divan.
Pulling her veil over her head, trying to walk as if it was a normal night, as if nothing was out of the ordinary, Julia passed the Praetorian guards. She could feel their eyes on her too. Had the sounds travelled this far?
Anthia woke at once. 'Is everything all right?'
How could anything be all right after what had happened? 'Yes,' she said. 'It is time to go.'
The imperial palace was a labyrinth of passages. At this hour of the morning, they were largely deserted. Having been forced to live there with her familia for months, Julia knew the way without thinking. The two women walked in silence.
Could she have stopped it? Could anything have stopped it? Myths were full of gods and goddesses intervening at the last moment to save girls and nymphs from other deities. A few miles from here stood the very laurel tree that Daphne had been transformed into a moment before Apollo would have had her. But the gods do not exist. Anyway, even in the myths, they seemed only to save young virgins.
There were stories that did not involve any gods. Greek girls drowned themselves in rivers, stern Roman patriarchs cut down their own daughters, but neither situation applied to her. Her father was dead, and she had been trapped in a heavily guarded first-floor dining room with adjoining bedroom. And the threat had been to her children. Dead, she could not have protected them.
She had tried to talk to him, to reason with him. Quietus's father needed her husband to command their forces; Quietus himself needed Ballista to oversee the troops in the east, for his own safety. The odious young man, his hands pawing, had shrugged her arguments aside. His father would triumph in the west. The imperium reunited, any need for Ballista was gone. She should think of her future, of her children's future. She and they would need a protector when Ballista was dead. They needed protection now — an emperor's will was law.
Trying to fend off his hands, she had persevered. What if Macrianus did not win? The advance expedition to the west under Piso had gone completely wrong. First Piso had withdrawn to Thessaly, where he had declared himself emperor, then he had been killed by Valens, the governor of Achaea, who was loyal to Gallienus. What if Macrianus did not come back?
Quietus had just giggled. There was, he had said, a sculpture in Cilicia set up by the great Assyrian king Sardanapallus. It represented the fingers of the right hand snapping. The inscription on it read: 'Eat, drink, fuck; everything else is not worth this.'
For a moment Quietus had looked serious. Yes, if his father failed, it would be the end — the end of all things. Yet just as old Sardanapallus had taught how to live, so he showed how to die. He would gather all the things that had given him pleasure. The silks and jewels, the spices and inlaid furniture, he would have them heaped up. The women he had enjoyed and the horses he had ridden would be sacrificed on the pyre. Then, from a high place, he would throw himself into the conflagration.
Julia saw that Quietus was not joking. She was sure he was mad.
As he pulled her off the dining couch and led her to the room next door, he recited poetry: 'For I too am dust, though I have reigned over great Nineveh. Mine are all the food that I have eaten, and my wild indulgences and the sex that I have enjoyed; but those numerous blessings have been left behind.'
Should she have fought him? She had pushed him away from her face when he tried to force her to do something no decent Roman matron should do. He had slapped her hard and asked in a hiss if she would like him to order some Praetorians to come in and hold her down. There was a full contubernium of ten men on duty tonight; he was sure they would all like to take turns with her when he had finished. She had done what he wanted. Her reluctance seemed to increase Quietus's pleasure in the act.
She had asked him to put out the lamps. Quietus had laughed: even the most respectable Roman matron lets the lights burn so her husband can admire her on their first night. Surely she would not deny her emperor, her dominus, the pleasure of gazing at the shrine where he was worshipping? A shrine defiled by a barbarian, but now being reconquered for Rome.
Julia tried to push the physical from her mind. What should she do now? Of course, early Rome provided a stern exemplum — did it not always? Raped by one of the sons of Tarquinius Superbus, the noble Lucretia had killed herslf. Why? She herself had said that only her body was defiled, her soul was not guilty. Her husband and her father had agreed; guilt fell not on the victim but on the rapist; the mind sins, not the body. It had made no difference. Lucretia was her own harshest judge. She absolved herself from guilt, but not from punishment. In the future, no unchaste woman would live, thanks to the precedent of Lucretia.
