Or death in the arena.
“I have saddened you. You were thinking, perhaps, of marrying someone else?”
“I fear you’ve guessed it. The Parthian king has asked for my hand. You are too late.”
He laughed and ruffled her hair.
“Marcus, I am honored beyond measure and filled with…surprise and joy. But…I have no answer for you on this day, for I do not know what comes for me.” She was thinking then of the midnight summons to Ramis’ island, and the Veleda’s disturbing words: “…or you can walk the wide avenue to the moon.” Fate awarded her a kingdom she might be compelled to spurn.
She continued, “You know there are women among us who…cannot marry because they are consecrated to the earth, as Ramis is…. I do not know why I say this, for I do not want to join the sisterhood of seeresses…but if I become one, it would not be left to my will, and—”
“Stop! You are a vexing labyrinth of worries and doubts. Wait, at least, until a thing happens before you fret over it. Now we must speak of one more thing—what must be done if you survive, and I do not.”
“That shall not be,” she whispered, “for I would then turn my sword upon myself.”
“Stop that, Auriane, I don’t want you to die because of me. And you’re only making what I must do much harder. Now listen to me. If things do not go well for me, my property will be confiscated. In that case, you must not come near this house, do you understand?”
Numbly, she nodded. He continued. “They will get the estates and anything else they can seize, but I have much that is hidden away. And I want a large share of it to go to you, that you might ever after be richly provided for. Now, unless Erato matches you foolishly, you stand a good chance of earning release. Here is what you must do. This matter is in the hands of a freedman of mine who lives at Veii. You will have to travel there—” And so he followed with a list of places and names, which she committed to memory while her eyes began to well with tears.
At last she said softly, “You are in favor still, in spite of all that has happened. Why think of these things?”
“You’ve no idea how swiftly favor can be turned round. Domitian lapses into a peculiar rational madness all his own. In these days I fear most for those who appear to be in favor.”
“You’ve some plan to rid the world of him, have you not?” she said suddenly, startling herself as much as him; the words seemed to come into her mind from nowhere, and once spoken she knew they were true.
How can she have known? he thought, alarm hammering in his head. There is no way. She has fine senses keyed beyond the human, wondrous as the dog’s ability to track, the eagle’s sight. I thank Nemesis that Veiento, Montanus and the rest are not as perceptive as she.
“You judge me for challenging one man,” she went on, “and yet you have set yourself against the whole of his Guard.”
“You must put it from your mind,” he said gently. “It is ill-omened and ill-advised, and I have oathed not to speak of it to many brave men and women who might lose their lives. These are hideous times.”
He put an arm about her shoulders and walked with her to the heavy oak door that led to the steep alleyway. “Auriane,” he said, taking her face in his hands, “you must stop sorrowing for me. I count my chances far better than yours against Aristos. Anyway, if I did not have an unusual gift for staying alive, I would not be with you now.”
She was not comforted by this. She studied him intently, to better remember his face lest this were the last time she should look upon it.
“We will meet again—soon,” he said. He knew from her eyes that she struggled to believe it and failed.
She sought his mouth suddenly and kissed him hard, as if to impress her soul on him for all time. Then they separated, and he pulled the hood of her cloak well forward, arranging it so that it concealed her face. When this was done, he opened the door.
“Farewell,” she said in a tremulous whisper.
“Auriane,” he said, stopping her just as she started to step down. “Do you believe now that I love you?”
She nodded, not trusting her voice. She did not want to go out into the streets shaking with tears.
“Try not to forget it this time,” he said, smiling casually. In answer she nodded again and gave his hand a forlorn squeeze. Then the two cook’s girls were summoned, and all three set off down the alleyway.
