Vespasian was always interested when his enemy's name came up in conversation. 'What did he want?'

'I knew that would get your attention.' Caenis took another sip of juice and then, with a mischievous look in her eyes, placed the cup down on the table, very slowly.

Vespasian laughed. 'Stop teasing, woman, otherwise I'll show you just what a large amount I pay for access.'

'That's a big promise and very tempting; I think I'll take you up on that.'

'Not until you've told me why Corvinus wanted an urgent meeting with Seneca.'

'Ah, yes; all that talk of access drove it from my mind. Well, remember that Nero granted him a stipend of half a million sesterces a year, ostensibly to raise his family's fortune to above the minimum level required for a senator but in fact to buy him off for having his province taken away so that Nero could send Otho as far away from Rome as it's possible to get within the Empire?'

'Of course I do, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d hasn't stopped smirking since.'

'He has now; Nero's withdrawn it as a luxury that he can ill afford.'

'Ha!' Vespasian clapped his hands in delight. 'That's the first sensible thing that I've heard Nero do for a long time.'

'I thought that would please you, my love.'

'Did Seneca promise to help him?'

'Yes; he said he'd try to get Nero to change his mind for an annual payment of three hundred thousand.'

'More than half the stipend! This just gets better.'

'Corvinus flew into a rage and so Seneca showed him the door saying that if he was willing to take a hundred per cent of nothing rather than two fifths of something then he was even more stupid than people thought.'

'That must have stung seeing as stupidity is one thing of which you cannot accuse Corvinus.'

'Quite; and he realised that he was indeed being stupid so he agreed, grudgingly, to Seneca's terms.' She tilted her head at an angle and looked at him out of the top of her eyes in an excellent impression of a coy innocent. 'Now, what do you mean by "paying me a large amount for access", sir? How large?'

Vespasian reached across the table, grabbed her wrist and pulled her over to him so that she landed, giggling, on his lap; negotiations began in earnest.

However, before the deal could be concluded there was the sound of a throat being cleared coming from the doorway into the tablinum. Caenis dropped what she was doing and looked up to see her steward.

'I'm sorry to interrupt, domina,' the steward said, his embarra.s.sment palpable, 'but Magnus and another gentleman are here for the master. They say it's of the utmost urgency.'

Caenis got up off Vespasian's lap. 'Very well, show them out here and bring wine for them both; I don't imagine that Magnus has much of a taste for pomegranate juice.'

'Yes, domina,' the steward said, bowing and turning to go.

Caenis looked down at Vespasian and frowned; he followed her gaze, grinned and then adjusted his tunic so that what had caught her attention could no longer do so as Magnus along with Tigran were shown into the garden; the steward followed with a slave girl carrying a tray with a jug of wine and some cups.

'I hope we didn't interrupt anything,' Magnus said as he took Caenis' hand in greeting.

'Nothing that can't be revived later, Magnus,' Caenis said as Tigran took her hand and mumbled his greetings. 'Sit, please, gentlemen.'

'Well, it's like this,' Magnus said after they had been served wine and the steward and slave girl had retired. 'They've got s.e.xtus.'

Vespasian looked at Magnus, his mind still on other things. 'Who's got s.e.xtus?'

'The Vigiles,' Tigran said, 'they grabbed him this morning.'

'Why?'

Magnus took a slug of his wine and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'We think it's to do with the Terpnus affair.'

'But that was over a year ago; surely that's been forgotten by now?'

'I don't think Tigellinus forgets things that easily; especially as he was deeply humiliated.'

'Then why has it taken him so long to haul s.e.xtus in?'

'I had all the lads involved in the business leave Rome straight after Senator Pollo warned me that Tigellinus was investigating it,' Tigran explained. 'I sent them down to Pompeii; Ca.s.sandros, my second in command, has a cousin who's very influential there, shall we say.'

'I see,' Vespasian said, understanding perfectly, his heart beginning to race. 'And now they're back.'

Tigran nodded. 'Yesterday. I thought that it would be safe after so long.'

Vespasian saw the implication immediately. 'Mars' a.r.s.e! Tigellinus was waiting for him to arrive back in the city and took him the moment he did so?'

'That's what it looks like,' Magnus muttered.

'The b.a.s.t.a.r.d knows; I can feel it.'

