Commodus Read online

  The wrestlers left and Commodus began to swim, enjoying the water that was now beginning to steam in the cooler air once more. The faint aroma of cooked mutton sneaked out through the floor tiles and wall flues, and Saoterus’ prediction that a noble could not tell the difference between it and a burning slave proved well founded from the sickeningly smug look on Quadratus’ face.

  By the time the prince was tiring of the water and I had repaired two winters’ damage to my hands and nails, an array of good food was brought in, along with a high-quality Caecuban wine that had probably been expensive and difficult to source at such short notice. A musician entered with a lyre, and a girl came to sing along to it. It was relaxed, peaceful and pleasant, even with Quadratus there. Finally, the supervisor in the blue tunic – a freedman of importance, clearly – entered with a bow.

  ‘This is Saoterus,’ I said, indicating him to the prince. ‘He is the one who put everything back in order for you.’

  Commodus smiled warmly. ‘Well met, Saoterus. And not just back in order, but you clearly surpassed yourself. This is excellent fare and your wrestlers good enough that I have a mind to steal them off you. Why, there is nary a bathhouse in Rome that could have achieved such quality with such little notice. You are to be commended.’

  Saoterus smiled. ‘The owner would be distraught, Majesty, if his wrestlers vanished. What would happen when your illustrious father subsequently visited?’

  Quadratus goggled at this insubordinate manner, but Commodus simply laughed. ‘My father has less interest in wrestlers even than my cousin here. I like you, Saoterus. You speak plain sense, as well. In fact, I have as much need of you as I have of a good wrestler. Perhaps more. Have you family in Centum Cellae?’

  ‘No, Majesty. Just a room and some personal effects.’

  ‘Gather them up for transport then, man. I have a place for you on the Palatine.’

  The blue-tunic-wearing freedman bowed low with a smile. Saoterus, I felt, could be just the very antidote to the odious Cleander who awaited us forty miles away.

  We moved on the next day by carriage, leaving early in order to arrive in Rome by nightfall. The roads are good and the going easy, and it is perhaps ironic that I was hale and hearty – if beset by terror – all the way by ship on the rolling winter sea, but by coach on a flat road thereafter I was sick as a dog.

  We reached Rome that evening with the erudite Saoterus and the powerful Narcissus in Commodus’ personal entourage now. The streets were still stricken with the plague. I thought it less virulent now, though I cannot be certain whether that was truly because of fewer signs in the city or perhaps because I had just become so inured to it that disease and death had become the norm. While the prince was immediately surrounded by those of any position or power seeking news of the north and to ingratiate themselves, and Quadratus drank in praise by association, I made for the Palatine to visit my mother. It turned out however, that Lucilla had sent her to one of her villas in Campania while she accompanied her husband on campaign with the emperor. And so I returned to the house on the Caelian, still periodically vomiting, attended by the household slaves.

  When the illness failed to subside the next day, but faded in the early afternoon, a horrible suspicion settled upon me, and not one that pleased me, either. Sickened with the thoughts that assailed me, and clutching my belly as though it nurtured a demon, I hurried to Quadratus’ room, where he lay groaning and hiding from the light, suffering a pounding head from a late night of socialising. One of the standing rules of our association was that he came to me in my chamber. I was under no circumstances to go to his, for he might be entertaining someone important. But I didn’t care, in my labyrinth of loathing. I brushed that aside, just as I did his personal slave who tried to stop me.

  ‘I think I’m pregnant,’ I blurted as I walked through the door to find Quadratus half wrapped in a sheet and moaning.

  It took my master some time to recover his wits enough to take in this critical news, but finally, sitting on the edge of his bed and rubbing his temples, he fixed me with a fuddled look. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve been vomiting since Centum Cellae, and it seems to be worst in the morning.’

  ‘Rubbish. I remember my sister being with child. She wasn’t sick until it was well advanced. You’d have known by now.’

