Collected Short Fiction, page 1428
“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 them: 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, 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, 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 Lactantiua 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 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 half-hearted 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?”
“I,” said Papinio immediately. But no one else spoke out.
Rufus looked about at the others. “Well?” he said. “Figulus? Lollianus? What about you, Priscus? Salvius Julianus?”
In the end Rufus managed to collect just two companions for his mission, the ever-ambitious Julius Papinio and another senator named Gaius Lucius Frontinus, a younger man whose family had enormous wine-producing properties in southern Italia. Though these were busy times in the Consular office—the consuls’ days were consumed by the task of purification, making out arrest orders, attending trials, authorizing the executions of those found guilty, which was nearly everyone placed on trial—they had surprisingly little difficulty gaining an audience with the Consul Valerian Apollinaris. But winning his support was not quite so easy.
“What you’re asking is treasonous, as you surely must know,” said Apollinaris calmly. He had remained seated behind his desk; the others stood before him. “By suggesting that one constitutionally appointed consul should depose his colleague, you’re inviting me to join the conspiracy that you apparently have formed to overthrow the legitimate government of the Empire. That in itself is a capital offense. I could have you whisked off to prison this very minute. Before the end of the week you’d be staring at the headsman’s axe. Eh, Rufus? Papinio? Frontinus?”
It was impossible to tell whether he meant it as a threat or as a joke. Lactantius Rufus, steadfastly meeting the consul’s coolly appraising gaze, said, “You’d probably follow us there in the next week or two, Count Apollinaris. Certainly you, of all people, must understand how dangerous Torquatus is to everybody’s welfare, certainly to ours and yours, perhaps even to his own.”
“Dangerous to yours, yes. But why to mine? I’ve backed Torquatus in all of his actions, haven’t I? So why would my respected Consular colleague turn against me?”
“Because the way things are going,” said Rufus, “the removal of Emperor Demetrius will become a political necessity somewhere down the line, more likely sooner than later. And the emperor has no sons. The heir to the throne is his addlepated and utterly incapable brother Marius, who sits quietly giggling to himself in his palace on Capraea. He can never reign. You and Torquatus are the only plausible successors to Demetrius in sight. But you can’t both become emperor. Do you see my logic, Apollinaris?”
“Of course I do. But I have no intention of having the emperor killed, and I doubt that Torquatus does either, or he’d have done it already.” Rufus sighed. “Unless he’s simply biding his time. But let that be as it may: perhaps you don’t feel that you’re in any danger, dear Apollinaris, but we certainly do. Four members of the Senate are dead already. Others are probably on the proscribed list. Torquatus is drunk with power, killing people as quickly as he can, scores of them. Some of them very much deserved their fate. In other cases Torquatus is simply settling old personal accounts. To claim that the Senator Pactumeius Pollio was an enemy of the realm—or Marcus Florianus—”
“To save your skins, then, you want me to lift my hand against my colleague in violation of my oaths. And if I refuse?”
“The Senate, with the emperor indisposed, has the power to strip you and Torquatus both of your consulships.”
“Do you think so? And if you can manage to bring it off, who will our replacements be? You, Rufus? Young Frontinus here? And would the people ever accept you as their leaders? You know perfectly well that Torquatus and I are the only men left in this rotting Empire who have the strength to keep things from falling apart.” Apollinaris smiled and shook his head. “No, Rufus. You’re just bluffing. You have no candidates to take our places.”
“Agreed,” Rufus said, without any hesitation. “This is certainly so. But if you refuse us, you’ll leave us no choice but to try to strike Torquatus down ourselves, and we may very well fail, which will plunge everything into disorder and turmoil as he takes his revenge. You and you alone can save Roma from him. You must remove him and take sole command, and make an end to this reign of terror before a river of senatorial blood runs in the streets.”
“You want me to be emperor, then?”
This time Rufus, taken by surprise, did hesitate before replying. “Do you want to be?”
“No. Never. If I take sole command, though, I would be acting essentially as an emperor. Before long, as you correctly foresee, I would be emperor. But the throne has no appeal for me. The most I want is to be consul.”
“Be consul, then. Get rid of Torquatus and appoint some congenial partner, anyone you like. But you have to stop him before he devours us all. Yourself included, I warn you, Apollinaris.”
