Chapter XII Trajan
XII
TRAJAN
“Should I wash your bedding today, dominus?” Alba asked as I was leaving the house.
“No, Alba. Not today.”
She nodded and bowed her head, though her expression of frustration was apparent.
During my parents’ time, Alba had kept an immaculate house.
But I’d always been a peculiar bachelor; even when I visited this home, I’d been a private person.
It was nothing new for me to keep her out of my bedchamber.
I did have documents from Julian and even my grandfather that were damning, but I always hid them. And sometimes I had maps of the empire out when I was tracking the movements of certain generals, marking their possible return and dates we needed to note.
It wasn’t that I thought Alba would’ve reported me if she found a map laid out with names and dates.
She couldn’t read, but she might wonder why I was looking at maps when I was no longer in the legion.
She likely wouldn’t find that suspicious.
I kept her and the rest of the household all out of my private quarters because they were all servants under my parents.
And though there was no proof that any of them had betrayed my father’s failure to Caesar, I thought it most probable the information came from inside this house.
The same way I’d sent Koska to gain information about Fausta was likely how it happened for my father.
Someone in the house informed Caesar of his gambling debts and his thievery from the treasury was discovered.
Then he was dead, and so was my mother. I didn’t blame Alba or any other slave for my parents’ actions, but I didn’t trust anyone either.
Julian was the one who consoled me after their deaths. It wasn’t long after that we left for our campaign into Carthage and we had a soul-shaking conversation about changing our world.
As I left through the back courtyard, I glanced up at the balcony that wrapped from my bedchamber to the side of the house.
This was the third day I left with Lela hiding there, and each time, my gut twisted.
What if Alba disobeyed me and decided to clean the bedchamber regardless of her master’s peculiar behaviors?
Then she’d find Lela, and then what? Suspecting one of them likely reported my father—intentionally or unintentionally—I couldn’t allow them to walk free with that information.
Time wasn’t on my side. I hoped Koska brought good news to me today. I had a feeling about Fausta, but I couldn’t take the chance in approaching her unless I was certain.
The streets were unusually empty this morning as I walked the most direct route to the senate house, planning to cut across the forum rather than take the street around it.
When I drew closer, the roar of a crowd echoed through the empty streets.
It wasn’t the usual buzz of excitement over something the praeco announced. Something was happening.
The street leading into the forum grew thick with people. I followed the crowd, keeping close to the stone wall of the buildings. I nudged a man in a blacksmith’s apron.
“What’s going on?”
“Caesar has made an appearance at the Temple of Vesta. He’s making a sacrifice to the goddess. His soothsayer is with him.”
I pushed my way to the front. Caesar was anxious to be making a public appearance at the Temple of Vesta. I managed to slide through the crowd until I had a good view of the front of the temple.
The Temple of Vesta was devoted to the virgin goddess of its name. No man, including Caesar, could enter the temple where the vestal virgin priestesses lived and kept Vesta’s eternal fire aflame. However, Caesar had done so once before.
When he first came into power many years ago, he marched into that very temple and kidnapped his own sister Camilla. She was a Vicus dragon, a white dragon, which were always female. And always devoted themselves as priestesses. Camilla had been living in this Temple of Vesta since she was fifteen.
But Caesar wanted her. I’d been told by a praetorian guard who I’d known when he was a centurion in our army that Igniculus himself carried Camilla over his shoulder all the way back to the palace. He’d taken her to his bedchamber, closed the door, and violated his own sister. Repeatedly.
The guards could hear her crying for help, though no one came to her aid.
At some point that night, she escaped into the courtyard and transformed into her white dragon.
But Caesar was right behind her. He shifted into his own giant red dragon and bit her wing, injuring her so that she couldn’t fly.
In half-skin, he chained her to the ground outside his palace under constant guard.
He waited for her to transform back into the pretty young woman that she’d been. But she never has.
Now, she lives in the pit that he had dug for her. The royal sister of Caesar lived in a hole in the earth, and everyone knows that she won’t ever transform into her female human form again. Not while he lives.
