The Nero Prediction (15 page)

I had fallen out of love with Fate, so I didn't believe I was fated to murder Nero. But how was I going to avoid doing it all the same? Of course I could go running to Nero and tell him that his mother was planning to use me to kill him but what then? Agrippina would deny it and then she would certainly keep her promise to kill me in the most painful way she could think of. Doing nothing while Agrippina plotted away was equally unacceptable because once she’d set up the assassination she could get someone else to do the deed if I failed her.

Tigellinus. Just the name was enough to ruin my day but whom else could I turn to? Nero was his patron now, not Agrippina. He had everything to lose if Nero was rushed into the underworld.

"I have to see Tigellinus immediately," I told Euodus at the Circus that evening.

Euodus examined me thoughtfully. He glanced to make sure that my bodyguards were out of earshot. "What's the matter?"

"Something dreadful has happened, something Tigellinus will want to hear directly from me."

Another long pause punctuated by a sharp intake of breath and a curt nod. "Very well. Meet him in the north latrine in half an hour."

I didn't think I'd heard clearly. "The latrine?"

"Might as well, you look like you're about to shit yourself. Sit near the center and remain seated. We'll be there in fifteen minutes."

Visitors to the latrine, a row of stone seats, came and went, grooms mostly at this late hour. My buttocks were numb from the hard stone by the time two figures hitched up their brown servile robes and sat down on either side of me, Tigellinus and Euodus.

Tigellinus made appropriate use of his time until we were alone. "Well?"

"Agrippina, she's ordered me to kill Nero." 

Tigellinus's eyes were velvet pools, his voice took on the softness of someone who is speaking to the terminally ill. "Did she say when?"

"In a month's time, the night of the Moon of the Year, four hours before dawn."

"Are you sure you have the time right?"

"Yes. She believes that I'm destined to kill him. But of course I'm not."

Tigellinus shifted his position and from below I heard something plop into the stream of water that carried away the waste. "How do you know that?"

"Because you'll warn Nero."

"Will I? Until I tell you otherwise, do exactly what Agrippina asks you to do. But always tell me first."

Anger drummed at my temples. "You mean you're not going to warn Nero?"

"I haven't decided what I'm going to do."

"Then I know what I must do."

Tigellinus applauded my show of defiance with a fart. "All right, suppose you run to Nero and tell him Agrippina believes you are destined to kill him, what do you suppose he'll do?"

"Confront her, of course."

"Perhaps. But what will he do to you?"

"I'll tell him everything, that the Copy Master forged my birth time, that I’m an imposter. He’ll question you and torture Euodus. Eventually the truth will come out.”

When he grinned Tigellinus’s teeth shone in the gloom. “I have to hand it to you Epaphroditus, you’ve become a lot more interesting.”

Blood On The Moon

March 17, 59 A.D.

Five days later we left for Baiae, the resort on the Bay of Naples. With us went Tigellinus, recently appointed Prefect of Police, Seneca the philosopher, Burrus the Praetorian Prefect, beautiful Poppaea and her indulgent husband Otho. Euodus accompanied Tigellinus, so that I could continue to make my nightly report. I was certain that there was no irony in Nero's voice when he told me that he was delighted Agrippina had agreed to travel with him so that they could ventilate the bad air between them, as he put it.

Nero frowned at me when the town came into sight. "Epaphroditus, you look like you've just found a slug in your lettuce. Are you all right?"

How I wished I wasn't. If I'd only come down with some totally disabling disease, perhaps this cup of poison would pass me by. It didn't. My health remained stubbornly good. I even caught myself enjoying the fresh air, the splendid sweep of villas that rimmed the sea, the wonderful gardens of Nero's seaside palace with its glassy waterfalls and pools populated with longhaired slave girls gliding between the water lilies like Nereids.

With official business cut to a minimum, I had too much time to entertain the ugliest thoughts in the most beautiful setting. Fate's Anointed wasn't feeling that fortunate. What was Tigellinus up to? How I hated the way he just sat there smugly in the center of his web. If he was working on a plan to save Nero, why didn't he share it with me? He appeared to be so perfectly at ease, to be enjoying himself so enormously as he danced attendance on Agrippina, charming her with his brilliant grin, getting her to smile widely enough to reveal her double canine tooth on the left side. A dark thought struck: had Tigellinus decided that Nero's obsession with musical war proved he was unbalanced like his uncle Caligula and that it doomed him to die young? If so, who was better placed to kill Nero than someone he trusted with his life, me?

