“Because it is a game only emperors can play. If I, for instance, did such a thing—I would be charged with a crime.”
Nero nodded meditatively. Domitian knew then what a wise answer this was; Nero took great pride in being able to do deeds not allowed to ordinary mortals. “Well spoken, Marcus Julianus. And I judge you were right earlier—Virgil wrote those lines. Though it hurts, mind you. But great artists have great hearts. Now, what do you think of the bride?”
“What anyone would think—she would make the Graces weep.”
“Ha! Well, I hope you enjoy her. I know I did,” Nero said idly, suddenly inspecting a gold-painted fingernail. Julianus refused to react to this. He stole one glance at Junilla, but in her look was only blankness, as if those lustrous eyes were blind. Had someone drawn out her soul as a spider sucks juice out of a fly?
“Tell me, my good man, why was no pig sacrificed?” Nero leaned close so that Julianus could smell the sweet stink of nardus oil in his hair. “What makes you so certain the gods do not want blood?”
“I am certain of nothing, my lord. But once all nations believed the gods required the blood of men. When the practice was stopped, did the Heavens raise an outcry? They did not, and now we believe it a cruelty, for nothing. The passing times better us, and who can say but that one day we will think animal sacrifice, too, a cruelty for nothing.”
“Oh, silence, now you remind me of someone I didn’t like.” Julianus supposed he meant Seneca. “Were the hundred filleted white bullocks sacrificed on the occasion of my Olympic victories then slaughtered in vain?”
“I say yes, I am damned. I say no, and I lie,” Julianus replied. “Which do you prefer for a dinner partner, a liar or a dead man?”
Domitian put his head in his hands.
But Nero only laughed a heaving laugh. “The dread honesty of the condemned! I should sentence all my Council to death, then maybe I would entice honest sentiments from them.” Without warning Nero turned on Domitian.
“Now, someone has eaten every oyster,” Nero said sulkily, “and left not a one for anyone else at this table. Domitian?”
Domitian looked at him with a jerk of his head, then turned away, flushing deeply. “I apologize, my Divine Lord. I didn’t realize…”
“Nervous men eat without realizing it. What are you nervous about?”
Domitian suddenly felt he could not move; he was pinned beneath the tyranny of those yellowed eyes. “I beg your indulgence, but I am—I am not—”
Nero smoothly drained his wine cup, then set it down so forcefully wine splattered everywhere; his tunic seemed flecked with blood. His voice fell to a gurgling whisper as if his throat had gone too slack to swallow the wine. “I will tell you what you are nervous about, since you seem a little shy. You’ve a lot of friends, important friends, with complicated plans for my demise. I imagine that weighs heavy with the victim right here, and oysters make a distraction if an inadequate one. Tell them not to bother sawing through the axle of my racing chariot. You know, it doesn’t work very well, I’ve tried it on others. It tends to leave them mangled but alive. You, there,” he called to a passing servant, “bring some more of those enticing sea creatures for the rest of us and keep them out of his reach this time.”
Domitian opened his mouth to speak, but his breath was gone. He felt he was made of stone, sinking heavily into the cushions; he couldn’t breathe; the cushions would smother him. And he found himself wishing desperately he were just that, a stone image, not a man of flesh and blood with a living throat to be cut, a body to be put to torture.
“Now we will play a little game,” Nero said, his sleepy, lethal eyes fixed mildly on Domitian, regarding him as prey that must be calmed before it could be killed.
“I have no plotting friends!” Domitian managed hoarsely. “I am your most loyal of servants!”
“Really? I will prove to you in a moment that you do.”
Domitian started to take up his wine cup and three servants rushed forward to aid him. Humiliated that the trembling of his hands was so obvious, he set it back down, deciding he wanted no wine after all.
“Ah, you’re a man to make me feel like Jupiter himself!” Nero went on, “a man of clay, to be formed into any shape I wish. Well, my young cock, so puffed up with your certainty you are more morally fit and firmer of purpose than me—I will demonstrate to you that your Cappadocian footmen are more fit to rule than you.”
