The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle (The Vampire Chronicles) (19 page)

“Right, correct,” said the Legate. “And we could have wiped out those tribes completely The Empire would reach to the Elbe! But for some reason, and mine is not the place to question, our Emperor Tiberius called us back.”

“Hmmm, and then condemns your beloved leader forgoing to Egypt.”

“Madam, it was no trip to seize power, Germanicus’s trip to Egypt. It was because of a famine.”

“Yes, and Germanicus had been declared
Imperium Maius
of all the Eastern provinces,” I said.

“And there was so much trouble!” said the Legate. “You can not imagine the morale, the habits of the soldiers here, but our General never slept! He went directly when he heard of the famine.”

“And you with him?”

“All of us, his cohorts. In Egypt he delighted in seeing the old monuments. So did I.”

“Ah, how marvelous for him. You must tell me about Egypt! You know that I, as a Senator’s daughter, cannot go to Egypt any more than can a Senator. I would so love—”

“Why is that, Madam?” asked the Legate.

“She’s lying to you!” roared Lucius. “Her whole family was murdered.”

“Very simple reason, Tribune,” I said to the Legate. “It’s no state secret. Rome is so dependent upon Egypt for corn that the Emperor wants to prevent the country from ever falling under the control of a powerful traitor. Surely you grew up as I did in dread of another Civil War.”

“I put my faith in our Generals,” said the Legate.

“You are right to do so. And you saw nothing from Germanicus but loyalty, is that not so?”

“It is absolutely so. Ah, Egypt. We saw such Temples and statues!”

“The singing statues,” I asked, “did you see them, the colossal man and woman who wail in the rising of the sun.”

“Yes, I heard it, Madam,” he said, nodding furiously. “I heard the sound! It is magical. Egypt is full of magic!”

“Hmmm.” A tremor ran through me. I banished it. In a flash I saw two images mixed: that of the tall Roman in his toga, and that of a burnt and cunning creature! Think straight, Pandora!

“And in the Temple of Ramses the Great,” said the Legate, “one of the Priests read the writing on
the walls. All about victory? All about battle? We laughed because nothing really changes, Madam.”

“And Governor Piso, do you believe these rumors? Can we not speak safely of them, of rumors as if rumors were not things?”

“Everyone here despises him!” said the Legate. “He was a bad soldier, plain and simple! And Agrippina the Elder, Germanicus’s beloved wife, is on her way to Rome now with the General’s ashes. She will officially accuse the Governor before the Senate!”

“Yes, how courageous of her, and that is how it should be done. If families are judged without trial, then we have fallen into tyranny, haven’t we? Here, our friendly lunatic, don’t you agree to that?”

Lucius was speechless. He turned red.

“And in the Teutoburg Forest,” I said tenderly, “that gloomy arena for our doom, did you see all the bones of our lost legions, scattered about?”

“Buried them, Madam, with these hands!” The Legate held up his weathered callused palms. “For who could tell what bones were ours and what bones were theirs? And Madam, the platform of that cowardly, sneaking King was still standing, from which the loathsome long-haired slob had ordered the sacrifice to his pagan gods of our men.”

Nods and noble mumbles came from the other soldiers.

“I was but a small child,” I said, “when word came of the ambush of General Varus. But I remember our Divine Emperor Augustus—how he let his hair grow long in mourning and how he would pound
his head on the walls, crying, ‘Varus, bring me back my legions.’ ”

“You actually saw him this way?”

“Oh, many a time, and was present one night when he discussed his often mentioned thoughts—that the Empire must not try to push further. Rather it should police the states which it now contains.”

“Then Caesar Augustus did say this!” said the Legate in fascination.

“He cared about you,” I said to the Legate. “How many years have you been in the field? Do you have a wife?”

“Oh, how I long to go home,” said the Legate. “And now that my General has fallen. My wife is gray-haired as I am. I see her when we go to Rome for parades.”

“Yes, and compulsory service was only six years under the Republic, but now, you must fight for what? Twelve? Twenty? But who am I to criticize Augustus, whom I loved as I loved my Father and all my dead brothers?”

Lucius could see what was happening. He sputtered when he spoke:

“Tribune, read my Safe Conduct! Read it!”