The day of the Moon of the Year, the fatal day, began with a spectacular dawn, red with blood it seemed to me. Ironically it was the Liberalia, the Roman's most frivolous holiday. The court celebrated the festival at Otho's villa, a few miles east of Baiae near Lake Lucrinus. Nothing was too expensive for Otho, nor too ostentatious for his wife. Preparations must have begun months in advance because flowering bushes and many of the trees had been clipped into drinking cups, bunches of grapes and thymuses: the attributes of Bacchus. Everywhere guests were entertained by bucolic comedies that had them in fits of laughter. There were also erotic vignettes, most of them based on classical themes. For a while I stared vacantly at a black dwarf, endowed with a penis that would make Priapus proud, who was servicing an acrobatic blonde nymph, hardly more than a child. She screeched with a sound that fell somewhere between pain and great pleasure. The energy of the little man was truly prodigious as he put the nymph through her paces sending color flying to the cheeks of the ladies, some of them quite tipsy, who tittered from a discreet distance away. Although the scene, both comic and prurient, helped even Euodus shrug off his air of gloomy preoccupation, it did nothing for me.

The Sun had been up for four hours and the day already too long, when Agrippina sent for me. Her face was heavily painted with the colors of youth. But there was age and pain and fearsome will in her eyes. Next to her stood a frightful man with indelible mementos of the arena carved onto his body.

"This is Mnester," she said. "After my departure tonight he will give you the dagger. The blade has been coated with poison. Death will come quickly and mercifully even if all you manage to do is puncture the skin. Mnester will remain with you to make certain that nothing unforeseen happens. Think only of your reward. Fate will guide your actions. We shall not talk again before it is all over. Farewell."

The banquet began at noon. The dining couches were placed along the shore of an island in the middle of a pond. The food was placed on gaily decorated miniature boats, one to each couch, which were floated across the pond to the diners. Guiding each boat was an underwater string that ferried it back and forth. Scantily dressed child slaves, selected for their beauty, attentiveness and coquetry, served the guests.

Nero reclined with Agrippina on one side of him and Poppaea on the other. From a distance it was difficult to tell who was the mistress and who the mother: both women showered him with affection. Of the two Agrippina was the most demonstrative. She fed her son little tidbits as if he were still a child, kept touching him with hands that lingered just a little too long, whispered into his ear and kissed his cheek so often that a little frown began to appear on Poppaea's unfurrowed brow.

But if she was puzzled by Agrippina's behavior, I was dumbfounded. A mother was about to murder her son and here she was behaving as if she was trying to seduce him! A stomach cramp steered me towards a red oleander bush that had been trimmed into the shape of a phallus.

Someone behind me laughed as I retched. "Not feeling too well?" It was Euodus. Beyond him, perhaps twenty yards away, stood my grim shadow, Mnester.

"Have you seen her?" I gasped, "she's carrying on as if she's trying to get him into her bed!"

The freedman’s green eyes twinkled merrily. "What do you expect her to do, carry on as if she's about to have him murdered?"

"I admire Nero, I love him. You'll never get me to kill him. I'm going to him now, to tell him everything."

Euodus was no longer smiling. "Try that and I'll kill you myself."

I watched him go, walking between trees hung with grotesque masks which were meant to ward off evil spirits. They hadn't succeeded because Tigellinus was everywhere, pressing the flesh. He had to be Agrippina's creature, I was sure of that now, perhaps he always had been, egging Nero on to his doom. Convinced by experience that it was easier to control a husband than a son, Agrippina probably had already secretly married Rubellius Plautus, great-grandson of Tiberius as rumor was already whispering. If she had then she would announce the marriage immediately after Nero's murder.

As the Sun set the Moon, a yellow pig's-bladder filled with bile, rose from behind Vesuvius, the first full Moon of the ancient religious year, always pregnant with destiny, never more so than now. Above the Moon hung Jupiter, a brilliant drop of brave light. Saturn's yellow rheumy eye blinked malevolently from high up in the western sky while Mars lay himself down to rest on the bloody couch of the horizon. I looked out over the mirror-calm sea. The night was so clear you could see the lights of Capri more than ten miles across the water. The sense of space suggested flight. But Mnester stood closer now that it was growing dark.

