everyone thought Great-Uncle would build himself an equally magnificent palace, but instead he made the new house exactly like the old one, only a little bigger and with annexes to accommodate his growing staff.” Claudius chuckled.
“Was Augustus in the house when it was struck by lightning?”
“Yes, he was. And that wasn’t Great-Uncle’s first encounter with lightning. He was very nearly k-k-killed by a thunderbolt during a night march in the Cantabarian campaign, after my grandfather Antonius was vanquished; a flash of lightning grazed Great-Uncle’s litter and struck dead the slave who was carrying a torch before him. After that narrow escape, he dedicated a shrine to Jupiter the Thunderer – there, if you squint you can see it over on the Capitoline, looking very impressive when the lightning illuminates it. Ever since, Great-Uncle’s had a morbid fear of lightning. How he hates a thunderstorm! I’m sure that’s why he left the b-banquet early, to take shelter under ground. The man fears nothing and no one here on earth, but he thinks that d-d-death from the sky might still claim him, as it did King Romulus. That’s why he was wearing that amulet tonight. He always wears it in stormy weather.”
“An amulet?”
“Did you not notice, Lucius? He was wearing an amulet made of sealskin, for protection, the way others carry a sprig of laurel.”
“Sealskin?”
“Just as the laurel is never struck by lightning, neither is the sea calf. It’s a scientific fact, confirmed by all reliable authorities. I myself prefer laurel.” He produced a sprig from inside his trabea.
“I suppose I should have taken a sprig,” said Lucius. The lightning and thunder were coming closer. The storm was almost upon them.
“Stay close to me; perhaps my sprig will protect you. There’s an interesting story about those laurel trees at the entrance to the imperial house. Not long after Livia was first betrothed to Augustus, she was riding in a carriage on a country road and a perfectly white hen dropped from the sky into her lap – with a sprig of laurel in its beak! Livia bred the hen to use its offspring in auguries, and planted the laurel, from which a sacred grove sprang up on the imperial estate along the Tiber, as well as the two specimens that flank the doorway of the imperial house. Augustus wore wreaths from those laurel trees in his triumphal pro cessions. Ah, but I digress…”
“You sometimes do.” Lucius smiled, then gave a start at a loud boom of thunder. He heard the hissing of the rain as it swept towards them over the Aventine.
“Well, you did ask about the sealskin amulet. And speaking of amulets, I’ve been th-th-thinking about the one you wear. I believe I may have an idea of what it is-”
He was interrupted by a flash of blinding light, followed at once by a tremendous thundercrack. Lightning had struck the Palatine, somewhere very close to them.
“Do you think it struck the imperial house?” said Lucius. They ran to the end of the porch and peered towards the residence. There was no sign of fire. Then a sudden downpour obscured everything beyond the temple steps. Wind blew rain onto the porch; the pediment gave no protection. Claudius opened one of the tall doors. They slipped inside the temple and closed the door behind them.
The air smelled of incense. A giant statue of Apollo dominated the sanctuary, lit by flickering lamps mounted on the walls. On this stormy night, it seemed to Lucius that the place had an eerie magic. The air itself carried a charge of excitement. Gazing up at the god, Lucius felt hackles rise on the back of his neck. With an uncanny certainty he knew that something very important was going to happen that night.
He looked behind him. Claudius was sitting on a marble bench against one wall, already nodding, his jaw hanging open and a bit of drool suspended from his lower lip. Truly, anyone who saw him at that moment would have assumed he was an idiot. Poor Claudius!
The uncanny sensation subsided. Lucius sat beside Claudius, listening to him softly snore, and waited for the raging storm to subside.
When the massive door began to swing inwards, he gave a start. Had he been dozing, and for how long? A man entered the temple, dressed in the tunic of an imperial servant and carrying a torch.
“Claudius? Are you here, Claudius?”
Claudius woke. He clutched Lucius’s arm and wiped a bit of drool from his chin. “What? Who’s there?”
