Perhaps some remembered how Titus, the golden boy, used to act as Vespasian’s hitman: He would invite people who had caused offence to dinner, give them a good meal, then at the end they were executed.… If an attack was planned, this could be the moment.

  * * *

  Camillus Justinus stood up, stretching his tall limbs. At scattered points around the dark room, others nervously followed suit, though no one was sure whether or not they could evacuate the black dining room without imperial permission. Camillus Aelianus stooped between their two couches to gather up his slave. When he straightened, with the now sleeping Toutou securely in his arms, the brothers exchanged a practiced glance, their signal.

  Moving with smooth, unobtrusive steps, they passed down the rows without stopping to chat, aiming for the main door through which they had originally entered. Whenever they passed an usher they murmured false thanks for the evening, like good-mannered boys whose noble mother had brought them up in the right way.

  They reached what they hoped was the exit. Their path remained unimpeded. A slave opened the heavy black curtains for them. Another operated the doors. They passed through to the outer audience chamber.

  There, lines of officials were waiting for them, ready to surprise them with what Domitian had planned next.

  15

  In the Camillus Justinus house, proceedings had reached the stage that happens at all the best parties, where nobody remembers the original point. Once this occurs, the party is the point. Why quibble?

  There were only three participants, plus a handful of Claudia’s closest slaves, those who had stayed awake, stolid elderly Baeticans who proved the claim she and Quintus always made that their slaves were family members. For Rome, the Camilli were liberal. They lived up to their stated ideals, which high-minded people will not always bother to do.

  Nevertheless, the slaves were on duty, so they were serving. They were allowed tots of their own. At least half-full ones.

  Since the group was so small, it was all fairly quiet. Besides, children were upstairs, hopefully sleeping. It was thought best not to disturb them, in case they came scampering down in their sleeping tunics to investigate what exciting times their elders were having. In the absence of incense and garlands, not to mention the lack of imported good-time boys (who organised this shindig?), a trio of respectable housewives was hardly going to raise the roof. As Helena said, the roof on the Camillus house was not in a good state and never had been in all her memory; they needed to treat it gently.

  The truth was that the effects of the wine hit them so fast mainly because they were unused to it. Not in such desperate quantity. Respectable women, some of them mothers, were no strangers to a warming nip during festivals, a medicinal draught for sickness (one for the patient, one for the exhausted nurse), or a small glass on somebody’s birthday (to reward themselves first for keeping a calendar, then for remembering to look at it in time to fix up a suitable gift). But they did not drink to forget often enough to know that drinking to forget only makes you forget that someone is likely to turn up unexpectedly and find you at it.

  In this case it was a small boy. He ran into the room barefoot, sweetly tousled, nervously het up. Claudia mentally went through the list of her children; this was Constans, her seven-year-old. He was prone to anxiety, sometimes suffered with his chest, had had trouble with his reading but was now catching up … His birthday, she knew without consulting, was next month. They had to make a special fuss of him, or he always lost out to Saturnalia.…

  “Constans! Why are you out of bed, darling?” burbled the fond mother ineffectually.

  Meline had mellowed so much that although she was wary of children, at least Roman ones, she actually held out her arms and took the boy on her lap. Since he was prone to anxiety, he sat very still, staring out at the others, owl-eyed.

  “Constans, don’t look so frightened; you are not in any trouble!” his Aunt Helena soothed him. He liked her. She bought good presents. From what Helena had heard about Constans, she supposed there had been bed-wetting, although Quintus had recently assured her that the lad seemed to be over that stage now.… Helena had an introverted son of her own. But dear heavens (thought Claudia) our son is nothing like her crazy Postumus! “Tell us what the matter is,” Helena went on kindly, “and we can do something about it for you, sweetheart.” That was debateable at this point in the party, but they could send a slave to the nursery.

  “Someone is coming! I was looking out of a shutter to see if my father would soon be home.”

  “Coming down the street?” demanded his mother.

  “No, they are here.”

  “Outside?”

  “The doorman has gone, but I don’t think he wants to let them in.”