Hours passed. The huge Moon continued her triumphant march to the zenith until her light beat down on me as hot as the Sun. Anxiety drove me in circles around the garden like a bird with a broken wing. Where I went Agrippina's man followed, a Moon shadow. My newfound faith in Cicero and the skeptics drained from me like a wounded gladiator’s blood. For the first time in nearly three years I opened my heart to the stars and heaven opened its heart to me. It brought me no comfort. The discordant planets wailed more shrilly than the cicadas. I was convinced that my wandering wasn’t random, convinced that a shadow destiny was guiding me, the destiny predicted by my lost stars. Every pace was a step on a pre-determined path that meandered, now towards the villa and now towards the sea, but always led me unerringly towards my goal: Nero's bedside.

The moonlight solidified. I lost my sense of independent motion. I was a fly entombed in liquid amber. Only when the amber flowed did I move, as imperceptibly but as certainly as the Moon.

A familiar, testy voice woke me from my ghastly reverie. "Where have you been? We've been looking for you everywhere. He needs you."

It was Graptus the chamberlain. My heart leapt at his words. They could kill me if they wanted. Nero needed me. He needed my confession. I followed Graptus past the guests who were watching a pantomime show. Tigellinus, Otho and Poppaea were still there, sitting together, but Agrippina and Nero weren't.

Mother and son reclined together on a couch in a room that looked out over the moonlit bay. At first I didn't recognize them in the dim lamplight. They were holding hands and whispering like lovers.

They drew apart when Graptus cleared his throat. "The notary Epaphroditus, Caesar."

A slight frown appeared on Agrippina's forehead. She hadn't expected to see me, not yet.

Nero greeted me with a familiar gesture: opening his right hand and letting it fall closed again. "Epaphroditus is here to take notes. You see, I've arranged a little surprise for you mother. Graptus, show him in."

Balbillus entered, the astrologer Agrippina had banished to Egypt so that she could walk alone over the pristine sands of the future. His bow was deep but his eyes glowed with the somber fire of revenge. "Greetings Augusta."

Agrippina's voice was inflected with fury.  "My son, what is the meaning of this?" 

Nero's reply sounded as innocent as a dove's coo. "He's here to read us our stars mother, what else? Is anything wrong?"

"I am surprised that Balbillus's return was kept from me, that he didn't pay me the courtesy of a call."

"But mother, that would have spoilt my little surprise!"

The control returned to Agrippina's voice, the temper of the coiled spring. "I see."

Nero nodded at Balbillus who gazed at the charts he'd brought with him. His face took on the awful serenity of someone who is in communication with infinity.

"The transits of the Moon of the Year bode well for the Augusta. The transit full Moon is in exact conjunction with the Augusta's Venus which predicts that she is about to have a successful courtship."

Nero's eyes glowed in the flickering torchlight. "How wonderful for you mother! A romance! Who is it? Do tell. Tongue's are wagging about Rubellius Plautus you know. Yes, it could be him. He's not very bright but he is the great-grandson of Tiberius. I shouldn't be surprised if he's working himself up into a frenzy of anticipation about you right at this moment, drunk with love and moonlight. Or is it something else he's after?"

For the first time since I'd been delivered to her I saw Agrippina on the defensive. "Don't be silly," she said through a yawn. "My son, you are going to have to excuse me soon. It is past midnight and I'm a long way from home."

"Oh mother, you can't go, not until you've heard what Balbillus has to say about me. Or doesn't that interest you any more?"

A little sigh of resignation. "Of course it does."

Nero turned to the astrologer. "Well Balbillus, we're hanging on your every word."

Balbillus smoothed paper in front of him. "Caesar, the vocation of an astrologer is not an easy one, particularly the astrologer of a prince. Often he is reluctant to say even what he knows about the future, let alone what he suspects. When the prince's stars indicate prosperity and victory, it's a pleasure for the astrologer to give him the good news since honors and presents are showered upon him as if he himself were responsible for the good fortune. But how different his situation when the stars predict danger and disaster! It's not one of the strengths of human nature to be able to distinguish the good messenger from the evil message he brings."