B007IIXYQY EBOK (67 page)

Domitian knew that in the Colosseum’s imperial box more than anywhere else he would feel most keenly the breadth of his power. He stole another discreet look at Julianus, searching that austere face, and thought: Julianus senses the vague shape of these thoughts as I think them, and he does not approve.

Titus’ First Secretary slid the imperial ring from the dead man’s hand. Domitian took it without thinking and quickly put it on his own finger, as if fearful another might snatch it if he did not hurry. He caught a subtle flicker of surprise in Marcus Julianus’ eyes.

And Domitian felt a cold hand grip his heart.

I am done.
I am the
fool who brings down the world with one hasty act. I should have waited and put on the cursed ring in private. Marcus Julianus is the one man who
knows
I should not be able to get it on my finger. I said an offhand word about this years ago, some lame joke or other about my hand being greater than Titus’ and the ring needing to be enlarged to fit—a joke anyone else
would have forgotten. But Julianus, as usual, forgets nothing.

That look proves it.

He’s deduced, surely, that I took the ring to the goldsmith beforehand to be enlarged, that I knew yesterday—when all
the physicians said Titus would recover—that today the Emperor would die.

Domitian’s hands quivered almost imperceptibly; he felt they were pinned by Julianus’ keen, knowing gaze, struggling to get free. He saw with disturbing clarity a grim line of faces, the senior officers of the Praetorian Guard, who loved Titus as they loved no other—men who would cheerfully see him roasted on a spit if they knew he was the cause of their friend and benefactor’s death. And he saw the faces of the most powerful Senators—Saturninus, Senecio, and Gallus, and Julianus himself, who would give fine speeches before the Senate, replete with literary allusions and all the trappings of the expensively educated rhetor’s art, condemning him for that most heinous of crimes,
parricidium,
the murder of a parent or close relation, and demanding some barbarous punishment.

What is to be done? Marcus Julianus must die, along with all the servants who aided me.

But a tide of shame welled up in him that swept these thoughts off.

Already I plan a Senator’s death and I have not reigned a full hour. My father executed one man in all the years of his reign; am I not destined to be a far better ruler than he?

Perhaps Julianus will be wise and forget what he saw.

In that moment Domitian understood with bright, painful clarity the cruelty of rulers: It stemmed from fear.

When those about the deathbed saw the imperial ring in place, they responded in soft, solemn voices not quite in unison,
“Ave, Caesar, Imperator
…
”
A moment elapsed before Domitian realized they addressed not his brother, not his father, but
him.

But where was the rich pleasure he had always expected from hearing those words? He felt like an actor who hadn’t rehearsed enough forced to play the most demanding of roles before an audience ready to rip out his throat if he misspoke one line.

When the court returned to Rome, they discovered that the rumor that Domitian had murdered his brother had flown before them. Lyrics laying the crime at Domitian’s door were scrawled everywhere on the city’s walls—as usual, lack of evidence did nothing to slow a good tale. It grew spontaneously because of the people’s love of Titus and great dislike of Domitian, its rapid growth fertilized by Domitian’s gloomy and secretive nature.

On the day of the court’s return an imperial messenger came to Marcus Julianus’ great-house with a letter from Domitian, praising his great knowledge of the law and inviting him to be First Advisor on the Emperor’s high council. Julianus was that night to attend a banquet in his honor. Julianus judged Domitian’s purpose was either to silence him with kindness or to show the world just how undying and great their friendship was—so no hand would be raised to accuse the new Emperor when Domitian arranged
his
murder.

That same day one of Julianus’ freedman clients employed as a scribe in the Petitions Office managed to spirit off to him, in advance of its public posting, a list of proscribed books. Among them were his father’s twenty volumes on the customs of the tribes of Germania. He could not have been seized with greater outrage if Domitian had desecrated his father’s tomb before his eyes.

He waits not even a month to flout that solemn promise he made in the last days of Nero. Does he think I will be silent? My father’s dying torments were eased only because I promised to keep his works alive.

But Julianus knew his circumstances were already precarious; confronting Domitian on this matter might prove as ill-advised as leaping into a bear-pit armed with a stick. He called his father’s old friend, Saturninus, for a meeting, with the intention of informing the aged Senator of what he learned, so that in the event of his own death Saturninus would be better armed against Domitian.

For privacy they walked the labyrinthine graveled walkways of his geometric gardens. Briefly Julianus related the tale of the ring.

“The clever monster! I
knew
he sent his brother off himself! The question is how?”
Saturninus’ frown was deeply inscribed in his face; he looked like old Cronus, set to destroy a whole host of upstart younger gods. He was a gnarled, stoutly made man with an obdurate spirit that put Marcus Julianus in mind of the bedrock that crops up in fields, breaking plows. Though his features were softly eroding with age—the birthday he had celebrated recently at Julianus’ great-house was his seventieth—those eyes still flickered with energy and fire, and when he held forth in full voice, his sonorous rumble could still carry to the highest galleries of the basilica.

“Exactly. How did he manage it? We’ve a body with no marks of poison on it, and no signs of foul play. It’s enough to make one believe in the efficacy of magic spells. By my father’s ghost, I mean to learn how he managed that murder, no matter what time and effort it takes,” Julianus said with carefully contained passion. “One of the three attending doctors died mysteriously the next morning. One is reported missing. The third is still alive—a man named Cleomenes, who I learned is a native of the Isle of Rhodes. He got to one of the ports and took to ship.
There
may
lie our only hope of ever knowing. I mean to find the man before Domitian does.”