Nero wriggled into a more comfortable position on the couch, languishing in the pleasure of the moment, settling into his layers of flesh long enough to raise a wild hope in Domitian that he might fall into a drunken stupor. But after a short time those eyes returned to bright, malicious life.
“I will do the difficult part. I will name the names, you won’t have to dredge them out of that wine-pickled memory.” Nero chose a name at random from the rolls of the Senate. “Servianus, does he plot against me?”
Domitian’s voice was a frantic whisper. “I am no informer, my family has always hated informers, do you think me capable of—”
“I think you capable of anything, if it gets you what you want. A simple yes or no!”
“I will say nothing!”
Everyone averted their gaze, too polite to increase Domitian’s torment by looking at him. All except Junilla. She smoothly licked her lips and smiled. This was more delicious than any banquet fare.
“I think you will say something! Your loyalty is worth mud. Speak, or…or…” Nero paused, face contorted in a caricature of deep thought. “Ha!” he cried as if he had just thought of it, “I will draft an edict on the morrow making it a crime to harbor eunuchs in the city.”
Quickly Domitian looked at him. “This is for certain?” He felt ridiculous asking, but the question burst out of its own accord.
“Do you think I play children’s games! For doubting me I should do it whether you yield or not.”
How did Nero know? Domitian wondered frantically. Nero seemed to have second sight when it came to flushing out the secret passions of others that they counted shameful.
“Do you think I would destroy my friends to keep my eunuchs?” Domitian’s forehead gleamed with perspiration.
“The likelihood frightens me. But that’s only the appetizer,” Nero went on merrily. “Here comes the main course: If you do not give me names…, I will recall your father from Judaea.”
Domitian felt as if a blow landed in his stomach. Nausea and fright gripped him.
I cannot let him block my one near-certain route to becoming emperor. He suspects the whole of the Senate anyway, Domitian rationalized; it means little if I give names. It means little….
Numbly he nodded a yes.
“Out loud, my boy,” said Nero, grinning. “So all can hear.”
“Yes!” Domitian said in a taut whisper. A sound like a sob came from him. Nero then followed with name after senatorial name; as Domitian spoke the last yes, he felt his tongue was covered with slime.
Julianus thought, once again the streets will run with blood. Is there no end to this?
“Now, let us confirm all this with our dear host, Marcus Julianus,” Nero went on. “He, too, knows everything about everyone, though from quite different motives. Tell me, Marcus Julianus, does Servianus plot against me?”
“I will spare your voice, my lord,” Julianus replied, his tone clear and hard. “All are innocent—you need not go again through that list of names.”
“All? How odd. For some reason I do not believe you. The Senate has two kinds of men, you know—wolves and sheep. And the sheep have long since been eaten. Now answer, name by name! Servianus!”
“At the risk of boring you with another’s lines,” Julianus said quietly, “I am no informer.”
“And bore me you have! Or perhaps you flatter my imitation: I pilfered from Virgil, as you have kindly pointed out to me, and so you filch a line from our lusty young cock here who’d rather see his compatriots die miserably than be deprived of his base pleasures. How then shall I bri
ng you to heel?”
Nero creased his brow in thought. “Domitian lives for his lusts and for his criminal ambitions,” he went on, “and you—you live for learning, or you seem to at least, unless you’ve got some fascinating fetish you’ve managed to conceal from me…. Let us see…. If you do not answer I will…I will set fire to this house of your ancestors, beginning with your library and all its rare books. A clever equivalent of the test I gave him, is it not? Am I not a wise player on the instrument of human feeling?”
The fleshy hand clamped about Julianus’ arm, and he leaned close. There was a smell about him of rotted meat. “Yes or no, Julianus.”
Marcus Julianus shut his eyes briefly, feeling he drew all his life about him. Nothing in this world can be protected. I know that. Why, then, the horror? This house is a temple of family ghosts. I would prefer he burned my own flesh. I would throw my body over those books as if they were a living child.
He looked off once in the direction of the library, as if the act of looking could somehow protect it. Every gaze was drawn to him. Junilla watched him doubtfully.
Domitian watched him most intently of all. Speak up, curses on you….Come with me! You are no better than I and no more loyal.
