Fools, Nerva thought. You are getting in victory’s way.
Two of his eight Cappadocian bearers were knocked to their knees. The litter pitched; Nerva rolled out into the muddy street. A booted foot stepped on his hand. Three of his chair-men hastily lifted him and dragged him into a cleft between two massive tenement blocks.
This is catastrophe, Nerva thought. If I’m not there to secure the office when the deed is done, the Praetorians will be allowed too much time to think. They cannot be left without a master even for an hour—they might well tear the city apart in vengeance.
That is, if the deed is done at all. The odds are not with us. Too many know of this. The conspiracy had one necessary flaw from the beginning—to render it safe afterward, too many had to be let in.
His eyes watered in a gust of thick, foul smoke. From above came shrieks of terror, a rain of poor possessions. He covered his head as tin vessels, patched clothing, jars of foodstuffs wrapped in rags dropped sloppily all about him. A mother threw a crying child into the waiting arms of a man below. The tenement that sheltered him had been fired by the mob.
Carinus’ heart contracted with dread as he padded about to each of the bedchamber’s five servants’ entrances, bolting them from without, converting his Lord and God’s bedroom into an escape-proof chamber of death.
Suddenly he heard a muffled disturbance within—a woman’s bristling protestations, followed by her angry sobs.
Mother of the gods, the Emperor has walked in on my lady just as she replaces the coverlet. She will fall at his feet and confess it all. We are good as buried.
Carinus felt his heart was compressed in a vise. He put an ear to the door and caught blurred words here and there of an ugly, clumsy verbal duel. First came Domitia Longina’s voice striking out in bold flurries, rising in pitch, as if she advanced with a weapon she did not want to be forced to use. Then came the Emperor’s voice, sulkily defensive, pushing her off, the flatness in his tone betraying he thought her a petty annoyance rather than a true threat. Gradually Carinus put it together—the Emperor had indeed surprised Domitia Longina in the act, but Carinus guessed Juno had preserved her—Domitian had not seen the shredded covers. The Empress, to prevent him from guessing the true reason for her panic, erupted into a fine display of jealousy, most likely over Domitian’s haughty new concubine, too highborn in Carinus’ opinion not to bring Domitia Longina public shame.
Wisely done, dear, clever Mother. It sounds as though he believes you. All is well.
Domitian was seated on a gold and ivory curule chair set on a dais near the east apse of the grand bedchamber. On his right rose a sturdy, maternal Minerva in Parian marble, her divine head angled toward him, her gracefully angled spear poised to protect. Behind him, the imperial bed appeared as formal and unused as funerary furniture. A shaft of hazy illumination from a lightwell shrouded him in sallow light. The Emperor appeared waxen, preserved, a thing scarcely living, his eyes inflexible and remote as that of a god-figure in an Egyptian tomb painting. The imperial gaze was fixed somewhere just above the heads of the five prisoners chained before him. He had shed his prison-fouled clothes and was now freshly bathed, oiled, laurel-bedecked, and magisterially draped in a purple toga embroidered with silver stars.
He was in a fine, grand mood. The Prefect of the City Police had assured him the unruly crowds would soon be brought under control. A dangerous plot had been exposed and crushed. There was still the ghastly matter of Aristos’ death, but was not that sign of divine disfavor evenly counterbalanced by his bold outmaneuvering of Marcus Julianus?
Domitian had long reserved the imperial bedchamber for settling matters he preferred kept quiet—those occasional embarrassments a ruler must attend to, whose sad solution he knows will not add luster to his name. He allowed his gaze to move unhurriedly over the five wretched specimens of humanity in fetters before him.
All persons, all creatures, all nations have their heaven-appointed place, he philosophized grandly as was his habit when he felt keenly his magnificence. This is the most fundamental law. When people stray from the niche in which wise Minerva put them, this is the source of all impiety, all strife, all criminal acts.
For long moments Domitian glared punitively at the five miscreants who had crawled from their place. He saw this task as not too different from that of the Palace slave who oversees the taking of the day’s garbage to the middens.
