Robert Silverberg: The Reign of Terror

“I—sir—that is—”

“We needed to confer,” Rullianus offered. “To work out which one of us is really in charge.”

“So you asked him to come, and he was madman enough to do it?” Apollinaris laughed harshly. “I think you’ve spent too much time around the Emperor, Severinus. The lunacy must be contagious.”

“In fact it was my idea to come,” said Severinus stolidly. “The situation—the two of us holding the same post, Rullianus and I—”

“Yes,” Apollinaris said. “One of you appointed by an Emperor who has lost his mind, and the other one appointed by a Consul who has lost his job.—You do know that Torquatus is in the dungeons, don’t you, Rullianus?”

“Of course, sir.” It was hardly more than a whisper.

“And you, Severinus. Surely you understand that the Emperor is insane.”

“It is very bad, yes. He was foaming at the mouth, sir, when I left him an hour ago. Nevertheless—His Majesty ordered me—”

“Give me no neverthelesses,” Apollinaris snapped. “Orders coming from a crazy man have no value. Demetrius is unfit to rule. His years on the throne have brought the Empire to the point of collapse, and you two are the men who can save it, if you act quickly and courageously.” They stood before him as though frozen, so profoundly awed they did not seem even to be breathing. “I have tasks for you both, which I want you to carry out this very morning. You will have the gratitude of the Empire as your reward. And also the gratitude of the new Emperor, and of his Consuls.” He transfixed them, each in his turn, with an implacable stare. “Do I make myself clear? The men who make Emperors reap great benefit from their deeds. This is your moment in history.”

They understood him. There was no doubt about that.

He gave them their instructions and returned to the Consular building to await results.

It would be a long and difficult day, Apollinaris knew. He barricaded himself within his office, with his little group of guardsmen stationed in front of his door, and passed the hours reading here and there in Lentulus Aufidius’s account of the reign of Titus Gallius, in the Histories of Sextus Asinius, in Antipater’s great work on the fall of Roma to the Byzantines, and other chronicles of troubled times. In particular he lingered over Sextus Asinius’s account of Cassius Chaerea, the colonel of the Guards who had slain the mad Emperor Caligula, even though it meant his own doom when Claudius followed his nephew Caligula to the throne. Cassius Chaerea had known what needed to be done, aware that it might cost him his life, and he had done it, and it had. Apollinaris read Asinius’s account of Chaerea twice through and gave it much thought.

Late afternoon brought a great crack of thunder and a flash of lightning that seemed to split the skies, and then torrential rainfall, the first rain the city had had in the many weeks of this ferociously hot summer. Apollinaris took it as an omen, a signal from the gods in whom he did not believe that the miasma of the hour was about to be swept away.

Rullianus was admitted to his presence only minutes afterward, drenched by the sudden downpour. The execution of the former Consul Marcus Larcius Torquatus, Rullianus reported, had been duly carried out, secretly, in the dungeons, as ordered. Virtually on his heels came Severinus, with the news that in accordance with Count Apollinaris’s instructions the late Emperor Demetrius had been smothered in his own pillows, the body weighted with rocks, thrown into the Tiber at the place where such things usually were done.

“You’ll return to your barracks immediately and say nothing about this to anyone,” Apollinaris told them both, and they gave him brisk, enthusiastic salutes and left.

To Charax he said, “Follow them and have them taken into custody. Here are the orders for their arrests.”

“Very good, sir. The prince Laureolus is outside, sir.”

“And still almost an hour before nightfall. He must have borrowed the wings of Mercurius to get here this fast!”

But the prince’s appearance showed not the least sign that he had hurried unduly to the capital. He looked as cool as ever, calm, self-possessed, an aristocrat to the core, his chilly blue eyes betraying no trace of concern at the disarray that was apparent all over the city.

“I regret to tell you,” Apollinaris began at once, in his most exaggeratedly solemn tone, “that this is a day of great sorrow for the Empire. His Majesty Demetrius Augustus is dead.”

“A terrible loss indeed,” said Laureolus, in that same tone of mock solemnity. But then—clearly his quick mind needed only a fraction of an instant to leap to the right conclusion—a look of something close to horror came into his eyes. “And his successor is to be—”

Apollinaris smiled. “Hail, Laureolus Caesar Augustus, Emperor of Roma!”

Laureolus held his hands up before his face. “No. No.”

“You must. You are the savior of the Empire.”

Only this morning—it seemed years ago—Apollinaris had thought to invite Laureolus to join him in the Consulship. But Demetrius’s unexpected brief escape from his confinement in the royal guest-house had ended all that. Apollinaris knew that he could make Charax Consul now, or Sulpicius Silanus, the thrifty Prefect of the Fiscus Publicus, or anyone else he pleased. It would not matter. The role that needed filling this day was that of Emperor. And, very quickly, Laureolus had seen that, too.

Color had come to his face. His eyes were bright with anger and shock.

“My quiet life of retirement, Apollinaris—my work as a scholar—”

“You can read and write just as well in the palace. The Imperial library, I assure you, is the finest in the world. Refusing is not an option. Would you have Roma tumble into anarchy? You are the only possible Emperor.”

“What about yourself?”

“I was bred to be a military man. An administrator. Not an Emperor.—No, there’s no one else but you, Caesar. No one.”

“Stop calling me ‘Caesar’!”

“I must. And you must. I’ll be beside you, your senior Consul. I had thought to retire also, you know, but that too will have to wait. Roma demands this of us. We have had madness upon madness in this city, first the madness of Demetrius, then the different sort of madness that Torquatus brought. And there are men in the Subura threatening yet another kind of madness. Now all that must end, and you and I are the only ones who can end it. So I say it once again: ‘Hail, Laureolus Caesar Augustus!’ We will present you to the Senate tomorrow, and the day after that to the people of the city.”

“Damn you, Apollinaris! Damn you!”

“For shame! What way is that, Caesar, to speak to the man who has placed you on the throne of the great Augustus?”

Lactantius Rufus himself, as the presiding magistrate of the Senate, presented the motion that awarded Laureolus the titles of Princeps, Imperator, Pontifex Maximus, Tribune of the People, and all the rest that went with being First Citizen, Emperor of Roma, and, as the Senators got quickly to their feet to shout their approval, lost no time in declaring that the vote was unanimous. The Count Valerian Apollinaris was confirmed immediately afterward as Consul once again, and the eighty-three-year-old Clarissimus Blossius, the eldest member of the Senate, won quick confirmation also as Apollinaris’s new colleague in the Consulship.

“And now,” said Apollinaris that night at the palace, “we must begin the task of restoring the tranquility of the realm.”

It was a good glib phrase, but converting it from rhetoric into reality posed a greater challenge than even Apollinaris had realized. Charax had built a network of agents who traversed the city day and night to detect unrest and subversion, and they reported, to a man, that the poison of democratic ideas had spread everywhere in the capital. The people, the plebeians, those without rank or property of any kind, had not been in any way distressed to see mass executions of Imperial courtiers in the plaza of Marcus Anastasius, nor did it trouble them when the Consuls were sending packs of Senators to the scaffold, nor when they learned of the virtually simultaneous deaths of the Consul Torquatus and the Emperor Demetrius. So far as they were concerned it would be just as well to arrest the entire class of men who were qualified to wear the toga of free-born citizenship, and their wives and children as well, and send them off for execution, and divide their property among the common folk for the welfare of all.