“He says that very soon there will be a new emperor in Roma.”

Domitian sat back, nervous ly picking at something on his forehead. “When?”

“He cannot say exactly. But very soon.”

“A matter of months?”

The translator questioned Eberwig. “Not months, Dominus. Days.”

There was a flash of lightning, followed by thunder.

“Take him away,” said Domitian.

Eberwig protested. The translator cleared his throat. “He says, what of his reward?”

“If his prophecy comes true, let him seek his payment from my successor!” snapped Domitian. “Now take him away and keep him under close guard.”

An uneasy silence followed. Eventually Stephanus appeared, slightly out of breath from running. Lucius was brought back to the courtyard. Stephanus stepped forward and handed him the lituus.

There could be no more delaying. Lucius took a deep breath. He looked at the lituus in his hands. He had not touched it in many years. What a lovely thing it was, with all its intricate carvings of birds and beasts!

As he had seen his father do many times when he was a boy, Lucius gazed up at the skies and marked out a zone for his augury. The sky was cooperative: almost at once a flash of lightning rent the dark clouds to the north, and then another. Lucius waited awhile longer and was rewarded by a third flash of lightning, so close that it illuminated the whole courtyard with a spectral blue light. It was followed by a tremendous clap of thunder that made everyone jump except Lucius, whose thoughts were focused entirely on what he was about to say.

He turned and faced Domitian. “The augury is done, Dominus.”

“So quickly?”

“The signs are unmistakable.”

“And?”

“There is to be a great change. A change so great it will affect the whole world. The change will be sudden, not gradual. It will happen in a single moment – like a thunderclap.”

“When?”

“The signs are very clear about that – unusually so. By counting the branches of all three strikes and observing their relationship to the main trunks of lightning, an exact number of days and hours from this moment can be calculated. The event will take place-”

“Not out loud, you fool!” snapped Domitian. “Whisper it in my ear.”

Lucius approached the emperor. He had never been so close to the man before. He was close enough to smell his breath, and to know that he had eaten onions recently. He was close enough to see a black hair that grew out of one nostril, and a wart on the man’s forehead. He was close enough to kill him, if he’d had a weapon. He fought back the revulsion he felt and spoke in Domitian’s ear.

“Exactly ten days hence, during the fifth hour of the day.”

Domitian calculated the date. “Fourteen days before the Kalends, in the hour before noon. You’re certain?”

“Absolutely.”

Domitian gripped Lucius’s wrist, squeezing it painfully hard. “You will return here on that day, Lucius Pinarius. You will be with me during that hour. If your prediction is false – if you’re playing some trick on me – I’ll see you strangled at my feet. Do you understand?”

“I understand, Dominus.”

“You will speak of this to no one.”

“As you wish, Dominus.”

Domitian released him. The emperor sat back, nervously picking at the wart on his forehead with one hand and making a curt gesture of dismissal with the other. Guards escorted Lucius from the courtyard, through the palace, and all the way back to his house. One of the guards, he noticed, took up a post across the street from his door. His comings and goings were to be carefully watched, and no one could call on him without being observed. He could expect no further visits from Flavia Domitilla.

That night he wrote a coded letter to Apollonius, telling him of the day’s events – his summons to the palace, the nervous demeanour of Domitian, and the sham augury, which he described in detail. Where was Apollonius now? Nerva would know. When he was done, Lucius would dispatch Hilarion to take the letter to an intermediary who would take it to Nerva. They never communicated directly.

Lucius finished the letter with the customary closing of “Farewell,” and felt a chill as he wrote the word.

On the morning of the fourteenth day before the Kalends of Domitianus, the month previously known as October, Praetorian Guards arrived at the house of Lucius Pinarius.

Lucius was ready for them, dressed in his best toga. He had slept surprisingly well the night before. He rose at daybreak and wrote farewell letters to his old friends Dio and Epictetus, and even an affectionate message to Martial. Hilarion stood by, unsuspecting. Lucius had told him nothing about his visit to the palace; the less Hilarion knew, the better for him. What a dreary morning this would have been, had Hilarion suspected that Lucius would be dead before midday. Instead, Hilarion was in a cheerful mood, and kept exhorting him to eat something, unable to understand why Lucius had no appetite.

Lucius took a stroll through his garden. The sky was overcast but not stormy. The garden was usually dull and dreary at this time of year, but all the recent rain had kept everything quite green. At the centre of the garden stood the statue of Melancomas he had inherited from Epaphroditus. It had arrived just the day before, and Lucius had insisted that the workmen install it at once. Like Epaphroditus, he chose to display the statue not on a pedestal but at ground level. It was a pity, Lucius thought, that he would have so little time to enjoy it.

When the Praetorians arrived, Hilarion was quite flustered. Lucius assured him that all would be well, and Hilarion seemed to believe him, until Lucius told him about the letters in his study, to be delivered in the event that he failed to return. Hilarion began to weep. Lucius embraced him, then left with the Praetorians.

He was led farther into the palace than he had ever been led before. The reception room where Domitian awaited him appeared to be attached to the emperor’s private bed chamber, for through an open door Lucius glimpsed an unmade bed piled with richly embroidered pillows and coverlets. On this morning, the emperor was not stirring far from the place where he felt most secure.

At the far end of the small reception room was a dais where Domitian sat on a chair, attended only by Catullus and the small-headed creature. There was also a water clock on the dais, a beautifully made device that used a dial to indicate the hours of the day. The dial was very nearly touching the numeral for the fifth hour of the day.

A balcony to one side admitted weak daylight from the overcast sky. Lucius instinctively took a closer look at the balcony, wondering if it might provide a means of escape, but the room was located on one of the palace’s uppermost floors. The balcony looked down on a garden several stories below.

“Take off your clothes,” said Domitian.

Lucius sighed. “Dominus, I‘ve already been searched for weapons. Your guards did a thorough job.”

“I didn’t ask if you’d been searched. I told you to take off your clothes. All of them!”

Lucius did as he had been ordered. He felt no embarrassment. Instead, he felt a kind of freedom, as he had felt when he stood naked before the emperor and all of Roma in the amphitheatre.

Domitian sent the small-headed creature to look through Lucius’s discarded toga and undergarments to make sure they contained no weapons, then sucked in a sharp breath when he noticed the fascinum on the chain around Lucius’s neck. “That amulet! You always wear it, don’t you? And no harm ever befalls you.”

“That is not true, Dominus. I’ve suffered harm. Those closest to me are all dead or banished, because of you.”

“But you still live. Is it because of the amulet? Give it to me!” Domitian’s wide eyes were bloodshot and his face was haggard. He looked as if he had not slept for days.