First on the left was the gladiator called the Cyclops. A peculiar scar in the midst of a broad forehead earned the man his name; it resembled a bold, staring eye. His squat, powerful body, stooped shoulders and overlong arms gave him a decided resemblance to an ape; idly Domitian considered if there might be some obscure causal connection between the man’s criminality and his bestial conformation. The Cyclops watched him with alert indifference, a calm Domitian surmised was the product of the discipline of the gladiatorial schools. He wanted to say: This is certain death, you ignorant brute—in the arena your chances are better.
Next to the Cyclops was Stephanus, a family steward, whose placid, inoffensive face was familiar to Domitian since boyhood. Stephanus’ participation in this affair was to be expected—he had been caught embezzling from the household chest. Domitian looked briefly at Stephanus’ heavily bandaged arm—three days ago he had broken it in a fall. He smiled at Stephanus, thinking, why bandage it at all? It won’t have time to heal. Stephanus nervously smiled back.
Domitian’s gaze moved hastily over the next man, Clodianus, a Centurion of the Guard, for in that soldier’s active black eyes was a raw, unrepentant contempt that threatened to capsize Domitian’s fine humor. Next to Clodianus was Satur, a tall Libyan with copper skin who was his wife’s chamberlain. Domitian tarried over Satur’s voluptuous lips and mentally caressed that lean, supple body. Domitian would have had Satur destroyed long ago because he knew his wife’s blood was fevered in the man’s presence; often he felt her eagerness to possess that neatly formed male body. But he himself had, almost accidentally one day, discovered Satur to be a master of the arts of the bedchamber and, until now, had not been able to bear the thought of giving him up.
Last was Parthenius, his own chief chamberlain, who until this day he had trusted more than any man. Parthenius alone of the imperial household had been granted the right to wear a sword. He was the tallest of men, causing Domitian to wonder if Parthenius’ great height might not the cause of his seeming awkward distance from his fellow men. The chief chamberlain had pleasantly battered features, distressed brown eyes, and a yellowed complexion physicians claimed was caused by a lingering malaise of the liver. Parthenius avoided Domitian’s gaze; he seemed distinctly ashamed of himself.
What an amusing collection of criminal suspects, Domitian observed. Each embodies a quality— Loyalty, Deference, Doggedness, and so forth. They’ve a single trait in common, however—they’re all fine physical specimens. They look a bit like characters in a country Satyr play, ready to fight over who’ll play Priapus.
Unaccountably, an unease overcame Domitian then, a sense this hour was somehow marked, that the world was slightly ajar in a way that should awaken him to danger. He recoiled in his soul, as if he heard an owl’s call at midnight.
Why do I feel a sixth man is here, brooding over them all? I sense closely the presence of Marcus Julianus—in each man’s face, I almost see that irksome, bemused smile, those eyes that apprehend with a cursory glance what most men won’t notice until tomorrow.
Vigorously he banished the apparition from his mind.
“Come forward!” Domitian called out in sonorous voice. For a moment the Cyclops’ impassiveness frightened him, but he was reassured by the slide-and-clink of the prisoners’ heavy chains and by the knowledge that just beyond the anteroom was a double guard.
I could not be more secure. Why, then, this prickling sense of dread?
“All of you are impious scum, and you know it. The gods alone know what mix of bestial cunning, crippled intelligence and faithlessness
inspires such acts of futile viciousness,” he proclaimed importantly. “Now I want you to tell me in your own words why you tried to destroy your Lord and God. If you’re honest and forthright in your replies, you’ll get a quick death and a decent burial. If not, we’ve a variety of more entertaining deaths in our stock. Afterward I’ll meet privately with each man and you’ll give me the names of the others involved in this plot. The man who gives me the fewest names will earn the right to die on a cross.”
They watched him with tense patience. Did he imagine it—or were they bunching more closely together?
In the corridor a door slammed shut with a rude clang. In a rough singsong voice a Guard cried out the ninth hour.
Carinus stood stiff and straight as a votive image while he poured a libation before the altar of the household gods set up in the antechamber. His hands shook; glistening red wine splashed down on the altar, onto the alabaster floor.
