I see flames on the horizon when I am still an hour’s ride from the city. Gusts of hot wind from the west bring me the scent of smoke: a fine dust of cinders seems to be falling, or am I imagining it? No. I extend my arm and watch a black coating begin to cover it.
It’s supreme folly to go to the capital now.
Should I not turn away, bypass Roma and head for the coast, book passage to Britannia while it’s still possible to escape? No. No. I must go there, whatever the risks. If Scaevola is Emperor, Lucilla will protect me. I will continue on to Roma, I decide. And I do.
The place is a madhouse. The sky streams with fire. On the great hills of the mighty, ancient palaces are burning; their charred marble walls topple like falling mountains. The colossal statue of some early Emperor lies strewn in fragments across the road. People run wildly in the streets, screaming, sobbing. Squads of wild-eyed soldiers rush about amongst them, shouting furiously and incoherently as they try to restore order without having any idea of whose orders to obey. I catch sight of a rivulet of crimson in the gutter and think for a terrible moment that it is blood; but no, no, it is only wine running out of a shattered wineshop, and men are falling on their faces to lap it from the cobblestones.
I abandon my chariot—the streets are too crazy to drive in—and set out on foot. The center of the city is compact enough. But where shall I go? I wonder. To the Palatine? No: everything’s on fire up there. The Capitol? Scaevola will be there, I reason, and—how preposterous this sounds to me now—he can tell me where Lucilla is, and what has become of Severina Floriana.
Of course I get nowhere near the Capitol. The entire governmental district is sealed off by troops. Edicts are posted in the streets, and I pause to read one, and it is then I discover the full extent of the alteration that this night has worked: that the Empire is no more, the Republic of the ancient days has returned. Scaevola now rules, but has the title not of Emperor but of First Consul.
As I stand gaping and dazed in the street that runs past the Forum, I am nearly run down by a speeding chariot. I yell a curse at its driver; but then, to my great amazement, the chariot stops and a familiar ruddy face peers out at me.
“Cymbelin! Good gods, is that you? Get in, man! You can’t stand around out there!”
It’s my robust and jolly host from Neapolis, my father’s friend, Marcellus Domitianus Frontinus. What bad luck for him, I think, that he’s come visiting up here in Roma at a time like this. But I have it all wrong, as usual, and Marcellus Domitianus very quickly spells everything out for me.
He has been in on the plot from the beginning—he and his brother the general, along with Junius Scaevola and Count Nero Romulus, were in fact the ringleaders. It was necessary, they felt, to destroy the Empire in order to save it. The current Emperor was an idle fool, the previous one had been allowed to stay on the throne too long, the whole idea of a quasi-hereditary monarchy had been proved to be a disaster over and over again for centuries, and now was the time to get rid of it once and for all. There was new restlessness in all the provinces and renewed talk of secession. Having just fought and won a Second War of Reunification, General Cassius Frontinus had no desire to launch immediately into a third one, and he had without much difficulty convinced his brother and Scaevola that the Caesars must go. Must in fact be put where they would never have the opportunity of reclaiming the throne.
Ruthless and bloody, yes. But better to scrap the incompetent and profligate royal family, better to toss out the empty, costly pomp of Imperial grandeur, better to bring back, at long last, the Republic. Once again there would be government by merit rather than by reason of birth. Scaevola was respected everywhere; he would know the right things to do to hold things together.
“But to kill them—to murder a whole family—!”
“A clean sweep, that’s what we needed,” Frontinus tells me. “A total break with the past. We can’t have hereditary monarchs in this modern age.”
“All the princes and princesses are dead too, then?”
“So I hear. One or two may actually have gotten away, but they’ll be caught soon enough, you can be sure of that.”
“The Princess Severina Floriana?”
“Can’t say,” Frontinus replies. “Why? Did you know her?”
Color floods to my cheeks. “Not very well, actually. But I couldn’t help wondering—”
“Lucilla will be able to tell you what happened to her. She and the princess were very close friends. You can ask her yourself.”
“I don’t know where Lucilla is. We were at Tibur together this week, at the Imperial villa, and then—when everything started happening—”
“Why, you’ll be seeing Lucilla five minutes from now! She’s at the palace of Count Nero Romulus—you know who he is, don’t you?—and that’s exactly where we’re heading.”
I point toward the Palatine, shrouded in flames and black gusts of smoke behind us.
“Up there?”
Frontinus laughs. “Don’t be silly. Everything’s destroyed on the Palatine. I mean his palace by the river.” We are already past the Forum area. I can see the somber bulk of Hadrianus’s Mausoleum ahead of us, across the river. We halt just on this side of the bridge. “Here we are,” says Frontinus.
I get to see her one last time, then, once we have made our way through the lunatic frenzy of the streets to the security of Nero Romulus’s well-guarded riverfront palace. I hardly recognize her. Lucilla wears no makeup and her clothing is stark and simple—peasant clothing. Her eyes are somber and red-rimmed. Many of her patrician friends have died this night for the sake of the rebirth of Roma.
“So now you know,” she says to me. “Of course I couldn’t tell you a thing about what was being planned.”
It is hard for me to believe that this woman and I were lovers for months, that I am intimately familiar with every inch of her body. Her voice is cool and impersonal, and she has neither kissed me nor smiled at me.
“You knew—all along—what was going to happen?”
“Of course. From the start. At least I got you out of town to a safe place while it was going on.”
“You got Severina to a safe place, too. But you couldn’t keep her there, it seems.”
Her eyes flare with rage, but I see the pain there, too.
“I tried to save her. It wasn’t possible. They all had to die, Cymbelin.”
“Your own childhood friend. And you didn’t even try to warn her.”
“We’re Romans, Cymbelin. It had become necessary to restore the Republic. The royal family had to die.”
“Even the women?”
“All of them. Don’t you think I asked? Begged? No, said Nero Romulus. She’s got to die with them. There’s no choice, he said. I went to my uncle. You don’t know how I fought with him. But nobody can sway his will, nobody at all. No, he said. There’s no way to save her.” Lucilla makes a quick harsh motion with her hand. “I don’t want to talk about this any more. Go away, Cymbelin. I don’t even understand why Marcello brought you here.”
“I was wandering around in the street, not knowing where to go to find you.”
“Me? Why would you want to find me?”
It’s like a blow in the ribs. “Because—because—” I falter and fall still.
“You were a very amusing companion,” she says. “But the time for amusements is over.”
“Amusements!”
Her face is like stone. “Go, Cymbelin. Get yourself back to Britannia, as soon as you can. The bloodshed isn’t finished here. The First Consul doesn’t yet know who’s loyal and who isn’t.”