Commodus Read online

  I was bereft. I had been too young to know what was happening when my father died, and had never truly experienced personal loss. As I sat alone in the room and wept, I finally understood a little of how Commodus had felt each and every time a member of his family had been snatched away like pieces on a game board. How easy it would be to sink into a permanent melancholia.

  Blame was easy to come by in my solitude as I let the tear-stained missive fall. Blame at the imperial courier system for not informing me straight away. Blame at an uncaring God, who had let so many good pagans die, but who had now taken one of our own well before her time. Blame at Verus for having brought the damned plague west. Blame at Commodus for not being with me when I needed him for a change. Almost anything I could blame that helped me avoid the guilt that burned like a cancer deep inside, for I had not visited Mother now for a third of my life.

  I wallowed in misery, wishing my prince would come and help me as I had helped him, yet afraid to leave my rooms in case I bumped into Cleander or attracted the further attentions of Quadratus. The last thing I wanted at that moment was abuse of any kind. And the longer I sat in gloomy, angry silence on my own, the less I was concerned with all else, and the more with the failings of a God I had been brought up to believe was good, and loving, but who had torn from me my only family. It occurred to me only on the darkest of nights that perhaps He had forsaken me because I had so often turned from him in favour of the fascinating ways of the pagans.

  When Commodus did come, it was many days later and my tears had long since dried. He came to tell me that the time was upon us. We were going back to Rome before Saturnalia.

  And I exploded into grieving sobs once more at the thought of what now awaited me there.

  X

  THE RAGE OF NEPTUNE

  Rome, winter, early ad 177

  Just as the journey to Athens had been the easiest and calmest voyage I had ever undertaken, so the journey to Rome from there was by far the worst. Had I more pagan leanings, I might have taken it as a bad sign that the ship we took, the Tigris, was the same trireme aboard which Verus had returned from Parthia, bringing the plague with him. Around the south of Italia, we were caught in a storm that even the sailors said was one of the most furious they had ever experienced.

  The waves hammered at the ship and the gale tore at the sails, and I cowered and shook with fright. My heart lurched as a spar creaked and then gave with a ligneous crack. Those sailors who were not desperately clutching ropes or fastening things down cast up prayers to the gods. One man close to me, who must have been a new crewman, dropped to his knees along with the others but began to intone one of the common prayers to the Lord while clutching his chi-rho symbol of the Christian faith. His open devotions drew the ire of his crewmates, who roared into life despite the wind and waves threatening to sweep them from the deck, blaming him for the damage to the spar and the storm in general, denouncing Christians as unlucky on a ship and having brought forth the rage of Neptune. I watched in horror as they rushed the man and tried to lift him bodily, shouting their displeasure as they manhandled the struggling sailor towards the bucking and dipping rail, their feet sliding around dangerously on the sodden boards. I could see clearly what they planned, as could the ship’s trierarch, who stood clutching the steering oars tight, hair plastered across his face, nodding his agreement, unwilling to lift a finger to stop the violence.

  God, no. To be thrown into that dreadful endless stretch of water. In an odd way, I instantly identified with the poor man for all our differences, for was he not receiving precisely the same reaction for an innocent gesture as I did from Cleander whenever I showed my faith? I staggered to my feet on the slippery deck, the ship lurching as I did so and sending me this way and that as I rushed to the prince, who was in close discussion with Cleander as both men clung to a rope.

  ‘Majesty, you have to stop this,’ I yelled breathlessly over the howling winds and crashing water, using his honorific respectfully since we were in public.

  Commodus turned to me, frowning, unaware of what was happening, lurching with another sudden movement of the ship. ‘What?’

  ‘That poor sailor. They’re going to throw him overboard.’

  Now the prince was paying attention, his gaze falling on the activity as the struggling man was pushed and heaved to the rail, where the churning, roaring sea awaited.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s a Christian. That’s all.’

