Curses on Nemesis, Petronius thought. If Julianus dies I will charge it to myself—for I let Bato into the plot. All comes apart. We’ll end taking our places beside Saturninus and all the others who tried to throw off Domitian and died for it.
In the octagonal bedchamber Domitia Longina hesitated before the imperial bed in its grand niche adorned with a temple roof and pilastered columns of serpentine. Her heart felt like a swallow trapped in the eaves as she drew back the heavy Oriental coverlet and exposed the checkered pillow with its tassels of gold.
Coward. Do it now!
Her hand slid cautiously beneath the goose-down cushion. Her finger was nicked by steel. Startled, she withdrew it and slowly, sensuously, licked the blood, imagining it her husband’s. Then she drew out the short sword always concealed there.
Now, monster, you’ll have no way to defend yourself. Just as I never did.
She was to conceal the sword beneath her palla, then calmly depart. The timing was close—loyalist Guards had just completed an inspection, and within the quarter hour Domitian was to be here, questioning the suspected traitors. But she found herself bewitched by the sight of that implacable blade, emboldened by the feel of that deadly weight in her hand.
This is what my life has been lacking. A weapon.
And her patched-together calm blew apart. That rage, so long tamped down, was volcanic. Savagely she whipped back the embroidered coverlet. With the sword held clumsily in both hands, she began slashing the undercovers, making horrible wounds, imagining she mangled her husband’s body. This, for the pleasure you took in my mock execution.
This, for your bloody murder of Paris, who loved me.
This, for every time you made me watch while you depilated your concubines. For long moments she continued her joyous mutilations. Soon undercovers and coverlet were heaped in a shredded mass at one end of the bed.
Finally the sound of fast, stuttering whispers—soft, urgent, persistent as a moth—penetrated the veils of her rage. It was Carinus.
“My lady! Stop! Please. Suspicions will be raised. Servilius is somewhere padding about, I saw him in the corridor not a moment ago!”
Domitia Longina slowed long enough for reality to overtake her, then slumped into passivity, cheeks flushed like a maiden’s. Perspiration matted her amethyst silk stola to her deeply heaving breast. She surveyed the damage with dismay.
“What will we do? Carinus, I have destroyed us!”
Carinus loved her too much to condemn her, even in the privacy of his mind. His sole thoughts were of means of remedying the situation.
“I’ll set it all to right. First, get safely off, and take the sword. We must make the bed look as before, that is all. Still your fears. In the Venus bedchamber off the East Garden is a tapestry made of the very same cloth and pattern. I’ll fetch it.”
She stared at him, her terror unabated. The Venus bedchamber was a quarter mile and a maze of passages away.
Carinus sprinted off like a youth in a footrace.
CHAPTER LXI
THE TORTURER PROSTRATED HIMSELF BEFORE DOMITIAN. He was as free of fearful awe as an obedient beast, as though the long habit of numbing himself to the sight of human suffering had taught him to deaden every other emotion as well. Those muscular hands had learned to operate the pulleys of the rack with the same indifference with which he fastened his sandals. Slowly his bald head came up—a barren moon in the twilight of the small torchlit chamber—and he gazed with inscrutable complacency upon nothing. He was a slave who had himself been tortured once—he had had the misfortune to have been the key witness in an important murder case—and he had as a reminder six missing front teeth, prized out by an inventive interrogator. The vacant places made a checkered pattern as he smiled.
“He lives?” Domitian asked.
The torturer gave a furtive nod of assent, unwilling to meet his august visitor’s eyes. He put Domitian in mind of a shy nocturnal animal.
Domitian gave a soft grunt and gestured sharply toward the inner room. The torturer led him past a smoking brazier, and through a passage hung with the implements of his trade—brands of various shapes, whips of different weights, some with thongs fitted with steel balls; a row of sinister pliers in graduated sizes. There were pincers, thumbscrews, foot-crushers, and vises, all as neatly cared for as if this were a carpenter’s shop. On the floor at his right loomed a rack, a complicated set of ropes and pulleys set on a wooden trestle, designed to wrench bone from bone. They stepped over a rusted drain set in a depression in the passage so the chambers could be washed clean of blood, then entered a second chamber where the reek of sickness prompted Domitian to whip out a cassia-scented handkerchief and hold it to his nose.