When the three senators had left his office Apollinaris sat quietly for a time, replaying the discussion in his mind. There was no denying the truth of anything Rufus had said.
Rufus was grasping and manipulative, of course, as one would expect anyone of his great wealth and long occupation of a position close to the centers of Imperial power to be. But he was not really evil, as powerful men went, and he was certainly no fool. He saw very clearly, and Apollinaris saw it as well, how unlikely it was that there would be any end to Torquatus’s frenzied purification of the realm, that not only were prominent senators like Lactantius Rufus in obvious danger but that it would go on and on until the list of victims included Count Valerian Apollinaris himself.
That was inevitable. Apollinaris, though he had approved from the start of the need to call a halt to the Emperor Demetrius’s excesses and purge the court of its parasites, had seen Torquatus’s zealousness growing day by day. And he was far from comfortable with the extreme nature of Torquatus’s methods—midnight arrests, secret trials, verdict within an hour, execution the next day.
Now that Torquatus had succeeded in establishing death as a valid penalty for undermining the moral fiber of the Empire, the list of potential victims of the purge had become almost infinite, too. Demetrius’s clump of odious hangers-on, some of them truly vicious and some mere witless buffoons, was gone now. So were dozens of the most corrupt members of the bureaucracy and four of their facilitators in the Senate. And, yes, just as Rufus had guessed, many more indictments were pending. Torquatus’s concentration was focused now on the unrest in the Subura, where the ordinary theft and vandalism had given way to rioting and anarchic outcries against the government. Soon Torquatus would be executing plebeians too. If left unchecked he would purge Roma from top to bottom.
That a cleansing of the commonwealth had been in order was something that Apollinaris did not question. Despite his reservations he had made no attempt to interfere in what Torquatus had been doing these five weeks past. But it was clear to him now that Torquatus had begun ruling almost as a dictator, a murderous one at that, and that as Torquatus’s Consular colleague he was expected to continue to join him in that role, or else face the possibility of becoming a victim of Torquatus’s zeal himself. For a time would come—if it was not already at hand—when it would be necessary to say to Torquatus, “Things have gone far enough, now. This is where we should stop the killings.” And what if Torquatus disagreed?
Very likely the name of Valerian Apollinaris would be the next one added to the roster of the condemned, in that case. And, though Apollinaris had never been greatly concerned about his personal safety, he saw now that in the present situation he must preserve his life for the sake of the Empire. There was no other bulwark but him against the encroaching chaos.
Best to face the issue immediately, Apollinaris decided.
He went to see Torquatus.
“The Senate is growing very uneasy,” he said. “These four executions—”
“They were traitors,” Torquatus said sharply. Sweat was rolling down his fleshy face in the dense, humid atmosphere of the room, but for some reason unfathomable to Apollinaris the man was wearing a heavy winter toga. “They wallowed in Demetrius’s iniquities to their own enormous profit.”
“No doubt they did. But we need the Senate’s continued support if we’re to carry through our program.”
“Do we? The Senate’s just an antiquarian vestige, something left over from the ancient Republic. Just as the Consuls were, before you and I revived the office. Emperors functioned perfectly well for at least a thousand years without sharing any power at all with the Senate or the Consuls. We can get along without the Senate too. Who’s been talking to you? Lactantius Rufus? Julius Papinio? I know who the malcontents are. And I’ll take them down, one by one, until—”
“I beg you, Torquatus.” Apollinaris wondered whether he had ever uttered those words before in his life. “Show some moderation, man. What we’re trying to achieve is a very difficult thing. We can’t simply dispense with the backing of the Senate.”
“Of course we can. The axe awaits anyone who stands in our way, and they all know it. What was Caligula’s famous line? ‘Oh, that these annoying Romans had only a single neck’—something like that. That’s how I feel about the Senate.”
“Caligula is not, I think, the philosopher you ought to be quoting just now,” said Apollinaris. “I urge you again, Torquatus, let us be more moderate from here on. Otherwise, what I fear is that you and I are lighting a fire in Roma that may prove to be extremely difficult to put out, a fire that may easily consume you and me as well before it’s over.”
