Ovid

28

My head was so full that night that I couldn't sleep. Instead I sent Bathyllus for a flask of mulled wine and settled down in my study to think things over.

The Illyrian Rebellion had almost crippled us. Sure, we pulled through eventually — the good old Roman Eagle always does, somehow — but it had taken two years for the situation to be normalised; which means we smashed the buggers. End of story, and hooray for us.

Only it wasn't the end. A year or so later Quinctilius Varus is massacred with three full legions in the Teutoburg, the northern frontier defences are suddenly non-existent and the Roman Eagle is up the creek without a paddle for the second time in three years.

And in between the two disasters Augustus's granddaughter gets caught with her pants down while her husband Paullus goes for broke conspiring against the emperor. Or whoever…

There had to be a link. The Paullus conspiracy had to fit in somewhere. And how it fitted in, I was sure, hinged on the identity of our fourth conspirator.

So what about Varus as a candidate? Standing in, as I'd suggested to Perilla, for Augustus himself? I sipped the mulled wine and went over in my mind what I knew about the guy. Ex-consul. Governor of Africa, then military governor of Syria, where he put down the Jewish revolt. Finally appointed by Augustus to be his personal viceroy in Germany…

Of which task he made the most almighty balls-up within living memory.

I shook my head. It didn't make sense. Oh, sure, given that Augustus was playing the conspirators' game, or pretending to, Varus was the natural choice for the job. He was the emperor's man beyond question, and he had a lifetime's experience as a diplomat and a general. A good all-rounder, experienced, tried and tested over a career stretching back thirty-odd years…

So how the hell had a guy like that managed to make such an almighty cock-up? How had the man who'd put down the Jewish revolt practically single-handed let himself be outgeneralled by a pack of unshaven louts who couldn't form a tortoise to save themselves?

The usual excuse was Arminius: a clever, smooth-talking Romanised bastard who'd twisted the poor senile governor round his little finger and then stamped on his balls. But that, I felt, wouldn't wash. Varus wasn't senile, he wasn't a military tyro, and as an ex-governor of Syria he'd dealt with guys that would’ve run rings round Arminius without so much as working up a sweat. So there had to be another explanation, and the obvious one was good enough to be going on with.

Varus's cock-up was intentional, and something had gone wrong.

The jug was almost empty. I tipped the last of the mulled wine into my cup and considered shouting for Bathyllus to bring me some more; but it was late, I'd already sent the little guy to bed and I suspected that another jugful would be one too much for me. I sipped at what was left, spinning it out.

Say at the start Varus had been quite genuinely Augustus's agent, his job being to guarantee the conspirators the protection of the Rhine legions. Only then Augustus tells the old guy that he's changed his mind, and that now Varus will be stringing the conspirators along. No legionary backing, no final bolthole. The whole thing's suddenly a sham. But maybe the scam's too tempting. Maybe Varus thinks that the way things are going the conspirators have a better-than-evens chance of pulling it off. And even although it involves a certain amount of risk his treason's in a good cause because Augustus would secretly welcome the chance to throw the Wart out on his boil-studded arse. Also if Postumus makes it past the starting gate then Varus is going to be very, very popular with the new regime. So Varus decides to carry on playing it for real. He sets out to screw up Germany, alienate the army and force the emperor to do what the poor bastard really wants to do all along…

Yeah, I thought. I'd go for that as a working theory.

Except that if Varus had doublecrossed Augustus then why should the emperor cover up for him instead of nailing him by his foreskin to the Senate House gates?

Shit. I swallowed the last of the mulled wine at a gulp. Varus was too good a candidate to pass up that easily. It was a shame the old bastard was dead. Maybe I could find a Babylonian necromancer and get him to call his spirit up from Tartarus or wherever. Bathyllus would know at least a dozen…

Then I remembered. I had one more valid option. Varus himself might be dead but his sister Quinctilia was still alive. Maybe she could tell me something. I thought of waking Bathyllus and sending him round to arrange a meeting, but of course it was far too late. Anyway, I was finally getting sleepy. That last mouthful of mulled wine had been one too many. Tomorrow morning would be early enough. I settled back on the couch and closed my eyes.

I was at a dinner party. Round the central table, lit by hanging oil lamps, reclined three figures. Silanus I recognised at once. He lay on the couch to my left dressed in an expensive party mantle, his arm draped across the shoulder of a naked woman who stared up at him with dead, empty eyes. The other guy, on the host's couch, was propped up on his left elbow, his pose stiff and formal, like the figure on an old tomb. His face was covered by a wax death mask.

They were waiting, I knew, for the principal guest to arrive. The dining-room doors swung open and a fourth man came in. He moved stiffly as if his limbs were not flesh and blood but stone. Silanus rose to his feet and led the man formally to the guest couch. He reclined, and in the light of the lamps I saw his face for the first time. It was cold, chiselled marble — the face of the dead emperor who stares down with fish-white eyes from the top of his mausoleum in the Field of Mars.

Augustus.

Silanus clapped his hands, once, and went back to his place. The doors opened again and Davus came in, the wound in his throat gaping and bloodless. He carried a tray down the length of the room and set it on the table. On the tray was a pastry map of the world and a cavalry longsword. Without a word he handed the sword hilt first to Augustus.

As the marble hand took the sword the atmosphere changed. Silanus and the woman leaned across the table, their eyes fixed on the pastry map. The dead man didn't move, but his wax mask seemed to take on an air of expectancy. The Augustus-statue rose to its feet, the sword held in a two-handed grip, its point hovering above the map's centre. Everything was suddenly very still.

Then the sword swung once…twice. Blood spurted onto the map, soaking the pastry, and two heads bounced and rolled across the table, one with a woman's braids, the other still wearing its mask. Silanus hadn't moved. Now he smiled up at the Augustus figure and nodded.

The statue raised its eyes and looked straight at me. It, too, was smiling. Slowly, horribly, with the grating sound of stone on stone, the head began to turn on the marble column that was its neck. Further and further it turned, beyond what I knew was humanly possible, until the face was in complete profile and I saw that it was not one face but two…

Two faces, one looking forwards, the other back, like the statues of the Door God Janus.

The head continued to turn, like the upper stone of a mill. The room faded and there was only the head and the terrible grating noise. I screamed…

And woke, sweating. Grey half-light shone through my study window, bringing with it the rumble of iron cartwheels on the stone surface of the street beyond.