Caligula’s assurance had been enough for the gullible young man.
It was a night of killing nine months after the Visitors had arrived. The palace’s smooth marble walls had echoed with the screams of slaughter into the early hours of the morning as the Stone Men hunted them down one by one. Their leader, that arrogant fool Stilson
… Caligula had made sure they captured him alive. His torment had lasted several days.
And Rashim?
Caligula giggled at the young man’s naivety. The night of the bloodletting, as all the other Visitors had been enjoying his lavish hospitality, in a quiet room away from the main atrium, away from the noise of raised voices and laughter the twelve Stone Men had assembled as requested in obedient silence.
Rashim spoke his special sequence of words that unlocked these automatons. The Stone Men had all seemed to momentarily fall into a trance only to stir moments later, a seemingly very different look in their cool grey eyes. Caligula’s first order had been for the one called ‘Lieutenant Stern’ to silence Rashim before he could speak again.
And so… the night of bloodletting began. Eight hours later, dawn had shone into the palace, shards of sunlight across these very marble floors spattered with drying pools of blood. His Stone Men were already stacking the bodies in the courtyard and preparing a funeral pyre. And the young man, Rashim, was waking up in his cage, muzzled. Waking up to the realization that the rest of his life was going to be lived in that cage.
Caligula stopped stroking the cool, smooth metal of the weapons spread out like museum exhibits across the purple satin. He looked out at the panorama of Rome getting ready to bed down for the evening. A rich, warm dusk bathed the labyrinth of clay-brick and whitewashed walls and terracotta roof slates. Thin threads of smoke rose into the sky from every district, many of them from bonfires of the daily dead. Disease, spoiled water… the normal attrition of such a big city. He shrugged. Things would be better for his people soon.
When he returned.
He listened to the distant echo of horns across the city, summoning the people out of their homes to pay homage to him. He could see the dark outline of his marvellous stairway up to Heaven; a stairway he was going to descend to visit this world once he had stepped into the white mists of Heaven and finally become what he’d always been destined to become.
God.
His reverie was broken by the sound of bare feet whispering on the smooth floor. He looked up to see Stern step forward to intercept a slave and in a hushed voice ask him what message he had for the emperor. The slave prostrated himself immediately as soon as he noticed Caligula looking at him.
‘What is it?’
‘The tribune of the Guard wishes to see you,’ replied Stern. ‘Says it is important.’
Caligula sighed. He was tired. He rather fancied curling up on the satin alongside the weapons and resting his pounding head against that cool metal. Soothing. But this tribune of the Palace Cohort… yes, he quite liked this new one. Quite an intelligent and engaging man, for an army officer.
What was his name? He struggled to remember.
‘Yes… all right, send him in.’
CHAPTER 52
AD 54, Imperial Palace, Rome
Cato entered Caligula’s atrium. He’d been in here on only half a dozen occasions since being appointed to command the Palace Guard. The room was cavernous and every noise seemed to echo endlessly. He had only ever seen Caligula alone. The emperor it seemed preferred his royal family as far away as possible. Preferred his own company.
He was alone except for one of his Stone Men, the one called Stern, and, of course, half a dozen slaves waiting patiently by the walls for his bidding; almost unnoticeable, still like frescos, murals. Not really humans in Caligula’s eyes.
Cato stopped a respectful distance from Caligula and saluted. ‘Caesar.’
The emperor smiled a greeting. ‘Ahh, yes, I remember now… it’s Cato, isn’t it?’
Cato nodded. ‘Yes, sire. Tribune Quintus Licinius Cato.’
‘Come on now, don’t be rude, Stern… say hello to our visitor.’
The support unit looked at Cato, blank-eyed. ‘Hello.’
Cato regarded him in silence for a moment. He had seen these things up close many times over the last few months. They unsettled his men. To be entirely honest, they unsettled him too. While he didn’t believe in supernatural explanations, he’d always been certain there was something not entirely human about them. Now he knew what they were — man-made: constructions made from flesh and bone instead of wood and metal.
‘What is it, Tribune?’ Caligula settled back on a seat. He beckoned Cato closer. ‘Come over so we’re not barking at each other.’
Cato took a dozen steps closer. As he neared Caligula, he noticed the Stone Man watching him closely.
‘Apparently it’s something important?’
‘It is, sire. I… I have come across evidence of a plot against you, Caesar.’
Caligula sat up. ‘A plot, you say?’
‘Plans to try and… well, to kill you, sire.’
The emperor’s face reddened slightly and he offered a tired sigh. ‘They never stop, do they?’ He pulled himself to his feet and approached Cato. ‘Kill me, you say?’
Cato nodded.
‘All these conniving old fools. All they care about are their own petty agendas. Advancing themselves, the careers of their sons and nephews, marrying money to status or the other way round. Cutting each other’s throats for profit. Awful people.’
He smiled sadly at Cato. ‘It’s the poor common man I feel so sorry for. Ruled by these inbred cretins for far too long.’ He noted the scrolls clasped in Cato’s hands. ‘So then, which meddling fools want me dead now?’
Cato silently held out several scrolls. ‘Correspondence, sire.’
Caligula snatched them from his hand, unrolled one and scanned it quickly. ‘Crassus! That dried-up old fig? Why am I not surprised by that?’ He looked up at Cato as if this was an old conversation they’d had many times over. ‘You know, I should have had every last one of those gossiping old relics done away with. I’m too much of a soft touch, that’s my problem.’ He looked back down at the correspondence and read on in silence.
‘Lepidus.’ Caligula looked genuinely surprised. ‘Lepidus?’
‘Yes, sire.’
Caligula opened the scroll and read further, his face turning a deeper red as his lips silently moved. ‘The ungrateful, fat wretch. I’ve given him and his men everything! They take pay three times what they would have normally! They… he… Lepidus pledged his allegiance!’
He swiped his hand at a bowl of fruit on a stand. The bowl clattered noisily on to the floor and rolled across it like a cart wheel, finally coming to rest, spinning and rattling with a noise that echoed round the atrium’s walls and off down the passage. Caligula spat a curse.
‘Lepidus… that slug actually got on his knees and prayed directly to me. Prayed to me! Said he always knew I was more than a mere man…’
‘The general tells you what he thinks you want to hear,’ said Cato.
Caligula balled his hand into a shaking fist. ‘The deceitful… He stood before me not so long ago… got on his knees before me and told me he believed in me! That he…!’
He turned on Cato. ‘You believe in me, don’t you, Tribune? You believe I will ascend to Heaven soon and take my place, don’t you? Because you know it isn’t long now! Not long at all!’
Cato hesitated. And realized in the space of several heartbeats that his hesitation was foolish. He should have anticipated this sort of question. Been ready and practised with an answer.
Caligula swung his hand up and placed a finger roughly against Cato’s lips. ‘No! Don’t answer me.’ His eyes were wide and glassy with tears of anger. ‘Tell me! Why… why is it so very hard to believe? Why is it so difficult to
