Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,60

they have these Delatores, given incentive to charge others with crimes for one-third of the condemned man’s property!”

The Legate was now sizing up my brother and every flaw in Lucius shone in the light; his cowardly posture, his trembling hands, his shifty eyes, his growing desperation in the pursing of his lips.

I turned to Lucius.

“Do you realize, you madman, whoever you are, what you are asking of this seasoned and wise Roman officer? What if he should believe your insane lies? What will become of him when the letter arrives from Rome inquiring into my whereabouts and the disposition of my fortune!”

“Sir, this woman is a traitor!” shouted Lucius. “On my honor I swear—”

“What honor is that?” asked the soldier under his breath. His eyes fixed on Lucius.

“If Rome were such,” I said, “that families as old as mine could be so easily dispatched as this man asks you now to do with me, then why would the widow of Germanicus dare to go before the Senate for a trial?”

“They are all executed,” said my brother, who was at his worst and most solemn, and seemed to have lost all touch with the effect of his words, “every one of them, because they were in a plot to kill Tiberius and I was given Safe Conduct and passage out for reporting them, as was my duty, to the Delatores, and to Sejanus, with whom I spoke myself!”

The possibilities were making themselves known slowly to the Legate.

“Sir,” I said to Lucius, “have you anything else on your person that identifies you?”

“I don’t need anything else!” said Lucius. “Your fate is death.”

“Same as it was for your Father?” asked the Legate, “and your wife? Had you children?”

“Throw her into prison tonight, and write to Rome!” declared Lucius. “You’ll see that I speak the truth!”

“Arid where will you be, whoever you are, while I am in prison? Looting my house?”

“You slut!” shouted Lucius. “Don’t you see this is all feminine wiles and lurid distraction!”

There was shock among the soldiers, revulsion in the face of the Legate. Flavius moved next to me.

“Officer,” asked Flavius with tempered dignity, “what am I allowed to do on behalf of my Mistress against this madman?”

“You use such words again, Sir,” I said firmly to Lucius, “and I’ll lose my patience.”

The Legate took Lucius’s arm. Lucius’s right hand went to his dagger.

“Just who are you?” the Legate demanded. “Are you one of the Delatores? You tell me you turned on your whole family?”

“Tribune,” I said, laying the gentlest touch yet on his arm. “My Father’s roots went back to the time of Romulus and Remus. We know no origins other than those in Rome. It was the same with my Mother, who was herself the daughter of a Senator. This man is saying rather . . . horrible things.”

“So it seems,” said the Legate, narrowing his gaze, as he inspected Lucius. “Where are your friends here, your companions; where do you live?”

“You can’t do anything to me!” said Lucius.

The Legate glared at Lucius’s hand on the dagger.

“You prepare to draw that against me!” asked the Legate.

Lucius clearly was at a loss.

“Why did you come to Antioch?” I demanded of Lucius. “Were you the bearer of the poison that killed Germanicus?”

“Arrest her!” shouted Lucius.

“No, I don’t believe my own accusation. Not even Sejanus would put such treachery in the hands of a petty scoundrel like you! Come now, what else do you have on your person to connect you with this family, this Safe Conduct which you say came from the pen of Sejanus?”

Lucius was utterly baffled.

“I certainly have nothing belonging to me to connect me to your wild and bloody sagas and tales,” I said.

The Legate interrupted me. “Nothing to connect you to this name?” He took the Safe Conduct from my hand.

“Absolutely nothing,” I said, “nothing but this madman here who is spouting horrors, and would lead the world to believe that our Emperor has lost his wits. Only he connects me with his bloody plot without witness or verification, and hurls insults at me.”

The Legate rolled up the Safe Conduct. “And your purpose here, Madam?” he asked in a whisper.

“To live in peace and quiet,” I said softly. “To live in safety and under the true shelter of Roman rule.”

Now I knew the battle had been won. But something else was required to seal the victory. I took another gamble.

Slowly I reached for my dagger and slowly I brought it out of its sling.

Lucius leapt back at once. He drew his