‘He might have meant to go in and wait. Her aged father was at home. We believe there is no love lost between the two men, though who knows? It never arose, though. Something must have spooked Ritellius, because he should have come back on the other side of the street and knocked – but he never showed.’

  ‘So he did see you?’ asked Tiberius, in a mood to fling reproof.

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘He saw someone else?’ I asked, equally scathing.

  Rubrius and Trebianus raised their eyebrows.

  ‘Juno, boys!’ I did not hold back. ‘There are so many intriguers at the palace, it’s no surprise if other people were looking for Ritellius. Your traitor, for one. It could even be the Parthians – Dolazebol may want to beat him up for mooning after Squilla. He won’t hold back because of diplomatic niceties.’ They were looking crushed, but I sailed on: ‘I wish I’d been in that street. I bet it was as packed with observers as fleas on a rat’s bum. You could have all sat down in the bar together and bought each other drinks − while you were waiting for nothing to happen.’

  Trebianus answered mildly. All agents used by the palace knew each other. If ever their missions overlapped, any spares would back off.

  Knew each other? I said I bet the famous collaborator kept one or two unknown specials hidden up his fancy tunic sleeve. Trebianus and Rubrius exchanged nervous glances.

  Tussling with Tiberius earlier had fired me up but, just in time, someone else arrived. After Dromo grumbled about having to let in yet another person, we were joined by Fuscus, the quiet man with a menacing air who also worked on the Palatine.

  Tiberius shot me a wry glance at the way our house was being used as a clandestine meeting place. Suddenly he and I were back on good terms. I smiled at him ruefully.

  Fuscus brought an emergency message. ‘Philippus was night watchman, so he received the tablet and had it decoded. It’s genuine, the cypher Ritellius uses for you, Trebianus.’

  ‘What does he want?’

  ‘He wants to come in − or at least he wants a meeting to discuss it. But he will only talk to you.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Trebianus. ‘That’s what I would expect.’ Trebianus then had a decisive moment. His tall figure straightened up. ‘When and where?’

  ‘Tonight,’ stated Fuscus. He had an impassive way of passing on intelligence. ‘The Greek Library at the Temple of Apollo. Both of you will arrive alone. He did not specify unarmed, because he knows that won’t happen. Any minders must stay at a distance, preferably visible.’

  ‘All ready?’

  ‘Yes, I have set it up as a safe incident space, with a sanitary cordon.’

  I asked what that meant; Fuscus said, without a flicker, that he had sent a team of men with buckets who were pretending to clean pillars. They had fenced off the area with trestles to stop the public wandering in.

  ‘Will you arrest him?’ Rubrius asked Trebianus, as if excited by the thought.

  Trebianus replied brusquely, ‘Certainly not. I want him to talk, not clam up and demand the right to appeal to the Emperor. Good gods, I do not want him ever to be allowed within hearing of our Master … He knows me; I know him. I shall take precautions, but everything ought to pass off quietly. Settle down and stop nannying.’ Rubrius made a small gesture of apology.

  They all stood up. Trebianus made excuses, as if he was abandoning a party early. We accepted this politely. They left.

  Tiberius and I sat on alone.

  ‘Forget it, Albia,’ he urged me quietly. I had bent down to fiddle with my sandal straps. He had read my thoughts. ‘Stay here. I won’t interfere with your work, but I can stop you being an idiot. Leave Trebianus to handle his agent. You are too weary to go trailing those men to the Temple of Apollo, however much you want to listen in.’

  I drew breath, considering defiance, then let it out again. He was right. Weariness crushed me like a dead weight.

  Perhaps there was a reason to be married. Once I would have been in a dark cloak and outdoor shoes by now. Somehow I had obtained for myself a sensible, affectionate man. He gave good advice. I was even prepared to follow it.

  40

  I contained my impatience through another night. Straight after breakfast, I went to the Palatine to ask Trebianus what had happened with his agent. Philippus had asked me to stand down, but I was taking no notice of that. When Trebianus saw me, he jumped up and whistled me out of his office, begging me to follow him at a distance, so it looked as if our passing through corridors together was a coincidence.

  I sighed. Never work in espionage.

