it was with reverence that they watched him pass with the rest of the Senate following behind, out of the Forum and then left, up towards the Vicus Patricius where the buildings became less grand as the tenements of the Subura jostled against one another for mutual support and where prostitution was the main reason for the transferral of coinage.

But it was with unseeing eyes that Vespasian made the journey; his mind was not on this world.

Ever since, as a boy of fifteen, he had overheard his parents discussing the omens found at his naming ceremony, he had suspected that he was subject to the will of his guardian god, Mars; but no one would tell him what had been predicted as his
mother had subjected all present to an oath never to reveal what signs they had seen on the sacrifices. Was what he had seen today similar? A ‘V’ stamped in the realm of Mars on the liver dedicated by him to Rome’s greatest god, Jupiter. But there were many parts of this puzzle and as he tentatively pieced them together a picture emerged whose entirety he had already glimpsed.

The Oracle of Amphiariaos holding a centuries-old prophecy to be delivered only to him and Sabinus. Tiberius’ astrologer advising the old Emperor that a senator who witnessed the Phoenix’s rebirth in Egypt would father the next dynasty of emperors: Vespasian had witnessed the event in Siwa and thought nothing of it until Sabinus had told him that the oasis had once been a part of the Kingdom of Egypt. Then there was the Oracle of Amun and the dying gift of his patroness, the Lady Antonia: the sword of her father, Marcus Antonius, one of the greatest of all the Romans. There was also Myrddin, the immortal druid of Britannia; he had told Vespasian that he had seen the destiny that Mars held for him. That destiny had terrified Myrddin because he was convinced that Vespasian would one day have the power, but fail to use it, to halt a disease now germinated in the heart of Rome; a disease, Mryddin believed, that would eventually destroy the old and true religions. Twice, Myrddin had tried to kill him with his gods conjured to life; proof that the gods existed, proof that they had power. That he had survived, Vespasian knew, was proof that Mars held his hands over him; and because that was certain, what he had seen that morning should be taken seriously.

All this echoed around his head as he led the procession towards the heir to the Julio-Claudian bloodline: a twitching, limping, dribbling fool ruled by his wife and freedmen. A scholarly historian? Perhaps. A legal pedant of some note? Certainly. But a wise emperor who weighed his words or a vain fool, dismissive of the talents of others, resentful for years of humiliation and under the mistaken impression that he was one of the finest wits of the age?

On they went up the Viminal, along the Vicus Patricius, to barely a raised voice, past the more respectable brothels of both sexes and on towards the Viminal Gate, beyond which waited the
fool who drooled. Vespasian put his thoughts to the back of his mind and wondered how the Emperor would deal with a man of such dignity and so worthy of respect as Caratacus.

Then Vespasian considered what he would do were he in Claudius’ position.

The Praetorian Guard crunched to attention, shaking the ground as thousands of feet stamped down in absolute unison. Beyond the ranks and files of regimented cohorts, crows rose, in wing-beating chaos, from the rooftops of the Praetorian camp, protesting with shrill caws the interruption of their morning slumber. The sharp bellows of command and the resulting military thunder echoed between the camp’s walls and the city’s high, brick-built Servian defences for a few moments before fading abruptly to leave only the fluttering of massed banners and the faint hiss of the breeze blowing through thousands of horsehair crests, augmented occasionally by mournful bird-cry. Rigid, the men of Rome’s élite unit held their eyes to the front, unblinking, as the Senate paraded through the Viminal Gate, Vespasian at their head, bearing the gift of a captured king and his retinue to their Emperor.

Claudius was seated on one of two daises to the left of the Guard’s formation with the wives and children of the leading men in Rome to his other side. Flavia and their eight-year-old daughter, Domitilla, were seated in places of honour to the front of the women; her pride in Vespasian’s position was very apparent as she sat, bolt upright, her head turning from side to side acknowledging the real or imagined compliments of her peers, her worries over wet nurses temporarily put to one side.

The Senate progressed without haste, giving every guardsman the chance of a glimpse of the rebel King before he met his inevitable death: garrotted and self-soiled at the feet of the Emperor. Even from a distance Claudius’ nervous tic was apparent; his head jerked and his limbs shook with irregular frequency as the parade neared him.

It was with a shock of disgust that Vespasian saw the occupant of the second dais: Agrippina. Never had a woman been raised to the same level as the First Man in Rome. Not even Augustus’
wife, Livia, had sought such an honour and not even Cleopatra had achieved it when she had visited her lover and father of her son, the dictator Gaius Julius Caesar, in Rome almost a century earlier. And now here was the direct female descendant of those two great men, well into her forties, acting as if she were their equal while her uncle-husband twitched and dribbled, dabbing the drool from his chin with the edge of his toga; incongruous in his laurel wreath and purple.

Arranged around the two daises were the men and women who benefitted from their close connections with either one – or both – of the occupants. Exactly between them was Pallas, his beard and hair now flecked with grey and his face and eyes, as ever, neutral; a mask that could not be read, a mask that Vespasian had only once ever seen drop.

