The Nero Prediction (17 page)

She sounded very tired. "Anicetus, you may go and tell your master that I am well."

I laid the dagger across the palms of my hands, walked towards her. Her eyes widened when she saw what I was carrying. Then she rolled them up to my face.

I could feel the fury burning like pepper in my eyes but I was pleased how calm I sounded. "Your son returns your gift. He feels you deserve it more than he does."

Agrippina took the dagger. Holding it high above her stomach she glared at me. When I held her frightful stare she smiled and for the last time I saw her double canine tooth. "Tell him that I strike the womb that bore him."

Leaving Anicetus and his officers standing around Agrippina's bedside, watching her struggle to die, I slipped away into the room next door, her study. There was a statue of her, frighteningly life like, next to the door. At the opposite side of the room was her desk. It was in disarray, unusual for Agrippina who always kept everything as neatly squared away as the arrangement of tents in the military camp where she was born. The straight-backed chair stood at an angle from the desk as if the person who last sat there had risen in haste. There were still traces of water on it. I touched my fingers to a drop, tasted it. Salty. Agrippina had hurried to her desk the moment she returned home, in too much of a hurry to change into dry clothes. Why?

I noticed something lying on the floor next to the desk. It was a volume of the new codex type that had fallen so that it lay open. I picked it up, turned the page. It was the tenth book of the Iliad.

The first thing that occurred to Agrippina when she got home, wet as a drowned rat, was to seek consolation in Homer's description of Agamemnon heaving sighs as loud as thunder claps. It didn't make sense.

I turned to the shelves behind me, looking for its companion volumes. They were directly in front of me, a neat row about shoulder high, their gilded spines glowing in the torchlight. The book's place on the shelf showed up like a missing tooth. Something in that gap caught the light. I tried to see what it was but my head cast a shadow that blotted it out. I put the book on the desk and removed two volumes on either side of where it should have been. What I'd seen was the gilded handle of a small cabinet built into the wall and normally concealed by the books.

I looked over my shoulder. There was no one in the doorway. Something in the cabinet had drawn Agrippina straight to it, something that she had taken out and placed on the hastily cleared desk and then returned to its hiding place in such a hurry that she didn't have time to look for the book that had fallen off the desk.

An irrepressible excitement took hold of me. I reached in and opened the cabinet. Inside was the white gleam of rolled paper. I reached in and took out the scroll lying on top of the pile and half unrolled it. The symbols of the planets were drawn inside a circle. There was no date of birth but at its center was my name. It was the horoscope of my false self, Fate's Anointed.

Next door Agrippina was bellowing at Anicetus, demanding that he help her die. Obviously the poison on the dagger was working too slowly.

“Proculus!” Anicetus barked at one of his captains, a hirsute man with legs like tree trunks. There was the dull thud of a club.

She let out a dreadful groan. "Harder Proculus."

Another thud. Silence.

I slipped the roll of paper into my sleeve, closed the cabinet, replaced the books.

Agrippina lay on the bed, her eyes glassy, blood seeping into the pillow under her head.

Volusius Proculus, still holding his club, was bending over her, his ear to her gaping mouth. "She's gone, I think."

Anicetus's eyes flickered in my direction as I entered like someone who all this time had been standing at the door. "Give instructions for the pyre,” he said to a soldier. “Tell them to use anything they can find, furniture if necessary, especially this couch."

"It'll be ready by now," said the lieutenant, "I gave orders as soon as we had the place surrounded."

"Good. Get her women to clean her up. I want her looking as if she's about to make one of her grand entrances. He'll be here any minute."

It was still dark when Nero's galley hove to. His voice was plaintive, histrionic. "Where is my mother?" 

Anicetus pointed to the mansion.

Surrounded by bouquets of flowers hastily plucked from the garden by torch light, Agrippina lay on a couch in the villa's Atrium, her arms crossed, her crushed skull covered with a hood, her expression not so much serene as distracted, as if she were already meddling in the affairs of another world.

Anicetus had supervised the finishing touches himself, paying particular attention to her make-up. Agrippina had been a handsome woman once, and now she was so again, making allowances for age and death.