  Claudia was on her feet in an instant. Silverware flew in all directions as she knocked a tray off a sidetable. Meline caught the falling flagon, even though she was holding the little boy. The container she fielded was actually empty, but this was a superb hand-eye co-ordination. Helena clapped her effort, before they all made a wild stampede to the front doors.

  The porter had refused to open up. He did not recognise the transport that had turned up on the doorstep; he became deaf when reminded that Quintus had not taken the family chair out that night, anyway. It was late. It was dark. Even by the standards of Roman porters, this one had always been intransigent. They only kept him because they were too soft-hearted to sell him on. He was taking a stand, nothing new in that. Despite increasingly frustrated banging, he would not risk letting danger in.

  “This is the first time you have shown such regard for us!” snapped Claudia. “It could be Quintus Camillus. Get out of my way.”

  She herself withdrew the mighty bolts. She cut her finger again, like the last time she tried it. She would not care about that, because she could hear her husband in a rage, bawling about how it was iniquitous for a man to be locked out of his own house.

  16

  By the time they staunched the blood that was oozing from Claudia’s finger and wrenched open the doors, one of which always stuck inconveniently, Quintus and Aulus had disappeared. Tipsy female shrieks occurred. Little Constans covered his ears. Back in the house, two of his brothers had appeared on the stairs, wailing because they thought something was wrong. Children need a quiet routine. They never got it in this house, but since even Mama was now behaving oddly, and quite loudly, tonight struck them as worse than normal.

  A curtained litter that no one recognised was already making an exit. Halfway down the road, almost under the aqueduct, it must now be empty, judging by the jaunty way the bearers were picking up their feet as they swung it along. They were in white, Domitian’s palace livery. “Shit!” exclaimed Gaius, running out into the road to look.

  “Gaius!”

  “Oh, he’s right. Shit and double shit!” Giggling, Aunt Helena conspired with Gaius. The children perked up, intrigued by this variation on their newest phrase. They always regarded Helena as one of them, which their parents could only tolerate patiently. Helena had grown up here. Once she discovered a mind of her own, she had never changed.

  When everyone piled back into the house, they met Quintus and Aulus in the hall. They had come through the communicating door after Quintus abandoned swearing at the recalcitrant porter, then Aulus simply used his key to his own house. Two shaken senators had returned—to find, oops, two unexpectedly merry wives. As the night’s story began to be told, the uncontrolled mirth stopped.

  There were intense hugs all round. Tears were shed, not always by women. Justinus loped off upstairs, where he did the rounds of his children, reassuring those who were awake, tucking those who had come downstairs back into their beds, gently kissing the warm heads of those who slept. He laid a hand upon each child, reconnecting after the threat of loss.

  In his absence, Aulus gave a swift account of the dinner. “He meant it to be horrible—the supposedly most important men of Rome reduced to gibbering wrecks, all of us trapped in that nightmare of confusion about his intentions, with the monster gloating over our discomfort. It did not end when he left. After we emerged from the palace, he continued the process, screwing us with more anxiety. Instead of the familiar retainers most people were expecting to find, palace staff forced us all into transports they summoned up, with escorts that none of us had ever seen before. It was unclear where these unknown men were taking us. Nothing was said. We still thought we might never see our homes again. Everyone had to live through further dread on the journey, imagining we would be dragged off down an alley, then murdered on the city streets.”

  “But you’re not. Here you are.”

  “Here we are,” said Aulus, though his face was drawn.

  “Safe and sound,” added Quintus as he returned. He sounded subdued, looking like a man who might have been praying somewhat intently to his gods. Normally he had no time for such niceties. The lares and penates of the Justinus household would have been rather surprised he acknowledged them tonight.

  Then, for once not scrapping but in earnest, he and Aulus came together. The brothers suddenly embraced, lumps in their throats, ordeal over, choking with relief.

  17

  Even their narrow escape from death left Aulus and Quintus silent and depressed. Neither could even find the spirit to complain about coming home from their great adventure to women who had spent their time carousing instead of weeping with fear for their men. Quintus had not even noticed yet that the wine Claudia pulled from the cellar had been his father’s favourite Caecuban.

