Repentinus, the only recently married son-in-law of Julianus, nodded vigorously.
“Caesar, you must save your daughter!”
Again, Genialis’ lip curled in revulsion at the constant displays of cowardice and fear this family exhibited. Despite his oath to serve and protect them, he was rapidly becoming convinced that Severus, the ‘Lion of Leptis’, might just be exactly what Rome needed: a strong leader, unafraid and severe.
Marcus Didius Julianus, master of the world, hugged the couch and wept like a little girl, his nose running, mucus matting his moustache.
“Get up!” Genialis snapped at him.
The heap of toga, shuddering and whining, remained exactly where it was, the cowardly Repentinus gingerly embracing his father-in-law, ostensibly begging him to save the young princess. Genialis was in no doubt as to whose skin the young man was really interested in saving.
“Get up!” he barked again.
Reaching down, he grasped the emperor by the throat, bunching the folds of the toga in his fist and hauling the man to his feet with a grunt. The waxy, pale Julianus, tears in his red-rimmed eyes and mucus in his beard, staggered, his knees quaking, the stink of urine about him.
Genialis thrust the gladius into his unwilling hands and folded the emperor’s fingers around the hilt. Julianus stared down at the weapon and raised it hesitantly, gesturing at the prefect. Genialis sneered and simply batted it aside.
“Killing me would hardly help you, Caesar.”
“Perhaps I can appeal to the masses? To the army? I still have a fortune. They’re gathered in the circus maximus, you say? I could shower them with sesterces from here! They will hear me and they will love me and I’ll be safe and they’ll kill Severus and I’ll rule Rome and I’ll be safe forever and…”
Another ringing slap stopped him chattering. He pulled away, the sword in his hand, and started toward the balcony before stopping dead again. His son-in-law was standing on the hem of his partially-undone toga, shivering, while the praetorian prefect glared at him with barely concealed loathing, his arms folded.
“Repentinus!” he barked, but the young man remained where he was, reached toward him, gripping the blade of the gladius in the emperor’s hand and gently pulled it from his grasp.
“Yes, yes” Julianus nodded. “I won’t need that, you’re right. I can buy them off. I will buy their love.”
Repentinus nodded and turned.
Genialis’ eyes widened as the young, cowering son-in-law drove the blade deep into the praetorian officer’s side, above the cuirass and below his folded arms, pushing the hilt with a grunt and listening to the grating as the blade slid between bones and vital organs. It was a masterly blow, worthy of a soldier; an almost instant kill.
Silenced first by shock and then simply by the journey to Elysium, Titus Flavius Genialis, prefect of the Praetorian Guard, collapsed in a heap, his legs buckling beneath him as blood rushed from the mortal wound in his side. A single gasp escaped his lips. Repentinus let go of the sword hilt and helped lower the dead man to the floor with a surprising show of respect. Fumbling with his toga, the young man stood.
Julianus, his eyes still wide with shock, started to nod madly, grinning like an idiot.
“Of course. Good boy. He had to go. He would never have let me live. Now we can buy them off and I can…”
His voice tailed off as Repentinus stood again. The respectful lowering of the body and strange toga-fumbling had simply been the boy removing the prefect’s dagger from his belt. Now he brandished the leaf-shaped blade with a sad, resigned look.
“What is it, Repentinus?” the emperor squeaked.
“You see, Caesar, there is a problem. Genialis would never manage to save us. Severus will kill him for simply being in your guard, and Didia and I will follow quickly. But he was right that you simply have to die. No amount of generosity and coin will save you now. But there is still time for me to secure my future.”
Reaching out with his free hand, he grasped the emperor’s toga and bunched it in his fist in the same fashion as Genialis had done.
The emperor stared in shock and panic.
“But you’re my family!” he wailed.
“Sadly you’re no longer in mine, Caesar.”
Julianus tried to say something. His last words may have been profound and noble, though they probably weren’t. Whatever they may have been, they were inaudible as Repentinus drew the knife across his throat, watching as the blood began to gush and spray, soaking his own toga.
Letting go of his father-in-law as he fell, Repentinus ignored the thrashing as the emperor tried to hold his throat closed, making hissing, rattling sounds. Reaching down with the knife, he began the onerous task of sawing through the prefect’s neck with the razor-sharp dagger and removing the head. Moments later, treading through the blood-slick, he repeated the process on the now-expired emperor.
Letting the knife fall and grasping the heads by the hair, he walked, one in each hand, toward the balcony.
Quintus Aemilius Saturninus, loyal soldier of Septimius Severus and future prefect of the Praetorian Guard looked up. The crowds of soldiers in the circus maximus continued to shout momentarily, but the noise gradually died away as they took note of the small figure, high up in the palace window perhaps sixty or eighty feet above them, past the stands of the circus and the Imperial box.
The man was clearly wearing a toga, though it could be seen even at this distance that it was stained heavily red.
“Behold the heads” the figure repeated for the third time, now finally sure of attention in the silence, “of the traitorous renegade Marcus Didius Julianus and his chief enforcer Genialis!”
With masterly theatrics, the man hurled first one head and then the other out into the air, watching along with the gathered crowd of legionaries as the heads of the emperor and praetorian prefect struck the seating area below the window and bounced, clunked and rolled down the stands until they fell, bloody and battered, to the sand of the circus.
The guards stared down at the grisly prizes as the killer in the window bellowed once again.
“Hail and long life to the Emperor Septimius Severus, Lion of Leptis!”
A roar rose from the crowd.
And so passed Marcus Didius Julianus: the man who bought Rome.
Sold by his own kin in return for a future.
Trackside seats
Lentullus leaned to his left, closing on Citus’ ear to be heard over the general hubbub.
“Should be a good one today. Prudens is up for the greens, and you know what he’s like.”
Citus’ voice came back, deep and hoarse as always.
“He’ll have a hard race against Sura, make no mistake.”
Lentullus let out a low chuckle. According to his sources, which were, after all, quality ones, Prudens stood little chance of a loss today. His team had been carefully selected from the best steeds bred by Sarmatian trainers who knew their horses better than any man. Certainly his sources damn well should be correct, given the amount he paid them. Even if Prudens walked away with a clear victory today, Lentullus’ profits would be heavily eaten into by what he owed to various people ‘in the know’. Of course the profit he cleared would still buy him the nice new estate down near Antium he had his eye on… figuratively speaking, of course.
“Andros? Are you there?”
The slave turned to his master, grateful that the latter’s long-term total blindness prevented him from seeing the expression on the young, long-suffering Greek’s face.
“I am, master.”
“What’s happening?”
Lentullus lounged back, his hand tapping along the marble of the seat toward Citus until it closed on the cheese and grapes that rested between them on a bronze plate.