‘No, dear.’ It was what he always said. Once he had drunk himself silly in some side-street bar, he would be open to another bribe. The life of a public-archive slave is tedious otherwise.

  I could be wrong. We informers pride ourselves on our keen observation and rich understanding of human nature, yet half the time we never use them. All I knew of Sodalus was his poor skin and red laces; his best quality for me was bribability. Maybe he was saving up the coins I gave him to buy his aged mother a retirement home or purchase his own freedom. I tried not to think so. If I did, I would have felt my payments were too small. He maintained they were. But that’s what everyone says about handouts and I never blame them for trying.

  The material was thin. First, Sallustius Lucullus: he remained elusive. It appeared there had been no births, marriages or deaths in his family while he was in Britain. The letters his wife had said he wrote to her on domestic matters must have been short.

  ‘This family may not live in Rome,’ Sodalus pointed out, sneering at the concept. ‘If he came from the provinces or worse …’ his lip curled even more ‘… if he came from abroad, all his diplomas may be placed in some dump of a local temple.’

  Where had this archive snob originated? A slave-trading village in the back end of Bythinia? The Lusitanian sardine shore? From out of a sandstorm in Africa, carried off by the wild-animal traders? Clearly he had forgotten − if he ever knew.

  ‘Let us not be prejudiced.’ I was tolerant, given where I came from myself. ‘I’ve been in overseas temples that were older than Rome. The sanctuary of Zeus at Olympia is one of the Seven Wonders of the World – though when I saw that big beast, I agree you could call it a dump. It needed maintenance … There are senators from foreign provinces,’ I conceded. ‘Integration is encouraged by the wise emperors who rule us – well, they want to pretend provincials are important to Rome. But I think Lucullus was Italian.’ I thought that because no one had told me otherwise. I reckoned foreign origin would have occasioned comment, as it had with Agricola (from Gaul) and Trajan (Spanish).

  Sodalus shrugged and lost interest. I believed his search had been thorough. He generally did well by me. Nothing here. Not his problem.

  We moved on to the Vettuleni. Anything deposited in their home town of Reate was an unknown, though Sodalus had pulled out some birth certificates from here. ‘People who want to look good register their sons in Rome. It gives them more status.’

  ‘Or so they imagine!’ I snorted.

  One record was for a son of Sextus Vettulenus, also Sextus. Romans like to be confusing. Lusia Paullina had the young man keeping his head down in Reate now, with her determined he would one day be consul. The long-lived among you know she succeeded. (Thanks to Trajan, hard-bargain purchaser of my wily father’s tenement.) At the time that I handled his birth certificate, Sextus Junior was approaching the age when he ought to have entered the Senate; in view of Domitian’s antipathy, his chances seemed doubtful.

  ‘You know all about his father?’ Sodalus asked me. I had given him clues to my field of interest. No need to be cagey when someone can help me.

  ‘A Sabine, thick with Vespasian?’

  ‘Much more than that, Flavia Albia!’

  Sodalus told me: Sextus Vettulenus Civica Cerialis was appointed a legionary commander when Vespasian went to quash the Judaean rebellion. Nero had had to plead for him, so in picking subordinates, Vespasian was allowed a free hand. Most famously, he took his own son, Titus. Also he selected a fellow-Sabine.

  Sextus led as many significant engagements as Vespasian and Titus. He was a highly trusted member of the war council. Then, once Nero died, Vettulenus and Titus worked closely together to advance Vespasian’s claim. As cronies go, Sextus and the older Flavians could not have been closer.

  After Vespasian was hailed as emperor and left for Rome, Titus took over finishing the Judaean campaign – though his father had left the more experienced Julius Alexander as chief of staff. This Alexander was procurator of Egypt, and among his troops he brought an equestrian officer called Lusius Gallus – brother of Lusia Paullina.

  ‘Sodalus,’ I asked, ‘you keep the marriage records – wasn’t it odd that Vettulenus, a senator, married an equestrian’s daughter?’

