Andronicus said, “And are there any special requests?”
“Only one, majesty.”
“And that is?”
All eyes were on Antipater. He wished he could sink into the gleaming stone floor. Why was it necessary for him to be the one to speak the damning words out loud before the great men of Roma?
But there was no escaping it. “Caesar Maximilianus requests, sire,” said Antipater in the steadiest voice he could muster, “that he be permitted to withdraw with such members of his court as may care to accompany him to the palace of the Emperor Diocletianus in Salona in the province of Dalmatia, where he hopes to spend the rest of his days in contemplation and study.”
There. Done. Antipater stared into the air before him, looking at nothing.
The hard gray-violet eyes of the Basileus flickered shut for half an instant; and something like a scornful smirk was visible just as briefly at a corner of the Byzantine Emperor’s mouth. “We see no reason why the request cannot be granted,” he said, after a time. “We accept the terms of the document as proposed.” Yet again he unrolled it; and, taking a pen from the magistrate beside him, he scrawled a huge capital A at the bottom. His signature, evidently. “Is there anything else?”
“No, your majesty.”
Andronicus nodded. “Well, then. Inform the former Emperor that it is our pleasure to spend this night in our camp beside the river, among our men. Tomorrow we intend to take up residence in this palace, from which nothing is to be removed without our permission. Tomorrow, also, we will present to you our brother Romanos Caesar Stravospondylos, who is to reign over the Western Empire as its Emperor thenceforth. Tell all this to the former Emperor, if you will.” He beckoned to his men, and they strode in a stiff phalanx from the room.
Antipater turned toward Maximilianus, who stood completely still, like a man transformed into a stone statue of himself.
“The Basileus says, Caesar, that he—”
“I understood what the Basileus said, thank you, Antipater,” said Maximilianus, in a voice that seemed to come from the tomb. He smiled. It was a death’s-head smile, the merest quick flashing of his teeth. Then he, too, went from the room. The members of the Great Council, most of them looking dazed and disbelieving, followed him in twos and threes.
So this is how empires fall in the modern era, Antipater thought.
No bloodshed, no executions. A parchment scroll passing back and forth a couple of times from conqueror to conquered, a scrawled letter A, a change of occupants for the royal apartments. And so it will go down in history. Lucius Aelius Antipater, the defeated Emperor’s Master of Greek Letters, presented the statement of abdication to the Basileus Andronicus, who gave it the most perfunctory of glances and then—
“Antipater?”
It was Germanicus Caesar. He alone remained in the great room with the Master of Greek Letters.
The prince beckoned to him. “A word with you on the portico, Antipater. Now.”
Outside, strolling together down the long enclosed porch that ran along this wing of the palace, with the rain clattering on the wooden roof overhead, Germanicus said, “What can you tell me about this Romanos Caesar, Antipater? I thought the Basileus’s brother was named Alexandros.”
There was something strange about his voice. Antipater realized after a moment that the prince’s indolent drawl was gone. His tone was crisp, business-like, curt.
“There are several brothers, I believe. Alexandros is the best-known one. A warrior like his brother, is Alexandros. Romanos is very likely of a different sort. The name ‘Stravospondylos’ means ‘crook-back.’”
Germanicus’s eyes widened. “Andronicus has picked a cripple to be Emperor of the West?”
“It would seem so from the name, sir.”
“Well. His little joke. So be it, I suppose.” Germanicus smiled, but he did not look amused. “One thing’s clear, anyway: there’ll still be two Emperors. Andronicus isn’t going to try to rule the whole united Empire from Constantinopolis, because it can’t be done. Which is what I told you, Antipater, in the Forum that day, at the Temple of Concordia.”
Antipater found himself still amazed by the abrupt change in Germanicus, this new seriousness of his, this no-nonsense manner. Even his posture was different. Gone was the easy aristocratic slouch, the loose-limbed ease. Suddenly he was holding himself like a soldier. Antipater had not noticed before how much taller Germanicus was than his brother the Emperor.
“How long,” Germanicus asked, “do you imagine that this Western Greek Empire will last, Antipater?”
“Sir?”
“How long? Five years? Ten? A thousand?”
“I have no way of knowing, sir.”
“Give it some thought. Andronicus marches west, knocks over our pitiful defenses with two flicks of his fingers, sets up his deformed little brother as our Emperor, and goes back to the good life in Constantinopolis. Leaving a dozen or so legions of Greek troops to occupy the entire immensity of the Western Empire: Hispania, Germania, Britannia, Gallia, Belgica, on and on and on, not to mention Italia itself. For what purpose has he conquered us? Why, so our taxes will flow eastward and wind up in the Byzantine treasury. Are the farmers of Britannia going to be happy about that? Are the wild whiskery men up there in Germania? You know the answer. Andronicus has captured Roma, but that doesn’t mean he’s gained control of the whole Empire. They don’t want Greeks running things, out there in the provinces. They won’t put up with it. They’re Romans, those people, and they want to be ruled by Romans. Sooner or later there’ll be active resistance movements flourishing all over the place, and I say it’ll be sooner rather than later. The assassination of Greek tax collectors and magistrates and municipal procurators. Local rebellions. Eventually, wide-scale uprisings. Andronicus will decide that it’s not worthwhile, trying to maintain supply lines over such long distances. He’ll simply shrug and let the West slide. He’s not going to come out here twice in one lifetime to fight with us. Either we’ll kill all the Greek occupiers, or, more likely, we’ll simply swallow them up and turn them into Romans. Two or three generations in the West and they won’t remember how to speak Greek.”
“I dare say you’re right, sir.”
“I dare say I am.—I’ll be leaving Roma tomorrow evening, Antipater.”
“Going to Dalmatia, are you? With the Emp—with your brother?”
Germanicus spat. “Don’t be a fool. No, I’m going the other way.” He leaned close to Antipater and said, in a low, hard-edged voice, “There’s a ship waiting at Ostia to take me to Massalia in Gallia. I’ll make my capital there or at Lugdunum, I’m not yet sure which.”
“Your—capital?”
“The Emperor has abdicated. You wrote the document yourself, didn’t you? So I’m Emperor now, Antipater. Emperor-in-exile, maybe, but Emperor none the less. I’ll proclaim myself formally the moment I land in Massalia.”
If Germanicus had said that a week ago, Antipater thought, it would have sounded like madness, or drunken folly, or some derisive joke. But this was a different Germanicus.
The prince’s sea-green eyes bore down on him mercilessly. “You’re a dead man if you say a word of this to anyone before I’m gone from Roma, of course.”
“Why tell me in the first place, then?”
“Because I think that in your weird shifty Greek way you’re a trustworthy man, Antipater. I told you that at the Temple of Concordia, too.—I want you to come with me to Gallia.”
The calmly spoken sentence struck Antipater like a thunderbolt.
“What, sir?”
“I need a Master of Greek Letters, too. Someone to help me communicate with the temporary occupying authorities in Roma. Someone to decipher the documents that my spies in the East will be sending me. And I want you as an adviser, too, Antipater. You’re a timid little man, but you’re smart, and shrewd as well, and you’re a Greek and a Roman both at the same time. I can use you in Gallia. Come with me. You won’t regret it. I’ll rebuild the army and push the Greeks out of Roma within your lifetime and mine. You can be a Consul, Antipater, when I come back here to take possession of the throne of the Caesars.”