Two looming figures emerged from the darkness, dressed in the armor and black robes of the Vigiles Urbani—local police known as Watchmen.
“This is a grave mistake!” Caelus screamed, the echoes of his cry bouncing off the rock walls and fading into the black void. “Do you know who I am?”
“The great Caelus, chief astrologer to Caesar.”
Jupiter! They know who I am. This was not a mistake!
“Yes, I am. I am counselor to Caesar. And he will have your heads for this!”
Unfazed, the big Watchman pressed down on him and pinned his arm to his side while the smaller one, who was not small at all, produced a large sword. It hovered over his forearm for a moment like a snake.
“He’s the one you want!” Caelus cried out, nodding to Virtus. “He’s young, strong, perfect for hard labor. Let me go! My hands are of no use to you!”
“God has a purpose for everyone.”
Caelus looked up in horror as the hulking figure above him raised his blade to reveal a black Chi tattoo under his arm.
“If your right hand causes you to sin….”
The blade came down, and Caelus wailed in unbearable pain.
The Watchman held up a finger in the dim light.
Caelus could see it clearly enough through the blur of his tears. It was his finger! His own finger and signet ring! The rest of his hand lay on the floor like a piece of red, bloody meat.
They’ve cut off my hand!
“Don’t kill me!” he moaned, suddenly aware that he could see only one Watchman.
He heard a whoosh from behind and felt something strike him in the back of the head. He fell flat on his face into the earthen floor, then rolled over to see a headless corpse, blood spurting up from the neck.
They had beheaded Virtus!
He tried to scream but heard only a whistle passing through his slack jaw. Then he recognized the medallion on the chest of the collapsing corpse and realized it was he himself who had been beheaded.
They’ve cut off my head! My head!
He felt the breath of life escaping him as this last, grotesque visage before his eyes began to fade.
Thus Spurius Balbinus, the spindly son of gypsies who had risen to become Caelus of Rome, Chief Astrologer to Caesar, passed from this world to the next.
And he never saw it coming.
II
The small, ornate box took three weeks to arrive in Rome. It was delivered to Caesar in his private box at the great coliseum known as the Flavian Amphitheater during the afternoon gladiator contests. As Titus Flavius Domitianus, the 11th emperor of the Roman empire, read the attached note, his fingers trembled: Due to unforeseen circumstances, Caelus has retired forever. Soon you will join him. The next government of Rome will be ruled by reason, not by dark arts. It was stamped with the Chi-Ro symbol of Chiron, the pseudonym of the mastermind behind the militant Christian group Dominium Dei.
Domitian opened the box and saw the severed finger and signet ring of his chief astrologer. Shaking with rage, the 44-year-old emperor rose to his feet on buckling knees and wordlessly exited the stadium through the Passaggio di Commodo, a newly constructed private tunnel that led back to the palace on Palatine Hill. Close behind him were three key amici from his inner circle: Titus Petronius Secundus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard; Titus Flavius Clemens, consul and his cousin; and Lucius Licinius Ludlumus, a scion of Rome’s wealthiest family and the Master of the Games.
Only when they were a good distance into the tunnel, where he was sure they could not be overheard, did Domitian unleash his fury and scream, “Will it take the death of Caesar for anyone to believe the conspiracy is real?”
Dressed in royal purple and embroidered gold, the balding, pot-bellied Domitian was in the 15th year of his reign, longer than any Caesar before him since Tiberius. He was also the first to demand to be officially addressed as dominus et deus, or “Lord and God.” But this humiliating assassination of his chief astrologer by Dominium Dei or “Rule of God”—itself a mockery of his own divinity — only made him more paranoid than usual. He was terrified that he would not live to see a day beyond September 18, the day the stars said he would die. Worst of all, the only credible source in his eyes to give him hope otherwise — Caelus — was gone, having failed to foresee even his own death.
“And you, my chief protector!” Domitian glared at Secundus. “Your Praetorian in plain toga couldn’t even protect Caelus. How am I to believe you can protect me?”
Secundus, realizing his own fate was on the line, spoke in a brave voice. “My man in Ephesus was but one in a city of villainy. Here in Rome, however, Your Highness has thousands of Praetorian surrounding you.”
“Surrounding me! Who will protect me from your men? You all want me dead!”
They continued to walk on in silence, only their steps echoing ominously like the inevitable march of doom. The tunnel was brilliantly lit by rows of torches on either side to ensure that no shadow could hide a would-be assassin. So great was Domitian’s fear.
As usual, it was left to Ludlumus, a former actor and failed playwright, to break the silence with his gravelly yet soothing deep voice. “No doubt this lapse of security is unacceptable. Nor any doubt now that Caelus was a fraud. But neither tragedy should cast doubt upon your own destiny. If anything, your continued survival is proof yet again that the gods protect you, that you indeed are one of them. You cannot kill a god, despite what second-rate playwrights might like to believe.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” Domitian murmured, annoyed that Ludlumus would use this moment to take yet another swipe at his former rival in the arts, Athanasius of Athens. “But Rome must make retribution for this public act against Caesar. We must therefore produce Chiron and execute him in public.”
Domitian often spoke of himself in the third person when he felt threatened. This usually foreshadowed an order of execution of some kind, the object of which was any unfortunate fellow in his sight. In the last few years alone Domitian had executed a dozen prominent senators and countless noblemen in his Reign of Terror, if only to confiscate their fortunes to feed Rome’s swelling public debt. This was on top of the usual allotment of Jews and Christians. But the rise of this Dei insurgency was a new phenomenon altogether, and the shocking, public nature of Chiron’s recent assassinations had unhinged the emperor.
“To be sure, it is time for Chiron to die,” Ludlumus said, halting for a moment, and then stated the obvious for Domitian’s own understanding. “But to kill Chiron, we must first produce him.”
Domitian addressed his cousin the consul. “Clemens, what do we know about these butchers who call themselves Dominium Dei?”
“Not much, Your Humanitas.”
Clemens often addressed Domitian as the Merciful One, mostly in hopes of eliciting mercy on the Christians, of which his wife Domitilla was one and himself an inquirer at the least and sympathizer at worst in Domitian’s eyes.
“No? Do they not receive secret instructions from the apostle John from his prison on Patmos?”
“John is the last of the Jewish apostles, Your Highness. His influence is contained to Asia Minor. The Dei are non-Jews in make-up, the spiritual progeny of those Christian converts that the apostle Paul left behind before his beheading by Nero. For decades these followers, both slave and freedman, have kept their faith secret even as they have faithfully served the governments of successive Caesars. These recent public executions are a radical departure from their reputation.”