B007IIXYQY EBOK (148 page)

“He rolls it expertly now.”

“Good. And now to—” Julianus fell suddenly silent. He looked quickly at Senecio, who once again seemed to be talking to himself.

Committing our words to memory,
Julianus realized all at once.

Senecio met his eyes aggressively. But gradually, under Julianus’ questioning gaze, bravado gave way to terror; blood drained out of him and he seemed in the grip of a light palsy. Now everyone turned to Senecio, their faces showing slow comprehension, then outrage, and finally, animal terror.

When Julianus spoke, it was as if a trapdoor dropped open, releasing them into nether blackness.

“Senecio,” he said softly, “tell me, where do you intend to sell what you learn here tonight?”

From Nerva came a moan.

Senecio’s words of protest were never heard. The room seemed suddenly full of baying dogs. Apollonia, Herennius and Petronius began shouting at once as they lunged at Senecio, who fell heavily onto his back. Apollonia was on top of him, crying, “Murderer! Murderer of my mistress!”
while clawing at his face. Petronius hauled her off him as if she were a sack of grain.

With the casual ease of a professional, the Prefect of the Guard drew his sword. When Apollonia saw lamplight slithering down the blade, she shielded her eyes. Herennius whispered, “Finish the bastard. Like he would have finished us!”

Petronius drew back his arm, preparing to thrust the point through Senecio’s chest. Senecio shut his eyes tightly and spat a curse, refusing to beg for his life.

Julianus came up swiftly behind Petronius and seized his arms. They struggled for long moments while he tried to force Petronius’ sword arm down; Julianus felt he fought to subdue an unruly horse. Finally, unable to overpower him this way, he kicked Petronius in the back of the knee, and both men went down. The sword was driven deep into the wood of the floor; it stood upright, shuddering. Petronius attempted to snatch it but Julianus got it first and put the blade to Petronius’ throat.

“Have you gone mad,” Julianus said through heaving breaths. “Do this thing and we’ll be no better than what we replace.”

“How can you countenance a traitor!” Petronius managed through gasps for air.

Nerva spoke. A fine rage lent his voice the strength of a youth of twenty. “Sit
down,
Petronius, you rude, boorish lout. In my reign the charge of traitor shall be laid to rest, and no man shall ever be condemned unheard. And I will be obeyed,
you wild ass in soldier’s dress, or you can do your fine strutting in the festering swamps of Britannia as a soldier of the ranks.”

Julianus grinned. He had never heard Nerva truly roused. Until that moment he had had occasional doubts about Nerva’s willingness to behave imperiously when the situation demanded it.

Petronius slowly got up. Senecio struggled to a sitting position and stared vacantly at the wall.

Julianus did not wonder too long over the cause of Senecio’s betrayal. All who were party to the plot felt disordered in mind by the cruelly tightening tension, and Senecio, he guessed, had just stared too long into the pit of that coming unknown and decided to make a desperate bargain with the Fates, hoping they would spare him if he shoved his fellows over the edge.

“Put him under arrest,” Julianus instructed Petronius. “Matidia can give us rope until you bring shackles. We’ll put out a story he had to depart suddenly for his estates. We’ll keep him stowed in Matidia’s wine cellars until after the assassination.”

They resumed their seats. Apollonia had a savage, hopeless look in her eyes. Herennius stared at Senecio with the intense but empty look of the madman.

“When next we come together,” Julianus went on briskly, hoping to soothe them by bringing them back to the business at hand, “I’ll have three copies of Caenis’ letters; I want them read in the Senate when Nerva is affirmed….”

As he spoke on, one thought hung in the air like a charnelhouse stench—
how many others are ready to betray us?

Cleopas, First Physician of the
Ludus Magnus,
stood helplessly in the doorway of the accounts room while Erato stalked to and fro, bellowing. The physician felt trapped in a violent storm—he had no choice but to huddle under cover and pray it passed quickly.

“Is
this
how the little whelp repays all I’ve done for her?” Erato’s eyes bulged—to Cleopas, he had the petrified stare of a fish dying on a bank. “By breeding herself to my patron? How dare
she try and foist a litter on me behind my back! I ask you, is this a
nursery?
What in the name of Zeus am I supposed to do with a broodmare? Do you realize I am going to lose millions? Do you care? I want her brought!” He then gave one long, hoarse shout—“Guard!”

Four guards presented themselves and stood at attention behind the Cleopas. Erato said more quietly, “Fetch the woman Aurinia at once.” If she were given abortives tonight, by tomorrow the whole sorry mess might be put to rest, before some agent of Marcus Arrius Julianus’ got wind of it.

“Wait,” the physician Cleopas objected timorously, knowing that if he said nothing and the woman died, he would be blamed for it later. “My lord, if you are right about…the day she conceived, she very well might be too far gone. It is too dangerous.”

“What?
And let her
have
it? Maybe you think her devotees would pay to see her give birth in the arena. She’ll be useless for half a year!”

Cleopas ventured, “I beg you, consider. It’s a thing fraught with perils, done late or
soon. Might I remind you the Emperor’s own niece died trying to empty her womb, and she had the best of physicians. It’s safer, really, to let her have it. Remember this is not a normal woman but a woman who is part ox, part wildcat. She is in the peak of condition. She has the endurance of a trained racehorse. Childbirth won’t be much different for her than cat-birth. You will lose her forever, not just for a few months, if you do this thing. And perhaps you won’t be deprived of her as long as you think.”

“She can still fight?”

“She
has
been. And probably can continue to, for two months more.”

Erato looked at the First Physician with a stupefied expression as, slowly, he absorbed this. Perhaps Cleopas was right.

“Cat-birth, you say?” he muttered softly. What did he know of such things? He had never been confronted with such a predicament. If the physicians took Auriane off right now, tonight, or perhaps tomorrow, she might die.

