For privacy they walked the labyrinthine graveled walkways of his geometric gardens. Briefly Julianus related the tale of the ring.
“The clever monster! I knew he sent his brother off himself! The question is how?” Saturninus’ frown was deeply inscribed in his face; he looked like old Cronus, set to destroy a whole host of upstart younger gods. He was a gnarled, stoutly made man with an obdurate spirit that put Marcus Julianus in mind of the bedrock that crops up in fields, breaking plows. Though his features were softly eroding with age—the birthday he had celebrated recently at Julianus’ great-house was his seventieth—those eyes still flickered with energy and fire, and when he held forth in full voice, his sonorous rumble could still carry to the highest galleries of the basilica.
“Exactly. How did he manage it? We’ve a body with no marks of poison on it, and no signs of foul play. It’s enough to make one believe in the efficacy of magic spells. By my father’s ghost, I mean to learn how he managed that murder, no matter what time and effort it takes,” Julianus said with carefully contained passion. “One of the three attending doctors died mysteriously the next morning. One is reported missing. The third is still alive—a man named Cleomenes, who I learned is a native of the Isle of Rhodes. He got to one of the ports and took to ship. There may lie our only hope of ever knowing. I mean to find the man before Domitian does.”
“I doubt you’ll survive long enough to find him.” Saturninus paused dramatically and clamped an urgent hand on Julianus’ shoulder. “Listen to me.” His voice dropped to a warbling whisper. “You should strike before he strikes. Accuse him now—and the Guard will believe you and not him. Do not give Domitian time to replace them with his own men.”
Julianus wearily turned away. “The result would be too unpredictable,” he replied quietly after a time. “And we need better proof. At best, I would be burning down a house to catch one rat. Removing Domitian suddenly would touch off civil war surely as Nero’s death did. I would not do such a thing unless a successor were named. Unfortunately, Domitian knows I think this way and even counts on it. The sly fox will never name a successor now, I’ll wager—in order to keep my hands bound.”
“Well, you cannot seriously be thinking of accepting that post. He knows you know. Do you think he’ll be easy with an advisor who sees his true nature? Retreat to your farthermost estate and quietly wait out his reign. He murdered his brother who was kind and good to him. He would scarcely think twice before murdering you.”
Julianus briefly shut his eyes. “I cannot.”
How this man tries to carry the weight of everyone, the living and the dead, Saturninus thought. “It’s that cursed school, isn’t it? And everyone you shelter there?”
“Yes, that’s a good measure of it.” Marcus Julianus had for seven years nurtured his school of philosophy and natural sciences like some beloved child, providing it with a library celebrated all over the world for its collection of rare and original manuscripts, and luring from the ten Academies of Athens—with a promise of a generous yearly dole—so many of their celebrated teachers that the citizens of Athens brought a formal complaint to the government in Rome. The school was a haven for those too poor or too despised to be tolerated anywhere else. The ragged followers of the martyred Isodorus lived there under Julianus’ protection, as well as the humbler slaves of aristocratic households who had no other chance to acquire learning. In spite of the fact that Julianus did nothing to please the noble classes at Rome—the school was lodged in dilapidated buildings much too near the fish markets, and aristocratic students were treated no better than the rest—his school was fashionable, nevertheless, and they actually began sending Senate-bound sons to him who ordinarily would have finished their educations in Alexandria or Athens. The school kept alive his reputation for eccentricity—for it lost great sums of money since he welcomed any who earnestly desired to come, from poulterer’s daughter to matchseller’s son, charging only what students could pay.
“And there is this,” Julianus went on, his look sad, intent, “I am haunted by the notion I might be the only man about Domitian able to keep him in check. You must know, old friend, my relationship to Domitian is…peculiar. I do not completely understand it myself. Domitian admires me more than he loves me—and counts me his greatest friend, though I would never count him as such.”
“Yes. I have seen that.”