Between Pallas and Agrippina stood Nero: fourteen years old and with the milky-skinned face of a young god, resplendently topped by lush curls, the golden-red hue of dawn. He stood, almost side-on with his left foot pointing forward, wearing the senatorial toga that the Senate had voted him, along with the rank of proconsul, when he had come of age a mere fifteen days ago. In sharp contrast, to Pallas’ other side, stood Britannicus, ten years old and still wearing the toga praetexta of a child with its narrow purple stripe. That and his thin, lank brown hair, long face and deep-set eyes, all inherited from his father, placed him physically well in the shadow of the dazzling Prince of the Youth, as his stepbrother was now titled.

Behind Britannicus his sister, Claudia Octavia, evidently found the allure of her stepbrother hard to resist and her eyes wandered in Nero’s direction with a frequency that could not be helped in a newly pubescent maiden.

Both in their early fifties and both running to fat, Lucius Annaeus Seneca and Sosibius, tutors of Nero and Britannicus respectively, hovered near their charges, anxious that their manners should be impeccable for fear of it reflecting badly upon themselves and the consequences that it would bring.

In the shadow of the tutors lurked Narcissus and Callistus; the first bearded and bejewelled with a full figure and face, the latter
wiry and bald, wringing his hands and flicking his eyes here and there as if surrounded by enemies. Both still held positions of power but neither had the influence with the Emperor that they had once held; Pallas had seen to that. Narcissus caught Vespasian’s eye and gave the faintest of nods, surprising Vespasian: it was unlike Narcissus to be so indiscreet; he looked away wondering if that was a sign of desperation on the freedman’s part.

Vespasian’s gaze then alighted on his lover of over twenty-five years now: Caenis, as beautiful as ever with her sapphire-blue eyes, smiling briefly at him as he came to a halt just five paces away from the dais. Having been Narcissus’ secretary until Pallas had commandeered her services as he emerged victorious in the struggle to become the Master of Rome, she stood ready to record the speeches on wax tablets with a slave supporting a desk on his shoulders kneeling before her. Loved by Vespasian and tolerated by Flavia, she was the woman whom he could never marry as a result of the injunction on senators marrying freedwomen; she had been born a slave.

Vespasian’s lictors and those of all the other magistrates moved away to the left, leaving a swathe of senators surrounding the prisoners.

There was a pause as Claudius endeavoured to collect himself, his mouth working hard as he tried to form his first word. With a spray of saliva it finally came: ‘W-w-w-what does my loyal S-S-Senate bring before m-m-me?’

Vespasian took a couple of steps towards the Emperor. ‘Princeps and colleague in the consulship, we have the honour to bring a gift from Publius Ostorius Scapula, the Governor of the province of Britannia, on behalf of all the Senate. We have the rebel King, Caratacus of the Catuvellauni, and the remainder of his followers here in chains.’

Despite the fact that the whole event had been choreographed for this moment, Claudius feigned surprise. ‘Caratacus? I know of the name. What would you have me do with him?’

‘We ask for your judgement upon him.’

‘His c-c-crime?’

Vespasian struggled to keep his face dignified as he played out the farce with the fool. ‘He is the man who refused to bow to you after your glorious pacification of the island.’ This, Vespasian knew, was stretching the truth by a considerable margin. The island of Britannia was far from conquered but that could not be admitted publicly, seeing as the Emperor had already celebrated a Triumph for his victory there and then graciously allowed Aulus Plautius an Ovation upon his return. It was for this reason that Caratacus had been paraded from the Forum for execution outside the city walls rather than the other way around as in a Triumph. To imply that the military operations, involving four legions and the equivalent in auxiliaries, still raging in the infant province were anything more than local mopping-up operations against a handful of rebels would be to invalidate Claudius’ victory and call into question his Triumph. Securing Claudius’ position as emperor with the glory of conquest had been his freedmen’s whole object when they had ordered the militarily ill-conceived venture.

Claudius pretended to consider the issue for a few moments, melodramatically rubbing his moist chin, while all those present did their best to conceal their embarrassment. ‘It shall be d-d-death. Burrus!’

From behind Caenis, Sextus Afranius Burrus, Agrippina’s choice as the new prefect of the Praetorian Guard, stepped forward and yelled to his men, ‘The execution party will advance!’

Six men with garrottes marched from the ranks while a further dozen made their way to the prisoners and herded them forward. The females and some of the younger males fell to their knees before the embodiment of the Roman State, twitching on his curule chair, and issued pleas for their lives in broken Latin, tearing at their hair and rending their clothes as their executioners ranged in a line behind them.

Vespasian looked at Caratacus, hoping that the man who had been so worthy an adversary would not stoop to the level of some in his retinue; he was not disappointed. The Britannic King stood, erect and proud, disdaining to plead for his life; instead, he stared at the Emperor of Rome with no sign of incredulity at his
unbecoming appearance and, when he caught Claudius’ eye, he inclined his head fractionally as if greeting an equal.