Roma Eterna (9 page)

It was a very long time before Menandros and Maximilianus returned from the depths. They said little when they emerged, but it was clear from the flushed, triumphant look on the little Greek's face that he had found whatever ecstasies he had been seeking in the shrine of the Baptai.

Now it was time for the place of the Chaldean whores, far across the underground city near the welter of caverns below the Circus Maximus. Menandros seemed to have heard a great deal about these women, most of it incorrect. “You mustn't call them whores, you know,” Faustus explained. “What they are is prostitutes—sacred prostitutes.”

“This is a very subtle distinction,” said the Greek wryly.

“What he means,” said the Caesar, “is that they're all women of proper social standing, who belong to a cult that came to us out of Babylonia. Some of them are of Babylonian descent themselves, most are not. Either way, the women of this cult are required at some point in their lives, between the ages of—what is it, Faustus, sixteen and thirty?—something like that—to go to the sanctuary of their goddess and sit there waiting for some stranger to come along and choose her for the night. He throws a small silver coin into her lap, and she must rise and go with him, however hideous he is, however repellent. And with that act she fulfills her obligation to her goddess, and returns therewith to a life of blameless purity.”

“Some, I understand, are said to go back more than once to fulfill their obligations,” Faustus said. “Out of an excess of piety, I suppose. Unless it is for the simple excitement of meeting strangers, of course.”

“I must see this,” Menandros said. He was aglow with
boyish eagerness again. “Virtuous women, you say, wives and daughters of substantial men? And they
must
give themselves? They can't refuse under any circumstances? Justinianus will find this hard to believe.”

“It is an Eastern thing,” said Faustus. “Out of Babylonian Chaldea. How strange that you have none of this at your own capital.” It did not ring true. From all accounts Faustus had heard, Constantinopolis was at least as much a hotbed of Oriental cults as Roma itself. He began to wonder whether there was some reason of state behind Menandros's apparent desire to paint the Eastern Empire as a place of such rigorous piety and virtue. Perhaps it had something to do with the terms of the treaty that Menandros had come here to negotiate. But he could not immediately see what the connection might be.

Nor did they see the holy Chaldean prostitutes that day. They were less than halfway across the Underworld when they became aware of a muddled din of upraised voices coming to them out of the Via Subterranea ahead, and as they drew closer to that broad thoroughfare they began to distinguish some detail of individual words. The shouts still were blurred and confused, but what they seemed to be saying was:

“The Emperor is dead! The Emperor is dead!”

“Can it be?” Faustus asked. “Am I hearing rightly?”

But then it came again, a male voice with the force of the bellowings of a bull rising above all the others: “THE EMPEROR IS DEAD! THE EMPEROR IS DEAD!” There was no possible doubt of the meaning now.

“So soon,” Maximilianus murmured, in a voice that could have been that of a dead man itself. “It wasn't supposed to happen today.”

Faustus glanced toward the Caesar. His face was chalk white, as though he had spent his whole life in these underground caverns, and his eyes had a hard, frightening glitter to them that gave them the look of brilliantly polished sapphires. Those stony eyes were terrifying to behold.

A man in the loose yellow robes of some Asian priesthood came running toward them, looking half unhinged by fear. He stumbled up against Maximilianus in the narrow hallway and tried to shoulder his way past, but the Caesar, seizing the man by both forearms and holding him immobilized, thrust his face into the other's and demanded to know the news. “His Majesty—” the man gasped, goggle-eyed. He had a thick Syrian lisp. “Dead. They have lit the great bonfire before the palace. The Praetorians have gone into the street to maintain order.”

Muttering a curse, Maximilianus shoved the Syrian away from him so vehemently that the man went ricocheting off the wall, and turned his gaze toward Faustus. “I must go to the palace,” the Caesar said, and without another word turned and ran, leaving Faustus and Menandros behind as he vanished in furious long-legged strides toward the Via Subterranea.

Menandros looked overwhelmed by the news. “We should not be here either,” he said.

“No. We should not.”

“Are we to go to the palace, then?”

“It could be dangerous. Anything can happen, when an Emperor dies and the heir apparent isn't on the scene.” Faustus slipped his arm through the Greek's. Menandros appeared startled at that, but seemed quickly to understand that it was for the sake of keeping them from being separated in the growing chaos of the underground city. Thus linked, they set out together for the nearest exit ramp.

