The Nero Prediction (27 page)

I thought this over for a few moments. What Tigellinus had said was true, every day my spies told me a new version of the rumor that Nero had set fire to the city. At first it had seemed so ridiculous I ignored it. But Nero's absence from public life, the way he was immersing himself in his music, fed the rumor. Every time it completed a circuit of the baths more people seemed to believe it.

I waited for a day when Nero seemed to have calmed down a bit and then I took Tigellinus with me to see him. "Augustus," I said, "you're being blamed for the fire. You must clear your name before your silence is taken as an admission of guilt."

 Nero was blowing bubbles in Maecenas's heated pool, another exercise to improve his breath control. Statilia, his current favorite, pushed the imperial head under water just as my complaint was being delivered, diluting its impact.

Tigellinus saved me from having to repeat myself. "Caesar, Rome smarts from the terrible wound she's just received. Her people are convinced it was the work of arsonists. Your enemies have spread the rumor that your men were the ones responsible and that you sang to urge on the flames."

Nero squirted a mouthful of water onto Statilia's face. "Nonsense, as you know perfectly well," he said through her giggles, "it was just the opposite."

"I do Caesar," said Tigellinus, "but the rumor continues to circulate: Nero sings while Rome burns. It's a sickness that's weakening your support among the plebs. It needs to be purged with a powerful remedy."

"Such as?" 

"Expose the true culprits, the Christians. They hate you, Augustus, and everyone despises them for the unwashed scum they are. Let's make a spectacle of them in the ruins of the Circus Maximus."

"Out of the question. The Circus Maximus is too big. My voice will never carry."

A puzzled frown ruffled the equanimity of Tigellinus's brow. "Your voice, Caesar?"

"Yes! Oh I see it all so clearly. We build a set that looks like a Jewish temple, stock it with armed Christians. Then we set it on fire and open the door. The Christians headed by their savior come rushing out bent on murder. I face them alone, armed with nothing but my kithara. The beauty of my song overwhelms them. They break down and cry tears of contrition."

Poppaea, who was sitting on one of the pool-side couches, sniffed loudly.

Nero squinted at her. "Whatever's the matter with you?"

She kept her voice under tight control but her eyes moistened. "If you had to choose between a child and a new song, I'm not at all sure what your decision would be."

Nero pushed Statilia to arm's length. "A child? You're pregnant!"

The joy in his voice made Poppaea smile through her tears, something she did quite beautifully. "No, and at this moment I wouldn't want to be."

"Why on earth not?"

Poppaea was clutching dice that she'd been throwing to keep track of the meandering current of Fate. "This morning a new-born calf was found at the roadside. Its head was attached to its legs. When I heard that I had the diviner Thallus sacrifice a victim for me. The right side of the bitter was covered with red spots like some ghastly rash. He says that when this is put together with the omen of the calf the indication is clear: the evil of the comet must be expiated or our next child will be deformed.”

“Why not Christian lives?” Tigellinus came in. “After all it was they who hailed the comet as the sign of their deliverance, of their triumph over you and everything you stand for."

Nero splashed water at me, narrowly missing my sandals. "What do you think Epaphroditus?"

I thought of Zebah and his angry cohorts, of the gentle people I had seen at the two Christian meetings I’d attended. "The Christian movement seems to consist of many factions, some of them led by violent men who have taken control of the minds of simple, gullible people.”

“Root out these leaders,” said Tigellinus. “Make them pay the legal penalty for arson."

Nero looked surprised. "You mean burn them?"

"Yes dominus," said Tigellinus. "Punishing the shepherds will bring the sheep to their senses.”

The words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them. “It certainly sounds like poetic justice."

Nero clapped his hands. "Poetic justice? That's it! Oh how brilliant! Leave me, everyone. Epaphroditus, stay. I need your inspiration."

It was suddenly very quiet around Maecenas's pool. Nero floated on his back gazing up at the stars. "Epaphroditus, what do you think, does this Christ exist?"

"Perhaps he's no more than wishful thinking, Caesar, although, as I've reported to you, his followers appear to be totally convinced that he's about to reappear."

