“Enough reading to last me through the night,” said Apollinaris. “Thank you. You can leave me now.”
“Sir—”
“You can leave me now,” said Apollinaris again. But as Charax walked toward the door he said, “One more thing, though. What about Timoleon?”
“He has gone free, sir.”
“I expected nothing else,” Apollinaris said.
Once Charax was gone he turned his attention to the books. He would start with Thucydides, he thought—that merciless account of the terrible war between Athens and Sparta, as grim a book as had ever been written—and would make his way, volume by volume, through all of later history. And if Laureolus let him live long enough to have read them all one last time, perhaps then he would begin writing his own here in prison, a memoir that he would try to keep from being too self-serving, even though it would be telling the story of how he had sacrificed his own life in order to preserve the Empire. But he doubted that Laureolus would let him live long enough to do any writing. There would be no public execution, no—Charax had been correct about that. He was too much of a hero in the public’s eyes to be sent off so callously to the block, and in any event Laureolus’s stated intention was to give the executioners a long respite from their somber task and allow the city to return to something approaching normal.
He reached for the first volume of Thucydides, and sat for a time reading and rereading its opening few sentences.
A knock at his door, then. He had been waiting for it.
“Come in,” he said. “I doubt that it’s locked.”
A tall, gaunt figure entered, a man wearing a hooded black cape that left his face exposed. He had cold close-set eyes, a taut fleshless face, rough skin, thin tight-clamped lips.
“I know you,” said Apollinaris calmly, though he had never seen the man in his life.
“Yes, I believe you do,” the other said, showing him the knife as he came toward him. “You know me very well. And I think you’ve been expecting me.”
“So I have,” said Apollinaris.
It was the first day of the new month, when the Prefect of the Fiscus Imperialis and the Prefect of the Fiscus Publicus traditionally lunched together to discuss matters that pertained to the workings of the two treasuries. Even now, many weeks along in the reign of the new Emperor, the Emperor’s private purse, the Fiscus Imperialis, was still under the charge of Quintus Cestius, and the other fund, the Fiscus Publicus, was, as it had been for years, administered by Sulpicius Silanus. They had weathered all the storms. They were men who knew the art of surviving.
“So Count Valerian Apollinaris has perished,” Cestius said. “A pity, that. He was a very great man.”
“Too great, I think, to be able to keep out of harm’s way indefinitely. Such men inevitably are brought down. A pity, I agree. He was a true Roman of the old sort. Men like that are very scarce in these dreadful times.”
“But at least peace is restored. The Empire is whole again, thanks be to Count Apollinaris, and to our beloved Emperor Laureolus.”
“Yes. But is it secure, though? Have any of the real problems been addressed?” Silanus, that sly little man of hearty appetite and exuberant spirit, cut himself another slab of meat and said, “I offer you a prediction, Cestius. It will all fall apart again within a hundred years.”
“You are too optimistic by half, at least,” said Quintus Cestius, reaching for the wine, though he rarely drank.
“Yes,” said Silanus. “Yes, I am.”
A.U.C. 2603:
Via Roma
A carriage is waiting for me, by prearrangement, when I disembark at the port in Neapolis after the six-day steamer voyage from Britannia. My father has taken care of all such details for me with his usual efficiency. The driver sees me at once—I am instantly recognizable, great strapping golden-haired barbarian that I am, a giant Nordic pillar towering over this busy throng of small swarthy southern people running to and fro—and cries out to me, “Signore! Signore! Venga qua, signore.”
But I’m immobilized in that luminous October warmth, staring about me in wonder, stunned by the avalanche of unfamiliar sights and smells. My journey from the dank rainy autumnal chill of my native Britannia into this glorious Italian land of endless summer has transported me not merely to another country but, so it seems, to another world. I am overwhelmed by the intense light, the radiant shimmering air, the profusion of unknown tropical-looking trees. By the vast sprawling city stretching before me along the shores of the Bay of Neapolis. By the lush green hills just beyond, brilliantly bespeckled with the white winter villas of the Imperial aristocracy. And then too there is the great dark mountain far off to my right, the mighty volcano, Vesuvius itself, looming above the city like a slumbering god. I imagine that I can make out a faint gray plume of pale smoke curling upward from its summit. Perhaps while I am here the god will awaken and send fiery rivers of red lava down its slopes, as it has done so many times in the immemorial past.
No, that is not to happen. But there will be fire, yes: a fire that utterly consumes the Empire. And I am destined to stand at the very edge of it, on the brink of the conflagration, and be altogether unaware of everything going on about me: poor fool, poor innocent fool from a distant land.
“Signore! Per favore!” My driver jostles his way to my side and tugs impatiently at the sleeve of my robe, an astonishing transgression against propriety. In Britannia I surely would strike any coachman who did that; but this is not Britannia, and customs evidently are very different here. He looks up imploringly. I’m twice his size. In comic Britannic he says, “You no speak Romano, signore? We must leave this place right away. Is very crowded, all the people, the luggage, the everything, I may not remain at the quay once my passenger has been found. It is the law. Capisce, signore? Capisce?”
“Si, si, capisco,” I tell him. Of course I speak Roman. I spent three weeks studying it in preparation for this journey, and it gave me no trouble to learn. What is it, after all, except a mongrelized and truncated kind of bastard Latin? And everyone in the civilized world knows Latin. “Andiamo, si.”
He smiles and nods. “Allora. Andiamo!”
All around us is chaos—newly arrived passengers trying to find transportation to their hotels, families fighting to keep from being separated in the crush, peddlers selling cheap pocket-watches and packets of crudely tinted picture postcards, mangy dogs barking, ragged children with sly eyes moving among us looking for purses to pick. The roaring babble is astonishing. But we are an island of tranquility in the midst of it all, my driver and I. He beckons me into the carriage: a plush seat, leather paneling, glistening brass fittings, but also an inescapable smell of garlic. Two noble auburn horses stand patiently in their traces. A porter comes running up with my luggage and I hear it being thumped into place overhead. And then we are off, gently jouncing down the quay, out into the bustling city, past the marble waterfront palaces of the customs officials and the myriad other agencies of the Imperial government, past temples of Minerva, Neptune, Apollo, and Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and up the winding boulevards toward the district of fashionable hotels on the slopes that lie midway between the sea and the hills. I will be staying at the Tiberius, on Via Roma, a boulevard which I have been told is the grand promenade of the upper city, the place to see and be seen.
We traverse streets that must be two thousand years old. I amuse myself with the thought that Augustus Caesar himself may have ridden through these very streets long ago, or Nero, or perhaps Claudius, the ancient conqueror of my homeland. Once we are away from the port, the buildings are tall and narrow, grim slender tenements of six and seven stories, built side by side with no breathing space between them. Their windows are shuttered against the midday heat, impenetrable, mysterious. Here and there among them are broader, shorter buildings set in small gardens: huge squat structures, gray and bulky, done in the fussy baroque style of two hundred years ago. They are the palatial homes, no doubt, of the mercantile class, the powerful importers and exporters who maintain the real prosperity of Neapolis. If my family lived here, I suppose we would live in one of those.