The news had spread everywhere by now, and hordes of people were running madly to and fro. Faustus, though his heart was pounding from the exertion, moved as quickly as he was able, virtually dragging Menandros along with him, using his bulk to shove anyone who blocked his path out of the way.

“The Emperor is dead!” the endless chorus cried. “The Emperor is dead!” As he came forth blinking into the daylight, Faustus saw the look of stunned shock on every face.

He felt a little stunned himself, though Emperor Maximilianus's passing had not exactly come as a bolt out of the blue to him. But the old man had held the throne for more than forty years, one of the longest reigns in Roman history, longer even than Augustus's, perhaps second only to that of his grandfather the first Maximilianus. These Etruscan Emperors were long-lived men. Faustus had been a slender stripling the last time the Imperial throne had changed hands, and that other time the succession had been handled well, the magnificent young prince who was to become Maximilianus II standing at the side of his dying father in his last moments, and going immediately thereafter to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus to receive the homage of the Senate and to accept the badges and titles of office.

This was a different situation. There was no magnificent young heir waiting to take the throne, only the deplorable Prince Heraclius, and Heraclius had so contrived matters that he was not even at the capital on the day of his father's death. Great surprises sometimes happened when the throne became vacant and the expected heir was not on hand to claim it. That was how the stammering cripple Claudius had become Emperor when Caligula was assassinated. That was how Titus Gallius had risen to greatness after the murder of Caracalla. For that matter, that was the way the first of the Etruscans had come to power, when Theodosius, having outlived his own son Honorius, had finally died in 1168. Who could say what shifts in the balance of power might be accomplished in Roma before this day reached its end?

It was Faustus's duty now to get Justinianus's ambassador safely back to the Severan Palace, and then to make his own way to the Chancellery to await the developments of the moment. But Menandros did not quite seem to grasp the precariousness of the situation. He was fascinated by the tumult in the streets, and, feckless tourist that he was at heart, wanted to head for the Forum to watch the action at
first hand. Faustus had to push the bounds of diplomatic courtesy a little to get him to abandon that foolhardy idea and head for the safety of his own quarters. Menandros agreed reluctantly, but only after seeing a phalanx of Praetorians moving through the street across from them, freely clubbing anyone who seemed to be behaving in a disorderly fashion.

Faustus was the last of the officials of the Chancellery to reach the administrative headquarters, just across the way from the royal palace. The Chancellor, Licinius Obsequens, greeted him sourly. “Where have you been all this while, Faustus?”

“With the ambassador Menandros, touring the Underworld,” Faustus replied, just as sourly. He cared very little for Licinius Obsequens, a wealthy Neapolitan who had bribed his way to high office, and he suspected that under the new Emperor neither he nor Licinius Obsequens would continue to hold their posts at the Chancellery, anyway. “The ambassador was very eager to visit the chapel of Priapus, and other such places,” Faustus added, with a bit of malice to his tone. “So we took him there. How was I to know that the Emperor was going to die today?”

“
We
took him, Faustus?”

“The Caesar Maximilianus and I.”

Licinius's yellowish eyes narrowed to slits. “Of course. Your good friend the Caesar. And where is the Caesar now, may I ask?”

“He left us,” said Faustus, “the moment news reached us underground of His Majesty's death. I have no information about where he might be at the present time. The Imperial palace, I would imagine.” He paused a moment. “And the Caesar Heraclius, who is our Emperor now? Has anyone happened to hear from him?”

“He is at the northern frontier,” Licinius said.

“No. No, he isn't. He's off at his hunting lodge behind Lake Nemorensis. He never went north at all.”

Licinius was visibly rocked by that. “You know this for a fact, Faustus?”

“Absolutely. I sent a message to him there, just the other night, and he came back to the city that evening and met with the ambassador Menandros. I was there, as it happens.” A look of sickly astonishment came over Licinius's jowly face. Faustus was beginning to enjoy this more than somewhat. “The Caesar then went back to his forest preserve yesterday morning. Early today, when I was informed of His Majesty's grave condition, I sent a second message to him at the lake, once more summoning him to Roma. Beyond that I can tell you nothing.”

“You knew that the Caesar was hunting, and not at the frontier, and never reported this to me?” Licinius asked.