Chained to the wall was a man stripped to the waist. Domitian forced down the errant stirrings of arousal caused by the sight of that smoothly muscled, well-formed body, utterly at his mercy—he did not want this man to have even that power over him. Julianus was unconscious; his head rolled to one side. His face was so misshapen from blows that Domitian could not have positively identified him at first. But from long experience in such matters, he knew precisely what the torturer had done. The vicious scarlet ruptures along the spine proved the brand had been applied; the purple-black welts, oozing red sap—beautiful, in their way, Domitian thought—were evidence he had been beaten with iron rods.
“Rouse him!” Domitian said softly. The torturer sloshed a bucket of scummy water into the man’s face. He coughed, shook his head, and opened his eyes to glassy slits. Gradually they sharpened with recognition. It was only when Domitian saw the familiar flare of critical intelligence in those eyes that he was certain this was Marcus Julianus.
Domitian edged closer, feeling lured by everything he never wanted to know, while conflicting feelings surged in him, giving him a sort of emotional indigestion. He felt the bully’s barbarous joy, mingled with a terrible pity, affecting as dreams, as if his own best self hung bleeding on that wall.
“Well, well, old friend,” Domitian said with attempted carelessness. “I see you moved right in, even though you weren’t invited! Since you’ve so boorishly intruded on my torture chamber, I trust you’re enjoying the accommodations. Are the brands hot enough? They can be heated more. This whipper is a disgrace, I’m afraid—you’ve still got flesh left on your back. My apologies. And I know what you’re thinking…that rack should be replaced—I’ll wager you thought I didn’t notice the wood’s unpardonably warped.”
Julianus regarded Domitian without realizing at first who he was; he felt he struggled up through bloody mud until, gradually, he saw diffuse light. His body’s massive struggle against feeling fogged his vision; comprehension came in blunt, lumbering starts.
Who is this barking fool? Oh, yes. I remember.
Domitian. Curses on Nemesis. He should be in the bedchamber by now. Petronius, you played your part poorly—you let him get away from you.
Time closes in upon us. I must make this visit a grievous torment for him so he will leave.
Domitian shifted to a more confidential manner, his voice rich with remorse and veiled pleading—“Do you think I want to see you like this, old friend? It is greatly distressing to me. Sometimes I wish for a new Nero so we could be allies once more. What caused you to do it? What base humor, what unleashing of spite, what close-nursed hatred of me made you spit in my face in the matter of the barbarian woman? I’m trying to comprehend you. Are you still enjoying the sight of the spittle dripping from me, or have you already moved on to other conquests? Ah, I’ve not it in my heart to condemn you summarily. Marcus, I’m begging like the blind man that beds down under bridges. Give me my half-measure of respect. Tell me I deserve an arch or two, or one golden statue, or a single reverent mention in a history text. And I’ll order our man here to cut you down.”
Julianus closed his eyes and drew deeply on his last reserve of strength. “I will oblige you then and tell you what you deserve,” he said in a voice forced from a parched throat. �
�But why waste the question on me alone? It would be edifying if we could ask it of all your victims.” He felt something tighten in the air, as if Domitian seized up in alarm.
“How would you fare in Hades,” Julianus continued, “before a court composed of the innocents you’ve murdered? I hear them pronouncing sentence—‘For wanton ruthlessness unbecoming of a bandit, let alone the highest caretaker of the state…’” As Julianus paused for breath, he heard Domitian’s angry, roughened breathing increase in tempo; with grim glee he continued on. “‘…for displays of peevish cruelty and murderous conceit that would make Nero blush…coupled with a nature so suspicious it skirts rank madness…and for exercising a justice that is no more than crude revenge for being told what your tyrant’s soul cannot bear to hear…we condemn you to…’ to what? What would be just and fair?”
