Roma Eterna (37 page)

“Quite splendid,” said Apollinaris. “But age has made it a trifle bitter. Would you pass me the honey, Torquatus?”

 

Charax said, “This is the list so far, sir.”

Apollinaris took the sheet of paper from his aide-de-camp and ran quickly down the names. “Statius—Claudius Nero—Judas Antonius Soranus—who are these people, Charax?”

“Lucius Status is the Emperor's private secretary. Soranus is a Hebrew who is said to import unusual animals from Africa for his collection. I have no information about Claudius Nero, sir, but he is probably a craftsman to the court.”

“Ah.” Apollinaris turned his attention back to the list. “Hilarion and Polybius, yes. The personal attendants. I remember those two. Oily little bastards, both of them. Gli
tius Agricola. Gaius Callistus. Marco Cornuto—what kind of name is that, ‘Marco Cornuto?'”

“A Roman name, sir. I mean, it's Roman in language, not Latin.”

That puzzled him. “Latin—Roman—what's the difference?”

“The lower classes speak some rough new kind of language now that they call ‘Roman,' a dialect—the dialect of the people, it's called. Derived from Latin, the way the languages of the provinces are. It's like an easier, sloppier form of Latin. They've begun translating their own names into it, I hear. This Marco Cornuto is probably one of the Emperor's coachmen, or a stable groom, something along those lines.”

Apollinaris made a face. He very much disliked the custom, of late so prevalent out in the provinces, of speaking local dialects that were coarse, vulgar versions of Latin mixed with primitive regional words: one way of speaking in Gallia, another in Hispania, another in Britannia, and still another, very different from the others, in the Teutonic provinces. He had suppressed the use of those languages, those dialects, wherever he had encountered it. So now it was happening here, too? “What sense does that make, a new dialect of Latin used right here in Roma? In the provinces, those dialects are a way of signifying independence from the Empire. But Roma can't secede from itself, can it?”

Charax merely smiled and shrugged.

Apollinaris remembered now what Torquatus had told him about the restlessness in the slums, the likelihood of some kind of uprising among the plebeians. Was a new bastard form of Latin beginning to establish itself among the poor, a private language of their own, setting them apart from the hated aristocrats? It was worth investigating. He knew from his experiences in the provinces what power language could have in fomenting political unrest.

He looked once more at the list of those whom Torquatus had arrested.

“Matius—Licentius—Licinius—Caesius Bassius—” He looked up. “What do these little red marks next to some of the names mean?”

“Those are the ones who have already been executed,” Charax said.

“Did you say ‘executed'?” Apollinaris asked, startled.

“Put to death, yes,” said Charax. “You seem surprised. I thought you knew, sir.”

“No,” Apollinaris said. “I haven't heard anything about executions.”

“At the far end of the Forum, in the little plaza in front of the Arch of Marcus Anastasius: he's had a platform set up there, and every afternoon there have been executions all week, four or five a day.”

“‘He'?”

“Larcius Torquatus, sir,” Charax said, in the tone of one who was explaining something to a child.

Apollinaris nodded. This was the tenth day since his return to Roma, and they had been busy days. Torquatus had never given him a chance, at their first meeting in Torquatus's home, to explain that it was his intention to give up his Consulship and retire to private life. And once he had heard what Torquatus had been up to—putting the Emperor under house arrest, throwing His Majesty's playmates into prison, issuing a raft of stringent new decrees designed to cleanse the government of corruption—Apollinaris had realized that his notion of retiring was an impossible one. Torquatus's program, commendable though it was, was so radical that he could not be left to carry it out alone. That would make him, in effect, dictator of Roma, and Apollinaris knew from his readings in history that the only kind of dictators Roma would tolerate were those who, like Augustus Caesar, were able to conceal their dictatorial ways behind a façade of constitutional le
gitimacy. A mere appointive Consul, ruling on his own after overthrowing the Emperor, would not be able to sustain himself in power unless he assumed the Imperial powers himself. Apollinaris did not want to see Torquatus do that. Maintaining the Consular system was essential now. And Torquatus must have a legitimate Consular colleague if he wanted his reforms to have any success.