Mother of the Gods, give me the heart of a lion…. Now the volcano erupts. And I must stand quietly in its path.
In her own chambers Domitia Longina took an inscription plate bearing her husband’s name and titles and dropped it into a burning brazier.
Fall away, prison walls, she prayed. Now, Juno! It is my life or his.
In the gloom of the Ludus Magnus the four guards posted before Auriane’s cell looked on in puzzlement as their charge rose up purposefully, suddenly restless. Auriane dragged herself painfully to the cell’s window; fresh blood appeared on the woolen bandages binding her thigh. Her eyes were excited, alive. Later they would report that at the ninth hour she looked directly at the Palace, just as the event occurred that would later be on everyone’s lips.
Domitian realized Stephanus was slowly, furtively unwinding the bandage that bound his broken arm.
He leapt to his feet.
“Halt! You! What are you about?”
All five prisoners sprang forward as if a rope dropped at the start of a race.
Vigorously they threw themselves against their chains, with the Cyclops slightly in the lead.
Carinus gripped the altar, shut his eyes, and muttered a jumbled prayer to Syrian Atargatis, goddess of his homeland. In the bedchamber all erupted into shrieking chaos. The earth dropped open beneath his feet.
As Domitian looked on, a frozen ghost, the prisoners’ fetters snapped as easily as if they had been made of lamp’s horn. Amazement stifled the scream forming in his throat. In Stephanus’ hand he saw a silvery flash.
Of course. The traitorous dogs. Of course a dagger would be concealed in that bandage.
Domitian saw the bloody visions of a hundred nightmares tear through the veil of dream. This could not be. But it was.
“Die! Tyrant! Die!” Stephanus’ voice rose above the others as they jostled each other in their eagerness to get to him. Domitian stood stiff as a pillar while the assassins flowed round him like wolves at a kill.
The Cyclops seized him from behind in a bear-grip, holding him steady for Stephanus’ dagger thrust. But Domitian finally roused himself from paralysis and met them with brutish energy, striking out with fists and feet. In his fright his strength was past nature. He knocked Satur down with one frenzied kick to the chest. Then he lunged at Stephanus, struggling to gouge out his eyes. The dagger ripped harmlessly through the air while Stephanus thrashed about, evading those frantically clawing hands.
Clodianus combined his strength with the Cyclops’ and gradually they managed to secure Domitian’s arms. Satur, from the floor, got a vise-grip on Domitian’s leg.
Carinus stopped his ears, unable to bear the torn-off howls and multiple yelps. It sounded as though a dozen dogs were being put to the torture.
Somehow Domitian managed to seize the dagger—but he caught it by the blade. Again and again he sliced his hands as he fought for a grip; the assassins’ tunics and grappling hands became reddened with Domitian’s blood.
It could not be, but it was. Domitian felt a perverse twist of satisfaction. This was the triumphant confirmation of all he believed to be true.
I truly was surrounded by wolves lusting for my blood. The prosecutions were just. They were, in fact, not stern enough—here now is proof.
Marcus Julianus, you were wrong.
“Guard!” Domitian’s shout rose like a kite’s screech over the assassins’ grunts and curses, over the animal scuffling. For Domitian, all seemed to move with a peculiar, slowed-down tempo, as if the beat of the world were coming to a halt, and so at first it did not seem odd when no Guards came.
By sheer force of their weight the five assassins succeeded in holding their quarry still. Then Stephanus’ knife whipped down, tearing once, then twice, into Domitian’s groin. Crying out in baleful agony, their victim twisted off with superhuman strength and struggled toward the imperial bed, dragging all five assassins along with him, toppling a fragile table, a tall urn, as he made his way.
Domitian caught at one of the columns that flanked the bed, then pulled himself close; finally he managed to fling off the bedcushion.
No sword. The black dogs from Hades had it removed.
“Gua-a-rd!” came Domitian’s second cry, this one more piteous and pleading than the last.
As he wrestled on with death, in one quick moment he caught sight of Domitia Longina calmly watching from the antechamber. Her eyes glowed like an owl’s; her cheeks were flushed with pleasure, and she had the witch-wise smile of Circe on her lips.
