Empire (71 page)

“As was my father.”

“Yes. Your father performed auguries for both the Divine Claudius and for Nero. But before that, your grandfather was known to Tiberius, and to Claudius, and even to the Divine Augustus.”

Lucius’s father had spoken little of his own father, whose exile to Alexandria he considered a chapter of the family’s history better forgotten. “I know that my grandfather was a friend of his cousin Claudius. And I
know he ran afoul of Tiberius, who banished him from Roma. But that had nothing to do with augury, or with lightning. It’s my understanding that my grandfather’s troubles stemmed from dabbling in astrology at a time when Tiberius was banning all astrologers.”

“Yes, that’s correct. But before that, when the Divine Augustus was still alive, he called upon your father to interpret a lightning strike which occurred in the old imperial palace. Did your grandfather never tell you the story?”

“I never knew my grandfather, and my father never mentioned such a story.”

“Amazing, how families fail to pass on the most interesting tales about themselves! Yet I assure you, in his private journal, Tiberius gives all the pertinent details. There was a lighting strike. Augustus called upon your grandfather to interpret the omen. Your grandfather told Augustus that the strike meant he had exactly one hundred days to live. And when the hundredth day arrived, Augustus died.”

“This has the ring of a legend.”

“Tiberius recounts it as a fact, and Domitian accepts it as such.”

“Again I ask, what has this to do with me?”

“Just as the Divine Augustus was convinced, correctly, that your father was the man to interpret that lightning strike, so our Caesar has become convinced that you, the grandson of Lucius Pinarius, are the man who can determine the significance of this current plague of lightning. Why else have the gods inspired Caesar to spare your life when he had every reason to snuff it out, not once but twice? Caesar now sees that you were fated for this task.”

Lucius was about to dismiss the idea as nonsense, then realized that Flavia must have known that this was the reason Domitian was summoning him to the palace. Catullus was offering Lucius a means to enter the emperor’s presence and perhaps even to gain his confidence. How could such a charade lead to the result that he and Flavia mutually desired? That he could not foresee, but he knew that Flavia would want him to cooperate with Catullus.

“You realize that I’m not an augur, like my father and grandfather?” he said.

“Yes. But your father actively practiced the science for Nero while you were growing up. You must have learned something about it simply from observing him.”

Just enough, Lucius thought, to perform a mock augury himself, if he had to, without looking completely foolish. “Yes, I saw the ritual performed many times. I know how it’s done.”

“And your father must have confided certain secrets of the science to you—the tricks of his trade?”

“As a matter of fact, he did. He liked talking about augury. I suppose he had hopes that I would follow his example one day and become an augur myself.” Lucius recalled the last time he had seen his father. On the day Titus Pinarius left the house to join Nero on his final flight, he took his second-best lituus with him, and left the family heirloom, the beautiful old ivory lituus of their ancestors, for Lucius, who had hardly looked at it since that day and had done nothing to pursue the study of augury. The old lituus was still in his possession, kept in a chest of keepsakes in the vestibule of his house, just under the niche that held the wax mask of his father.

“Caesar wishes you to take the auspices,” said Catullus. “He wants you to observe the skies for lightning and to give him your interpretation, not as a member of the college of augurs but as the grandson and namesake of Lucius Pinarius.”

“Here? Now?”

“Why not? The day is stormy, with no lack of lightning.”

“This seems most irregular. Isn’t Caesar’s German soothsayer already at work to interpret the lightning?”

“Caesar will listen to both of you, and compare your findings. Will you do this or not?”

“What if I refuse?”

“That is not the answer I’m looking for.”

Lucius took a deep breath. “I’ll do what Caesar asks.”

Without an assistant to guide him, using only his staff, the blind man led Lucius across the small, sodden garden and then through a series of hallways. Their destination was a gravel courtyard surrounded by a low portico. Lucius recognized the Auguratorium; he had seen his father take the auspices in this place, which had once been situated outside the imperial
palace but was now completely enclosed within the House of the Flavians.

Under a nearby portico, shielded from the drizzling rain and surrounded by courtiers, sat Domitian, who looked up at their arrival. Lucius suddenly felt unsure of himself. To perform a religious travesty for a man he wanted dead, Lucius could hardly look to the Teacher for inspiration.

To stall for time, he told Catullus that he would need the lituus of his ancestors.

“Surely any lituus will do,” said Catullus.

“No, it must be the ivory lituus I keep with my father’s things. I’ll have to go home and get it.”

“No, you’ll stay right here. Someone will fetch it for you.”

A nearby courtier, overhearing, stepped forward. He was a middle-aged man with bristling eyebrows and a neatly trimmed beard. “I’ll go for it,” the man said.

“Very well, Stephanus,” said Catullus. Lucius’s ears pricked up at the name. “Pinarius will tell you where to find it while I explain the delay to Caesar.”

As soon Catullus was out of earshot, Lucius whispered, “I heard your name spoken earlier today, before I came here.”

Stephanus nodded. “Ten days hence,” he said quietly, barely moving his lips.

Lucius wrinkled his brow. What was the man talking about?

“Ten days hence,” Stephanus repeated. “Fourteen days before the Kalends of Domitianus, at the fifth hour of the day. Can you remember that?”

Lucius stared at him blankly for a moment, then nodded. “Yes,” he said, in a normal tone of voice. “I keep it in an antique chest in the vestibule, just under the wax mask of my father. You can’t mistake it—a beautiful old thing, made of solid ivory. My freedman Hilarion will help you find it.”

“Then I’m off,” said Stephanus. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

Domitian was not pleased by the delay. He strummed his fingers against the arms of his chair. He tapped his foot nervously. He glared at Lucius. He muttered something to Catullus.

