The Emperor's Games

by The Emperor's Games (retail) (epub)

  “I’m delighted to see you, Lucius,” Uncle Gentilius said. “We were discussing poor Aemelius’s, uh, misfortune.”

  Faustus Sulla looked at Paulinus and added bluntly, “The emperor could have stopped that, you know.”

  Lucius let his gaze wander over his uncle’s company before he replied. Dinner-party conversation was generally confined to scientific questions and other people’s amorous affairs, with politics an almost forbidden subject. Otherwise one was likely to discover later that one’s dinner partner had the emperor’s ear. Lucius could think of no reason why his uncle should lay traps for him. “Unfortunately Marius Vettius picked a time when the emperor was not in Rome,” he said.

  Faustus Sulla made a face. “And so found it convenient not to interfere.”

  “I’m afraid so. My brother-in-law – Flavius Julianus, I mean – did try. He’s on Domitian’s staff, you know, but I don’t think he thought he was going to have much hope from the start. His wife is taking it very badly. She’s Aemelius’s daughter.”

  “We were aware of the connection,” Sulla said.

  I’ll bet you were, Lucius thought. He contemplated a plate of lettuces before him. Beyond them were lobsters in shells, with a cracking tool and a bowl of herb butter to dip the meat in, a round cake with nut meats in it, oysters, snails, eggs, the roasted ribs of a kid, and a stew of fruit with wine, honey, and spices. Lucius picked up an egg and apparently addressed his remarks to it. “Flavius Julianus is a loyal man.”

  “You will note that I have not invited Flavius Julianus to dine,” his uncle said.

  Lucius bit into the egg. “Am I insulted?”

  “Not at all,” Gentilius said briskly. “Don’t play the fool with me, Lucius.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Lucius murmured.

  “Flavius’s loyalty is to the person of the emperor,” Uncle

  Gentilius said. “Whatever man happens to fill his sandals at the moment. Some men feel that loyalty should have a wider scope than that. To the empire itself, you might say. The emperor should serve the empire and not the other way round. That sort of idea. What do you think?”

  “I think this is dangerous water.” Lucius appeared to be talking to his egg again. “You might meet a shark.”

  “On the contrary,” Gentilius said. “We were thinking of fishing for one.”

  “This is ridiculous!” Faustus Sulla exploded. “You’re tiptoeing around this like a lot of maidens in a barn full of spiders. We’re all here because each of us has a grievance with Domitian, and you’ve been invited, Lucius, because we think you do, too.”

  “Well, that’s to the point at any rate.” Lucius finished his egg and looked around the table at them. Sulla was fuming darkly. Uncle Gentilius wore his usual careful, mildly amused expression and was cracking lobster claws with brisk efficiency. Roscius Celsus sat folding his napkin into careful shapes. “What’s your quarrel, Sulla?”

  “If you’d ever had the faintest interest in holding public office, you wouldn’t have to ask!” Sulla said. “Half the men in Rome’s prisons haven’t done anything worse than fall foul of Domitian or one of his tame thieves like Marius Vettius! ‘Somebody said that another man said that a third man spoke against the emperor.’” He pounded his fist on the wooden armrest of his couch. “Two days later they’re all three up in front of a judge, and five minutes after that they’re in my charge.” The triumviri capitales inquired into crimes and had command of the prisons but no power to pass or alter sentences. “I go home at night with a conscience I don’t think I can live with much longer.” He slammed his fist into the armrest again.

  “You’ll break my couch,” Gentilius said mildly. “But he’s right, Lucius. You’ve been hiding at home, and you haven’t seen it, but matters are getting worse. If something isn’t done, there may be rebellion.”

  Lucius raised his eyebrows. “Odd, but I had the impression that that was what you were advocating.”

  Gentilius raised his hand in oratorial style before Sulla could burst out again. “Sometimes it is best to substitute a controlled event for one that might otherwise be, uh, unsupervised.”

  “I see,” Lucius said. “Sulla would like Domitian removed in the interests of justice, and you want to do it before someone else does.”

