The day after Gaius’s failed speech at the senate, on the tenth Kalends of June 472, an extraordinary snowfall took place in Rome. The people, many of whom were accustomed to sleep under the stars on their roofs in the summer, awoke to cold and bedclothes that had become sodden with a dense layer of soft, melting snowflakes. Gaius, who always slept indoors, was not so much woken by the sudden drop in temperature as the laughter of children and the rattle of the shutters of his bedroom as they were repeatedly struck by something from the outside.

The dreams of the disgraced senator were a comfort to him in these stressful times and he resented being disturbed from them. Just now he had been chatting amicably with the empress and she had apologised for her harsh words in public. ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘you and I understand that was just to underscore a policy that has to be impressed upon the others with dramatic clashes. I need you for this very purpose. Lambasting you was no reflection of our friendship, you understand. Please don’t be afraid.’

On realising that he had only been dreaming these words, Gaius felt miserable. The truth – and for the sake of his survival, he had to face the truth – was that the empress hated him and there would be no reconciliation, no return to favour. How many people, he wondered, had experienced such comforting dreams in the days before the visit from the assassin?

On opening his shutters, to shout at the children who had disturbed him, Gaius was amazed. The streets were white. The lines of birch trees along the roadside were equally white. Their trunks appeared to be wrapped in white gauze. And while Gaius had seen the bare-leafed trees in winter with snow and frost on their branches, he had never before in his entire life seen fresh spring leaves with snow upon them.

A snowball hit the shutters and Gaius felt the cold fragments of it on his cheek. Too astonished to cry out with threats against the miscreants, he simply muttered, ‘well, well,’ and retreated into his room. This was extremely strange and while Gaius mistrusted extraordinary events, he welcomed this one. Why not? It gave him something to respond to, to research, to ponder over, something other than the politics of the senate, where he was isolated from his peers and even in danger from them.

Once the governing class of Rome had seen and heard the very clear signals from the imperial court, they all shunned Gaius. No more invites came his way to meals or entertainments. No more book study groups invited his participations. Certainly, Gaius was offered no opportunities to give lectures or write for the public. When he went out, he was at physical risk of assault. For his enemies knew there would be no repercussions for acts of violence against him. And Gaius could therefore no longer safely walk to the sauna or the library. Often, he was jostled and pushed by complete strangers, who stared at him knowingly. Once, a rock the size of his fist had rebounded heavily from the wall beside him with a startling crack. The young man who had thrown it was one of the new senators and he simply sneered when Gaius had stopped to complain.

His official duties and his continued stipend required Gaius to report daily to the Senate House. It would be a risk not to, for councillors had been arrested when, as a result of being under a similar cloud to that which rested upon Gaius, they had feigned illness and stayed away from the city. So always with a sense of foreboding, he attended the senate, where he was assigned his (increasingly menial) tasks and where he had to put up with daily abuse and scorn from the young acolytes of the empress.

Yet Gaius had not given up. The young senators and councillors fell fast and fell quickly if, for some reason, the empress wanted to get rid of them. Not so Gaius. It would take some effort and a very plausible pretext to strip him of his titles and property. Too high-handed a blow against him would not just damage an unpopular Councillor, it would worry the whole of the senatorial class. Matters had not yet reached the point where the empress could entirely ignore the Grand Council. Provided he could avoid being the victim of a physical attack on the streets Gaius had some time to plan his escape from Rome.

Yes, leave Rome.

Hard as it was to imagine life outside of the capital, it had come to the point that any life at all was better than none. The daily insults, the loneliness, the cruelty, it had to end. And so too must the source of his greatness weakness: a hope that he might be restored to favour. It could easily happen. Gaius had seen the wheel of fortune turn for others. If he ingratiated himself with Johannes, praised the masterful philosophy and deep strategic thinking of the empress’s brother, if he kept a low profile for long enough, perhaps he would be brought back to prominence, to real government. Yet this thought was crippling. It prevented him from taking action both to save himself and to save Rome. So he pushed that hope down, deep down.

