B007IIXYQY EBOK

by Gillespie, Donna

  Parthenius dodged Domitian’s gaze. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “It was not I who fated you to die. I’d no choice but to go along. You would know your murderer? It was Marcus Arrius Julianus.”

  It seemed to Parthenius that Domitian’s spirit fled in that instant, as if his reply had struck the death blow, not the Cyclops’ blade as it neatly cut the Emperor’s throat.

  Domitian did not feel the blade. For a little longer his mind went on knowing.

  Marcus, old friend, so you won the palm. You are the king, I, the fool. I suppose you’re exulting now that power was brought down by intelligence. Or perhaps by dumb patience. It must have taken you years, and the determination of a criminal madman, to seduce the Guard, my household, and my wife, and no doubt the Senate as well, then submit to torture to make certain your monstrous scheme did not come apart. Now that is hatred of epic proportions. And yet, once I had your regard, your precious, capricious regard…. What caused that manifold, mysterious intelligence to turn on me and kill me? If you think I understand, Marcus, know this—I do not.

  Do not imagine yours is a noble victory, Marcus. I die as Aristos died, slain by base trickery.

  Servilius broke in. With drawn sword, he rushed at the five men still crouched over Domitian. Stephanus had the ill fortune to be first within reach; Servilius dispatched him with one expert thrust to the heart. As Stephanus sank in death across Domitian’s body, Petronius’ Guards rushed in and wrestled Servilius to the floor.

  The remaining assassins—Clodianus, the Cyclops, Parthenius, and Satur—were men roughly awakened from one nightmare and pitched into another. Slowly they rose up on shivering legs and began edging away from the frightful disarray of limp arms, legs, and bloody toga that was Domitian. Praetorians rapidly filled the room. The four moved unmolested to the door while the soldiers watched in a grim silence tangled with conflicting passions—they could not help despising these men who had dirtied their hands, and felt faintly shamefaced at letting them go. Who lets a murderer with fresh blood on his hands simply walk away? At the same time they felt mean and ungrateful that they did not hoist these men on their shoulders and parade them about as heroes.

  The Guards in the anteroom shifted aside to let the assassins through. When the four reached the corridor, all broke into a run, two bolting east, two west. The furious staccato of their retreating footsteps was to the Guards a mocking, accusing sound: You let us go, fools, you let us go. Servilius struggled with fresh energy and cried out—“Have all of you been struck mad? After them!”

  To Domitian the shouting sounded like the cooing of pigeons. His many wounds were bruises—he could not feel them if he lay very still. Struggle trickled out of him and he felt a moist contentment creeping up slowly; tepid water encroached, embraced. He felt the impact of a wave-break of a sea of ghosts, heard whispering, felt affirming sea water rushing through his veins, gently disengaging his shade from his body, swiftly bearing him up; he imagined his consciousness flooded into the wise, watery mind of Minerva. With it came perceptions of such startling potency and drop-away depth that his whole life might have been held in a spring so clear he could see a hundred fathoms down.

  I was mad—and did not know it. I thought I lived my life traveling along in one firm direction—away from my beginnings where I felt less worthy than the slave-murderer condemned to the mines. But I was instead like the blindfolded donkey that turns the millstone, treading one path all my life and always thinking it new. I saw everything in life as one thing—I never knew life’s variousness. I see now my father and Marcus Julianus, watching me with one and the same pair of eyes, one piercing, damning gaze whose look gives the same raw bitter taste. Marcus, you said at the last I expected you to serve me and betray me. Well, of course. My father was first in that office, you but his successor. We are born tied up in cord and cursed few of us ever untangle ourselves. I was not one of the fortunate ones.

  From the beginning my jealous hatred was fear of the great cold. But there is no great cold. Why did I live so? I spent my life like one born wealthy who fritters away his fortune on empty revels.

  Domitian’s ghost felt the frenzy in the minds of the people rushing about, those small harried animals still trapped in tight, narrow skulls. He gloried in his new freedom, not fully realizing he was dead. And when he did know it, “dead” hardly meant what it had an hour ago.