Julia had not tried to kill herself before being raped, and she had no intention of following the precedent of Lucretia now. Julia had submitted to protect her children. She was not going to stop protecting them now. She would just have to carry on as if nothing had happened.
Could she keep it quiet? Rhea, raped by a river-god, had killed herself in case her blush betrayed her to the mob as an adulteress. Ridiculous, thought Julia. It showed the weakness of Rhea, that she let her body betray her by blushing. And it indicated her stupidity — first to equate a woman who had been raped with an adulteress, and then to care what the unwashed plebs thought.
But what about Ballista? He would go mad — literally, mad — if he found out. Was he likely to? The slaves and freedmen of the imperial bedchamber would know. Ballista was highly unlikely to be talking to them. The story might spread amongst the Praetorians, if the two in the corridor had recognized her or one of the imperial servants named her in their hearing. That was far more dangerous; Ballista was one of their commanders. There was nothing she could do about that.
A sickening thought hit Julia. After abducting and raping their wives, the emperor Caligula used to enjoy an over-dinner discussion of their performance with their husbands. Might Quietus gloat in the same way? At first, before he had resorted to threats, when it was still oily seduction, he had tried to encourage her by saying that no one need know — it would be their secret. How much faith could be put in that?
When summoned to the dinner party, Julia had taken only one maid with her. Anthia was loyal. She would not talk. They could slip back into their own apartment. The rest of her household need not know.
Another sickening thought broke over Julia like a wave. Was she in some way to blame? Why had she taken only one maid? Had she been expecting it? Had she been already limiting the witnesses, or almost inciting the rape by her lack of care?
Of course it was not her own fault. She dismissed the disgusting idea with the ingrained self-control of her senatorial background. She had feared what might happen from the moment she had been ordered to dwell in the imperial palace while her husband was away. She had not shared her fears with Ballista. His barbarian nature would have driven him to spontaneous and disastrous actions. Daughters of the senatorial nobility of Rome did not give way to emotions; the icy self-control did not slip.
And when at last it was over, when Quietus put out the lamps and straight away fell asleep, why had she merely got dressed in the dark and left? Quietus had been lying on his back, naked, exhausted and defenceless. There must have been something that could have been used as a weapon somewhere in the room. He was unconscious. Why had she not tried to kill him?
Of course she knew the reason: she would have been caught and executed. The children would have lost her, possibly suffered themselves. Even as she framed the thoughts, she knew they were not the real reasons. She had been too shocked and scared to act. She had behaved exactly as a Roman man would expect a woman to behave. Unlike at the fall of Antioch, she had been weak, timorous, irresolute. Her behaviour disgusted her. Her disgust encompassed the world. This world created by men, this imperium, was an unfair world.
They were now at the side door, the one that led straight to Julia's private rooms. Anthia was waiting, clearly expecting her to say something. No words came. At last Julia spoke: 'I am no Luctretia. I must protect my children. Tell no one. This must be our secret.' The waves, driven by the continual south-westerly, crashed and boomed against the harbour defences of Sebaste, the name given to the port area of Caesarea Maritima. Calgacus had walked the southern breakwater, followed it when it dog-legged to the north, all the way to the big lighthouse at the end. High on the battlements, the late-spring sun was warm on his shoulders. Calgacus remembered the bitter cold of that night back in the winter when he had nearly died on a Galilean hillside. Gods, but it was good to be warm and alive; a free man with time on his hands. He looked around.
To his left, out to sea, the lines of white-topped water rolled in relentlessly. One after another, they thundered against the rocks at the foot of the mole. The spray flew high, jewelled in the sunshine. They were powerful, these waves, but there was no malice in them. They might kill you, but only in an absence of mind. Unlike a winter storm, they would mean nothing by it.