Catullus shook his head. “Dominus, surely it would be better to wait until after—”

“Fetch him now!” said Domitian. “And take Pinarius elsewhere, until he’s ready for the augury.”

As Lucius was led away, he passed a man wearing such an outlandish costume that he looked like a parody of a German, with a huge mane of red hair and a bristling red beard, fur boots on his feet, tanned leggings, and a tightly laced leather vest that left bare much of his broad, hairy chest. His bare arms were decorated with bracelets that were fashioned as coiling dragons and covered with runes.

Lucius was shown to a small waiting room and left alone. He spied a grated window high in one wall. He stood on a chair. If he peered to one side, looking down the length of the portico, he could see most of the imperial party, including Domitian, and he could hear everything that was said.

Catullus spoke to a translator. “You will tell Eberwig that Caesar is ready for him to deliver his report.”

The translator spoke to Eberwig. The German replied to the translator at length.

Domitian leaned forward impatiently. “What is he saying?”

The translator looked uneasy. “He says, if he should deliver news to Caesar which displeases Caesar, what will become of him?”

“Tell him to speak,” said Domitian. “As long as he tells the truth, he’ll receive his reward and remain unharmed. But if he doesn’t speak at once, I’ll have him strangled.”

The translator and Eberwig conferred at length. At last the translator addressed Domitian in a quavering voice. “Dominus, the soothsayer declares that he has examined all the evidence of the lightning strikes most scrupulously and he is convinced that he has reached a correct interpretation. He says that the frequency and location of the strikes foretell an imminent change at the very highest level of power. He says that this can only mean . . . yourself.”

“Speak clearly.”

“He says that very soon there will be a new emperor in Roma.”

Domitian sat back, nervously picking at something on his forehead. “When?”

“He cannot say exactly. But very soon.”

“A matter of months?”

The translator questioned Eberwig. “Not months, Dominus. Days.”

There was a flash of lightning, followed by thunder.

“Take him away,” said Domitian.

Eberwig protested. The translator cleared his throat. “He says, what of his reward?”

“If his prophecy comes true, let him seek his payment from my successor!” snapped Domitian. “Now take him away and keep him under close guard.”

An uneasy silence followed. Eventually Stephanus appeared, slightly out of breath from running. Lucius was brought back to the courtyard. Stephanus stepped forward and handed him the lituus.

There could be no more delaying. Lucius took a deep breath. He looked at the lituus in his hands. He had not touched it in many years. What a lovely thing it was, with all its intricate carvings of birds and beasts!

As he had seen his father do many times when he was a boy, Lucius gazed up at the skies and marked out a zone for his augury. The sky was cooperative: almost at once a flash of lightning rent the dark clouds to the north, and then another. Lucius waited awhile longer and was rewarded by a third flash of lightning, so close that it illuminated the whole courtyard with a spectral blue light. It was followed by a tremendous clap of thunder that made everyone jump except Lucius, whose thoughts were focused entirely on what he was about to say.

He turned and faced Domitian. “The augury is done, Dominus.”

“So quickly?”

“The signs are unmistakable.”

“And?”

“There is to be a great change. A change so great it will affect the whole world. The change will be sudden, not gradual. It will happen in a single moment—like a thunderclap.”

“When?”

“The signs are very clear about that—unusually so. By counting the branches of all three strikes and observing their relationship to the main trunks of lightning, an exact number of days and hours from this moment can be calculated. The event will take place—”

“Not out loud, you fool!” snapped Domitian. “Whisper it in my ear.”

Lucius approached the emperor. He had never been so close to the man before. He was close enough to smell his breath, and to know that he
had eaten onions recently. He was close enough to see a black hair that grew out of one nostril, and a wart on the man’s forehead. He was close enough to kill him, if he’d had a weapon. He fought back the revulsion he felt and spoke in Domitian’s ear.

“Exactly ten days hence, during the fifth hour of the day.”

Domitian calculated the date. “Fourteen days before the Kalends, in the hour before noon. You’re certain?”

“Absolutely.”

Domitian gripped Lucius’s wrist, squeezing it painfully hard. “You will return here on that day, Lucius Pinarius. You will be with me during that hour. If your prediction is false—if you’re playing some trick on me—I’ll see you strangled at my feet. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Dominus.”

“You will speak of this to no one.”

“As you wish, Dominus.”

Domitian released him. The emperor sat back, nervously picking at the wart on his forehead with one hand and making a curt gesture of dismissal with the other. Guards escorted Lucius from the courtyard, through the palace, and all the way back to his house. One of the guards, he noticed, took up a post across the street from his door. His comings and goings were to be carefully watched, and no one could call on him without being observed. He could expect no further visits from Flavia Domitilla.

That night he wrote a coded letter to Apollonius, telling him of the day’s events—his summons to the palace, the nervous demeanor of Domitian, and the sham augury, which he described in detail. Where was Apollonius now? Nerva would know. When he was done, Lucius would dispatch Hilarion to take the letter to an intermediary who would take it to Nerva. They never communicated directly.

Lucius finished the letter with the customary closing of “Farewell,” and felt a chill as he wrote the word.

On the morning of the fourteenth day before the Kalends of Domitianus, the month previously known as October, Praetorian Guards arrived at the house of Lucius Pinarius.

Lucius was ready for them, dressed in his best toga. He had slept surprisingly well the night before. He rose at daybreak and wrote farewell letters to his old friends Dio and Epictetus, and even an affectionate message to Martial. Hilarion stood by, unsuspecting. Lucius had told him nothing about his visit to the palace; the less Hilarion knew, the better for him. What a dreary morning this would have been, had Hilarion suspected that Lucius would be dead before midday. Instead, Hilarion was in a cheerful mood, and kept exhorting him to eat something, unable to understand why Lucius had no appetite.