  Possibly. I was hardly versed in such matters. But the coincidence seemed too much. ‘I do know for sure. I cannot remember when my last menses occurred,’ I replied shakily. The last thing I wanted was to be pregnant. Especially with Quadratus’ child. A wave of disgust radiated through me. I didn’t want it. I wanted it out of me.

  ‘No. I can’t take that chance. I have no intention of siring a child by a worthless pleb; I’ll be the laughing stock of Rome. Come.’

  He rose and grabbed me by the wrist, dragging me to the kitchens. There, the household slaves dropped into respectful bows in surprise.

  ‘Oysters. Where are the oysters?’ the master of the house demanded.

  Cook hurriedly dug around in the cold-room and found the slimy seafood delicacy that had been imported from the oyster beds of Neapolis. Under Quadratus’ direction, and beneath my worried gaze, cook tipped a dozen raw oysters onto a silver platter.

  ‘Silphium?’

  The cook, her brow furrowing in concern, retrieved a small bowl of the chopped herb from a shelf, where it had rested among other similar seasonings. Without care for quantity, Quadratus tipped the entire bowl onto the oysters, shaking the plate so that the seasoning covered as much as possible of the slippery white surfaces. He snatched the platter from her and thrust it under my nose.

  ‘Eat.’

  I stared at the plate of slippery crustaceans. Raw oysters were far from my taste, and I found silphium too strong at the best of times. ‘No, I . . .’ I felt a little sick rise into my mouth.

  ‘Eat the fucking oysters,’ he snarled at me in a tone I’d never heard him use. ‘They say it kills off a pregnancy. Silphium too. Eat them all.’

  I had no choice. Standing in that kitchen, surrounded by watching slaves, I consumed twelve raw oysters. And when I was sick, Quadratus had Cook count the oysters that came up and feed me more to make up the deficiency, finding more silphium and coating the replacements liberally.

  When it was over I was shaking, tears streaming down my face. My throat was raw and my mouth gritty from the silphium. All around me the slaves looked on. Pity filled their eyes, and I hated that they had seen me like this. Hated him.

  When I was finally released, I crept to my room, curled up on my bed and was sicker than I have ever been.

  The next morning I bled. I bled as though I were on my period, which for a short while I thought was perhaps true. Perhaps I had been wrong all along, and it had been seasickness after all. The cramps and the blood were familiar enough. But it all changed soon after. Three days I suffered the cramps and the bleeding, and then suddenly, on the third morning, a wave of pain and nausea wracked me from head to toe. I rushed to the latrine.

  What happened there is difficult to relate. I had another flow, but this one held something. It was tiny – far from even remotely being a child – yet its nature was unmistakable. I watched it for a moment in sick relief as the pain ebbed. I had lost the life that was growing inside me, a life I could not have nurtured, for it would have been the offspring of my abuser. I stared at the shape below, my body still covered in blood and shaking. Three days of cramps, an hour of pain, and the panic was gone. I would never have to raise Quadratus’ child.

  It took time to recover from that awful day, both physically and mentally, but throughout the process of healing I found myself granted more freedom. Given what had happened to me, I made discreet enquiries and read much. I learned that Quadratus’ sister had aborted her second child, and his knowledge of silphium and oysters was a consequence of that time. It did not take a great deal of research to di
scover that silphium was a known abortive, used by many physicians, and could be administered painlessly. Raw oysters were more direct and brutal, given to causing bouts of severe digestive agony that would almost certainly carry away any unborn child with them. The fact that at even a hint of pregnancy, Quadratus had used both without concern for my own health said much about him – I suspect that if he had used silphium alone and left out the oysters, much of my pain and discomfort could have been avoided.

  Fortunately, as we were back in Rome Quadratus was once more among his elite and with plenty to do, and I was relegated again to being an occasional visit when the lust was upon him. Perhaps it was easy for him to turn away from me after my ordeal. I had likely lost much of my allure to him in the process. For my part, my hatred blossomed into new, fiery depths. Occasionally, I caught his eye straying to one of the prettier house slaves, and I began to wonder how long he would remain interested in keeping me as a mistress after that little episode with the oysters, and what I would do when he finally discarded me. I was a little old now to go back to Mother and help her. Marriage to some tradesman in Lucilla’s employ, I supposed.