Domitian felt like a cat thrown in water. What is this? he screamed with every sense. In his subterranean self he always had believed Marcus Julianus loathed him. But Domitian now realized that, at an even deeper stratum, he entertained the faint hope that Julianus loved him, as the good father, beneath everything, cherishes a son. An edifice of pretense that had protected him all his life began to crack apart at the foundation.
“Ah, yes, I have it,” Julianus went on, “perfect justice. Your victims condemn you…to be packed in a chest of ice…”
“What are these filthy spewings?” Domitian’s hands flew to his ears.
Julianus felt Domitian’s outrage as a blast of heat; the room felt like a kiln. Quietly he finished, “…the death you gave your own brother.”
“You know nothing! Slithering viper. No, I’m pleased to hear this. Who can be injured by the ravings of a madman?” He advanced upon Julianus, fists clenched. “I’ll pour molten steel down that lying throat.”
“And still you imagine you can obliterate truth by destroying the vessel through which it speaks. Little children believe such things…. Perhaps it’s why it never seemed you truly came to a man’s estate….”
Domitian gave a dark growl and struck Julianus hard across the mouth. A bright thread of blood traveled down his chin.
“You are a scourge,” Domitian breathed. “You knew. All these years. Worm in the cabinet. Fiend. Your father found a street-urchin and not his true son—this proves it. You’ve a slave’s stupid, cunning, devious nature. How dare you judge? What do you know of being despised and vilely plotted against by an older brother—the world’s darling, our father’s pampered favorite. Who are you anyway? You’ll die unknown and forgotten, Endymion.”
Domitian nodded to the torturer. “The weighted whip.”
The interrogator took up the seven-thonged lash fitted with steel balls and, with unthinking grace, laid it on. Seven fresh ragged cuts appeared on Julianus’ back. His body contracted with each new blow—an organism’s animal protest against massive insult. By the fifteenth, the flesh began to look pulverized. Julianus groaned with each stroke but would not cry out.
The sight suffused Domitian with strength until he felt powerfully engorged, while the body of his victim shrank into pulpy insignificance. Now I am his god. He needs me more than he needs the immortal Fates, to end the pain.
After twenty lashes Domitian signaled a halt—he remembered he had a question to put to his former advisor while there was still life left in him. The torturer lowered the whip, and Julianus’ body lay still, dangling heavily as a haunch of meat.
“The scoundrel called Bato has met with a deserved end. What was he to you? Why did you scheme to prevent him from being questioned?” Domitian demanded softly.
Julianus’ chest and throat felt ravaged from the strain of forcing back screams; for a moment no words would come, though he tried. His back was a raging conflagration. The pain pulsed furiously, swamping him in molten lava, slightly relaxing its hold, then engulfing him once more. Domitian was forced to repeat the question. Julianus felt that voice as an iron file, relentlessly abrading his eardrum.
“The man Bato”—Julianus managed finally in a rasping whisper—“knew…of a plot against your life…a plot I did not want to fail….”
“You knew of this as well. You are shameless!”
“Oh, come now, you expected me to serve you and betray you…. You expect it of everyone.”
“How can you look at me!”
“It’s…not easy to look at you…believe me. Bato came to me for financial help, and…for advice, which I readily gave him. I knew the man had not the strength to withstand torture…so I let them take me…and that’s all you’ll know, monster…. You’ll never get their names. I would first bite off my tongue and spit it in your face.”
Domitian heaved with soft, malicious laughter. “Well then, let me save that tongue for you! Parthenius…Stephanus…Satur…Clodianus…a gladiator called the Cyclops.” Domitian lingered over the names as if they were delicacies, observing with satisfaction that each brought a fresh start of despair to Julianus’ eyes. “So you see, your sad little plot is undone. These men are all in chains. I am truly sorry you had to subject yourself to all this for nothing.”
Julianus lay silent and still. He knew he must let Domitian feel he was safe.
“Your ineptitude surprises me, Marcus Julianus. You know, I always thought that if ever you set your hand against me, I would be a dead man. A councillor who has lost his cleverness is rather like a concubine gone to fat, don’t you think?”