  You poor insects scuttling about with such purposeful mindlessness, you set me free! You rush about for fifty years and more, evading in terror a thing that is not. You rear monuments to it, you worship it with your fear. I do not envy you who still possess life.

  Petronius bent over Domitian’s body, counting the wounds. Twenty-seven. As he struggled to remove the imperial ring, he felt a pious fright. Those dread hands would never write another edict altering lives in a village in Baetica, or set events in motion in cities along the Nile. The body that knew every pleasure life had to give would taste no more. The last son of the Flavian dynasty, bringers of peace to the whole world, authors of the Colosseum, was reduced to corrupting flesh and a collection of spare sentences in a history text.

  “You will roast in Hades for this!” Servilius shrieked at Petronius. “Traitorous, murdering swine!”

  Petronius rose, walked over to Servilius, and quietly met his gaze. “I’ll let that pass as momentary folly, Servilius. Calm yourself. Do not force me to order thirty lashes.”

  “No,” Servilius rasped, shaking his head. “You cannot still be—” He meant to finish by saying, “Commander of the Guard,” but he stopped, finally perceiving he was part of a dangerously small minority. A staggering number of the Guard stood quietly at attention, ready for Petronius’ order.

  “Lucius Servilius, look at me,” Petronius said severely, putting a fist beneath Servilius’ chin and forcing him to lift his head. “I warn you one last time to silence. You are speaking treason. Whether they are murderers or not isn’t for you to say. It’s a matter for Emperor Nerva to decide.”

  “Emperor—who?”

  At last Servilius comprehended the enormity of the deed. If Nerva was already set in place, the better part of the Senate must have known of this. Petronius might have organized the Guard, but he had no influence over the upper aristocracy. And it was not in Senator Nerva’s nature to set such a thing in motion—all knew him as a man of no grand ambition. Who authored this great crime?

  All progressed, Servilius saw, like some tightly composed play. All knew their part. There was disorder, for certain—panicked servants ran through the halls, crying out in soul-shredding shouts, and fierce altercations continued among the Guards. But there was entirely too much order.

  Whoever planned this was a master. He knew precisely who to bring in, and who to leave out; all was timed with a musician’s precision. Civil war was neatly circumvented. The loyalists were swiftly surrounded and overcome, at the cost of but a single death, Stephanus’. The last of the Flavian dynasty was put out of the way with none to call it a crime.

  CHAPTER LXII

  WITHIN THE HOUR THE CITY KNEW. The poorer streets throbbed with the driving chant: “Death to the tyrant! Long live freedom!” The people massed about the Senate House had a better understanding of the succession of events; these raised torches aloft and cried out— “Long live Emperor Nerva!” It was as though the news had come by post that a great war had been won. Spiced wine ran in the streets. Houses were garlanded. Wine-flushed faces gleamed in the heat as citizens embraced strangers. The people clustered around the temples of Juno and Fortuna, tugging along a sheep or goat for a thanksgiving sacrifice. Before the Temple of Minerva, renegade musicians began to play; the gallop of their drums could be heard beyond the river—it was anarchy’s insistent voice, pulling in every mind with its loose, careless rhythm.

  Within the Palace, Petronius took matters in hand, ordering everyone from the bedchamber except for Domitian’s childhood nurse, an aged Greek slave named Phyllis, the only person near to Domitian who cared t
o claim the body for burial. Petronius had already sent one messenger to the Senate to report that Domitian was dead; he now sent another to inform them of the feeling among the Guard. Then a Senate messenger was dispatched to him, bearing the alarming news that Nerva was missing.

  Petronius knew the Guard must not learn of this; in order to settle matters decisively, he had already had his men take their oath to the new emperor. Curses on this day, he thought. They had to find Nerva quickly—otherwise city and Guard would be like oil awaiting the torch. They needed a ruler. Had Nerva fled in fright at the last moment, deciding on retirement after all? Petronius gave another brief speech to his men, declaring Nerva had been sighted on his way to the Curia, then repaired quickly to the prisons. It occurred to him that Julianus might have some better notion of what had become of their misplaced Emperor.

