B007IIXYQY EBOK (137 page)

If the ghost of Baldemar had appeared before him demanding wergild he could not have felt greater dread. He knew this whole barrack block was cordoned off always—there was no way Auriane could have stolen in to do these things.

Aristos demanded and got new quarters.

You have your wish, then, you she-demon, you spawn of guest-murderers. I shall cut you up into pieces small enough to feed to Junilla’s pet carp.

The following night, over mutton stew, he listened with sharp interest while Meton complained loudly to a fellow trainer about the annual games of August, held to celebrate the birthday of one of their most illustrious heroes, a man he sometimes heard called Octavian, at others Augustus, a warrior of old who won a victory in a great sea battle over a foreign queen called Cleopatra and her scheming lover, Marcus Antonius.

“The first day is utterly wasted,” Meton was saying with a world-weary shake of his head. “Those mock naval battles show no skill, they’re just a lot of carnage with newcomers. And then there’s that foolish business the next day when the fighters are disguised and the people are supposed to guess who they are—who cares?
And they want volunteers of status! What man who’s made a name for himself is going to volunteer not to be recognized? Whoever hatched this notion should be arranging shows in Pannonia.”

After asking several careful questions, Aristos learned that all the contestants that day would be masked and robed as celebrated or notorious personages of history; the final exhibition was a pairing of Cleopatra and her ill-fated Marcus Antonius. He learned that a similar show had been staged in the days of Titus, when Cleopatra’s costume was worn by a man of slight stature.

Aristos thought, if this plan I’ve just conceived bears fruit, I wager our new Cleopatra will be of a more appropriate sex. This is the gift of Wodan, given me because I no longer make war upon the runes. If everyone believes our identities are unknown, even to each other, until the last when we are face to face before the mob and it is too late, how can I lose status by fighting that miserable woman?

And so Aristos volunteered at once to be costumed as Marcus Antonius. The secretary of Plancius, the magistrate responsible for this show, could scarcely believe his luck when he realized what a prize fish had swum into his net. Plancius’ games would be remembered forever, and his master would surely give him some rich gift when he learned of this. Aristos threatened the secretary with a slow and unpleasant death if he broke silence about this to any official of the
Ludus Magnus.

Then Aristos sent round his henchman called the Acrobat with a message for Auriane. As she struggled through the idlers that gathered as she left the practice ring, the Acrobat approached with mincing walk, then inserted himself in front of her in his gaudy tunic, half red, half blue; all the while he juggled balls of colored glass to disguise his purpose. Fish sauce and garlic were heavy on his breath as he leaned close.

“Antonius desires to meet Cleopatra,” he said with a false lilt, as if he spoke lines in a drama, “to teach her a lesson she’ll not live to remember. That is, if this trembling ewe before me has the mettle to play the part of a queen.”

The Acrobat was disconcerted by the look of triumph that slowly came into Auriane’s eyes. Aristos is right, he thought; Mars coupled with a Fury to beget this creature.

Auriane replied, her smile amused, “Tell him Cleopatra trembles with gladness that he wishes to see her…and she eagerly awaits the day.”

That night Sunia and Auriane embraced each other, laughing. “We have won it!” Auriane exclaimed. “The monster has gobbled up the bait.”

“Thank all the gods for that,” Sunia said, falling wearily onto the bedcushion. “Nothing could force me to go back into his stinking cell again. I’ve got pig’s blood under my nails and splinters in my hands from his wooden spear, and one of those beef-witted guards poked me with his sword. I think he thought I looked a little too tall to be one of the cleaning boys.”

“It was well done, Sunia, and bravely done.”

“Fria is with us, who can doubt it.”

“Until Erato finds out. I’m hoping he’ll discover it too late. If this Plancius wants it to be, he won’t be inclined to let Erato interfere.”

“Who is Cleopatra?”

“Some woman-chieftain of a people whose name I cannot remember who lost a war to them in the time of their great-great-grandfathers.”

“Auriane, you should not dress as someone who lost a war—it will bring ill luck.”