Loftily Faustus said, “Sir, I was wholly preoccupied with looking after the Greek ambassador. It is a complicated task. It never occurred to me that you were unaware of the movements of the Caesar Heraclius. I suppose I assumed that when he reached Roma the night before last he would take the trouble to meet with his father's Chancellor and ascertain the state of his father's health, but evidently it didn't occur to him to do that, and therefore—”

Abruptly he cut his words short. Asellius Proculus, the Prefect of the Praetorian Guard, had just shouldered his way into the room. For the Praetorian Prefect to set foot in the Chancellery at all was an unusual event; for him to be here on the day of the Emperor's death verged on the unthinkable. Licinius Obsequens, who was starting to look like a man besieged, gaped at him in consternation.

“Asellius? What—”

“A message,” the Praetorian Prefect said hoarsely. “From Lake Nemorensis.” He signaled with an upraised thumb and a man in the green uniform of the Imperial courier service came lurching in. He was glassy-eyed and rumpled and haggard, as though he had run all the way from the lake without pausing. Pulling a rolled-up dis
patch from his tunic, he thrust it with a trembling hand toward Licinius Obsequens, who snatched at it, opened it, read it through, read it again. When the Chancellor looked up at Faustus his plump face was sagging in shock.

“What does it say?” Faustus asked. Licinius seemed to be having difficulties forming words.

“The Caesar,” Licinius said. “His Majesty the Emperor, that is. Wounded. A hunting accident, this morning. He remains at his lodge. The Imperial surgeons have been called.”

“Wounded? How seriously?”

Licinius responded with a blank look. “Wounded, it says. That's all: wounded. The Caesar has been wounded, while hunting. The Emperor.—He
is
our Emperor now, is he not?” The Chancellor seemed numb, as though he had had a stroke. To the courier he said, “Do you know any other details, man? How badly is he hurt? Did you see him yourself? Who's in charge at the lodge?” But the courier knew nothing. He had been given the message by a member of the Caesar's guard and told to get it immediately to the capital; that was all he was able to report.

 

Four hours later, dining with the ambassador Menandros in the ambassador's rooms at the Severan Palace, Faustus said, “The messages continued to come in from the lake all afternoon. Wounded, first. Then, wounded seriously. Then a description of the wound: speared in the gut by one of his own men, he was, some sort of confusion while they were closing in on a boar for the kill, somebody's horse rearing at the wrong moment. Then the next message, half an hour later: the Imperial surgeons are optimistic. Then, the Caesar Heraclius is dying. And then: the Caesar Heraclius is dead.”

“The Emperor Heraclius, should you not call him?” Menandros asked.

“It's not certain who died first, the Emperor Maximilianus at Roma or the Caesar Heraclius at Lake Nemoren
sis. I suppose they can work all that out later. But what difference does it make, except to the historians? Dead is dead. Whether he died as Heraclius Caesar or as Heraclius Augustus, he's still dead, and his brother is our next Emperor. Can you believe it? Maximilianus is going to be Emperor? One moment he's wallowing around with you in some orgy at the pool of the Baptai, and the next he's sitting on the throne. Maximilianus! The last thing he ever imagined, becoming Emperor.”

“That soothsayer told him that he would,” Menandros said.

A shiver of awe ran through Faustus. “Yes! Yes, by Isis, so he did! And Maximilianus was as furious as though the man had laid a curse on him. Which perhaps he had.” Shakily he refilled his wine bowl. “
Emperor!
Maximilianus!”

“Have you seen him yet?”

“No, not yet. It isn't seemly to rush to him so fast.”

“You were his closest friend, weren't you?”

“Yes, yes, of course. And doubtless there'll be some benefit to that.” Faustus allowed himself a little smirk of pleasure. “Under Heraclius, I'd have been finished, I suppose. Pensioned off, shipped to the country. But it'll be different for me with Maximilianus in charge. He'll need me. He will, won't he?” The thought had only then occurred to him in any coherent way. But the more he examined it, the more it pleased him. “He's never cultivated any of the court officials; he doesn't know them, really, won't know which ones to trust, which to get rid of. I'm the only one who can advise him properly. I might even become Chancellor, Menandros, do you realize that?—But that's exactly why I haven't gone speeding over to see him tonight. He's busy with the priests, anyway, doing whatever religious rites it is a new Emperor is supposed to perform, and then the Senators are calling on him one by one, and so on and so forth. It would be too blatant, wouldn't it, if I turned up there so soon, his bawdy and disreputable old
drinking companion Faustus, who by coming around the very first night would be sending an all too obvious signal that he's showing up right away to claim his reward for these years of hearty good fellowship the two of us have shared. No, Menandros, I wouldn't do anything so crass. Maximilianus is not going to forget me. Tomorrow, I suppose, he'll be holding his first
salutatio,
and I can come around then and—”