them so tightly that he was surprised they could move at all. But move they did, in a constant stream towards the forum.
Far below him, as the masses moved in one direction, Narcissus moved in the other. The timing was perfect. All Rome was converging on the Senate to hear the Emperor's announcement. Caligula was about to declare himself divine.
In a way, it was not surprising. The more malleable sections of the mob already treated him as a god and dedicated shrines to his spirit. In this, they were only following a tradition set by his ancestor Augustus. But the declaration he would make today was a step further, further even than his elevation of Drusilla to the pantheon. Already he spoke daily to Jupiter in his temple on the Capitol. He had begun to remove the heads from statues of the gods and replace them with busts of his own. Now Roman citizens would be required to worship him alongside Mars, Hermes and Apollo. The nobility would bankrupt themselves to build temples in his honour and make expensive sacrifices to him. They would hate him even more. Narcissus smiled his cold smile, and quickened his pace against the flow of the crowd.
The villa Rufus had described was to the east of the Circus Maximus, on the edge of the city. The animal trader's property and goods had been confiscated and divided among the Emperor's favourites, but Narcissus was aware that the villa had not yet been formally occupied by its new owner, Protogenes's effeminate nephew.
The house was locked, but Narcissus had come prepared. From beneath his tunic he drew a selection of keys tied together by a piece of cord. They would not be missed before the hired thief who stole them for him returned them. It took three attempts before he found the correct key to unlock the gate, then a further two to locate the smaller key to the entrance door of the villa.
Fronto's home was a Spartan place, exactly what Narcissus would have expected of an uncultured oaf who lived alone and spent his life purchasing animals destined for death. No opulent or ostentatious decoration here, no great paintings or statues, but what was this? An extensive library. Perhaps Fronto was not the buffoon he seemed.
He looked around. What was it Rufus had said? The red urn with twisted vine decoration at the neck. A souvenir of one of the trader's trips to the east. There it was, in the corner. It was heavier than it looked but, using all his strength, Narcissus was able to move it out of position. Yes, the cracked tile. Despite himself he began to tremble with excitement. He prised up first one jagged portion of the patterned stonework, then the other, and bent forward to look into the dark cavity below.
Rufus knew from the moment he saw Narcissus's face that the news was bad.
The Greek spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. 'None of Fronto's acquaintances admits to any knowledge of your money, Rufus. Of course, one may be lying, but I don't think so. Fronto was too clever to trust them.'
'And the villa?'
Narcissus shook his head, defeat in his eyes. 'Nothing. I checked it myself and there was nothing beneath the floor but spiders and mice.'
Rufus bowed his head. 'Perhaps it was too much to ask. It was only a dream.'
Narcissus clapped a hand on the younger man's back. 'Don't give up, Rufus. You can win your freedom. I am the living example of that.'
Rufus looked up at him, the pain of failure reflected in his eyes. 'But you are cultured and intelligent. You won your freedom with the talents the gods gave you. What gifts do I have? I was born to be a slave.'
Narcissus shook his head sadly and turned to walk back to the palace. As he did, he struggled to control a smug grin.
You could never be too rich. He had done Rufus a favour, really, by saving him from a difficult decision. The gold in the two leather pouches would not have been enough to buy freedom for the young man and his pretty wife. In any case, Caligula would never have freed him. Who else would look after his elephant?
XXXVIII
Now the door into Narcissus's clandestine world opened more fully for Rufus. The volume of information he passed to Livia increased and the messages themselves became more complex. Claudius's secretary could no longer impart what he needed during short visits to the elephant keeper's house. Instead, Rufus would wait until Livia made her excuses and waddled off to see the woman who was monitoring her pregnancy (and, no doubt, to pass on the fruits of their previous evening's discussions to Chaerea) before departing for a previously arranged meeting with Narcissus.
Here he would be instructed, not only in the wording of the message, but also in the way it should be imparted. Do not give it all at once; let her tease it out of you. A did not meet B in the alley behind the kitchens of the palace of Tiberius. No, A was seen by C loitering. C said A gave the impression of being up to something. Then change the subject. Livia will go back to it, and then, only then, do you reveal that when C was leaving, he saw B approach A and they disappeared together talking animatedly.
Rufus did not question what he was told, but he sensed each message was a building block in some intricate structure Narcissus's devious mind had designed — part of a giant puzzle in which each piece would only interlock in a certain way. But the messages were so innocuous he couldn't see what use they would be to Chaerea.
What he could not know, and what Narcissus would never tell him, was that the information Livia passed to Chaerea was being relayed to different sources in the palace hierarchy. They in turn would feed their titbits to the other members of the select circle of Caligula's hated favourites: Protogenes, Helicon and Callistus (harmless Appeles was long departed, flayed alive for failing to laugh sufficiently loudly at one of the Emperor's jokes), each of whom would seek to outdo the others in the speed and the drama with which they would present the information to the ultimate recipient.
At first, Caligula would accept the whispers for what they were, nails in coffins; specifically, and here was the dangerous part, nails in the coffins of Senator Claudius and his faithful freedman, Narcissus.
Yet the Greek gambled that Caligula's paranoia was so acute, it would allow him to perceive the seeds of treachery sown in the messages. On their own they were simply a series of denunciations by his faithful servants of plots by those he had long suspected. Yet each was subtly different in emphasis, and, taking all together, the young Emperor could only come to one conclusion: he was being betrayed by one or more of the men he trusted most.
Somehow, Rufus discovered, it was possible to live two lives. The seething undercurrents and ever-changing alliances of palace politics occurred in a dimension somewhere close by, occasionally intruding on what he called normality. But it never felt as real as his dull little everyday routine.
His reputation as an animal trainer had followed him from the arena to the Palatine, and occasionally he would be asked to use his skills to help the handlers at the little zoo the Emperor had established in one of the palace courtyards. It was one of the great mysteries of Caligula that he took as much pleasure from studying the exotic animals captured in Africa and Asia as he did from watching them being slaughtered in their hundreds in the arena.
'We're having trouble with one of the tigers, the big female,' the head keeper explained one day. 'She's usually quiet as long as you keep her fed, but she almost took Rodan's arm off yesterday and nobody's been keen to go anywhere near her since. Can you have a look at her?'
At night, the big cats slept in cages surrounding a deep, stone-lined pit, but during the day the cages were opened and they roamed free where the Emperor's privileged visitors could view them.
Rufus was surprised to see Callistus and his son among the watchers by the low wall overlooking the pens. He smiled in recognition. Callistus ignored him, but the boy — what was his name? Gnaius — grinned back, before turning again to watch the big cats that so obviously enthralled him. Rufus made his way to the narrow stairway leading down to the cages. The sharp, pungent scent of the cats thrilled him, as it always had, reminding him of his days with Fronto, but that memory brought with it an overwhelming sadness he struggled to throw off. Fronto was gone. There was nothing he could have done. Nothing he could do. Unless… No, he must not even think of it.
'This way.' The voice of the Gracus, the head keeper, brought him back to the present and he buried the image of treason where it belonged. 'She's over here. We didn't let her out with the others.'