Rule of God (Book Three of the Dominium Dei Trilogy) Page 7

  “He allegedly was torn apart by his own animals under the arena floor this morning,” Pliny was telling him about Ludlumus as they entered the empty Forum square. “An accident, they say, something about an unbolted gate in the tiger pens. I simply assumed Domitian was behind it. All sorts of crazy things have been happening lately, and now you show up, back from the dead, dressed up as a tribune.”

  “Well, you are the ghost hunter.” Athanasius could see the single-door entrance at the bottom of the Tabularium’s tall, fortified base. At the top of the base were small windows cut out of the facade, and above them the Doric and Corinthian arcades.

  “If there is any trace of the ghost of Mucianus, we’ll find him here,” Pliny told Athanasius. “I’m curious myself, especially with the demise of Ludlumus and your connection of his father to the Dei. You know, I’ve consulted with him in the past about ghosts. And now you show up with all these revelations. Maybe something really is going on today. It brings back all the chills of Pompeii.”

  But Athanasius was still looking at the squat Tullianum prison next door, wondering whatever happened to old smashface the warden, before turning his attention to the two guards outside the entrance to the Tabularium.

  The guards recognized Pliny on sight and allowed them inside without trouble. As they passed through the interlocking interior vaults of concrete, Athanasius felt his pulse quicken at the thought that he was on the verge of discovering the secret fate of Mucianus while bracing himself for the probability that all tracks of the Dei ghost had been erased and that he, Virtus and Stephanus were running blind into what promised to be an epic, historic morning, however Rome stood at the end of the day.

  “Over here is where the deeds, records and laws are housed,” Pliny said as he followed a particularly austere corridor to a large vault, where they found a skeleton of a clerk with hollow cheeks. “Hello, Hortus.”

  Hortus didn’t appear surprised to see them here at this hour, and Athanasius suspected that most senators did their archive skullduggery themselves at night rather than send their staff by day.

  “I need some old documents for Senator Sura in order to update them and submit them for approval to the senate. I need everything for these seven years.”

  Athanasius watched Pliny sign a wax tablet and list the band of years starting with the Year of Four Emperors.

  The clerk looked at the tablet, back to Pliny and then to him, the mysterious tribune who said nothing. Hortus seemed surprised by the wide band of years. “This will take some time,” he said, “and higher-level authority.”

  “I have my supervisor’s authority, Senator Nerva,” Pliny said and presented an identification token.

  Hortus nodded.

  Athanasius watched the ghoul disappear to the back and asked Pliny, “You trust old Nerva?”

  “Yes, and you’re going to have to, because if you do kill Domitian today, you’ll need Nerva’s help to confirm the succession of Young Vespasian. He’s old, has no heirs and is trusted by competing factions to do the right thing in line with the law during times of crisis.”

  “Maybe,” Athanasius said. “What are you hoping the clerk turns up?”

  “If Senator Sura, Ludlumus or any member of the Licinius family had any official business with the Mucianus family, the papers would have been filed here,” Pliny told him.

  “And if their business wasn’t official?”

  “Regardless of the true nature of their arrangement, to conduct any trade in the empire would require paperwork, Athanasius. We can infer quite a bit from it. We’re not an entirely criminal government, you know. There are good men in Rome.”

  Hortus apparently was one of them, returning with a thick stack of documents, which Pliny took to a small table for review.

  “Official state business,” Athanasius authoritatively told the clerk, who had probably seen quite a bit of “state business” in this dungeon and slowly nodded.

  “Thank you, Hortus,” said Pliny, returning the material all too quickly. “We have what we need. Goodbye.”

  Athanasius followed him out of the vault and back down the long tunnel. “What did you find?”

  “Nothing,” Pliny said. “That’s the problem. The business records have been sanitized. But I have another idea.”

  They descended a flight of gloomy stairs into the bowels of the Tabularium, and then yet another flight even further below until they reached a vast suite of interlocking vaults.

