“Only what you gave your word to do, so long ago in my father’s house.”
“Ah, yes, the Age of Gold would come then, wouldn’t it?” Domitian said, tightly leashing his anger, eager to find out just how far Marcus Julianus would go, “and all the criminals would run free. A sight to warm your soul. I see packs of barking Cynics overrunning the streets. The mob robbing the temples. The law in a drunken sleep. Vestals and married women selling themselves for a few coppers. And in the hand of every one of your colleagues, a ready dagger for any poor ruler who dared hold firm on any matter. Tell me, are they your friends, these criminals, or is speaking treason just a pastime born of boredom, now that so many of your erstwhile companions have met with well-deserved justice?”
“You’re laying traps with words and eagerly awaiting my tumbling in, and it’s all the easier for you because, as holder of supreme power, you give words their very definition. If you would play board games, let us keep to the same rules. Now you call ‘treason’ what you once called ‘acts of patriotic courage’ and ‘speaking freely,’ and this was, I recall, always followed with a remark about how blessed you were that this was possible in your reign. Has ever a ruler in history rendered himself safe through acts of terror?” Julianus paused, feeling he pummeled a corpse, expecting Domitian to order him to be silent—but the Emperor watched him with a noncommittal glare, and so he pressed on.
“I remember, if you have forgotten, you used to say often that if Nero had had one truthteller about him, he might have kept himself alive. Hear, then, your one truthteller. They call you a despot. High, and low, they say it the moment they can say it safely—and you cannot silence them all. But even now this could be turned around, if you stop the prosecutions. Surely you have seen in life that people want to adore a ruler. Winning their love should be no more difficult than coaxing water to run downhill. Begin with Herennius. You know he has no ambitions above the most drab of civil posts. No one listens to him or cares what he says. Let him go.”
Domitian laughed easily and put a companionable hand on Julianus’ shoulder.
“But they listen to you and care what you say, do they not, my dearest Marcus? Would it not be a fine joke on me if I’ve been nursing a viper at my breast all these years? Do not be alarmed, I’m just speaking freely. That’s fair, isn’t it? One might say you’ve prepared the ground well. Your counsel has made me hated, but the people throw roses at your feet. Interesting, is it not? I know at last why you always natter on at me about what I said as a boy. I was foolish then, and easily ruled, and you mean to keep me so. Once my destiny settled on me, and I became infused with divine essence—yes, divine essence, for that is what happens when you stand so close to the gods for so long—then, you could abide it no more. Ah, but perhaps it’s your great talent to get a man to trust you with his life, until you’ve rendered him blind, deaf, and dumb….”
They had come to the dock with its stone dolphins splattered with pigeon dung. Domitian said gaily, as if it were some trifling joke on himself, “You know what? This is awkward, but I cannot seem to remember why I summoned you. Perhaps you’d best go back.” He signaled to the Master of the Gardens and ordered him to fetch the simpleminded boy, meaning to have him take Julianus’ place in the boat.
Julianus met Domitian’s eyes, and the emptiness in them was haunting; it was like looking on a barren patch of ground that was the site of an old, unsolved murder. There was a glancing memory of life in those eyes, but no more.
This, then, was the end. He knew Domitian would not summon him again, either as an advisor or as a friend. Whatever it was in Domitian that reached for him had finally sickened and died, poisoned by his fear. The hard shell he had been secreting about himself all these years was now closed, complete. The only face Domitian would ever turn to him would be that of this sly trickster, a crude mask that hardly covered all that gaped emptiness beneath.
His position was more perilous than at any time since Domitian’s accession, for now his shield—Domitian’s deep, inchoate yearning for his good opinion, so pervasive it made him both father and final arbiter of truth—was there no more. He stood exposed before all that bestial imperial ill-will. In spite of this, Julianus departed the Alban villa feeling only the lucid calm of a soldier on the dawn of battle, and a measure of relief from having spoken his mind. Days passed, then a month, and he was not summoned, but neither was he harassed or condemned. He could not account for it; he could only pray all remained so, until the fateful day. The stratagem was successful; Nerva was safe—that was all that mattered.
