Empire (61 page)

The first course was taken away. Each of the guests was given a plate of mushrooms and other fungi, all black thanks to the sauce in which they had been simmered. Again, only Catullus showed any signs of appetite. He ate with relish, sucking the sauce from his fingertips.

“As I recall,” he said, “when Caesar judged the men who violated Varronilla and the Oculatae, he showed great leniency.”

“Yes, I allowed them to live. I have been reconsidering the wisdom of that decision, too. It might have been wiser, I think, to enforce the traditional
punishment for the seducer of a Vestal, as a deterrent to others who might be tempted to commit such a crime in the future. As Pontifex Maximus, I must do all I can to preserve the sanctity of those who keep Vesta’s fire. Do you not agree, Virgo Maxima?”

For the first time, Domitian acknowledged Cornelia’s presence. In a very faint voice, she replied, “Yes, Dominus.”

“Tonight, you may address me as Pontifex Maximus,” he said.

“Yes, Pontifex Maximus.”

“That’s better. Would you not agree, Virgo Maxima, that the traditional penalty makes for a powerful deterrent? The man is stripped naked, hung on a cross, and publicly beaten with rods, while the violated Vestal watches, until he is dead. I’m told that can take quite a while, depending on the man’s general health. A man with a weak heart might die after the first blow. Others remain alive for hours. The beating can become quite tedious to administer, not to say tiring. Sometimes the lictors charged with the beating become so exhausted that new lictors have to be brought in to continue the punishment.”

It seemed to Lucius that the plate of delicacies held before him by his cupbearer contained not fungi but a mixture of viscera and organs, swimming in a nameless fluid. He began to feel nauseated.

Black figs were served next, to all except Domitian. The servers brought him a single apple, together with a silver knife. Domitian set about peeling the apple very slowly and methodically, cutting away thin strips of the skin. He handed these to the small-headed attendant, who gobbled them up as a dog might eat scraps from its master’s table. When Domitian bit into the apple, the noise was startling, like the cracking of bones.

Lucius again saw spots before his eyes. He heard a low noise. It was Domitian, whispering to the small-headed creature, who whispered back. The two of them laughed.

“We were wondering how it is, Catullus, that a man who is blind can burn with lust for another. Beauty inspires passion, but how can beauty be perceived without sight?”

Catullus turned his face to Cornelia. “A blind man may possess memories of beauty. A blind man has imagination.”

“Ah, but beauty fades, Catullus; it is as short-lived as it is intoxicating. Your memories are surely out-of-date.” Domitian stared at Cornelia, who
lowered her face. “Beauty exists only in the moment. That is why I asked Earinus to entertain us tonight. Although you cannot see him, Catullus, I assure you that he is beautiful.”

The eunuch entered the room, dressed in black. He was small and delicate and moved with such grace that he seemed to float across the floor. His pale hair, the subject of poets, was startlingly bright in the dark room; it seemed to glow with a light of its own. His skin was creamy white.

In the shadowy room, Earinus seemed to be an ethereal being from a realm of dreams. He stood in the center of the room and began to sing. The notes were pure and sweet, but also unsettling; his voice had an uncanny quality, impossible to categorize. The song, like the singer, seemed to emerge from some realm beyond ordinary experience.

What has death to frighten man,

If souls can die as bodies can?

When mortal frame shall be disbanded,

This lump of flesh from life unhanded,

From grief and pain we shall be free—

We shall not feel, for we shall not be.

But suppose that after meeting Fate

The soul still feels in its divided state.

What’s that to us? For we are only
we

While body and soul in one frame agree.

And if our atoms should revolve by chance

And our cast-off matter rejoin the dance

What gain to us would all this bring?

This new-made man would be a new-made thing.

We, dead and gone, would play no part

In all the pleasures, nor feel the smart

Which to that new man shall accrue

Whom of our matter Time molds anew.

Take heart then, listen and hear:

What is there left in death to fear?

After the pause of life has come between,

All’s just the same had we never been.

The last note of the song was followed by a long silence. Watching the eunuch and listening to him, Lucius thought of Sporus. A tear ran down his cheek. Before he could wipe it away, he realized that Domitian had risen from his couch and was walking slowly to him.

The emperor’s eyes emerged from the shadows and glittered, reflecting the lamplight. His unblinking gaze was fixed on Lucius’s face. As a hunter, Lucius had often wondered at the tendency of certain prey, such as rabbits, to freeze rather than to flee when observed by the hunter. Now he understood. He felt as the rabbit must feel, unable to move a muscle, frantically willing himself to vanish into the darkness around him. It was as if he had turned to stone. Even his heart seemed to stop beating.

Domitian stepped closer. He stared at Lucius intently, his small mouth compressed in an unreadable expression. He stopped directly in front of Lucius and reached out to him. Frozen as he was, Lucius nevertheless feared that he would cry out if Domitian touched his face. He struggled not to flinch, and only a stifled gasp escaped his lips.

Domitian used his forefinger to wipe the moisture from Lucius’s cheek. He furrowed his brow, gazed at his finger, then turned and very gently brushed his finger against the parted lips of Earinus.

“Does it taste of salt?” he whispered.

Earinus touched his tongue to his lips. “Yes, Dominus.”

“A tear!” said Domitian. “Was it the words of the poet Lucretius that made you weep, Lucius Pinarius?”

Lucius open his mouth, afraid he had forgotten how to speak, then found his voice. “I’m not sure I heard the words, Dominus. I only know that I heard Earinus sing, and then I felt the tear on my cheek.”

Domitian slowly nodded. “I, too, wept the first time I heard Earinus sing.” He stared at Lucius for a long time, then turned to Catullus. “The dinner is over,” he said.