So Apollinaris had put all thought of retirement aside and had spent his first days back reestablishing his presence at the capital, setting up his office in the Consular building, renewing his connections with the important men of the Senate, and otherwise resuming his life at the center of power. He had met daily with his colleague Torquatus, who assured him that the work of purging the commonwealth of idlers and parasites was moving along smoothly, but up until now Apollinaris had not pressed him for details. That had been a mistake, he realized now. Torquatus's policy of ending the drain on the public treasury that the Emperor's huge mob of hangers-on had created was one that he had applauded, of course. But it had never occurred to Apollinaris that his co-Consul was having them killed. And his travels around the city since his return had not taken him anywhere near that little plaza of Marcus Anastasius, the place of execution where heads rolled in the dust by order of M. Larcius Torquatus.

“Perhaps I should have a little talk with Torquatus about this,” Apollinaris said, rising and tucking the list of the arrested men into a fold of his robe.

Torquatus's office was one floor above Apollinaris's in the Consular building. In the old days the two Consuls had divided the ninth floor between themselves: that was how it had been in Apollinaris's first three terms as Consul, certainly. The first time, as junior Consul, he had used the office on the eastern side of the building, looking down into Trajan's Forum. During his second and third terms, when he now was senior Consul, he had moved over to the somewhat more imposing rooms on the western side of the
top floor. But during Apollinaris's long absence in the provinces Torquatus had expanded his own Consular domain into the part of the floor that had previously been his, and had set up a secondary office for his colleague on the building's eighth floor. “The Consul's tasks have increased so greatly since we reconstituted the post,” Torquatus explained, a little shamefacedly, when Apollinaris, having returned, had showed up to reclaim his old office. “You were away fighting in Sicilia and probably wouldn't be back for two or three years, and I needed more room close at hand for the additional staff members that now were required, et cetera, et cetera—”

The new arrangement rankled more than a little, but this was not the moment, Apollinaris felt, to start quarreling with his co-Consul about office space. There would be time to express concern over matters of precedence and status once things were a little more stable at the capital.

Torquatus was busily signing papers when Apollinaris arrived. He seemed unaware, for a moment, that his fellow Consul had entered the room. Then he looked up and offered Apollinaris a quick apologetic smile. “So much paperwork—”

“Signing more death warrants, are you?”

Apollinaris had meant the statement to sound neutral, even bland. But Torquatus's frowning response told him that he had not quite succeeded.

“As a matter of fact, Apollinaris, I am. Does that trouble you?”

“A little, perhaps. I don't think I understood that you were actually going to have Demetrius's people put to death.”

“I thought we had discussed it.”

“Not in so many words. You said you were ‘removing' them, I think. I don't recall your explicitly explaining what you meant by that.” Already a defensive iciness was visible in Torquatus's eyes. Apollinaris brought forth the list of prisoners that Charax had procured for him and said,
“Do you think it's wise, Torquatus, to inflict such severe penalties on such trivial people? The Emperor's barber? The Emperor's clown?”

“You've been away from the capital many years,” Torquatus said. “These men are not such simple innocents as you may think. I send no one lightly to his death.”

“Even so, Torquatus—”

Smoothly Torquatus cut him off. “Consider our choices, if you will. Strip them of office but let them go free? Then they remain among us, stirring up trouble, conniving to get themselves back to their high positions in the palace. We merely imprison them? Then we must maintain them at public expense, perhaps for the rest of their lives. Send them into exile? Then they take their illicitly gained wealth with them, which otherwise we could recapture for the treasury. No, Apollinaris, getting rid of them once and for all is the only solution. If we allow them to live, sooner or later they'll manage to get access to His Majesty again and begin working him up to overthrow us.”

“So we put them to death to minimize the risks to ourselves?”

“The risks to the Empire,” Torquatus said. “Do you think I care that much about my own life? But if we fall, the Empire falls with us. These men are the enemies of the commonwealth. You and I are all that stand between them and the reign of chaos. They have to go. I thought we had already come to full agreement on that point.”