"Well then we ought to do everything we can to encourage him to break cover. He's called a savior, isn’t he? So let him do some saving. Tell Tigellinus to arrest his followers, every single one of them he can lay his hands on. Poetic justice, your idea, that's what we'll threaten them with. They threaten to do away with art, so art must do away with them."

The strange intonation with which Nero delivered these words, sinister almost, made me uneasy. "Caesar?"

"How about an Icarus or two? Who knows, the savior might help them fly. Let's also have a gang of Sisyphuses rolling rocks up a hill, Orpheuses being torn apart by Maenads, Hercules being roasted by Centaur's blood, Ixion spinning on his fiery wheel, Prometheus and his vulture, oh, everybody's bad end. There are female Christians like your Rachel who are quite pretty, they tell me. So let's have Danaids and Dirces. Are you getting all this down?"

I was, but I was regretting every word. "Yes Augustus," I said, "although as I pointed out, a large majority of the Christians are gullible fools who had absolutely nothing to do with the fire. Surely you don't intend to condemn them as well?"

"Of course I do, otherwise he may not show up and I’ll never get to sing him to his senses."

The Kingdom That Didn’t Come

July 25 – August 1, 64 A.D.

Nero was working his way through a bucket of Lucrine oysters (he was intentionally putting on weight because his singing teacher assured him it would increase the power of his voice) when Tigellinus reported that the Christians were surrendering themselves in droves.

"What?"

Irritation pinched at the Praetorian Prefect's eyebrows. "The city jail is already full of them and hundreds more are milling around in the street begging to be arrested."

"Do they have any idea what's in store for them?"

"Yes. One of my officers gave them a grisly little lecture but they applauded him as if he were Cicero."

"Why? Did they give any reason?"

"They’re beyond reason, Caesar. They told the Praetorians that if they’re killed for giving witness to their faith, they call it being martyred, they go to heaven instantly. So now they’re all begging to be killed. It might sound ridiculous but the situation really is quite serious. Many of the would-be martyrs are valuable palace slaves. Some of them are citizens. You're not going to believe this, but Epaphroditus’s little favorite Rachel is one of them."

I was so shocked I spoke out of turn. "Rachel? Where is she?"

"In prison. She was one of the first to give herself up."

Nero’s eyes widened with excitement. "Bring her to me."

Rachel was even thinner than when I'd last seen her. The cowl of the cheap black robe she wore covered straggly black hair that was glossy no longer. It seemed she hadn't washed since the fire. If she saw me standing next to Tigellinus behind Nero's chair she showed no sign of it.

Nero was jovial. "Rachel, oh dear you do look like you need a bath!"

She sounded perfectly at ease. "Baths are temples of the flesh. It is the spirit that we seek to cleanse."

"The spirit? What, at the expense of the nose?"

She ignored his sarcasm. "My eyes have been opened. I'm here to give witness that Jesus Christ the savior lives."

"Where is he?"

"He’s everywhere."

“With matches in his pocket?”

Tigellinus laughed but I didn’t. Nero went on: "Did he set Rome on fire?"

"He sent the fire as a sign of the purification that is to come."

"Did you, and the others, help him burn the city?"

"We may have. The faithful have been told to make smooth the path of the lord."

"Does that mean yes or no?"

"It means that the faithful are all one in the spirit, what one does, the others also do."

"I see. Is it true that this Christ of yours is about to make an appearance?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Very soon."

"Why will it be soon?"

"Because of you."

"Why me?"

"Because he said that he would come when the Antichrist persecuted his martyrs. You are the Antichrist."

"He's going to rescue you from me, is that what you believe?"

"It's our sacrifice in his name that will save us."

"Let me make sure that I understand you correctly. Your death will save your life?"

"Yes."

"How's that possible?"

"Because it will purify our souls so that we will be perfect when he resurrects our bodies."

"What makes you think he can do that?"

"Because he's done it already, to his own body."

Nero frowned. "He died?"

"He died on the cross and was buried. On the third day he rose again. This was witnessed by his apostles."

"I’ve heard that story before. It’s impossible."

"For a man, yes, but not for god."

"He's a god?"

"Yes, the son of god."

Nero smiled. "I'm the son of a god too, since I'm the son of the deified Claudius. Does that mean that I'm going to rise from the dead?"