“Understand I say this without pride. Another could have played this role, had he been in the right place at the right time in Domitian’s youth. Sometimes a man, when young, encounters someone, frequently older, who, rightly or wrongly, he feels he can never equal. The power the older man has over him lingers like some persistent ghost, and that man’s opinions carry greater weight all his life. I have become, half by chance, that man for Domitian—”
“Through your defense of your father. You are too modest. Many others besides Domitian praise you for that brilliantly mad act of devotion, my friend.”
“What’s important now is the effect it’s had on him. That great need of his to curry my favor must be employed to our advantage. I cannot walk away from this. It’s a delicate and dangerous balance, admittedly. If I do not love him, it worries him. But my independence is necessary as well, or he ceases to trust my judgment—”
“It is almost as though…he is confused and imagines you a parent rather than a friend.”
“Precisely. And so you see, if I run to safety, there will not be an act he commits that I will not wonder, could I have averted it or softened it? I’m trapped at his side. How the Fates taunt us when we are grown with a silly shadow of what we wanted when we were young! Once I had some notion of advising an emperor—as a proud and noble use of philosophy. Grim reality reduces me to a trickster who must outmaneuver a monster.”
“I should be well used to your easy assumptions that you can master a situation most men would shun to approach. But I’m not, and I grieve for you.”
“Grieve when the battle’s lost, not while strategy is still being laid. But know this, lest I misstep in the next few days.”
He lowered his voice, though none were about to overhear but a curious fawn stealthily approaching them through the oleander bushes. “Titus documented every attempt of Domitian’s to murder him, in his letters to Vespasian’s mistress, Caenis. They greatly strengthen our case, should we one day be ready to tell what we know to the Guard. They may even reveal the method of murder that eventually succeeded. I know those letters are locked in some nether storage room of the Palace—they will require patience to locate. Domitian suspects they exist but is not certain. We must cultivate the rumor that they exist in fact—and we must never stop looking for them.”
At the tenth hour Marcus Arrius Julianus reclined at the imperial table in the dining hall of the Palace of Augustus, seated at the Emperor Domitian’s right hand. Seven hundred banqueters gathered in a vast space that froze the senses with its humbling brilliance, from the domed ceiling as remote as the heavens, to the massive columns of red granite gleaming in the light of crystal lamps, to the three central fountains crowded with nymphs jetting water into opalescent pools, to the pilastered walls of crimson-veined Numidian marble polished to the sheen of mirrors, and the heroic images of Mercury and Apollo in adamantine basalt set in niches about the chamber. Everywhere was a blaze of flowers and silks; silvery music played lightly over the steady, joyous rush of water. Gemstones flashed in women’s hair, at their breasts. But all this luminous grandeur did nothing to dispel the warning darkness that lay over this hall, heavy as the scent of blood on a battlefield. Domitian’s grim shadow fell everywhere; it was impossible to put out of mind the great crime rumored to be at the beginning of this reign.
Domitian had selected the eight guests at the imperial table with an eye to making himself seem a cultured man. Julianus felt not so much honored on this night as used as a stage-prop to make the new Emperor appear the companion of philosophers. Saturninus’ place was assured because he numbered an esteemed
playwright among his clients; from time to time Saturninus shot Julianus a distracted, worried look, as if alert for the first signs of rebellious behavior. Next to Saturninus was Licinius Gallus, who earned his place because he was a famed gourmand—it was said he could taste an oyster and name the bay from which it was taken. Junilla was banished to a lower table for the evening—no doubt, Julianus mused, because her single serious flirtation with the arts was that much-talked-of occasion at one of Domitian’s private parties when she rolled off her couch onto the esteemed poet and essayist Milo, and, beneath the eyes of Domitian’s disbelieving but delighted friends, began idly coupling with him as though she thought him the dessert course. Reclining on Domitian’s left was his sixteen-year-old niece, Julia, daughter of Titus, his murdered brother, upon whom the Emperor had been lavishing more than avuncular attention since his brother’s death. Julia was a frail, tentative presence who at least had the scent of learning about her; unlike Junilla, the suffering in Julia’s eyes had an artistic and thoughtful cast. With her aristocratically arched brows, bewilderingly complex coiffure, and rose-stem neck, she was an icy bloom, seeming pulled back from the world—not surprising since she had been thrust so young into the world of the court.
