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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?”

Parthenius dodged Domitian’s gaze. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “It was not I who fated you to die. I’d no choice but to go along. You would know your murderer? It was Marcus Arrius Julianus.”

It seemed to Parthenius that Domitian’s spirit fled in that instant, as if his reply had struck the death blow, not the Cyclops’ blade as it neatly cut the Emperor’s throat.

Domitian did not feel the blade. For a little longer his mind went on knowing.

Marcus, old friend, so you won the palm.
You are the king, I, the fool. I suppose you’re exulting now that power was brought down by intelligence. Or perhaps by dumb patience. It must have taken you years, and the determination of a criminal madman, to seduce the Guard, my household, and my wife, and no doubt the Senate as well, then submit to torture to make certain your monstrous scheme did not come apart. Now
that
is hatred of epic proportions. And yet, once I had your regard, your precious, capricious regard…. What caused that manifold, mysterious intelligence to turn on me and kill me? If you think I understand, Marcus, know this—I do not.

Do not imagine yours is a noble victory, Marcus. I die as Aristos died, slain by base trickery.

Servilius broke in. With drawn sword, he rushed at the five men still crouched over Domitian. Stephanus had the ill fortune to be first within reach; Servilius dispatched him with one expert thrust to the heart. As Stephanus sank in death across Domitian’s body, Petronius’ Guards rushed in and wrestled Servilius to the floor.

The remaining assassins—Clodianus, the Cyclops, Parthenius, and Satur—were men roughly awakened from one nightmare and pitched into another. Slowly they rose up on shivering legs and began edging away from the frightful disarray of limp arms, legs, and bloody toga that was Domitian. Praetorians rapidly filled the room. The four moved unmolested to the door while the soldiers watched in a grim silence tangled with conflicting passions—they could not help despising these men who had dirtied their hands, and felt faintly shamefaced at letting them go. Who lets a murderer with fresh blood on his hands simply walk away? At the same time they felt mean and ungrateful that they did not hoist these men on their shoulders and parade them about as heroes.

The Guards in the anteroom shifted aside to let the assassins through. When the four reached the corridor, all broke into a run, two bolting east, two west. The furious staccato of their retreating footsteps was to the Guards a mocking, accusing sound:
You let us go, fools, you let us go.
Servilius struggled with fresh energy and cried out—“Have all of you been struck mad?
After them!”

To Domitian the shouting sounded like the cooing of pigeons. His many wounds were bruises—he could not feel them if he lay very still. Struggle trickled out of him and he felt a moist contentment creeping up slowly; tepid water encroached, embraced. He felt the impact of a wave-break of a sea of ghosts, heard whispering, felt affirming sea water rushing through his veins, gently disengaging his shade from his body, swiftly bearing him up; he imagined his consciousness flooded into the wise, watery mind of Minerva. With it came perceptions of such startling potency and drop-away depth that his whole life might have been held in a spring so clear he could see a hundred fathoms down.

I was mad—and did not know it.
I thought I lived my life traveling along in one firm direction—away from my beginnings where I felt less worthy than the slave-murderer condemned to the mines. But I was instead like the blindfolded donkey that turns the millstone, treading one path all my life and
always thinking it new.
I saw everything in life as
one
thing—I never knew life’s variousness. I see now my father and Marcus Julianus, watching me with one and the same pair of eyes, one piercing, damning gaze whose look gives the same raw bitter taste. Marcus, you said at the last I
expected
you to serve me and betray me. Well, of course. My father was first in that office, you but his successor. We are born tied up in cord and cursed few of us ever
untangle ourselves. I was not one of the fortunate ones.

From the beginning my jealous hatred was fear of the great cold.
But there is no great cold.
Why did I live so? I spent my life like one born wealthy who fritters away his fortune on empty revels.

Domitian’s ghost felt the frenzy in the minds of the people rushing about, those small harried animals still trapped in tight, narrow skulls. He gloried in his new freedom, not fully realizing he was dead. And when he did know it, “dead” hardly meant what it had an hour ago.

You poor insects scuttling about with such purposeful mindlessness, you set me free! You rush about for fifty years and more, evading in terror a thing that is not. You rear monuments to it, you worship it with your fear. I do not envy you who still possess life.

Petronius bent over Domitian’s body, counting the wounds.
Twenty-seven.
As he struggled to remove the imperial ring, he felt a pious fright. Those dread hands would never write another edict altering lives in a village in Baetica, or set events in motion in cities along the Nile. The body that knew every pleasure life had to give would taste no more. The last son of the Flavian dynasty, bringers of peace to the whole world, authors of the Colosseum, was reduced to corrupting flesh and a collection of spare sentences in a history text.

“You will roast in Hades for this!”
Servilius shrieked at Petronius. “Traitorous, murdering swine!”

Petronius rose, walked over to Servilius, and quietly met his gaze. “I’ll let that pass as momentary folly, Servilius. Calm yourself. Do not force me to order thirty lashes.”

“No,” Servilius rasped, shaking his head. “You
cannot
still be—” He meant to finish by saying, “Commander of the Guard,” but he stopped, finally perceiving he was part of a dangerously small minority. A staggering number of the Guard stood quietly at attention, ready for Petronius’ order.

“Lucius Servilius, look at me,” Petronius said severely, putting a fist beneath Servilius’ chin and forcing him to lift his head. “I warn you one last time to silence. You are speaking treason. Whether they are murderers or not isn’t for
you
to say. It’s a matter for Emperor Nerva to decide.”

“Emperor—who?”

At last Servilius comprehended the enormity of the deed. If Nerva was already set in place, the better part of the Senate must have known of this. Petronius might have organized the Guard, but he had no influence over the upper aristocracy. And it was not in Senator Nerva’s nature to set such a thing in motion—all knew him as a man of no grand ambition. Who authored this great crime?

All progressed, Servilius saw, like some tightly composed play. All knew their part. There was disorder, for certain—panicked servants ran through the halls, crying out in soul-shredding shouts, and fierce altercations continued among the Guards. But there was entirely too much order.

Whoever planned this was a master. He knew precisely who to bring in, and who to leave out; all was timed with a musician’s precision. Civil war was neatly circumvented. The loyalists were swiftly surrounded and overcome, at the cost of but a single death, Stephanus’. The last of the Flavian dynasty was put out of the way with none to call it a crime.

CHAPTER LXII

W
ITHIN THE HOUR THE CITY KNEW.
The poorer streets throbbed with the driving chant: “Death to
the tyrant! Long live freedom!”
The people massed about the Senate House had a better understanding of the succession of events; these raised torches aloft and cried out—
“Long live Emperor Nerva!”
It was as though the news had come by post that a great war had been won. Spiced wine ran in the streets. Houses were garlanded. Wine-flushed faces gleamed in the heat as citizens embraced strangers. The people clustered around the temples of Juno and Fortuna, tugging along a sheep or goat for a thanksgiving sacrifice. Before the Temple of Minerva, renegade musicians began to play; the gallop of their drums could be heard beyond the river—it was anarchy’s insistent voice, pulling in every mind with its loose, careless rhythm.