Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

She was met by a retainer in the Via Sacra, to the northeastern side of the complex. She held her head up, ignoring the nagging pain inside, determined to show no weakness. She was led through two great arches, dedicated to the memories of the emperors Titus and Domitian, and found herself in a large paved area. It was the Domus Flavia that was her destination, the wing of the palace where official work was done.

The Domus Flavia was built onto a large platform set on top of the hill. It consisted of several rooms set around a huge peristylium . The walls and floors were decorated with mosaics and imported stones; the colors were bright yellow, crimson, and blue, the lines of the rectangular patterns sharp. There was much business being done here, she saw; men walked this way and that, arguing earnestly, bearing heaps of papyrus scrolls or wax tablets. Despite the bustle, as with much of Rome there was a sense of shrinkage, of emptiness, as if these busy men were smaller than their ancestors. She wondered how it must have been two or three hundred years ago when this building really had been the hub of the whole world.

A fountain set in the center of the peristylium was dry, its bowl mildewed, evidently long out of action. It made her think of her own long-lost childhood home; the fountain had never worked there, either.

“Madam. I am Gratian.” The man who greeted her was tall, his hair white as British snow, with a thin, strong-nosed, elegant face. He was actually wearing a toga, a sight rarely seen nowadays. Gratian walked her toward one of the great buildings. It was a throne room; he called it the Aula Regia. “We will sit in the shade, over wine …”

Gratian was a senator, a close adviser to the Emperor — and a close relation. He was one of the cabal of rich and powerful men who actually controlled the imperial administration: though the Emperor Romulus Augustus bore two of the mightiest names in all Rome’s long history, he was but a boy.

If the complex as a whole was impressive, the throne room was startling. The walls and floor were covered with a veneer of patterned marble, gray, orange, brown, green. The walls were fronted by columns, and in twelve niches stood colossal statues carved of night-black basalt. The room was covered by a vaulted concrete roof, and was oddly chill even in the heat of the day. The floor was warm, though, evidently heated by a hypocaust. At one end of the room was an apse where the Emperor received embassies and gave audiences. Today it was empty.

Gratian led her to a series of couches set in a semicircle, where they sat.

“If I am meant to be impressed,” she said, “I am.”

Gratian actually winked at her. “It’s an old trick and not a subtle one. Rome herself has always been the emperors’ most potent weapon. Do you know the history of the palace? The Emperor Domitian made his great platform on top of the Palatine by leveling earlier buildings, or filling them in with concrete. It is as if this mighty complex has used whole palaces as mere foundations! …” His talk was smooth and practiced.

“Perhaps,” she said. “But this is power projected from the past, not the present.”

He was apparently surprised at this sally. “But power even so.”

A girl brought them wine — from Africa, Gratian said — and olives, bread, and fruit. She took a little of the wine, but watered it heavily; wine seemed to go to her head these days, perhaps because her blood was drawn by the thing in her belly.

“I take it,” she said dryly, “that Romulus Augustus will not be receiving me today.”

“He is the Emperor, and a god, but also a boy,” Gratian said gently. “And today he is with his teacher of rhetoric. Are you disappointed?”

She smiled. “Is he?”

That made him laugh. “Madam, you have a spirit rarely seen in these difficult times. You have made a success of your life — and you have made your Order rather wealthy in the process.” He waved a hand. “Our records are almost as good as yours are reputed to be,” he said dryly. “Your Order contributes a great deal to the city — far more than most, in these times of declining civic sentiment. The Emperor understands, and he wants me to transmit his gratitude.

“But, madam,” he went on, “we face a grave problem. The Germans are in Italy again. Their leader is a man called Odoacer: not a brute as some of these fellows are, but resourceful and uncompromising.”

“Where are your legions?”

“We are overcommitted elsewhere. And tax revenues have been declining — well, for decades. It is not so easy to raise, equip, and pay an army as it once was …” He began a dismal litany of military commitments, triumphs, and setbacks, and the complexities and difficulties of the taxation system. What it amounted to was that Gratian was trying to raise a ransom from Rome’s richer citizens and foundations: a bribe to make Odoacer go away, with minimal loss of blood.

And suddenly she saw what this thin, elegant man wanted of her. Sitting in this grand, ancient room, surrounded by the trappings of imperial power, she felt as if the whole world were swiveling around her.

So it has come to this, she thought with gathering dismay. That an emperor should come to me for help: me, helpless little Regina.

She had always believed that one day things would get back to normal — that the security she had perceived in her childhood would return. In the Order she had found a place of safety, even if they were “huddling in a hole in the ground,” in the unkind words of Ambrosius, a place where they could wait out the storm, until it was safe to emerge into the light again. But Rome wasn’t going to recover — she saw this clearly for the first time in her life. The fall had gone too far. “Normal” times would never come back.

She felt angry. The Emperor himself and his incompetent predecessors had betrayed her — as had her mother, Amator, Artorius in turn. And she felt afraid, as she hadn’t even when the Vandals were raging within the walls of Rome. The future held only darkness. And all she had was the Order, which would have to preserve her family, her blood, not just through an uncertain hiatus, but — perhaps — forever .

I must go home, she thought. I have much work to do, and little time left.

She stood up, interrupting Gratian’s monologue.

He seemed bewildered by her abruptness. “Madam, you haven’t given me an answer.”

“Bring him here,” she said.

“Who?”

“Your German. Odoacer. Bring him here to the palace. Show him the marbles and tapestries, the statues and mosaics. Impress him with Rome’s past as you have me, and perhaps he will spare the present. You’re good at it — the act .”

He looked at her angrily. “You’re unnecessarily cruel, madam. I have my job to do. And that job is to preserve Rome from bloodshed, perhaps ruin. Is that ignoble?”

She felt a stabbing pain in her stomach — as if the thing in her belly had rolled and kicked, like a monstrous fetus. But by a monumental effort of self-discipline, she kept her posture upright, her face clear. She would not show weakness before this creature of a boy-Emperor.

She walked out of the palace without regret, and hurried home. But the pain followed her, a shadow in the brightness of the day.

After the birth, Lucia recovered quickly.

She understood what she was going through. She worked through her postnatal exercises for her abdomen and waist and pelvis. Her uterus was returning to its normal size. Her postpartum discharges did not trouble her and were soon dwindling. Like everything about the pregnancy, her recovery seemed remarkably rapid.