In no way was that statement true, Apollinaris knew. Yet he saw the validity of the argument. The Empire stood, not for the first time, at the brink of anarchy. The disturbances in the provinces had given early warning of that. Augustus had created the Imperium by dint of military force, and it was the army that had sustained the Emperors on their thrones all these centuries. But Emperors ruled, ultimately, by the consent of the governed. No army was strong enough to compel the populace to accept the authority of a wicked or crazy Emperor indefinitely: that had
been shown again and again, from the time of Caligula and Nero on up through history. Demetrius was plainly crazy; most of the government officials were demonstrably corrupt; if Torquatus was right that the plebeians were muttering about a revolution, and it was altogether possible that he
was
right about that, then a fierce purge of the corruption and craziness might be the only way of heading off calamity. And to allow Demetrius's minions to live, and to regroup, and to regain the Emperor's ear, was to invite that very calamity.

“Very well,” said Apollinaris. “How far do you intend to carry this, though?”

“As far as the situation demands,” Torquatus said.

 

The month of Julius gave way to the month of Augustus, and the worst summer in Roma's long history went grinding on, intolerable heat, choking humidity, low ominous clouds hiding the sun, lightning in the hills but never any rain, tensions rising, tempers snapping everywhere as the daily procession of carts bearing the latest batches of the condemned rolled onward toward the executioner's block. Great throngs came to watch each day, commoners and patricians alike, looking toward the headsman and his victims in the fascinated way one stares at a weaving serpent making ready to strike. The spectacle of horror was terrifying but no one could stay away. The reek of blood hung over Roma. With each passing day the city grew more pure, and much more frightened, paralyzed by fear and suspicion.

“Five weeks now,” said Lactantius Rufus, who was the presiding magistrate of the Senate, “and the killing has spread into our own House itself.”

“Pactumeius Pollio, tried and found guilty,” Julius Papinio said. He stood closest to Rufus among the little group of men on the portico of the Senate this sizzling, steamy morning.

“Likewise Marcus Florianus,” said the rotund Terentius Figulus.

“And Macrinus,” said Flavius Lollianus.

“And Fulpianus.”

“That's it, I think. Four all together.”

“Four Senators, yes,” said Lactantius Rufus. “So far. But who's next, I ask you? You? Me? Where does it stop? Death is king in Roma these days. This whole House is endangered, my friends.” He was a great sickle of a man, enormously tall, stoop-shouldered, his back curving in a wide arc, his face in profile a jagged blade of angular features. For more than thirty years he had been a prominent member of the Senate: a confidant of the late Emperor Lodovicus, a close adviser to the present Emperor Demetrius, a three-time holder of the Consulship. “We must find a way of protecting ourselves.”

“What do you suggest?” Papinio asked. “Shall we call upon the Emperor to remove the Consuls?”

It was said in a halfhearted way. Papinio and all the others knew how ludicrous a suggestion that was. “Let me remind you,” Lactantius said anyway, “that the Emperor is a prisoner himself.”

“So he is,” Papinio conceded. “All power lies with the Consuls now.”

“Quite true,” Rufus said. “And therefore our task must be to drive a wedge between them. We should go, three or four of us, or perhaps five, as a delegation to Apollinaris. He's a reasonable man. Surely he sees the damage Torquatus is doing, the risk that these purges, if they continue, will get out of hand and run through Roma like a wildfire. We ask him to remove Torquatus from office and name a new colleague.”

“To remove Torquatus from office—!” said Terentius Figulus, astounded. “You make it sound so easy! But could he do it?”

“Apollinaris has just reconquered four or five whole provinces without any serious difficulty. Why would he have any trouble overcoming one man?”

“What if he doesn't want to?” Papinio asked. “What if he
approves
of what Torquatus has been doing?”

“Then we remove them both,” replied Rufus. “But let's keep that for a last resort. Which of you will come with me to Apollinaris?”