Chapter 42: The Emperor’s Garden
The two weeks it took for the package to arrive from Hispania were the longest of Alex's life. The city was a powder keg. The last of the subsidized grain from his emergency release was gone, and the full force of the famine had taken hold. The cries of "Panem! Panem!"—"Bread! Bread!"—were a constant, low murmur outside the palace walls, a grim soundtrack to his waking hours. Riots were now a daily occurrence. Maximus and his men were perpetually exhausted, their duties shifting from keeping the peace to outright suppressing rebellions in the city's poorer quarters. Alex's political capital was evaporating with every hungry stomach. The Senate was stirring again, with Metellus whispering that the Emperor's "divine guidance" had led them only to starvation.
Alex ignored them all. His entire focus, his entire hope, was pinned on the contents of a single, sealed amphora making its slow, careful journey across the sea.
When it finally arrived, it was brought to his study under armed guard, carried with the reverence of a holy relic. With Perennis as his only witness, Alex carefully broke the ancient clay seal. The air that escaped smelled of dust, of age, of centuries of dry, silent darkness. He tilted the vessel, and into a linen cloth on his desk, he poured out its contents.
They were a pathetic sight. A handful of small, dark, gnarled objects, no larger than a child's fist. They were tubers, unmistakably, but they were as hard and light as volcanic rock, their skin wrinkled and shrunken. They looked utterly, irrevocably dead.
Perennis stared at them, his face a mask of disappointment. "This... this is it, Caesar? This is the miracle that will save Rome?"
"This is the seed of that miracle, Prefect," Alex said, his voice holding a conviction he did not feel. "See to it that I am not disturbed."
He took the small, mummified tubers and carried them himself, not to a grand imperial field, but to a place no one would ever think to look, a place of quiet secrecy. On the highest level of the palace, there was a private, walled garden, a hortus that had belonged to the Empresses of Rome for generations. It was a secluded, sun-drenched sanctuary, forgotten by most of the palace staff, a place of flowering vines and quiet fountains. This would be his laboratory.
He summoned his young acolyte, Timo. The boy's loyalty since the night in the study had been absolute, a silent, watchful devotion that Alex found both useful and humbling. Together, they began the painstaking work. Alex couldn't risk involving the imperial gardeners, whose traditional knowledge would be useless and whose gossip would be dangerous.
Following Lyra's memorized instructions, he directed Timo. "We need a special soil, Timo. A bed for the 'sacred roots.' We need sand from the riverbank, rich soil from the forest floor beyond the city walls, and ash from a cold fire. We will mix them together, to create a perfect balance."
For two days, they worked, smuggling the components into the private garden. They prepared a small, raised plot in the sunniest corner, hidden behind a trellis of climbing roses. It was a bed of black, rich, perfectly balanced soil, awaiting its last, desperate hope.