The next course was held back while Domitian explained the sauces arrayed before them in silver bowls, lost in a display of his knowledge of fine cookery, unmindful that only the diners at the imperial table could hear him—and these were weary of him and hungry. His white-liveried servants were poised by the serving carts in the crimson-curtained entranceway, awaiting the Emperor’s signal. As Julianus watched Domitian gesturing with almost comic majesty, as if each sweep of his hand created a kingdom or scattered bread to the starving, he reflected—how quickly Domitian is comfortable with the trappings of supreme power. He needed no time to adapt. Perhaps it’s because he’s always set himself apart from his peers; from youth, he’s had that tendency to treat friends as good or bad servants. The imperial purple did not look so immediately right on either his father, his brother, or Nero.
“But the tartest sauce,” Domitian was saying, “is this one.” He leaned across his couch and, to everyone’s embarrassment, seized one of Julia’s too-thin arms, and before the eyes of the seven hundred banqueters, inflicted on her a languid, devouring kiss from which she could not escape. One clumsy, blunt-fingered hand moved determinedly down her back, boldly claiming territory as it went.
The dinner guests looked everywhere but at Domitian, their collective demeanor expressing polite, muted shock. Julia writhed—the instinctive motion of a trapped animal—but dared not break the embrace. Julianus knew Domitian intended this outrage as a slap at his brother’s memory, an assertion of his own authority. He is saying to the people—I will do what I like with my brother’s daughter. You will not rule me with rumors and tales. Believe I murdered Titus if you want—even say that I did it so I could enjoy his daughter openly—I do not care.
I must stop this. Before Julia suffocates. Or her heart stops. Julianus signaled to the servants to come forth with the silver carts, then quietly ordered them to begin serving.
When the heavy gold platter bearing a grilled whole mullet stuffed with minced pheasant brains glazed with rue-berry honey was set grandly before Domitian, the Emperor looked at it irritably, then heaved himself away from Julia, leaving the imprint of his thick fingers on her arm. Julia’s face was ashen. She understood what Julianus had done, and met his eye with a fleeting appreciative look that held a trace of a cry for help.
An instant later Domitian realized whose interference this was. He turned to Julianus with a look that was steely and remote.
“Perhaps you’d like to take a turn on the throne at tomorrow’s morning audience.”
This was a voice Julianus had never heard from him—it spoke not to him as an individual but to a collective presence—a whole room full of wayward servants. A sharp chill seized him. But he fought it and managed an amiable smile, as if at an amusing misunderstanding between two cultured men. He leaned close and said in a conspiratorial voice, “Fine words for a man who saved you from disgrace! This dish is ruined, you know, if it’s even a trifle overcooked.”
Domitian hesitated. Then he remembered the heating flames on the serving carts. He had forgotten them. His withering look softened faintly, sabotaged because he truly was grateful. Did Julianus catch his blunder in time? Domitian stole a glance at Licinius Gallus. Was the gourmand thinking: Our rude, countrified Emperor is too ignorant to know this himself?
“You’re going to wring your own neck some day with this habit of yours of taking matters into your own hands, old friend. Fortunately for you, the wine has rendered me affable.”
“Ah, a good servant isn’t motivated by desire for words of praise, so I’ll let this stinging moment pass,” Julianus replied, smiling.
Domitian looked intently at him, probing for mockery, finally deciding it wisest to behave as if none were intended. He nodded to the flaxen-haired eunuch Carinus, his cupbearer and current favorite in the bedchamber, who stood at attention behind him, indicating the one sauce bowl that was covered. Carinus placed this bowl beside Domitian’s plate, then discreetly spooned it out for him. Julianus caught the stink of putrefaction and knew it was the cheap fish sauce called garum, so popular in the streets. Domitian ordered the boy to put it on everything—the fish, the cultivated asparagus, the flat bread—while he cast an occasional defensive glance about the room and shifted his body slightly on the couch so Julia could not see. After the learned discourse on sauces he did not want her to know this plebeian fish sauce was to his taste.
