The Great Council of State assembled at the second hour of morning in the grand velvet-hung chamber known as the Hall of Marcus Anastasius on the northern side of the Imperial palace. Both Consuls were there, and half a dozen senior figures of the Senate, and Cassius Cestianus, the Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and Cocceius Maridianus, the Secretary for Home Affairs, and seven or eight other government ministers as well, and a formidable battery of retired generals and naval officers. So, too, were the key members of the Imperial household: Aurelius Gellius, the Praetorian Prefect, and Domitius Pompeianus, the Master of Latin Letters, and Quintilius Vinicius, the Keeper of the Imperial Treasury, and more. To Antipater’s astonishment, even Germanicus Antoninus Caesar, the Emperor’s rascally younger brother, had come. His presence was appropriate, since at least in theory he was the heir to the throne; but never had Antipater seen that wastrel prince at any sort of council meeting before, nor, to Antipater’s recollection, had Germanicus ever been visible in public at all at such an early hour of the day. When he came sauntering in now, it caused a palpable stir.
The Emperor began the proceedings by asking Antipater to read the captured Greek scroll aloud.
“Demetrios Chrysoloras, Grand Admiral of the Imperial Fleet, to His Excellency Nicholas Chalcocondyles of Trebizond, Commander of Western Naval Forces, greetings! Be advised by these documents, O Nicholas, of the unanswerable will of His Most Puissant Imperial Majesty and Supreme Master of All Regions, Andronicus Maniakes, who by the grace of God holds the exalted title of King of the Romans and Lord Autocrat of—”
“Will you spare us this Greek foolishness, Antipater, and get to the essence of the matter?” came a drawling voice from the side of the chamber.
Antipater, rattled, looked up. His eyes met those of Germanicus Caesar. It was he who had spoken. The Emperor’s brother, lounging in his chair as though at a banquet, was rouged and pomaded to gaudy effect, and his purple-edged white robe was rumpled and stained with wine. Antipater understood now how Germanicus had managed to be here at this early hour: he had simply come directly to the palace after some all-night party.
The prince, smirking at him across the room, made a little impatient circling gesture with his hand. Obediently Antipater skimmed silently through the rest of the flourish of Byzantine pomp with which the letter opened and began reading again from the middle of the scrolclass="underline"
“—to hoist anchor forthwith and undertake the northerly road, keeping well clear of Corsica isle, so that you journey straightaway to the Ligurian province of the Western Empire and make yourself the master of the ports of Antipolis and Nicaea—”
There was murmuring in the chamber already. These people had no need of maps in order to visualize the maritime movements that were involved. Or to grasp the nature of the danger to the city of Roma that the presence of a Greek fleet in those waters would pose.
Antipater closed the scroll and put it down.
The Emperor looked toward him and said, “Would you say, Antipater, that this document is authentic?”
“It’s written in good upper-class Byzantine Greek, majesty. I don’t recognize the handwriting, but it’s that of a capable scribe, the sort who’d be attached to an important admiral’s staff. And the seal looks like a genuine one.”
“Thank you, Antipater.” Maximilianus sat quietly for a moment, staring into the distance. Then he let his gaze travel slowly along the rows of Roma’s great leaders. At last it came to bear on the frail figure of Aurelianus Arcadius Ablabius, who had had command of the Tyrrhenian Sea fleet until his retirement to the capital for reasons of health a year before. “Explain to me, Ablabius, how a Byzantine armada could make its way up from Sicilia to the Sardinian coast without our so much as noticing the fact. Tell us about the Empire’s naval bases along the west coast of Sardinia, if you will, Ablabius.”
Ablabius, a thin, chalk-white man with pale blue eyes, moistened his lips and said, “Majesty, we have no significant naval bases on the west coast of Sardinia. Our ports are Calaris in the southeast and Olbia in the northeast. We have small outposts at Bosa and Othoca in the west, nothing more. The island is desolate and unhealthy and we have not seen the need to fortify it greatly.”
“Under the assumption, I suppose, that our enemies of the Eastern Empire were not likely to slip around us and attack us from the west?”
“This is so, majesty,” said Ablabius, visibly squirming.
“Ah. Ah. So nobody is watching the sea from western Sardinia. How interesting. Tell me about Corsica, now, Ablabius. Do we have a military base somewhere along the western coast of that island, perhaps?”
“There are no good harbors in the west at all, Caesar. The mountains come right down to the sea. Our bases are on the eastern shore, at Aleria and Mariana. It is another wild, useless island.”
“So, then, if a Greek fleet should succeed in entering the waters west of Sardinia, it would have clear sailing right on up to the Ligurian coast, is that right, Ablabius? We have no naval force whatsoever guarding that entire sea, is what you’re saying?”
“Essentially, yes, your majesty,” said Ablabius, in a very small voice.
“Ah. Thank you, Ablabius.” The Emperor Maximilianus once more traversed the room with his gaze. This time his eyes did not come to rest, but circled unceasingly about, as though he saw no place to land.
The tense hush was broken at last by Erucius Glabro, the senior Consul, a noble-looking hawk-nosed man who traced his ancestry back to the earliest years of the Empire. He had had Imperial pretensions himself, once, thirty or forty years back, but he was old now and generally thought to have become very foolish. “This is a serious matter, Caesar! If they land an army on the coast and begin marching toward Genua, we’d have no way of keeping them from coming on all the way down to the city itself.”
The Emperor smiled. He looked immensely weary. “Thank you for stating the obvious, Glabro. I was certain that I could count on you for that.”
“Majesty—”
“Thank you, I said.” The senior Consul shriveled back into his seat. The Emperor, his glinting narrow eyes roaming the group once more, said, “We have, I think, four choices here. We could transfer the army under Julius Fronto from the Gallian frontier to the vicinity of Genua, and hope that they’ll get there in time to meet any Greek force coming eastward along the Ligurian coast. But in all probability they’d be too late. Or we could bring the forces commanded by Claudius Lentulus across from Venetia to hold the Genuan border. That would probably work, but it would leave our northeastern frontier wide open to the army that Andronicus has in Dalmatia, and we’d see them in Ravenna or even Florentia before we knew what was happening. On the other hand, we could call the army of Sempronius Rufus northward from Calabria to defend the capital, bring Lentulus south to Tuscia and Umbria, and abandon the rest of the peninsula to the Greeks. That would put us back to where we were two thousand years ago, I suppose, but the chances seem fairly good that we could hold out here in the ancient Roman heartland for a long time.”
There was another long silence.
Then Germanicus Caesar said, in that lazy, offensive drawl of his, “I think you mentioned that we had four choices, brother. You mentioned only three.”
The Emperor did not look displeased. He seemed actually to be amused. “Very good, brother! Very good! There is a fourth choice. Which is to do nothing at all, to ignore this captured message entirely, to sit tight with our defenses in their present configuration and allow the Greeks to make whatever moves they have in mind.”