  ‘Yes, but Sabines are not prejudiced. Remember, Vespasian was living with a freedwoman, Antonia Caenis. He wasn’t going to disapprove. Is Lusia a looker, Albia? Was she very rich? Or was the marriage arranged to solder friendships with the Egyptians?’

  All of these, I suspected.

  After Titus had followed his father back to Rome, Vettulenus was left as governor of Judaea. As Lusia had told me, this was followed without a break by Moesia. For a significant part of Vespasian’s reign, Sextus Vettulenus Civica Cerialis was the Flavians’ man in the east. His brother Caius then had Moesia after him, followed by Asia. For me, this clinched everything. ‘So for years Sextus was as tight as ticks with Vespasian and Titus.’ I presumed that Domitian had originally intended to continue this with Caius – until it went wrong.

  Sodalus had more: ‘Later, if there was what you could call a Titus faction, a faction opposed to Domitian, Sextus Vettulenus was significant in it.’

  This caused a shiver. ‘Was there a Titus faction?’

  ‘Not openly.’ Sodalus instinctively lowered his voice as I had done. ‘But Titus’ daughter Julia was seen as a potential figurehead.’

  ‘Was Julia political?’

  ‘Probably not. She had no children or she might have seemed more dangerous.’

  Julia herself, a woman, would never have been a contender for the throne. Nevertheless, it might explain why Domitian took her to the palace after her husband died, and kept her close: he wanted to control her. He had Julia so close that gossip accused him of incest, eventually killing his niece through a forced abortion …

  ‘She died this year,’ I mused. ‘Viewed sympathetically, Julia was the only person in his life Domitian genuinely cared for. Gods help the rest of us, now he has lost her!’

  There was no way I could mention any Titus faction in the report I had to write.

  Whether there was a faction or not, Sextus Vettulenus had shared with Vespasian and Titus both an exciting war and the intrigue to make Vespasian emperor. Domitian, who was never in Judaea and who was sidelined in home politics, must have resented the veteran cronies’ closeness. After his accession, Sextus, as an older man who was used to taking an important role, may even have had blunt Sabine words with Domitian about the exercise of power. Sextus had died of natural causes so Domitian had retaliated against the younger brother, Caius.

  When Caius Vettulenus went to Asia, his older brother’s past prominence might have affected how he acted. The influential knot of people who had supported Vespasian welcomed him. They remembered his brother well, not least because of his marriage to Lusia Paullina, one of their own. Caius never had to establish himself; he was immediately among friends.

  Suppose the easterners felt Domitian was destroying what Vespasian and Titus represented? They could decide that as they had once created a ruler for Rome they could do it again. In this context, to our nervous emperor, the False Nero stopped being a joke. The eastern clique, who saw themselves as powerful backers, might have been supporting him.

  Perhaps when Caius arrived in Asia, the easterners welcomed him too much. Suppose they said to him, ‘Let’s forget the False Nero. That’s a doomed plan. We respected your brother; now we have great faith in you. So how would you feel, Caius, if we put you up as the next emperor?’

  No one had suggested this to me. I would not offer the theory to palace officials. Domitian might well have feared it privately when he had had the governor of Asia killed.

  So was I now supposed to be investigating whether the impact of that death was to throw the eastern faction back into supporting a False Nero? Did Claudius Philippus really wonder whether the governor’s widow and that sister-in-law with whom she lived so closely knew of some continuing conspiracy out east?

  If so, Philippus was a fool not to have come clean. I had not asked the right questions. By a fluke, however, I reckoned I had the answer: Lusia Paullina had openly admitted she corresponded with friends abroad but she had also claimed to have her husband’s Sabine values. Sabines were cautious. They liked the status quo. They wanted the currency stable and grain production protected. They were dignified. They had old-fashioned distaste for volatile politics.

  I had never pushed Lusia into a position where she needed to divert attention from anything her eastern cronies might be up to. Of her own accord, she had warned me that the real danger lay with Parthia. To me it felt like genuine concern for Rome. That would never include support for a foreign interloper.

  14

  I composed my report quite easily once I had started. I had been over the ground from different perspectives. I stuck to what I had been invited to do: interviewing the two women about their menfolk.

