Perennis stared at him for a long moment in the silence that followed, then turned to face the emperor, either rage or a mortal fear for his own life making his right eye quiver minutely.
‘Caesar, with your permission, I feel that it would be unwise for us to indulge these fantasies any longer … I’ll have these men …’
‘Us, Prefect?’ Cleander’s voice was still soft, but it cut across the praetorian commander with more than sufficient authority to silence him. ‘You feel it unwise for us to indulge these fantasies? Surely it is Caesar’s place to determine if this gift is a fantasy. Caesar’s place, Prefect, and not yours. After all, a million aureii should prove difficult to conjure out of thin air, wouldn’t you say? It is of course your decision, my Caesar …’
Commodus spoke quickly, waving aside Perennis’s horrified protests, his eyes gleaming with the excitement of the moment.
‘Bring in this gift, Cleander, and prove that what you say is true. Prefect Perennis, order your men back to their places.’
The freedman strode back to the doors, ignoring the praetorians who had frozen where they stood at the emperor’s command, and flung them open again to reveal the startled guardsmen they had passed moments before. He called out a command in a loud, clear voice at odds with the previous softness of his tone.
‘Bring in the gold!’
The door to the room where the Tungrians waited opened in response to his shouted command, and one by one the chests were carried through it and up the wide corridor into the anteroom. Cleander stepped closer to the door guards, and Marcus barely heard his softly spoken words as he muttered a dire warning.
‘These chests contain the proof of your prefect’s treachery. Make any attempt to block their entry to the throne room and I promise you that you’ll die with him. Just not as quickly …’
Stepping back into the room, he raised a hand to point to the gold bearers’ slow procession as the first of the chests approached the doorway.
‘These boxes full of gold are carried by loyal auxiliary soldiers of the First and Second Tungrian Cohorts, Caesar, the men who captured this magnificent prize for you. And note, Perennis, they are unarmed, and represent no threat to our beloved emperor.’
Marcus, his gaze fixed on Perennis, saw the prefect’s eyes narrow again at the mention of the Tungrians, his face taking on the slightly puzzled expression of a man who knew that the word should mean more to him than it did, as Cleander continued his address to the emperor.
‘These men have proven their loyalty to you on a dozen battlefields across the northern empire, as you can see from their faces, and now they bring you the spoils of their struggles as homage to your pre-eminence among all Romans.’
As the first chest was carried into the throne room Marcus realised the brutal logic that had underlain Albinus’s selection of men to carry the gold through the city. Not only were the soldiers he had chosen among the biggest and strongest men in the two cohorts, but to a man their faces were disfigured by scars inflicted on them by their enemies in the succession of battles that the Tungrians had fought since the beginning of Calgus’s rebellion two years before.
‘That’s close enough!’
Perennis had regained something of his composure in the face of looming disaster, and stepped forward to stop the procession, drawing his sword in a rasp of iron on scabbard fittings. Cleander smiled crookedly at him, shaking his head slightly as the Tungrians lowered their burdens carefully to the throne room’s intricate mosaic floor.
‘I always thought that being the only member of the imperial court to carry a sword was a purely ceremonial privilege. After all, the days when the emperor Trajan told his prefect to use his for him as long as he ruled well, but against him if he ruled badly, are long gone, are they not? But to draw your sword in the presence of the emperor, Prefect? Who presents Caesar with the greater threat, I wonder, his loyal servants who have risked their lives to win him a fortune, or any man who dares to unsheathe a blade in his presence, no matter how elevated his position? But no matter, I’m sure Caesar knows best …’
He strode across the room and threw back the lid of the closest chest and thrust a fist into the sea of gold coins within, pulling out a handful and nodding to Albinus, who quickly opened the other boxes to reveal the treasure that filled them almost to their brims. Striding past the praetorian prefect he went down on one knee before the emperor, holding out the coins while Perennis looked on white-faced.
‘Here, my Caesar, look at these coins, and tell me if Prefect Perennis’s charge of fantasy rings true.’ He waited while Commodus stared down at the small heap of gleaming gold coins in his lap, then picked one up and peered more closely at it. ‘See how the reverse of the coin is decorated with an image of Britannia, to represent your victory over the barbarians who sought to steal the province from you. It is traditional, I believe, for Britannia to be depicted in chains after such a victory, of course, but you can overlook such an oversight, I’m sure, unless there is some deeper meaning …’ He looked up at the emperor with his face perfectly straight. ‘And now, Caesar, look at the head that adorns these coins.’
Commodus turned the aureus over in his hand, staring down at it for a long moment before his face creased in a frown.
‘But this isn’t my head.’
Cleander spoke again, his voice subtly changing tone to that of a man reluctantly revealing a distasteful truth.
‘Indeed, Caesar, and nor is it your beloved father’s. Upon a closer inspection I realised that the profile depicted on these coins seems to be that of your praetorian prefect. But I’m sure there is some rational explanation. What do the words around the coin’s rim say?’
The young emperor’s voice fell to a whisper.
‘Imperator … Fides Exercitum?’
For a moment the throne room was utterly silent, as Commodus digested the full magnitude of what had been revealed by the three simple words that circled the profile of his closest adviser.
‘Emperor?Loyalty of the soldiers?!’
The words were bellowed at the top of the emperor’s voice as he rose from the throne in a scatter of flashing gold, turning to point an accusatory finger at the recoiling Perennis who raised his hands in helpless defence, his unsheathed sword unwittingly held out before him.
‘M-my C-caesar …’
‘Emperor?! Fucking EMPEROR?!’ Commodus strode forward, putting a finger in the prefect’s face with an apparent disdain for the sword less than a foot from his body. ‘You sought to take my throne, and now you raise your sword to me?! Seize him!’