Commodus Read online

  ‘Congratulations,’ was all I could manage, and as soon as his hand left my chin, my eyes slid to the floor once more.

  ‘It will be soon. There is to be another campaign against the Marcomanni. Father has decreed it. I tried to argue against it, but he is emperor and he is determined. I will go north with him to fight a war, and I will have a wife. And you have Quadratus.’

  I nodded silently. He remained in front of me for some time, then rose with a sad sigh.

  ‘I shall look for you at the games,’ he said, and left.

  I sat in silence in my empty room, shivering. I had lost Mother, and now I was to lose my prince, to a wife and to a war. And Quadratus was hardly a consolation. I waited until Commodus had left the domus, ruminating on my feelings on all that had passed between us in those few short moments. And I discovered that I was not sad. I had been sad over losing Mother, but I was not sad about Commodus. No, I was angry. That God had put me so close to him and made us so perfect together, only to build a wall between us that could not be crossed. Angry that Commodus was to be emperor, the most powerful man in the world, with the ability to write laws at will and kill or pardon with impunity, yet even he could not make it possible for us to be together.

  Only moments ago I had been preparing to willingly let him go, until I discovered that I would have to do so, whereupon it became critical that I did not.

  I ripped open my door and walked out into the corridor. It was empty, just half a dozen painted marble faces staring at me from plinths beneath the windows. The one directly in front of me had a smile. She was mocking me. Who was this stone woman, so happy and silent? So young and pretty and vivacious. Before I even knew what I was doing, I had thrown the bust from its stand to smash into pieces on the marble floor. In my head, she was this Bruttia Crispina, who was to have the man I loved. Damn her.

  I suspect that my idiotic reaction and the awfulness of what happened next were as much a final outburst of emotion to Mother’s unsung passing as it was to Commodus’ betrothal. A slave appeared at the end of the corridor and stopped, open-mouthed at what I had done. She was a middle-aged woman I vaguely recognised, and moments later I was in front of her, my eyes wild.

  ‘Where do I get a curse tablet?’

  The slave stared in shock.

  ‘Where?’ I demanded.

  ‘I . . . I can find you one, Mistress,’ she said, still staring past me at the shattered bust that was probably some famed relation of Quadratus’.

  ‘Come, then.’

  The slave hurried off, with me right behind her. We went to the storerooms, a part of the domus I had never had reason to approach, and immediately I was taken back to my days as a girl on the Palatine when I had gained an understanding of the world of slaves and servants that the rich will never comprehend. In a matter of heartbeats, the worried slave had found me a lead sheet and a nail. I never even thanked her, so out of sorts was I. I hurried across to the window and placed the lead sheet on the sill, etching into the soft metal with the nail.

  I invoked that demon goddess Hekate that I remembered from my youth in the palace. I begged that Bruttia Crispina bear no child to the emperor. I begged that she die a lonely death. I rolled it up and pinned it with the nail, then found a slotted drain in a doorway, just like the one the slave on the Palatine had done all those years ago, and I dropped the dreadful thing into the darkness.

  It took only the blink of an eye for me to realise what I had done. Panic overtook me then, driving all my anger out as suddenly as it had flooded in. I had turned my back on God in my fury and had cursed an innocent woman.

  I looked down into the dark aperture. I was saved. The lead roll had caught on a lip just half a foot down. I jammed my hand into the hole and huffed, fingers straining to reach it. I felt the touch of cold lead, then my heart froze as it slipped and disappeared into the gloom with a wet plop.

  It was gone. The curse was done. I was oddly grateful that Mother was dead, then, that she could not see what had become of her daughter. Could a curse work if Hekate was not real, but just some face of the devil? I prayed to God that it could not.

  But somehow, despite all this, somewhere deep inside my cankered heart, a tiny glow still hoped that it would work.