  “I do not want civil war again, Lucius, let me put it that way,” Gentilius said. “None of my generation does. Neither do we wish to spend our old age wondering when Domitian’s eye will light on our estates.”

  “Or when someone will tell him we have been talking treason,” Sulla said.

  “Which they may now do with perfect truth,” Lucius pointed out. He looked at Roscius Celsus, who was still fiddling unhappily with his napkin. “What is your stake in this?”

  Celsus looked uncomfortable, a man in unfamiliar territory, but he put the napkin down and squinted to focus across the table on Lucius. “The merchants, all of us, will be ruined if the emperor continues to allow men like Marius Vettius a free rein. There are toughs now who work the waterfront offices and threaten us if we don’t give them a percentage to go away. And half the officials in the Shipping Offices are demanding a cut, too. We made up a delegation, myself and a few others of those with the largest trade, and went to complain to Vettius. He shrugged one shoulder and ate a bowl of olives while we talked to him, and after we left, a man from his office came to demand another three percent to give us our port clearances.”

  “They leave the grain fleet alone,” Gentilius said, “but every other ship coming in or out of harbor has been shaken down to the point that they’re losing money.”

  “Old Cornelius Suffuscus tried to raise a stink about it, and now he’s gone to prison, and we don’t even know on what charges,” Celsus said. “His physician says he has a bad heart, and it’s not likely he’ll survive his term.”

  “Even if someone doesn’t help him along,” Sulla said. “Old Suffuscus has a warehouse full of spices.”

  “They will confiscate it, you see,” Celsus said. “It may not be long before they will do the same to the rest of us and not wait until we provoke it.”

  “Is there no way the merchants can fight this?”

  “I am fighting,” Roscius Celsus said quietly. “That is why

  I am here. For the rest, no. They will either pay up, or they will try to argue and go the way Cornelius Suffuscus did.”

  Lucius sighed. “I had the feeling when you invited me, Uncle, that I should have stayed home.”

  “Then go home,” Gentilius said. “And contrive to forget the conversation.”

  “And let the three of you fight my fight for me?” Lucius asked. “That is what it amounts to. I’m not immune from Domitian’s informers, either. Far otherwise, I expect.”

  “Just so,” Gentilius said.

  “Now that we are agreed, perhaps we could cease to pussyfoot!” Sulla snapped.

  “I never pussyfoot,” Gentilius said.

  “Balls. You could teach a shadow to slink.”

  “I take it you do have some plan in mind.” Lucius looked at his uncle. “For, uh, afterward?”

  “Oh, no,” Gentilius said sarcastically. “We were just going to run up and stab Domitian and shout, ‘For the empire!’”

  “Without being rude,” Lucius said, “it has been done.” Faustus Sulla looked like a man who would take that approach.

  “And that’s just what will happen if we don’t do it,” Gentilius said. “Or it will be someone with an eye to the purple himself and a rabble in back of him to enforce it.”

  “It must be a man who is… acceptable,” Celsus said. “An admirable man whom the Senate will not quarrel with and whom the merchants will trust.”

  “And whom the army will support,” Lucius said. “If they don’t support our man, they will put up one of their own.” It gave him a shock to find that he had accepted the lethal idea of assassination – lethal for more people than Domitian. But his uncle was right. Someone else would eventually do it if they
didn’t, and the aftermath would be deadly. And the voice of justice that spoke from Sulla and Celsus was not something that Lucius could ignore. “Very well, Uncle. Who is the paragon you propose to give the purple to?”

  “Grattius Benacus.”

  Lucius whistled. “He agreed?”

  “Not exactly,” Gentilius said.

  “Not at all,” Sulla said. “But he’s the right man. He’s got the Fourteenth Legion in Upper Germany just now—”

  “Right under Domitian’s nose,” Lucius said.

  “That is not a bad thing. Benacus is popular with the army, and if he’s proclaimed emperor, they’ll back him. He comes from a good, old family entirely acceptable to the Senate. And he once held the post that Marius Vettius is making free with now.”