“The man whose mask Odberht will wear also lost. We cannot both
be unlucky. Our freedom comes, Sunia. May Athelinda know it wherever she might be, and the ghosts of our people. On the third day after the Ides, in the month of
Augustus,
I avenge Baldemar and all our dead.”

Carinus heaved himself away from his noisily slumbering Lord and God, slid off the silk-swathed bed, then slunk soundlessly from Domitian’s octagonal bedchamber. He fled down a flight of steps gauzily illumined by a light-well, then leapt over the reflecting pool of mosaic glass at the bottom, one hand firmly on the precious prize freshly plucked from beneath the imperial bedclothes—a stack of thin sheaves of linden wood he had tucked into his tunic—and darted into a dark passage used only by guards. This was the quick, safe way to Domitia Longina’s quarters; better than anyone, he knew his way about this maze of resplendent public and private rooms that was Domitian’s newly completed Palace. When he was nearly safe at her door, a gold-helmeted Praetorian reached out and snared him.

“It’s the imperial gelding!” He hoisted Carinus up by his tunic. “Someone’s hurt his feelings. Come here, Peach-Face, I’ll make it better. What are you hiding in there?”

Carinus panicked.
If he sees what I have here, all of us die.
He bit down hard on the hand that held him. The guard cursed, then tossed him off, laughing, as if at a bad-tempered puppy. The marble-sheathed halls reverberated with aggressive guard-laughter.

Domitia Longina’s maid Arsinoe admitted him to the Empress’s apartments. Once safely inside, he felt himself a hero, like Prometheus or Hercules—
as
long as Domitian does not awaken.
It will be well, he reassured himself.
It would take a herald’s trumpet in the ear to rouse my lord from that dense sleep he falls into after he’s taken his pleasure of me
.

Carinus’ panic was eased by the thought of how proud of him Marcus Julianus would be.

“Carinus!
Dearest dear, come. What have you there?” Domitia Longina’s voice, silvery, frayed with anxiety, rang out from her writing room; he heard in it that languor that signaled she had taken her tonic already. That was good. She would be less alarmed.

He pulled out the sheaves of linden and laid them before her.

“The list, dear Mother—it exists, just as Marcus Julianus always insisted it did. My lord had it hidden on himself, that’s why I’ve never found it. There it was, tucked into his underclothes, nearer to his privy parts than any willing
person would choose to be.” Without waiting for her response he wriggled onto her lap and clung to her, nuzzling one ample breast as though seized suddenly by a blissful memory of being a suckling.

“Have you lost all your wits?” Her body heaved; he was a small craft on an unpredictable sea. “Straw-for-brains! Do you know a cabbage from a herring? Why did you take this?”

Carinus was pitched sprawling to the floor. He looked up at her, mute and amazed; Domitia Longina had never spoken a harsh word to him. The hurt began, poignant as if someone dripped lemon juice on a raw wound.

“He said to
read and remember,
not
take
it. You lackwit! You’re so starved for a sweetmeat you’ve nearly cut the thread by which we’re all suspended!” She was silent a moment, brow furrowed, focusing nearsighted eyes on Domitian’s spidery scrawl.

“We are done! Nerva’s to be prosecuted on the day after the Kalends. Oh, foul life, why are we not asked if we choose to be born. Now put it back at once.
Make certain he’s snoring, or don’t do it. Go!”

Domitia Longina began to pace with heavy, swaying steps. Carinus edged for the door clutching his unwanted prize; tears stung his eyes. He listened for a time as she spoke to herself, while his stomach felt weighted with lead.

“I am a dead woman!” she said to the tapestried walls, the busts of poets on their pedestals. “This is the second
time he’s marked for death the man Julianus chose as successor. He knows what Julianus is doing and he’s playing with him. One of the conspirators is an informer. Any hour now I’ll be arrested. Will it be the block, or will he let me take my own life?”

“My lady, it could be coincidence,” Carinus whispered. “He’s prosecuting everyone.”

“Charon take you. Why are you still here!” She threw her inkpot at him. Carinus shrieked and ran out, splattered with black.

