B007IIXYQY EBOK (120 page)

“There is a law against sending gold and silver across the frontier, and it is strictly enforced.”

“And yet we are certain this is being done—those who know have sworn by their own mothers, before the gods.”

He paused, realizing what Auriane said might well be true in this case. Aristos’ gifts to the Cheruscans, particularly if they were used to attack her tribe, would be so much in the interest of the Roman government that there was a fair chance Domitian’s parsimonious officials might look the other way. They would view it as rather like having someone else pay their bribes for them.

“Auriane, I cannot
accept this. Can you understand? It is like standing idly by while my mother, my child, is sent off to slaughter. It is monstrous. And how did you imagine you’d carry out the deed? Have you some plan to fall on him at dinner with a stolen dagger, then be slain at once by the guards?”

“That would not fulfill the requirements of the rite,” she replied with weary determination. “First, a declaration must be made, and he must acknowledge it. The battle must take place beneath the sun, preferably on an island in a stream, but any circular enclosure focuses the power of the gods. It must be carried out with honorable weapons of war. I am a prisoner and he is well guarded. So I see but one way to do it according to sacred law—in the arena.”

“Good, that’s the end of the matter, then. You’ve no notion of what you’re saying. You—and Aristos—matched together? Has the world been turned upon its head? No sane trainer, no giver of shows would allow it. Erato will forbid it. And even if Erato did allow it, Aristos’ faction would rise up in outrage—he would lose status. So you’ve no choice but to give in to reason.”

To his alarm, she hardly seemed to hear this.

“Your power is greater than any man’s….
You
could arrange it.”

“Madness!” he exclaimed softly. “Do you truly believe I would arrange your murder?”

“You are certain, then, I will die. You must not believe I am innocent.”

“Innocent?
What has that
to do with it? Of course I believe you are innocent. If innocence
is all that is needed to preserve life, why do newborn children commonly die? Do you not see, all about you, blameless people meeting hideous ends? By all the gods, I can listen to no more of this,” he exclaimed with anguished finality. “This is a man,
Auriane, who is twice your weight, who could cleave you down the middle with one blow. A man who has been over thirty times a victor. Not even the gods would assist such a foolhardy endeavor. And for this pathetic
madness you toss aside my plans. And do you really think Domitian has had done with you? If you stay here, he’ll kill you in some barbarous way, eventually. I’ve seen him behave this way before. He pretends to be indifferent to your fate, but he plays a part. I offer you freedom. You fling it off and choose slavery and degradation!”

He turned sharply from her, eyes brilliant with wrath; the heavy cloak flared, then settled about him again. “You will not move, I will not move. There is nothing to be gained by speaking of this more.” For long moments he remained in furious silence.

Auriane was very still, numbed with despair.

He despises me. I have lost him.

She felt she fell from a horse and knew the fright of the ground rushing up. She realized, amazed, that facing Aristos in the arena caused her less anxiety than being the object of this man’s wrath. But she was long used to forcing herself on despite panic and desolation.

“You will not help me,” she said, her voice frail. “Then I must find some other way.” She edged toward his back. Hesitantly, she took his shoulders in her hands. His body was wooden and without feeling. She said, her voice tentative, like a creature testing the strength of the ice before attempting to cross a frozen stream, “Do not turn from me, Marcus. Please. I cannot do other than what I do.”

He turned to face her, and she felt a sickness of heart as she looked upon him. Those eyes, earlier so direct and clear, were muddied with defeat. He seemed a powerful creature tensed to spring, but there was no place for him to go. She felt she committed some unforgivable act—trapping a magnificent animal in a snare or giving it poison—and she looked down, unable to bear the sight of its futile struggles.

“I count you already among the dead,” he said with weary pity. “Farewell to you.”

“Farewell,” she whispered, swallowing hard to contain a rising tide of feeling. She interpreted his words literally. “You are leaving me?” she asked then, watching him intently; in her face was a mix of vulnerability and courage as she waited for the death blow.

Julianus knew then just how futile all argument was. She perceived this not as a battle of beliefs, for she did not separate herself from her beliefs. She saw it as a repudiation of all she was.

“Of course I am not leaving you,” he responded with tender urgency, drawing her tightly to him with impassioned desolation. “I forbid you to think it.” He felt the small shudder of relief run through her body and was sorry for his anger.

“Fortune owes you better,” he said after a time. “What destiny would you choose for yourself, were you able?”

“What an odd notion, to think anyone can choose. Now that I am old—”

“Come—you cannot be much past twenty and five.”

“I am
old, to me. I would want…safety enough to watch and consider things—study, as your people would say—to have time to ferret out why things are as they are.”

“Witness the antic humor of the Fates,” he said, smiling sadly at her. “They take a philosopher’s soul, better suited, the world would say, to a young aristocrat preening about the porticoes of a school in Alexandria, and give it to a barbarian woman imprisoned in a gladiatorial training school.” He savored the sight of her for long moments, suffused with pride. “My curious, eager lamb with claws of steel. Was there ever such a creature?” Then he fell into more somber thoughts.

“You’re being devoured by people who want parts of you—and none has the wit to see the whole. To your tribesmen, you’re a goddess without a human heart, and they expect you to live and die for them. To Erato, you are a performer—an astonishingly good one, but still, a performer. To Domitian, you’re a reminder of his deficiencies and, I suppose, the promise of their cure. To the rest, you are a fleeting amusement. When they’ve all had done with you, what will be left?”

She realized, sadly, she might have added:
And to Decius, I was but a clever, promising child that had better not shame him—or grow to womanhood and no longer need his teaching.
Auriane understood in that moment one reason why she felt such solemn unity with this man—he alone strove to see all of her. She had not realized what pleasure and contentment lay in being seen whole.

