False God of Rome (5 page)

‘And they’re among the best from the first century,’ Vespasian replied. ‘There’re a couple of centuries who can’t even dress themselves off into a straight
line; the centurions are getting through vine-sticks at an incredible rate.’

Before Magnus could express his opinions on the effectiveness or otherwise of beating discipline into sub-standard soldiery, a well-groomed, togate quaestor’s clerk approached them.

‘What is it, Quintillius?’ Vespasian asked.

‘There’s been a woman waiting to see you for three hours now; I tried to get her to make an appointment to come back at a more suitable time but she refused. She said that as a Roman
citizen it’s her right to see you as soon as you return. And also that it’s your duty to see her as her father was your uncle’s clerk when he was a quaestor in Africa.’

Vespasian sighed. ‘Very well, have her shown to my study. What’s her name?’

‘That’s the odd thing, quaestor, she claims to be a kinswoman of yours; her name’s Flavia Domitilla.’

‘And it’s now a month and a half since he went southeast and he promised me that he wouldn’t be gone more than forty days.’ Flavia Domitilla sobbed into
a silk handkerchief, then dabbed her eyes carefully so as not to smudge the thick line of kohl that outlined them.

Whether she was genuinely upset or just using her feminine wiles to the full, Vespasian could not tell, nor did he very much care; he was transfixed by this elegant and immaculately presented
young woman. Tall with curved hips, a thin waist and high, rounded breasts, her body was sumptuous. Her intelligent, sparkling, dark eyes, a slender nose and a full mouth were framed by a mound of
high-piled black hair with braids falling to her shoulders on either side. Apart from a few slave girls he had not had a proper woman since he last saw Caenis; and Flavia Domitilla was undoubtedly
a proper woman. Her clothes and jewellery spoke of wealth and her coiffure and make-up told of the time that she had to enjoy it; she was exquisite. Vespasian stared at her, inhaling her feminine
scent, heightened by the heat and augmented by a delicate perfume, as she whimpered softly into her handkerchief. He felt the blood pulsing in his groin and, to cover any embarrassment, adjusted
the folds of his toga, grateful, for the first time since arriving in the province, to be wearing the garment. In an effort to tear his mind away from carnal thoughts, he raised his eyes to study
her features. Other than a slight roundness of the face he could make out nothing that would suggest a close kinship; however, her name was irrefutably the feminine form of Flavius.

Suddenly realising that he had been too busy admiring her to take in what she had been saying, he cleared his throat. ‘What was his name?’

Flavia looked up from her handkerchief. ‘I told you; Statilius Capella.’

‘Oh yes, of course; and he’s your husband?’

‘No, I’m his mistress; haven’t you listened to anything?’ Flavia frowned. ‘His wife is back in Sabratha in the province of Africa; he never takes her on his
business trips, he finds that my charms work much better on his clients.’

Vespasian could well believe it; they had certainly worked on him and, dizzy with desire inflamed by her sensual scent and ripe body, it was as much as he could do to keep his hands clamped on
the arms of his chair and concentrate on what she was saying. ‘And what was his business again?’

Flavia looked at him exasperated. ‘You’ve just been sitting there staring at my breasts, haven’t you, because you’ve evidently not heard a word I’ve
said.’

Vespasian opened his mouth to deny the accusation – he had been staring at more than just her breasts – but thought better of it. ‘I’m sorry if you think that I’ve
been inattentive, I’m a busy man,’ he blustered, his eyes involuntarily resting again for a moment on the magnificent swell of that part of Flavia’s anatomy.

‘Not too busy to sit and stare at a woman’s body rather than listen to what she has to say. He’s a wild-beast master; he procures animals for the circuses in Sabratha and
Lepcis Magna. He was making a trip out into the desert to try and get some camels; they don’t put up much of a fight but they look funny and make people laugh. We don’t have them in the
province of Africa but there’s a tribe here that does.’

‘The Marmaridae.’

‘Yes, that sounds right, the Marmaridae,’ Flavia agreed, pleased to have his full attention finally.

‘So your er… man has gone to try and buy camels off a tribe that doesn’t acknowledge Rome’s hegemony in the area because we’ve never been able to defeat them in
battle as they’re nomadic and almost impossible to find?’