  The Guard’s Commander found Julianus still in chains in the interrogation room. One of Petronius’ first orders had been for Julianus’ release, but in the general confusion it had not been carried out. Petronius stifled a cry of despair at the sight of him, thinking, the death-count will have to be put at two—surely this man’s beyond any physician’s help.

  Petronius pressed wine on him, then assured Julianus when he thought him able to comprehend, “The tyrant has breathed his last. After the gods, we’ve you to thank for it.” The Guard’s Commander was not surprised this brought faint response from a man more dead than alive. But he was baffled by Julianus’ first coherent question—he wanted only to know if anyone had claimed the body of the woman Aurinia.

  “What? Who?” Petronius exclaimed. “How am I to know? You speak of the barbarian woman? But—she is alive. She was not even grievously wounded, they say.”

  Petronius saw no shift in the barren look in Julianus’ eyes.

  “Come, let me prove it!” Petronius said then, anxious to give reassurance because the matter seemed to trouble Julianus greatly. With the aid of two prison guards Petronius helped him stand; then they walked with him to the guard room a half-floor above. Petronius bid Julianus look out a window, in the direction of the Aventine Hill.

  In the fierce sunlight at first Julianus saw nothing but an accumulation of red tile roofs broken by bouquets of green, and saffron haze mingled with sluggish cooking-smoke. Beyond the roof of the Palace kitchens, in the direction of the Circus, he discerned barely the white wall of the side of a small Temple of Hercules; on it, for two years now, devotees of Aristos had painted and stubbornly repainted the words Aristos Rex. Gradually he realized something new was painted there.

  The words Aurinia Regina were written on the wall in tall, graceful red script.

  “She lives!” His exclamation was soft, private. A potent mix of feelings welled up in him—vaulting exultation, pride in her, a sense of limitless solace. He felt he had taken an Olympian draught—his own pain shrank to insignificance. Sunlight seemed to live in everything, the darkened doorways, the sagging shops, the proud rooftops. All seemed harmonious, gentle and right.

  Auriane, how you have done it the gods alone know. You fulfilled your vow. You had no chance, yet you prevailed. Impossible creature!

  Petronius was awkwardly silent, not understanding what this was about. He made Julianus take another draught of wine, then went on urgently, “We’ve got a ticklish difficulty before us, good sir. Nerva cannot be found. Do you think he’d turn from us at the last?”

  Julianus looked fully at Petronius then, eyes keen and focused. “Absolutely not. My guess is he set out exactly when he was supposed to, at the eighth hour, and got ensnared in the mob in the Via Sacra.”

  “Wonderful. That crowd won’t thin out until tomorrow. Every man of the City Cohorts is already in the streets—they can do no more.”

  “We must somehow draw them off from about the Curia,” Julianus said, and Petronius found himself relieved by the return of that durable confidence. “What, other than earthquake or threat of fire, would…I have it!—the woman Aurinia. Their curiosity of the moment. She killed Aristos, and I’ll wager they haven’t yet tired of gaping at her. Petronius, send someone you trust to the Ludus Magnus and have them accompany her to a place where she can be seen—a second-story window so she’ll be safe. Tell the people that…that she will make a prophecy for the new reign. Yes. And Petronius, make certain she knows the request comes from me—and tell her I am well. It is our one chance.”

  Petronius slowly grinned. “It doesn’t say much for the intelligence of the mob—but what does? Let us try it.”

  Nerva hauled himself from his crevice and dazedly looked about. His litter had been set alight, and what the fire had not burned had been vandalized—its poles had been broken off for use as weapons; cushions and documents spilled out onto the street. One of his Cappadocians lay dead on the cobblestones, run through by one of the poles; the rest had fled. His toga looked like it had been used to scour the street. But the crowd, for some unknown reason, was slowly receding, leaving overturned carts, mountains of broken wares, and himself among the wreckage in its wake. Who, or what, had inspired them to move on? he considered in brief bewilderment. Then he hastened to take advantage of the situation.