Caesar believed that was his punishment for entering the Temple of Vesta.
That is why he lowers himself at least once a year to come down from his palace atop the hill and sacrifice an animal to the goddess Vesta.
Perhaps he believes that Vesta will somehow convince Camilla to transform back into a woman.
But everyone knows she’d rather live and die a chained beast in the ground than live as a woman beneath his brutal hand.
The bellowing of a bull rose up as three men maneuvered the beast through the crowd on the other side. People parted to get out of the way as the white bull was led before the temple and to the altar.
The altar was little more than a flat platform and a well around the edges to catch the sacrificial blood.
Four lanterns of incense billowed scented smoke from each corner of the altar.
The bull bellowed again as his three leaders guided him onto the stone platform, then two stepped away while one held him.
The one left looked over at Caesar, who stood in a long red toga near the entrance of the temple. Behind him, on the interior of the shadowed archways, stood a row of vestal virgin priestesses. They were singing a low, solemn song.
It reminded me of the tune I heard Lela singing in Diana’s temple the night I met her. But none could compare to the haunting beauty of Lela’s voice.
Their melody carried across the now quiet square. The soothsayer—a grizzled man with a long white beard wearing a black robe, the color of his house—ambled forward, carrying a short sword balanced across both of his outstretched hands. He stopped at the altar, turning to face Caesar.
A hush fell over the murmuring throng, for everyone knew what was coming. I’d seen this display before myself, and yet I also held my breath in anticipation.
Caesar removed his toga and held it out to a slave at his right, then he tilted his face toward the sky. The cracking of bones shifting and realigning, and the familiar sizzle of magic in the air, accompanied his transformation into half-skin.
In moments, he was a gargantuan beast. Red-scaled, four horns jutting from his skull, thick tail lashing, he stood approximately sixteen feet tall in his muscular half-dragon form.
I’d seen hundreds of Romans in their own half-skin on the battlefields, but there was something terrible and menacing about this creature.
There was no doubt this fearsome Roman stalking across the open plaza toward the altar and the waiting sacrifice was a true killer.
Caesar didn’t need the sword that the soothsayer held out to him but he used it anyway. Gripping the hilt, he strode two more steps toward the bull, who snuffed the air nervously. The slave holding his reins stepped back while Caesar gripped the beast by a horn and sliced deep across its throat.
With a gurgling bellow, the bull’s eyes rolled to the heavens, then he fell heavily onto the altar platform. Caesar’s growl vibrated in the air, raising chills along my skin. I heard a woman whimper behind me. He was terrifying in this form.
Tail lashing, he remained still as the soothsayer hobbled forward and removed the short sword from his hand.
Mumbling some incantations we couldn’t hear, the soothsayer cut open the bull’s chest and stomach, spilling his entrails.
Though he didn’t transform into half-skin, he used his dragon strength to hack through thick flesh and bone until he dropped the sword with a clang on the stone and pulled the bull’s heart from his chest.
With ceremonial steps, he circled Caesar once, twice, and on the third time, he stopped in front of him, holding out the heart. Caesar took it with both hands and bit into the organ still dripping the bull’s blood. His growl of pleasure filled the quiet.
The soothsayer took the heart from him while Caesar held his arms out.
The priest dragged the heart along his arms and across his chest, still murmuring prayers.
He then turned toward the altar, lifted the heart above him, and placed it back beside the beast, whose blood was filling the well around the stone slab.
Caesar closed his eyes and lifted his face toward the sky while the soothsayer continued to murmur prayers, his own eyes closed, palms out as he prayed to Vesta for blessings.
It was blasphemy, to think that the goddess would forgive him for all he’d done, particularly to his own sister, one of her priestesses.
The soothsayer’s voice rose to a climactic finish, then he went suddenly quiet, dropping his chin to his chest. Even the priestesses were silent now, no longer singing. He knelt at the altar and dragged his finger through the blood on the stone, divining some signs from the gods.
