DECEMBER melted into January, marking a drunken, miserable winter for Paulinus. The drunkenness and misery vanished overnight when the news came roaring to his cousin’s palace: Governor Saturninus of Upper Germania had launched a revolt. He had proclaimed himself Emperor, and at the head of an army of legionnaires and tribesmen he was on his way to Agrippinensis.

Thirteen

UPPER Germania now!” Senator Scaurus murmured. “What’s next? Gaul? Spain?”

More murmurs. Business had conducted itself as usual in the Senate House, the rebellion barely mentioned. Saturninus was dismissed as an upstart, a disappointed old soldier with a few blue-painted natives trailing in his wake. But more senators than usual had lingered after the conclusion of business, clustering together in the marble tiers as they nervously fingered the purple borders of their togas.

“If Egypt goes then we’ll be blockaded—”

“—and with the Emperor off in Dacia—”

Scaurus’s voice again, low and panicky. “I say we negotiate with Saturninus now. Pacify him. Who knows what may happen? Do we want another year like the Year of the Four Emperors, senators falling to the wayside right and left because they sided with the wrong claimant? Do we—”

“The Year of the Four Emperors.” The voice of the god Augustus’s grandson cut through the commotion like a knife. Eyes turned toward the gray-haired figure sitting some distance separate, drawing idle circles on the marble rail with a pen. “I wondered when someone would mention that. Twenty years ago, and still none of you can speak of it without quaking.”

“Easy for you to say, Norbanus,” Scaurus snapped. “You don’t scrabble for your life like the rest of us when the heads start to roll. What do you know about quaking?”

“I know that my son is in Lower Germania as we speak.” Marcus was still looking down at the pen. “I know that he has a touch of Imperial purple in his veins, just as I do. I know that Governor Lappius appointed him unofficial commander of Lower Germania’s legions—in deference to his name. Which means that when Saturninus makes his account of those who threaten him, Paulinus will head the list.”

A little silence. Marcus Norbanus labored to his feet, old and tired in his senatorial toga, his face fallen into crumpled lines and his shoulder very stooped. But his voice still reverberated around the Senate, and everywhere the little clusters of frightened men turned toward him.

“The Year of the Four Emperors. The year after Nero; the year of Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian. Most of us remember it quite vividly. I certainly do. Galba confiscated our family estates, Otho sent my father a polite invitation to commit suicide, and Vitellius threw me in a cell where I spent three months nursing a dislocated shoulder, reading whatever books my few remaining friends could smuggle me and wondering if I would be assassinated. And when Vespasian marched in and decided I was harmless enough to be let out, I was verminous, orphaned, paupered, crippled, and alone—since most of my family had decided to divorce themselves from the ‘protection’ of my Imperial name.”