  Despite my earlier ponderings on the necessity of distancing myself from Commodus, I now began to spend more time with the prince again, and our friendship entered a new era of closeness. Indeed, with each passing month, as he grew into a man and a glorious reflection of his great, mourned uncle Verus, I found it harder and harder to ignore the feelings inside me that spiteful Cleander had laughed about so long ago. I was in love with him. And now that I was a woman, and he almost ready to take on the man’s toga, it was no longer a laughable, forgivable, childhood infatuation. Furthermore, the way he sometimes looked at me now – his gaze straying down from my face to take in my figure, sometimes seeming to penetrate my physical shell and peer deep into my soul – made it clear that it was reciprocated. Trouble would loom soon if I did not find a way to stop this, but how long could we remain just friends in the knowledge of what simmered beneath the surface?

  Winter came with news that the emperor continued to make headway on the Danubius, and more and more tribes were submitting, though each campaign engendered the need for another, and he would remain on the border until he was certain it was secure. Commodus’ wry suggestion that war could never truly settle a border, and that trouble would always return, seemed to be more astute and true than ever.

  We entered the new year of the Consulship of Gallus and Flaccus on a high point, even though the pestilence still ravaged the poorer districts. Commodus was in grand spirits now, partially because I was there with him, bolstering his mood whenever he felt low, partially because he was grown now, and he was beginning to make a true impact on Rome, and partially because of the influence of the man we had brought back from Centum Cellae: Saoterus. The man had been appointed as Commodus’ ab epistulis – his secretary – and had his ear as much as any man at court. I trusted Saoterus, which made him my friend, too. And, to some extent, his presence constricted the influence of Cleander. The slave, who had welcomed his prince back to the palace, hoping perhaps to return to his former position, found that he was playing second to this new favourite. How much that rankled with the man made me smile and left me warm inside. God, but how I hated Cleander.

  It was clear how much trust the emperor had in his son for, as the year started, and Aurelius began once more to take steel into the heart of the barbarian world, he started to send letters to Commodus which contained instructions for him to carry out in the capital. The emperor began to administer Rome by proxy, through the prince.

  It was a good year. Cleander seethed but lacked the power to do anything about it, Commodus exhibited all the values he would need as an emperor, I kept him happy and Saoterus kept him level. Narcissus the wrestler became more than mere entertainment for Commodus, now residing on the Palatine and acting as a physical trainer to the empire’s heir. It was as golden a time as Rome ever had.

  The seasons turned once more, and the consuls laid down their authority. This year, one hundred and seventy five since the birth of the saviour, the emperor wrote that he was too busy to devote time to deciding on the consuls and left the matter in the hands of his son. Commodus consulted with several very clever politicians and a number of intuitive freedmen – not even once with Quadratus, which irritated him – and settled upon Calpurnius Piso and a friend of the imperial family, Salvius Julianus.

  The year started well enough, but we soon began to see the signs of trouble ahead. One morning a letter arrived from the north, dictated by the emperor through his secretary Eclectus, and the prince opened it hungrily, itching to see what new business he was to undertake. In fact, in the letter there was instruction to begin giving imperial largesse in the forum, though that was but a footnote. The main business was a warning. It seemed that the emperor’s good friend Avidius Cassius, an old and trusted colleague who had been Verus’ right-hand man in Parthia and who had efficiently put down the revolt in Aegyptus five years ago, had risen against Aurelius, his troops proclaiming him emperor. Commodus found it hard to believe and presumed it a joke. Cassius was as loyal a man as could be found in the empire. Yet there seemed to be no hidden mirth. The letter was genuine and came from the imperial secretary. Further information in that epistle was subtle and understated. Eclectus noted, probably at his own whim and not the dictation of Aurelius, that the emperor was not well. That was all, but the manner of the telling suggested that Eclectus was worried.