Julianus thought frantically— Why won’t he leave? He despises me, and he’s won. Nemesis!
He made a last try. “Poor as my own opinion is of you, Spawn-of-Nero,” Julianus whispered, “yet…there’s still another who loathes you even more.”
Domitian moved closer, his eyes afire with lust to know. “Who, you arrogant spewer of sophistries? Petronius? Norbanus? That shuffling old fool who gives kindliness a bad name, Nerva? Tell me. What is it to you now?”
“You run too far afield, don’t exert yourself so. I speak of yourself.”
“Why do I waste time with a madman? What man despises himself? It is against nature. I order you not to think it.”
“It is a curious phenomenon, but it happens. Despite that you’ve taken your place on the world’s highest throne, what you see in the glass is a mean, unlettered lout, a cross between criminal and slave…. You wear your ignorance like a pox. You took to killing to get the respect of your betters and, too late, discovered it only strengthened their belief in your own father’s assessment of your worth—that you’re fit to be a mule driver, and no more.”
Domitian silenced him with a murderous grunt that caused the torturer to jerk back as if struck. Then he nodded curtly, and the man laid on five more lashes.
Julianus relapsed into unconsciousness, leaving Domitian alone—and agonizingly conscious. All the words Julianus had spoken ate eagerly into Domitian’s brain like so many vigorous worms into a corpse.
I defeated this man, and he’s admitted to his shameless faithlessness. What is his cursed secret that he seems the victor, even as he waits by the Styx for the boatman to pick him up?
Roughly Domitian shook Julianus’ shoulder. “You’ll not get away from me so easily, you scorpion-in-the-coverlet. Bring him round!”
The torturer sloshed another bucket of filthy water into Julianus’ face. This time he was not roused so quickly.
I could have him whipped to death, Domitian realized, and still it would not take the scorn out of that smile. I want to cripple him inside, as I have been.
Domitian thought of a way.
He crouched so his gaze was level with Julianus’ eyes. Blandly he smiled.
“Sorry to bother you again, old friend,” he said with easy joviality, “but it seems I forgot to give you the news of the day, which doubtless you’ve not heard, stowed away down here. Your barbarian Circe paid the price for her criminal insolence. Aristos chopped your Aurinia into cutlets, as she begged him to. She died slowly. I’m afraid he played with her a bit first. Would you like a part of your esta
te to go for her funeral? That is, if they saved enough of her for the pyre?”
He watched Julianus’ face with a sculptor’s attention to expression and saw that a few intelligently chosen words had succeeded where the torturer’s arts had not.
Julianus at first did not seem to hear. Then slowly anguish became visible; Domitian saw something writhe, then collapse within those eyes. Greedily he drank in the sight.
That is life, fool! So much for your cursed independence from me. Know what I know—that the world is infinitely brutish and cold. Love is a tomb. And I spoke the words that taught it to you.
Domitian rose to full height, feeling himself a strutting lion with a fine mane that had just snapped its leash. Never again will I bow down to this man, even in my secret thoughts. I’ve pulled down the idol; I’ve plowed the memory over with salt.
“Feast on defeat, Marcus Julianus. For all your conspiracies, I am victor at the last.”
Domitian gifted the torturer with a newly minted gold aureus, graced, he thought, with an especially fine likeness of himself. The torturer accepted it with no emotion. The Emperor then nodded toward Julianus. “Let him hang there. Give him a full night to think on what I’ve told him. Tomorrow at dawn, he dies on the block with the rest of them.”
Senator Nerva sputtered curses as the mob flowed around his litter and the powerful current of people steadily forced him back. It was a foul enough circumstance that he felt death lodged in every muscle and only wanted to lie down and sleep out all his remaining days. But he feared that if this crowd did not soon disperse he would never reach the Curia quickly enough to ensure his confirmation. The austere columns of the Senate House rose serenely over the storming sea of people, tantalizingly close, but they might as well have been far off as the shores of Africa. He sensed something alien and savage in the excitement of the mob—the wild blood of the barbarian woman whose name they cried infected their own.
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