  Even when he was outside, Trebianus seemed happier if I sauntered a few paces back from him. If he had been my husband I would have clipped his ear, but I went along with the deception.

  He headed for the site of his adventure last night. He led me to the northern corner of the hill so I feared we were to have our clandestine talk inside the Hut of Romulus. Nothing rural has happened there for centuries, but it still smells of very ancient sheep droppings and probably ancient shepherds. Drunks have been known to throw up in it.

  Avoiding this experience, Trebianus made a beeline for the House of Livia, but still carried on. He finally climbed the huge podium of the Temple of Apollo above Augustus’ house. Glaring across the great vale of the Circus Maximus to the Aventine Temple of Diana, this glittering pure white monument was the earliest and finest of Augustus’ public buildings, a hundred years old but recently reconstructed by Domitian. It had been elegantly Ionic but was now overbearingly Corinthian Composite. I like Ionic; Composite is horrible.

  Trebianus took me briefly to the Greek library, recounting how he had turned up there last night. Large enough to have hosted Senate meetings, the grand apsidal room had the usual two storeys of shelves around a ground-floor reading area, medallions of bearded authors from the remote past, very few readers, even fewer attendants. Nevertheless, last night a library slave had been on duty; he had brought the waiting Trebianus a note to say he should move to the main temple. The slave had not properly seen the messenger. He had hidden his face.

  ‘A ruse?’ I guessed.

  ‘Standard practice. The first was a decoy instruction.’ Trebianus seemed proud of his agent’s tradecraft. ‘Helps avoid an ambush. Ritellius will have been secretly watching, to check that I arrived alone, not bringing an arrest posse.’

  This library seemed large enough to converse unheard, though eavesdroppers could have hidden by book-cupboards or on upstairs balconies. That might have worried Ritellius. More likely he just enjoyed subterfuge.

  My guide whisked us out of the library, then hurriedly zigzagged through the vast temple colonnade. Its elegant yellowish columns were giallo antico, which I must report on to Tiberius, who had inherited a family speciality in marble. Between them stood fifty black marble statues of the daughters of Danaus, who were ordered by their father to kill their fifty bridegrooms on their wedding night, together with equestrian statues of their unfortunate short-lived husbands, his brother’s sons. A nice Greek family saga. Myths are so cheery.

  Beside a cult statue of the temple god, there was the usual outdoor altar, a huge one. This grand specimen was flanked by four extremely lifelike stone oxen, poised as if ready for sacrifice. They were famous statues by Myron, looted from Greece by Augustus.

  Ahead of us towered the temple, its tall pediment crowned by the chariot of the sun, the whole thing newly cleaned and ‘improved’ with those over-complicated Corinthian columns. Trebianus climbed the long flight of steps to the high interior and slipped through the ivory doors. He quickly pulled me after him and closed up, before I had time to admire the famous door panels. For spies, art is something about which you must pretend to have intimate knowledge when bluffing international statue dealers, who may be agents of a foreign power. You don’t stop to have a look.

  Glimmering with torches, the cella contained another, larger, statue of Apollo, plus his sister Diana and mother Latona. No sign of Jupiter, the archetypal philandering absentee father.

  Inside was crammed. In my view, this was a worse place to meet than the library. Many other statues stood around, providing useful hiding-places. Augustus had deposited golden gifts he didn’t need, and plunder that showed what a good conqueror he was, while one of his nephews had made it a convenient repository for his collection of seal-rings and other jewels. It was like an extremely expensive version of the cowshed where boys are told to store the treasures they never play with any more, after their mothers have despaired of dusting their clutter and made them clear out their rooms.

  ‘He sneaked into the cella through a back entrance.’

  ‘Ritellius? Come on, hurry up with the story.’ I felt nervous of being in this dark interior, in case indignant attendants banned us; they left us alone, however. Trebianus took it as his right to be there. I had been taught that temples were private places, but he reckoned this was an imperial shrine and he was an imperial freedman.

  ‘I saw him at once, waiting by the cult statue.’

