“He would glorify a victory over women?”
“It’s an excuse to use them in a combat without publicly embarrassing himself more than he already has,” Julianus explained. “What’s peculiar is that Auriane’s not to be part of that sad spectacle. He’s got more specific plans for her. Domitian has personally chosen a man for her, a certain Perseus, for an individual bout…. He’s selected a fighter who is strong, but not so strong he would destroy her too quickly and spoil his amusement.”
“Perseus? Perseus.” Diocles exclaimed. “I know of the man. He’s a free fighter. He’ll be about in the streets. Have him put out of the way.”
“To what purpose? Domitian would simply find another who’d do as well. Anyway I will not murder an innocent man.”
Two gardeners approached on the gravel path; they pushed a small cart and carried shears for trimming the box hedges. Diocles angrily waved them off. Julianus idly countermanded this, waving them forward again, then he moved farther along the low stone wall so they would still be out of hearing. Diocles followed him, mildly exasperated. Only Julianus, he thought, would show such consideration for two nearly worthless gardeners while discussing matters of grave import.
“But the most troubling thing,” Julianus went on quietly, “is that he’s somehow scented a connection between Auriane and myself. Last night, while probing me with those bleary prosecutor’s eyes, he spoke thus: ‘You remind me of someone…a woman…that barbarian Medusa.’ Then he went on to say: `What did I do with her?…I’ve misplaced her…. You’ve got that same quality of…lofty innocence.”
“An oblique threat, by Charon’s eyes,” Diocles observed. “You’ve been careful. It’s uncanny.”
“I’ve heard Junilla called many things, never uncanny.”
Diocles looked at him with alarm. “Of course. She bid for the wench’s horse. And doubtless she hissed all that she suspects into Domitian’s ear. She must be enjoying herself immensely. You are a dead man.”
“Do not look so. The fortunate thing about Junilla is the more she enjoys herself, the sloppier she gets. And the next throw is mine.”
Diocles turned sharply away. “I know already what you’re going to propose and I want to say in advance—grief has stolen your wits.”
“Why should I not make use of the one woman who can aid us, who, I’m certain—if I can get past her fear—will prove to want precisely what we want?”
“I knew it.” Diocles dramatically put his hands to his temples. “Not the Empress.” He shook his head vigorously in a way that put Julianus in mind of a balking mule. “She’s got feathers for brains. And she’s as approachable as as the concubines of a Persian satrap.”
But Julianus scarcely heard. His gaze intent as a hawk’s, he saw only the Colosseum among the complexity of red-tiled tenements, the warren of dark streets, the gilded domes and temple roofs; from this distance the amphitheater’s mass looked like the stump of a severed column that at full height might have parted the clouds. The dying sun tinted the brutish structure rose, and he imagined it stained by the blood of the impossible multitudes of men and animals that already had perished there. It was malign and alive, seeming to reproach him for having studied and governed and taught alongside its horrors—this carnivorous child of Vespasian’s that had torn loose from the bonds of rational thought and grown primitive and strong feasting on human flesh. Its familiar bands of columns were bared teeth, set to devour Auriane.
“Admittedly the Empress is not a… practical woman,” Julianus said at last. “But I believe she is predictable. I’m prepared to stake my life on what I judge she’ll do.” He clamped a comforting hand on Diocles’ bony shoulder. “I’m sorry, Diocles, there’s no other course open to me. She’s my last hope for saving Auriane—and my first, for what I plan next.”
The Empress Domitia Longina sat naked before her polished bronze mirror, appraising her form with a ruthless eye. She approved of its comfortable abundance, of her stable, settled hips, her skin of ivory silk with its delicate rose flush, the pearly sheen of her heavy breasts. She was less pleased by the blur of fear she saw in her eyes, and the first muted signs of age about her mouth. And delighted even less by the thickening about her waist. The monster managed to put another child in me. This one, by Artemis’ black dogs, I’ll have out.
And she was repelled by the sight of her cleanly plucked pubic triangle. She found it dismayingly ugly, but he desired it, demanded it, for such things roused him. Domitian had depilated her himself, as he had all his concubines. She counted it as much a sign of her enslavement as she would a scar from a brand.