Two months had elapsed since the night Auriane passed at Julianus’ great-house. Auriane lay listlessly on her rude cot, her forehead glazed with sweat, the rough wool of her tunica matted to her back. Sunia stood pressed to the bars of their cell’s narrow window, never giving up hope a small wind might stir.
“I like this not at all,” Sunia was saying as she fanned herself with papyrus sheaves plucked from the kitchen garbage. “You must know that oaths of love do not mean to these people what they means to us—they do not join for life as we do.”
“Sunia, give me rest, not this again.”
“Then attend to what I say this time. Erato’s been married three times and Acco, four. It is said a king of former days called Nero married a eunuch in a royal ceremony before the whole of the city, because he…she…resembled a past wife whom he’d murdered. We know little of these people, and what I do know gives me shivers. Living stacked on top of one another does something evil to the mind. They marry girls off at twelve in this place, twelve. In a few more years Avenahar will be old enough for him. He might forget about you and start nursing a passion for your daughter.”
“Sunia!”
“Well, that finally roused you from that bed!”
“You may say whatever you wish of the rest of them, but not him. I’ll hear none of it!”
Sunia felt her stomach twist. She had seen Auriane angry with others, but it was unsettling to feel that fine fury turned on herself.
“I am sorry,” Sunia whispered. “I should not have said that.” She waited a moment, then added tentatively, “Am I forgiven?”
“Of course. I am weary and heartsick and frightened of what comes, and it’s hot enough to bake bread in here. Let us forget it.”
Sunia turned her attention back to the window. “Come and look. The soldiers scattered the pantomimes, and they left, but now there’s a long line of women with torches, frightening everyone away…. They’re carrying palm branches.”
“The prostitutes,” Auriane said lethargically. “I heard it somewhere. They’ve been denied the right to inherit.”
“But listen. A good number of them are crying your name. ‘Carissima Aurinia.’ They will raise you up to be queen, I swear on my mother, if you are victor one more time.” Sunia looked about. “Auriane, something ails you, I have known it for some days now. I’ve never seen you lying about so much. Maybe you ate spoiled food. Or it could be the summer sickness. Perhaps the physicians have some potion—”
“No,” Auriane responded more sharply than she meant to. “I am well as ever. No physicians.”
Sunia came closer, mystified now. “You are ill. I’ve been watching you. I…I heard you last night.” Auriane had vomited up her evening barley gruel.
“Leave me be. It is nothing, I say.”
“You do not trust me enough, then, to tell me when you are ill.”
“Sunia, it is not that at all.” Auriane tensely looked away. “Say nothing to Erato. Swear to it on your mother.”
“Auriane!”
“Sunia, I am with child.”
“What? What? No!” Sunia sank down beside her. “What are you saying? It cannot be.”
“It can be, and it is.”
“Auriane, no!” Sunia put her hands to her temples, slowly shaking her head. Then she got a firm grip on Auriane’s arm, as if to restrain her, too late, from what had already been done. “No,” she said again softly, bewild
erment collecting in her eyes. Then she ventured, “It is… his?”
“His,” Auriane affirmed, shivering as she spoke the word, surprised that such an impersonal word as his could feel so intimate, could steal so deeply inside. “His,” she repeated just because she enjoyed the sound of the word.
“But I don’t understand…. How did it happen? I mean…you were given herbs and amulets and that ghastly wash of vinegar water…”
“I did not drink or use what the physician prepared for me. And I tossed the amulets away.”
“But…why?”
“Did you not see the moon on that night? All below was drenched in its holy light. No creature touched by it could have remained barren. It is unwise to thwart the fruitfulness of nature on such a night.”
