Chapter 5: Growing Bolder and Acting Tenderly
That night, Ursa began to think to herself about the thought of her brother taking her home in the morning. The emperor did seem a little concerned for her, but that certainly didn't mean he loved her. She sighed. Part of her had become a little excited at the idea of Commodus falling in love with her when she had first arrived here at the palace. Meeting him only spurred that on further, but then to be approached by him was overwhelming. Cicero had been very careful about her contact with males close to her age. She had never spent more than seven seconds with any man in her age bracket. If the man was twelve years older than her, or it was a boy that was six years younger than her, then she was permitted to spend more time around them provided it was supervised. Cicero had been forced into the position of protective father for Ursa. Not that he minded, but it was a truly difficult task with her being so lovely and kind. Maximus had helped step in and take care of her after they had met. It was a pleasure for him to have the company of the little girl after a long day on the battlefield and being away from his own family. It felt wonderful for him to be able to step into the place of uncle in the life of a girl that had no father. Both Cicero and Ursa truly missed Maximus. He had been unofficially accused of the murder of Marcus Aurelius by Commodus himself. Uunfortunately for the grieveing fledgling royal, there was no evidence for him to bring before the senate or a tribunal to convict the Spaniard. Maximus had openly accused Commodus of committing the crime. As punishment, Commodus had ordered Maximus be taken out at dawn and executed in Germania for treason rather than wait till returning to Rome and forcing a confession from him through slow and devastatingly painful torture. His land, servants, and family were to become property of the government; but word soon reached the emperor that a troop of bandits had ravaged the farm and its inhabitants. Commodus almost felt relieved that Maximus hadn't come home to such a thing, but mourned in a small part for the little boy and expectant woman that Maximus had carried on about. Ursa played all of these thoughts and memories through her mind. The group that wanted to rise against the young Caesar were acting out of fear and righteous anger for the state of the empire. Crime had risen considerably, taxes had been raised unjustly, two new plagues had sprung up, and there were hundreds of unneccessary arrests being made every day. Artists, scholars, Christians, mathemeticians, and even orators that spoke words that were considered simply a little 'seditious and slanderous against the empire and emperor' were arrested and thrown into the insatiable hunger of the colosseum. This included women, children, the elderly, and so on. It made Ursa and Cicero ill. Ursa didn't feel it right to murder Commodus even with all of this against him, murder should never beget murder, but she did wish these travesties would cease. She also wished more than anything that she was lying in bed beside her brother rather than awake and cold here at the palace. She had to go home in the morning, but she felt it wrong to return to her fellow labourers for the cause empty-handed. She slipped out of bed quietly and headed towards the tapestry on the odd wall with a strong purpose in mind. She carried a few pieces of the parchment and a piece of charcoal that she had found.
Commodus paced back and forth in the hall angrily. Falco sat not far away.
"I gave a very specific order! Why is no one listening to me!?", he ranted.
"The men have little resepect for you as it is, highness. You mustn't blame them, they see you as simply a boy.", Falco offered. Commodus snarled. "I say you send the Spaniard into the arena against four white lions and make a spectacular end of him."
"I am not going to give him a glorious death after what he did to my father!", Commodus shouted back. Falco sighed and shook his head.
"While I am truly in agreement with you, sire, the rest of the empire needs to see evidence before they will empathize with your wrath towards him. There is no such evidence. The surgeons all say the same thing, his breath gave out.", Falco repeated.
"Bollocks!", Commodus shouted angrily. (Although, being in the world of the ancients, I doubt that he truly used the word 'bollocks', but it was the closest non-compound naughty word in English I could use to regale what the poor dear actually meant) "His breath didn't give out, it was stopped! Maximus killed him! He must have snuck in and smothered him with a mantle or something. There weren't any other marks on him."
"Precisely, sire, which means that there was no sign of a struggle either."