  “Birth and death certificates,” Pliny explained. “These are usually missed when commercial records are altered, and we may find something about either the Mucius or Licinius families that will tell us something about what happened to Mucianus.”

  Athanasius, now thinking about Helena alone and bleeding back at the inn in Ostia, said, “Time is running short.”

  “Then we split the work and double our time,” Pliny said before they presented themselves before another pinch-mouthed clerk, who if possible looked to have even less flesh on his bones than the one upstairs.

  They worked through two stacks while the clerk kept a beady eye on them. By the time word of this research reached Domitian or the Dei, it would be too late: Domitian would be dead and Nerva would rally the senate to bless the succession of Young Vespasian to the throne.

  “Jupiter!” remarked Pliny, and then covered his mouth.

  Athanasius leaned over to look at what Pliny had discovered. But it didn’t look like any birth or death certificate Athanasius had ever seen before, although he hadn’t seen many.

  “These are adoption papers,” Pliny whispered. “Adoption papers between the Mucius and Licinius families. It changes the name of Gaius Mucius Mucianus’s son from Lucius Mucius Ludlumus to Lucius Licinius Ludlumus.”

  Athanasius stared. “Ludlumus was Mucianus’s son! But now he’s dead. Who did it, and who might have taken his place?”

  Now it was Pliny who looked like a ghost himself, white as a sheet. He gulped and said, “I’m afraid it could be the lawyer who handled the adoption.”

  Athanasius looked at the signature and seal at the bottom of the certificate. It read Marcus Cocceius Nerva.

  Senator Nerva!

  Athanasius grabbed the official adoption certificate, slipped it under his breastplate, and said, “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Pliny was only too quick to agree, leaving the papers behind them for the clerk as they rushed out of the Tabularium.

  Athanasius raced back to Ostia on one of Pliny’s horses as the first hint of sunrise began to break across the horizon, his mind racing faster than the horse as he pondered the significance of what he had discovered at the Tabularium. Ludlumus was the son of Mucianus, whose fate was still unclear at this point. Perhaps he had died long ago at the hands of Ludlumus, much like Domitian killed his own father.

  The death of Ludlumus, however, was more problematic. Was it at the hands of Domitian, in which case everything should proceed according to plan? Or was it at the hands of Senator Nerva, who could rally the senate to install not Young Vespasian but the Dei’s designated successor in the wake of Domitian’s demise? In the first case, Nerva was simply a lawyer who knew how to keep state secrets, however terrible. In the second case, he was Chiron and the true leader of the Dei all along.

  Whatever the case, thanks to the adoption certificate of Ludlumus in his possession and Pliny’s help on the senate floor, the Church could connect Senator Nerva to the Dei, along with Senator Sura, Senator Celsus and others, exposing them all and securing the succession of Young Vespasian.

  Meanwhile, he and Helena would be long gone from Rome.

  Upon reaching the inn at Ostia, Athanasius raced up the stairs behind the courtyard and down the hallway to the room with Helena. But when he burst inside, she was gone, the bed and furniture turned upside down.

  He scanned the debris looking for clues and then saw it—a note pinned to the wall by a dagger. He ripped the note off and read it:

  We meet in the arena at 9
o’clock and trade

  the document you stole from me for Helena.

  It was signed Chiron.

  X

  All of Rome was in a fog that morning, a kind of meteorological and supernatural stupor. The streets were thinned of the usual crowds, and the overcast skies more ominous than ever. What faces Athanasius could glimpse looked vacant under the occasional flashes of lightning. The hour of dread had finally come, and by the way they shuffled along the Sacred Way near the Flavian Amphitheater, everybody knew it, as if their sole purpose was simply to reach the next hour.

  Athanasius looked up at the empty, ghostly Coliseum rising into the mist. One of the statues of the gods ringing the arches of the second story seemed to move. Athanasius caught his breath but didn’t miss a step. So there were sharpshooters trained on him before he even entered the stadium. But then he never imagined Chiron was going to let him walk out of here alive.