  ‘Probably reason enough,’ shouted Cleander unpleasantly, and Commodus looked back and forth between us as I was forced to grasp a rail to prevent myself being thrown back away from them. He stood uncertain, torn, pulled this way and that by emotion as much as the tipping of the deck. He had no hatred of Christians, of course, having grown up with one, but he also knew the popular view of them which had pushed Cleander into urging him not to interfere. His gaze fell on Saoterus, who stood nearby, arm coiled in a rope, clutching a mast, and I felt the balance of the scales of justice tip towards me. The secretary gave a slight nod and Commodus turned, pointing at the group of sailors who now had their unfortunate compatriot on the rail, trying to force him to let go, cursing our God as they did so.

  ‘Stop this,’ Commodus bellowed. His words were torn away fruitlessly by the gale and he repeated himself twice, bellowing hoarsely above the howling winds. The men fought on for a moment, the prince’s voice going unheard, though one or two stopped when the trierarch began to echo the call. The man’s life was only truly saved when half a dozen burly Praetorians staggered across and hauled them off him, grabbing the beleaguered sailor and pulling him back aboard, one of their own almost pitching into the water in the process.

  The man spent the rest of the journey with the guard, endlessly thanking and praising the prince who had saved him. The ship was battered and torn, tossed from wave to wave, and finally limped, badly damaged, into the harbour at Heracleum. We had also lost one of the two military triremes that escorted us with all hands in the storm. At the port, while I welcomed dry land and turned my back gratefully on the dreadful sea, Commodus had that sailor stricken from the ship’s lists and gave him a purse of coins to see him through the month until he could secure a new position.

  While we waited for a vessel of appropriate quality to be found to take us onward and an extra escort trireme to be brought from Syracusae, the sailors and many of the court and passengers made their way to the Temple of Neptune to give gifts and make libations in an attempt to appease the sea god before we attempted the next leg of the voyage. I found myself tempted to join them, my legs still shaking from the terror of the sea, then reminded myself what Mother would think if she found out her good Christian daughter had made libations in a pagan temple. That, of course, brought the grief at her passing and the dismay over an uncaring God flooding back in once more, and left me struggling to decide whether it even mattered who I prayed to now. Turning back to Athenagoras’ new work, which was perhaps the first philosophical text I had ever cared for, provided some comfort.

  Finally, we boarded our replacement ship and sailed on around Sicilia and up the Italian coast to Ostia. I had never hated a journey as much as I did that one, and yet when we bumped against the jetty in Ostia, I found myself oddly reticent, wishing I could stay aboard, given what awaited me in Rome.

  Commodus had been largely occupied with his father during our voyage and had continued to spend only a little time in my company. When he did, I took a leaf from his book and bolted on a mask of contentment, letting my heart shatter over and over beneath it. Somehow, the fact that I had always tried to be there when he needed me, yet he had been consorting with philosophers when I needed him, rankled deeply. He had enquired in Athens when I burst into tears what had made me sad, and I glossed over the whole event, keeping the news of Mother’s passing a secret to myself while I gently broiled at his absence during my suffering.

  I know it is ne
ither logical nor fair, especially given that I had decided to distance myself from him, but then I never said I was either of those things.

  We arrived in Rome to the tumultuous pleasure of the crowd. I was surprised at the change a year and a half had made in the city. While it was clear that the plague was still active in Rome, it was equally evident that it had subsided somewhat. There was still illness, and there were queues outside the many physicians’ houses, but not the endless lines of corpse-wagons and piles of bodies there had once been. Silently, unfairly, I cursed Mother for giving in when she did and not lasting another year to ride out the disease.

  We returned to the Palatine and the court dispersed in preparation for what was to come. Though the empress Faustina had necessarily undergone a small funeral in Cilicia, Rome expected a grand affair, and so games and processions and banquets and the like would be held to allow the city to properly show its respect for her.