He stopped abruptly in his pacing, as if a chasm had opened before his feet. He had not the heart to peer into it. No, he thought. I cannot let…
my child
…die. Yes, that is truly what she has become. I have no child but Auriane.

The sentiment embarrassed him and added savagery to his scowl.

“I’m not saying I agree. But say, for the sake of argument, I do. Then what,
by the girdle of Nemesis, am I supposed to do
with it?”

Cleopas seemed mystified by the question.

“Expose it, of course.”

Erato put his hands to his head and cursed. Expose it, indeed, he thought. That’s easy for Cleopas to say—he doesn’t know who the father is. I
could
resign my position, get my old post back, and let somebody else lose his head over this.

Finally he said, “All of you, dismissed. I will think on this and tell you my answer tomorrow.”

On the following morning, the opening day of the Augustan Games, Erato came to the west yard to observe Auriane at practice. Auriane felt him watching her intently, a curiously sad expression on his face, and sensed at once that Erato knew.
She fought down terror.

But Erato said nothing to her that day on the matter, though she knew his mind was crowded with many words.

Fria, let him say and do nothing for the next four days! After that, I will either be dead or ready to flee this place.

Erato departed without a word, and she was left with a tangle of fears and troubles. The herb Sunia brought from the stalls settled her nausea, but still she struggled through days when she wanted only to sleep, though times when she felt she had sacks of stones tied to every limb. This must pass, she thought frantically; it did, last time. She counted and recounted the days, praying to Fria to restore her strength. It is time. Why does the weakness remain?

Later in that same day, Aristos met Rodan, and wood was exchanged for steel. Auriane and Sunia listened to the bout from the training yard. Aristos saw the odds set against him for the first time since he was brought to this place. Although Rodan had been retired, he was little past thirty; in his day he had sent five champions of Aristos’ rank to their graves and made himself immensely wealthy. Sunia found herself privately pleased. Aristos would be slain. Auriane would never fight him.

After a dread-filled wait during which Auriane and Sunia stood with indrawn breath, their nails digging into their hands, their ears battered senseless from the crowd’s thundering, the roars at last melted into one shapeless din.

Sunia shook her fists, demanding of the sky— “
Who lives
?”

Odberht has gone to the sky and taken our honor with him, Auriane thought. How swiftly I lose all hope when there’s equal likelihood of one outcome or the other!

After a cruel stretch of time came the cry—
“Aristos Rex!”

Sunia collapsed to the sand and cried. If Rodan cannot finish Aristos, no mortal can, she thought. Auriane doomed herself surely as if she gave herself to the spring sacrifice.

Auriane’s outrush of relief was muddied with a terror too disconcerting to fully acknowledge.

Part of me wanted what Sunia wants. I am not so ready to die. Can one portion of the heart betray while the rest stands firm?

That evening as the kitchen slaves washed down the dining tables and the guards herded their charges back to their cells, an odd tale circulated through the three halls. The Emperor had ordered Aristos to attend a public banquet at the Palace to celebrate his narrow victory. As Aristos swaggered through the street with his way-clearers, his retainers, and a small honor guard, he was set upon by assassins. He survived only because this honor guard carried concealed swords and mounted a vigorous, skilled resistance that caused some witnesses to claim the assault was expected. Common wisdom maintained the assassins were sent by Musonius Geta, in revenge for the murdered girl. But Geta stoutly denied it, and oddly, it was thought, Domitian believed him.

Auriane guessed the truth of it. “That was Marcus Julianus’ work and none other,” she insisted to Sunia. “Curses on Hel. He’s discovered the identities of Antonius and Cleopatra, the gods know how. You have your wish, Sunia. Our stratagem is finished.”

And so the plan Junilla presented to Veiento proved, to Veiento’s surprise, an unreserved success. Once the ground was prepared, Domitian embraced eagerly all Veiento told him: Julianus had lusted for the woman Aurinia from the start and had brazenly lied to him about the matter. Then the sly mountebank actually went on to enjoy the wench’s favors right under the trusting nose of his Lord and God.

Domitian took the news with deceptive calm, and Veiento feared at first the enchantment Julianus worked on the Emperor could not be broken. But all the next day Domitian meted out savage sentences to supplicants who appealed their cases to the Emperor: A forger convicted on the barest evidence was condemned to have his hands cut off and hung round his neck; a contractor who took bribes was roasted over a slow fire. Then on the following morning Domitian summoned Petronius.

The Guard’s Prefect was brought to a chamber so dimly lit that all Petronius could see of the Emperor was the smooth outline of the top of his skull, the gleam of multiple rings, the shimmer of the gold border of his toga. Later he supposed Domitian meant to conceal his face, lest anguish be too visible.

But the Emperor could not conceal his voice. That tone was so devoid of feeling Domitian might have called for an extra tunic against the cold. To Petronius, such indifference signified madness.

“I order you to arrest Marcus Arrius Julianus.”

Petronius believed the conspiracy exposed. With a mammoth effort of will he maintained an air of neutrality. Then he turned on his heel and departed to see the order carried out.

The six Praetorians were uncomfortable in the atrium of Julianus’ house. Ancestors’ spirits were thick in this place, staring from the lintels, living in the long-stored waxen death masks of forebears who walked the streets of Rome three centuries ago; they fought a reflexive need to incline their heads in reverence. This great-house turned them into simple country louts—or worse, barbarians sent to sack an ancient and venerable city. It was a solemn temple of the Muses, a citadel of knowledge that securely shut them out. And the man himself was no less unsettling—Julianus watched them with a calm curiosity that roused all their superstitions about philosophers. Perhaps it was true they possessed a superhuman ability to weather ill fortune, to solace the dying, and to conquer the passions of the mind.