B007IIXYQY EBOK (46 page)

“Time, perhaps, is more precious to us than to you,” Veiento said softly. “Your guilt is established. Had not your father’s arrest been ordered?”

“Arrest, then, is proof of guilt? Well, then, you save us all much time. We can retire from the courts. We do not need law, only soldiers.”

This brought cautious smiles. Nero opened his eyes halfway, unpleasantly awake as if after a best-forgotten night of debauch. It was impossible to tell if he were angered or amused.

Veiento broke into one of his controlled furies. The words were fired off in a well-tempered shriek that echoed dramatically off stone.

“The Emperor ordered him arrested! He then does not know the law?” This awakened Nero completely. He looked at Marcus Julianus with great affront.

“His knowledge is not on trial,” Julianus said mildly. “The Emperor ordered him arrested on advice given by yourself. An emperor can be failed by those who give him information. A pity, but it occurs. This contest is more between you and me, not between myself and the state.”

“I assure you your situation is too dire for sophistry.”

“Yes, you’ve made certain it is.”

“Does each generation of your family double in impertinence? Your children will piss on the throne itself.”

“The throne can withstand that far better than justice can withstand your assault.”

This brought cautious laughter and curious glances at Nero, who now watched Julianus with growing interest, as he might an untried gladiator who gained a sudden advantage over a seasoned opponent. Veiento seemed visibly to withdraw, but not in defeat, more as the predator that collects itself before it unleashes the next attack.

Veiento then said, “Conspirators meet openly at your house every ninth day.” The last words were a shriek.
“Deny that!”

“Yes. Our tyrant is ignorance. Our talk is of nature and the spirit, not of government.”

“Philosopher and trickster, your philosophy is in
itself
traitorous. Your Zeno teaches the wise must rule—and for certain, wise you count yourself. They have spoken
thus
at your meetings….” He paused to snatch up one of the tablets Montanus dutifully kept ready for him, then held it out theatrically and read, “‘Gentleness is the ruler’s best proof against assassination. When a ruler loses himself to his passions and lives by revenge, it is the duty of the wise man to destroy the tyrant.’”

“We live in the world, my lord, not in a maze of words. I hardly see what those words have to do with this day and time…unless you count Nero a tyrant.” At this, a small cold smile of amusement came to Nero’s face.

“You talking snake,” Veiento shouted. “Your father counted our Divine Lord a tyrant, and you know it well. Everyone knows it. He felt himself a better man, better educated, more fit to rule. He counted the hours he spent in study and measured them against the hours our Divinity spent at the games. And finally when he thought the Emperor’s position weakened enough, he invited his barbarian allies to come south and help him and his fellow rebels launch an attack on Gaul. His plan would have succeeded had not even
more
savage barbarians attacked his own forces. And now, enough of this!”

Veiento looked meaningfully at the Consul, hoping desperately he would call for the vote. But Messalinus took his cue from Nero, and the Emperor seemed to be enjoying himself.

Julianus counted it a victory that he remained calm through that gale of words; they seemed not words at all but shrieking wind. His reply was not meant for Veiento or the Senators—but for his father’s ghost. He looked toward the seat that would have been his father’s as he spoke.

“My father, Marcus Julianus, was perhaps the only man among you who never had such thoughts. He was old-fashioned enough not to judge those who ranked above—he thought it right to leave that to Providence. He was of the ancient sort for whom duty was god. He gave his life defending the frontier—and a humiliating death was his reward. I will now prove to you his recruitment of Wido was desperation—”

Veiento slammed down a tablet. “Enough of this criminal’s rantings.”

But Nero, with the smallest gesture of his hand, motioned for Julianus to continue on.

Julianus brought out two rolled documents he had concealed in his tunic. “I mean to submit as evidence these records, taken from the Military Treasury, that begin with the date of the outset of our lord the Prosecutor’s time as minister—”

Veiento tore them from his hand. “This evidence was not shown to the board of judges.”

But Nero was intrigued by Veiento’s displeasure, and he scratched a quick note for the Consul.

“The court decides this evidence may be used, even though the board of judges did not know,” Messalinus read out.

Julianus felt a rush of joy. “And there, too, are my father’s records of what he received in the same years so the court can make a comparison.”

“These documents are forgeries made by our enemies!” Veiento shouted.

Julianus gave him a look that a parent might give a child caught lying. Nero’s smile was smug and murderous.

“I think not,” Marcus Julianus replied smoothly. “As the court will see, there is a great difference between what my father recorded and what the Palace records say he received. This discrepancy curiously disappears during Veiento’s year of absence from the Military Treasury and resumes the year he took the office back.”

Veiento for a moment let fright show in his eyes. How had Julianus obtained those records? He must have stolen into the military records room like a thief in the night.

“Forgeries! All forgeries!”

Nero sleepily whispered an instruction to the Guard posted next to him. Then he turned vengeful eyes on Veiento. Embezzlement in itself he counted a rather dull crime to which he was not really opposed in principle; good embezzlers could even be useful for some things, such as milking the provinces. But Veiento had sworn before him and by all the gods he had no shameful secrets for Julianus to uncover. And this meant that Marcus Julianus the Elder had spoken the truth when he protested the charges, making
him
look the fool as well as Veiento.

The Guards took both sets of documents and gave them to the imperial procurator for examination. The Senators regarded Julianus with growing amazement. No one had ever successfully attacked Veiento’s character before his peers. Veiento sensed the power balance subtly shifting, and he hated more than death this feeling of being on the pitched bow of a ship that was slowly taking on water.