“Let others be fruitful then! How can you possibly—”
“Listen to me. I will tell you my reasons. It was the day of the Festival of the Sacred Marriage. Any child conceived on that night will be a great bringer of good, be it woman or man. And this babe was conceived beneath the aurr, and so will have the earth-magic given me by Ramis, as well as powerful Roman magic from its father, whom I fear I will never see again on earth. Do you not see? This child will have kin-luck far greater than mine and will do for our people what I could not. Sunia, my own circle of kin has been pruned back to a stalk…it is pitiful. I must let it flower again, or how will my ancestors ever find rebirth? And…it is also because of Avenahar. That I have not seen her budding years sorely oppresses me. With this babe it will be different—this one I’ll keep by me always.”
“Great Fria, keep by you always? You’re a war captive locked into a cell. They do not have children in this place! And how can you fight? What of Aristos? The day is set.”
“Calm yourself, Sunia. I have thought of all of this. This time of sickness does not last—I know, from when I bore Avenahar. On the day that I fight Aristos I will be still strong and lithe in body, and not yet through half my time. Tell no one, Sunia, not even Coniaric and Thorgild. Erato would order the physicians to force abortives on me. Do not look so! It’s not the first time I have done battle with a child in me. Now swear on Fria’s name to say nothing, and to help me hide it.”
“I swear—” Sunia began, then broke into soft tears. “Oh, this is a sad madness. How could the gods ask such a thing of you? Have you not suffered enough?”
“It is all right, Sunia. Now listen to me…. To keep those hawk-eyed physicians from finding me out, I’ll need a draught for the sickness. There is a plant called clove root—do you know it?”
“I think I saw my mother gather it once.”
“It grows in damp places and has brownish-pink flowers. The root smells of cloves. The leaf is shaped like this.” Auriane traced the form of the leaf in the grime of the floor. “When next they send you to the vegetable-market, you must steal off to the herb stalls and get it for me. Can you do it?”
“Of course. I’ll find it,” Sunia assured her, consoled somewhat by this small mission—it made her feel less buffeted about by fate. “You’ll not be found out, I’ll see to it.” Sunia looked with bewilderment toward the narrow slice of night sky. “What would Witgern have said of this strange turn of events, or Sigwulf, or your own mother? When the month of Augustus comes, Aristos, killer of men, born Odberht, bane of us all, will do battle with…with a pregnant Cleopatra. I think the Fates are having a joke at your expense. I do not like any of this.”
“Perhaps they are. I know Baldemar would find it rightly humorous. But he would in deadly earnest expect me to carry it through.”
AURINIA REGINA
CHAPTER LIII
THE MONTH NAMED IN HONOR OF the deified Augustus came, and with it his festivals and games.
Auriane was like the hungry wolf in winter that pursues its quarry day on day, leaving bloody tracks in the snow as it seeks the creature whose death will give it life. Whether Aristos gulped down wine and meat in the First Hall or practiced in the school’s central ring, she observed him with the same neutral intensity with which she watched the flames during the Ritual of Fire. As the day drew close, his strengths and weaknesses became the boundaries of her world. Soon she could imitate the ponderous grace of Aristos’ leaps when he shifted target with such merciless accuracy that Thorgild broke into laughter when he practiced with her. Her awakening doubts about the holiness of the vengeance rite served only to increase the ferocity of her pursuit, for now she had to shout to cover the sound of whispered questions within.
But if Auriane had doubts, the three hundred Chattian prisoners housed among the city’s four training schools did not. When Auriane first spoke the challenge, excitement spread quickly among them. Though they did not know the hour was set, they sensed her new purposefulness and it maddened them with hope. Aristos’ greater strength did not discourage them—had not Auriane sprung from a bloodline that regularly produced great enchantresses and heroes who turned back armies? And had she not lived a season with Ramis, whose earth-born powers would lend her sword the speed and accuracy of a hundred serpents?
In great numbers they vowed their hair to her victory.
When they caught sight of Auriane, they made the sign of the war-god, and the chant of old would begin— Daughter of the Ash, lead us out! Soft and uncertain at first, it would gain in momentum until the vaulted corridors of the school resounded like the interior of a great drum. It alarmed the guards, to whom it was no more than barbarous, gutteral noise.