For Julianus the need to save all in the house was pulsing, alive. The names are damned already, he reasoned. The plot was crushed anyway. Humor the tyrant. He only wants one simple word. Save the books.
But then a bright stillness settled over him, and a resolution rose up higher than temple doors. The wanted words would not come. What were the books if nothing human was left to read them?
Julianus replied softly, “Raze the house.”
Nero jerked back slightly in surprise; then slowly he collected himself. “You refuse then to answer your Emperor and God,” he said coldly.
Nero nodded to Pan, who lit a torch from a wall sconce. The Emperor then gestured toward the library. Pan ran lightly, threading his way through dining tables; he was still in sight of the guests as he paused in the ornate doorway of the first room of the library. He tossed in the torch.
The bookrolls lay in convenient heaps; they might have been set out purposefully as tinder.
The flames were timid at first, then they found their strength, crackling, accumulating, licking round the bookrolls’ cylindrical parchment cases, stretching to the ceiling. There came the smell of burning cedar, growing stronger. The guests watched wonderingly for a moment, as though it were not real.
Julianus closed his eyes and looked down. He felt his insides were crushed between two stones. Burning were a volume of Zeno said to be written in the philosopher’s own hand, a work of Anaxagoras’ astronomy that existed nowhere else, poetry in his father’s hand, which he had written as a boy…all sacrificed to Chaos. That life offends. Pluck it out. And a child’s tantrum immolates it. Who will restrain the child from destroying worlds he will never even know?
But Julianus could not acquiesce. If he held firm he might bring the Emperor to doubt Domitian’s denunciations, given Nero’s changeable nature.
As the flames began to spread more rapidly, the guests rose up all at once like a frightened flock of birds; they began overturning couches in their haste to get to the doors. Julianus did not move and he saw that Junilla, too, remained in her place; he had the disturbing sense that this was because to Junilla, Nero’s divinity was fact, and she believed his presence could somehow shield her from fire.
“Halt!” Nero shouted. “Headless chickens have more dignity! Do you think I will sit here and be burned alive while you vagabonds scurry off to safety?” He turned to his own servants. “Let the flames feed for a time and get their fill of rare words. Then, put them out.”
Nero leaned close to Marcus Julianus, staring at him with mock bewilderment; then he smiled at Domitian, who had collapsed into the cushions as if his bones had turned to pudding.
“Look well, young man!” Nero said patiently to Domitian like a teacher with a slow-witted pupil. “This is what steadfastness is. I demonstrate because you might not ever see it again, and like comets and other such prodigies, when these things occur we should examine them. Nature is perverse, is she not? You, with your vaulting, pathetic ambition, are of the stuff of which knaves are made, and he, who has no ambition to rule and won’t live out the next month, would make a fine ruler indeed.”
Nero leaned toward Domitian and patted the young man’s hand. Domitian jerked back from him, feeling like a flayed animal prodded with a sharp stick. Domitian found himself despising Marcus Julianus as much as Nero, as though his good friend had planned it all. From that moment Marcus Julianus became not just a friend whom he admired and envied, but something more—a potent mix of father, teacher, and judge. Julianus was the embodiment of all he could never be. Domitian saw swiftly how this could sour even gaining the supreme power: Marcus Julianus would manage to be above him, even then. In one moment, Domitian felt relief that Julianus would soon be tried and executed; in the next, this thought made him greatly ashamed.
Nero then ordered his musicians to put out the fire. They gathered up the empty amphorae in which the wine had been brought, and ran to the nearest garden fountain—but it was dry.
They were forced, finally, to run out to the street fountain. A number of the Praetorians were pressed into service as well. Nero ordered the drummer and the boy with the scabellum to play an accompaniment to this chaotic firefighting, covering noise with worse noise. The smoke was dark and dense; it drove everyone from the north part of the house.
During all this, Julianus saw a way that some great good might come out of this vicious farce. He fought briefly with himself, considering the risk. Then he motioned to Diocles and whispered rapid instructions to him; the pandemonium all about ensured that Nero, who was ignoring everyone and lustily finishing off the oysters, did not hear his words.
