“Excuse the disguise, but I knew no other way to see you. Best of friends and old school companion, I—”
“Best of friends! You would make a fine auctioneer. The last time you were here I ordered you out.”
“A lapse of taste on your part I’m willing to forget. Come, we have a common goal, we should be friends.”
Marcus Julianus could not contain a faint smile at such audacity. “Caesar and Marcus Antonius had a common goal. It did not make them friends.”
“What you call cruelty,” Domitian said with an impish grin, “I call sport and a good time. Must two men always agree?” Their fight had come about when Domitian, between courses, decided to show off his skill in archery to Marcus’ guests. He ordered one of his attendant slaves to go into the garden and stand next to a tree with fingers outstretched so he could shoot arrows between them. That the terrified slave got off without injury had not lessened Julianus’ anger toward him.
“On some matters, yes, they must.” Julianus’ tone became gentler. “Well, tell me then—how have I become useful to you?”
Encouraged by this barest sign of relenting on Julianus’ part, Domitian approached closer with the sly smile of one preparing to tell an obscene joke in confidence. Domitian’s wine-flushed face had a heavy handsomeness bordering on fleshiness; it put Julianus in mind of a sullen Apollo cast too large. The young man managed somehow to look thoroughly world-weary at seventeen. Those eyes were ever watchful, swift to calculate the relative power of others in a given room—dark, lively eyes marred by a morbid look that easily attracted lovers of both sexes. He would struggle a few more years to keep that heavy-boned body conditioned, Julianus surmised, then give it up. There was a blunted, dull solidity about his head, his shoulders; his was a tall, brooding form giving the sense of a spirit weighted down. He was the sort to retreat to dark places and nurse hurts at leisure, waiting for the moment to rush out and attack while his quarry basks unawares in the sun.
“You have it then. It was cruelty. I do not do such things anymore.” Domitian was struggling, but with what? Julianus considered. A genuine impulse to control that playful sadism, or with sincerity fallen into long disuse, or the final refinement of his acting ability?
Best for now to treat it as sincere, Julianus decided. It was one of those moments that would linger in memory—the one time he thought he might have seen a childlike openness in Domitian’s manner, a youthful suppleness of mind.
“It is past then. Let us speak of it no more.” Marcus Julianus rose then and embraced his friend, chiding himself for still holding onto a good measure of distrust.
“First I’ll cement our rekindled friendship with a gift,” Domitian said, smiling, “an offering of choice information. I’ve learned why Nero seems only in a moderate hurry to dispose of you—by rights you should be dead already, you know. You know those tiresome literary competitions Nero bores his guests with when the courses are done? Well, an ode you wrote last year somehow got put in with the rest, and the cursed thing—truthfully you’ve written better—got chosen as victor over Nero’s, because the judges got confused over who wrote what and—”
“Nemesis! Why was I not told of this?”
“I wasn’t there, nor was anyone loyal to you. Your good friend has razor ears or you wouldn’t be hearing it now. They corrected the mistake right away, but it was too late—and now Nero’s haunted by ugly suspicions you might be better at scribbling odes than he is. He mocks what he’s in awe of. One time when he speaks of you, he’d like to pin asses’ ears on you. The next, he’s begging someone in confidence to tell him if he’s ever heard some chance remark of yours praising his poetry, or his music, or anything he’s done. He won’t rest until he contrives some way to hear of you praising him truthfully, when you’re not expecting word of it to get back to him. This is excellent, my friend! You’ve not the knack of taking advantage of men’s weaknesses, but it’s power in your hands. You are his fixed star today, by which he calculates all else—you should make use of it while you have the chance.”
“I want nothing from that ballet-dancing butcher except an open trial.”
“He’ll never relent on that. He’s too frightened of that famous mouth. He’s not fool enough to unleash it in a public place. Anyway, public or private, a treason trial cannot be won.”
“I would not waste effort attempting to win. I mean to speak my father’s eulogy and to trick Nero into leaving my family alone.”
“There need be no trial at all! Marcus, good friend, I come with…encouraging news.”
Julianus looked sharply away. “I know what it is, and it does not encourage. It turns the heart to stone.” Through his own carefully cultivated network of spies, Julianus knew of this month’s assassination plot. The conspirators had enlisted the services of a robber condemned to be thrown to the beasts by luring the wretch with an offer of a better death: At a banquet in Nero’s Golden House the robber would be concealed above the ceiling behind one of the movable panels just above the Emperor’s couch. He would fall upon the Emperor, slay him, then be immediately slain himself—they hoped—by the Guard.
Domitian stared at Julianus in mute fright. Sometimes, he thought, it seemed Marcus Julianus saw through walls.
“Have no fear,” Julianus said quickly. “It’s gotten no further than me.” Some of the terror ebbed off from Domitian’s eyes. Julianus then said, “And it hardly seems well thought out. What is to keep your man from being tortured instead of killed outright—and revealing all of your names?”
