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The King's Gambit(73)

By:John Maddox Roberts


She received me in a sitting-room, looking cool and serene. She sat with her back to a fretted window, so that the light surrounded her with a nimbus. Her gown was of some flimsy material, clinging to every curve, a brilliant blue. It complimented her eyes perfectly, as did the jewelry she wore: gold set with lapis lazuli and sapphires. She looked every inch the patrician lady, not the wild-haired maenad she had seemed when I had last seen her.

“Decius, how good to see you,” she said, her voice as low and intimate as ever. It went through me like the vibration of an overstretched lyre string when it is plucked.

“I am sorry to appear before you in so unkempt a condition,” I said.

She smiled with one corner of her mouth. “You were a good deal less kempt when we last parted.”

I could feel my face flushing and was infuriated that this woman could bring out so juvenile a reaction in me. “There was a rough scene in the Forum, involving your brother and his thugs.”

Her face hardened. “You have not hurt him, have you?”

“He’ll probably live, which is better than he deserves. His men will probably bring him here soon, although they may take him to a physician first.”

“What do you want, Decius? I have little time for you. You are no longer a player in the game. You might have been, but you chose to play the fool. You count for nothing now. Make this brief.”

“A game. Is that what it is to you?”

Her look was utter contempt. “What else is it? It is the greatest game in the world. It is played on a board made up of kingdoms and republics and seas. The men are just counters. They are placed on the board and struck from it at the whim and according to the skill of the players.” She paused. “And there is the uncertainty of luck, of course.”

“Fortuna can be a whimsical goddess,” I said.

“I don’t believe in the gods. If they exist at all, they take no interest in what men do. But I believe in blind chance. It just makes the game more interesting.”

“And you have a taste for this sort of gaming? Knucklebones and dice and races and the munera grew too tame for you?”

“Don’t talk like a fool. There is nothing else in the world like this game. The prize is power and wealth beyond dreams. The Pharaohs never saw such wealth. Alexander never wielded such power. This empire we have built with our legions is the most incredible instrument for imposing the leader’s will that has ever existed.”

"There are no legions of Rome,” I said. “They are the personal followers of twenty or more generals. The four or five most powerful generals are always mortal enemies, more occupied with cutting each other’s throats and stealing each other’s glory than with expanding Rome’s empire.”

Her smile was dazzling. “But that is what the game is all about. At the end of it, there will be one man who controls all the legions, who controls the Senate, who will be followed by patricians and plebs alike. No more bickering parties and treacherous senatorial votes behind the leader’s back.”

“You mean a king of Rome,” I said.

“The title needn’t be used, but the power would be the same. Like the old King of Persia, only much greater.”

“It has been tried,” I noted. “Marius, Sulla, others. None of them succeeded, no matter how many domestic enemies they killed.”

“They were inferior players,” she asserted calmly. “They were ruthless, and their soldiers worshipped them, but they were not intelligent enough. Marius tried to keep playing the game when he had grown far too old. Sulla had it all won, then he decided to retire. It was the act of a political moron. We are moving into the final rounds of a great munera sine missione, Decius. When it is over, only one man will be standing.”

“If you will forgive my saying so, this is not a game in which women compete.”

She laughed musically. “Oh, Decius, you really are a child! Men and women simply play differing roles in this game. You will not see me in polished armor leading a legion, of course, but depend upon it, when the game is ended, I shall be sitting on a throne by the side of the winner.”

I wondered if she was mad. It was difficult to say. The Claudians were mad almost by definition, but they were hardly alone in the condition. As I have said, half my generation seemed to be subject to madness. I was not immune to the sickness myself. Perhaps Claudia was just a part of the times.

“In this game, if you lose, you die.”

She shrugged. “What is the game if the stakes are not the highest?”

“And sometimes,” I continued, “it’s hard to keep track of all the counters on the board. Ones you thought were gone turn up again.”