10
The Professor
They dragged me along the corridor by my arms. Apparently walking under my own steam wasn’t allowed, and I frankly didn’t have my breath back anyway.
My ribs still ached, but I didn’t think these goons had broken any.
Now a familiar voice, shouting. Julia Domna was marching down the corridor in her full makeup and hair, jewels dripping over a dress of white and purple, her expression livid. She walked right up to her son and got in his face, and he shouted back and pushed at her shoulder, and she shoved back. Caracalla was bellowing now, almost spitting, his face red and apoplectic. I couldn’t understand a single word; they must have been speaking one of their other languages, Punic or Aramaic or whatever.
For all that Caracalla was a young guy—barely into his twenties, my guess—I found myself harboring the unworthy hope he’d just have a heart attack and die right there.
His soldiers had dropped back and were watching, hands on their gladius hilts, which scared me. Would Caracalla order them to draw steel on his own mother?
Almost as bad. She raised her arms above her head, almost as if she was going to pitch a spell on him, and at that Caracalla stepped up and punched her full in the face. Domna went over backwards.
I howled and tried to struggle up but Caracalla’s legionary put his foot on my shoulder and trod me back down to the floor, and there I lay until Caracalla and his bully boys swept out, leaving me and the Empress Julia Domna sprawled on the marble floor, gasping like fishes. We weren’t in great shape, either of us; but at least they’d left us alive. I had Domna to thank for that.