‘And so you shouldn’t, master,’ Pallas agreed smoothly. ‘You will give the orders, but I’ll decide what to do because I am acting in the Lady Antonia’s name.’ He held up his right hand; on the little finger was Antonia’s seal ring.
Corbulo looked at the brothers. ‘Do you accept orders from him?’
‘I think that he knows better than any of us what is required,’ Vespasian replied diplomatically.
Corbulo, realising the ludicrousness of a situation whereby he would just repeat Pallas’ words like a herald, drew himself up and swallowed his pride. ‘Very well then, Pallas leads.’
‘Pompous arsehole,’ Magnus said, not altogether under his breath.
Corbulo turned and glared at him but could not bring himself to acknowledge the insult. It was bad enough taking orders from a slave — he was not going to compound that by demanding an apology from an urban ruffian. He turned and followed Pallas out of the room.
‘That didn’t help,’ Vespasian hissed at Magnus as they trailed behind.
Marcus grinned. ‘I know, but it felt good.’
At the rear of the house they descended a stone staircase into a long, damp corridor lit by flaming torches in holders down one side of the wall; their acrid smoke partially obscured the low ceiling, staining it and the wall behind them black. On the opposite side were a series of sturdy-looking oak doors with grills in them at head height. The stench of urine, sweat and fear hung in the air. The clatter of their sandals reverberated off the walls and ceiling.
‘Antonia has her own private prison, it seems,’ Magnus observed as Pallas stopped outside one of the doors and inserted a key into the lock.
Vespasian chuckled. ‘I suppose this is where you’ll end up if you stop performing for her.’
With an echoing, metallic clunk the lock turned; Pallas pushed open the door, walked in and reappeared an instant later dragging a filthy, naked, skeletal body by the ankles: Rhoteces. His long, straggly hair and beard were matted with shit. He had evidently been asleep because, as he was pulled into the light, his head jerked up and his eyes opened. He immediately started screaming, grabbed the doorframe and held on whilst trying to kick Pallas away.
‘A little help would be appreciated, masters,’ Pallas requested politely, ‘but don’t knock him out, I need him to swallow.’
None of them reacted for an instant, unwilling to go too near to the disgusting creature.
‘Fuck it,’ Magnus said, stepping forward and grabbing Rhoteces’ wrists he hauled them away from the doorframe.
The commotion had disturbed the other prisoners in the corridor and shouts emanated from behind rattling doors.
‘Master Vespasian, would you mind taking these?’ Pallas’ voice rose against the noise as he offered Vespasian the ankles.
Vespasian took hold of the spindly joints; they were so thin they felt as if they would crack if he held them too hard. A couple of sharp twists from Rhoteces disabused him of that notion and he gripped them with all his strength. He felt a tremendous sense of satisfaction that the man who he had witnessed so happily sacrificing Roman prisoners in Thracia four years previously had been reduced, during the past eight months, to nothing more than an animal.
‘Sit him up,’ Pallas said to Magnus as he pulled a vial out of his shoulder bag. ‘Master Corbulo, grab his head and force his mouth open; Sabinus, hold a knife to his throat.’
Corbulo winced but did as he was asked. Vespasian suppressed a grin guessing that Pallas had saved the most unpleasant job for him.
With his head held back, mouth forced open, baring his pointed, filed teeth, and with a knife at his throat, Rhoteces went still. Pallas approached him and opened the vial. ‘This won’t kill you if you drink it but that knife at your throat will if you don’t. Understand?’
Rhoteces wild eyes showed he had. Pallas tipped a quarter of the brown, viscous contents of the vial into his mouth and quickly held it shut, pinching the priest’s nose. He swallowed.
‘That will keep him sedated for twelve hours or so once it’s kicked in,’ Pallas informed them, ‘it’s what was used on Secundus yesterday. Let’s get him upstairs.’
Rhoteces had evidently accustomed himself to whatever fate was in store for him and had ceased to struggle.
As they pulled the priest along the corridor Vespasian noticed behind one of the grills a pair of eyes pleading with him from beneath a mono-brow.
He ignored them.
Out in the stable yard Rhoteces was pushed into the two-horse, covered cart that had transported him from Ostia; because he was drugged no one had to have the unpleasant job of travelling with him.
Antonia appeared in the torchlight on the steps leading up to the house. Caenis was behind her; she clutched her medallion and blew Vespasian a surreptitious kiss.
‘Gentlemen,’ Antonia said, ‘Macro has sent eight men of his previous command, the Vigiles, to escort you to the Capena Gate. I will pray and sacrifice every day for your success in this task. May the goddess Fortuna travel with you.’
She took each of them briefly by the hand and then they mounted up. Pallas climbed on to the front seat of the covered cart and took up the reins. The gates were hauled open to reveal the eight Vigiles, all holding flaming torches aloft; heavy clubs hung from their belts. With a click of his tongue and a flick of the reins Pallas urged the cart’s horses forward; the iron-rimmed wheels grated over the paved floor of the stable yard. Vespasian kicked his mount forward to follow the cart out. As he reached the gates he turned in his saddle and caught Caenis’ eye; he raised his hand in farewell, and she returned the gesture as he passed through the gates and out of sight.
The Vigiles led the way down the Palatine Hill and turned left on to the Via Appia as it ran alongside the huge, shadowy facade of the Circus Maximus and then passed under the inelegant but functional arches of the Appian Aqueduct to exit the city by the Capena Gate. The official escort and Antonia’s ring were enough to persuade the centurion of the Urban Cohort to let them pass without question. Now deprived of the Vigiles escort, who had left them at the gate, they had to push their way through the throng of farmers making their way to the city to sell their produce. Passing the public reservoir on their right they came to the junction of the Via Appia and Via Latina, close by the tomb of the Scipios; here they took the right-hand fork, staying on the Via Appia, and headed southwest as the first glimmers of dawn broke up the absolute darkness of the cloud-ridden night sky.
Progress was easy along the dead straight road and, in just two and a half days, staying at comfortable inns along the way, paid for by the generous travelling allowance that Antonia had given Pallas, they covered the almost seventy miles to Tarracina, where the road arrived at the coast on the edge of the Caecuban wine district. Here the road turned east and they followed it through the seemingly endless fields of neatly tended rows of vines. Sumptuous-looking villas on hills overlooking the crops that provided the money to build them demonstrated the wealth of the wine-producing families of the region.
Vespasian spent much of the journey time contemplating the problems of the transfer of power between generations or dynasties and how it had been effected by other peoples in the past. The history books that he had inherited from his grandmother had originally inspired his interest and then, in the last three months at Gaius’ house, he had belatedly taken up his uncle’s offer of the use of his good-sized library. With not much else to do in the evenings he had made his way through Homer, Herodotus and Thucydides as well as Callisthenes’ account of Alexander’s conquests — curtailed owing to the author’s execution by his subject. He had finally read Caesar and the more recently published History of Rome by Titus Livius. All these and more had widened his knowledge and understanding of politics and confirmed a truth in life: power and glory for their own sakes were the only motivations needed for the men who had sought them, to keep them; history was not littered with men like Cincinnatus.
Having spent the third night at Fundi they followed the road southwest again back to the sea and then along the coast. The March days were warming up and the sky stayed clear of clouds. The Tyrrhenian Sea sparkled to their right; trading ships and galleys passed to and fro in the busy sea lane between Ostia and Neapolis, now reopened after winter.
Passing Mount Massicus, they entered Campania and the Falerian wine district. Here the style of buildings became noticeably more Greek, attesting to the mixed ancestry of the Roman citizens of the region.
