The Furies of Rome by Robert Fabbri Read Free Book Online

source of the money was someone so close to the Emperor as Seneca, I don’t know, but Nasica said that he was adamant that Venutius be kept and questioned in secret. I was happy to help because Nasica’s time with the Ninth Hispana will be at an end in a year or so and Paulinus has promised to use his influence to make sure that Cerialis takes over his older brother’s position.’
    Sabinus finally understood. ‘Ah! So you’re ensuring that your soon-to-be son-in-law has the status that you feel your daughter deserves; very commendable, but what about the risk of going behind the Emperor’s back?’
    ‘If no one knows that Venutius is in Rome then there’s no risk of that ever being found out. Once we’ve buried Mother, I’ll come back to Rome with you and take him off your hands.’
    ‘What will you do with him?’
    ‘Something that he really won’t like: I’m going to give him to Caratacus; I’m sure that he’ll enjoy keeping, in a very small little cell, the man who, along with his former wife, betrayed him to us and I know that he’ll take extra special care that he doesn’t escape.’
    Sabinus grinned at his brother. ‘I’m sure he will; no one will find him there. Then, once that matter is out of our hands, we can think about how to avenge the outrage perpetrated upon our uncle.’
    With the day’s events having been so draining, Vespasian had practically forgotten about the non-appearance of Gaius. ‘What happened to him?’
    ‘It was one of Nero’s rampages.’
    ‘He got Gaius?’
    ‘Gaius said that it wasn’t Nero himself but rather Terpnus the lyre-player; although Nero encouraged him on whilst Otho, Tigellinus and some others held Tigran’s lads at knifepoint.’
    ‘Terpnus beat up Gaius?’
    ‘Yes, and pissed all over him and then left him lying in the street, unconscious, with the haft of a flaming torch stuffed up his arse, which they, apparently, considered to be hilarious.’
    The brothers looked at each other over the table and reached a silent, mutual agreement before both picking up their cups and downing the contents in one.
    ‘We’ll organise it through Tigran,’ Vespasian said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I’m sure that after his lads have been so humiliated he’ll be only too keen to ensure that Terpnus loses the ability to play the lyre.’

CHAPTER II
    A DAMP MIST SWIRLED around the front door as Vespasian and Sabinus stepped out of the house the following morning soon after dawn. Sabinus held the waxen funeral mask of their father who had died, seventeen years previously, far to the north in the lands of the Helvetii; Vespasian held the newly crafted one of Vespasia. Following them came the rest of the family displaying the funeral masks of their ancestors and then the body, borne on a bier by the household freedmen. The slaves came last; the household ones and the exterior ones, who could be trusted, free; but the field slaves, whose lives were one long blur of pure misery, remained shackled under the eyes and whips of their overseers.
    Crows cawed from up in trees whose topmost branches were barely visible in the weather conditions that seemed to Vespasian to have been sent by the gods specifically with a funeral in mind.
    With sedate dignity the procession made its way around the house, past a paddock where Vespasian’s five grey Arab chariot horses grazed on the dew-laden grass, and on to where the pyre had been built near Vespasia’s newly constructed tomb. Next to it was that of her husband, whose ashes she had brought with her when she had returned to Aquae Cutillae, soon after his death.
    As the light grew with the sun cresting the peaks of the Apennines, in whose western foothills the Flavian estate was situated, the bier was placed upon the pyre; Pallo then led a fat sow, coloured ribbons tied around its neck, up to the brothers standing next to the pyre with folds of their togas covering their heads in deference to the deities about to