  PART THREE

  THE GOLDEN AGE

  ‘Heracles by the might of his arms pulled the weary rowers along all together’

  – Apollonius Rhodius: Argonautica, trans. Seaton, 1912

  XI

  ASHES OF THE DEAD

  Pannonia, winter ad 179

  I was glad to be leaving Rome once more. I had spent the spring and summer following our discussion wallowing. I did manage to have Mother’s urn moved to one of the bigger catacombs, where she was interred close to a painted image of the Christ in his majesty, which she would have liked. I could not look that painted face in the eye after what I had done in the domus and scurried back out of there feeling like a pagan heretic. Oh, and I managed to find an excuse for the shattering of the bust that earned me only a few welts and bruises, as well as the gratitude of the slaves who Quadratus had initially blamed.

  Commodus had argued against the need for a new war, and might even have succeeded, but then news reached Rome that the Quadi, the troublesome Marcomanni’s largest neighbour beyond the river, had revolted against our terms, and further tidings that arrived only worsened matters. The generals in charge of Pannonia at the time were Quintilii – not those sour-faced brothers who had gone east with us, but their sons: young, hungry for glory and, sadly, almost entirely incompetent. It became the common opinion around court that the Quintilii could not possibly hold Pannonia, especially if the Marcomanni began to force the issue too, which they undoubtedly would.

  War was inevitable.

  I had wondered for a while whether I would join them this time, but the matter was settled for me in conversation with Quadratus one morning.

  ‘I am, of course, of Antonine blood,’ he’d said airily as though we were not all well aware of that. I’d nodded, keeping sullenly quiet. ‘While there are those who have a better claim to the throne than I,’ he said, a little bitterness creeping into his tone as I pictured Commodus with a sceptre, ‘it is unfair how often the emperor passes me over for leading roles.’

  I bit back a quote I remembered from Cicero about competence and simply nodded again.

  ‘Pompeianus,’ he spat. ‘A Syrian nobody who achieves overall command of Rome’s forces, repeatedly. Pertinax. Son of a freedman, no less, and heroic general of the Dacian wars. The Quintilii. Noble blood, yes, but from Asia. Herodes Atticus, confidante of the emperor, given lavish gifts and the man’s a damn Greek. And here am I, cousin to Commodus, nephew of the emperor, and I struggle to secure command of a fucking legion. Lucilla is right, imperial blood counts for nothing in these days of freedmen.’ I took note of that slur on my social status and added it to my list of reasons to dislike Quadratus. ‘But no more. I shall demand my right. I shall secure a command this time and not let the emperor send me home.’

  He sounded like a petulant child. I sighed. ‘How will you persuade the emperor if he has been reticent thus far?’

  I was genuinely interested in that. The man was a fool. How could he hope to persuade Aurelius that he wasn’t?

  ‘Lucilla backs me. She is well aware of how imperial blood is overlooked. She herself was sold off to a peasant. With her influence and mine, I damn well will secure a command.’

  He would. I could imagine it. Not that Lucilla had any better influence over the emperor than Quadratus, but with the two of them badgering Aurelius, I could see him giving in just to shut them up. What a pair they would make. The idiot and the bitch.

  Summer came around soon and we left the city. Fortunately, the army was already gathered in the north, and so we moved at reasonable speed across the Apennine Mountains. We took ship at Ancona and suffered a horri
ble three-day journey across the Adriatic to Tergeste, during which I constantly shivered in a cold sweat, watching the glassy ocean and waiting for a storm to claim us. We landed easily, though, and moved on once more through Noricum and Pannonia to the Danubius.

  I kept very much to myself on the twenty-day journey. I had no desire to be around Commodus, who travelled now with his pretty wife, a fact that taunted me and made my heart burn. And while on my previous journey to that frontier I had been visited regularly by Quadratus, this time, though I travelled with his familia in an expensive carriage, he came to my bed not once during the whole trip. He was becoming tired of me, I think. I had become uninteresting, and he availed himself instead of various young women around the column. And so we arrived in Vindobona. We were swept along into the emperor’s new campaign swiftly. If I had thought Carnuntum bleak and martial, then I realised how wrong I had been: Carnuntum was a vibrant, colourful metropolis compared with the grey fortress and small settlement of Vindobona.