She was being prepared for a dinner party in her suite of rooms at the Palace. Though her husband lingered at his villa on the Alban Mount, still Domitian watched her through the eyes of every chamberlain, every Guard posted near her quarters. While a maid applied to the Empress’s face a foundation made of sweat of sheep’s wool, three hairdressers worked on her coiffure. One applied curling tongs, creating in front the effect of an impressive, multistoried edifice of ringlets. A second braided the back and twisted the braids into a coil, while a third skillfully wove in false hair, for Domitia Longina’s own tresses were too scanty for the lofty hairstyles in fashion in these times.
The eunuch Carinus slipped in quietly, soundlessly. The Guards called him the Empress’s lapdog and were long in the habit of paying him no mind. The boy settled at her feet, content to watch his mistress’s transformation. Domitia Longina had for long filled the role of Carinus’ mother. He had been stolen from his true mother at so tender an age he half believed the auction-block tale he was begotten by the beautiful Ganymede on a swan.
In Carinus’ hand was a bookroll; he put it into Domitia Longina’s idle hand. She patted his head affectionately. “What is it, my lamb?” She unrolled it slightly and read its title and author.
She felt a soft jolt. It was a long-banned philosophical work, penned by the notorious Cynic philosopher Isodorus. Quickly she scanned it; apparently it was one of Isodorus’ vitriolic essays on the duty of the wise man to destroy the ruler who descends into tyranny.
She gave Carinus a sharp, questioning look. But the boy would not meet her eyes; his petal-thin lids eased shut as he determinedly rubbed his silky head against her thigh, burrowing in like some pup trying to get closer to its mother.
She unrolled it further, keeping her expression impassive so she would not alarm her maids. Where the text ended, she found words written in a different hand—“What you will, my lady, can be accomplished. I must have an audience with you alone.”
She passed a moment in fearful confusion. Who sent this? The name Isodorus called up surely in her mind the name of Marcus Arrius Julianus. Who did not know the tale of his futile fight to save the old man from being thrown to the wild dogs? An instant later she realized this copy of Isodorus’ book was freshly produced. Julianus published banned books in the reign of Nero; everyone knew that. And it was whispered about the bookstalls that he continued to do so today.
By Juno, Queen of Heaven, I hold treason in my hand. This is one of his books. The message is from Julianus.
He desires an audience with me alone? It is a notion so mad and reckless I can make nothing of it. What grievance could Julianus have that I alone could put right? His influence in these times is greater than my own. Surely he knows I cannot respond. He must expect my refusal. Perhaps this is but preparation for something he plans later, or some sort of warning. I know he does not count me an enemy, for we share a mortal enemy—Veiento—and by the laws of survival in the Palace, this makes us allies, even though we scarce know each other beyond formal greetings.
“Carinus, dear child,” she said with forced nonchalance, gently shaking the boy off. Who had seen him with this? She felt a prickle of terror. “Fetch the lamp.”
Carinus rose, took the terra-cotta lamp from her cosmetics table and held it before her. Tears pooled in her eyes as, with faintly trembling hand, she held the bookroll over the flame.
She could not bring herself to burn it.
Such a precious and dangerous book—I want it for my library. I want also to answer yes—but how can I and live? When was I last free? I scarce remember.
More than ten years had passed since Domitian had snatched her away from her original husband and made her first his mistress, then his wife. In the beginning he was courtly, overly attentive, flattering a youthful dreaming mind nourished on ancient epics. She imagined herself a Helen, stolen off by an over ardent lover. By the time she realized Domitian’s true nature she was caught in his snare, possessed by him just as his household slaves were, and he was determined she should never escape while he lived. She quickly discovered that his solemn silences were times of brooding in which suspicions grew like fungus in a gloomy cellar. He was a house of walled-off rooms, which instinct told her she would not want to enter. In the early years she told herself this life was not past bearing. I have been given immortality, she thought, in place of mortal love.
