Empire - Saylor Steven - Страница 8

“Do you think it struck the imperial house?” said Lucius. They ran to the end of the porch and peered towards the residence. There was no sign of fire. Then a sudden downpour obscured everything beyond the temple steps. Wind blew rain onto the porch; the pediment gave no protection. Claudius opened one of the tall doors. They slipped inside the temple and closed the door behind them.

The air smelled of incense. A giant statue of Apollo dominated the sanctuary, lit by flickering lamps mounted on the walls. On this stormy night, it seemed to Lucius that the place had an eerie magic. The air itself carried a charge of excitement. Gazing up at the god, Lucius felt hackles rise on the back of his neck. With an uncanny certainty he knew that something very important was going to happen that night.

He looked behind him. Claudius was sitting on a marble bench against one wall, already nodding, his jaw hanging open and a bit of drool suspended from his lower lip. Truly, anyone who saw him at that moment would have assumed he was an idiot. Poor Claudius!

The uncanny sensation subsided. Lucius sat beside Claudius, listening to him softly snore, and waited for the raging storm to subside.

When the massive door began to swing inwards, he gave a start. Had he been dozing, and for how long? A man entered the temple, dressed in the tunic of an imperial servant and carrying a torch.

“Claudius? Are you here, Claudius?”

Claudius woke. He clutched Lucius’s arm and wiped a bit of drool from his chin. “What? Who’s there?”

“Euphranor.” It was one of the emperor’s most trusted freedmen. His hair was black but his beard was almost entirely white. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” He approached and handed Claudius a wax tablet of the sort that could be written on, rubbed flat, and written over.

By the light of the torch Claudius peered at the tablet. In a crabbed, elderly hand was written the quaint phrase “Come, quick as asparagus,” with the word asparagus marked through and the word lightning scrawled above.

“A message written in Great-Uncle’s own hand!” declared Claudius, obviously surprised. “The man has an army of scribes to take his dictation at any moment of the day or night. Why in his own hand? What can he want so urgently? And why ‘quick as lightning ’?”

Lucius suddenly felt out of place. “I suppose I should go home now-”

“While the storm still rages? No, no! You’ll come with me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Great-Uncle didn’t say for you not to come. Follow me, cousin – quick as asparagus! Euphranor, lead the way.”

Pelted by rain, they followed Euphranor back to the house, past the dining rooms and the garden, where rain descended in a torrent, and then through a series of doors and a maze of hallways. At last they came to a narrow doorway that opened onto a flight of stairs leading down.

“I’ll stay here,” said Euphranor. “You’ll find him at the bottom of the steps.”

Claudius descended the long, steep, winding flight of stairs with Lucius following. At last they arrived in a lamp-lit, subterranean room. Lucius saw at once that the ceiling and the walls were decorated with mosaics; the thousands of tiny tiles glinted and shimmered. Among the dazzling images he recognized King Romulus with his long beard and iron crown. Another image could only be the infant twins, Romulus and his brother Remus, adrift on the Tiber in a basket. Another image showed Romulus being carried up to the heavens on a ray of light sent by Jupiter. There were many more images, all illustrating stories from the life of the Founder.

“What is he doing here?”

Lucius turned to see Augustus, standing closer than Lucius had ever seen the man before. What terrible teeth the emperor had, all yellow and decayed, and how short he was, wearing slippers instead of the thick-soled shoes that usually made him taller. Lucius told himself he should be at least a little awed, but the presence of the emperor was underwhelming. In his younger days, the fair-haired Octavius was said to have been the best-looking boy in Roma, so pretty that his uncle Julius Caesar took him for a lover (so went the whispered rumour), and in later days, the boy Octavius who became the man Augustus had commanded sufficient authority to bend whole nations to his will. But at that moment Lucius saw only a little old man with rotten teeth, unkempt straw-coloured hair, tufts of hair in his nostrils, and bushy eyebrows that met above his nose.

Eye to eye with the ruler of the world, Lucius was buoyed by a curious sense of confidence, remembering the premonition he had experienced in the Temple of Apollo that something very important was about to happen.

“Shall I send him away, Great-Uncle?” said Claudius.

Augustus stared at Lucius, so long and hard that Lucius’s confidence began to waver. The old man finally spoke.

“No. Young Lucius Pinarius may stay. He is an augur now, is he not? And his ancestors were among the very first augurs in Roma. A Pinarius accompanied Romulus when he took the auspices, and before that the Pinarii were keepers of the people’s first shrine, the Great Altar of Hercules. The state assumed that duty over 300 years ago; perhaps I should return the Great Altar to the hereditary keeping of the Pinarii. Reviving ancient traditions is pleasing to the gods. And he is a blood relation, for what ever that’s worth. Perhaps, Lucius Pinarius, the gods themselves delivered you here to me tonight.”

Lucius averted his eyes, humbled by the emperor’s scrutiny. He stared at the mosaics above them.

“Images from the life of Romulus, as you no doubt perceive,” explained Augustus. “The chamber in which we stand is the Lupercale, the sacred cave where the foundling twins Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she-wolf. I myself discovered the cave when the foundations for this house were being laid, and under my directions it’s been decorated as a sacred shrine.”

“The mosaics are exquisite,” said Lucius.

“Yes. There you see the twins suckled by the she-wolf, and there, the rescue of Remus by his brother, the slaying of King Amulius and the taking of his iron crown. There, the sighting of the vultures, and Romulus plowing a furrow to mark the city boundaries. There, the first triumphal procession, and the king’s ascent to the heavens during a thunderstorm.”

Lucius nodded. He recalled something Claudius had told him, that the emperor had considered taking the name Romulus as a title, rather than Augustus, but ultimately rejected the name as unlucky; Romulus murdered his brother, after all, and though legend said that Romulus was taken alive by the gods to Olympus, some historians believed he was murdered by conspiring senators.

“Of course, one cannot take the legends too literally,” Claudius noted, pointing to the image of the suckling she-wolf. “My tutor Titus Livius says that our ancestors used the same word, lupa, to mean either a she-wolf or a whore. Livius suggests that the twins may have been raised not by a wild beast but by a common prostitute.”

“Don’t be impious, nephew!” snapped Augustus, and seemed about to say more when a crack of thunder shook the room. The emperor frantically reached for the sealskin amulet he wore on a chain around his neck. “Even here, so deep under ground, the earth shakes!” he whispered. “Is it possible the house has been struck by lightning two times in one night?” His rheumy eyes flashed with something Lucius could only interpret as fear.

“Why did you s-s-summon us, Great-Uncle?” asked Claudius quietly.

“I’ll show you now – though to do so, we’ll have to leave the safety of the Lupercale.” Augustus frowned, then braced himself and led the way up the stairs, taking them slowly. Euphranor was waiting for them at the top of the steps. At Augustus’s order, the freedman brought each of them a torch to carry.

“When you see the omen, Claudius, you’ll understand why no one else must know of this. No one!” Augustus turned to Lucius. “Do you understand as well, young man? Any omen that regards my person is a state secret and must never be divulged. There’s no telling how it might be used by those who wish me harm. To divulge such a secret is a crime punishable by death.”