  It was a handsome piece, though in long Greek robes and with hair flowing down over his shoulders, Apollo looked oddly feminine. The traditionally beardless and youthful god of music, truth and prophecy (not to mention healing, the sun, light, plague and poetry) was holding a very solid box lyre; he must be golden, beardless and strong. We gazed up at his serene features until Trebianus at last revealed what Ritellius had told him, starting with how he had packed up his life in Ctesiphon. The freedman’s voice was low and urgent. I did not interrupt with questions, even when the story struck me as ludicrous.

  Ritellius had seen his abrupt return to Rome as a momentous decision; he set about it as if it was the last adventure of his life. When he packed up in Ctesiphon, he left behind everything he did not need. Travelled light. Travelled simply. Before he went, he gave away his possessions, bestowing one or two items he valued on the few people he had genuinely liked. He said nothing to anyone else. He told nobody his plans.

  He stopped being a slob, started getting into shape. He had done it before; he could be active again. He attended gymnasia, both in Ctesiphon before he left and along his journey whenever a large inn provided exercise facilities. He gave up drink – well, nearly. There are limits. He was paring down his life until he was burdened only with whatever he would strictly need.

  Ritellius believed that, whether he failed or succeeded, at the end of the day he would most likely be dead. He felt it would be worth it. ‘He was sober, but like a man in drink,’ complained his handler. What Ritellius was doing now gave him integrity. This great adventure would validate an otherwise rather pointless life. ‘I sensed,’ Trebianus told me, ‘in some wild way, he is enjoying himself.’

  ‘Extraordinary,’ I answered, commenting for the first time. ‘But explain. What made him suddenly take flight, without orders from you?’

  It was simple enough. Ritellius had wanted to rescue his girlfriend. Trebianus looked as scornful as I felt.

  We tried to accept the situation as Ritellius saw it: in the clutches of Dolazebol, Squilla could neither bear her role nor make the Parthian let her go free. For me, this was her hard luck: she had chosen to live with him. It must have been clear before she started that he liked exercising power.

  But the runaway agent explained everything another way. Ritellius claimed he and Squilla had always been inseparable: she had never dumped him for a richer man; it only looked that way. Squilla had seduced the Parthian in order to watch him; Ritellius had sent her in to learn who the Roman conspiring with Parthia was. Her personal sacrifice was all to help Ritellius.

  Well, that was what he thought. I had seen her. I had seen her with Dolazebol. Was Ritellius fooling himself about Squilla’s motives? Somewhere in this mess there had to be a double agent; I could quite believe it was Squilla. She had found herself a better life, being the Parthian’s white kitten, so she had simply bamboozled Ritellius, pretending to go along with him but forming a real bond with her powerful new lover.

  Trebianus said Ritellius was convinced she was honest. When she suddenly had to accompany Dolazebol to Rome, Squilla had barely had time to let Ritellius know she was leaving. A cryptic message said she thought she had learned something important that was unsafe to trust in writing. By the time her note reached him, she had gone.

  Ritellius had followed. He had had to. He wanted to hear what she had found out – then he was desperate to free her. She was the love of his life. ‘At least,’ I muttered, ‘the latest one!’

  ‘He hardly dares think of the future,’ Trebianus continued, with sorrow. This agent, now reduced to romantic frenzy, had been his special protégé. ‘But he imagines that if they two expose the collaborator, Rome’s gratitude will enable them to have whatever life they choose.’

  ‘Will it happen?’

  ‘If he can bring it off. The Emperor will be appropriately grateful.’

  That seemed likely. I thought of Julius Karus gathering in his three gold crowns and silver spear for saving Domitian from a supposedly subversive British governor. ‘Rather hard on Ilia!’

  ‘Ilia?’

  ‘His wife! Trebianus, the wife your swine Ritellius actually stayed with when he popped back here to rescue his sinuous girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh! His wife.’ As Parthia-watcher, Trebianus was too obsessed to care about Ilia.

  A snag struck me. ‘If this is all true, why did Squilla refuse to see him? Why did he make a great fuss at the house – and leave her there? If she was in danger before, it must be far worse now. Ritellius has revealed his interest; the Parthians will see Squilla is a plant. They’ll soon guess exactly what she is trying to find out. This is all madness!’