The Legate looked truly annoyed.

My brother marshaled what he could of his rhetoric, which wasn’t much. “She lies. She is condemned. Her family is dead. I was compelled to bear witness to Sejanus because they sought to kill Tiberius himself!”

“You turned on your own family?” asked the soldier.

“Oh, don’t wear yourself out with this,” I said “The man has harried me all day. He has discovered that I am a woman alone, an heiress, and thinks that this is some uncivilized outpost of the Empire where he can bring a charge against a Senator’s daughter with no proof. Dear lunatic, do pay attention. Julius Caesar gave Antioch its municipal standing less than one hundred years ago. There are legions stationed here, are there not?”

I looked at the Legate.

The Legate turned and glowered at my trembling brother.

“What is this Safe Conduct?” I asked. “This bears the name Tiberius.”

The Legate snatched it from Lucius before Lucius could respond and handed the scroll to me. I had to take my hand off my dagger to unroll the paper.

“Ah, Sejanus of the Praetorian Guard! I knew it. And the Emperor probably knows nothing of it. Tribune, do you know those palace guards make one and one half times what a Legionnaire makes? And now they have these
Delatores
, given incentive to charge others with crimes for one-third of the condemned man’s property!”

The Legate was now sizing up my brother and every flaw in Lucius shone in the light; his cowardly posture, his trembling hands, his shifty eyes, his growing desperation in the pursing of his lips.

I turned to Lucius.

“Do you realize, you madman, whoever you are, what you are asking of this seasoned and wise Roman officer? What if he should believe your insane lies? What will become of him when the letter arrives from Rome inquiring into my whereabouts and the disposition of my fortune!”

“Sir, this woman is a traitor!” shouted Lucius. “On my honor I swear—”

“What honor is that?” asked the soldier under his breath. His eyes fixed on Lucius.

“If Rome were such,” I said, “that families as old as mine could be so easily dispatched as this man asks you now to do with me, then why would the widow of Germanicus dare to go before the Senate for a trial?”

“They are all executed,” said my brother, who was at his worst and most solemn, and seemed to have lost all touch with the effect of his words, “every one of them, because they were in a plot to kill Tiberius and I was given Safe Conduct and passage out for reporting them, as was my duty, to the
Delatores
, and to Sejanus, with whom I spoke myself!”

The possibilities were making themselves known slowly to the Legate.

“Sir,” I said to Lucius, “have you anything else on your person that identifies you?”

“I don’t need anything else!” said Lucius. “Your fate is death.”

“Same as it was for your Father?” asked the Legate, “and your wife? Had you children?”

“Throw her into prison tonight, and write to Rome!” declared Lucius. “You’ll see that I speak the truth!”

“And where will you be, whoever you are, while I am in prison? Looting my house?”

“You slut!” shouted Lucius. “Don’t you see this is all feminine wiles and lurid distraction!”

There was shock among the soldiers, revulsion in the face of the Legate. Flavius moved next to me.

“Officer,” asked Flavius with tempered dignity, “what am I allowed to do on behalf of my Mistress against this madman?”

“You use such words again, Sir,” I said firmly to Lucius, “and I’ll lose my patience.”

The Legate took Lucius’s arm. Lucius’s right hand went to his dagger.

“Just who are you?” the Legate demanded. “Are you one of the
Delatores
? You tell me you turned on your whole family?”

“Tribune,” I said, laying the gentlest touch yet on his arm. “My Father’s roots went back to the time of Romulus and Remus. We know no origins other than those in Rome. It was the same with my Mother, who was herself the daughter of a Senator. This man is saying rather … horrible things.”

“So it seems,” said the Legate, narrowing his gaze, as he inspected Lucius. “Where are your friends here, your companions; where do you live?”

“You can’t do anything to me!” said Lucius.

The Legate glared at Lucius’s hand on the dagger.

“You prepare to draw that against me!” asked the Legate.

Lucius clearly was at a loss.

“Why did you come to Antioch?” I demanded of Lucius. “Were you the bearer of the poison that killed Germanicus?”

“Arrest her!” shouted Lucius.

“No, I don’t believe my own accusation. Not even Sejanus would put such treachery in the hands of a petty scoundrel like you! Come now, what else do you have on your person to connect you with this family, this Safe Conduct which you say came from the pen of Sejanus?”