  Almost immediately, knowing the remaining campaign season to be growing short, the officers gathered the army and forged on northwards across the river, pressing both the rebellious Quadi and the Marcomanni. Quadratus went with them, as did Commodus and his father. In fact, of the senior military men, the only three to remain in Vindobona were the prefect who controlled the place and the two young Quintilii who had managed, by the skin of their teeth, to hold Pannonia over the year but had done little else of merit. Those three, along with a garrison left behind, were given the remit of expanding the place and making it grand enough for an emperor to use as his headquarters, though I didn’t notice much happening other than a lot of planning.

  The army was gone for more than a month across the great river and I settled into reading quietly in a small, well-heated room for the duration, since every time I left my quarters I invariably bumped into Lucilla or Bruttia Crispina or, on occasion, Cleander. The snake rarely looked at me these days. My withdrawal from the prince’s side and replacement with a pretty idiot had made me powerless in Cleander’s eyes, and the man obviously no longer saw me as enough of a threat to bother with. That suited me fine, and instead he began to pester Bruttia Crispina, seeing her as the best way to curry imperial favour in Commodus’ absence. The two of them would take daily walks along the safe southern bank of the river, soldiers of the Guard following at a discreet but protective distance. What they spoke of I could not know, but I doubted any good would come of it. I hoped the pair of them fell in the great Danubius together.

  I was largely alone again.

  This time, thank God, I never saw the battle in which the two tribes were battered into submission, but I could imagine readily how awful it had been from the aftermath that I did witness. First came the legions and the Praetorian units returning to their garrisons, plus endless cohorts of auxiliaries, dirty, tired and dishevelled. Even to my amateur eye it was clear how much smaller many of these units were than when they had left Vindobona. Then came the slaves. Thousands upon thousands of hairy barbarians, stripped naked to the waist in the cold autumn air, faces still defiant and proud in defeat. The wagon trains came next with supplies and the booty. It would all have been quite grand to look at had not the final stretch of that huge swathe of humanity returning to civilisation been so gruesome.

  The wounded were mixed with the dead in the carts. The latter had not been dead when they climbed aboard, of course, but had passed away on the long return journey, and the other occupants had neither the strength nor the inclination to bury them.

  I have never seen so many missing limbs or so much visible bone. It was appalling to witness and, given that the only benefit from this war won in the long term would be the slaves and the booty – for these tribes could clearly never be civilised or controlled – it hardly seemed worth it. Despite that, it was said that Aurelius still planned to create a new province across the river before he died, and was pushing to achieve it now, knowing that time was short.

  Occasionally I had cause to pass near the hospital district. Imagine, if you can, how dreadful a battle needs to be to require more than just a simple valetudinarium, but rather a complex of tents devoted to the differing medical needs of the wounded. The time I passed a surgery tent, holding my breath against the sickly sweet smell of decay, and found the heap of amputated arms, was the last time I went near the place.

  As the emperor settled in and the ashes of the dead cooled, Vindobona’s reconstruction began in earnest. Grand new buildings arose, blocks of insulae, new roads and more. I joined the court more often now that everyone had returned, but it did not take me long to see how things were progressing. Commodus had returned from battle looking slightly older and stronger; there was a little world-weariness about his expression, but he was hale and powerful, like a conquering emperor of old. Marcus Aurelius, conversely, looked tired, weak and old. Gone was any real glimmer of vitality. He looked like a starving old man: his face drawn, eyes slightly clouded. And whenever Commodus looked at him yet thought himself unobserved, his mask slipped and I could read the immense sadness within him. The Augusta Bruttia Crispina simply hung on Commodus’ arm like a devoted puppy, completely unaware of the depth of what was happening around her.