  He stepped under the arch at Gate XXXIV, one of the 76 public entrances into the Coliseum. It was the only gate from which the chains had been unlocked today. The peeling sign beside it proclaimed, “Death Guaranteed!”

  Athanasius entered the maze of empty passageways and ramps under the stands, which were supported by hundreds of towering arches. There were no souvenir sellers, sausage vendors or fortunetellers to slow his march to the runway that would direct him to his section. A moment later he emerged at the end of the tunnel into tier 1 and beheld the vast arena, with nothing but Helena in the center and empty stands all around.

  “Helena!” he shouted, sprinting his way toward the emperor’s box. “Helena!”

  He hauled himself over the bronze balustrade and landed on the soft sand of the arena floor. He started toward her when she screamed.

  “Athanasius, stop!”

  Suddenly the sand before him shifted and an entire section of the floor collapsed to reveal a great pit filled with roaring lions trying to claw their way up. And if they had the usual ramps, they could have.

  Athanasius stepped back and looked across at Helena, who was shaking on the other side of the pit. He then looked all around the ghostly stands, waiting for a hail of arrows or the appearance of Chiron. But none came down.

  Slowly he began to circle around the pit toward Helena when he felt another vibration under his feet and stopped. Sure enough, the dust began to swirl again as another trapdoor opened and a platform rose with a towering figure in a white toga.

  “I am risen!” Ludlumus proclaimed with outstretched arms. “I am risen indeed!”

  A fury of thoughts and emotion engulfed Athanasius. Ludlumus alive? So his rival had faked his death to set this board and place these pieces. But what was the next move? What was his game?

  “Behold the beast!” Ludlumus cried out, pointing to the pit. “Behold the Whore of Babylon!” He waved his arm at Helena. “And behold the rider on the white horse,” he said, pointing straight at Athanasius. “The one who has come to save them who shall instead be cast into the pit of fire!”

  Athanasius half expected an eruption of flames to explode from the pit, but Ludlumus probably intended to save that effect until after he had cast them to its bottom, their flesh torn to pieces by the lions and their eyes looking up to him like he was some malevolent god.

  But this god wasn’t omniscient, Athanasius thought, hoping that the thought and care Ludlumus put into this production had made him oblivious to the ground being pulled out from under him at the palace. Once Domitian was gone, Ludlumus would be history too.

  “More games, Ludlumus?”

  “The greatest of all, Athanasius. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, don’t you see?” He gestured to the ghostly stands under the overcast sky. “You have finished the race and entered the Hall of Faith. Welcome to the afterlife.”

  The sand shifted again, and a gladiator and Praetorian were launched into the arena. The Praetorian was in chains and gagged, the gladiator holding a sword to the soldier’s throat. From the engravings on his breastplate, Athanasius could see the gladiator was one of Domitian’s. Then Athanasius saw the eyes turning wild under the helmet of the Praetorian and recognized Virtus.

  They got him before he could steal Domitian’s dagger.

  In that instant Athanasius knew that his plans had failed. If they had gotten Virtus, then they had gotten Stephanus, and Domitian was alive this very hour.

  “He too was lost,” Ludlumus laughed. “But, like you, now is found.”

  In the basilica at the Palace of the Flavians, surrounded by great statues of his contemporaries the gods, Domitian again picked at the bloody ulcer on his forehead as he listened to testimony on behalf of still another astrologer. This one was an Armenian who dared to agree with his late predecessor Ascletario that the recent rash of lightning in Rome augured a change in government.

  What it really augured, Domitian knew, was the soothsayer’s untimely end.

  It was the only certainty of the hour that Domitian knew he could control.

  Ironically, it was the prosecutor Regulus who was defending the astrologer, or rather his astrology. The poor fool misinterpreted the obvious signs of Jupiter’s displeasure at those who would challenge his son Domitian as Emperor and twist the stars to suit themselves like the infernal Christians and their rising Age of Pieces, the cosmic symbol of their Christ Jesus.