  “The trade guilds remember him kindly.” Roscius Celsus’s face showed a half smile that took some of the nervous look away. “Especially in contrast.”

  “It’s not going to work,” Lucius said flatly. “Grattius Benacus is no sword-made emperor. He won’t do it.”

  “That’s why he’s the right man,” Gentilius said. “He doesn’t want the power, so he won’t abuse it if he gets it. But he will take it if it’s handed to him. If the alternative is chaos, Benacus will do what will keep the empire stable.”

  “How do you know?” Lucius looked suspicious.

  “Because he’s much like Vespasian,” Gentilius said. “And it worked on Vespasian.”

  “Vespasian told me once that he had been pushed to the purple,” Lucius said. “Do I detect your hand shoving, Uncle?”

  “Mine and Appius Julianus’s, and one or two others.” Lucius saw Faustus Sulla and Roscius Celsus listening with interest. That hadn’t been common knowledge. “Is Appius in on this?”

  “No,” Gentilius said. “Appius would stop short of regicide, whatever his views on the situation otherwise. And, in any case, it would be unwise, knowing Flavius’s stand. I do not wish to set father plotting against son.”

  “But you’re perfectly willing to set me plotting against my brother-in-law,” Lucius said. “Damn it, Uncle, this could get Flavius killed, too. He’ll fight for Domitian.”

  “It is not our intention that it should come to fighting.” Gentilius contemplated his ancestors in their niches along the walls. “And certainly not that any move should be made when Flavius is at hand.”

  “‘Not your intention.’” Lucius looked unimpressed, and he pointed a finger at his uncle across the table. “That isn’t good enough, Uncle. I want an assurance that Flavius will be kept absolutely out of it.”

  “Assurances like that can be difficult to make good on,” Gentilius said. “You’re asking a lot, Lucius.”

  “So are you.” Lucius’s plain face looked weary just now in this circle of treason, and the lamplight showed up lines around his mouth and eyes. “You’re asking me to risk my hide calling in favors from old connections for you, and I assume you want money. You won’t buy the Praetorian Guard without money, before or after.”

  Roscius Celsus nodded. Money was the major contribution from his kind as well.

  “Very well, then. Give me an assurance about Flavius, or you don’t get any of it.”

  “And if we can’t?” Gentilius asked.

  “Then I’ll warn Flavius myself to stay clear. And to hell with your plots if he decides to warn Domitian.”

  “That would be… unwise.” There was a fair amount of menace in his uncle’s voice, but Lucius looked back at him steadily.

  “Then you’ll have to kill me. If you think you can.”

  His usually unassuming face had a dangerous expression that Gentilius was not such a fool as to underestimate. “You add an unnecessary complication, Lucius,” he said irritably.

  “Not from my point of view. I am reasonably fond of Flavius, and his sister is my wife. Swear it, Uncle, or I am leaving right now. You may try to stop me if you wish. Incidentally, Tullius is in the kitchens.”

  “I am not going to murder my own nephew at the dinner table in front of witnesses,” Gentilius said. “Don’t be an ass.” He glared at Lucius. “All right, then. I will swear that Flavius Julianus stays uninvolved. I expect we can arrange for him to be elsewhere.”

  “Thank you. Sulla?”

  “I don’t want any innocent blood in this. That is why we are doing this. I agree.”

  “I, also,” Roscius Celsus said. “Although I doubt that I could affect the outcome one way or the other.” He smiled. “The money is my province. That and support for the new man in the City.” The trade guilds had a fair amount of influence with the plebeian class through the price of their goods. Cheap wine is a powerful vote getter.

  Uncle Gentilius cracked another lobster claw and reached a large hand across the table for the butter. “Then if all consciences have been salved, perhaps we could get to specifics.”

