B007IIXYQY EBOK (144 page)

Domitian forbade the Senators to leave for their cooler country estates, as was the usual practice, for the trials continued unabated, and he needed them in the city to try and convict their own. The Emperor rarely left the Palace gardens; frequently he avoided the games altogether because increasingly he found the noise agonizing to his nerves, though he had detailed reports brought to him of the behavior of the crowds. He was always eager to know what policies and what men they shouted against, and which gladiators brought the greatest cheers. The foolish few who failed to shout the praises of his favorites occasionally found themselves thrown into the arena to face the next contestant themselves.

Once when the Emperor retired for several days to his Alban villa, he ordered Marcus Julianus to come to him. He was preparing to take his gilded boat out onto the villa’s artificial lake; he himself would be towed behind it in a smaller craft, for lately even the sound of dipping oars was like the crashing of cymbals to his tortured nerves. They walked together through the closely pruned geometric garden, to the edge of the black lake with its strikingly clear reflections of reversed columns and statuary hanging in airless silence like some eerie underwater city. A servant held a sunshade for Domitian. The Emperor’s posture, Julianus noted, was that of a man desperate to ward off the world. His jaw, grown fleshy of late, was set belligerently as a boxer’s, while his head was kept low as if to ram the opposition. Those eyes seemed to register little of his immediate environment—it was as though Domitian judged there was nothing more to be gained by seeing. If the dead walked, Julianus thought, they might do so with those leaden sleepwalker’s steps, too methodical to be animated by a living heart. Domitian sweated, though this day was relatively cool. Julianus suspected that he himself had not been provided with a sunshade in order to make him feel at a slight disadvantage. Domitian could see his expression well, but the sun prevented him from seeing the Emperor’s.

“A fine day, is it not?” Domitian smiled too broadly, showing teeth. “And how speedily fine days can be ruined. I sent you round the charges against Herennius and Nerva. You returned them unedited and unread.”

“They are dead men. Does a man need more than one executioner?”

“Ah, you are clever, Julianus. Odd how I never noticed until recently just
how
clever. Some men will try and subvert you soon as you turn your back to them. And some men do it before your face, with sophistry masquerading as frankness. Most
intriguing. I’ve a new board game I’d like to play with you. It’s imported from Egypt. We’ll try that cleverness.”

Julianus felt his body tauten. Was there something sinister in the way Domitian pronounced the word
Egypt?
Had an informant overheard his conversation with Nerva—and this was Domitian’s way of letting him know? He carefully kept his expression neutral, knowing those sallow eyes examined his face.

“Ah, yes, I learned a thing about Nerva today that reveals much about you,”
Domitian said, his voice soft as an adder’s hiss.

Julianus stopped breathing.

“He’s precariously ill with the quartan fever,” Domitian went on, “and it’s most instructing that you
did not tell me, for you must have known—you know when any one of those silly old women in broad stripes so much as sneezes.
Clever man. You would have had me try a man when it was not necessary. And such a loved one as Nerva!”

“You are unfair. No one knew Nerva was ill.”

“Ah, perhaps the temptation to take advantage of my love for you finally proved too much. Would I be a fool to think I was foolish to ever count you a friend? I wonder. Now tell me, why do I think your temper has changed? What have you done to make me think so? I find you melancholic, furtive, and cold.”

Julianus was angry suddenly at being batted about like some cat’s prey; he could abide no more diplomatic lies. He felt his whole existence had become like the blade of a knife, bound to cut away what was not true.

I will not be played with. If he suspects me, I will drive it out of him.

“It is you who have changed, not I.” Julianus slowed his steps and held Domitian’s gaze. “You abandoned the throne after Saturninus’ revolt, and you rule no more.
Fear
rules.”

Because the sun blinded him, Julianus felt rather than saw the jerk of surprise in Domitian’s eyes, and he wondered at his own lack of fear. “How fortunate I am to have you tell me these things.” Domitian’s tone was open and friendly; those eyes, poised javelins. He was an aging carnivore, a beast run to seed, too spent to work up much excitement for the kill. “And what would your divine lordship have me do,” Domitian said, “to turn this foul situation round?”

“Only what you gave your word to do, so long ago in my father’s house.”

“Ah, yes, the Age of Gold would come then, wouldn’t it?” Domitian said, tightly leashing his anger, eager to find out just how far Marcus Julianus would go, “and all the criminals would run free. A sight to warm your soul. I see packs of barking Cynics overrunning the streets. The mob robbing the temples. The law in a drunken sleep. Vestals and married women selling themselves for a few coppers. And in the hand of every one of your colleagues, a ready dagger for any poor ruler who dared hold firm on any matter. Tell me, are they your friends, these criminals, or is speaking treason just a pastime born of boredom, now that so many of your erstwhile companions have met with well-deserved justice?”

“You’re laying traps with words and eagerly awaiting my tumbling in, and it’s all the easier for you because, as holder of supreme power, you give words their very definition. If you would play board games, let us keep to the same rules. Now you call ‘treason’ what you once called ‘acts of patriotic courage’ and ‘speaking freely,’ and this was, I recall, always followed with a remark about how blessed you were that this was possible in your reign.
Has ever a ruler in history rendered himself safe through acts of terror?”
Julianus paused, feeling he pummeled a corpse, expecting Domitian to order him to be silent—but the Emperor watched him with a noncommittal glare, and so he pressed on.

“I remember, if you have forgotten, you used to say often that if Nero had had one truthteller
about him, he might have kept himself alive. Hear, then, your one truthteller. They call you a despot. High, and low, they say it the moment they can say it safely—and you cannot
silence them all. But even now this could be turned around, if you stop the prosecutions. Surely you have seen in life that people
want
to adore a ruler. Winning their love should be no more difficult than coaxing water to run downhill. Begin with Herennius. You know he has no ambitions above the most drab of civil posts. No one listens to him or cares what he says. Let him go.”