“I doubt you’ll survive long enough to find him.” Saturninus paused dramatically and clamped an urgent hand on Julianus’ shoulder. “Listen to me.” His voice dropped to a warbling whisper. “You should strike
before
he strikes. Accuse him
now
—and the Guard will believe you
and not him.
Do not give Domitian time to replace them with his own men.”

Julianus wearily turned away. “The result would be too unpredictable,” he replied quietly after a time. “And we need better proof. At best, I would be burning down a house to catch one rat. Removing Domitian suddenly would touch off civil war surely as Nero’s death did. I would not do such a thing unless a successor were named. Unfortunately, Domitian
knows
I think this way and even counts on it. The sly fox will never name a successor now, I’ll wager—in order to keep my hands bound.”

“Well, you cannot seriously be thinking of accepting that post. He knows you
know.
Do you think he’ll be easy with an advisor who sees his true nature? Retreat to your farthermost estate and quietly wait out his reign. He murdered his brother who was kind and good to him. He would scarcely think twice
before murdering you.”

Julianus briefly shut his eyes. “I cannot.”

How this man tries to carry the weight of everyone, the living and the dead
, Saturninus thought. “It’s that cursed school, isn’t it? And everyone you shelter there?”

“Yes, that’s a good measure of it.” Marcus Julianus had for seven years nurtured his school of philosophy and natural sciences like some beloved child, providing it with a library celebrated all over the world for its collection of rare and original manuscripts, and luring from the ten Academies of Athens—with a promise of a generous yearly dole—so many of their celebrated teachers that the citizens of Athens brought a formal complaint to the government in Rome. The school was a haven for those too poor or too despised to be tolerated anywhere else. The ragged followers of the martyred Isodorus lived there under Julianus’ protection, as well as the humbler slaves of aristocratic households who had no other chance to acquire learning. In spite of the fact that Julianus did nothing to please the noble classes at Rome—the school was lodged in dilapidated buildings much too near the fish markets, and aristocratic students were treated no better than the rest—his school was fashionable, nevertheless, and they actually began sending Senate-bound sons to him who ordinarily would have finished their educations in Alexandria or Athens. The school kept alive his reputation for eccentricity—for it lost great sums of money since he welcomed any who earnestly desired to come, from poulterer’s daughter to matchseller’s son, charging only what students could pay.

“And there is this,” Julianus went on, his look sad, intent, “I am haunted by the notion I might be the only
man
about Domitian able to keep him in check. You must know, old friend, my relationship to Domitian is…peculiar. I do not completely understand it myself. Domitian admires me more than he loves me—and counts me his greatest friend, though I would never count him as such.”

“Yes. I have seen that.”

“Understand I say this without pride. Another could have played this role, had he been in the right place at the right time in Domitian’s youth. Sometimes a man, when young, encounters someone, frequently older, who, rightly or wrongly, he feels he can never equal. The power the older man has over him lingers like some persistent ghost, and that man’s opinions carry greater weight all his life. I have become, half by chance, that man for Domitian—”

“Through your defense of your father. You are too modest. Many others besides Domitian praise you for that brilliantly mad act of devotion, my friend.”

“What’s important now is the effect it’s had on
him.
That great need of his to curry my favor must
be employed to our advantage. I cannot walk away from this. It’s a delicate and dangerous balance, admittedly. If I do not love him, it worries him. But my independence is necessary as well, or he ceases to trust my judgment—”

“It is almost as though…he is confused and imagines you a parent rather than a friend.”

“Precisely. And so you see, if I run to safety, there will not be an act he commits that I will not wonder, could I have averted it or softened it? I’m trapped at his side. How the Fates taunt us when we are grown with a silly shadow of what we wanted when we were young! Once I had some notion of advising an emperor—as a proud and noble use of philosophy. Grim reality reduces me to a trickster who must outmaneuver a monster.”

“I should be well used to your easy assumptions that you can master a situation most men would shun to approach. But I’m not, and I grieve for you.”

“Grieve when the battle’s lost, not while strategy is still being laid. But know this, lest I misstep in the next few days.”

He lowered his voice, though none were about to overhear but a curious fawn stealthily approaching them through the oleander bushes. “Titus documented every attempt of Domitian’s to murder him, in his letters to Vespasian’s mistress, Caenis. They greatly strengthen our case, should we one day be ready to tell what we know to the Guard. They may even reveal the method of murder that eventually succeeded. I
know
those letters are locked in some nether storage room of the Palace—they will require patience to locate. Domitian suspects they exist but is not certain. We must cultivate the rumor that they exist in fact—and we must never stop looking for them.”

At the tenth hour Marcus Arrius Julianus reclined at the imperial table in the dining hall of the Palace of Augustus, seated at the Emperor Domitian’s right hand. Seven hundred banqueters gathered in a vast space that froze the senses with its humbling brilliance, from the domed ceiling as remote as the heavens, to the massive columns of red granite gleaming in the light of crystal lamps, to the three central fountains crowded with nymphs jetting water into opalescent pools, to the pilastered walls of crimson-veined Numidian marble polished to the sheen of mirrors, and the heroic images of Mercury and Apollo in adamantine basalt set in niches about the chamber. Everywhere was a blaze of flowers and silks; silvery music played lightly over the steady, joyous rush of water. Gemstones flashed in women’s hair, at their breasts. But all this luminous grandeur did nothing to dispel the warning darkness that lay over this hall, heavy as the scent of blood on a battlefield. Domitian’s grim shadow fell everywhere; it was impossible to put out of mind the great crime rumored to be at the beginning of this reign.