Domitia Longina sat down, her mind wrestling off the shrouds of opium until she felt reasonably free of all that fuzzy comfort, and could think and plan.

How to warn Julianus?
He must be told at once. I dare not send one of my own maids. Who then shall I send? Eumenes, the bookfinder of the Palace library. Yes, he’ll do. That Hermetic text from Alexandria I sent Julianus last month—I’ve got two copies; I’ll send him another with my message coded in the middle. The fact that I’ve already given him that book should at once alert him that something is very wrong.

But perhaps he knows already. Perhaps even now Veiento’s agents are torturing him, prying from him all the conspirators’ names.

Domitia Longina’s warning was brought to Julianus’ great-house in early evening. He sent out messengers at once, intending to call a meeting of the chief conspirators. They collected at staggered times at Violentilla’s mansion on the Caelian Hill. While he muttered praises of Carinus’ courage and Domitia Longina’s quick action, at the same time he cursed the betrayal of Venus—for this was the very night Erato was to send Auriane to Violentilla’s house.

As he climbed the Caelian, stepping on crushed lupines and dung, dodging troupes of satyrs and nymphs as the people celebrated the festival of Flora, he swiftly deliberated. Of course she could not now be brought to this place, and good sense told him to give it up altogether and arrange for another night. But how many nights had they left to them? And what if he were arrested before this month was done?

Sensing suddenly he was being watched, he looked to the pendant moon just above his destination. It was nearly full, seeming conspiratorial and wise as it tracked him, marking this night, mocking him for thinking himself an independent being able to move apart from the deep, blind pulse of life. That moon was a she-demon of the fertile damps, mothering, merciless at once, impatient with reason, infinitely patient with the abyss. Its call was silent but wild and disorienting. He knew then he was falling prey to archaic forces beyond frail knowing, and a sudden, errant curiosity caused him to refuse to struggle against them. He thought of the now-moldering earth religion of his people in the time before time and wondered, are the old gods rendered powerless when people cease to believe in them? Auriane then seemed priestess as well as lover, beckoning him to a ritual old as mankind’s first sowing of seedlings into the ground—the shadowy rite of the Sacred Marriage, which arcane texts asserted was once celebrated by his own people. He thought of old King Numa, proud in his kingdom of mud and thatch, who wedded Egeria, goddess and nymph, so he could learn wisdom, and remembered that Isodorus had taught that the bridegroom was later ritually sent to the next world so that he might have life everlasting.

If there is death in her love, death to all this cramped, regimented, soul-dead life, it is a death philosophers praise. To see her is not so much a risk as a prayer, an offering on the grassy altar of natural life.
I will see her.

By the time he arrived at Violentilla’s he was firm in his choice, and he sent word to Erato that Auriane was to be conducted to his own house instead. All will be well, he assured himself. She will arrive after nightfall, dressed as a reveler in a hairy calfskin cape and goat mask, with guards, also disguised, who will be selected by Harpocras—surely none will pay them any mind.

The conspirators met in one of Violentilla’s cellar rooms. In addition to Julianus and Nerva, there were three Senators of great influence who had held every office, men who had been with him from the first, and a Centurion of the Guard possessed of phenomenal memory, able to recite all the guard postings through the month, as well as Domitian’s Chief Chamberlain, Parthenius, who was more familiar than any man with the Emperor’s daily habits. Marcus Julianus listened while they argued dispiritedly over various schemes to save Nerva’s life, planning to withhold his own offering until last—for it was a desperate measure. Most of the proposals involved carrying out the assassination at once, but none overcame the fact that they still had not won a safe portion of the Guard to their cause, or that Domitian would be cloistered at the Alban villa for the next eight days with the Guard’s most fanatic loyalist, a Centurion called Servilius, while they framed charges and shot elk and antelope in the Emperor’s hunting gardens. Julianus became uncomfortably aware of the passage of time; the sun had fallen, and by now that designing moon would have moved far in the sky. Auriane must have arrived at his house. She would be disconcerted and alarmed to learn he was not there.