'That's what we think too. As soon as I was sure it was the Vigiles who had him,' Tigran continued, 'I went to Magnus to ask his help and advice. s.e.xtus is tough but I don't think he will be able to hold out that long against specialist interrogators; they'll have broken him by this time tomorrow and then Tigellinus will know not only that it was the South Quirinal Crossroads Brotherhood who attacked the Emperor on the Viminal, but also that the prefect of Rome and an ex-consul were with us.'

Vespasian felt the colour fade from his cheeks, his expression more strained than ever. 'That's something to be avoided at all costs; it would be the end of us and our family.' And so soon after becoming the generation responsible for it, he added in his head.

'Which is why I thought that you could get Sabinus to put pressure on Tigellinus to release s.e.xtus,' Magnus suggested.

'That won't work,' Caenis said, shaking her head. 'Tigellinus doesn't take any notice of anyone other than the Emperor and the only other man who could have him killed.'

All three men looked at Caenis, trying to work out who that was.

'Burrus?' Vespasian said eventually, the sick feeling in his stomach alleviating slightly with a glimmer of hope. 'Of course, the Praetorian prefect could have Tigellinus on trumped-up charges of treason any time he wanted.'

Caenis smiled. 'Yes, but would he want to? Or to put it another way: what would make him want to?'

Vespasian looked despondent, the glimmer fading. 'I have absolutely no influence over Burrus at all, quite the reverse, in fact, as it was him who suggested to Agrippina that I had shown sympathy towards Messalina at her execution.'

'You might not have any influence over him but I'm pleased to say that, thanks to Pallas and Agrippina, I do and it will be a pleasure to exercise it.'

'What have you got over him?'

'Ohh, something he really won't like.' Caenis rose to her feet. 'I'll just get my secretary to make a copy of a letter whilst I call for my litter and get changed; I think a visit to the Praetorian Guard's camp is in order.'

Caenis' litter pa.s.sed through the Viminal Gate; Vespasian, walking next to it, nodded at the Urban Cohort centurion on duty and then wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, pulled from the fold in his senatorial toga. Magnus and Tigran did their best to keep their faces averted from the guards as they came through behind the litter. Up ahead, about two hundred paces away, lay the brick-built walls of the Praetorian Camp; ma.s.sive structures in their own right but dwarfed by the Servian defences of Rome.

'I can't say as I'm all that keen on going in there,' Magnus muttered as they pa.s.sed through the obligatory crowd of beggars that infested every gate, waving their mutilated limbs or displaying virulent skin diseases in the hope that revulsion would stir pity and generosity in the hearts of the pa.s.sers-by. A small boy, holding his begging bowl between two stumps, accosted him importunately, causing Magnus to have to step aside to avoid tripping over the child. 'f.u.c.k off!' Magnus clouted the boy on the side of the head, toppling him and sending his bowl flying through the air to disappear into the crowd. 'Just f.u.c.king sitting around here all day and annoying respectable folk; why don't you work like the rest of us?' Magnus stalked on muttering, his mood worsening the closer they came to the gates of the camp.

'Senator t.i.tus Flavius Vespasia.n.u.s and Antonia Caenis here to see s.e.xtus Afranius Burrus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard,' Vespasian informed the Praetorian centurion in charge of the four men blocking their entry to the camp.

Cold eyes scrutinised Vespasian with no particular urgency as the centurion tapped his vine-stick repeatedly into the open palm of his left hand, his burnished bronze scale-armour almost blinding in the burning sun. He pulled a grudging salute as if he were unable to understand why such an ill.u.s.trious member of the Praetorian Guard should have to salute a senator rather than the other way around. 'Wait here.'

This was too much for Vespasian, who jumped forward and caught the man's elbow as he turned, restraining him. 'Listen here, lad,' he hissed in the man's ear, 'you might think that being in the Praetorian Guard makes you ever so special but you're wrong. Not only am I a senator and a good twenty years older than you but I'm also an ex-consul and have commanded a legion for six years during which time I actually saw combat on a regular basis, all of which makes me far superior to a parade-ground soldier like you. Now, if you choose to leave me waiting on the doorstep like some tradesman whilst you go off to see whether the man I've come to see is busy or not then that's your decision; but between you and me, I can tell you it'll be the last decision that you ever make. Common legionaries in the Second Augusta, fighting the painted savages of Britannia, don't need to make decisions as they're all made for them in order that they can spend all their time concentrating on getting killed or having a limb lopped off. Do I make myself clear?' Vespasian pulled back, allowing the man to turn and face him.