The emperor left the room without another word. The small-headed creature followed him, as did Earinus.

Lucius stood. He looked at Cornelia across the room and felt an urge to run to her. She raised one hand, beseeching him to keep his distance. As they stared into each other’s eyes, with all the power of his will he tried to show her what she meant to him. He had never loved her more.

The serving boy took Cornelia’s hand, gently pulled her to her feet, and led her from the room.

The room became even darker. Lucius looked around and saw that all the lamps but one had been extinguished. Catullus had vanished. Except for his cupbearer, Lucius was alone.

The boy led him though a doorway. He was hardly aware of his surroundings, though he sensed that each turning brought him to a hallway that was larger and more brightly lit than the last. Finally he arrived at the vast reception room dominated by the statue of the emperor. He looked up at the statue’s face. The sculptor had captured the terrible power of Domitian’s gaze. Lucius shut his eyes and reached for the cupbearer, letting the boy lead him like a blind man.

He opened his eyes only when he felt fresh air on his face and realized that they were outside, under a dark and moonless sky. A flight of steps led down to the sedan that had brought him. The boy helped him step inside. Bearers lifted him aloft. Next to him on the seat were the clothes he had changed out of earlier.

The trip to his house was short. He stepped from the sedan. The bearers turned and vanished without a word.

Lucius rapped on the door. Hilarion opened it. His knowing grin vanished when he saw the look on Lucius’s face.

“What do you see, Hilarion? No, don’t speak. You see a dead man before you.”

In the days that followed, Lucius expected Praetorians to arrive at his house at any moment to arrest him. Moving sometimes in a stupor, sometimes in a frantic rush, he put his affairs in order. He wore the fascinum always, so that he would not be without it when they came for him.

Confronted by oblivion, he tried to think about the gods and his ancestors and all the other things a man was supposed to think about in the face of death, but he drew a blank. In the end, did he believe in nothing at all? This revelation was the most disturbing aspect of the ordeal. He had left the House of the Flavians shaken, uncertain, full of dread, as would
any man; but more than that, he had emerged with a sense that nothing mattered. In the black room, all illusions had been stripped away. A man and a rabbit were exactly the same, two flashes of consciousness caught for a brief instant in the cycle of life and death that had no beginning, no end, no resolution, no purpose.

In such a frame of mind, he received the news that Cornelia had been arrested. Then he heard that others had been arrested—men accused of being her lovers. That these men were innocent, Lucius had no doubt, for he was certain that he was her only lover; they were simply men who had run afoul of the emperor, and this was Domitian’s way of destroying them. Not one of them confessed, though they were interrogated under torture. Nor did Cornelia’s slaves from the House of the Vestals produce any evidence against them. The verdict against Cornelia and her alleged lovers was delivered not in Roma but at the emperor’s retreat at Alba. Cornelia was not even present at the mockery of a trial. She was condemned in absentia.

There was speculation that the guilty men would be allowed to flee into exile, as had happened after the previous trials of Vestals. But because they had not cooperated with the court—in other words, confessed—it was decreed that the men must suffer the traditional penalty. In the Forum, for all to see, they were stripped naked, tied to crosses, and beaten to death. Cornelia was compelled to be present. Lucius stayed at home. He was not sure which would have been worse, to see the men killed or to see Cornelia as she was forced to watch.

He intended to avoid the spectacle of Cornelia’s punishment as well, but on the scheduled day, well publicized by heralds and placards, he found himself unable to stay away.

Starting before dawn, thousands of people began to gather outside the House of the Vestals. No living person had ever before witnessed the traditional punishment of a Vestal. The same spectators who flocked to the Flavian Amphitheater came to see this spectacle as well. They dressed in dark colors appropriate for a funeral. The Forum was a sea of black.

Lucius found himself at the back of the crowd; he could not have pushed his way to the front if he had wanted to. There was nothing to see, at least at first. The beginning of the ceremony took place out of sight,
within the House of the Vestals. That was where Cornelia would be relieved of her vitta and her suffibulum, stripped naked, and scourged with rods while the Pontifex Maximus, the other Vestals, and the assembled priests of the state religion watched. Then she would be dressed as a corpse and placed in a closed, black litter, with restraints on her limbs and a gag over her mouth, and the litter would be carried aloft, like a funeral bier, through the streets.

The crowd awaiting the appearance of the funeral litter grew restless. Some the women began to keen and tear out their hair. Some of the men muttered curses against the guilty Vestal. Some made obscene jokes, smirking and laughing. A few dared to speculate that the Vestal might be innocent, despite the judgment of the Pontifex Maximus, for it was said that she had comported herself with utmost dignity throughout her trial and that not one of the condemned men had spoken against her.

At last, preceded by musicians with rattles and pipes, the funeral litter appeared. Black curtains concealed the occupant, but the knowledge that a living woman was inside—the Virgo Maxima herself, known to everyone because of her appearances at religious rites and at the amphitheater—caused people to shudder and gasp.

The procession passed at a stately pace through the Forum, then entered the Subura, heading for the Colline Gate. This was the very route, thought Lucius, that his father had taken with Nero on their final journey out of Roma.

The procession moved slowly down the narrow street. Oppressed by the crush of people, Lucius left the route and took other streets to arrive ahead of the procession at an open area just inside the old Servian Walls. Here the crowd had only begun to gather and Lucius was able to find a place near the front. There was not much to see—only a hole in the ground from which a ladder protruded, and next to it a pile of freshly dug earth. This was the opening, normally covered over, to the underground vault that had existed since the time of Tarquinius Priscus, in which, for centuries, condemned Vestals had been interred and left to die.