estate was undermanned. Some of the newly freed decided to stay on the estate but most had decided to try their luck in Cosa or even Rome. Attalus had bought a few new slaves but had, rightly, been reluctant to make large purchases without Vespasian’s permission. The restocking of the field-slave force had taken up a lot of his time in the first couple of months and then more recently he had been occupied by getting the estate back up to its full capacity before winter slowed down the agricultural life for a few months.
He had busied himself every day from dawn until dusk working hard at what he knew best; the days had not been the problem, it was the evenings. Since Clemens had brought his sister Clementina to Cosa in August for her marriage to Sabinus, Vespasian had been forced to have dinner every evening with two people who had very quickly fallen in love. The truth of the matter was that, for the first time in his life, he was jealous of his brother. He was jealous of his happiness; he was jealous of his love and how it was returned; he was jealous of him having the woman he loved in his bed every night; he was jealous of everything that Sabinus had because he could not share the same thing with Caenis.
Antonia had once sent Caenis to Cosa, ostensibly with a message saying that Caligula had arrived on Capreae along with Clemens and that she was awaiting news. However, three months on no news had come and Vespasian was starting to fret about his inactivity; his career was not going to progress so far from Rome, however much he enjoyed farming.
Caenis had stayed for four days — and nights — but that had been back in September and he had not seen her since. Four days they had had playing man and wife — sharing a walk in the morning, a couch at dinner, a bed at night. He had been grateful to Sabinus and Clementina for treating her as an equal, despite her slave status, without a hint of condescension; but in some ways that had emphasised the problem: no matter how much anyone pretended, she was still a slave and could only ever hope to be freed, never free.
When Clementina’s pregnancy had been confimed at around the time of his birthday in November, his jealousy had become almost impossible to keep hidden; his brother was having a child with a woman that he loved yet he, Vespasian, could never do the same with Caenis because the child would not be a citizen. He could never marry Caenis because of the Augustan law, the Lex Papia Poppaea, which forbade the union between a freedwoman and a senator; if he was to continue to serve Rome he would be elected as a quaestor, at or after the prescribed age of twenty-four, and, because his uncle was of senatorial class, he would automatically gain a seat in the Senate.
It was a situation that he could see no way out of short of giving up his career. Since he had first been overwhelmed by the majesty of Rome as viewed from the hill on the Via Salaria, he knew that was something he would never do. So he had no choice but to keep his feelings locked away and busy himself with the estate until Antonia called upon him and Sabinus to finally complete their mission and take Rhoteces to Tiberius.
This evening, however, he had managed to put all his troubles to one side; it was almost impossible to feel miserable during the Saturnalia, which was exactly what it had been designed for, all those years ago during the dark days of Hannibal’s invasion of Italia.
Another chorus of ‘Io, io, io, Saturnalia!’ greeted Vespasian and Sabinus as they re-entered the triclinium and set down the two final dishes.
‘You weren’t exaggerating, Sabinus,’ Attalus observed, poking his finger into the very sloppy sauce that surrounded an overcooked brace of rabbits. ‘You’ve surpassed your grandmother; the Gallic sailor would also have to be blind and drunk to eat that.’
‘Well, you’re already halfway there, Attalus,’ Vespasian laughed, picking up a knife from the table and pointing it at the steward’s face. ‘Would you like me to help you with the other half?’
‘You’re most kind, but I must decline as I fear that you would regret the offer in the morning when things get back to normal and you need a numerate person with full use of his eyes to correct all the mistakes that you’ve made in the estate’s account books.’
‘Io, io, io, Saturnalia!’ the assembled company shouted, raising their cups.
With the toast drunk the diners began to tuck into the meal.
‘Allow me to serve you, Master Marius,’ Sabinus said, noticing that the one-handed crossroads brother was having difficulty carving off a leg of suckling kid.
‘Yeah, he needs a hand,’ Sextus piped up, pleased with the joke that he had made a hundred times before but never tired of.
‘It must be the Saturnalia if you’ve got your only joke out, brother,’ Marius responded with a grin as Sabinus placed the leg on his plate. ‘Thank you, Sabinus.’
‘No need to thank me, it’s good to be able to do something useful seeing as I can’t even get myself elected as a quaestor.’
‘Io, io, io, Saturnalia!’ everyone roared in response to this unusual piece of self-deprecation. Vespasian joined in. He had, at first, been surprised by how well Sabinus had taken his failure in the elections — especially as he, Vespasian, had on more than one occasion mentioned that his friend Paetus, now back in Rome, had come top of the list — but then, observing the regularity with which his brother consoled himself for the defeat in the arms of his new young bride, he began to think that for Sabinus it had come as a relief. There were always next year’s elections and in the meantime he was free to enjoy married life rather than be second in command of some far-away province for a year or more, which was bound to be his fate — the plum jobs in the city being reserved for men of Paetus’ lineage.
The meal gradually petered out as the diners got more and more drunk; eventually they had all passed out on their couches or under them. The brothers and Clementina left them to their noisy slumber, surrounded by the debris of the meal; the Saturnalia did not extend to the masters clearing and washing up, that was something that the diners would have to do, with raging hangovers, when they returned to their normal roles early the next morning.
Sabinus led Clementina off to their bedroom, his grin assuring Vespasian of the night of consolation ahead of him, leaving Vespasian alone. Since it was still early and he was not yet tired he decided to go to his study and carry on working through the surprising amount of history books and historical documents that his grandmother had left him. As he crossed the atrium a loud knock sounded on the front door. In the absence of the doorkeeper — drunk in a pool of his own vomit on the floor in the triclinium — he opened it himself.
‘Good evening, sir, did I miss the party?’
‘Magnus!’ Vespasian exclaimed, surprised and pleased to see his friend. ‘Yes, I’m afraid that you did.’
‘That’s a shame.’ Magnus stepped into the vestibule, shaking off his cloak and handing it to Vespasian with a grin. ‘Never mind, it’s still Saturnalia so you can make up for it by pouring me a drink once you’ve hung this up.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’ll have that drink first, boy.’
Vespasian rolled his eyes; perhaps Saturnalia did last just a bit too long.
‘Not until March?’ Vespasian exclaimed.
‘At the very earliest,’ Magnus replied.
They were sitting in Vespasian’s small but cosy study; a mobile brazier in the corner glowed red, giving out a pleasing amount of heat. A jug of wine and a couple of oil lamps stood on the desk between them.
‘What’s the delay for?’
Magnus took a gulp of wine, spilling a bit down his tunic, and set his cup down. ‘I don’t know the exact details, sir, but it’s something to do with Satrius Secundus.’
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Well, when we got him back to Antonia he spent an hour closeted with her and Pallas in her study. I was waiting outside because she’d asked me to… wait, if you take my meaning?’
Vespasian smirked. ‘Yes, I do, you old goat.’
‘Well, so when she comes out she looks at me and smiles and says: “I’ve really got him now.”’
‘And?’
‘That was it. She doesn’t talk to me that much, just tells me what to do, you know, orders and such.’
‘Yes, I can imagine,’ Vespasian replied, trying not to. ‘So Secundus has given her something on Sejanus that she believes will really convince the Emperor of his treachery?’
‘It looks that way; she was certainly in a very good mood that evening,’ Magnus replied, grimacing slightly. ‘But I don’t know what it is. I tried asking Pallas, but you know what he’s like, he wouldn’t disclose a confidence even if his own mother was being nailed to a burning cross with a pitch-soaked, wooden stake up-’