It helped that Gaius had a secret correspondence with the governor of Deva. An old friend from the halcyon days when Romans could speak freely, Antonius Vibius had tried to oppose the rise of the Barbula siblings and his critique of the limitations and egotistic, self-deceiving recklessness of their initiatives had helped Gaius see the empress and her brother for who they really were: cynical characters, without any moral restraint. When Antonius had been voted off the senate, however, Gaius had abstained, rather than stand by his friend. To do otherwise would have been hopeless and any kind of a vote for Antonius would have merely been a futile gesture. Gaius had consoled himself that by surviving, he could perhaps influence events for the better in Rome. And Antonius had never seemed to hold that moment against their friendship.

Exiled to the most remote governorship in the Roman world, that of Deva, adjacent to the semi-Sí barbarians of Cambria, Antonius had kept an interest in Roman affairs via a regular exchange of letters with Gaius. And while it took a month or so to communicate in this way, the correspondence was the only source of support for Gaius in this time of adversity. Moreover, in the back yard of Gaius’s home was a cart packed ready for an immediate journey north. Should matters reach such a low point that it was necessary to flee for his life, Gaius intended to travel to Deva.

The latest letter from Antonius was under his pillow and Gaius took it up one last time, to fortify himself for the difficulties of the day to come.

My dear friend,

Yesterday, the legate Sapentia returned, alive, and with not just one sorcerer but four! Well, two, apparently, are genuinely powerful. I had always thought the best of magicians were women. You’ll recall our reading of the Odyssey and discussion over Circe. And that Quintilian, in cynical mode, wrote that men will be thieves and women will engage in sorcery. One of these magicians, however, is a male. His name is Arthyr and he is a Sí who has been brought up in our world in a remote village beyond a large mountain. I quite like him. When we met, I challenged him to perform some magic for me. His companion, the other magician, is a young woman (did I say that Arthyr was young too? I see that I did not. He is, perhaps, twenty and Merilyn sixteen), and this Merilyn refused. She said that agreements with the spirits of Tartarus (she used the term Uffen) were not to be entered into frivolously. Arthyr, however, just laughed and with little more than a gesture and a call caused a hawk to swoop down and grasp a helmet, which it then dropped into a water trough with a splash that alarmed the soldiers washing there. Arthyr is a good looking creature too, wait until you see him. Heads will turn and the foolish around you will lose their wits over him.

The legate, Sapentia, seems as guileless as when I last met her. It’s a long time since I heard anyone speak so enthusiastically about the empress without it being a blatant exercise in career advancement. She genuinely believes in Lisia and her project. About which I am now a little clearer. The magicians are going to be brought to the camp at Aventicum and receive training there. Then I think three legions are to enter Tartarus, with the magicians effecting the transition. What they actually hope to achieve there isn’t clear. Our master strategist, Johannes, will want to prove his worth as a general and will want a battle and a victory so he can present himself as another Julius Caesar. Naturally, this is going to be a complete disaster. As Caesar himself said, ‘the invasion of Tartarus was a deed of great daring; the victory over the five princesses a real triumph; but only the decision to leave Tartarus demonstrated any wisdom.’ What Lisia wants from this, I’ve no idea. Can she really believe such an expedition will do anything to lessen the economic difficulties our empire faces? You, my friend, are better placed to judge her motives than me.

As always, I urge you to consider joining me in Deva. The troops are loyal to me; the barbarians not as dangerous as you might have been led to believe (it suits me to present them as a threat to Rome) and one gets used to the harsh wine. There is this added reason now. When the invasion of Tartarus comes to grief, who knows what the consequences will be? Civil war? Invasion? Counter-attacks by the vampyres and werewolves of Tatartus? Don’t you think it would be wise to be as far from Rome as possible?

Take care Gaius, keep yourself safe. There are few enough in the empire these days with any wisdom and Rome will need you again, even if the empress does not.

Gaius took the letter over to where a small flame waved from a wick that floated in cork on a little bowl of oil. Fire eagerly rushed across the papyrus and Gaius held the letter for as long as possible before dropping it to the stone floor and letting the flames turn it black.