Nero stifled a little gasp when he saw her, then sank to his knees next to the couch, took her hand and kissed it. For several minutes he held it while he stared into her face, his lips moving soundlessly. Ten minutes later Agrippina was roasting on top of a bonfire.

The Moon was setting above the mountains of Misenum and the east was already rosy with dawn when we returned to the water, now a delicate wash of pinks and yellows. The sun rose, glorious and majestic, cauterizing the hemorrhages of the night. Nero stood alone at the prow of the boat, as he now stood alone at the prow of the world, gazing on a panorama of infinite possibilities.

It was the first day of his rule.

Embattled

March 18 – June 59 A.D.

I closed the door to my cubicle. It had no lock. I listened for footfalls, there were none. I sat on the bunk and unwound the scroll I'd taken from Agrippina's office. Ten years and six months after Phocion had discovered them, here were the stars of the man I pretended to be. There was something I hadn't noticed in the gloom of Agrippina's office. Two more horoscopes were wound inside the first.

I placed my forged horoscope on the bunk next to me and examined the one underneath it. It bore no name, no date of birth, but it had the oily texture of paper that has been frequently handled and it was still wet in two places where the ink had been smudged by recent drops of water. This chart had two rings of planets outside the circle containing the birth stars. One of these rings was identical to the stars of the horoscope that was supposed to be mine. The other represented the positions of today’s planets. It had to be Agrippina’s horoscope.

The third sheet, also a chart with a double ring of planets, had a name at its center. The center of the universe: Nero. I held the empire's most secret document in my hands, the emperor's horoscope.

The door flew open and there stood Euodus, smirking at me. "My, my! I did give you a scare, didn't I? I'll bet it has something to do with those papers. It really is something I should know about, isn't it? Remember, you keep no secrets from me."

He held out his hand for the horoscopes. I passed them to him. His brow darkened. "So this is what you took."

Somebody must have seen me going into Agrippina's office, Euodus must have been told. I fought for breath. "The horoscope was half open on her desk," I said. "When I saw my name I took it thinking I ought to show it to Tigellinus. I've only just discovered there are others here. I haven't had a chance to look at them."

Euodus's green eyes mocked my lie. "Really?"

I made it sound as if I was helping him solve a mystery. "The chair had drops of water on it. For some reason she seems to have consulted my horoscope before changing into dry clothing. Can you think why?"

"Yes. She wanted to know where she'd gone wrong. I have no doubt she found out.” He looked at the papers again. “Zeus!"

I'd never seen Euodus afraid before. I pretended not to know what frightened him. "What's the matter?"

"Fated, fated, fated," Euodus was whispering to himself. He looked up from Nero's horoscope because that's what must have frightened him. "Remember the vultures that were circling over us when we sailed from Alexandria? I should have known then what you would bring me." An abrupt snap of command. "Stay here until I come for you or you won't last longer than a hungry dog's dinner."

I walked in a tight circle around the cubicle, one step per second, the Persian walking exercise Balbillus used to calm his mind, the march of time.

About an hour later Euodus returned without the horoscopes. He looked grim. "Go to Poppaea Sabina. Agree to do everything she asks. Then report directly to Tigellinus." 

Otho's chamberlain told me to wait outside the door that led to Poppaea's personal quarters. From inside came the muted wail of a flute accompanied by the patter of some kind of unobtrusive percussion instrument. The music, redolent of dreamy worlds, washed over me like a wave every time the door opened. People spoke in whispers as they passed, averting their eyes. The atmosphere was one of excitement, of intrigue, of delicious promise. Agrippina was dead, by suicide, after attempting the life of her son. Everyone knew that by now. They also knew that I'd played some important but unspecified role in these momentous events, just as I had in the death of Messalina. Best avoid me until the dust settled because this time my luck might have run out.

I recognized some of the passers-by. Otho nodded at me as he left, but his mouth was tight. Poppaea had been a toy he'd used to torment his imperial friend. But the friend had proved himself capable of matricide. Nero might no longer be someone with whom it was safe to trifle.