CHAPTER LII
“THE LADY JUNILLA,” VEIENTO’S BLUE-LIVERIED SERVANT announced with the shrill arrogance of the young. He was a Cappadocian boy, a sulky Eros grown too tall too quickly, an amusement Veiento neglected to discard when post-pubescent beauty became marred by stooped posture and poor complexion. As Junilla moved past him amid floating silks of iridescent saffron and sea-green, the boy gave her a pert look that meant— life is difficult enough, harlot, without your coming here to stir up an already boiling pot. Junilla ignored him as she might a growling cur and presented herself haughtily before Veiento, who was hard at work in his rooms in the West Palace, considering an array of written confessions, purloined letters and transcribed conversations, consolidating evidence for the prosecution of Domitian’s enemies in the Senate.
Veiento roughly ordered the boy off, along with two elderly recorders. When they were alone, he gave Junilla a tight, cold smile, inclining his head so slightly the gesture was scarcely made at all. His eyes were two bright, sharp points in their owlish hollows. That shark’s fin nose was more prominent than Junilla remembered; gray flesh shrank from bone as though he decayed while still living. Human blood, Junilla mused, must not provide much nourishment.
“To what do I owe this dishonor?” His voice had the smooth grace of a well-handled dagger. “Have the Circus stalls become too cramped? Or have you come to beg me to put in a word for your dear sisters in the streets who’ve just lost their right to inherit? Or perhaps you’ve just lost your sense of direction along with your good sense—the training school is that way.” He jabbed a skeletal finger in the direction of the Ludus Magnus.
Her eyes stung like scorpions. “Shut your mouth, you slithering serpent, you’ve done worse before noon with catamites that make the sewers look clean, and I wouldn’t warrant that all your lovers had just two legs. I’ve come with a gift you don’t deserve.”
“Being allowed to live on in this city has certainly left you bold. I’ve heard the good citizens of Pannonia—that’s where the Emperor was going to send you, you know—sent him a letter of gratitude when he changed his mind.”
“I don’t doubt it, but I’ll wager it was climbing into your bed, not Aristos’, that inspired them to think their damning thoughts of me. Do you want to battle me all day? One more uncivil utterance and I leave—and you’ll lose him, just when I’ve got him cornered for the death blow.”
“Whomever could you be talking about?”
Junilla ignored this. “And it’s yours, for the small price of getting our divine ruler to lower the taxes on my farms in Noricum, as is only right since my crop was ruined by frost.”
Veiento laughed hollowly. “You’re bargaining with me? You need me, you silken slut. He won’t have it from you, whatever you’ve got. He won’t have anything from you.”
“My price is rightly calculated. You want this more than I do, if that’s possible. You and Marcus Julianus haven’t exactly been lovers these last ten years.”
“Say I agree.” He waved a waxen, blue-veined hand that was the more pitiful for its burden of heavy gold rings. “Go on, and quickly.”
She dropped her voice to its dart-in-for-the-kill register. “I have the statement of two guards from the school, claiming they were called for at midnight to conduct that…that female beast who is the toast of the arena from his house back to the school. She was there, do you understand? Julianus has conceived some unnatural passion for her. Remember, I accused him of this before Domitian. You know that’s…that’s when Julianus so wickedly slandered me. And after I was sent off, Julianus must have lied to Domitian—mu
st have, or he wouldn’t be alive now—and said he’d had nothing to do with her. He’s been aggravatingly careful. I know. I’ve had that house watched for months. But for some reason this once he got careless and those guards betrayed him. Read, and weep for joy!”
Carefully she flattened on the table the papyrus rolls on which the guards’ statements were written. Veiento’s look was almost lustful as he read. All at once he had no malice left for Junilla; all he possessed was for Julianus. He and Junilla were allies once more.
“Yes, yes, this is interesting, but you’ve got to take the measure of the man you’re trying to destroy. A couple of letters from two ambitious guards won’t topple a man who’s been the Emperor’s right arm for so many years. He’ll just talk his way out of this one like he does everything else.”
“This is but the first part of my plan—there’s more. First, you show Domitian these, just to fertilize the ground and start his mind working on the matter.”