“If that monster in the Palace dies before your trial, you live. I do not understand why you oppose us.”
“You speak of deliberately provoking civil war.”
“Not I. Others are doing it for us. And so like you, to name worst outcomes.”
“I do not know why you are so certain your father will emerge atop that bloody mountain of bodies.”
“I wish you would learn to look at life more as a sport.”
“It’s a sport until the suffering is your own.”
“All right, then, whatever you say, but…when freedom has been won…and if you still walk this earth with us, there is a thing I ask of you, Marcus Julianus: Will you speak my father’s cause before the Senate?”
“There are many ready to speak for your father. I do not understand your need of me.”
“You truly do not know, do you?” He shook his head slowly in puzzlement. “You are so…innocent of the effects of your own presence. I don’t know if they’re intimidated by your learning or if it’s the way you look at them, but the Senators credit your words more than men three times your age. I see it if you don’t. But I also need you because my forebears, let us speak plainly, were turnip eaters, and that’s all we’ll ever be, even wearing the purple. We sorely need the endorsement of one who traces his ancestry back to Venus.”
Julianus rose and paced. Curses on him, Domitian thought, he has to think about it!
Finally Julianus halted and turned that direct gaze upon Domitian. “I’ve nothing whatever against your father. He is a plain and fair man—most likely he is the best choice. It’s…it’s you I’m uneasy with.” Regret showed almost at once in Julianus’ face. “I am sorry, but nearness to death makes such things easier to say.”
Domitian laughed a thin laugh that did not disguise the flare of anger in his eyes. “I’ve never seen a man less afraid of losing his head. What must I do for your approval?”
“This is absurd,” Julianus answered sadly. “Change your very nature.”
“Done. Anything else?”
“Do you want other than the truth? Of what use is it? A lie may succor now, it kills later. There is a vein of cruelty and suspicion in you, and it is not a terrible thing in an ordinary man. But if an extraordinary life claims you, what would you be? Reflected a thousand times your size, daily good humor or bad humor makes you god—or monster.”
“Very well, you are not needed then,” Domitian said with feigned lightne
ss as he spun about to leave. “I have many men around who—”
“As Nero has? Flatterers? To lead him blindfolded and singing to his doom?”
Domitian stopped and turned. In his face for one instant was the quick frantic look of one pushed off balance. He had never thought of Marcus Julianus’ cult of truth as a thing that might keep him safe; the idea, once sown, began to take root.
“Perhaps I do not take your youth enough into account,” Julianus said then. “I mean not to offend. It might be I jump too easily at the least whiff of tyranny because I have seen so much of it of late. And anyway, it looks more and more as though you are inevitable. I will settle for a promise, then.”
Domitian was surprised at the depth of the relief he felt. Why was Marcus Julianus’ favor worth so much more to him than that of other men? “Yes?” he said, carefully reining in his delight. “Ask it.”
“Vow to me that when the supreme power is yours, you will not persecute men of letters or any school of thought, nor burn their writings, nor the philosophers themselves, for that matter,” Julianus said carefully. Domitian found himself transfixed by that sharp, clear gaze. “Give me your word the owners of bookstalls will not be made criminals, nor will anyone who declaims on the street crossings be made a plaything for dogs.”
“A simple matter! I myself am a poet—now really, would I persecute my own kind?” He smiled the quick, mobile smile of a pantomime actor.
“That you call it a simple matter causes me to suspect you mouth the words with as much comprehension as a talking magpie. Hades take you if I give you my support, and you turn on us.”
“You have my sworn word! Never will I persecute anyone for his writings, not even the most foul-mouthed of Cynics who beg you to execute them.”
“When the day comes—if it comes and I still live—I will speak for your father.”
As Domitian took his leave, Julianus called after him. “I’ve a question for you! Why does the Emperor waste a rare prize such as Junilla on a man he means to destroy?”
Domitian shrugged. “I wouldn’t look for a normal human motive behind Nero’s acts. Last night at dinner he had all his concubines costumed as fish. By the way, since we are friends again, can I come to the wedding?”
“No,” Julianus said with mock annoyance, “you’ll snatch the bride.”
“I promise to wait at least a month out of common decency.”
“Come if you wish. Sad puppet show that it is, I wish I had the choice not to come. The air in this city is foul as an animal’s den—it’s the stench of captivity.”
Domitian then added with a reverence so uncharacteristic of him that Julianus first thought the words were meant in jest, “She has a beauty not of this earth.” Domitian alone had set eyes on Junilla, who was kept in seclusion by her mother; once he had climbed over her garden wall and, in the instant before her maidservants drove him off with rakes and hoes, managed to steal a glimpse of her as she sat reading. “She was Psyche, she was Selene. You are the most fortunate of men—if you live.”
“You love her! Curses, even you’ve got a motive for murdering me now.”