  Trebianus said Ritellius knew that. Hence his urgent request to be received back by his handlers. He wanted Trebianus to help him extract Squilla.

  ‘She is done for as soon as anyone shows they want her out!’ I commented. ‘Never mind her spying, Dolazebol has only to think himself losing his trophy to a rival and he’ll finish her.’

  ‘So Ritellius fears. He was in a great state,’ Trebianus said. ‘He is keyed up for some messy stunt. He believes this is the exploit he has always been waiting for. It is why Gaius Ritellius has existed on the earth.’

  Jupiter!

  I saw parallels here with the prisoner at the Castra Peregrina, the man with dung between his toes who was set up to play Nero. He, too, cannot have expected it to end well. He, too, was risking everything including life – especially life – to gain something. A future for his family, personal renown. Something thrilling that made death worthwhile.

  For me, such men are mad. Of course, for them there is glory. Their desperate caper beats the mediocrity of normal life. But it is their kind of glory and for me it stinks.

  ‘So what are you intending, Trebianus? Can you somehow pull the girlfriend out – yet without jeopardising the friendly relations we are pretending to have with Parthia?’

  Trebianus pulled a face. ‘A rescue could be achieved, I dare say. Relations are bound to suffer.’

  ‘So? Do it! Why wait?’

  ‘Ritellius is convinced that, after Ctesiphon, Squilla stayed on with Dolazebol because of some other secret. That was why she wouldn’t see him when he went to the house. She wasn’t ready.’

  I blinked. ‘If she knows the traitor, what more can there be?’

  It did fit what she told Corellius: that she wanted people to stop messing with her and Dolazebol, and leave her alone. She had more to do.

  ‘Ah!’ replied the lanky man. ‘You have met Corellius.’

  ‘I know he works for the palace. He helped my cousin and me to escape when the Parthians turned nasty. Afterwards he spoke to Squilla at our urging. If she’s really finding out things for Rome, I don’t know why she didn’t just tell Corellius while she had the chance.’

  Trebianus seemed cagey. ‘He told you what she said to him? He told you everything?’

  I was scathing. ‘He is a spy. I don’t expect he did that! Why do you ask? Trebianus, has he said something else to you?’

  ‘Not to me. Philippus is his handler.’

  ‘So what has Corellius said to Philippus? Has Philippus informed you, or are you both intriguing too much against each other?’

  Trebianus ignored my reproof. ‘He has told Philippus that Squilla is extremely secretive. She wouldn’t say anything important to him. He thinks she is keeping back whatever she knows until she sees Ritellius, so he can gain full credit. However, as insurance she has sent out an oblique message.’

  ‘Why didn’t Corellius tell me?’ I was annoyed.

  Trebianus brushed it aside. ‘Protocol. Corellius will only pass material information to his handler. Philippus told me, and I’m telling you now. She said, It is the man who has been consulting the Sibylline Books.’

  I could not help myself; I groaned.

  Thanks to Marius teaching me the history of Rome, I did know what these antique treasures were.

  The Sibyl of Cumae, a fabled prophetess, once offered to Tarquinius, one of the ancient kings of Rome, nine books of prophetic verse. The king declined to purchase them, due to their exorbitant price. She burned three, then offered the remaining six at the same stiff figure. Tarquinius again refused. She burned three more. Tarquinius decided he must be missing something really good so he purchased the last three books at the original price. My father, a true auctioneer, called this classic bargaining.

  The expensive verses were originally stored in a vault beneath the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitol, with high-powered custodians. If an emergency threatened, they consulted the Sibylline Books, not to discover exact predictions of future events because seers never work in that way, but to see what religious observances might avert calamity. As with all oracles, the prophetic words were open to misinterpretation. If an oracle doesn’t work, that makes it your fault.

  The original prophecies had supposedly been collected in the neighbourhood of Troy. They were written in Greek hexameter verse, so the curators had to employ interpreters. When the Temple of Jupiter burned down, as it regularly does, those first books were completely lost. That did not deter the stalwart Romans, who sent envoys east to acquire replacement sayings. Versions in private hands were also gathered in and evaluated by the custodians, who retained only those that appeared true to them (surely subjective). They made it illegal for anyone to possess a private copy.