“Is that so?” he said, looking at her fully for the first time. Then he reached for the heavy gold medallion of the cult of Isis that hung between her breasts, gently pulling her forward under the pretext of examining it. “You change religions more often than you change lovers,” he commented with an agile frown; then he patted the space beside him on the wooden bench. “What happened to that Syrian love-cult you joined last month? Settle here, Junilla. What’s that charming essence on you? Hyacinthus, is it not?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said, stiffening her back and pulling away. “It’s some scent that stayed with my clothes. My litter was halted by the funeral procession of a man whose death you caused and I don’t know what they were burning. And I’ll stand, if it pleases you.”
Veiento shrugged as if it were no matter.
“Now listen to this,” Junilla continued. “I have something from Aristos himself that no one knows. He’d have murder on his mind if he knew I was revealing this to—”
“You’re telling me Aristos chatters in his sleep?” Veiento broke in with malevolent merriment. “Or was this blurted out during the sweaty culmination of—”
“Mock all you want, Veiento, but I got a choice morsel from him that eluded all your professional spies. He is going to be matched with that Amazon during the Augustan Games. He arranged it himself—he’s convinced she’s laid a curse on him that can only be undone if he kills her with a sword, in the light of day. They’re going to be disguised, that’s how they’re managing it. What is this to us? I’ll tell you. No one knows, not even Julianus. When he learns a day has been set for the combat, he will go mad. As I breathe, he will make an attempt upon Aristos’ life.
“You must go with all this to Domitian,” Junilla continued. “The letters will unsettle him. Who knows but they may be enough by themselves. If not, you and the Emperor can set a trap for our dear Julianus. You’ll have no trouble getting Domitian to cooperate—he’ll get more pleasure from this than from a month of treason trials. On a set day you’ll have a false spy reveal to Julianus that his beast-woman has set herself on a course of extinction. Then have it arranged so that shortly after, Aristos is publicly invited to the Palace on some pretext, and reduce his guard. Promise Domitian he will see Aristos attacked along the way. Arrest the assassins—who Julianus will send for him, surely as winter comes after summer. Under torture they’ll reveal who paid them. Domitian is so close to suspecting Julianus of disloyalty now that this will be like giving one last push to a tottering rock.”
“Oh, he won’t risk Aristos’ life, not outside the arena anyway, a waste of a fine fighting animal in his prime, he would call it….” But Junilla guessed he had already added much in his mind to the bare plan she had given him.
“If it’s properly arranged, there will be little risk to Aristos. We’re speaking of a man who has every means in the world at his disposal, and an artful mind. Banish all thought of the risk. Consider the reward.”
“The reward. Pulling that brazen conniver off his perch, forever. He’s only survived this long because we two have not worked as one.” He held her gaze longer than was necessary while stagnant hopes pooled in his eyes. “Junilla,” he said. “Come now, I know you have a pleasant side tucked under all that malice. Sit.”
The perfect arch of Junilla’s upper lip was delicately distorted in distaste. “My litter bearers arouse my passions more than you.”
A murderous look came into Veiento’s eyes, but he brought it swiftly under control.
She spun about to leave, raising fresh clouds of shifting sea-green and saffron silk, then paused to add in a hissing whisper, “If your good sense matches your genius for treachery, you’ll not mention me to the Emperor.”
“Of course not,” he responded blandly. “I would not want to turn all this into a low joke. Off with you now. Go make another beetle-browed charioteer glad he was born a man.”
Summer came with its profusion of flies, its shimmering heat that drove the poor to gather about street fountains to escape their oven-like tenement rooms, its swampy air laden with the stench of beasts dead in alleyways, and all its sweet rottenness. Flowers and overripe fruit lay crushed on the pavements, while the gutters glistened with stale honey-wine. But even for summer, on most days the streets were unnaturally empty, and only the sporadic roars, rumbling like a distant avalanche, would have alerted a newly arrived traveler to the capital city that most of the populace inhabited the Colosseum or Circus.
