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.”
“Another Reign of Terror, then?”
“We hope not. But it won’t be pretty, all the same. Still, the First Consul wants the Second Republic to get off to the most peaceful possible—”
“The First Consul,” I say, with anger in my voice. “The Second Republic.”
“You don’t like those words?”
“To kill the Emperor—”
“It’s happened before, more times than you can count. This time we’ve killed the whole system. And will replace it at long last with something cleaner and healthier.”
“Maybe so.”
“Go, Cymbelin. We are very busy now.”
And she turns away and leaves the room, as though I am nothing to her, only an inquisitive and annoying stranger. It is all too clear to me now that she had regarded me all along as a mere casual plaything, an amusing barbarian to keep by her side during the autumn season; and now it is winter and she must devote herself to more serious things.
And so I went. The last Emperor had perished and the Republic had come again, and I had slept amidst the luxurious comforts of the Imperial villa while it all was happening. But it has always been that way, hasn’t it? While most of us sleep, an agile few create history in the night.
Now all was made new and strange. The world I had known had been entirely transformed in ways that might not be fully apparent for years—the events of these recent hours would be a matter for historians to examine and debate and assess, long after I had grown old and died—nor would the chaos at the center of the Empire end in a single day, and provincial boys like me were well advised to take themselves back where they belonged.
I no longer had any place here in Roma, anyway. Lucilla was lost to me—she will marry Count Nero Romulus to seal his alliance with her uncle—and whatever dizzying fantasies I might have entertained concerning the Princess Severina Floriana were best forgotten now, or the ache would never leave my soul. All that was done and behind me. The holiday was over. There would be no further tourism for me this year, no ventures into Etruria and Venetia and the other northern regions of Italia. I knew I must leave Roma to the Romans and beat a retreat back to my distant rainy island in the west, having come all too close to the flames that had consumed the Roma of the Emperors, having in fact been somewhat singed by them myself.
Except for the help that Frontinus provided, I suppose I might have had a hard time of it. But he gave me a safe-conduct pass to get me out of the capital, and lent me a chariot and a charioteer; and on the morning of the second day of the Second Republic I found myself on the Via Appia once more, heading south. Ahead of me lay the Via Roma and Neapolis and a ship to take me home.
I looked back only once. Behind me the sky was smudged with black clouds as the fires on the Palatine Hill burned themselves out.