"My father was a helpless, embittered, withered up old man. What kind of struggle would there have been against the brute!?", Commodus exclaimed. He stopped and leaned against a column, rubbing his aching head. As he stood there breathing slowly, Ursa made her way into the area, but remained hidden. She had manuevered her way through the catacombs using a torch that had been left on the wall; she had then ventured up the stairs and out into the rest of the palace keeping a sharp eye on which door it was that she had come through, then she had walked directly over to the eastern hall that Gracchus had said was used by the emperor and senator Falco to do most of their lecherous plottting. Gracchus seemed less inclined to accuse Commodus of mindless evil, but his thoughts were a little swayed by Lucilla and the fear of losing the stability of an empire he had sacrificed so much for. Lucilla had been the one to suggest that the group kill the emperor in the first place, feeling that he was dangerously beyond her control anymore. After hearing that, Ursa had gone home and fallen into Cicero's arms begging him not to be that vicious if she ever stopped strictly obeying him. Cicero had comforted his sister assuring her that he was not a royal and therefore did not have the same appetite for violence that Lucilla did. She probably didn't really want her brother dead, but she was very angry, sad, and disappointed all at the same time. Ursa listened closely to the two men and knelt to copy down a few of the important phrases the group would need to hear.
"Sire, Maximus is a vexation for you. You will not have peace until you kill him.", Falco said smoothly. "Send him against a foe that is impossible to destroy."
Commodus sighed. "That is still too good a death for him. He should have died in Germania as I decreed.", he grumbled. Ursa gasped. Maximus was alive!? Her heart raced happily at the thought of such a thing. Then it struck her that her brother had been right, Commodus did want Maximus murdered. What a cowardly little monster! "Still, if I can find a way to end the whole thing and gain a little favour with my people then that would be far better than satisying vengence with his blood alone."
"Might I suggest something, sire?", Falco asked. The odious senator already knew the answer to this. Commodus tried very hard to assert himself as a strong and powerful young man, but knew that all in all he was still just a scared and sorrowful little boy. He welcomed advice, but in trying to seem like an adult, often rejected the good advice that would mean doing what someone else believed was right. What the young ruler failed to see, was that every time he accepted advice he was proving mature, but the deciding factor in both what others thought of him and what he was slowly becomming was which advice he acted upon. To flex his authority, he often followed the advice that came saturated with flatteries. This was the custom of Falco and the other less than savoury senators that seemed more than happy to be 'friends' with the emperor even when he had lost popularity with the people. Commodus turned and looked directly at the seedy old man that sat before him. "The games you have orchestrated should be the grandest in our history. There is only one gladiator champion to have survived every match he has been in as the overwhelming victor; Tigris of Gaul."
"He is retired, Falco. He has three wives, five grown sons and three grown daughters.", Commodus countered. "He won his freedom long ago. I wouldn't want to bring him back to the arena where he could possibly die a very humiating death." Ursa stopped and listened. That was a little noble of the emperor to say, even if he was referencing the manner in which he would like to unscrupulously dispatch Maximus. "Besides, Tigris always kills as quickly and efficiently as possible. Maximus deserves to suffer for what he has done."
"Again, sire, there is no proof that he killed your father. It would be best to place such an accusation to the side and simply claim it as a personal vendetta of jealousy. After all, your father loved Maximus more than you.", Falco chided . Ursa looked up at the men's faces flickering in the torchlights. He blamed Maximus for his father's death? Commodus suddenly turned a bright shade of red and began to stand very still. Ursa wondered if he was readying to strike Falco in rage. "Didn't he once say to Maximus that he was the son he should have had?"
Now Commodus looked as though he had been stabbed viciously in the chest. His eyes swelled slightly. He turned away from Falco and breathed as deeply as his pain would allow.
"Go and make the arrangements. Tigris will do the empire a great service in killing him.", Commodus said softly.