But the glory of being known at the ends of the earth sustained her less with each year; eventually she sought solace with Paris, the most popular pantomime actor of the day. She used to steal into his dressing room between performances, disguised in a satyr’s mask, loincloth and robe. One day Veiento’s agents caught her. Veiento had his own reasons for wanting Domitia Longina put out of the way; he had a niece he hoped Domitian would marry.
When Veiento reported her infidelity to Domitian with eager malice, she did not take her husband’s humiliation seriously enough; she grasped the mythic and fantastic better than brutal daily realities. With alarming swiftness Domitian divorced her, then arranged to have Paris murdered in the street. When mourners came to offer precious oils and flowers on the site where the pantomime actor had been brutally slain, Domitian loosed soldiers on them. Domitia Longina passed a month in turmoil, wondering if his wrath were spent. Then Domitian informed her by messenger that he had set a date for her execution.
As the day approached on which she was to be beheaded, Domitian answered none of the frantic entreaties she sent. Then one day remained before the appointed hour. Domitian was presiding at the games, and the throng seemingly spontaneously began to shout her name, urging the Emperor to forgive her. Domitian relented, careful to make it appear as though he acted in response to the wishes of the mob. He then forgave her publicly and remarried her—and so found a way to preserve his dignity while doing what she suspected he had planned to do all along, which was to take her back once he satisfied himself he had terrified her nearly to madness.
Domitia Longina never recovered from the months of waiting for execution; she went about in dread of being condemned again. She began to demand poppy juice from her physician to dull the daily terror. Often she walked to the Esquiline to sacrifice at the Temple of Juno Lucina, Mother of Light, begging the torch-bearing image to be allowed to outlive her husband by many years, praying war, accident, or an assassin’s knife would carry him off. She despised women like Junilla who lived with the freedom of Cleopatra and squandered it on debauched nights among companions with the souls of crawling things. If she had that precious freedom, she would pen poetry, live among players and the authors of plays, and finish the library she was having built in her gardens.
Surely, she thought, Julianus cannot have overheard my prayers at the Temple of Juno?
But fear triumphed, and she touched the bookroll to the flame.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
AURIANE AND SUNIA SAT AMONG CORAX’S two hundred novices, awaiting the test of aptitude. Before them was the elliptical practice arena that lay at the heart of the school. Amber light filtered through the clouded glass of a skylight fifty feet above; it gave the sand a lurid, sickly glow, as though some sorcerer cursed the spot and the hungry balefires of Lower Earth shone through.
We are dragged still closer to the pit of sacrifice. I feel the heat of the pillar of fire, the chanting voices of Hel’s host below. But for you, Marcus, and Avenahar, I would shed the world and let myself be pulled down.
Had she not been in misery, she would have been amused by the sight of Corax strutting among the milling staff of the school, shouting with comic ferocity as he gave orders to his five assistants and making forced jests no one found amusing.
He is a dwarf rooster who does not realize it is lost among grander beasts who would as soon step on it as listen to its crowing.
While three assistants brought out leather arm guards and greaves, stout round shields and an assortment of wooden swords, another hastily prepared a list, determining who would be paired with whom. Two Mauretanian slave boys smoothed the sand, dragging about the ring a mechanical contrivance that in Auriane’s mind resembled a plow. An additional rank of guards moved into place behind those always posted along the vaulted passages leading from the two grand entrances; aptitude tests were common times for attempted breakouts. All this activity, Auriane saw, was carried out with the precision and efficiency of before-battle preparations.
There is no enemy here, you strange and silly people—no enemy but your own peculiar madness.
Curious citizens were wandering in. The visitors’ seats opposite began to fill with idle young men of noble families, avid to know before their absent companions if some formidable talent were forthcoming so they could win back at the amphitheater what they had lost at the races. They wore the brightly dyed lacernas currently in fashion; as they gracefully gestured, their hands glittered with rings of amethyst, topaz, sardonyx and gold. Sprinkled among them were spies from the Ministry of Finance, sent to make certain Corax did everything properly and wasted no money. And as the city’s shops were closed—this was one of the fifty-one days of the year memorializing Rome’s worst defeats in battle, and it was ill-omened to conduct business on such days—shopkeepers and their apprentices appeared as well. Coming with them through the guards’ lines was a flock of Matidia’s prostitutes, swathed in yellow silk. The visiting company brought startling color to this sepulchral place, as though roses were cast down in a festering sink.