  With little more ado, everyone took themselves off to bed. Helena Justina had been offered her old room by an elderly slave. “Little Aelia has it nowadays, she decided she wanted her own place, but I can move her in with her parents.…”

  “No, let their parents have time together.” Helena, convincingly sober by some sleight, wanted to go home to her own family. She needed the kind of reassurance Quintus had sought earlier. To count them. Touch them. Tell them they were loved. To make sure for herself that everyone was there, and safe.… Besides, she knew that her husband, left in charge, would be waiting for news of the situation. She could imagine him prowling about unhappily without her, pretending not to feel worry while he drove himself mad with it.

  Night lay upon the Capena Gate. There was a period of rumbling commercial activity as delivery carts inhabited the road system, but after yesterday’s triumph, things were still slow. No one who lived in Rome noticed the familiar racket, anyway. Once their tasks were done, the wheeled vehicles evacuated the city. A quieter time ensued, where partygoers sometimes whooped or thieves yelled at the vigiles. Then there was peace. Stars. Near stillness. What passed for silence in a city of a million people, a city that was never entirely at rest.

  Still wound up, Aulus and Quintus found sleep hard to come by. Their crazy evening on the Palatine reimposed itself, chuntering round in their heads obsessively as they tried to escape. Aulus and Meline, who sometimes kept to separate rooms, lay in each other’s arms tonight. Quintus, the tragic traditional husband, had his back to his wife, though he was comforted by Claudia pressed up against him, and had she needed, he would have turned to her. She, exhausted by wine and fearfulness, had collapsed, unable for once to listen out for troubled children. Quintus was doing that, until he too at last found sleep.

  Only Aulus lay awake for some time longer. Aulus, the grim brother, the one who had always been most likely to harbour suspicions about situations where everyone assured him there was no need. His teeth clenched. He could not relax. Aulus Camillus had heard his relations congratulate each other that they had survived, that the threat had come to nothing, that the misery was ended. But Aulus assessed this as a crisis that was not yet over. To him, the black banquet’s climax seemed to be missing. Domitian, he reckoned, had unfinished business. So he lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling, trying not to disturb Meline, while he waited alone for the crunch to come. Yet even he succumbed to weariness eventually and sank into a deep slumber.

  * * *

  Just before dawn, the time when raids are carried out and sudden arrests are made, two households were woken by thunderous, protracted knocking.

  18

  More terror.

  Stumbling down to see who was attacking their doors, all the Camilli were horrified. As soon as they saw the soldiers, they were sure this time they really were done for. Just when they dared to believe they escaped last night, loud messengers from the Palace had arrived at their homes. They were, after all, being brought a death sentence.

  “Morning! Let’s be having you.”

  This was a cheery cry from Taurinus, that hardened, diligent officer, still stuck with acting as postman, still subtly troubled by his task. Now he was in charge of waggons. He had two hundred doors to knock on, each time greeting a man who would think that this racket heralded his executioner. There was always a chance, Taurinus knew, that some noble senator, still with sleep in his eyes, would grab a weapon and come running out to spill blood. Nothing to lose. Go down fighting, like his hairy ancestors. Horatius Cocles holding that bridge single-handed. Now some victim of Domitian might finally choose to say no to a polite death. Blood all over the flower urns. Nasty incident. Horribly public.

  From various directions, neighbourhood dogs could be heard barking. In other houses, shutters had been discreetly opened.

  “Presents!” announced Taurinus. He had been told to keep them guessing until the last moment. “Nice ones,” he added, pretending this was irony. Taurinus had no truck with mothers so he ignored Claudia Rufina, but he winked at Hosidia Meline. She was younger and, in her light sleeping tunic, almost lustworthy. He had taken to her. “These your husbands, are they? Noble A Camillus, noble D ditto?” He sounded chippy. “So, aren’t they the lucky boys!”