  Quadratus gave orders for his household to return to the domus on the Caelian Hill, and as we departed the palace, I took the opportunity to slip away on my own mission. Enquiring of a few of the minor functionaries, I learned what had become of Mother. Two hours later I was outside the city proper, near the fourth mile marker of the Via Latina. A squat, square columbarium stood there, plain and unadorned, set slightly back from the road and nestled in shade cast by two much grander tombs. One of the resting places constructed for palace staff. I had acquired a key from the man who directed me here, and quietly, sadly, unlocked the gate and slipped into the gloomy interior. I filled and lit the small oil lamp on the shelf by the door and waited until the glow increased enough to see properly.

  I shuddered. Row upon row of small apertures covered each wall, many of them already filled with a cinerary urn and a small stone plaque identifying the occupant. I browsed the more recent additions, grateful that I had not found anyone else I knew, and finally alighted upon Mother’s.

  Marcia Aurelia Sabinianus.

  I wondered oddly whether, when my time came, I would be placed close by. Marcia Aurelia Ceionia Demetriade. No one ever used my full name. I was not important enough.

  ‘Did anyone attend your funeral?’ I asked the shade of my mother. I reached out and touched her urn. It was so cold. Months she had been in here while I thought her alive. ‘Were there mourners? Did the palace pay for a procession?’

  No. Of course they didn’t. Mother was a celebrated seamstress and valued highly by Verus when he lived. But now Lucilla ruled that house, and even had she been in Rome when Mother died, she would likely have drawn the line at paying for the urn and the plaque.

  I cried again, then. In that gloomy house of the dead, where Mother, a Christian, sat among so many pagans. At least the columbarium was plain and not painted with gaudy scenes of Roman gods. She would have hated that.

  I left the place an hour later, eyes dry once more, vowing that when I had managed to amass adequate funds I would pay for Mother’s ashes to be moved to one of the catacombs devoted to our faith. Perhaps Quadratus could be persuaded to pay.

  I made my way back to the city and to the domus of Quadratus. The house’s master was still on the Palatine and would not want to parade his plebeian mistress there, so I settled into my rooms and I was still there, sitting in silence, lost in my contemplation of Mother and her unexpected and unwelcome passing, when my visitor arrived.

  The house was suddenly all abustle in response to the knock at the gate, for Praetorians and lictors waited out in the street. I was unaware, sitting in my room, until the major-domo appeared in a worried shuffle and showed my visitor into the chamber.

  Commodus frowned.

  ‘I had thought to find you at the palace, but I was told Quadratus sent you home.’

  I looked up, eyes wide, and leapt from the bed to stand respectfully, head bowed. The prince smiled easily and motioned for me to sit. Turning, he bade the staff and his escort leave and shut the door, and with that we were alone. More alone, in fact, than we had been since we left Rome a year and a half ago. And being alone now could be scandalous, though I was only a little concerned. Commodus was fifteen and a man now, unmarried and highly valued. I was almost twenty and a spinster, for all that I was tethered to Quadratus.

  ‘I . . .’ I didn’t know what to say. I’d not told him about my troubles. In fact, he had been so busy with affairs of state and his father these past months that since that ride to the mountaintop I had spent little time with him at all.

  ‘Something is troubling you, and has been since Athens,’ he said, pulling up a chair to sit in front of me.

  I did not reply. How could I tell him that Mother had died, that I had needed him when he could not be there for me?

  He looked into my eyes for some time and then nodded. ‘You are not ready. I can see that. Tell me when you are ready.’

  We sat in an odd silence for a while. Not uncomfortable as such, but strained in some way.

  ‘I am to be consul,’ he said, finally, breaking the silence. ‘Consul and emperor. I am to rule alongside Father the way Verus did. We will rule together.’

  ‘You will do it well,’ I said. A formulaic and bland response.

  ‘I fear Father is truly starting to feel his age,’ the prince said in a sad voice. ‘He is still not well. This illness he suffers may be minor, but it has been with him for so long I fear he thinks of it as a companion. And he has become slower, frailer. He hides it well in public, but he can’t hide it from me. I am with him so much – he spends every hour drilling into me the details of state. He is preparing me for when he is not around, and must believe that time is coming soon: there’s an urgency to it.’

