“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?”