“I am a Roman citizen born, sir,” said Antipater quietly.
“Yes. Yes, of course. That’s why you speak Greek so well, and why you look the way you do. And that hot little dark-eyed lady you spend your nights with—she’s Roman, too, right? Where are you from, anyway, Antipater? Alexandria? Cyprus?”
“I was born in Salona in Dalmatia, sir. It was Roman territory at the time.”
“Salona. Yes. The palace of Diocletianus is there, isn’t it? And nobody would say that Diocletianus wasn’t a Roman. Why do you look so damnably Greek, though? Come over here, Antipater. Let me look at you. Antipater. What a fine Roman name that is!”
“My family was Greek originally. We were from Antioch, but that was many hundreds of years ago. If I am Greek, then Romans are Trojans, because Aeneas came from Troia to found the settlement that became Roma. And where is Troia today, if not in the territory of the Greek Emperor?”
“Oh-ho! Oh-ho! A wise man! A sophist!” Briskly Germanicus returned to Antipater’s side and grasped at the front of his robe, clutching it into a tight bunch. Antipater expected a stinging slap. He lifted one hand to protect his face. “Don’t cower like that,” the prince said. “I won’t hit you. But you’re a traitor, aren’t you? A Greek and a traitor. Who consorts nightly with the enemy. I’m speaking of that Greek wench of yours, the little bosomy spy. When the Basileus comes in triumph to Roma, you’ll go rushing to his side and tell him you were loyal to him all along.”
“No, sir. By your leave, sir, none of that is true, sir.”
“Not a traitor?”
“No, sir,” said Antipater desperately. “Nor is Justina a spy. We are Romans of Roma, faithful to the West. I serve your royal brother the Caesar Maximilianus Augustus and no one else.”
That appeared to be effective. “Ah. Good. Good. I’ll accept that. You seem sincere.” Germanicus winked and released him with a light shove, and spun away to stand with his back toward Antipater. In a much less manic tone, sounding almost subdued, he said, “You stayed at the meeting after the rest of us left. Did Caesar have anything interesting to say to you?”
“Why—why—he merely—”
Antipater faltered. What kind of loyalty to Caesar would it be to betray his private conversations to another, even Caesar’s own brother?
“He said nothing of significance, sir. Just a bit of recapitulation of the meeting, was all.”
“Just a bit of recapitulation.”
“Yes, sir. Nothing more.”
“I wonder. You’re very thick with him, Antipater. He trusts you, you know, shifty little Greek that you are. Emperors always trust their secretaries more than they do anybody else. It doesn’t matter to him that you’re a Greek. He tells you things that he doesn’t tell others.” Germanicus swung round again. The sea-green eyes drilled with sudden ferocity into Antipater’s. “I wonder,” he said once more. “Was he speaking the truth, when he said that we don’t need to do anything about this fleet off Sardinia? Does he actually and truly believe that?”
Antipater felt his cheeks growing hot. He was grateful for the faintness of the light in here, and for his own swarthy skin, that would hide his embarrassment from the prince. It seemed odd to him that the famously idle Germanicus, who had never to Antipater’s knowledge demonstrated a shred of interest in public affairs, should be so concerned now with his Imperial brother’s military intentions. But perhaps the imminence of a Greek invasion of the capital had aroused even this roguish, lackadaisical, irresponsible lordling to some alarm. Or, perhaps, all this was just some passing whim of his. No matter which, Antipater could not evade a reply this time.
Carefully he said, “I would not presume to tell anyone what I imagined the Emperor was thinking, sir. My understanding of his position, though, is that he sees that there’s very little we can really do against the Basileus—that we are hemmed in on two sides already and that we are unable to protect ourselves against an attack on some new front.”
“He’s absolutely right,” said Germanicus. “Our goose, as the Britannians say, is cooked. The question is what kind of sauce will go on the dish, eh? Eh, Antipater?” And then, abruptly, Antipater found himself being seized once again and swept forward into a hard, crushing embrace. Germanicus’s bristly cheek rubbed across his with stinging force. The reek of the young prince brought a new surge of dizziness to him. He is crazy, Antipater thought. Crazy. “Ah, Antipater, Antipater, you know I mean you no harm! I do love you, man, for your devotion to my brother. Poor Maximilianus! What a burden it must be to him to be Emperor at a time like this!” Letting go of Antipater once more, he stepped back and said, in yet another new tone of voice, somber now and oddly earnest, “You will not speak a word of this meeting to my brother, will you, eh? I think I’ve disturbed your tranquility, and I wouldn’t want him thinking ill of me for that. He’s terribly fond of you. He relies on you so very much.—Come, Antipater, will you let me take you home, now? That hot little Greek of yours very likely has a sizzling noontime surprise for you, and it would be rude to keep her waiting.”
He said nothing to Justina of his strange encounter with the Emperor’s brother. But the episode stayed in his mind.
Beyond much doubt the prince was mad. And yet, yet, there had seemed to be some undertone of seriousness in his discourse—a side of Germanicus Caesar that Antipater had never seen before, nor, perhaps, anyone else either.
Germanicus’s belief that the original Empire, the one that had spanned the world from Britannia to the borders of India, had been too large to govern from a single capital—well, yes, nobody would dispute that issue. Even in Diocletianus’s time the job had been so big that several Emperors reigning jointly had been needed to handle it, not that that had worked particularly well; and a generation later the great Constantinus had found governing the entire thing impossible even for him. And so had come the formal division of the realm, which under Theodosius had become permanent.
But what about the other point, the inevitability of war between East and West?
Antipater had no love for that line of thinking. Yet he knew that the historical record provided strong support for it. Even in the era of supposed East-West concord, that time when Justinianus reigned in Constantinopolis and his nephew Heraclius in Roma, great trade rivalries had sprung up, each Empire trying to outflank the other, Latin Romans reaching out around Byzantium toward remote India and even more remote Khitai and Cipangu where the yellow-faced men live, and Greek Romans seeking influence to the south in black Africa and to the far frozen northern territories that lay behind the homeland of the half-savage Goths.
That had all been sorted out by treaty; perhaps, thought Antipater, Justinianus’s temple in Roma had been erected in commemoration of some such agreement. But the frictions had continued, the jockeying for prime position in the world’s commerce.
And then, beginning eighty or ninety years ago, the West’s big mistake, the colossally foolish expedition to the New World—what a calamity that had been! Certainly it was exciting to discover that two great continents lay beyond the Ocean Sea, and that mighty nations—Mexico, Peru—existed there, strange lands rich in gold and silver and precious stones, inhabited by multitudes of copper-skinned people ruled by lordly monarchs who lived in pomp and opulence worthy of Caesar himself. But what lunacy had possessed the megalomaniac Emperor Saturninus to try to conquer those nations, instead of simply to enter into trade relations with them? Decades of futile overseas expeditions—millions of sesterces wasted, whole legions sent out by that obstinate and perhaps insane Emperor to die under the searing sun of the inhospitable continents that Saturninus had optimistically named Nova Roma—the pride of the Western Empire’s military destroyed by the spears and arrows of unstoppable torrents of demonic wild-eyed warriors with painted faces, or swept away by the overwhelming force of great tropical storms—hundreds of ships lost in those perilous alien waters—the spirit of the Empire broken by the unfamiliar experience of defeat after defeat, and the ultimate grim capitulation and evacuation of the final batch of shattered Roman troops—