"Of course, sire.", Falco said as he rose to leave. "Don't be so grieved at your father's memory, sire. He really didn't love you. There are much more important things to think about at the moment than the death of a hateful old man." Falco bowed to the emperor before leaving. Commodus remained facing away from him until he was sure the senator was gone. He stormed down the hallway and headed towards the same door that Ursa had used to get up into the rest of the palace. She gulped. She would have to be very careful in manuevering past him this time. She crept quietly down the hall and opened the door to the catacombs very softly. To her surprise, she was able to do it without the old hinges creaking very loudly. She made her way slowly down the dimly lit stairs. The light from the emperor's torch at the bottom of the staircase gave enough light for her to cautiously walk down them and not break anything in the process. She finally made it to the bottom and began to move swiftly towards the hidden door. As she reached the other side of the room, she heard the same weeping that had touched her heart the day before. She turned and watched.
"You had me, why didn't you love me?", the emperor cried as he held onto the bust desperately. It was as if the young man felt that his sorrowing would bring back the old man's voice long enough to derrive some words of comfort and apology from him. "All I ever wanted was your love and guidance. What was so terrible about giving them to me? What did you see in me that mother couldn't, that I can't?"
Ursa felt her heart twist in pity and sadness for this poor little boy sentenced to mourn within the body of a man. She walked over to him sliently as he slipped to the floor again. This time, she waited near him for what seemed like hours. He leaned back against the statue's base and began to fall asleep. Ursa moved to his side and gently laid his head in her lap as she knelt on the floor. He was too tired from the madness of the day to care who was there with him. Besides, they were warm and soft and too pleasant to question at the moment. He sighed as Ursa began to soothingly stroke his hair and forehead. She looked down at him in the dim lighting and frowned. It must have been terrible to have lost his mother at such a young age and have no one to take her place. From what Ursa had seen, Lucilla was no substitute by any means, no matter how much Commodus wanted her to be. Ursa felt truly blessed to have had Cicero by her side during her life. Even worse for the young man was the fact that he had known his mother and father before losing them. It was far less merciful in Ursa's opinion to be aware of what you were missing because you had enjoyed it once. While it was painfully obvious that Commodus did not enjoy having his father, he seemed to truly pine for his mother. He groaned a little and shifted slightly, but remained laying peacefully on the floor in front of her. She smiled. It was at times like these that Cicero sang a lullaby he himself had written for her. No matter her age, or what had troubled her, the words brought unexplainable comfort and peace to her. Perhaps they would do the same for this poor soul. She breathed deeply and began to sing softly.
"Sleep my baby, sleep. The stars about your cradle keep you.
Hush and close your eyes. The moon will sing your lullabies.
While the moon wakes the night,
Now begin your dreamland flight.
I'll always be near,
'Til the morning light is clear.
Sleep my baby, sleep. The stars about your cradle keep you.
Hush and close your eyes. The moon will sing your lullabies.", she sang softly.
She could feel a single tear roll from one of his eyes even as he slept. She continued to sit with him, comfortingly stroking his head and whispering to him every now and again until it was more than plain that he was sound asleep. She looked up at the grating. The sun was beginning to rise slowly. She moved slightly, removing the cloak she had kept around her that night. After shifting herself out from under him, she laid the cloak under him in a bundle and took off one of the sheets covering a large painting. She laid it over him as a blanket and looked back down at him once more. He seemed to be completely at peace at the moment. Looking at him like this, there was no way that he was a heartless monster. She sighed and felt the ache turn into resolve. She had a purpose now for the rest of the week. On the morning of the seventh day, she vowed to send her brother back to the group with irrefutable evidence that Commodus was both innocent and a capable ruler. She would also need to prove to Commodus that Maximus was innocent and prove to Maximus that Commodus was faultless. The thought of dear Maximus being alive again was so wonderful. She leaned forward and gave the young man a soft kiss on the cheek. Cicero had been most affectionate with his sister and had made it clear to her that showing someone you care about them was done most easily and effeciently with a tender kiss on the cheek. She stood and went to go back into her quarters before the sun rose.