  I shivered. A world without the great Marcus Aurelius. Commodus would be a good successor, of course, but it still felt strange even to think on such a thing.

  ‘And there will be a triumph,’ Commodus said, filling that silence again. ‘Soon.’

  I shook my head. ‘The empress’ funerary games and rites will go on for some time.’

  ‘And as soon as they end, Father and I share a triumph. Just us, this time, not the whole family.’

  I frowned. ‘Do you not think that a little unfeeling? So soon after your mother’s rites?’

  ‘Propriety sometimes has to take second place to expediency. The triumph is not for me, in truth. Nor even for Father, though it is ostensibly to celebrate the victory over a dangerous usurper. In truth, the triumph is for Rome. The people need it. Gifts and glamour to tear their thoughts away from war and disease and poverty. To remind them that Cassius is nothing and that we rule Rome. Just as we were there in the east, we have to be here in Rome, for the people.’

  I said nothing, just nodded my understanding. I was still sad and out of sorts. I could feel the old closeness with my prince hovering on the edge of the room, almost within my grasp, but I knew that it was a fleeting, stupid thing. A promise of something intangible.

  He reached out and cupped my chin in his hand, lifting my face from where I gazed at the floor.

  ‘I wish . . .’ His voice tailed off. I knew what he had wanted to say. That I was not Quadratus’. That I was a princess or he a pleb. That the divide between us was not so wide and so deep. It had not been as children, but we were adults now, and a social rift widens with age.

  I sighed. ‘I love you. I always have.’

  It felt so strange to say it, and I knew that even uttering those words was dangerous. But perhaps ever since the day Cleander had accused me of that very emotion, I had known it to be true, and I was certain my prince shared the feeling.

  ‘I know,’ he said. No reciprocation, of course. He could not.

  ‘But it cannot be. You are the heir to the throne of Rome, and I am Quadratus’ mistress. We each have our duty.’

  ‘I would make my cousin give you up,’ Commodus said, and there was something new in his voice – something odd and strangled –
‘but it would do no good.’

  I nodded. ‘We cannot.’

  ‘I still would. I would not be the first emperor to consort so. Hadrian’s favourite was the son of a farmer, after all, and he now sits among the hallowed gods.’

  Antinous – that great emperor’s Adonis. Would I be happy to be mistress to an emperor? Perhaps the distance between us was unnecessary. Some women had been very content to be an emperor’s mistress. Had not Penthea been Lucius Verus’ very willing mistress in Antioch? And it could hardly be any more difficult than being Quadratus’ mistress. I would not be his wife, for I could never be that, but like Antinous to Hadrian, or Claudia Acte to Nero, or even Penthea to Verus, I would be the favourite of a married man, for an emperor needs a wife for a legitimate heir. But no, I couldn’t cope with sharing him. Better to lose him altogether than share him with another.

  I must have let the silence drag out too long, for Commodus was looking increasingly uncomfortable. I readied myself to speak, to send him away as kindly as I could, but he spoke first.

  ‘I am to marry,’ he said.

  And my world shattered. I was unable to speak. I stared at him.

  ‘Father has betrothed me. Bruttia Crispina. Daughter of a former consul, from a very illustrious line. Pretty girl. Demure, noble, friendly. Perfect in every way. Except that she’s not you.’

  Damn him, but I had almost managed to convince myself that I could live without him. I had said ‘it cannot be’ and I had known that. I had been sure, and I had begun to prepare myself for a new, even wider rift to grow between us, but now everything had changed. That I could not have him was bad enough, but to know that someone else would made it impossible to accept. To know that he would be tethered to a pretty, probably vacuous, Roman matron whom he did not love, and to know what I had always believed: that he loved me. I tried to keep my face straight, while inside I raged and bellowed, throwing furniture and hammering my fists on the wall at the unfairness of a world that would give my man to another woman. Because I might have been able to deny it while he was single and untouched, but now, tethered to a matron harpy, he suddenly became just that: my man.