When crouching became awkward, she loosed him and resumed her seat. Gaius had recovered his composure. ‘Time, Gaius. You will have to heal. Have you talked to a doctor?’
He flared up. ‘There is nothing wrong with me!’
Lucilla forbore comment on the contradiction. ‘Were you wounded?’
Gaius was still tetchy. ‘Why is that the first question women must ask?’ Onofria had done so. ‘No. Not in the groin. I was hit on the head.’
‘But might a head wound affect you?’
He exploded again: ‘I don’t use my brain — ’
Lucilla toughened up with him. ‘When fit, you used everything, including the wits you have thrown away today. Experience, observation, curiosity, ideas, responses…’ Alba again.
‘Hands, lips, breath, muscles, heart — but mostly the all-important dingle-dangle,’ groaned Gaius bitterly.
There was silence.
Lucilla braced up to the easier question. ‘Well you have to decide which you want. You can’t have two wives, one of them must go.’
‘Both.’
‘The loud Onofria and the quiet Caecilia?’
‘Both. Absolutely; both.’
‘Well Gaius, make this the last time you let your brothers boss you. Stop them pushing you around. Grow up. Take responsibility for your own life.’
Now it was the turn of Gaius Vinius to make a massive, unthinking mistake.
‘I know what I want — who I want. Get free of both these bloody nightmares and make a vacancy.’ He meant so well — for both of them. He said it so wrongly.
Lucilla was hearing unpleasant contempt in the way he spoke of Onofria and Caecilia, even though he just told her he had voluntarily made drunken promises to one and exchanged formal vows with the other. He sounded hard, coarse, a little crazy. For herself, she would never fear any harm from Vinius, yet she was glimpsing a changed man here; she understood it might be temporary but he was a man out of control, a man she did not like.
At Lucilla’s silence, he made matters even worse: ‘All right, I know I’m a mess. But you can excuse the battle flashbacks, the drunken nights, the dried-up sap… Here I am, darling. Battered, but now all yours.’
Oh no. Calling her ‘darling’ was terrible. She had always hated the mocking insincerity of the way he used that word. But that was just the tip of her wrath, and Gaius could see how his lack of refinement was destroying their relationship.
Flavia Lucilla jumped to her feet. Deep in her eyes burned a fierce message that a man with five wives recognised: a diatribe was about to fell him like a tree struck by lightning. ‘How convenient — I can be sixth in the parade?’
The dog slid down off his lap and quailed against his chair. ‘That came out wrong,’ Gaius admitted hurriedly.
‘Really? You forget — I have seen how you treat wives. Who wants to be pushed out of the way while you grease your way off to some new refuge, your next secret “investment”, to confide in some new safe co-tenant, who may let you seduce her when she’s desperate but who will have no claim on you?’
‘I have had my faults-’
‘Yes.’
‘But you would be different.’
‘The promise you made to all those neglected wives!’
‘No!’
‘Two believe they still own you, even while you are pouring your heart out to me.’
‘ Because you are different-’
‘Because you take me for an idiot. You imagine I am just waiting to be a substitute, the next chained captive in your pathetic triumph.’ Lucilla shuddered. ‘This is my home. Don’t come to my home and behave like a dumb soldier. I have been a wife — to a good man, who for all his faults offered affection and respect.’ She knew how to make Vinius jealous.
‘I respect you.’
‘Don’t insult me. You are a disgrace, Vinius.’
‘So my wives tell me.’
She stormed off. The dog, who knew how to make choices, slunk after her. Vinius sat on the balcony with the wreckage of his hopes, until there was no point sitting alone any longer. He left the apartment without speaking again to Lucilla.
That was that then.
He had ruined it.
Everything was over.
The Praetorian knew it would be self-destructive to spurn Lucilla’s good advice. She would have been surprised how much of it he followed. Step by step he reclaimed his life.
He said goodbye to Onofria. He took her a generous amount of money and was surprised when she good- heartedly waved him and his cash away. He left the pay-off even so.
He agreed with Caecilia that although he was retreating to the Camp, she could consider herself married to him until she received her legacy. He could be civilised about it. There was no rush; he would not be marrying anybody else. Being honest, it was a fair certainty he would never be married again. He wanted no more second best. There were financial and career penalties for unmarried men, worse for those who refused to be fathers; he would live with that.
He consulted Themison of Miletus about his dysfunction. Themison paid great attention to the wound on his head, noting with interest how irascible interest in the skull depression made Gaius, who still considered it irrelevant. Then the doctor told him this happened even to gladiators, happened to those sex gods regularly. Give it six months. Be abstemious with drink. Then stick with his best girl, relax and keep in practice. Gaius amused himself wondering what his best girl would say, if asked to make herself available for therapeutic purposes.
He returned to the Camp. He smartened up for the cornicularius. He approached his work in a mature and conscientious manner, as he always used to do. He was now assigned to investigating the public. He stuck with the task without self-loathing, though it made him twisted and cynical. That worked well as a state of mind for a Praetorian.
He drank no wine for a month. He resumed only at his old measured pace, apart from occasional evenings with Scorpus, though they tended to be more interested in the aniseed and savoury delights of Chicken Frontinian, or for Scorpus, sausage in a ring, with double fish pickle. Once a month Gaius submitted to a night in a bar with the cornicularius, which they called ‘catching up on the paperwork’. Those rather stiff occasions cemented what became a gruff friendship. Now that Gaius had to deal with Domitian’s informers, with their sour reports of adultery, sedition and treason, he needed somebody who understood his work. His duties were grisly, verging on the unacceptable.
He imposed new rules on Felix and Fortunatus.
He took them to a bar, set up the most expensive flagon to show there were no hard feelings, then announced: ‘Every time I look up from picking the fluff out of my bellybutton, you two have married me off again. Some woman I never met before, who wants intimacy five times a night and thinks I’m made of money.’
‘You know we always look after you,’ said Felix, moved by this appreciation.
‘You are our little brother,’ Fortunatus added fondly.
‘I don’t want to appear ungrateful, but there are limits.’
‘What brought this on?’ marvelled Fortunatus.
Gaius refused to answer.
‘Give him another drink,’ urged Felix.
Gaius insisted: ‘It has to stop.’
Felix paused to effect his famous fart, then commented portentously: ‘Titan’s turds! Baby Brother must have found love.’