The sixty Chattian captives huddled close together on the stone seats, as if in a vain attempt to preserve identity and prevent it from dissolving in an alien sea. Sunia was pale as one stricken with ague.
Corax began to shout names; by twos the novices entered the arena and started sparring. Auriane pointed out their errors to Sunia, trying to keep desperation from her voice. And numbly Sunia feigned paying close attention, praying to Fria her morning meal of miserable gruel would stay in her stomach.
Auriane was quiet suddenly when the slender-boned girl from Albion rose and took her turn. She was paired with a tall, closed-countenanced Sarmatian woman, wiry and nimble as a race-bred mare, with a nippy temperament to match. The pale girl made a game but hopeless effort, causing Auriane to think of a startled bird pecking desperately and uselessly fluttering its feathers. The Sarmatian woman with two clipped, violent strokes struck the wooden sword from her hand, then with a backstroke, knocked her to her knees. Light laughter came from the visitors’ seats. Corax ordered the frail creature off with a contemptuous flourish of the hand.
Auriane felt dull horror settling round her heart. What would they do with her? Auction her off to a brothel? Lower her, bound, into a bear pit? Auriane seized Sunia’s hand and found it slimy with perspiration.
“Thorgildus—Sunia!” Corax cried out. Auriane masked a smile of relief. It was an absurd pairing, but Auriane knew Corax’s object was not to match evenly; he meant only to spur his charges into demonstrations of skill. Thorgild would be easy with her, and he was clever enough to make Sunia look skilled.
Then they heard part of a hushed exchange behind them.
“Tonight’s the night we avenge ourselves on those villains of the Second Hall,” a Numidian called Massa was saying. “We’ll make it look like a suicide. I know we’ve got the right rogues this time. By the fleas of Cerberus, once they’re disposed of, I’ll wager a month’s wine ration you’ll see no more rat dung in our
barley.”
Rat dung? Auriane thought, battling an upwelling of queasiness. For how many months had they been eating fouled food?
For Sunia this final, if minor, bit of vileness proved past bearing. She rose, then bent over retching. Auriane stood up quickly beside her, steadying her, silently cursing the men behind her.
“Nemesis,” Corax shouted to his assistants. “Douse that sickly cow with water and be quick about it.”
Two assistants came up with a bucket of water and sloshed it hard over Sunia as indifferently as if she were a soiled spot on a wall, soaking Auriane and Massa as well. Sunia, shivering and dripping, her long, braided hair matted to her rough wool tunic, climbed down, took up a wooden sword and entered the practice arena, followed closely by Thorgild. Thoroughly unnerved, Sunia wanted only to throw down the weapon and weep.
Sunia began with a hesitant lunge at Thorgild that brought looks of amused disbelief from the visitors. Auriane, wincing, forced herself to watch as Sunia swung the sword too broadly, giving Thorgild room for a dozen strikes. Silently Auriane prayed—Fria, descend, and fill her limbs with wisdom. When she looked up again, she saw Thorgild played his part well, not pressing her too hard, giving her numerous openings to strike.
Then Auriane saw that the wisdom for which she prayed was given to Thorgild. He began to bat at Sunia, hitting her several times painfully on the shins and elbows with the flat of the sword, as one might to annoy a short-tempered beast. Thorgild was well acquainted with Sunia’s blind fits of frustrated rage. The ploy was successful.
Wrath was a better instructor than Corax. Sunia’s movements were not studied now. With a two-hand hold, she launched into Thorgild with a series of wildly aimed vertical cuts; it was less a show of strategic skill, more akin to a madwoman attacking a snake with a hoe. She drove him back several steps, then lowered her head and charged, ramming his chest with her shield. Delighted laughter erupted from the spectators. Skill or farce, it made no difference to them.
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