Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [101]
Calaphilus reached down and gently wiped a tear from Agrinella’s porcelain-like cheek. ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘I think not.’
At the same time, a large phalanx of the praetorian guard were accompanying a similarly brutal entry into the house of Antonia Vinicius.
Thalius Maximus arrived at the villa of his former wife a few moments after the guards had stormed the place and fought a brief, yet bloody, battle with the personal guard of Senator Germanicus. Four men lay dead in the corridor along with two of Thalius’s soldiers. The praefectus expressed his condolences for the losses to his loyal captain as he entered the great hall. Even from a distance he could clearly make out Antonia’s shrill voice.
‘Oh, you are in trouble now, my dove,’ he said as Antonia ceased squabbling with her weeping handmaiden.
Astonishingly, given the circumstances, she began to laugh. Softly at first but then, encouraged by Thalius returning her smile, more raucously. ‘You have waited for an age, Thalius, to get me in such a compromising position. I trust that you shall sleep stiffly and long this night.’
It was typical, thought Thalius, that even in his moment of absolute triumph and her moment of total defeat, that his ex-wife could still get the better of him with her vicious and piercing words.
‘I give you a choice, Antonia,’ he said flatly, and with no delight in his voice. Your crimes are uncovered. Face the senate with your treachery, bring your husband down by association, and still end your days with a public execution...’
‘Or?’ asked Antonia with a wry smile.
‘Take your own life. Die with dignity in your own home.’
Antonia hesitated, perhaps still believing for a moment that her husband’s position would save her.
‘That will not be the case,’ Thalius said, reading her thoughts. ‘The
senator will disown you, to save himself. You know that, do you not?’
‘I suspected as much,’ Antonia said, recovering her sense of humour as the situation demanded. ‘He is a man, after all, and all men are worms, Thalius. You know this.’
‘Perhaps, my sweet,’ said Thalius and then, in a moment of uncharacteristic weakness, he kissed his former wife on the forehead. ‘I loved you once. I would have given you the sun and the stars if they were mine to give...’ He shook his head and handed a small, razor-sharp knife to Antonia. ‘The guards will return within the hour to arrest you for treason.
Goodbye, Antonia.’
‘We live in troubled times,’ the Pharisee said. ‘Such times require order from the chaos.’
Marcus Lanilla smiled and nodded his agreement whilst Fabius merely looked nervous and fidgeted constantly.
‘May I ask, Titus, why you have agreed to help us when others within your brethren, notably your leader, have met our entreaties with disdain and contempt?’
Titus had an answer ready almost before the words had left Marcus’s lips. ‘The Jewish people stand at a crossroads,’
he noted. ‘We face the choice of dealing with the realities of the Roman world, and flourishing within it, or denying them, and perishing along with all of the other ignorant savages for whom reality is an overrated pastime.’
‘But you wish for freedom, surely?’ asked Fabius.
‘It is my experience that one should be careful what one wishes for,’ noted Titus. ‘For what is a man to do if he should get exactly what he wants?’
Marcus liked this clever and dangerous little man. The ambitious Titus, it was known, craved Hieronymous’s position and, according to rumour, had attempted to use a recent incident of alleged indiscretion with a gentile woman to compromise the old man. Now, seemingly, he was happy that the Romans had finally decided to crack down on the Zealot problem, and to help them behind Hieronymous’s back. His implications that Hieronymous