“Sounds familiar,” Bordeaux joked lightly.
I smiled for his benefit, but quickly lost it. “It gets worse. In our history, Nero was betrayed by his Praetorians when factitious portions of the empire rebelled against him. His Praetorians did this because by then, it’s what they did. They controlled who became emperor, starting with the assassination of Caligula and their support of Claudius.” I sighed, realizing once again it was our interference that led us to this point. “But four years ago, Vincent had a plan to mold the Praetorians into the ardent defenders of the Caesars they had been under Augustus. He succeeded.”
Bordeaux nodded. “The Sacred Band.”
“Yep. In fact, the entire Praetorian Guard is now more devoutly loyal than maybe even the Pope’s Swiss Guard.” I threw a hand in the air in frustration. “Damn it, to be fair, I thought it was a good idea at the time with Caligula showing such promise. Now? It couldn’t have backfired more. Augustus was almost eighty years old when he died, and there’s no saying Nero won’t last that long either. Who knows what will happen to the future after eighty years of Nero”
“So, what are you going to do? Kill him when he’s four and can’t fight back?”
“Who said anything about killing?” I asked, mostly sure he was kidding. “No, I’m going to kidnap him, hold him ransom and stage a coup that will put a proper ruler on the throne. It’s the least I can do for Caligula since there’s no one to blame for his premature death than me.”
Just as Bordeaux opened his mouth to respond, a wailing woman burst through the door and made a bee line towards Helena and Julia. The older Helena still had her arms around the young girl’s shoulders in a consoling manner, but was quickly abandoned when mother and daughter rushed into each other’s arms. Both were crying tears of happiness as the mother clutched Julia by the head and kissed her forehead and cheeks over and over.
It was a tender moment and I noticed Helena with a happy but somewhat sad smile on her face, a few tears running down her cheeks. She looked over at me and her smile faltered just slightly, but she composed herself quickly and looked back at the reunited family.
But their reunion only lasted a few minutes. The mother moved to where Helena sat and planted a few kisses on her cheeks, and made her way over to Bordeaux and me, offering us similar thanks as well. When she reached her hand out to offer me some money, I pushed it away and told her payment was not necessary. The mother hugged me again and gave me another series of kisses before Julia came over to stand beside her mother. She kept her distance from us, but there was a small smile tugging at her lips I had yet to see from her. It was more than I expected from a young woman who must have gone through so much.
With a last few goodbyes, the two women took their leave of the tavern and were on their way, hopefully back to the relative safety of the Italian peninsula.
“I see why you do this,” Bordeaux commented as he watched them leave. “Is it always this happy?”
“Sometimes,” I answered honestly. “Other times, we aren’t doing things nearly so heartwarming and usually our business transactions end with us getting paid. We’ve actually accumulated a good amount of wealth over the years. Need a lone?”
“No, I’m fine.” He laughed. “Do you deny payment often?”
“Rarely. Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age.”
Bordeaux snorted. “Wait till you hit fifty, then you can complain. I’ll be there in a few years,” he informed with a humorous shudder.
I laughed politely and waited to continue our conversation when Helena sat down between us and scratched her long, unkempt hair.
“How have you been, Jeanne?” She asked. “Are you a daddy yet?”
So Bordeaux went through the process of showing her the pictures of his family where she commented about their size just like I had. Her gaze lingered on the picture of his family.
“You have a beautiful family, Jeanne,” she said. “You should consider yourself lucky.”
Bordeaux glanced side long at me as he heard the same strain in Helena’s voice I used earlier. “Merci. I already miss them horribly even though I have only been gone a few days.”
“We’re sorry we had to borrow you,” she told him, “but Jacob thinks this is important. We won’t take up much more of your time.” She looked over at me sternly. “Will we?”
“No,” I said, giving her a look of my own. “I’ll try to be quick.” I looked Bordeaux square in the eye. “I need you to get the band back together.”
“What?” He asked, not understanding the Blues Brothers reference.
“I mean, I need you to find Wang and Vincent and get them to join us in our mission. God knows we could use their help.”
“You have yet to tell me what this plan of yours even is. Who do you have in mind to replace Agrippina?”
“Vespasian,” I said immediately. “He was a fine emperor after Nero, and he’s our best candidate now. He’s young, only in his thirties, and word is that he’s just finished up a campaign in Britain and is returning to Germany to campaign there.” I paused. “You should know that in our timeline, Vespasian should still be in Britain for another few years and there never was a campaign of this scale planned for Germany. Probably ever. Things are already changing thanks to the few years of respite we gave Rome after saving them from crazy Caligula, but delivering to them bellicose Agrippina.”
“So, how do you plan to do all this?”
I chuckled. “Well, I haven’t actually thought that far ahead yet. I like to let things unravel as they happen. I think it was MacGyver who once said something about how well thought out plans hinders the ability to be flexible and adapt to possible snags.”
Helena rolled her eyes and held out a hand in my direction. “You see what I’ve had to put up with? All this time he’s been going on about his grand plan to save the universe, but he doesn’t even know where to begin.”
“Actually,” I said as I gave her another look, annoyed at her interruption and tone, “I do know where to begin. Step one is to contact Galba and come clean.”
“Galba?” Bordeaux said loudly. “Are you serious? He hates us. What good is that going to do?”
“We think it’s necessary to get him involved.”
Helena scoffed, but Bordeaux ignored her.
“Why?”
I glanced over at Helena who looked at me expectantly. “Well, some of us buy more stock in this than others, but it may mean less trouble later if we get him involved now.”
Bordeaux’s expression indicated he was confused.
“This is all just theory,” I said, trying to clarify things, “but it makes some sense. It goes with the line of reasoning that surrounds Agrippina’s ascension to the throne. In the original timeline, when Caligula was killed, Claudius took over, but in the timeline we now find ourselves in now, Claudius is dead, so when Caligula was killed, who would be the next candidate for the throne?”
“Agrippina, I guess,” Bordeaux answered. “Especially since Caligula named Nero his direct successor.”
“Right,” I confirmed. “I believe, however, that it was just Agrippina using her wits to manipulate the situation, while others,” I gestured to Helena with a hand, who looked frustrated, just as she did any time I gave Agrippina any credit, “as well as Santino, believe that some kind of fate is at work here. Our involvement hasn’t changed anything. Agrippina ended up running things because she more or less had a hand in it during our original timeline.”
“So what does that have to do with Galba?”
“Between 69 and 70 A.D. there was a civil war after Nero’s suicide. Four men vied for the position and Galba was one of them, as was Vespasian. Otho and Vittelius are the other two, but they were small potatoes. The idea is that if we were to place Vespasian on the throne without dealing with these other people, fate dictates that sooner or later the other three men will step forward and try and take control themselves. What the outcome would be, I have no idea, but there’s no guarantee it would be a better result.” I held out my hands so that my palms faced one another, inches apart, and wiggled them left and right, never touching. “Fate will… I don’t know, realign the timeline back on its original course or something.”