  His vision blurred; his stomach lurched. But he knew from the mob’s cries that Domitian was dead. He must hurry. He loosened his toga and threw a portion of it over his head to conceal himself—he was ashamed to let these people who cried his name in adoration see him skulking about looking like a rag-picker. Then he rummaged about in the wreckage of his litter and, to his great relief, found the copy of the speech he was to make to the Senate. Miraculously, it was still legible.

  He wondered if he should stop at a street fountain to wash the mud out of his hair. No—he could not risk taking the time. He would have to hope his colleagues maintained their sense of humor.

  Perhaps I’ll start a fashion. Young fops will take to slapping mud on their hair before sauntering out to their night’s revels. Odder customs have begun over less.

  All that night and through the next day the victory-fest careened on. In every street and in the forums the people set up ladders, brought rope, and pulled down Domitian’s many golden statues, and all the votive shields engraved with his likeness. Where they found his name chiseled into monuments, they defaced them with hammers. The people took one imperial statue graced with a particularly smug expression and used it in a playful mockery of a triumphal procession—dressing it in rags, they set it facing backward in a debris cart drawn by four asses harnessed abreast, then paraded it down the Via Sacra while the people pelted it with filth.

  On the eve of the second day a herald appeared on the steps of the Curia to inform them of the acts of the Senate since Domitian’s death. Once Nerva was safely proclaimed, the Senators unleashed their fury on Domitian. First they handed down the damnatio memoriae—Domitian’s memory was officially damned for all the ages. His name was not to appear on documents of state, and was to be erased from public buildings all over the Empire. Statues erected to him in the forums of every city, from Britannia to Egypt, were to be taken down. All the acts and laws of his reign were abolished. The month he renamed “Domitianus” became “October” once more. Senate and people would carry on as though he had never lived.

  When Nerva delivered his first speech as Emperor, he pledged that the time of bloody tyrants was done; in his reign no Senator would be put to death. All property seized by Domitian would be returned; the men and women he sent into exile would be brought home. An amnesty was declared and the prisons were thrown open. Nerva promised to impose no laws without first consulting the Senators. And he would permit no one in the Empire to deify him while he lived—not even foreign kings would be made to address him as Lord and God.

  For many, this peacefulness would last all their lives. Domitia Longina lived on happily for another thirty years in her quarter of the Flavian Palace, immersed in books and literary friends. She never married again—though she quietly took a succession of younger and younger lovers, plucked from the
pantomime stage and theater dressing rooms. She never fully lost her adoration of this freedom that for so long seemed impossible. Carinus when he reached the ripe age of twenty-five became her chief chamberlain. Veiento was never punished for his long career of prosecuting the innocent, and Nerva was criticized in his case for not being harsh enough. But the people were gratified that at least the notorious informer was driven from public life. He dared not linger in Rome, however, for fear of being set upon by the relations of his victims, and within the month he slunk off to his villa in Praeneste, where he lived on for a time in obscurity and disgrace.

  On the day following the assassination, Junilla boarded up her great house on the Viminal Hill, locked her jewelry in strongboxes, sent her slaves to her villas at Terracina and Baiae, donned pitiful rags, and then made a determined attempt to join the Christiani. She did this more from fear of Julianus’ vengeance than from a true attraction to the esoteric new mystery cult. She knew that, because of past persecutions, the shy, secretive Christiani had knowledge of places of concealment unknown to the City Cohorts, where she hoped she might escape Julianus’ wrath. But matters became tense when Martha, the proud, grim freedwoman who was their leader, learned Junilla had arranged a predawn tryst with the Cyclops in the back of the abandoned government grain storage tower that served as the sect’s current meeting place. When it also came out that Junilla had lied and not given away all her worldly possessions, but only cleverly hid them from sight, the Christiani drove her out, fearing she was sent to spy on them.

  But by that time she feared Marcus Julianus no more, for he had departed the city with great honor. Junilla observed it all with amazement and disdain. He was higher than anyone in the Emperor’s esteem and could have persecuted her in any way he pleased, but never once did he seek to make a move against her. Not only did he seem to forget or forgive all she had done to him; he also spurned the greatest offices the Emperor could bestow. The man, as ever, was a fool.