But Marcus Julianus still felt death’s shadow hovering close. It was true he sensed the Senators allying themselves with him—they loved shows of filial fidelity, particularly when carried out at great risk. But in spite of the grave embarrassments he had inflicted on Veiento, still he had given Nero no good reason to spare him, no reason not to persecute his family.

Veiento paced, eyes afire, lips pale. How could it have come to this? In a mere quarter hour his own fate had become nearly as dire as Julianus’. Vigorously he began a fresh attack.

“This does not change the truth. Had there not been internal dissension within that tribe—the Cats—” An assistant motioned to him and whispered the correct pronunciation in his ear. “…the
Chattians,”
he continued, “your father would have unleashed these blood-drinking savages on us and succeeded in seizing all Gaul.”

“The dissension in the tribe, gentlemen,” Julianus replied, “was over us. None here doubt the hostility of Baldemar. My lord, tell the court his motive for striking at Wido.”

“I am not the one being questioned here!”

“The answer has great bearing on my father’s guilt or innocence—and on the truth.”

Nero nodded at Veiento, demanding an answer.

“Revenge for the theft of his daughter,” Veiento replied reluctantly.

“No. Baldemar had with him men of many neighboring tribes. You know well, or should know, that the Germanic tribes band together
only when their common enemy is Rome.
If Wido had been a weapon aimed at us, never on this earth would Baldemar have struck at him. Indeed, Baldemar would have joined him.
No. This barbarian chief called Wido was to be used as a weapon
against his own people.

“My father was an innocent man, and he has died because of your greed.” Julianus’ voice rose to a ringing shout. “You created that tale to destroy my father so your own crimes would never be uncovered!”

The last echoes of his voice died into a powerful silence in which many of the members found some of their terror of Nero ebbing away. Marcus Julianus’ audacity was contagious—it taunted them with the possibility of freedom from living daily in fear.

Veiento quickly shifted the direction of his attack. “Your father used witchcraft to undermine the state. It is well documented he consulted a barbarian seeress called Ramis and tried to learn the day of Nero’s death.”

Julianus felt hope vault upward. Veiento had at last fallen into one of several traps he had set. This charge had actually been inserted by Julianus himself, through “witnesses” in his own pay whom he had sent to Veiento when the Councillor was gathering evidence—for he wished for Nero to hear his reply.

“That is true, in part. But my father had no interest in the day of the Emperor’s death. His purpose was to learn the means of quelling night-terrors, to which he was prone in those days, possibly as a premonition of his own death. She knew the means, and told him the prayers and the herbal remedies required, and my father carefully recorded it all. By the way, he wrote to me that it was marvelously effective.”

Julianus knew Nero was so tormented by nightmares since he had murdered his mother that, in an attempt to elude the Furies, he never slept twice in the same bedchamber of his Golden House. The Emperor had sent as far away as India for concoctions to relieve himself of them. The ruse worked; he felt Nero’s interest sharply increase.

Once again, Veiento thought in fury, I grasped the snake by the tail.

Nero wrote out a question and had it brought to the prosecutors—rarely did he speak publicly, in order to preserve his voice for singing. Montanus read it to Marcus Julianus. “Where are these formulae at present?”

“Burned, my lord, in the unfortunate fire recently sustained in my house. I read them through once, however, and I believe that with practice and experimenting, I could rediscover what was lost.”

Veiento cursed silently. Julianus had given Nero a powerful reason for leaving him alive—at least temporarily. But I’ve one arrow left in my quiver, Veiento thought, and this one is tipped with poison.

He readied himself for the death-dealing shot, motioning with a withered hand to Montanus, who, with a smug smile of importance, rose and gave to him what appeared to be a small packet of letters. Then Veiento held them aloft so all could see.

“Marcus Arrius Julianus, these are philosophical essays written by your father, taken from his personal effects—and here is a veritable catalogue of villainies.”

“How did you obtain those?” Marcus Julianus asked sharply.

“It is not relevant; let us just say they were a—gift to the court.”

Julianus said with great resignation, “My father carried those essays with him everywhere, but he did not write them. And truly, I
do
hold with all therein.”

“Fine and good. No matter if he wrote them then, if you admit to belief in them. Let us take a passage at random. Here’s a likely one—it’s a brazen attack on our Divine Ruler’s love of the Games: ‘The entertainments of the amphitheater are base and cruel; indeed, they corrupt those who watch, for the immoderate letting of blood incites unnatural passions and awakens the savagery asleep in all of us—’”

“I hardly see—”

“Silence, you slithering serpent!”

Nero spoke for the first time. “Let him speak.”

That pale, unused voice made everyone uneasy. Nero seemed acutely interested in this, an enigmatic smile on those puckered lips.

“And listen well to
this
,”
Veiento continued, pleased that he seemed to be gaining an advantage. “This is no less than an attack—albeit a clumsy one—upon the Emperor’s competence to rule alone. ‘Those who have the power to do all are in truth the servant of all.’ I am surprised at you, Julianus, I myself found these thoughts quite stale…. Shall I continue?”

“Please,” Marcus Julianus replied. “To me it is euphonious to the ear.”

“As you say. ‘Even Jupiter cannot hurl a lightning bolt without first listening to the counsel of the hosts of heaven. If Jupiter does not consider his judgment sufficient, how then can a man? A ruler not subject to his people’s will should relinquish his throne.’ Stinking treason, I say. You believe the Emperor is wrong when he rejects our advice. It seems, Marcus Arrius Julianus, you’ve been caught with your hands on the silver plate.”

Julianus said quietly, “Perhaps you should order the arrest of the author.”

And then Veiento knew. His thoughts seemed to halt in air and hang precariously like a bird stopped in flight. What he had said could not be unsaid. The predator had dropped neatly into the trap fashioned by its prey.