After a few bites Domitian forgot Julianus’ small insurrection and seemed to remember why he was here. The Emperor put a proprietary hand on Julianus’ shoulder, lavishing on him a look that was proud and paternal, his eyes softly focused as if they were beginning to dissolve in the wine.
“Friends!” Domitian called out in his rhetorical voice, commanding the attention of the greater part of the hall. The imperial table was raised on a low platform so that all could view him if not perfectly hear him. “Let us lift a cup to this man in whose honor we are assembled on this night.”
A tribute, Julianus realized with dismay.
Obediently his guests stopped picking delicately at their fish and turned to the Emperor. “This man is first among my friends, and I will be leaning heavily on his wisdom.” Here and there Domitian inserted a phrase of Greek, to prove he was no boorish ruffian. Julianus and Saturninus made an effort not to wince as he ever so slightly mispronounced them, revealing to all he had acquired a tutor in Greek embarrassingly late in life.
“He will not let me honor him in the traditional ways, so I can only give this tribute. Not only is he a man of prodigious learning, he is one of those exceedingly rare men who will speak his mind to a ruler.”
Julianus cast a quick glance about to observe the reaction of his fellow members of the Imperial Council, most of whom reclined at the second table just beneath them on their right. Among them were his old enemy Veiento, in whose eyes Julianus saw a muted flash of hatred, and Veiento’s pawn the Senator Montanus, who met his gaze with vacant eyes, porcine cheeks greasy from overeager feeding, a gnawed quail leg, a remnant of the last course, dangling idly in one hand.
“He will not let me make him Consul,” Domitian continued liltingly, grandly, glancing once at Julianus, who read clearly in the look: Accept my gifts and behave, you too-clever man, and all will be right between us. “Nevertheless, he has consented to be part of my private Council—and I want it known he will be first among them. Let us drink to the well-being of my great and good friend, Marcus Arrius Julianus.”
All cheerfully drank, except for Veiento, who had a murderous look lurking just behind that mask of blandness as he pointedly made no move for his wine. Veiento had been teased into believing he himself would be named First Advisor. His minion Montanus started to reach for his wine cup, but Veiento chopped that hand off with a glance. Domit
ian chose to ignore this.
Junilla did drink, allowing a drop of the dark wine to escape her lips so it looked as though she was bleeding from the mouth. Without moving to wipe it, she gazed meaningfully at Julianus, a bare smile on her lips, recalling some sleekly beautiful beast that had just consumed something bloody and raw. The look convinced him Junilla plotted some fresh vengeful act. With every honor accorded him, her resentment grew—for she counted that honor by rights hers, as he was by rights hers. He had noted long ago a contradiction at the core of her strategy: If she did succeed in ruining him as her nature demanded, she rendered the remarriage she so ardently desired pointless.
When the hum of conversation began again, Domitian said companionably to Julianus, “Ah, here we are, victorious! Remember how we wanted the world to be when we were at the academies together? Now it is ours to shape! Light and knowledge have won! Tell me frankly, Marcus, you did not believe it, did you?” He pointed playfully with his spoon. “I insist you speak to me as friend, not as subject.”
Julianus smiled, then said with careful firmness, “My lord, I fear light and knowledge still have not quite won.”
Uncertainty flitted across Domitian’s flushed Apollo’s face. But he mastered it and returned to effusiveness. “So…a cloud appears over the happy kingdom! Now what have I done?”
Julianus discerned a measure of genuine concern. Thank all the gods he does still require my blessings on his acts.
But before he could reply Domitian spoke on: “I know you hesitated, old friend, before agreeing to come along with me. That grieves me, you know.”
“There was…much to contemplate.”
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