  My unreasonable, if perhaps understandable, hatred of Bruttia came to a head one morning. I was standing on a balcony at the building used as the imperial palace, and watching the two emperors, in full regalia, discussing some matter in the square below. There was a whisper of air and suddenly the empress was leaning on the balcony next to me, a demon in white silk.

  ‘Majesty,’ I greeted her. It was a term of respect, but the ice and dislike in my voice must have been audible, for she turned to me, one elegantly shaped eyebrow raised. She was almost the antithesis of me. Blonde, pale, quiet, and I had thought shy and retiring until that moment.

  ‘You knew him of old.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, Majesty.’

  ‘They say you grew up together, as children. Cleander seems to think you have feelings for him.’ She had clearly been doing some prying into my past. She was neither as quiet or as ineffectual as I had thought.

  ‘Cleander says many things, for he hates me, but I know my place, Majesty. We were childhood friends and nothing more.’

  ‘Cleander is a rat, but still, despite your protestation, I discern a grain of truth in this tale. It is also said that you bore a child for Quadratus but tore it out of yourself. Was that because of my husband?’

  I stared. Few people knew of that awful incident with the oysters. My pregnancy had hardly been announced, after all. And I had been tortured thus because Quadratus would not have me bear his children, even had I the faintest desire to do so. It had nothing to do with Commodus.

  ‘The emperor had nothing to do with it, Majesty. I am but a bed slave to Quadratus. I have no desire to bear him a child, and he would rather see me dead than siring his offspring.’

  ‘A sentiment he and the emperor surely share. Stay away from my husband, Marcia Ceionia. You may have known him all his life, but you are just a pleb, and an ambitious one, I think. He is mine.’

  With that she was gone, leaving me in a torrent of emotion. I felt shock at the words, horror at such tales being told of me, fear that I would be somehow ruined by all of this, dismay that a further wedge had been driven between he and I . . . But most of all I felt a new wave of hatred for this woman, and a new determination that Commodus would be mine, and not bound to this angelic-looking harpy. Who was she to take me to task over losing a child? It was nothing to do with her.

  I turned back to the tableau below, seething, an emotion that stayed with me the rest of the day.

  As the old emperor displayed a notable decline, so the vultures began to gather. Cleander, and even Saoterus, spent much more time with Commodus and the rest of the court. Pompeianus, Quadratus, the Quintilii, anyone with an interest in the potential succession started to become very visibl
e and very close to the heir. Commodus was beset by those who would gain from him, with a wife who was blithely ignorant of his troubles, when all he really wanted was to be shut away with his father.

  As autumn moved apace into winter – and Pannonian winters are unkind to say the least – the emperor’s fragility continued to worry the entire court, and his time in council with his consilium grew shorter each day. By Saturnalia he was rarely seen in public and, though he put on his most powerful mask for the populace and the legions, everyone could see how weak he was becoming. With the new year, the emperor began to spend whole days in his room and Galen, the famed physician, was now with him almost all the time.

  Had I had any real access to Commodus at the time, I would have lost it then, for the young emperor began shutting himself away with his father, receiving advice on what to do in the coming months. Other officers trooped in to see the emperor as required, or whenever their plea to attend him was given the affirmative.

  Quadratus, I noted, was not one of those the emperor summoned, and neither were the Quintilii. In fact, the three of them spent a great deal more time now with Lucilla, whose husband was one of those the emperor regularly called upon. I could imagine trouble brewing among that disaffected, ambitious group. Had they only recruited the sly Cleander and the cow-faced Bruttia, all the bad eggs of the empire might have been held in one basket.

  The day the world changed began with irritation. I had woken and readied myself in my small room in a building that resembled a barrack block. I’d then taken a brief visit to a small bathhouse staffed by grumpy slaves who spoke some awful gruff local language, and then went to see Quadratus to ask politely for a small stipend to keep myself busy buying material for new cloaks and dresses to see me through the horrible northern winter.