Domitian forbade the Senators to leave for their cooler country estates, as was the usual practice, for the trials continued unabated, and he needed them in the city to try and convict their own. The Emperor rarely left the Palace gardens; frequently he avoided the games altogether because increasingly he found the noise agonizing to his nerves, though he had detailed reports brought to him of the behavior of the crowds. He was always eager to know what policies and what men they shouted against, and which gladiators brought the greatest cheers. The foolish few who failed to shout the praises of his favorites occasionally found themselves thrown into the arena to face the next contestant themselves.
Once when the Emperor retired for several days to his Alban villa, he ordered Marcus Julianus to come to him. He was preparing to take his gilded boat out onto the villa’s artificial lake; he himself would be towed behind it in a smaller craft, for lately even the sound of dipping oars was like the crashing of cymbals to his tortured nerves. They walked together through the closely pruned geometric garden, to the edge of the black lake with its strikingly clear reflections of reversed columns and statuary hanging in airless silence like some eerie underwater city. A servant held a sunshade for Domitian. The Emperor’s posture, Julianus noted, was that of a man desperate to ward off the world. His jaw, grown fleshy of late, was set belligerently as a boxer’s, while his head was kept low as if to ram the opposition. Those eyes seemed to register little of his immediate environment—it was as though Domitian judged there was nothing more to be gained by seeing. If the dead walked, Julianus thought, they might do so with those leaden sleepwalker’s steps, too methodical to be animated by a living heart. Domitian sweated, though this day was relatively cool. Julianus suspected that he himself had not been provided with a sunshade in order to make him feel at a slight disadvantage. Domitian could see his expression well, but the sun prevented him from seeing the Emperor’s.
“A fine day, is it not?” Domitian smiled too broadly, showing teeth. “And how speedily fine days can be ruined. I sent you round the charges against Herennius and Nerva. You returned them unedited and unread.”
“They are dead men. Does a man need more than one executioner?”
“Ah, you are clever, Julianus. Odd how I never noticed until recently just how clever. Some men will try and subvert you soon as you turn your back to them. And some men do it before your face, with sophistry masquerading as frankness. Most intriguing. I’ve a new board game I’d like to play with you. It’s imported from Egypt. We’ll try that cleverness.”
Julianus fe
lt his body tauten. Was there something sinister in the way Domitian pronounced the word Egypt? Had an informant overheard his conversation with Nerva—and this was Domitian’s way of letting him know? He carefully kept his expression neutral, knowing those sallow eyes examined his face.
“Ah, yes, I learned a thing about Nerva today that reveals much about you,” Domitian said, his voice soft as an adder’s hiss.
Julianus stopped breathing.
“He’s precariously ill with the quartan fever,” Domitian went on, “and it’s most instructing that you did not tell me, for you must have known—you know when any one of those silly old women in broad stripes so much as sneezes. Clever man. You would have had me try a man when it was not necessary. And such a loved one as Nerva!”
“You are unfair. No one knew Nerva was ill.”
“Ah, perhaps the temptation to take advantage of my love for you finally proved too much. Would I be a fool to think I was foolish to ever count you a friend? I wonder. Now tell me, why do I think your temper has changed? What have you done to make me think so? I find you melancholic, furtive, and cold.”
Julianus was angry suddenly at being batted about like some cat’s prey; he could abide no more diplomatic lies. He felt his whole existence had become like the blade of a knife, bound to cut away what was not true.
I will not be played with. If he suspects me, I will drive it out of him.
“It is you who have changed, not I.” Julianus slowed his steps and held Domitian’s gaze. “You abandoned the throne after Saturninus’ revolt, and you rule no more. Fear rules.”
Because the sun blinded him, Julianus felt rather than saw the jerk of surprise in Domitian’s eyes, and he wondered at his own lack of fear. “How fortunate I am to have you tell me these things.” Domitian’s tone was open and friendly; those eyes, poised javelins. He was an aging carnivore, a beast run to seed, too spent to work up much excitement for the kill. “And what would your divine lordship have me do,” Domitian said, “to turn this foul situation round?”
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