After what seemed like forever, he stood before Caesar, palms together.
“The goddess requires no killing of kings by the hand of Caesar until Lupercalia has ended.”
Caesar chuffed, his dragon not liking the decree, but he nodded and marched back toward the temple entrance, transforming back into the man as he did.
There was a gasp of awe from some in the crowd, seeing the transformation.
Plebeians didn’t see the transformation take place often, if ever, since it was only ever done on the battlefield or behind closed doors of patricians’ homes inside the city.
The crowd continued to adore their emperor’s might.
I watched him speak to Drussus, who stood in the shadows away from the temple entrance near some of his own men.
I recognized two centurions, brothers of the Amethystus House who’d been military tribunes in Drussus’s army since the days we’d battled together in Carthage.
While Caesar dressed, still speaking to Drussus, I backed my way out of the throng. Taking a street that paralleled the forum, I made my way along the narrower alley that came out closer to the senate house.
As I arrived, I noticed my grandfather walking alongside Appius from the direction of the crowds still corralled around the Temple of Vesta. I met them near the giant black marble statue of Mars, the god of war—his sword raised high, wings spread wide, horns curling back, tail lashing the air.
I glanced around but there were very few in the forum; the closest merchant was a potter setting up his wares too far away to hear us.
“Did you see Caesar making his annual sacrifice?” I asked, unable to hide my sneer of distaste.
Grandfather nodded. “I did.”
“When is the triumph for Drussus?” I asked, knowing this would be a good time to meet, when all of the patricians’ eyes were elsewhere.
“Tomorrow. Kato and I were informed this morning.”
“That German barbarian will keep his head longer than most kings,” said Appius on a laugh.
My pulse leaped. “What do you mean?”
Appius gestured toward the Temple of Vesta. “You know Caesar won’t go against his soothsayer, which means he won’t kill the barbarian until after Lupercalia, rather than at the triumph.”
“I thought they killed the king of the Visigoths already,” I snapped.
“No.” Grandfather frowned. “You know Igniculus would only want a public slaying. And by his own hands. He always likes to kill the kings himself if his legions capture one alive. Why did you think he was dead?”
I couldn’t admit to him that I’d been to the palace and Caesar had threatened his life while he piled up bodies in his courtyard. I also couldn’t confess that I’d murdered one of them and added to the heap, thinking their Visigoth king was somewhere at the bottom of it.
“I was mistaken,” I said, shaking my head. “But this is good news. Or at least, it could be.”
“How?” asked Appius.
My hunch could be totally wrong, but Julian and I had both thought otherwise.
While in Moesia, we’d predicted that the Germanic king was indeed a dragon.
Julian swore by it after their combat, which left him with a poisoned gash in his side.
We’d deduced that the only way the barbarian’s army could’ve escaped that fiery forest was in dragon form.
“I think the virgin goddess Vesta may be on our side.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Grandfather.
“She has stayed the emperor’s hand. And this Visigoth king has an army we can use.”
“Had,” corrected Appius. “Drussus’s army wiped them all out.”
“No. I heard Drussus say himself that he’d be returning to Thrace to kill the rest.”
“Even if he does have an army left, what good will it do you with a dead king?”
“He won’t be dead if I help him escape.”
They both gaped at me, Grandfather then glancing around to be sure no one had wandered too close.
“Don’t be foolish, Trajan. That’s impossible,” he said. “You’d be caught.”
“No, I wouldn’t. I know a way.” I gripped my grandfather’s shoulder. “Just trust me. And set up the meeting with the others for the night of the triumph. All of Palatine Hill will be having parties to celebrate. It will be the perfect time to have a meeting of our own.”
“Just don’t do anything rash until we’ve met after the triumph.”
I nodded to them both, knowing I was lying, then headed toward the bathhouse where I planned to meet Koska and hopefully get news about Fausta. But my mind was already back home on Lela. I knew exactly what I was going to ask for my favor.