  ‘Father is dying, I think,’ Commodus said, lowering the letter. His face betrayed no sudden panic or sorrow, and as I looked into his eyes I realised he had donned his mask once more, a mask he had been preparing for this very occasion ever since the death of Verus.

  ‘Surely Eclectus would have said?’

  ‘Not openly. He is certainly more than a “little ill” or Eclectus would not have mentioned it.’

  I nodded, trying to imagine the emperor, still sprightly at fifty-four, on his deathbed. It did not sit well in my head. I had never known a world without Marcus Aurelius and could barely imagine such a thing. ‘Perhaps he is just ill,’ I said soothingly. ‘He has a weak constitution, after all. You know that. Your uncle always said it. And he is in the cold, dreary north. Perhaps all he needs is to return to warmer climes?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he admitted slowly. ‘If word of this has spread elsewhere, I wonder . . . Perhaps this is Cassius’ reaction to fearing the emperor might fall?’

  I frowned. ‘But Cassius must know, as all Rome does, that you are the heir?’

  The prince turned a strangely bitter, calculating look on me. ‘Men who enjoy position fear change. Perhaps Cassius thinks that if the empire passes to me he will not enjoy the same favour he does from my father. Verus knew this problem, I think: that the senators of Rome work for their own advancement, rather than that of the empire. That is why he trusted in freedmen, who could not hope to usurp. Shrewd.’

  I tried to picture Cassius rising as a new emperor in the east. I couldn’t. I’d only met the man once or twice and I’d been quite young. But I had spent those lonely nights in Carnuntum reading for entertainment, and I had read my histories well. I knew how dangerous a usurper in the east could be. Marcus Antonius and Vespasian had illustrated that point adequately. In fact, the danger of a usurper controlling Aegyptus was precisely the reason no senator could govern the province and it was the remit of a lower prefect.

  The months went on, now more than a little tense. Commodus spent time as instructed, in the hall of Trajan, distributing imperial largesse. Some thought it was the emperor and his son alleviating the effects of the plague that continued to claim lives everywhere. Some thought it was a grand way to try and offset the pressure that had been placed on the empire by increased taxes to support the endless wars on the Danubius. Commodus understood the truth, even if no one had said it. There was a usurper threatening the legitimate rule of the Antonines, and the people of
Rome had to be reminded where their loyalty lay.

  Over those months, more and more reports rolled in. The wars in the north continued, without disaster, but also without clear sight of an end. The situation in the east went from bad to worse. Avidius Cassius, originally with just the backing of the Syrian armies, now had the entire east behind him, including important, perpetually troublesome Aegyptus. The worst news was what came through rumour.

  It was said that the emperor had died in the north.

  I was shocked when I first heard it. Commodus initially panicked, unable suddenly to maintain that stoic mask he had prepared, but soon he began to calm, reasoning that no matter what had happened, Eclectus or one of the other courtiers or generals in the north would have at least told him, had that truly been the case. When the next news did come from Carnuntum, it confirmed that though the emperor was still not well, he was far from dead. Indeed, he was busy leading a push against the enemy even now. Commodus put away his mask for a time.

  Spring rolled on, with a cloying, dung-ridden Roman summer on the way, and I was wondering whether Quadratus intended to move to a country estate, as was the wont of nobles in that season. On one bright, fresh day, Maius the eighteenth, I was on my way to see Commodus, when I rounded a corner to find the most spiteful argument in progress.

  Saoterus and Cleander were alone in the corridor and I shrank back before they saw me, listening to them.

  ‘You were like me not long ago,’ snarled Cleander. ‘Worse than that. Even as a slave I was close to a prince, while you dug shit from a latrine for a living.’

  ‘It matters not how argumentative you get or where either of us started,’ Saoterus replied firmly, ‘the fact is that I am a free plebeian of Rome and you are a stinking Phrygian slave who likes to think himself important. Get back to your mopping.’

  ‘When the time comes, Saoterus, you will fall so hard and so far, you won’t know what fucking month it is when the boatman comes for you.’