  “This man merely repeated predictions that have long since warned Caesar of what year and day he would die, and even the specific hour and manner,” Regulus said, looking up from a papyrus with lunar tables. “All he added was that the moon is in Aquarius and that today’s fifth hour, beginning at nine o’clock, is especially dangerous and could augur transition. But he also concluded that Caesar would be safe if he lived to the sixth hour.”

  Domitian was tired of this astrological minutia. For years he had known just how unusual were the twin events of Mars setting on the Roman horizon with the moon at its lower culmination, both within minutes of each other. Especially as the moon’s position in Aquarius was exactly the same as Saturn at the time of his birth on October 24 almost 45 years ago. While this happened every month, the connection with Mars setting as the moon passed its lower culmination made it an astrologically noteworthy event.

  He looked down into his empty wine goblet and then to Julius, his food-and-wine-tester, who ceremoniously poured him the last of the proven, poison-free Dovilin wine in the palace. In recent weeks he had half-hoped his former dog walker would turn purple and die after losing his beloved Sirius.

  Domitian turned to Regulus and said, “However he covered his ignorance, it doesn’t negate the fact that he predicted a change in government, something that could only happen with my demise.”

  “On the contrary, Your Highness, he said it was your prophecy as Lord and God that would determine the outcome.”

  “My prophecy?”

  Regulus cleared his throat, fully aware he was voicing what nobody else would, and yet claiming they were not his words from his own mouth but those of Caesar himself. He picked up a tablet and read from it.

  “Caesar himself was overheard yesterday refusing a present of apples and telling his servant Julius, ‘Serve them tomorrow, if only I am spared to eat them. There will be blood on the moon as she enters Aquarius, and a deed will be done for everyone to talk about throughout the world.’”

  “My word! My word!” Domitian stood up, beside himself. “Silence!”

  The basilica was quiet.

  “What time is it? What is the hour?”

  Julius conferred with another member of the staff who ran out, then returned and whispered in his ear. Julius announced, “The time is 10 o’clock, Your Highness. It is the sixth hour.”

  Domitian collapsed into his chair and exhaled. The hour had passed! He had survived! The gods were indeed greater than the stars!

  He looked across the small group of magistrates in the hall and noted their dismay, even horror, at this reality, and stood up to address them.

  “The
deed has been done today that the world will talk about. Emperor Domitian Flavius is a god who defies the stars, and whose reign shall be forever. And the deed shall be memorialized with blood on the moon in Aquarius, beginning with the execution of this astrologer and all astrologers who would worship the stars instead of their Caesar. Kill him. I’m off to my bath.”

  And with that, Caesar walked out of the basilica with a new bounce in his step and deaf ears to shouts from behind.

  “But Your Highness!” Regulus called out.

  Domitian could feel a second wind enter his body, a second spirit, a new life. To have this weight removed from his shoulders! To have the unequivocal salutation of the gods!

  “I will feast tonight on the blood of my enemies!” he told his entourage of attendants as he walked, the old energy of hatred focusing his mind now that the fog of dread had lifted. “I have my list, and my Praetorian will have names.”

  I knew you would protect me, dear Minerva, he prayed to himself, then turned a corner to find Parthenius his chamberlain waiting for him. Domitian stopped, as did the several attendants who had followed him out of the basilica.

  Parthenius said, “Your Highness, a person has come to wait upon you with a document about a matter of great importance that simply cannot be delayed.”

  Domitian frowned. That Parthenius refused to name this person in the company of the others informed Domitian that this matter was indeed important. But could it be more important than his bath? He felt like Jesus rising out of his tomb, and now he wanted to plunge into the waters of his bath like a baptism to symbolize his rebirth. At the same time, Domitian understood that word of his survival had probably scattered the panicked roaches from the shadows into the light, and he should make haste to crush them all.