  It was odd how fast matters went, Lucius thought later, once they had all admitted that they were going to kill the emperor. A fast, dangerous slide down a mountain, with only one right way to land. Within three days he was involved in a network of bargains and assignations so convoluted he could not have disentangled himself had he wanted to. The largest of the possible stumbling blocks was the short, bowlegged figure of Velius Rufus, the emperor’s general at Moguntiacum. Grattius Benacus’s legion, the Fourteenth Gemina, was part of his army. Although no one had the nerve to approach Rufus directly, it was decided after much debate that he would likely make no trouble over Benacus’s candidacy once the thing was done. Velius Rufus lacked the connections and the family lineage to make him as acceptable a candidate as Benacus, and he was outspoken enough to have a good stock of enemies in the Senate. Also he had never shown any sign of wanting more power than he had now, so likely he would let well enough alone.

  The other problem of course was Grattius Benacus himself, who would never countenance a revolution in his name. Gentilius Paulinus and his cronies would have to push him into it, as apparently they had pushed Vespasian. He would accept it. They were sure of that. A man like Grattius Benacus had too much conscience to let a war start when he could make peace with his acceptance. And unlike Vespasian, he had no sons, a blessing in itself. Having pushed a man to the purple, it was very difficult to control him thereafter, and Vespasian’s desire to found a dynasty had been a good idea only so long as Titus had lived.

  And if Grattius Benacus was essential to the plan, so too was its timing. Domitian would have to be killed while he was in Germany, and Benacus acclaimed by his own troops and the other German legions, with the emperor’s Praetorians to lend their weight to the matter before the Senate could question the succession and give time for another candidate to step in.

  It all took, Lucius discovered, endless careful planning. Each step had to be mapped out and plans made to deal with each possible failure along the way. Each possibility had to be thought of, and solutions that might never be needed made certain in advance. In the end, whose hand actually would hold the knife became less important than how it would be made possible and the assurance that all would go as planned afterward.

  Secrets like these are hard to keep. The more problems that arose and were dealt with, the more paths crossed in the network. Julia was still mourning Felix, hugging her own children to her in compensation, and her days were bounded by the nursery and the garden. She gave Aemelia what comfort she could, but mostly the other woman’s talk washed over her unheard, and when her husband ceased to tell her what he was doing with his days, she seemed not to notice.

  There were other ears pricked for rumor in the wind. And because a man who will work for a cause for money may talk about it elsewhere for more money, it was not long before the men who were attuned to the political undercurrent and rumors of the City knew that something was in the offing.

  “I don’t like this. It gives me an unpleasant crawling sensation on the back of my neck. There are too many hands in this.” Lucius was sitting in the sunny library where he worked on hi
s History, with Gentilius beside him, ostensibly come to give his opinion of his nephew’s latest work.

  “It is all very well for four high-minded souls to plan an assassination,” Gentilius said bluntly. “To put it into action is another matter. The stock of men willing to risk their hides for the good of the empire is not particularly large. We have no choice but to deal with the people we need on their own terms.”

  “There are too many of them. There are people involved in this now that I don’t even know.”

  “Consider that a blessing,” Gentilius said. “That way, they don’t know you.”

  Lucius looked dubious. ‘Too many men with an eye to the main chance is dangerous. All it takes is one who finds informing a better proposition.”

  “I doubt it,” Gentilius said. “Once you’ve put your hand to treason, it’s very difficult to get it unsticky again. Informing would shed more light than the informer would care for.”

  * * *

  They concentrated on that thought as each new man was admitted to the plot, and in the end it was that thought that let disaster in the door, because no one remembered that there were worse things to fear than discovery – most particularly not the man who sat chewing the end of his pen in one of the innumerable shipping offices belonging to Roscius Celsus. He was only a very small cog in the wheel, a matter of delaying those ships on the grain run if a certain message came from Germany. He hedged cautiously with the man across the desk from him.

  “I don’t know what you’ve been hearing, but I think you must have it wrong.”

  “No, I don’t, either,” the man said. He had introduced himself as Tetricus Fulminatus, and he was also a small cog in another works, those of Marius Vettius’s domain. “What’s more, I want in on it. A man has to think about his future, and Vettius is on shaky ground. And you need me. I know better than anyone what my man’s likely to be doing, and you don’t want him getting wind of your doings.”