The centurion opened his mouth to speak but Vespasian's intense stare made him think better of it; his eyes s.h.i.+fted nervously, left and right, to his men who were all studiously transfixed by something in the middle-distance. 'Let the senator and his party pa.s.s,' he ordered with as much dignity as he could manage. 'And escort them to the tribunes' mess and tell the steward to serve them whatever they require.'

'That was a very wise decision, centurion,' Vespasian commented as he was allowed into the camp. 'If that is the calibre of your decision making then I can see that you are well qualified to make many more.'

With a blank expression, the centurion snapped a very smart salute, turned stiffly and then stamped off.

'That seemed to work,' Caenis said with an amused expression as they came out into a street running between long, two-storey, brick barrack blocks with tiled roofs that seemed to be home to hundreds of crows. 'What did you say to him?'

'Oh, nothing too threatening, my love; I just pointed out that people who are lucky enough to have the ability to exercise a modic.u.m of free will, and then abuse it, generally seem to lose it.'

'How very astute of the centurion to see the truth of what you were saying and modify his behaviour accordingly; I do hope Burrus is just as sensible.'

'Why is a prisoner of the Vigiles any concern of yours, Senator Vespasian?' Burrus asked, surprising Vespasian by addressing him formally and with a certain degree of respect in his tone.

'He is of interest to some a.s.sociates of mine who would rather he didn't share his knowledge with someone like Tigellinus.' Vespasian knew that sounded lame; however, Burrus seemed to take it at face value, or, at least, had the good manners to pretend to do so.

'I see.' The prefect frowned whilst considering what to say next. He leant forward in his chair and rested his elbows on the desk; bellowed orders and the crash of drill came through the opaque-gla.s.s window behind him. He looked hard at Vespasian and then at Caenis sitting next to him. 'Forgive me, but I really don't see what this has to do with me; as prefect of the Praetorian Guard I have absolutely no influence over the Vigiles or their prefect.'

Caenis presented Burrus with her sweetest smile. 'We quite understand that, prefect; technically you have no power over how the Vigiles run themselves.'

'So why are you here then?'

'Because, if you chose to, you could make life very difficult for Tigellinus; even impossible, I would suggest, to the point where he would be obliged to terminate it. No one likes their life to be impossible, do they, prefect?'

'I see.' Burrus frowned in thought again.

Vespasian kept his face straight, enjoying the subtlety of Caenis' implied threat. The speed with which Burrus had seen them had hinted at an anxiety to get the interview over with as quickly as possible and Vespasian knew that was nothing to do with his own presence. As a veteran of imperial politics himself, Burrus would be only too aware that Caenis did not come asking for something unless she felt sure that she had the means to get it. They had barely enough time to be served their wine in the tribunes' mess before a very respectful secretary had invited them to follow him to the prefect's quarters in the praetorium at the heart of the camp. Magnus and Tigran had been more than happy to keep the jug of notably tolerable Falernian wine company and await the result of the meeting in the mess.

'And why would I choose to make Tigellinus' life impossible a.s.suming that I could, that is?'

'I'm not saying that you should make his life impossible; the threat should be enough. We want to avoid any unpleasantness. As to why, prefect?' Caenis bestowed another radiant smile upon Burrus. 'I don't know about you but I always find it much better when someone else's life is made impossible rather than my own; wouldn't you agree?'

Burrus swallowed; it seemed to Vespasian that he evidently believed that whatever Caenis would threaten him with would be viable. 'And ... er ... what incentive would you have for me to help you out in this matter?'

Caenis pulled a scroll from beneath her palla. 'This is a copy, prefect, which I had my secretary do just before I left my house; the original is stored very securely.'

Burrus unrolled the scroll and read its contents, his face seeming to fall with every sentence. When he had finished he laid it down on the desk and tapped his fingers together. 'Where did you get this?' he asked.

'I should think that's obvious.'

'Agrippina?'

'Who else could have had such a doc.u.ment?'

'And how did you come by it?'

Vespasian recalled the cylindrical doc.u.ment case that Caenis had said contained the payment from Pallas and Agrippina for her to present their request for help from him.