‘Yes, and he should have been back five days ago,’ Flavia added, quivering her bottom lip.

Vespasian bit his, trying to banish thoughts of where that lip might go. ‘You should hope that he hasn’t made contact with them.’

Flavia looked at him in alarm. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘Because they’re notorious slavers; they take whomever they can find and sell them, hundreds of miles away in the south, to the Garamantes, who apparently have massive irrigation
works that enable them to grow crops down there; it’s very labour intensive.’

Flavia burst into fresh tears.

Vespasian fought to resist the urge to comfort her, knowing that once he touched that body he would be lost. ‘I’m sorry, Flavia, but it’s the truth. He was absolutely mad to go
out there. How many men did he have with him?’

‘I don’t know for sure, at least ten, I think.’

‘Ten? That’s preposterous; there are thousands of Marmaridae. Let’s pray that he hasn’t found them and that his water hasn’t run out yet; how much did he
take?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Well, if he doesn’t turn up in a couple of days then I’m afraid you’ll have to fear the worst. If he’s gone southeast then the first place that he can get water
– if he hasn’t taken a local guide to show him where the wells are hidden – is the oasis at Siwa just before the Egyptian border; that’s over three hundred miles away and
can take between ten and twenty days to get to, depending on the conditions.’

‘Then you’ll have to go and find him.’

‘Find him? Do you have any idea how big an area we’re talking about and how many men I’d have to take just to ensure that we’d get back?’

‘I don’t care,’ Flavia snapped. ‘He’s a freeborn Roman citizen and it’s your duty to protect him from slavery.’

‘Then he should have asked me for an escort before he went off on that idiotic trip,’ Vespasian retorted, aroused even further by the spirit that she was showing. ‘For a
reasonable price I could have provided him with some cavalry.’

‘Then provide him with the cavalry now instead,’ Flavia insisted, rising to her feet. ‘I’m sure that he will prove generous when you find him.’

‘And what if I refuse?’

‘Then, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, kinsman or not, I will go to Rome and let it be known that you sat by and did nothing as a member of the equestrian order was abducted and sold into
slavery. And I will furthermore allege that the reason that you did nothing was because you wanted to bed his woman.’ With that she turned on her heel and stormed out of the room.

Vespasian watched her go appreciatively, drew a deep breath and exhaled, shaking his head; she was certainly right about one thing: he did want to bed her. But she could give him more than just
pleasure and, as his heart continued to send the blood racing around his body, he knew that he would risk anything to possess her.

Reacting out of instinct, Vespasian punched his left arm up, catching the lightning-swift downward cut of a
gladius
on the guard of his
pugio
. Twisting the dagger
left, he forced the sword aside and down as he thrust his gladius forward at belly height to feel it parried to the right by firmly held iron.

‘So we may get some lion hunting in after all,’ Magnus said, pulling away from the embrace that the move had ended in. He was looking pleased for the first time since arriving in
Cyrenaica; sweat glistened on his scarred torso.

‘I haven’t decided whether or not to go yet,’ Vespasian replied, taking the on-guard position: standing crouched, almost square-on, gladius low and forward with his pugio to
one side and slightly withdrawn.

They were exercising next to a pomegranate tree in the courtyard garden at the heart of the Governor’s Residence, taking advantage of the cool of twilight. A couple of slaves worked their
way around the colonnade lighting torches; the smoke that billowed off the freshly lit pitch-soaked rags contrasted sharply with the clean, fresh smell of the recently watered garden.

Magnus feinted to the right and then brought his gladius back-handed slicing towards Vespasian’s neck; parrying it with his pugio, Vespasian launched a series of criss-crossing strokes,
forcing Magnus ever back as he struggled to counter them. Sensing victory he lunged for Magnus’ throat; Magnus ducked under the stroke and, thrusting his sword down onto Vespasian’s
dagger, blocking it, he pushed his right shoulder up under Vespasian’s extended sword arm, knocking him off-balance while curling his right leg behind his opponent’s left, sending him
crashing to the ground.

‘You were too anxious to win there, sir,’ Magnus said, pressing the blunted tip of his practice sword against Vespasian’s throat.

‘My mind was on other things,’ he responded as he pushed away the weapon.

