B007IIXYQY EBOK (138 page)

And so he called to Anacreon, a trusted freedman and for years his most competent spy, a man who had grown rich from Julianus’ rewards for his reckless deeds, and sent him with a warning to Auriane that the moon might set before he managed his way back there.

On this night Anacreon’s luck was at an end. He was caught climbing a wall as he took a short route to save time, and the Vigiles who intercepted him turned him over to Veiento’s men, scenting that there might be money in it since they saw him come from Violentilla’s and they knew this noble widow was under suspicion. He was taken to the Palace and tortured on the rack, maintaining bravely to the last that he knew nothing of the secret associations of Violentilla.

When Marcus Julianus finally began to lay his own plan before the six grim-faced men, he did not know the message for Auriane hadn’t been delivered and that his good friend and servant was dead.

“If this is the best we can do,” he began, “I fear we are going to have to go forward with a rather extreme measure.” He turned to Nerva. “My friend, you must take poison.”

Nerva started from his misery. “This is your scheme to save me?”

“I speak of shamming mortal illness. Listen to me. In spite of how it looks, you, Nerva, because of your lineage, are one of the few men he still
would prefer not to prosecute if he can avoid it. You know how he lusts to be worshiped after his death with the same dedication that Augustus is worshiped, with temples and priests in far-flung places. My guess is that he’s long been confused about what to do with you. Letting you live shouts to everyone of his magnanimity and in his eyes nullifies the effects of his many murders, yet I suppose he has decided in the end that he cannot risk it. He knows that by blood, you’ve more of a right to rule than he does. We will let him think he can have it both ways. Why should he carry out a task himself that he believes nature is ready to carry out for him?

“We will make him believe you’re in the mortal stages of a deadly ague,” Julianus continued. “I’ve consulted Anaxagoras—he can concoct a draught that will mimic precisely its effects. He claims to have done this successfully at the court of the Parthian king. The draught will make your flesh livid and your hands palsied, but it won’t kill you, though you may pray it does. You must be secretive about this illness—it’s the best way to attract the attention of the gossips. Tomorrow, I recommend you send a man to retrieve your will from the temple of Vesta. I’ll make certain Veiento’s agents ‘accidentally’ discover this, and I’ll send round a legacy hunter or two to make it even more convincing—everyone knows they’ve finer senses than vultures for ferreting out the dying. And you must never walk anywhere—have yourself carried in a covered litter at all times. You probably won’t feel like moving about much anyway.”

“Wonderful.”

“And have a man discreetly in attendance who looks the part of physician.”

“I am too old for this playacting.”

“You for certain will not get any older if you don’t
do a little playacting.”

“It is no use. I think he suspects us all.”

“We do not really know what he knows,” Julianus said. “
He
does not know what he knows. It is foolish to roll over and die. We are the ones doing the will of the gods. If we act with vigor and certainty, surely our momentum will not let us fall into the pit.” He looked about from one taut face to another; the only movement was the serpent curl of smoke rising from one small lamp. “Come now, be of better cheer. This cannot be the end. He’s won every throw for too long. It is his turn to lose. Very soon now, we’ll need to set a day.”

“Without even one
Prefect with us?” asked Herennius, a Senator who was five years his junior; he watched Julianus with the bright pertness of a boy who has found a flaw in a schoolmaster’s logic.

“As of this morning, we’ve got one Prefect,” Julianus said quietly. “Petronius is with us.” This was met with happy astonishment. Nerva recovered himself first. He grinned, looking triumphantly at everyone in turn.

“And all of you doubted him! That is wonderful. And Petronius is the stronger of the two. Well done! Julianus, how in the name of all the gods did you do it?”

“Petronius owes his rank, even his life, to Titus, as you know. I told him the whole sorry tale of brother-murder, made the more compelling because I’ve since found that physician who carried out Domitian’s order—he was operating a wineshop in Baiae, dispensing a wretched beverage by the way. Before I finished presenting my case, I almost had to physically restrain Petronius from going out right then, seizing our Lord and God and packing
him
in a chest of ice. ‘Do not trouble yourself,’ I said, ‘that heart’s frozen already, it might have no effect.’ That, and one small lie. I said Norbanus is already with us.”

“You said
what
?”
Nerva said softly. Norbanus was Petronius’ colleague in the office of Prefect. “Was that
wise? What if he asks—”

“He won’t. He believed me. Anyway, they are not much in each other’s confidence. And in a short time, it will be true. Norbanus is of an irresolute nature and he’s intimidated by Petronius. When he hears we’ve seduced his colleague, he’ll not have the courage to hold out for long.”

“By the jowls of Cerberus, it sounds precarious,” Nerva said, vigorously shaking his head. “I hope to Nemesis you know what you’re about. I’ll play your game, then—have I a choice? Tell Anaxagoras to send round my poison. Tonight I drink to the monster’s death.”

CHAPTER LI

A
URIANE WAS MET IN THE VESTIBULE
of Julianus’ house by a bent, befuddled old man who seemed held together by his disdain.
Diocles
,
she heard a young maidservant call him as she stole close to replace Auriane’s heavy, mud-splattered sandals with silken slippers.

“I beg you, enter,” Diocles said in his musical whine. “This house is at your disposal.” But delicate distaste emanated from this man like a rancid perfume, and Auriane heard,
Enter, now that you’re here. But you should have come in by the kitchen entrance.
He coldly refused to meet her eyes but stole a caustic look at her the instant she turned away.
So this is the exotic and peculiar animal dragged home from the frozen wastes,
that look said,
over whom my master lost his good sense and his sense of taste.

