Under a nearby portico, shielded from the drizzling rain and surrounded by courtiers, sat Domitian, who looked up at their arrival. Lucius suddenly felt unsure of himself. To perform a religious travesty for a man he wanted dead, Lucius could hardly look to the Teacher for inspiration.
To stall for time, he told Catullus that he would need the lituus of his ancestors.
“Surely any lituus will do,” said Catullus.
“No, it must be the ivory lituus I keep with my father’s things. I’ll have to go home and get it.”
“No, you’ll stay right here. Someone will fetch it for you.”
A nearby courtier, overhearing, stepped forward. He was a middle-aged man with bristling eyebrows and a neatly trimmed beard. “I’ll go for it,” the man said.
“Very well, Stephanus,” said Catullus. Lucius’s ears pricked up at the name. “Pinarius will tell you where to find it while I explain the delay to Caesar.”
As soon Catullus was out of earshot, Lucius whispered, “I heard your name spoken earlier today, before I came here.”
Stephanus nodded. “Ten days hence,” he said quietly, barely moving his lips.
Lucius wrinkled his brow. What was the man talking about?
“Ten days hence,” Stephanus repeated. “Fourteen days before the Kalends of Domitianus, at the fifth hour of the day. Can you remember that?”
Lucius stared at him blankly for a moment, then nodded. “Yes,” he said, in a normal tone of voice. “I keep it in an antique chest in the vestibule, just under the wax mask of my father. You can’t mistake it – a beautiful old thing, made of solid ivory. My freedman Hilarion will help you find it.”
“Then I’m off,” said Stephanus. “I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
Domitian was not pleased by the delay. He strummed his fingers against the arms of his chair. He tapped his foot nervously. He glared at Lucius. He muttered something to Catullus.
Catullus shook his head. “Dominus, surely it would be better to wait until after-”
“Fetch him now!” said Domitian. “And take Pinarius elsewhere, until he’s ready for the augury.”
As Lucius was led away, he passed a man wearing such an outlandish costume that he looked like a parody of a German, with a huge mane of red hair and a bristling red beard, fur boots on his feet, tanned leggings, and a tightly laced leather vest that left bare much of his broad, hairy chest. His bare arms were decorated with bracelets that were fashioned as coiling dragons and covered with runes.
Lucius was shown to a small waiting room and left alone. He spied a grated window high in one wall. He stood on a chair. If he peered to one side, looking down the length of the portico, he could see most of the imperial party, including Domitian, and he could hear everything that was said.
Catullus spoke to a translator. “You will tell Eberwig that Caesar is ready for him to deliver his report.”
The translator spoke to Eberwig. The German replied to the translator at length.
Domitian leaned forward impatiently. “What is he saying?”
The translator looked uneasy. “He says, if he should deliver news to Caesar which displeases Caesar, what will become of him?”
“Tell him to speak,” said Domitian. “As long as he tells the truth, he’ll receive his reward and remain unharmed. But if he doesn’t speak at once, I’ll have him strangled.”
The translator and Eberwig conferred at length. At last the translator addressed Domitian in a quavering voice. “Dominus, the soothsayer declares that he has examined all the evidence of the lightning strikes most scrupulously and he is convinced that he has reached a correct interpretation. He says that the frequency and location of the strikes foretell an imminent change at the very highest level of power. He says that this can only mean… yourself.”
“Speak clearly.”
“He says that very soon there will be a new emperor in Roma.”
Domitian sat back, nervous ly picking at something on his forehead. “When?”
“He cannot say exactly. But very soon.”
“A matter of months?”
The translator questioned Eberwig. “Not months, Dominus. Days.”
There was a flash of lightning, followed by thunder.
“Take him away,” said Domitian.
Eberwig protested. The translator cleared his throat. “He says, what of his reward?”
“If his prophecy comes true, let him seek his payment from my successor!” snapped Domitian. “Now take him away and keep him under close guard.”
An uneasy silence followed. Eventually Stephanus appeared, slightly out of breath from running. Lucius was brought back to the courtyard. Stephanus stepped forward and handed him the lituus.
There could be no more delaying. Lucius took a deep breath. He looked at the lituus in his hands. He had not touched it in many years. What a lovely thing it was, with all its intricate carvings of birds and beasts!
As he had seen his father do many times when he was a boy, Lucius gazed up at the skies and marked out a zone for his augury. The sky was cooperative: almost at once a flash of lightning rent the dark clouds to the north, and then another. Lucius waited awhile longer and was rewarded by a third flash of lightning, so close that it illuminated the whole courtyard with a spectral blue light. It was followed by a tremendous clap of thunder that made everyone jump except Lucius, whose thoughts were focused entirely on what he was about to say.
He turned and faced Domitian. “The augury is done, Dominus.”
“So quickly?”
“The signs are unmistakable.”
“And?”
“There is to be a great change. A change so great it will affect the whole world. The change will be sudden, not gradual. It will happen in a single moment – like a thunderclap.”
“When?”
“The signs are very clear about that – unusually so. By counting the branches of all three strikes and observing their relationship to the main trunks of lightning, an exact number of days and hours from this moment can be calculated. The event will take place-”
“Not out loud, you fool!” snapped Domitian. “Whisper it in my ear.”
Lucius approached the emperor. He had never been so close to the man before. He was close enough to smell his breath, and to know that he had eaten onions recently. He was close enough to see a black hair that grew out of one nostril, and a wart on the man’s forehead. He was close enough to kill him, if he’d had a weapon. He fought back the revulsion he felt and spoke in Domitian’s ear.
“Exactly ten days hence, during the fifth hour of the day.”
Domitian calculated the date. “Fourteen days before the Kalends, in the hour before noon. You’re certain?”
“Absolutely.”
Domitian gripped Lucius’s wrist, squeezing it painfully hard. “You will return here on that day, Lucius Pinarius. You will be with me during that hour. If your prediction is false – if you’re playing some trick on me – I’ll see you strangled at my feet. Do you understand?”
“I understand, Dominus.”
“You will speak of this to no one.”
“As you wish, Dominus.”
Domitian released him. The emperor sat back, nervously picking at the wart on his forehead with one hand and making a curt gesture of dismissal with the other. Guards escorted Lucius from the courtyard, through the palace, and all the way back to his house. One of the guards, he noticed, took up a post across the street from his door. His comings and goings were to be carefully watched, and no one could call on him without being observed. He could expect no further visits from Flavia Domitilla.
That night he wrote a coded letter to Apollonius, telling him of the day’s events – his summons to the palace, the nervous demeanour of Domitian, and the sham augury, which he described in detail. Where was Apollonius now? Nerva would know. When he was done, Lucius would dispatch Hilarion to take the letter to an intermediary who would take it to Nerva. They never communicated directly.