They held each other in silence for long moments, not wanting to speak of matters that would separate them, miserably aware of how little time they had left.

“Marcus,” she said after a time. “Everyone in this place writes, not just the keepers of words of power….”

He listened with a puzzled smile.

“Write my name.”

“Your name?
By sound, I suppose it can be done.” He took a volume of legal formulae from his cloak and looked about for a writing utensil, settling on a bit of charcoal. “Keep in mind it’s foreign, so no two people would write it the same way.”

Slowly he formed the letters. “That is my name?” she said eagerly. “It takes so many runes to write it?”

“Letters,” he corrected.

“Now write yours.” When he had done so, she said, “You have used some of the same letters. Our names are intermingled.”

“To be truthful…it happens commonly. We’ve not that many letters to start with.”

But he could see she was not ready to believe him. She looked for long at the carefully written names, as if they were the most potent of magical charms. “Might I keep it for an amulet?”

“No, I am sorry, the risk is too great. We must burn it, lest anyone find it and see our names linked.” He tore off the portion on which he had written; as he touched the bit of papyrus to the flame, they heard Harpocras’ key furtively entering the lock.

“That was not an hour, curses on him!” Auriane whispered.

“It could mean someone comes.” He grasped her shoulders firmly and said in a voice tender on the surface but with a core of iron, “Auriane, I cannot force you to come, and I am not certain I’d want to. But I warn you—I’m not the sort to sit by and watch unnecessary tragedies unfold before my eyes. It will take much more than your belief in your supreme god, vengeance, to keep me from striving to halt this. It’s my intention to see you get what you said you want—a safe place, in which you can examine the world in peace.”

“Marcus, you must not suffer over this. Our seeresses say, all life is one weaving, and the web is beautiful.”

“You mean that!” he said with grief. “You poor orphaned creature. You would see beauty in maggots on meat.”

The door made its cat-cry. The incoming draft animated the lamp flames; light and shadow lurched about in a macabre dance. Harpocras spat a curse when he found them in close embrace.

CHAPTER XLIV

O
N THE FOLLOWING DAY
J
ULIANUS WAS
tormented by a solution that was brutal and obvious—why not put Aristos out of the way by murder, thus neatly eliminating Auriane’s reason for refusing to flee? The life of a man many times a murderer himself, even before fate brought him here, seemed more than a fair trade for Auriane’s.

But by day’s end he had ceased to let grief blur his reason. It was not so simple to murder a man who was an integral part of the vast machinery used to pacify the mob. A dangerous disequilibrium would result. Who could calculate whom Aristos’ supporters would blame for the murder, and what damage they would wreak? In Domitian’s mind an attack on Aristos would be counted a strike against himself, and his vengeance on parties both guilty and innocent would be swift and cruel. And Aristos was excellently guarded, for the Palace found him useful—not only did he help distract the people from Domitian’s increasing ruthlessness; he saved the government great sums of money as well, for when the crowd was given Aristos they needed little else. Marcus Julianus had once heard old Musonius Geta, Domitian’s miserly Minister of Finance, assert that Aristos was the equal of a year’s supply of zebras, ten rare Volga tigers and a hundred Mesopotamian lions. Tasters sampled Aristos’ every meal, and a contingent of the school’s guards accompanied him whenever he demanded trips to his favorite brothel. His ruffians stayed as close about him as hornets round their nest.

By nightfall Julianus had set himself a different course. After all it seemed impossible Auriane would ever succeed in arranging the bout with Aristos, and so he turned his efforts to ensuring her survival until the assassination freed her from her sentence. On that fortunate day he would buy her from the school—Erato dared not refuse him this—and grant Auriane her freedom. For the present he would conspire with Erato to see her undermatched and exceedingly well prepared. The following morn, he summoned from the gladiatorial schools of Capua a certain Trebonius, a trainer famed for his skill in teaching swordfighters techniques for overcoming disadvantages of height and weight, and paid a great sum to have him brought to the
Ludus Magnus.

Erato did wonder at Julianus’ interest in the woman. But a sense of dutifulness prevented him from voicing his curiosity to Julianus or anyone else; he owed his unprecedented good fortune to the man, and it would not have occurred to Erato to betray him. It was not wise to question the eccentricities of the powerful; all his life he had heard the adage,
guard well their secrets and they will guard you.

In the matter of the assassination plot all progressed well, if with disheartening slowness. Julianus was encouraged by the fact that he had enlisted an influential Guards’ centurion, who induced five of his subordinates to follow. Caenis’ letters were powerfully persuasive, and the more so in his hands. When he took his first sampling of the opinion of the Senate concerning the choice of successor, second after his own name—which they continued to put forth in spite of his firm refusals—came the name of Licinius Gallus. He thought he had much cause to rejoice, until the night he summoned Gallus to tell him of this. And he then knew all that was bestial in Domitian was rising again, growing in strength, straining at fast-fraying bonds.

Gallus refused to come to him in person. His steward came in his place, bearing a frightfully familiar tale. Gallus was being followed in the streets. The documents and letters in his records room had been rifled through; much was missing. Men who appeared to be soldiers in civilian dress skulked about whenever he made a public sacrifice, doubtless seeking to learn if his offerings were dedicated to some disgraced person or treasonable cause. His servants were steadily disappearing—a reliable sign that they had informed on their master. And Veiento had haughtily refused to return Gallus’ greetings when they encountered one another at the Emperor’s morning audiences, a sure sign Licinius Gallus was a current victim. The tale was so similar to that of Junius Tertullus, the third man on the infamous list, that Julianus felt he had been shown Gallus’ death warrant.