'Now that is a rather strange tale, prefect. My price for a favour is either cash or information; I have never had any leverage on you, so when approached by Pallas and Agrippina for a favour, you were my price. Agrippina gave it to me in return for me presenting Vespasian with a proposition from her and Pallas. However, that proposition was nothing but a ruse to get Vespasian to deliver the invitation that lured Agrippina to her death; a plan, I believe, that you acquiesced to, having, as we both now know, sabotaged the previous two attempts.'

Vespasian was now confused: how did Caenis know that?

Burrus could not resist a smile. 'Are you saying that she gave you this doc.u.ment in return for facilitating her own demise?'

Caenis joined him in his amus.e.m.e.nt. 'Yes, prefect, I found it a delicious irony when I realised it myself. But then I understood how that came about and my respect for Pallas' subtlety increased even further, if that is possible.'

Vespasian was desperate to discover the contents of the letter but knew better than to show his ignorance of the matter.

'You see, prefect,' Caenis continued, 'Pallas has never forgiven either you or Seneca for his banishment. He knew perfectly well that Agrippina could never use this doc.u.ment whilst she still lived for she couldn't possibly let on to Nero that she knew of its contents as it would've meant certain death to her. So it was easy for Pallas to get her to part with it because if it came to the Emperor's attention from any other source, she could legitimately deny all knowledge of it, saying that it must have been intercepted before it reached her or that it was a fake.'

Burrus completely understood. 'But now she's dead she can't do that so the Emperor will a.s.sume, correctly, that she did receive it and it is genuine.'

'And you will be dead; as you well know because you wrote and sent it.' Another sweet smile lit up Caenis' face. 'And so Pallas gets her to give it to me, in payment for a favour that seals her fate, which thereby makes the doc.u.ment so toxic that you would do almost anything to get the original back. I thought it was a work of genius.'

Even Burrus could appreciate the finesse and shook his head slowly in wonder. 'So if I induce Tigellinus to give up this ... s.e.xtus?'

'That's right, prefect, s.e.xtus along with any notes taken whilst interviewing him; and make it clear to Tigellinus that what he's investigating is best left alone.'

'Then I'll get the original back.'

'You have my word on it, prefect.'

'And you aren't afraid that when it's all over I might be very angry and seek revenge on you?'

Again Caenis smiled. 'I don't think you'll want to do that, prefect; after all, everyone is happy: s.e.xtus has been released and Tigellinus knows never to try to investigate that matter again and you have the original copy of your letter to Agrippina warning her that Nero was going to attempt to poison her and telling her what antidotes to use. I think that we can leave it there, don't you, prefect?'

Burrus rubbed the back of his neck, sucking the air through his teeth, as he looked at the copy. 'I did it out of loyalty to her, you know; she did get me the Praetorian Guard, after all.'

'Very commendable, prefect; and I suppose it was out of loyalty of a different sort that you a.s.sisted in her murder.'

'I didn't a.s.sist; I just knew about it and did nothing to stop it or warn her this time.'

'What made you change your mind?' Vespasian asked, feeling better now that he understood what Caenis had over Burrus.

'What?' Burrus looked at Vespasian in surprise as if he had forgotten his presence in the room. 'Oh, for a couple of reasons: he was going to do it no matter what, so it was best that it could at least look like an accident; although that went wrong too. Plus the fact that Agrippina had made it clear that she would never support him divorcing Claudia because she believes that being married to Claudius' daughter gives Nero legitimacy that he would not otherwise have as Claudius' adoptive son. Should Agrippina have made a public display against Nero by supporting Claudia it could be very dangerous for my position; both women are, or were, very popular with the people and, more importantly, the army, so it could easily have led to a rebellion and then where would I be? Leading ten thousand parade-ground soldiers against frontier legions; not a happy prospect.' Burrus got to his feet, pus.h.i.+ng his chair back behind him. 'Still, it's done now and once I have that letter back I can forget about Agrippina completely. So, if you would excuse me, I've got to go and mention to Tigellinus that his life might just become intolerable and will carry on being so until he forgets everything concerning s.e.xtus and whatever investigation he's involved in. I shall bring s.e.xtus to your house, in an hour or so, personally in order to take receipt of what's mine.'

Caenis stood, gracing Burrus with yet another beaming smile. 'Prefect, we look forward to seeing you there. You know where I live?'

'I'm the prefect of the Praetorian Guard; I know where everyone who matters lives.'

'Indeed. Would you care to stay for dinner?'