When but two days remained before the hastily arranged marriage, Marcus Julianus began yet another night of studying his father’s military correspondence and records, going through these documents in order of year. Earlier that day he remembered his father’s wish concerning the sorceress’s black amulet; after retrieving it from the strongbox in the tabularium, where the family records were kept, he placed it once again about his neck. He could see no reason not to humor a ghost. The amulet felt right there, as though a tessera taken from a mosaic were returned to it. It brought a rush of memories—of running with bleeding feet on cobblestone streets, of hard moldy rye bread and rough vinegar water, Grannus’ leering grin, the fiery agony of the lash.
Three times during the night he had to pull the wick of the lamp as he read ever on, struggling against a downward pull into deathlike hopelessness. If his father could not survive in this world, why did he presume he could? Names blurred and became confused. One treaty with Baldemar began to look like the next.
But all he had read so far vindicated his father. It was apparent at once that enlisting Wido was an attempt to get by with very little—rarely was his father granted what he needed to train new recruits.
It was well past midnight when Julianus realized that the years his father was acutely short of funds corresponded with the time Veiento acted as minister of the Military Treasury. Suddenly he was sharply awake.
Could Veiento have thieved from the Military Treasury during his time in that office? It would explain why he was so intent upon avoiding a public trial.
But how to confirm this? Somehow he must obtain the military records from the Palace and compare the figures to his father’s, to see if divergences appeared. He remembered then that one of his poorest clients had a cousin who was a freedman accountant in the military records room and had access to confidential documents. No, he could not ask. The fellow, if caught, would be executed.
But what was the alternative? The world would continue to think his father incompetent and a traitor. Perhaps if the theft were carefully planned, and the fellow royally paid for his risk….
He felt a small jolt of hope. He must somehow procure a public trial. But how to get Nero to pay attention to his plea?
He read on, gathering more proof his father had used Wido solely as a means of controlling Baldemar, going through individual journals of soldiers, quaestors’ reports, his father’s private letters. As the night became ever more still and the hour of spirits approached, the uncanny lands of Germania seemed to hover about, vivid and close, that dark ocean of wild forest where trees trapped the spirits of the dead, magic mists swallowed armies, human sacrifices dangled in groves, and quaking bogs digested generations of dead. Who knew what flourished in such places? Barbarous mysteries bloomed everywhere like flowers in the dark. In one report his father recorded the words of a northern sybil called Ramis after one of the treaty meetings, and to Julianus’ amazement she spoke words on the rebirth of souls that closely echoed the sayings of the Pythagoreans—yet this was an illiterate tribal woman who cooked over open fires and at night lay down on earth. What could account for this?
And he wondered if he had not found, in this northern waste, humans in the idyllic state, living what many philosophers called the natural life. It seemed they lived in a sort of extended innocence, were cruel only of necessity, and uncorrupted by the worst temptations of power and greed. Was it of these people that Isodorus had spoken when he said, “In the wastes beyond the North Wind they live still as in the time of Saturn”?
Again and again through the letters and reports he found references to a mysterious maid who bore arms. She confused him at first; it was not clear if she was a woman of flesh and blood, or a local manifestation of one of their earth goddesses, or possibly some nymph of a spring or well, described elsewhere in his father’s writings. She could shift shape; she could shield a warrior from the bite of weapons and outrun a deer. “Her hair is full of spirits, and she is clothed in night” were the words of one Chattian captive.
In one treaty it became clear she was quite mortal—and was that same daughter of Baldemar whom his father had sought to see married to Wido’s son. Her name appeared, then disappeared, wending its way through the records, taunting, elusive, twisting sinuously through tale after tale like a wild vine: Auriane. The name conjured up so clearly the woman—surely it was the lateness of the hour—but there she was unabashedly before him, so clear and close he could see the shadow of a lash, the dew on her hair, a creature who in some archaic way coupled beauty and strength, not unlike the heroines of the oldest tales of the Roman people—Camilla the warrior or Tanaquil the queen. She was the spirit of streams breaking through rock, the numen of primeval places.
Then he came upon a report made by a soldier who had witnessed an incident deep in the interior of Chattian lands. The soldier had a te
ndency to florid words, but Marcus sensed a core of truth in the tale, and it was the beginning of a haunting that would flourish through the years.
He was a cavalry centurion with the detachment that accompanied the native army of Wido’s son, Odberht, and he had witnessed the maid’s capture.
They were surrounded by us and set to fight to the last, the Centurion wrote, but she held out the sign of peace and brought a stillness everywhere, and so sacrificed herself to the enemy that her tribesmen could live. Who since the time of the Kings has seen such hallowed devotion? She passed close by me, and she had the aspect one who walked easily with the powers of Night. And she was full of Magic, for within days she escaped, taking the form of a doe. She manifested again at the final siege, where she assumed raven shape and opened the gate to victory.
Without knowing why, avidly he searched for more. He came upon another text transcribed from the words of a deserter who made it clear she had led the final engagement itself.
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