Antipater heard a few gasps of astonishment; and then there commenced a wild general hubbub. The Emperor, motionless, arms folded across his breast, lips curving into the faintest of smiles, waited for it to die down. As order began to return the voice of the Consul Herennius Capito could be heard clearly asking, “Would that not be the suicide of our nation, Caesar?”
“You might argue that any response at all that we might make at this time would be suicidal,” said the Emperor. “Defending ourselves on some new front means leaving some existing front unguarded. Pulling troops from any of our borders now will create a breach through which the enemy can easily move.”
“But to take no action whatever, Caesar, while the Greeks are landing an army virtually in our back yard—!”
“Ah, but are they, Capito? What if this message Antipater has just read to us is merely a fraud?”
There was a moment of astounded stillness, after which came a second uproar. “A fraud? A fraud? A fraud?” cried a host of high ministers and Imperial counselors all at once. They seemed stunned. As was Antipater as well, for was this not precisely the idea—implausible, absurd—that Justina had proposed to him in the privacy of his apartments the night before?
Antipater listened in amazement as Maximilianus now set forth the argument that the supposed letter of the Grand Admiral Chrysoloras might have been designed purely as a trap, that its intention was to induce the Romans to draw their forces away from a military front that was in genuine need of defending and move them to a place where no real threat existed.
That was possible, yes. But was it in any way likely?
Not to Antipater. His father had taught him never to underestimate an enemy’s cunning, but by the same token never to overestimate it, either. He had seen often enough how easily you could outsmart yourself by trying to think too many moves ahead in a game. It was far more reasonable, he thought, to believe that the Greeks really did have warships out there beyond Sardinia and were at this moment making ready to grab the Ligurian ports than it was to suppose that the Chrysoloras letter was merely a clever ploy in some game of—what was that game the Persians liked to play?—chess. A gigantic game of chess.
But no one could tell the Emperor to his face that a position he had put forth was absurd, or even just improbable. Very swiftly the assembled ministers and counselors could be seen bringing themselves around to an acceptance of the argument that it might not be necessary to react to the Grand Admiral’s purported orders to the commander of the Sardinian fleet, because there just might not be any Sardinian fleet. Which was the safest way to deal with it, anyway, politically speaking. A decision to do nothing spared them from having to yank Roman legions away from a border point that was quite definitely in danger of imminent attack. Nobody wanted the responsibility for doing that.
In the end, then, the Grand Council voted to take a wait-and-see position; and off went everyone to the Senate House in the Forum to go through the meaningless ritual of presenting the non-decision to the full Senate for its foreordained ratification.
“Stay a moment,” said the Emperor to Antipater, as the others headed for their waiting litters.
“Caesar?”
“I saw you shaking your head, there at the end, when the vote was being tallied.”
Antipater saw no purpose in offering a reply. He regarded the Emperor with a blank bland subservient stare.
“You think the Admiral’s letter is real, don’t you, Antipater?”
“Unquestionably the penmanship and the style of phrasing are Byzantine,” said Antipater cautiously. “The seal looks right also.”
“I don’t mean that. I’m talking about the fleet that we’re supposed to believe is lying at anchor off western Sardinia. You think it’s actually there.”
“Caesar, I am in no position to speculate about—”
“I think it’s really there, too,” Maximilianus said.
“You do, Caesar?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then why did you—?”
“Allow them to vote to take no action?” A look of terrible fatigue crossed the Emperor’s face. “Because that was the easiest thing, Antipater. It was my duty to bring the letter to their attention. But there’s no way we can respond to it, don’t you see? Even if the Greeks are on their way to Liguria, we don’t have any troops to send out there to meet them.”
“What will we do, Caesar, if they invade the peninsula?”
“Fight, I suppose,” said Maximilianus dully. “What else is there to do? I’ll pull Lentulus’s army down from the Dalmatian border and bring Sempronius Rufus’s men up from the south and we’ll hole up in the capital and defend ourselves as well as we can.” There was no trace of Imperial vigor in his voice, not a shred of conviction or fire. He is just striking a pose, Antipater thought, and not working very hard at it, either.
To Antipater the outcome seemed utterly clear.
The Empire is lost, he thought. All we’re doing is waiting for the end.
Once he had translated the Chrysoloras letter for the benefit of the Senate, there was no need for Antipater to remain for the rest of the debate, nor did he feel any desire to do so. Disdaining the litter-bearers who were waiting outside to take him back to his office at the palace, he set out on foot into the Forum, wandering blindly and purposelessly through the dense crowds, hoping only to soothe the agitation that pounded through his brain.
But the heat and the myriad chaotic sights and smells and sounds of the Forum only made things worse for him. The Empire’s present situation seemed all the more tragic to him here amidst the Forum’s multitude of glorious gleaming buildings.
Had there ever been an empire like the Roman Empire, in all of history? Or any city like mighty Roma? Surely not, thought Antipater. The greatness of Roma, city and Empire, had been growing steadily with scarcely any check for nearly two thousand years, from the era of the Republic to the coming of the Caesars and then on to the period of grand Imperial expansion that took the eagles of Roma into almost every region of the world. By the time that great age of empire-building had come to its natural end, with as much territory under control as was practical to administer, the power of Roma prevailed from the cool gray island of Britannia in the west to Persia and Babylon in the east.
He was aware that there had been a couple of occasions when that pattern of never-ending growth had suffered interruptions, but those were anomalies of long ago. In the modest early days of the Republic the barbarian Gauls had burst in here and burned the city, such as it had been then, but what had their invasion achieved? Only to strengthen the resolve of Roma never to let such a thing happen again; and the Gauls today were placid provincials, their warrior days long forgotten.
And then the business with Carthago—that affair was ancient history, too. The Carthaginian general Hannibal had caused his little disturbance, true, the thing with the elephants, but his invasion had come to nothing, and Roma had razed Carthago to its foundations and then built it all up again as a Roman colony, and the Carthaginians now were a nation of smiling hotel-keepers and restaurateurs who existed to serve the sun-seeking winter-holiday trade from Europa.
This Forum here, this crowded array of temples and law courts and statues and colonnades and triumphal arches, was the heart and core and nerve center of the whole splendid Empire. For twelve hundred years, from the time of Julius Caesar to the time of the present Maximilianus, the monarchs of Roma had filled these streets with a stunning conglomeration of glistening marble monuments to the national grandeur. Each building was grand in itself; the totality was altogether overwhelming, and, to Antipater just at this moment, depressing in the very fact of its own splendor. It all seemed like a giant memorial display for the dying realm.