Magnus leant down to help him up. ‘Well, she spoilt your concentration. Anyway, if you don’t go she could make trouble for you back in Rome.’

Vespasian scoffed and brushed some dirt from his arm. ‘No, she couldn’t; everyone would understand why I did nothing. Who’s going to sympathise with an idiot who goes off into
the desert with hardly any escort in search of a tribe of slavers?’

Magnus looked disappointed. ‘So you ain’t going to go?’

Vespasian walked over to the pomegranate tree and sat down on the bench beneath it. ‘I didn’t say that; I just said that I wouldn’t go just because Flavia was threatening me.
If I go it’ll be for different reasons.’

‘Because it might be fun?’

‘Did you see her?’ Vespasian asked, ignoring the question. He picked a jug up from the table and poured two cups of wine.

Magnus joined him on the bench taking a proffered cup. ‘Yes, briefly; she looked expensive.’

‘That’s true, but it was a good look: pure woman. And she showed spirit and loyalty; imagine what sort of sons a feisty woman like that would bear.’

Magnus looked at his friend, astonished. ‘You’re not serious, are you? What about Caenis?’

The words of love in Caenis’ letter flashed though Vespasian’s mind and he shook his head regretfully. ‘As much as I’d want to, I could no more have children with Caenis
than I could do with you. You because, no matter how hard and often I tried, you’d be barren; and Caenis because the children wouldn’t be recognised as citizens, being the product of an
illegal union between a senator and a freedwoman.’

‘Yes, I suppose so; I’d never really thought about it like that before,’ Magnus said nodding and quaffing his drink. ‘So you’ll have to look elsewhere for your
brood-mare?’

‘And Flavia seems to be perfect and to cap it all she’s a Flavian.’

‘What difference does that make?’

‘It means that her dowry will be staying within the clan and therefore her father is likely to make a larger settlement on her.’

‘Well, you’ll need it if you’re going to keep her in all that finery; she ain’t going to be cheap. So I suppose it’s pointless going to try and rescue her lover;
much better to let him disappear out of the way.’

‘On the contrary, I’m going to take four
turmae
of cavalry and go and find him; if I don’t, then Flavia will never consider marrying me because she’s a loyal
woman.’

‘If you don’t find him that will be fine, but if you bring him back then she’ll stay with him.’

‘Not necessarily.’ Vespasian grinned slyly at his friend. ‘If I do find him, I’ll give him the option of staying out in the desert and not having to pay the costs for his
own rescue or returning with us to civilisation and a large invoice.’

‘What? The cost of keeping the cavalry supplied for however long it takes us to find him?’

‘Yes. Plus, of course, my own private expenses.’

‘Which will be how much?’

‘Oh, no more than Capella can afford to pay; say, one woman?’

‘H
OW MUCH FURTHER
, Aghilas?’ Marcus Valerius Messala Corvinus, the young, patrician prefect of the
province’s Libu light cavalry snapped, wiping away the sweat that flowed freely from beneath his broad-brimmed straw hat.

The dark-skinned Libu scout pointed towards a small, rocky outcrop shimmering in the heat haze, some two miles distant. ‘Not far, master; it’s in among those rocks.’

‘And not a moment too soon,’ Magnus muttered, easing his hot and sore behind in the saddle. ‘It’s only three days since we came down off the plateau and I’ve
already had enough of the desert.’

‘You didn’t have to come,’ Vespasian reminded his friend. ‘You could have stayed in the foothills and gone hunting; I’m sure Corvinus would have left you a couple
of guides.’

Corvinus glanced at Vespasian in a way that assured him that he was completely mistaken on that point.

Magnus looked ruefully at the stout hunting-spear jiggling upright in a long, hardened-leather holster attached to his saddle and shook his head. ‘No, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss
the fun; I just didn’t realise that there was so much desert.’

There was indeed a lot of desert.

Since descending from Cyrene’s plateau, two days after leaving the city, they had headed southeast, over a hard, dun-brown, rock-strewn wilderness that stretched to beyond the
province’s vague southern border and then as far as the imagination; it provided a natural defence against whomever or whatever lived beyond this wasted land. Despite it being November the
sun burned down during the day with a ferocity that belied the season; winter, however, caught up at night when the temperature plummeted and ice would form in the necks of their water-skins.