  Anyone who writes to the palace has to remember that anything they say may fall into the hands of slimy types whose objectives may not be theirs. What you say will probably even be seen by Domitian himself. Trusting no one, he famously reads everything.

  In my twelve years of being an informer I had become well-practised in sensitive-report creation. Often you are simply confirming what the client feared. This is probably the easiest situation, yet you need to phrase with care. Imply that the investigation did need doing, even though the answer was obvious. Otherwise they forget to pay you.

  Sometimes the information they hired you to find will be entirely factual: is that bounder who wants to wed the rich widow already married? In what hole is the delinquent father of the unborn child hiding? Spell it out. Say nothing you don’t have to. Give them no excuse to fly into hysterics, making it heartless to send in your bill. You need the cash. Be heartless. If that isn’t enough, send bailiffs.

  It is when you have to surprise your client with unexpected news that you need most diplomacy. You must become their comforter. That did not apply here.

  Here, my formal conclusion was: our wise emperor correctly suspected Sallustius Lucullus of bending to the defiant attitude of his staff, and Civica Cerialis of being too close to rebellious elements out east. The people of Rome should be grateful for our emperor’s vision in spotting these problems and containing them so swiftly.

  I said neither woman was willing to condemn her husband further. They were of noble birth. No apparatus of the state could compel them. In marriage, a man should be able to trust his wife above all others and a wife should be loyal to her man. It would be improper to attempt to break that most valuable tradition, one that kept our society decent. My verdict was that the two widows truly had nothing to add to what was already known. Their connections with plots were limited, and might never have existed. Their husbands had been dealt with. The widows would not cause trouble; it was not in their interests.

  I finished and went to have lunch with my mother. While we talked and ate, Father’s Egyptian secretary wrote out my draft in his fine script. Mother, who had read it swiftly, suggested I rephrase the end, adding: ‘They could safely be allowed to retire into obscurity.’

  I told her my situation at home; she promised to give thought to that. She would lend us a slave temporarily. She had also written to a board member at the Museum at Alexandria, Aedemon, an old acquaintance who was a doctor. He treated most disease with purges; I knew Tiberius would regard that as quackery. But with use of the Great Library, Aedemon could dig out any literature that had ever existed on recovery after lightning; in the time it took to make a sea journey there and back we would possess the world’s knowledge. If Tiberius lasted that long, I thought we would have worked out for ourselves what to do, but writing to Aedemon made Helena feel she was helping.

  She did help. She comforted me when I suddenly realised how upset I had been by nearly losing my lover. I suppose that was why I had gone to see her.

  Katutis, the secretary, accompanied me as I returned to our house. Tiberius then read my draft and advised me to remove ‘it was not in their interests’ in case that started anyone wondering too closely what the women’s interests were.

  Katutis, who was entirely trustworthy, took the finalised document to the palace for me. I had hoped that would be the last of it, but he came back with an invitation. At a meeting that afternoon Philippus would present my report. He thought I should be there.

  For a bureaucrat, that is code, of course. It means, And then you can tell us what you left out.

  ‘Be careful!’ warned Tiberius.

  I suspect he wanted to come with me, but could not bring himself to leave the house. I held him close, promising to return as soon as possible.

  Katutis went back with me instead. ‘Look out for intrigue,’ I said. ‘Rome’s devious palace politics almost match your fine Egyptian standard.’

  ‘And you are venturing straight into the midst of it!’ Katutis made a despairing gesture, throwing both hands wide. It appeared pharaonic, though was, I think, of his own devising. He knew how to fit in here in Rome, yet he cultivated obscure traits. I expect he was homesick. He wanted to remember who he once was. ‘With your usual foolishness, Flavia Albia.’

  Katutis was always frank with me. He respected my father as a venerable employer who had saved him from penury (which was the truth) and my mother as a great lady he could not entirely fathom (which was how all of us felt about Helena). As for me, I had been young and angry when he had first encountered me. He still treated me as if I was seventeen, fit only for discreet reproof by him, the wise one from an older culture.