A small man came in who wore high-soled shoes and an expression of preposterous self-importance. He was Ptolemy Seleucus, Poppaea's astrologer, the snake who'd correctly predicted when Messalina would die and that Lollia Paulina would set a dog on Agrippina in Augustus's mausoleum. He was shown into the scented inner sanctum. The door closed. The soft music lulled me. My eyes closed. I hadn't slept in two days.

Someone was shaking me by the shoulder. It was one of the gorgeously liveried Nubians who guarded the door. "She'll see you now."

Poppaea reclined on a couch, propped up with cushions embroidered with gold and purple threads. Incense hung in the air as thick as feather down. The musicians in the adjoining room played so softly that one didn't need to raise one's voice. Ptolemy sat at a table lit by colored candles. Their light flickered in his large dark eyes. I sank to my knees, touched my forehead to the thick Parthian carpet, waiting for Poppaea to speak first. I noticed that her toenails, like her fingernails, were painted with signs of the planets.

"We greet you, Epaphroditus," she said.

"I am honored to serve."

The hint of a lisp gave the edge of irony to her words. "I'm aware that you served Agrippina well."

I raised my eyes to hers. Her eyelids danced over the clear blue orbs, giving them a dozen different expressions in the space of a few seconds. The sheen painted onto the eyelashes reminded me of the iridescent glitter of an insect's wing. There was no resisting the allure of this woman.

"She was convinced that you were destined to destroy her son, wasn't she? What sublime irony that you were destined to destroy her instead!"

"It was a strange coincidence," I said.

The smile widened. Poppaea glanced at her astrologer. "What do you think Ptolemy?"

The snake tapped the sheets of paper in front of him. "There's no such thing as coincidence. It's all here in his chart."

"How interesting! How about his future, what do the stars say about that?"

Ptolemy looked at me. "As you would expect, domina, they show that he's in mortal peril. A painful death in an open place. It looks like he's about to be crucified."

For what dark reason had Tigellinus given my forged horoscope to Poppaea? Was it an attempt to ingratiate himself by allowing her to toy with a fate she thought was mine?

Poppaea tilted her head to one side, a pretty gesture. An ear decorated with pearls appeared from under her lush amber hair. "An awful death," she lisped. "Poor Epaphroditus! Is that all he has to look forward to?"

"Perhaps not, domina," said Ptolemy. "Epaphroditus has an unusual horoscope. In many respects it’s most fortunate. Because his Moon is square his Venus, it predicts great riches. Because his Jupiter is placed in his House of Friends and is in harmony with both his Mars and his Venus, he will achieve public greatness. However his Saturn is precisely on his ascendant by night which promises that he will be worn out by hard labor.”

Poppaea laughed, a thrilling sound. “Perhaps then it’s not the cross for him after all. Perhaps it’s the salt mines!”

The astrologer’s eyes dropped to the chart. “Perhaps, domina, if it were not for the Moon.”

Poppaea fluttered her eyelids. “The Moon? A woman?”

“His chart is ruled by the Moon which is conjunct his Part of Fortune in his House of Power. A Moon which is exalted in Taurus the Bull, the sign of Venus and therefore of Rome, a Venus which is precisely square his Moon. Epaphroditus will achieve great power through obedience to a woman. That is why Agrippina chose him."

Poppaea’s question sounded more like a tease. “What was that about Sirius and why Nero believes Epaphroditus is destined to help him start something quite new?”

“If he knows that domina it will give away the day, the hour, the minute of his birth. He could have his horoscope cast.”

Poppaea tilted her head so that a curly blonde lock caressed her creamy shoulder. “Yes, I suppose we’d better keep that a secret,” she said with a pout. “It’s better not to have the servants rummaging around in the future.” She closed her eyes, swayed her head from side-to-side as she followed the rhythm of the music. When her lids opened her eyes were fixed on an object above and behind me. I turned my head. She was staring at a statue of Nero that was so life-like that I thought the man himself had slipped into the room.

Poppaea teased no longer. "Epaphroditus, you've heard Nero talk about becoming a performer. What do you think of the idea?"

The question, her suddenly amiable tone, caught me off guard. I knew what Poppaea wanted to hear, I'd heard it from behind the palace hedge the night Agrippina had called her a traitor.