Lucius was utterly baffled.

“I certainly have nothing belonging to me to connect me to your wild and bloody sagas and tales,” I said.

The Legate interrupted me. “Nothing to connect you to this name?” He took the Safe Conduct from my hand.

“Absolutely nothing,” I said, “nothing but this madman here who is spouting horrors, and would lead the world to believe that our Emperor has lost his wits. Only he connects me with his bloody plot without witness or verification, and hurls insults at me.”

The Legate rolled up the Safe Conduct. “And your purpose here, Madam?” he asked in a whisper.

“To live in peace and quiet,” I said softly. “To live in safety and under the true shelter of Roman rule.”

Now I knew the battle had been won. But
something else was required to seal the victory. I took another gamble.

Slowly I reached for my dagger and slowly I brought it out of its sling.

Lucius leapt back at once. He drew his dagger and lunged at me. He was immediately stabbed by the Legate and at least two of the soldiers.

He hung there bleeding on their weapons, staring from right to left, and then he spoke, but his mouth was too full of blood. His eyes widened; it seemed again he would speak. Then, as the soldiers withdrew their daggers, his body folded up on the cobblestones at the foot of the stairs.

My brother Lucius was quite mercifully dead.

I looked at him and shook my head.

The Legate looked at me. This was a significant moment, and I knew it.

“What is it, Tribune,” I asked, “that separates us from the long-haired barbarians of the North? Is it not law? Written law? Traditional law? Is it not justice? That men and women are called to account for what they do?”

“Yes, Madam,” he said.

“You know,” I went on in a reverent voice, staring at this heap of blood and clothes and flesh that lay on the stones, “I saw our great Emperor Caesar Augustus on the day of his death.”

“You saw him? You did?”

I nodded. “When they were certain he was to die, we were rushed to him with a few other close friends. It was his hope to put down rumors in the
capital that might lead to unrest. He had sent for a mirror and combed his hair. He was primly propped up. And he asked us as we entered the room: Didn’t we think he’d played his part well in the comedy of life?

“I thought, what courage! And then he made some further joke, the old theatrical line they say after plays:

“I could tell you more, but—”

“Oh, please do,” said the Legate.

“Well, why not?” I asked. “It was told to me that the Emperor said of Tiberius, his chosen successor, ‘Poor Rome, to be chewed slowly by those sluggish jaws!’ ”

The Legate smiled. “But there wasn’t anyone else,” he said under his breath.

“Thank you, Tribune, for all your assistance. Would you allow me to take from my purse sufficient funds to treat you and your soldiers to a fine dinner—”

“No, Madam, I wouldn’t have it be said I or any man here was bribed. Now this dead man. Do you know anything more of him?”

“Only this, Officer, that his body probably belongs in the river.”

The soldiers all laughed among themselves.

“Good night, Gracious Lady,” said the soldier.

And off I went, striding across the blackness of the Forum, with my beloved one-legged Flavius at my side and the torchbearers round us.

Only now did I shake all over. Only now did the sweat cover my whole body.

When we had plunged deeply into the unbroken darkness of a small alleyway, I said, “Flavius, let these torchbearers go. There is no reason for them to know where we are headed.”

“Madam, I don’t have any lantern.”

“The night’s full of stars and has a near full moon. Look! Besides, there are others from the Temple who are following us.”

“There are?” he asked. He paid off the torchbearers and they ran back towards the mouth of the street.

“Yes. There is one watching. And besides, we can see well enough by the lighted windows and Heaven’s light, don’t you think? I am tired, so tired.”

I walked on, reminding myself again and again that Flavius could not keep up. I began to weep.

“Tell me something with your great philosophical knowledge,” I said as I walked on, determined to make the tears stop. “Tell me why evil people are so stupid? Why are so many of them just plain stupid?”

“Madam, I think there are quite a few evil people who are quite clever,” he said. “But never have I seen such skilled rhetoric on the part of anyone, either bad or good, as your talents revealed just now.”

“I’m delighted that you know that that is all it was,” I said. “Rhetoric. And to think he had the same
teachers as I, the same library, the same Father—” My voice broke.