Robert Silverberg: The Reign of Terror

Very likely the name of Valerian Apollinaris would be the next one added to the roster of the condemned, in that case. And, though Apollinaris had never been greatly concerned about his personal safety, he saw now that in the present situation he must preserve his life for the sake of the Empire. There was no other bulwark but him against the encroaching chaos.

Best to face the issue immediately, Apollinaris decided.

He went to see Torquatus.

“The Senate is growing very uneasy,” he said. “These four executions—”

“They were traitors,” Torquatus said sharply. Sweat was rolling down his fleshy face in the dense, humid atmosphere of the room, but for some reason unfathomable to Apollinaris the man was wearing a heavy winter toga. “They wallowed in Demetrius’s iniquities to their own enormous profit.”

“No doubt they did. But we need the Senate’s continued support if we’re to carry through our program.”

“Do we? The Senate’s just an antiquarian vestige, something left over from the ancient Republic. Just as the Consuls were, before you and I revived the office. Emperors functioned perfectly well for at least a thousand years without sharing any power at all with the Senate or the Consuls. We can get along without the Senate, too. Who’s been talking to you? Lactantius Rufus? Julius Papinio? I know who the malcontents are. And I’ll take them down, one by one, until—”

“I beg you, Torquatus.” Apollinaris wondered whether he had ever uttered those words before in his life. “Show some moderation, man. What we’re trying to achieve is a very difficult thing. We can’t simply dispense with the backing of the Senate.”

“Of course we can. The axe awaits anyone who stands in our way, and they all know it. What was Caligula’s famous line? ‘Oh, that these annoying Romans had only a single neck’—something like that. That’s how I feel about the Senate.”

“Caligula is not, I think, the philosopher you ought to be quoting just now,” said Apollinaris. “I urge you again, Torquatus, let us be more moderate from here on. Otherwise, what I fear is that you and I are lighting a fire in Roma that may prove to be extremely difficult to put out, a fire that may easily consume you and me as well before it’s over.”

“I’m not convinced that moderation is what we need at this point,” said Torquatus. “And if you fear for your life, my friend, you have the option of resigning your Consulship.” His gaze now was cold and uncompromising. “I know that you’ve often spoken of returning to private life, your studies, your country estate. Perhaps the time has come for you to do just that.”

Apollinaris summoned the most pleasant smile he could find. “Not just yet, I think. Despite the objections I’ve just put to you, I still share your belief that there’s much work for us to do in Roma, and I intend to stand with you while it’s being carried out. You and I are colleagues in this to the end, Marcus Larcius. We may have disagreements along the way, but they’ll never be permitted to come between us in any serious way.”

“You mean that, do you, Apollinaris?”

“Of course I do.”

A look of enormous relief appeared on Torquatus’s heavy-featured, deeply furrowed face. “I embrace you, colleague!”

“And I you,” said Apollinaris, standing and offering his hand to the bigger man, but making no move to let the talk of embraces be anything more than metaphorical.

He returned quickly to his headquarters on the floor below and called Tiberius Charax to him.

“Take ten armed men—no, a dozen,” he told the aide-de-camp, “and get yourself upstairs to Marcus Larcius’s office. Tell his bodyguards, if you encounter any, that you’re there at my orders, that a matter concerning the Consul Torquatus’s security has come up and I have instructed you to place these men at the Consul’s disposal at once. I doubt that they’ll try to stop you. If they do, kill them. Then grab Torquatus, tell him that he’s under arrest on a charge of high treason, bundle him out of the building as fast as you can, and place him under tight guard in the Capitoline dungeons, where no one is to be allowed to see him or send messages to him.”

It was to Charax’s great credit, Apollinaris thought, that not the slightest evidence of surprise could be detected on his face.

The problem now was choosing a new co-Consul, who would aid him in the continuing work of reconstruction and reform without in any way presenting serious opposition to his programs. Apollinaris was adamant in his desire not to rule by sole command. He lacked the temperament of an Emperor and he disliked the idea of trying to reign dictatorially, as a kind of modern-day Sulla. Even after twenty centuries the memory of Sulla was not beloved by Romans. So a cooperative colleague was needed, quickly. There was no question in Apollinaris’s mind that the task that he and Torquatus had begun needed to be seen through to completion, and that at this moment it was very far from being complete.

He hoped it could be done without many more executions, though. Certainly Torquatus in his Old Roman rigor had allowed the process of purgation to go too far. The first spate had been sufficient to eliminate the worst of the ones Torquatus had referred to, rightly, as the caterpillars of the commonwealth. But then he had begun his cleansing of the Senate, and by now everyone of any consequence in the realm seemed to be denouncing everybody else. The prisons were filling up; the headsman’s arm was growing weary. Apollinaris meant to check the frantic pace of the killings, and eventually to halt them altogether.

He was pondering how he was going to reach that goal, three days after Torquatus had been taken into custody, when Lactantius Rufus came to him and said, “Well, Apollinaris, I hope your soul is at peace and your will is up to date. We are scheduled to be assassinated the day after tomorrow, you and I, and some fifty of the other Senators, and Torquatus also, and the Emperor too, for that matter. The whole regime swept away in one grand sweep, in other words.”

Apollinaris shot a look of bleak displeasure at the wily old Senator. “This is no time for jokes, Rufus.”

“So you see me as a comedian, do you? The joke will be on you, then. Here: look at these papers. The entire plot’s spelled out for you in them. It’s Julius Papinio’s work.”

Rufus handed a sheaf of documents across the desk. Apollinaris riffled hastily through them: lists of names, diagrammatic maps of the governmental buildings, a step-by-step outline of the planned sequence of events. It had occurred to Apollinaris that Rufus’s purpose in coming to him with these charges was simply to get rid of an annoyingly ambitious young rival, but no, no, this was all too thorough in its detail to be anything but authentic.

He considered what little he knew of this Papinio. A red-haired, red-faced man, old-line Senatorial family. Young, greedy, shifty-eyed, quick to take offense. Apollinaris had never seen much to admire in him.

Rufus said, “Papinio wants to restore the Republic. With himself as Consul, of course. I suspect he thinks he’s the reincarnation of Junius Lucius Brutus.”

Apollinaris smiled grimly. He knew the reference: a probably mythical figure out of the very distant past, the man who had expelled the last of the tyrannical kings who had ruled Roma in its earliest days. It was this Brutus, supposedly, who had founded the Republic and established the system of Consuls. Marcus Junius Brutus, the assassin of Julius Caesar, had claimed him as an ancestor.

“A new Brutus among us?” Apollinaris said. “No, I don’t think so. Not Papinio.” He glanced through the papers once more. “The day after tomorrow. Well, that gives us a little time.”