Domitian laughed easily and put a companionable hand on Julianus’ shoulder.

“But they listen to you
and care what you
say, do they not, my dearest Marcus? Would it not be a fine joke on me if I’ve been nursing a viper at my breast all these years? Do not be alarmed, I’m just
speaking freely.
That’s fair, isn’t it? One might say you’ve prepared the ground well. Your counsel has made me hated, but the people throw roses at your feet. Interesting, is it not? I know at last why you always natter on at me about what I said as a boy. I was foolish then, and easily ruled, and you mean to keep me so. Once my destiny settled on me, and I became infused with divine essence—yes, divine essence, for that is what happens when you stand so close to the gods for so long—then, you could abide it no more. Ah, but perhaps it’s your great talent to get a man to trust you with his life, until you’ve rendered him blind, deaf, and dumb….”

They had come to the dock with its stone dolphins splattered with pigeon dung. Domitian said gaily, as if it were some trifling joke on himself, “You know what? This is awkward, but I cannot seem to remember why I summoned you. Perhaps you’d best go back.” He signaled to the Master of the Gardens and ordered him to fetch the simpleminded boy, meaning to have him take Julianus’ place in the boat.

Julianus met Domitian’s eyes, and the emptiness in them was haunting; it was like looking on a barren patch of ground that was the site of an old, unsolved murder. There was a glancing memory of life in those eyes, but no more.

This, then, was the end. He knew Domitian would not summon him again, either as an advisor or as a friend. Whatever it was in Domitian that reached for him had finally sickened and died, poisoned by his fear. The hard shell he had been secreting about himself all these years was now closed, complete. The only face Domitian would ever turn to him would be that of this sly trickster, a crude mask that hardly covered all that gaped emptiness beneath.

His position was more perilous than at any time since Domitian’s accession, for now his shield—Domitian’s deep, inchoate yearning for his good opinion, so pervasive it made him both father and final arbiter of truth—was there no more. He stood exposed before all that bestial imperial ill-will. In spite of this, Julianus departed the Alban villa feeling only the lucid calm of a soldier on the dawn of battle, and a measure of relief from having spoken his mind. Days passed, then a month, and he was not summoned, but neither was he harassed or condemned. He could not account for it; he could only pray all remained so, until the fateful day. The stratagem was successful; Nerva was safe—that was all that mattered.

Two months had elapsed since the night Auriane passed at Julianus’ great-house. Auriane lay listlessly on her rude cot, her forehead glazed with sweat, the rough wool of her tunica matted to her back. Sunia stood pressed to the bars of their cell’s narrow window, never giving up hope a small wind might stir.

“I like this not at all,” Sunia was saying as she fanned herself with papyrus sheaves plucked from the kitchen garbage. “You must know that oaths of love do not mean to these people what they means to us—they do not join for life as we do.”

“Sunia, give me rest, not this again.”

“Then attend to what I say this time. Erato’s been married three times and Acco, four. It is said a king of former days called Nero married a eunuch in a royal ceremony before the whole of the city, because he…she…resembled a past wife whom he’d murdered. We know little of these people, and what I do
know gives me shivers. Living stacked on top of one another does something evil to the mind. They marry girls off at twelve in this place,
twelve.
In a few more years Avenahar will be old enough for him. He might forget about you and start nursing a passion for your daughter.”

“Sunia!”

“Well, that
finally roused you from that bed!”

“You may say whatever you wish of the rest of them, but not him. I’ll hear none of it!”

Sunia felt her stomach twist. She had seen Auriane angry with others, but it was unsettling to feel that fine fury turned on herself.

“I am sorry,” Sunia whispered. “I should not have said that.” She waited a moment, then added tentatively, “Am I forgiven?”

“Of course. I am weary and heartsick and frightened of what comes, and it’s hot enough to bake bread in here. Let us forget it.”

Sunia turned her attention back to the window. “Come and look. The soldiers scattered the pantomimes, and they left, but now there’s a long line of women with torches, frightening everyone away…. They’re carrying palm branches.”

“The prostitutes,” Auriane said lethargically. “I heard it somewhere. They’ve been denied the right to inherit.”

“But listen. A good number of them are crying your name. ‘
Carissima Aurinia.
’
They will raise you up to be queen, I swear on my mother, if you are victor one more time.” Sunia looked about. “Auriane, something ails you, I have known it for some days now. I’ve never seen you lying about so much. Maybe you ate spoiled food. Or it could be the summer sickness. Perhaps the physicians have some potion—”

“No,” Auriane responded more sharply than she meant to. “I am well as ever. No physicians.”

Sunia came closer, mystified now. “You
are
ill. I’ve been watching you. I…I heard you last night.” Auriane had vomited up her evening barley gruel.

“Leave me be. It is nothing, I say.”

“You do not trust me enough, then, to tell me when you are ill.”

“Sunia, it is not that at all.” Auriane tensely looked away. “Say nothing to Erato. Swear to it on your mother.”

“Auriane!”

“Sunia, I am with child.”

“What?
What?
No!” Sunia sank down beside her. “What are you saying? It cannot be.”

“It can be, and it is.”

“Auriane, no!” Sunia put her hands to her temples, slowly shaking her head. Then she got a firm grip on Auriane’s arm, as if to restrain her, too late, from what had already been done. “No,” she said again softly, bewilderment collecting in her eyes. Then she ventured, “It is…
his?”

“His,” Auriane affirmed, shivering as she spoke the word, surprised that such an impersonal word as
his
could feel so intimate, could steal so deeply inside. “His,” she repeated just because she enjoyed the sound of the word.