After a good half hour of shouting, running, and sloshing of water, the blaze was finally doused. The fire had been contained by the surrounding stonework to two of the four library rooms, but to Julianus the house’s heart was gone. Then all was still once more; everywhere was standing water, the stench of burnt brocade, the mess of ashes, muddy footprints, and overturned tables.
“I made another play out of life, did I not?” Nero said, his musical alto jarring in the fresh silence. “Tell me, Marcus Julianus, why are your fountains dry?”
Julianus knew well that Veiento was responsible for this; to harass him, Veiento had ordered the commissioner of the water supply to replace the main pipe that supplied his house from the city reservoir with a much smaller one that barely sufficed—lack of water pressure was often a telling sign of loss of favor.
Can it be the gods have handed me a chance to provoke this monster into giving me a public trial?
“It seems, my lord, I displeased the wrong person, a powerful and subtle man—Veiento,” Marcus replied, choosing words as the painter chooses colors, for precise effect. “I petitioned him to let me defend my father’s name before the Senate. It was odd. Not only did he refuse, the request seemed to anger him—and you know an angry man is often a frightened man. I wonder sometimes what he was frightened of. In any case, by his order—it must have been by his order, you know how all jump at his command—the water commissioner turned on me and reduced my water supply to a trickle.”
Julianus saw a sharp light of interest in Nero’s eyes, followed by a dark, turbid look. Once he made a sound like a dog’s growl while looking at Domitian, who was staring significantly at his wine cup as if he wanted to drown himself in it.
Finally Nero turned to Julianus and put a cushioned hand on his shoulder. “I take amusement from your arguments, Marcus Julianus. It is like watching a good beast fight. What a show it will make: you, pitted against my good and faithful serpent—servant—Veiento. You shall have your public trial.”
Julianus carefully concealed his elation. So Nero was suspicious of his Chief Councillor. He looked once at Junilla; to his surprise she appeared alar
med by this turn of events.
“My gratitude is beyond expressing,” he said quietly to Nero.
Roasted pheasants stuffed with herbs and minced quails’ eggs were then swiftly set down on each table. Nero scooped out a good measure of the stuffing and put it on a dish. As he ate greedily, he looked at Julianus, stuffing dribbling from his mouth as he spoke.
“I’m not granting you life, mind you, only a Senate trial. Your father was a traitor, and most likely you are too—like insanity, it’s passed on in the blood from father to son, you know. Fine pheasant, by the way. My own cooks cannot do better, and I’ve brought them from every part of the world.”
Just then a soft wailing was heard from the remote parts of the house. All paid it no mind at first. But it persisted and finally got Nero’s attention. Julianus sent for Diocles for an explanation. The steward appeared, his face and clothes smeared with ash. Behind him were two housemaids, their hair disheveled, faces swollen from tears. Diocles spoke confidentially to Marcus Julianus.
Julianus then turned to Nero to explain. “My Lord, there have been deaths from the fire,” he said quietly. “If you will excuse me, my steward needs a word with me…and Arria alone.” Arria heard her name and let out a raw cry; she knew already what they would tell her. She rose up, then fell into a faint before Julianus could catch her. Diocles helped him carry her out.
Nero looked on with impatient bewilderment. When after long moments Julianus resumed his place on the couch, Nero demanded, “Well? So you’ve lost a housemaid or two? I suppose you want me to pay you.”
“That will not be necessary,” Julianus replied. “Three housemaids died from the smoke, as did Arria’s children, who were sleeping in the bedchamber next to the library.”
Nero’s yellowed eyes were at first stupefied and blank; gradually his face contracted in petty fury. He threw down his oyster spoon with a loud clatter and staggered up, meaning to leave. Five of the musicians hastily set down their instruments and rushed to help.
“You are a wretched host,” Nero sputtered. “The pheasant is vile. You’ve quite ruined my evening. You know, now I do not want dessert.” He considered ordering Julianus’ death at once, but disciplined himself: He must first witness the coming courtroom confrontation between Julianus and Veiento, which promised to be a luscious, vicious duel to the death.
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