The next day commenced with the arrival of one of Menandros’s slaves, bearing a note telling him that it was the ambassador’s pleasure to carry out a third exploration of the subterranean city in midafternoon. He had a special interest, Menandros said, in seeing the chapel of Priapus and the pool of the Baptai, and perhaps the catacomb of the sacred whores of Chaldea. The ambassador’s mood, it seemed, had taken an erotic turn.
Quickly Faustus dashed off a note to the Caesar Maximilianus, telling him of the day’s plans and requesting him to summon Danielus bar-Heap the Hebrew once more to be their guide. “Let me know by the sixth hour where you would like us to meet you,” Faustus concluded. But midday came and went with no reply from the prince. A second message produced no response either. By now it was nearly time for Faustus to set out for the Severan Palace to pick up the ambassador. It was beginning to look as though he would be Menandros’s sole escort on today’s expedition. But Faustus realized then that he did not care for that idea: he felt too dour this morning, too cheerless and morose. He needed Maximilianus’s high-spirited company to get him through the task.
“Take me to the Caesar,” he told his bearers.
Maximilianus, unbathed, unshaven, red-eyed, wearing a coarse old robe with great rents in it, looked startled to see him. “What is this, Faustus? Why do you come to me unannounced?”
“I sent two notes this morning, Caesar. We are to take the Greek to the Underworld again.”
The prince shrugged. Clearly he hadn’t seen either one. “I’ve been awake only an hour. And had only three hours of sleep before that. It’s been a difficult night. My father is dying.”
“Yes. Of course. We have all been aware of that sad fact for some time and are greatly grieved by it,” said Faustus unctuously. “Perhaps it will come as a deliverance when His Majesty’s long ordeal is—”
“I don’t mean simply that he’s sick. I mean that he’s in his last hours, Faustus. I’ve been in attendance on him all night at the palace.”
Faustus blinked in surprise. “Your father is in Roma?”
“Of course. Where do you think he’d be?”
“There were stories that he was in Capreae, or Sicilia, or perhaps even Africa—”
“All those stories are so much nitwit blather. He’s been right here for months, since he came back from taking the waters at Baiae. Didn’t you know that?—Visited by only a very few, of course, because he’s become so feeble, and even the shortest of conversations drains his strength. But yesterday about noon he entered into some sort of crisis. Began vomiting black blood, and there were some tremendous convulsions. The whole corps of doctors was sent for. A whole army of them and every last one of them determined to be the one who saves his life, even if they kill him in the process.” In an almost manic way Maximilianus began to list the remedies that had been employed in the last twenty-four hours: applications of lion’s fat, potations of dog’s milk, frogs boiled in vinegar, dried cicadas dissolved in wine, figs stuffed with mouse liver, dragon’s tongue boiled in oil, the eyes of river crabs, and any number of other rare and costly medicines, virtually the whole potent pharmacopeia—enough medication, Faustus thought, to do even a healthy man in. And they had done even more. They had drawn his blood. They had bathed him in tubs of honey sprinkled with powdered gold. They had coated him in warm mud from the slopes of Vesuvius. “And the ultimate preposterous touch, just before dawn,” said Maximilianus: “the naked virgin who touches her hand to him and invokes Apollo three times to restrain the progress of his disease. It’s a wonder they could even find a virgin on such short order. Of course, they could always create one by retroactive decree, I guess.” And the prince smiled a savage smile. But Faustus could see that it was mere bravado, a strenuously willed flash of the sort of cool cynicism Faustus was supposed to expect from him: the expression in the Caesar’s red-rimmed, swollen eyes was that of a young man pained to the core by his beloved father’s suffering.
“Will he die today, do you think?” Faustus asked.
“Probably not. The doctors told me that his strength is prodigious, even now. He’ll last at least another day, even two or three, perhaps—but no more than that.”
“And is your brother with him?”
“My brother?” Maximilianus said, in a dumbfounded tone. “My brother’s at his hunting lodge, you told me!”
“He came back, the night before last. Gave audience to the Greek at the Hall of Marcus Anastasius. I was there myself.”
“No,” Maximilianus muttered. “No. The bastard! The bastard!”
“The whole meeting lasted perhaps fifteen minutes, I suppose. And then he announced that he would be leaving town again the next morning, but surely, once he found out that your father was so gravely ill—” Faustus, comprehending suddenly, stared in disbelief. “You mean you never saw him at all, yesterday? He didn’t go to visit your father at any time during the day?”
For a moment neither of them could speak.
Maximilianus said, finally, “Death frightens him. The sight of it, the smell of it, the thought of it. He can’t bear to be near anyone who’s ill. And so he’s been careful to keep his distance from the Emperor since he took sick. In any case he’s never cared a spoonful of spider’s piss for my father. It’s perfectly in character for him to come to Roma and sleep right under the same roof as the old man and not even take the trouble of making inquiries after his health, let alone going to see him, and then leave again the next day. So he would never have found out that the end was getting very close. As for me, I wouldn’t have expected him to bother getting in touch with me while he was here.”
“He should be summoned back to Roma again,” Faustus said.
“Yes. I suppose he should be. He’ll be Emperor in another day or two, you know.” Maximilianus gave Faustus a bleary look. He seemed half addled with fatigue. “Will you do it, Faustus? Straight away. Meanwhile I’ll bathe and dress. The Greek is waiting for us to take him down below, isn’t he?”
Thunderstruck, Faustus said, “You mean you want to go there now—today?—while—while your father—?”
“Why not? There’s nothing I can do for the old man right now, is there? And his doctors solemnly assure me that he’ll last the day.” A kind of eerie iciness had come over the Caesar suddenly. Faustus wanted to back away from the chill that emanated from him.
In a fierce, cold voice Maximilianus said, “Anyway, I’m not the one who’s going to become Emperor. It’s my brother’s responsibility to stand around waiting to pick up the reins, not mine. Send a messenger off to Heraclius to tell him he had better get himself back here as fast as he can, and let’s you and I and the Greek go off and have ourselves a little fun. It may be our last chance for a long time.”
On such short notice there was no way of finding the Hebrew, so they would have to do without his invaluable assistance for today’s outing. Faustus felt edgy about that, because spying on the chapel of Priapus was not without its risks, and he preferred to have the strong, fearless bar-Heap along in case they blundered into any trouble. Maximilianus, though, did not appear to be worried. The prince’s mood seemed an unusually impetuous one, even for him, this day. His fury over his brother’s absence and the strain of his father’s illness had left him very tightly strung indeed, a man who gave every indication of being on the verge of some immense explosion.
But his demeanor was calm enough as he led the way down the winding ramp that entered the Underworld beside the Baths of Constantinus and guided them toward the grotto where the rites of Priapus were enacted. The passageway was low-roofed and moist-walled, with splotchy gray-green fungoid stains clinging to its sides. Menandros, as they neared their goal, displayed such signs of boyish anticipation that Faustus felt both amusement and contempt. Did they no longer have any such shady cults in Constantinopolis? Was Justinianus such a stern master that they had all been suppressed, when Justinianus’s own wife Theodora was herself a former actress, said to be of the loosest morality imaginable?