CHAPTER XVIII
Vespasian was woken by a knock on his bedroom door.
Magnus stuck his head round the corner. ‘I’ve ordered a chair to be…ah! I’ll leave you to it.’ He beat a hasty retreat.
Vespasian turned on his side and looked at Flavia; she opened her eyes.
‘When he says “it” I assume he means me?’ she said with a yawn.
‘He could have meant the act itself.’
‘That would be a preferable interpretation, but I’ll only believe you if you prove it to be the correct one.’
Vespasian smiled and kissed her while running the tips of his fingers down over her breasts, across her flat belly before easing them in between her legs. Flavia moaned softly as she had done for most of the night as she had sucked on his mouth and his nipples and his penis between bouts of intense sexual activity; he had made love to her in a way that he had done to no other woman except Caenis.
Vespasian had decided to bed her the moment that he saw her again; and the feeling had seemed to become very mutual, especially once he had explained to her that he had found Capella and had brought him back out of the desert; he had not let her down. She had not seemed too distressed at the news of Capella’s savage death and was genuinely surprised to learn that he had not been trading for camels. Vespasian did not, however, tell her what Capella had really been doing, and when she had pressed him on the subject he had just alluded to imperial business and it was better if she did not know; which, indeed, it was. Admiring his high connections, which she had evidently found irresistible, she had started to work her charms on him to the full, quite unnecessarily but much to Vespasian’s enjoyment and the other guests’ embarrassment. When the dinner broke up Flaccus appeared most aggrieved and a triumphant-looking Laelia did not even bother to ask Flavia if she wanted her litter called.
The orange glow of the newly risen sun filtered through the shutters and Vespasian was spent; he climbed off Flavia and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I should be going; I’ve got business to attend to.’
‘What sort and how much?’ Flavia asked, resting her head on her hand.
‘Private and a lot.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No; you just be here when I get back.’
She sighed and lay back down on the pillow. ‘I can’t see that as being a problem.’
‘Dinner was successful by the looks of it,’ Magnus commented as Vespasian appeared from his bedroom.
‘Very,’ Vespasian replied while Ziri began to drape his toga around him.
‘Well?’
‘Well, we’ll go to see the Alabarch first and then on to the Forum to Thales and then try and find Felix.’
‘I know what we’re going to do; I meant: well, who is she then?’
‘You won’t like it.’
Magnus thought for a moment and then slapped his palm on his forehead. ‘Venus give you the strength to resist her: Flavia!’
‘A small world, isn’t it?’
‘Too small; you’re just about to cash a draft for a quarter of a million — she’ll have that off you in no time.’
‘Not if I marry her.’
‘The last time you thought about that a whole load of people ended up dead. Why don’t you just be content to have her as a bed-toy while you’re here?’
‘Because I’ll be twenty-nine this year and I need to have sons; my parents write of hardly anything else in their letters.’ Vespasian examined the folds of his toga draped over his left arm; he nodded with satisfaction. ‘That’s perfect, Ziri, you’ve finally mastered it.’
Magnus frowned. ‘So you’re going to take her back to Rome?’
‘I’m not going to live here.’
‘She might not want to come.’
‘Oh, she’ll come; it’ll be the best offer she’s had since she got here. Anyway, how was your evening?’
‘Much the same as yours, but without the long-term commitment to a very expensive woman.’
‘How come you both got a fuck last night and I didn’t?’ Ziri asked resentfully.
‘Because, Ziri, you’re a slave,’ Magnus said, clipping him lightly around the ear, ‘and besides, I haven’t noticed any camels around the palace. Now stop moaning and go and get Sir’s box.’
Optio Hortensius and his men were waiting for them at the palace gates, sitting in the shade of an outsized sedentary statue that reminded Vespasian of the image of Amun in the temple at Siwa but was, according to the Greek inscription, a representation in the Egyptian style of the first Ptolemy.
‘You can guide us to the Alabarch’s house near the Canopic Gate, optio,’ Vespasian said, getting into the chair that Magnus had ordered, ‘seeing as we’re saddled with you.’
Hortensius saluted and his men fell in.
‘You could make yourself useful and give us a guided tour as we go,’ Magnus said with a grin.
Hortensius ignored the jibe.
‘Don’t antagonise him,’ Vespasian muttered, as they passed through the palace gate and into the enclosed Royal Harbour, ‘he may prove useful.’
‘I can’t remember the last time that anyone in the Twenty-second Deiotariana did anything useful; the legion hasn’t seen proper action for ages.’
Clearing the Royal Harbour they entered the city itself and passed by the side of the old Macedonian barracks, two storeys high and now used for housing legionaries on duty within the city — the Roman military camp being situated outside the eastern walls. Turning left they walked along the length of its drab, two-hundred-pace, square-windowed facade, with their escort clearing the way through the crowd, and then turned right, into the Jewish Quarter.
Immediately there was a change of atmosphere; it was still busy but there was a sullenness in the air and, as they walked down the middle of the street, Vespasian noticed many a resentful glare at not only the legionaries but also at the thick, purple senatorial stripe on his toga. He kept his head held high and, disdaining to look either left or right, progressed with all the dignity befitting a Roman senator in a part of the Empire that belonged to the Senate and people of Rome.
As they got deeper into the quarter the people began to move aside less willingly and their escort were forced to draw their swords as a warning and occasionally push a more stubborn obstacle out of the way with their shields.
‘Maybe it weren’t such a bad thing to be given a guard,’ Magnus said from behind his right shoulder, ‘we don’t seem to be too popular.’
They carried on for half a mile past rows of Greek-style houses — two-storeyed and built around an oblong central courtyard with a couple of small windows and a plain wooden door in the whitewashed facade — before turning east onto the Canopic Way. Nothing in Rome had prepared Vespasian for this sight: three and a half miles long and sixty paces wide, lined with temples and public buildings for all its length, it ran from the Canopic Gate in the eastern wall straight as an arrow’s flight to the western wall and out into the Necropolis. Vespasian tried not to stare like some hill-farmer — which, he reflected, he was.
The going became easier as the width of the street and the more multicultural make-up of the pedestrians played their parts. Between the buildings to his left and right Vespasian noticed, out of the corners of his eyes, small areas shaped like the Circus Maximus with one open end, seating up to a hundred people, mainly Greek, listening to a speaker at the curved, far end. As they approached the fourth area the noise emanating from within was not what one would expect of a group of students listening to a philosophical debate.
Getting closer Vespasian could see that the audience was not only Greeks but Jews and native Egyptians as well. They were all involved in a fierce shouting match with scuffles breaking out and the two sides were not split by racial divides; a minority of Jews were taking issue with the majority of the audience — which included many of
