Wrapped in a woolen cloak, Lucius sat on a stone bench in his sodden garden under the threatening morning sky. A bolt of lightning flashed above his head, casting a weird light on the glistening greenery around him, followed a heartbeat later by a thunderclap that caused the leaves to tremble. If there were omens to be perceived in all the lightning, Lucius was oblivious to them. He was again at a low ebb in his life, the lowest he had experienced since the death of Cornelia. How he missed her still, especially at a time like this!
He also missed Apollonius. Since his disappearance from Roma, the Teacher had been constantly on the move, travelling from city to city in the Eastern provinces, staying just ahead of Domitian’s agents. For a long time, Lucius had no news of him at all, but eventually the senator Nerva paid Lucius a visit and revealed that he was in contact with Apollonius. Nerva even offered to send messages between the two of them, sharing with Lucius a cipher with which he could encode his letters.
Apollonius’s letters to Lucius were encouraging, but brief to the point of being perfunctory. A typical letter, after being decoded, read: “I am in a coastal town which must not be named, among good people. I told them the tale of my friend in Roma who lay beside a lion in the arena. How I wish I had been there to see it. Your courage gives courage to others. Farewell.”
When Lucius wrote to Apollonius, he said little about himself – there was little to report about his secluded existence – so he mentioned events in Roma that he thought might be of interest to the Teacher, though he suspected that Nerva already kept Apollonius well informed on that count.
These infrequent exchanges were no substitute for the personal contact Lucius once had enjoyed with the Teacher. With Apollonius no longer present to set a daily example for him, Lucius often felt confused and lost. He still adhered to the Teacher’s tenets, abstaining from wine, meat, and sex, but the sense of balance and well-being he had felt at the side of Apollonius often eluded him.
More lightning flashed across the sky, followed by a long rumble of thunder.
Despite the Teacher’s belief that one should not dwell on sadness, Lucius found himself brooding over the loss of all the people who had mattered most to him. The suicide of his father had been a terrible blow, and even after all these years, the death of Sporus still haunted him. His mother had died from the plague that followed the fall of ash on Roma after Vesuvius erupted; without her presence to unite the family, he had drifted further and further from his three sisters, and his appearance in the arena, a mark of shame despite his pardon, had completed the estrangement. He had grieved when Domitian banished Dio of Prusa; now the emperor had seen fit to banish Epictetus as well, along with virtually every other philosopher in Roma. And while once Lucius had taken enjoyment from Martial and his wit, the poet’s sycophantic loyalty to Domitian had alienated Lucius long ago; to him, Martial might as well have been dead. With Apollonius gone and likely never to return to Roma, Lucius felt forlorn and isolated, the lone survivor of the ongoing catastrophe that was his life.
These morbid thoughts had been set off by the terrible news Lucius had received the day before: Epaphroditus was dead.
No man had ever been a better friend to him. Epaphroditus had kept Lucius safe through the treacherous months that followed the death of Nero, had welcomed Lucius into his circle of learned friends, had been the only person in whom Lucius confided about his love for Cornelia. The intimacy of their friendship had eventually lessened, but only because Lucius’s melancholy had driven him to seek inspiration outside Epaphroditus’s circle.
Epaphroditus’s reappearance in his life, at the trial of Apollonius, had been as brief as it was unexpected. After being spared by Domitian, Lucius arrived home from the arena to find a letter from Epaphroditus, delivered not by imperial courier but by a private messenger. The letter expressed joy at Lucius’s good fortune, but also made it clear there could be no further contact between them: “My return to imperial service and your singular history with the emperor make it impossible that we should be as close as we once were. You are a dangerous man to know. So am I. Let us keep a distance between us, for both our sakes. But know, Lucius, that I am forever fond of you, and I wish you well. I trust you will destroy this message after you have read it.”
In the years since, Lucius had not seen or communicated with his old friend and mentor. And now Epaphroditus was dead.
Hilarion, gleaning information in the Forum the preceding day, had brought Lucius the news. Hilarion had not been able to discover the cause or the exact circumstances of Epaphroditus’s death. Lucius hoped to learn more from the visitor he expected to arrive at any moment.
The cloudy morning sky turned as dark as night. A heavy rain began to fall. Shivering in his woolen cloak, Lucius retreated from the garden to his library, where Hilarion was stoking the fire in the brazier. Above the pelting of rain against the roof and the peals of thunder, Lucius did not hear the knock at the front door, but Hilarion did. The freedman showed the visitor to the library, then discreetly vanished.
Her long, voluminous cloak concealed her gender. The hood concealed her face. Did she wear the cloak to protect herself from the inclement weather, or because it allowed her to traverse the Palatine without being recognized? She stood before the brazier and warmed her hands for a moment, then pushed back the hood and shook her head, freeing tresses of lustrous black hair in which there were a few strands of grey.
Flavia Domitilla was the emperor’s niece, the daughter of his sister, Domitilla, but she did not share his typical Flavian features. Her cheekbones were high, her nose was small, her forehead broad. She had dark, flashing eyes and a sensual mouth. The outlines of her cloak hinted at a voluptuous figure giving way to stoutness. Though Flavia’s life scarcely resembled that of a Vestal – she had borne seven children – something about her reminded Lucius of Cornelia. Perhaps it was her willfulness and her spirit. Or perhaps it was simply that Flavia was the first woman since Cornelia who had inspired in Lucius a faint stirring of lust. But it was not to woo him, or even to seek his friendship, that she had come.
“Greetings, Flavia,” he said.
“Greetings, Lucius.”
“What can you tell me about the death of Epaphroditus?” he said.
She sighed. “I gather the two of you were close friends, back in the days of my grandfather?”
“Yes. I never ceased calling Epaphroditus my friend, though I hadn’t seen him in quite some time.”
“What have you heard?”
“Only what my freedman was able to pick up from the gossips in the Forum, which wasn’t much. It’s true that he’s dead, then?”
“Yes.”
“How did it happen?”
“Domitian condemned him. He took his own life.”
“But why? What was the charge?”
“The same charge my uncle always brings against his enemies, whether real or imagined. He was accused of conspiring against Caesar.”
“And was he?”
Flavia gazed at the fire. “You’re assuming that I would know such a thing – that I know who wants to see the emperor dead.”
“I should think that many men desire his death. But only a few would risk everything to make it happen. Was Epaphroditus one of them?”
Flavia pursed her lips. The firelight glinted in her eyes. Lucius found her beauty distracting. What would Apollonius say about her presence in Lucius’s house? Certainly, the Teacher would disdain the physical attraction Lucius felt towards her, but Flavia was not here because of that. She was here because they both desired the death of Domitian. What would Apollonius think of that? Would the Teacher ever approve of murder, even the murder of a tyrant?