Auriane felt a painful knot forming in her chest.
He behaves as though my very presence here is a grave breach of manners.
But perhaps this was just one ill-mannered man. She regarded him in a way that was proud and open, but not arrogant, then inclined her head slightly and thanked him, saying firmly to herself,
You are Baldemar’s daughter. If he thinks to humiliate you, then he
is the fool, not you.

Diocles said then that his master was not at home, and added vaguely that some summons had come from the Empress, but he seemed to feel no greater explanation was necessary. He motioned to two maidservants who stood at attention behind an oval pool that was an ominous black mirror in the lamplight, and gave Auriane over to their care.

As they conducted her silently through the atrium, she felt she entered a perilous kingdom with two malign spirits for guides. One walked ahead of her, the other behind, as though to cover her lest she reach out and topple some precious bust or urn. Though the two maidservants were much alike to her in their foreignness—both had luminous Asian eyes alive with sophisticated mischief, teeth like pearls against clear nut-brown skin, small strong hands that moved like darting fish, and arms encircled with heavy bands of silver that caught the light of the myriad lamps—she saw one clear difference between them. The one she judged the wiser of the two regarded her with worldly pity, while the other watched her dubiously, counting her some beast that could never be fully domesticated, like a wolf or ferret.

Auriane wondered, is this house overrun with ill-mannered people?

But soon she forgot them and surrendered to childlike amazement—she felt she explored the interior world of a man who must be at once sorcerer, demigod, and king. The room beyond the atrium was so grand that it might have held a throne. Its walls were lined with lofty sapphire-veined columns that seemed to support the heavens, and indeed there was some sort of high seat at its center where audiences could have been held. Then they passed through a sensuous mass of silken curtains of saffron, sea-blue, and olivine, and on into a series of rooms where wonders quickly became commonplace. She felt rather than saw all about her, for its strangeness and newness overwhelmed her perceptions. Lustrous surfaces were everywhere; every space was alive and crawling with decorative forms. It was as though the gods had taken all the chaos of nature and given it order. Reality oscillated with illusion; here, an extra room was only a wall painted to look like a receding space, and there, a bottomless pool was actually some magically reflective stone. And all was marvelously replicated: Gold-fretted ceilings were reflected in glassy floors; a stand of columns was doubled in a rectangle of water that ran the length of one room, and in another, softly modeled ghostly-white figures of goddesses and gods were multiplied many times in moonstone mirrors. She walked through forests of lamps that rose from the floor or were suspended from the ceiling. Marbles of every hue, cut into squares, triangles, or thin bands, had been cleverly set into the walls, and she realized that marble could be as brilliant and varied in color as paints; indeed whoever created this had painted in marble. In one chamber she sank into carpets as dense and yielding as moss; in another she hesitated before stepping onto a mosaic floor that seemed studded with gems—surely it was not meant to be trodden upon?—but when the maidservants did so with indifference she hesitantly followed after. Tall screens of thin horn and silvery silk broke up the rooms and made their pathway more confusing.

I am traveling into a magic mountain; all the treasures of the gods are heaped here.
Now and again a wall would disappear as they walked, to be replaced by lines of columns delicate as deer’s legs, and earthy, flowery scents would betray the presence of a darkened garden. Occasionally she would hear the splash of a leaping fish, and once the rush of a waterfall, but mostly the place lay under a spell of lush quiet—a precious possession in itself, in this city with its continuous din. Their route took them through a vast, carved-ivory cage alive with captive birds that seemed dripped accidentally with paint, odd little birds whose presence puzzled her, for they were too small to be much use as food. They crossed a stone bridge over a brook, frightening off a peacock, and beyond was a row of five chambers in which every wall was honeycombed with niches from ceiling to floor. Books, she realized, more than she ever imagined anyone would accumulate in one place. A grove of books, sacred, doubtless, to him, where his gods spoke their oracles through talking paper. Her soul shrank even more.

How many of the dead live again on these walls? He has spoken with every sage. While I know only the words of Ramis. Why would he not count me the most ignorant of women?

But gradually she realized that, in spite of this house’s opulence, this was a dwelling quite different from any she had seen in this city. This place alone seemed suffused with a gentle humanness, a peacefulness and harmony. Unlike the villa and garden of Domitian, which was built to overwhelm, this was a place of relief; she imagined all who lived here must feel the contentment of a stable heaped with fresh fodder. She thought it might be simply because his presence was abiding, because he had lived here so long, as Baldemar’s had been in his own hall. Or perhaps it was because she noticed after closer looking, signs of wear, indications of a man utterly at ease with and almost unconscious of immense wealth. Here was a claw-foot table that looked as though it had been the plaything of children, and there, a tapestry that needed reweaving. And the books, too, were tattered and used; a few spilled carelessly onto the floor. She sensed that wealth was just a useful thing for him, like an ox, meant for work that must be done, and not a means of making himself splendid in the eyes of others.

Her uneasiness began to creep back when she realized she had traveled so far into the labyrinth of rooms that she no longer knew the way out. A warrior’s wariness was roused. She would be trapped. Her steps slowed.

The more contemptuous of the two maidservants sighed, grasped Auriane’s wrist and jerked her forward as if her arm were a horse’s lead.

“Take your hand from me,” Auriane responded with quick indignation, pulling herself free. “How dare you.” Auriane’s look was full of questioning as well as hurt. The maidservant withdrew in mock terror, then smiled wickedly at her guest’s rudely accented Latin.

Why did they treat her so? Auriane knew a thing then that made her heart feel weighted with stones: The look Diocles gave her in the vestibule was familiar—it was the same look Erato had given her when she asked to be taken here, and it meant:
No, this is not a woman.

Had he, too,
decided, this is not a woman? Was that the true reason he was not here?

That is nonsense, and I am more than half mad. This house, this city, has cast a despairing spell on me
.