Again Earinus tugged at the emperor’s sleeve but he cuffed him on the side of the head and sent him sprawling. “Later, I said. Stupid boy!”
Earinus watched in silence as the emperor unwound the cord that bound the two leaves of the tablet together and lowered his eyes to read. Then, in a movement so fast that the boy couldn’t follow it, there was a dagger in the messenger’s hand. The blade flashed upward, piercing the emperor in the groin. Domitian groaned and doubled over. The blade came out followed by a gush of blood from between his legs. Stephanus stepped back but Domitian, crouching, flung himself at him with a scream of rage, grappling him around the knees and throwing him down. Stephanus’ arm was tangled in his sling and he couldn’t free it. He struck the emperor a glancing blow in the side but then Domitian was on top of him holding his right wrist. Earinus, petrified but desperate for his master, ran from his hiding place. “Boy!” Domitian gasped, “my sword under the pillow!” Earinus ran to the bed while the two men, both smeared with blood, thrashed and grunted on the floor. He reached for the sword and pulled out-a hilt with no blade!
The two men, rolled over and over, Domitian gripping the dagger blade with bloody fingers, while with the other hand he clawed at his assassin’s eyes. Even mortally wounded, he was stronger than his attacker. Stephanus shouted for help and now the sentry was running in followed by one of the imperial gladiators with their swords drawn. They dragged Domitian off and stabbed him again and again until he stopped moving. A moment later Parthenius and two of his assistants appeared. Stephanus struggled to his feet, breathing heavily, and for a brief moment the vision of rich rewards from his grateful compatriots danced before his eyes. But only for a moment. The gladiator ran him through, as he had been instructed to do by Parthenius. One less mouth to tell the tale. The steward had never been one of their kind anyway.
“Send for the empress,” Parthenius ordered and one of his men dashed off.
Domitia Longina Augusta looked down at her husband’s corpse. Her lips twisted in contempt. “All those polished mirrors, all the guards and watchmen. Useless.” She spat on him.
No one paid any attention to the small-headed boy who lay in the corner sobbing, his red tunic pulled up over his eyes to keep out the horror. ???
The eighth hour of the day.
The streets were filled with Praetorians in full battle gear. The City Battalions had been disarmed, and their prefect, Aurelius Fulvus, arrested. At a hastily convened session in the Senate House with as many senators and magistrates as could be rounded up, Pliny not among them, Marcus Cocceius Nerva was unanimously voted the collection of titles and powers which gave a gloss of civil legality to his usurpation. A noisy delegation marched to his house to hail him. Unfortunately, he was too indisposed to welcome them. He had spent the whole morning throwing up.
Chapter Thirty-one
That evening.
The tumult outside penetrated even to the innermost rooms of the house. Romans marching, dancing and singing in the streets-still celebrating the overthrow of the tyrant. On every corner, his gilded statues were being pulled down with ropes amid the cheers of the populace and the shrilling of flutes.
Pliny sat by his wife’s bed, holding her bone-white hand while she slept, watching the slight rise and fall of her breast. The floor was still littered with bloody cloths.
“I’ll be going then,” the midwife said. “Have your people change the poultice every hour regular and feed her only a little broth. Make a vow to Aesculapius. I can’t do more. Goodbye, sir. And I’m truly sorry.”
He barely nodded as the woman left.
Zosimus tapped on the door and came in. “You must come away and sleep, Patrone. I’ll keep watch. And…Patrone, I want to beg your forgiveness.” Pliny looked up in surprise. “What on earth for?” “For being useless, scared out of my wits. I failed in my duty.” “Nonsense, what could you or anyone have done? We owe our lives to the Purissima.” “You still call her that, even though-” “Of course I do. What else?” At that moment, Calpurnia sighed, and her eyelids fluttered open; she moved her lips. “Gaius? How…? “Hush.” He lifted her to him, kissing her forehead, murmuring thanks to every deity he could name. “Have I been sick?” “The gods have given you back to me, that’s all that matters. We…we despaired. So much blood. Hush now.”
“No, but tell me what has happened. What are they shouting outside?” She gripped his hand and tried to struggle up on an elbow. He felt her trembling.
“Yes, yes, all right. The emperor has been assassinated. Before that, the Praetorian commandant and his men came here to take Amatia away and to, well, to deal with me.” She needn’t know every detail. “Then you went into labor and Amatia took command. I confess I’ve never seen anyone so magnificent. She refused to leave us. She sent a slave running for the midwife. And she convinced Petronius that I had joined their conspiracy to overthrow the emperor. Yes, that’s what it was all about. I don’t know if he believed her, but such force leapt from that woman’s eyes…Short and stout she may be, but at that moment, she seemed to tower over him like the great statue of Minerva come to life. Anyway he backed down.” “And had you? Joined them?” Pliny shook his head wearily. “At that moment I honestly don’t know.” For a while they were both silent. Then Calpurnia whispered, “And now, husband, I want to see my baby.” He covered his eyes with his hand.
Chapter Thirty-two
A week later.
Domitian’s corpse had been carted away on a common litter by the public undertakers, as they did with paupers. His old nurse saw to his burial in an inconspicuous spot. The elderly Nerva, looking shrunken inside the voluminous folds of Domitian’s triumphal toga, had presided as emperor over the final day of the Roman Games. In the city, people waited nervously for the tramp of approaching legions, but, as it became clear that there would be no civil war, rejoicing broke out anew and continued for days.
A communique had been promptly released from the palace announcing that the tyrant had been killed. No names were named but the text underlined that his death had occurred at the fifth hour on the fourteenth day before the Kalends, the precise day and hour that had been widely prophesied. Plainly, Fate, or the stars, or call it what you will, had spoken. There was no gainsaying it. And Parthenius had even found the time, during those last hectic days, to throw together an imperial horoscope for Nerva. So that clinched the matter.
The dead emperor’s memory was formally damned by the Senate. In an orgy of hate, his arches and monuments were demolished, his name obliterated from inscriptions. The months Germanicus and Domitianus reverted to their old names, September and October.
The Deified Julius and Augustus had named the months Quinctilis and Sextilis respectively after themselves, but they had died with honors and the changes seemed likely to last; not so Domitian. It would be as if he had never existed. The following day Aurelius Fulvus, the city prefect, who had been a regime stalwart to the end, was removed from office, and Pliny was politely relieved of his post as vice-prefect, although with a commendation from Nerva for good work and a hint that, having shown such a talent for detection, there might be further assignments of a confidential nature. Pliny devoutly hoped there would not be. He had sunk into a deep funk, crushed by the double loss of his stillborn son and Verpa’s slaves. Apart from unavoidable duties, he hadn’t left the house in a week.