Pity floated on Rachel's lips but there was the hiss of contempt in her words. "You will beg to die but it won't relieve your agony."

"Why?"

 "Because you are so evil that even if you're thrown into a lake of fire and burn there throughout eternity, you will never become pure."

Tigellinus, who had gone white with anger which made the strange light that always seemed to play in his velvet eyes brighter, broke in. "How dare you speak -"

Nero shut him up with a quick movement of his hand. "No, she's quite right. If purity means an end to art, I'm afraid I'll never be pure. Rachel, you can't deny that there were times you were happy with me, when you sang and danced and made love with real pleasure. Why do you hate me so much now?"

"Because of your power, the power of sensation. It's infectious, like a dreadful plague. There were moments, weak moments, when I sickened with it too. But now, thanks to my savior, I'm nearly whole."

Nero raised an eyebrow. "Only nearly?"

"Yes, all that remains is for me to give the witness that will purify me, the final witness, so that I'll be among the first to be resurrected, among the first to embrace him."

Nero set his jaw, there was the glint of battle in his eyes. "Oh really? You forget that he's got to reckon with me first."

Rachel laughed, that high tinkling laugh which reminded me of wind chimes, laughed until the tears rolled down her hollow cheeks leaving tracks through the grime. "Christ forgive me, dear lord, please forgive me, lord forgive me."

That night I went to see her in jail. It was Tigellinus who suggested it. "You'd better try and pull a few strings to get her locked up somewhere safe,” he said with a black smile. “All sorts of interesting things happen to beautiful women in prison."

When I told her that she laughed again. "I'm safer with my brothers and sisters than I'd be with the Beast's Vestal Virgins."

I showed her the blanket, the straw mattress and the basket of food that I'd brought her.

She refused them. "Christ feeds us and keeps us warm at night in preparation for his coming. These things you've brought belong to the Beast. Soon, very soon, they'll catch fire and burn. You'll burn with them."

Nero ordered me to spend the night before the Second Coming, as he himself began to call it, with the Christians. They were penned up in the Vatican Gardens a hundred yards away from Caligula's race-track, thousands of them.

"Stay awake. Keep notes," Nero told me, his eyes glittering and his face moist with excitement. "I want to know everything that happens, everything. This may be one of the most important days in history."

It wasn't an assignment I looked forward to. As dusk fell my mind darkened. While the brothers and sisters hugged each other a dreadful loneliness enveloped me, a feeling of being the last thing alive on earth, or perhaps the only thing dead. I borrowed a torch from a soldier to keep away the night. The faces I held my torch to were melting into myriad expressions of ecstasy, as if flesh were changing into something else. The torch was already beginning to splutter and die when a hand grasped it. It belonged to a frail old man with a long white beard and perfectly calm eyes.

It was Peter the Apostle. He appeared to mistake me for a fellow Christian. Or perhaps one of my elusive watchers, who seemed to be everywhere, had pointed me out to him. "What do you seek, brother?" he said in the dialect of the streets.

"A friend," I said because, toward the end, I'd been looking for Rachel.

"You've found one in Jesus, he's the only friend you need. Don't allow your faith to waver, now that the end is finally here."

His composure helped me find my tongue. "I hear that Christ will return tomorrow to prevent the martyrdom. Is that the truth?"

"Christ warns us to beware of false prophets. They are of this world, not of the next. Don't put your faith in them, only in your savior."

"But is it going to be the end of the world?"

He dropped the spluttering torch, put both of his light hands on my shoulders. "Of this world, yes, for us, for you too, if you can shake off Satan. Come, be strong. Don't fail this final test. Come and feast with us in paradise."

A powerful, healing force seemed to flow from his hands into my shoulders. My body grew lighter as if my blood was turning into air. Peter’s eyes grew as large and as white as the Full Moon. My spine tingled, my whole body began to glow with a delicious sensation. I knew that this was the ecstasy that Rachel had been referring to, the sensation that sustained her. Somewhere, nearby, I heard a trumpet, the signal for the changing of the guard. It reminded me of Rome's power. The air in my veins turned to lead. When Peter let me go I fell to the ground. I no longer wanted to find Rachel. I cursed Poppaea for sending her to me. All I wanted to do was sleep.