  We walked side by side. If he was with my mother, or even my sisters now they were growing, Katutis stayed a little behind. It looked like deference, though he always managed to imply he was independent. He really liked to gaze around on his own, marvelling at our reprehensible second-rate city.

  He knew I saw through his Egyptian mystique. He and I shared complicity as outsiders.

  Tiberius had accepted that on the streets and in the bowels of the palace I was as safe with Katutis as I would have been with him. For the Egyptian, I was Falco’s daughter. He would defend me against anyone.

  Would I need defending? Nobody attends Domitian’s palace without apprehension. I had an official invitation, but when they know you are coming, they have time to prepare any kind of surprise. Ghastly surprises were our emperor’s speciality.

  The people I was about to meet now were, I was aware, those who must have provided the initial briefing for Domitian when he considered whether to execute the two provincial governors. I must avoid my outspokenness, hide my judgemental attitude. These were functionaries no one should offend.

  15

  The inner security council met in an apt location, given their concerns about the False Nero. Philippus, who had been waiting impatiently for my arrival, walked me there. We were followed by the silent Katutis. He had once worked in an Egyptian temple and had a way of insinuating himself that any spy would envy.

  The venue surprised me. I was taken to one of the most famous features of that mad fantasy, the Golden House: its revolving dining room. My father believed he had been there, wrongly I now saw. Nero’s extravagant palace, with its grandiose pleasure park and lake, had once sprawled over the entire centre of Rome. In the part beyond the Forum, amid fantastically decorated corridors and the gold-covered marble that gave the place its name, Falco had once attended a meeting with Titus in a large octagonal banqueting hall. That had a moving ceiling, so gifts, perfumes or rose petals could be released from its fretted ivory panels to the delight of guests. ‘There were no free gifts for us!’ Pa would grumble.

  There were none for me, but at least I got to see the real thing. Falco would growl when I spoiled his story. Still, a house the size of a city was bound to possess more than one place to eat. It was inconceivable Nero had only ever banqueted in one room. Ostentation was his medium.

  The most famous dining room stands on the south-east corner of the Palatine. As soon as we arrived I could see why: it gave diners the best view in Rome. It was dusty and echoing now, as it probably had been since Nero had fled on his final escape from the Senate. Frugal Flavian emperors might admire their predecessor’s toy but would balk at paying for maintenance or technical operators. They tried to distance themselves from Nero. Domitian, who ate meagre meals, would find no joy there anyway; he took pleasure only in tormenting those who had to dine in his presence. He was a gravy-flinger, a domineering conversation-steerer, a silent starer. The host with the most horrible manners. If he invites you, send a sick note. If he insists, take to your bed and die.

  Nero’s fabulous creation had a ceiling decorated with all the stars and planets of the heavens. Because it was propelled by water from the nearby aqueduct, a spur off the Aqua Marcia, even now it was gently moving all the time. The complete room rotated, to provide a slowly changing view of the Forum, from the new amphitheatre and the Arch of Titus around to the glinting golden-roofed temples on Capitol Hill. Until Vespasian had replaced them with the Flavian Amphitheatre, it had looked across Nero’s pleasure lake and park. It would be a delightful experience. For that, you would tolerate the fact your host was deranged.

  Since we were early, I quizzed Philippus about the engineering. We had time. There was only one man present so far, though someone important, judging by the lashings of gold on his stunningly white tunic and his expensive masculine jewellery. This personage was chatting to attendants; Philippus seemed reluctant to interrupt, so we sat on the sidelines. He condescended to explain in an undertone that the room had been built around a giant brick spindle, this core operated by a waterwheel. There must be a system of gears. The floor rested on large slippery clay balls; they moved the platform gently, also using hydraulics.

  Nero had attracted people with ideas, encouraged them, and eagerly paid for their elaborate devices. His best-known hobby was collecting water organs, those enormous sets of musical pipes that are used in amphitheatres. He had not stopped there. Engineers and architects had found plenty of work under the Flavians, but they would never again be as free in their flights of fancy as Nero had allowed. He had been an extraordinary character.