Inclining his head to the empress, he said, “I did not dare ask the Augusta to risk coming here tonight, but she insisted. Your Highness, please tell the women of your bedchamber how grateful we are for their help in smuggling you out of the palace. And now, let us begin.” He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat. His stomach was torturing him but he wouldn’t allow it to show. “Our fortunes are at a crisis. Tomorrow is the fourteenth before the Kalends. By mid-day either the tyrant will be dead or we will. We have much to discuss, and little time, it will soon be sunup. For the benefit of some of you, let me review the sequence of events that has brought us to this point.”
“Wait!” the Praetorian commandant lurched to his feet, crossed the tablinum and ripped back the curtain that gave onto the garden. Half a dozen of his Guardsmen in civilian clothes had taken up positions there. There were still more at the front of the house.
“All quiet, Sir,” their officer reported. The commandant went back to his seat. He had already taken the precaution of cancelling all leaves, and his officers had been alerted to attack the City Battalions if they rallied to the emperor.
Parthenius drew a breath and began again. Over the past months, he explained, he had orchestrated the tyrant’s mounting terror. “We wanted to drive him mad, encourage him to even greater outrages which would eat away at his still considerable support in some quarters. I have sent people to report lightning strikes in every part of Italy. With the help of my colleagues in the palace, we arranged a series of parlor tricks all designed to unnerve him. His morbid imagination did the rest. Not long ago I procured a soothsayer to prophesy the date of his death: tomorrow at the fifth hour of the morning. The unfortunate man paid with his life, but that is no matter. And our campaign of terror has succeeded. Don’t be fooled by the image he displays at the Games. I happen to know that he has scarcely slept in days.
“When I and the empress first combined to plot his overthrow, we knew the importance of horoscopes in molding public opinion and lending nerve to a potential replacement. The empress wished Clemens to succeed, and so we prepared a horoscope predicting his imperial destiny. We gave it to him so that he could produce it at the crucial moment. This was a calamitous mistake. The horoscope can be traced to us. In fact, I composed it myself in my own hand. Foolish, I admit. Two months ago our plans came crashing down. Out of the blue, that snake Verpa astonished everyone by accusing Clemens and his wife of atheism and Jewish practices. We had known nothing of this mania of theirs. We were completely routed, terrified that the conspiracy would come to light. We held our breath and waited for the ax to fall, but it didn’t. Clemens went quietly to his death, his wife was banished to a desolate island, and the incriminating horoscope seemed to have vanished.
“After a time, we gathered our courage once more. We had to begin again to recruit someone to take Clemens’ place. The noble Nerva has courageously accepted our offer.” Parthenius nodded in the man’s direction and favored him with a tight smile. Nerva looked around as though he wanted to bolt for the door and only shame kept him in his place.
“It was during this tense period,” Parthenius continued, “that the Vestalis Maxima, the Purissima, came to our aid. I think most of you know, without my going into the details, the reason for her hatred of the tyrant.” Several heads nodded. “The Cloister of Vesta would be our center of communication. The wives of senators and other allies of ours could go there to leave messages and receive instructions, and the empress’ loyal women would serve as a link between the Cloister and ourselves. This way no senator would ever be seen in a compromising conversation with someone like me or with the empress. This is what we proposed and she undertook it eagerly on behalf of her Order.
“Several weeks went by in this way while we bided our time. Then, just a little more than three weeks ago, Verpa struck at us. It seems Domitilla had managed to get a letter to him revealing the conspiracy and telling where they had hidden her husband’s horoscope. We learned this both from Stephanus, her steward, a most useful man in many ways, who came directly and reported to me, and also from Verpa himself. He wrote a letter to the emperor, well knowing that Entellus here would intercept it. It was his way of announcing himself to us. Over the next days, I bargained with him, but the price of his silence was astronomical, and finally he had the audacity to propose himself as emperor! He wouldn’t tell me what the letter said, but he hinted that he held all our lives in his fist. Maybe he exaggerated, but who could be sure?