Once as she was led to practice, she managed to exchange a few hurried, sad words with a fellow tribesman freshly captured, and got scraps of news from home. She learned a shrine of stones had been built on the spot where she had been taken captive, and the ground about it was daily sprinkled with the blood of white ewes.
And Witgern, to her astonishment, was alive. It was Witgern who had led the Chattian warriors when they attempted to cross the frozen Rhine to aid Saturninus in his ill-fated war on the Emperor. Her informant added, “The Hel-borne ice thawed that night only because the Scourge lives on—and lives like a king.”
“Soon now, that will be remedied,” she whispered before the guards prodded her on.
Erato noticed the new restlessness of the Chattian prisoners. When he was told that they refused to let the school’s barbers cut their hair, and that they muttered uncouth incantations whenever they saw Auriane, on the advice of his senior guards he decided to ignore it. These things were harmless enough in themselves, he was told, and his interference might provoke a costly uprising.
As the day of the bout with Aristos drew ever closer, for Auriane the nights worked in gentle but powerful opposition. As she lay in the darkness trying not to hear Sunia’s stuttering snores, Marcus Julianus seemed so intimately close that she felt like a loose lyre string shivering after it has been plucked. In the midnight dark the golden haze stole back, pleasure’s insistent ghost, lingering round her loins, haunting her with the memory of the heat of his breath on the back of her neck, the caress of his voice as he uttered reassurances. At such times she hardly knew the creature possessed by the need of Aristos’ death. But when dawn came, once again ancestors ruled. Each morning she had to force down the memory of him—which she could not do completely—and ignite herself anew with a passion for vengeance. By day, her resolve was like an image in a still pool—whole and perfect when she paused to examine it. But the memory of him cast in a stone, agitating the surface, disintegrating that clarity, muddling the world.
Marcus Julianus was at first given no sign to show how completely the bond between himself and the Emperor had been severed. Then, when two months had elapsed since the afternoon Domitian summoned him to the boat, his permission to use the imperial post was withdrawn without explanation. Within days of this, three men whom he had recommended for various posts were dismissed for frivolous causes. Friends and relations of clients whose court cases he supported began to regularly lose. No banquets of state were given in these days, and Julianus suspected the cause wa
s that Domitian would not have him at the imperial table, but was not yet ready for the city to see such visible evidence of the rift. And when he sent round written advice Domitian requested concerning interpretation of the laws, if the Emperor had questions he would not put them to Julianus directly but asked them instead of his magistrates. Julianus mused once to Diocles, “It is as if I died.”
He put his favor to the test, and the evidence became less subtle—he requested a private audience and was told by an imperial secretary he must go to the Office of Petitions and wait his turn like a common citizen.
Rumors of who was in favor and who was not traveled swiftly as panic of fire; when word of this snubbing got about, Julianus found his clients deserting him in dozens, seeking the shelter of safer patrons. The favor of the Emperor was like rain on crops—nothing flourished without it. But he knew he had lost only the affections of those who used him to climb to the next post, and he found some grim amusement in the sight of them scurrying off. It would not undermine his plans or prevent Domitian’s death. For all, at last, was nearly in place.
He had enlisted more than half the Guard, enough to ensure the transition would be relatively bloodless—at least, as far as it was possible to arrange such things through human agency—and he was ready to leave the rest to the gods. The fateful day had been chosen: the second after the Ides of Augustus. On that day the twenty most influential Senators, all ready to proclaim Nerva emperor, would be present in the city. And the Senate would be in session against all custom, for Domitian was eager to begin autumn’s round of prosecutions.
Through all this, Julianus was shadowed by a certainty he had released Auriane to her doom. It was apparent from the reports of his agents that she stalked Aristos still, and it angered him. He sent a warning message to Erato, ordering him to keep them well apart. Though he reassured himself repeatedly the two would find no way to meet, the deep-knowing part of him knew better: She was in mortal danger.
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