  The noble A and noble D pushed their wives behind them for safety, not that either of their wives was having it, so the two women moved back out beside them. The senators occupied their home doorsteps, arms folded, knowing that they were probably doomed but ready to turn truculent.

  No need for heroics, Taurinus assured them pleasantly. Our Master just wanted to give them treats, mementos of his lovely banquet.

  “Oh, he shouldn’t have. The heartburn is enough!” quipped the noble Quintus.

  “Nice one, sir! Now look lively, if you please. Sign here!” ordered Taurinus in his now-practiced don’t-give-me-any-trouble voice.

  “I shall do it,” said Aulus Camillus, acting the elder brother.

  “For what is he signing?” demanded his wife, true daughter of the famous jurist Minas.

  Taurinus recited: “Delivered goods. Item: one tombstone. That is, one per person.” The black painted name slabs that had stood beside each dining couch had been cleaned up, revealing an unexpected constituency. “Very desirable, very expensive, very generous of Our Master!” Taurinus congratulated them as the startled beneficiaries noticed that under the dark goo of last night, the tombstones were in fact substantial blocks of solid silver. “What a merry trickster he is.… Item: one serving platter each, elegant comport, seemingly onyx, will look delectable in your display cabinet!” The wives grabbed them. “Item: one slave boy, cleaned up, personal attendant with high-end dancing and serving talents, just watch their habits and their language, which to my mind are both absolutely filthy.”

  Aulus used the military response to panic, though he said it quietly. Taurinus responded, with sympathy. “Don’t blame me, sir. I am just the messenger. If anybody asks, I’ll say you was both utterly delighted to get this stuff, shall I?” Aulus and Quintus nodded weakly. Children were crying now—and that was just the two appalling slave boys from the banquet who had been dumped here, almost certainly as spies.

  Taking their gifts, the Camillus brothers turned into the Justinus’s house, intending to share more raw mirth at the malevolence of the Emperor’s “joke.”

  “I am not having that horrible pervert slave in the same house as my children!” stropped Claudia. “Quintus, I shall give the dirty little beast to your niece Albia. She is setting up a new household and she doesn’t stand for nonsense.”

  “She can take ours too,” agreed Meline tartly. “‘We thought you could have them, Albia—you are so scary, you can make them run away.…’ Then my ex-husband, the moneychanger, will turn those hideous tombstones into cash. I shall ask him today, before the silver market crashes due to overload.”

  “And maybe today for once,” they chimed fiercely at their husbands, “you noble pair will stay at home for breakfast among your loved ones.”

  “All we ever want!” promised the Camillus brothers, sounding meek.

  It was too early, but no one would be able to get back to sleep, so Claudia had her Baetican staff bring breakfast now. Appetites returned. The nightmare was over; they had emerged from it unscathed. Everything was all right.

  As they ate, light-heartedness coloured requests to pass the chickpeas. Both men were freely teasing their wives over whether they needed a cabbage cure for hangovers; Claudia and Meline acted out disinterest, cradling small cups of mint tea with refined gestures. Wily children snatched slices of Lucanian sausage from other people’s plates. When a saucer of olives was placed on the serving table, a wit cried, “Black food!” so everyone collapsed laughing.…

  But perhaps, as their eyes met over their bread rolls, Aulus and Quintus were thinking. As brothers, they knew how to communicate privately. Each could see the other suspected Domitian had miscalculated. He had shown how much he despised the Senate. Yes, he had made clear that his return to Rome would have a cruel tone, while last night he clinched his intention to rule through tyranny. But this relied on his premise that the Senate was composed of cowards.

  In fact, Rome had checks and balances. There had always been honourable senators, and the Camilli were not the only ones who were capable of resistance. They, and others at the black banquet, had refused to submit to fear. These dinner guests were all part of a strong network that stretched throughout the empire: relatives, colleagues, contacts in trade and politics, old ties to the legions in which they had served, new ones in provinces where they owned estates. Any emperor relied on the Senate to validate him. They were not moribund: they could vote in a new one and obliterate the predecessor from history.