My wife. Foul bitch-dog from the sulfurous depths. You knew of this!
She let her gold-embroidered palla slip so he could see the sword.
My sword. How had you the audacity? Medusa! Clytemnestra! Wellspring of all womanly vileness. You stand out there in full view of a Century of the Guard and watch while my household murders me!
In that instant Domitian realized it fully— the guards are not coming.
A curse on the immortal gods. The whole of the Palace must have turned on me.
Stephanus’ dagger came down in a fast, irregular series of blows, penetrating Domitian’s neck, stomach, and thighs. A misplaced strike stabbed the Cyclops deeply in the shoulder; he spat a venomous curse at Stephanus but still managed to hold Domitian fast. The struggling mass of them presented such a tangle of torsos and limbs that Carinus could not tell assailant from victim.
It seemed to Carinus that thunder rattled in the eaves. Dark droplets of blood were flung all about, lurid, bright, visceral on the translucent floor, befouling Minerva, splattering the snowy columns, the frescoes along the wall. He pressed his ram’s horn amulet to his heart. “Darkness, descend,” the boy whispered. “Strengthen me, Mother Atargatis, or the sight will strike me blind.” Somewhere in his deep self he thought, but it is right, it is ordained, and I know that Atargatis smiles…. The time was ripe for the sacrifice of the old god-king—his fructifying blood will fall on our fields and bring a new dawn…. Soon the city will know and be blessed.
Domitian fought with declining strength, bleeding from many wounds. The purple toga had come half unwound, hobbling him in its bloody length.
The whole of the Palace and the whole of the Guard. I’ve been seized in the jaws of a colossus…. Who in the name of the gods….
And then, suddenly, he knew.
Marcus Julianus. Who else could have turned so many minds? You fiend to best all fiends.
No. I refuse to believe it. I’ll remember you always as I saw you last, broken and destroyed by my hand.
Another dagger thrust sank into flesh. Domitian knew he was dying.
And so the arena comes for me at the last, as I knew it would. All the high barriers and archers can only hold it at bay for a decade or two. The world and its delights are a cruel distraction, concealing the brutal truth: Life is one tedious, graceless fight to the death. We spend our days struggling to forget the gods’ thumbs were down at our birth.
Witness right and order overrun by the boiling, bestial mob. I was too lenient and good. I failed to tame them with law.
He sank to his knees, struggling reflexively now; the assassins followed him down. Dizziness came like some thick, welcome draught; the world became distant, diffuse, mythic—he might have been a warrior of ancient days dying in nameless glory on the battlements of Troy.
When Servilius heard the first shouts from the bedchamber, he was idly gaming with a fellow Guard’s Centurion, awaiting his watch. He sprinted down the corridor to investigate, with ten off-duty soldiers at his back. At first he was mystified to find Petronius’ recruits impassively blocking the door to the antechamber. Then came outrage and disbelief—for there was no doubt the terrible cries within were Domitian’s. More loyalists poured into the corridor; Servilius drew his sword and sought to enter the bedchamber through the servants’ side entrances. When he found every passage locked from inside, he rushed back to the anteroom, only to find Petronius’ recruits had been quietly joined by the cohort handpicked by Norbanus; these men stealthily moved into place all along the length of the corridor, javelins crossed, faces implacable. The loyalists then tried to ram their way through, shields to the front; barked threats ricocheted throughout the corridor. The battle was bloodless, for none were willing to raise a sword against their own.
Servilius was astonished at the number of men of the Guard who barred his way. The majority of the loyalists fell into passive confusion. But Servilius would not give up the effort, continuing to bully and plead, determined to break in on the ghastly scene still progressing in the bedchamber.
Domitian lay on his back, still alive. The Cyclops wrested the dagger from Stephanus, muttering that the Emperor would see his hundredth birthday at the speed Stephanus was finishing this business. Parthenius, heaving and close to tears, used his weight to pin Domitian to the floor. In that moment Domitian’s eyes sought Parthenius’ and held them in a death grip.
“Parthenius! Why?” Domitian breathed the question. “I trusted you…. What did you want of me that I did not give?”
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