“Euphranor.” It was one of the emperor’s most trusted freedmen. His hair was black but his beard was almost entirely white. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” He approached and handed Claudius a wax tablet of the sort that could be written on, rubbed flat, and written over.
By the light of the torch Claudius peered at the tablet. In a crabbed, elderly hand was written the quaint phrase “Come, quick as asparagus,” with the word asparagus marked through and the word lightning scrawled above.
“A message written in Great-Uncle’s own hand!” declared Claudius, obviously surprised. “The man has an army of scribes to take his dictation at any moment of the day or night. Why in his own hand? What can he want so urgently? And why ‘quick as lightning ’?”
Lucius suddenly felt out of place. “I suppose I should go home now-”
“While the storm still rages? No, no! You’ll come with me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Great-Uncle didn’t say for you not to come. Follow me, cousin – quick as asparagus! Euphranor, lead the way.”
Pelted by rain, they followed Euphranor back to the house, past the dining rooms and the garden, where rain descended in a torrent, and then through a series of doors and a maze of hallways. At last they came to a narrow doorway that opened onto a flight of stairs leading down.
“I’ll stay here,” said Euphranor. “You’ll find him at the bottom of the steps.”
Claudius descended the long, steep, winding flight of stairs with Lucius following. At last they arrived in a lamp-lit, subterranean room. Lucius saw at once that the ceiling and the walls were decorated with mosaics; the thousands of tiny tiles glinted and shimmered. Among the dazzling images he recognized King Romulus with his long beard and iron crown. Another image could only be the infant twins, Romulus and his brother Remus, adrift on the Tiber in a basket. Another image showed Romulus being carried up to the heavens on a ray of light sent by Jupiter. There were many more images, all illustrating stories from the life of the Founder.
“What is he doing here?”
Lucius turned to see Augustus, standing closer than Lucius had ever seen the man before. What terrible teeth the emperor had, all yellow and decayed, and how short he was, wearing slippers instead of the thick-soled shoes that usually made him taller. Lucius told himself he should be at least a little awed, but the presence of the emperor was underwhelming. In his younger days, the fair-haired Octavius was said to have been the best-looking boy in Roma, so pretty that his uncle Julius Caesar took him for a lover (so went the whispered rumour), and in later days, the boy Octavius who became the man Augustus had commanded sufficient authority to bend whole nations to his will. But at that moment Lucius saw only a little old man with rotten teeth, unkempt straw-coloured hair, tufts of hair in his nostrils, and bushy eyebrows that met above his nose.
Eye to eye with the ruler of the world, Lucius was buoyed by a curious sense of confidence, remembering the premonition he had experienced in the Temple of Apollo that something very important was about to happen.
“Shall I send him away, Great-Uncle?” said Claudius.
Augustus stared at Lucius, so long and hard that Lucius’s confidence began to waver. The old man finally spoke.
“No. Young Lucius Pinarius may stay. He is an augur now, is he not? And his ancestors were among the very first augurs in Roma. A Pinarius accompanied Romulus when he took the auspices, and before that the Pinarii were keepers of the people’s first shrine, the Great Altar of Hercules. The state assumed that duty over 300 years ago; perhaps I should return the Great Altar to the hereditary keeping of the Pinarii. Reviving ancient traditions is pleasing to the gods. And he is a blood relation, for what ever that’s worth. Perhaps, Lucius Pinarius, the gods themselves delivered you here to me tonight.”
Lucius averted his eyes, humbled by the emperor’s scrutiny. He stared at the mosaics above them.
“Images from the life of Romulus, as you no doubt perceive,” explained Augustus. “The chamber in which we stand is the Lupercale, the sacred cave where the foundling twins Romulus and Remus were suckled by the she- wolf. I myself discovered the cave when the foundations for this house were being laid, and under my directions it’s been decorated as a sacred shrine.”
