The Nero Prediction (28 page)

Ecstatic cries woke me. "Hallelujah. Look, the messenger!"

Mercury had appeared above the horizon.

From somewhere off to my left a voice thundered. "Beware false prophets. Let your thoughts dwell only on Christ and his promise of everlasting life. Do not weaken now for the end is at hand."

A deep bass voice began a hymn. The others joined in. A voice was bawling out something. At first I thought someone was attempting to stop the singing. It was a soldier calling out my name.

I went to him. "Yes?"

"The emperor sends for you. He's in the circus."

The neat rows of calm Praetorians, the banners and pennants of the imperial cult, the orderly fashion in which the crowds were being shown to their seats, brought me back to my senses.

Nero was already in his box. "That singing," he said, his eyes wide with excitement, "they're rehearsing, aren't they?"

"Yes, Caesar. I suppose that's what they're doing."

"Of course they are. One of them told Tigellinus that when the savior comes to the rescue he's going to be accompanied by a heavenly choir made up of winged angels who sing as beautifully as the spheres. But that's just too good to be true, isn't it?"

I smiled sadly. "Unfortunately yes."

"But they're certain he'll show up, aren't they? Oh, I don't care if he comes on the back of a donkey, as long as he comes!"

Tigellinus chipped in. "Augustus, it's time."

A battery of trumpets sounded the flourish, an ironic touch that sparked raucous laughter around the track. Saturn, a ball of burning amber, had risen above the horizon.

This got the Christians going. "Hallelujah! It's the sign! The end of time! Hallelujah!"

Their ecstatic cries were drowned by a roar of organ music as the orchestra launched into Nero's rousing
Hymn to Bacchus
. Dawn was breaking. Nero, a dangerous set to his jaw, was scanning the eastern sky through the Alexandrian glass that corrected his vision. "Friends, I have very disappointing news, I don't see him."

Tigellinus was at his elbow. "Perhaps they're right. Perhaps he won't come unless you first sacrifice them to him."

Nero shuddered, a theatrical gesture. "He requires human sacrifice! What kind of monster am I dealing with?"

Tigellinus beamed, his violet eyes burnt like marsh fire. "Your opposite, Augustus.”

Nero unwound the large white silk scarf tied around his throat and raised it above his head. The crowd, which had been watching him intently, roared its approval. The trumpets sent a silvery thrill through the marrow of my bones.

Nero dropped the scarf. He bellowed: "Let the kingdom come!"

I've seen many remarkable deaths, but the deaths of the Christians on that August day were the most remarkable of them all. Theirs wasn't the demeanor of Stoic indifference with which a Roman aristocrat slashes his wrists and hops into his last bath. Just the opposite: the Christians exulted in their own destruction. The greater the attempt to humiliate them, to extract screams of agony, the greater their personal triumph, the louder their cries of joy. At last I understood the power locked up in their mysterious formula which commanded them to love those who harmed them. This was a sect that preached gentleness but fed off brutality. Attempting to eliminate them by force was like attempting to put out fire with boiling pitch. Punishment nourished them, an unfortunate oversight.

That was apparent from the very start when a knot of Christians dressed in hides and wearing ass heads were led out onto the track. While the Neronians jeered, the condemned men fell to their knees, facing the eastern horizon. There were no screams of terror, no entertaining attempts at flight or self-defense when the huge black war dogs were let loose on them. Only cries of welcome, and then, as the dogs proceeded to tear them to pieces, cries of joy.

As dusk approached, Christians wearing the
tunica molesta
, the jacket soaked in resin and pitch, were being nailed to crosses at intervals of ten paces all the way round the track. One of them was nailed upside down. It was the old man called Peter, the one who had held me by the shoulders.

Poppaea allowed a short-lived frown to crease her unlined forehead. "Is that supposed to mean something special?"

Nero, for once, was subdued. "Oh, that's the leader of the Christians here in Rome. Tigellinus suggested it since the poor fool had got the Christ and Antichrist thing the wrong way around. Seemed quite witty at the time."

By now we'd witnessed the re-enactment of every death in Greek mythology. Icarus, shot high into the air by a catapult, plunged to the ground in spite of several desperate flaps of his wings. Sisyphus was crushed by the huge boulder he refused to roll up a ramp. Orpheus, a handsome young Egyptian musician, was dismembered by female gladiators dressed as Thracians. Hercules' robe sprang alight by itself. Ixion spun on his wheel of fire. Hungry vultures, penned in a cage with a bound Prometheus, fed on his liver. Dirces were tied naked to the horns of angry bulls. Elaborate tableaux all of them, carefully staged, poetic justice, my idea.

But many who regularly worked themselves into a frenzy of blood lust in the amphitheater shifted awkwardly in their seats, strangely subdued. Nero had made them feel pity and that disgusted them. He was becoming another Caligula, they whispered. He was losing his mind.

At sunset Tigellinus, who'd been having the time of his life, turned to Nero with his wry smile. "Caesar, I'm disappointed. It looks like your opponent is a no show."

Nero felt it too, the uneasy undercurrent. "You're wrong," he said gloomily, "he's here all right. Don't you see how they're rushing into the arms of death? That's not death they're embracing, it's him."

I was digesting this enigmatic remark when I discovered that Nero was squinting at me. He hadn't forgotten that poetic justice was my idea.

"Epaphroditus," he said, "there's someone in the dressing rooms who's about to be transfigured. I'd appreciate it if you'd take her my congratulations."

She was Rachel, her face flushed with anticipation, her eyes glittering with tears of joy. They had washed her and dressed her in shining white and were strapping silvery wings onto her back. The mask on the table next to her made it clear who she was about to play.

She must have blinked when she saw me for tears skidded down her cheeks. "Epaphroditus, come with us, there is still time, he is waiting with open arms just beyond the threshold of this life. Even the Beast knows this, for look he has dressed me as Winged Victory!"

"I come with a message from Nero. He sends his congratulations."

Again that laugh that tinkled like wind chimes. "His congratulations! Tell him that there's nothing of his I want, nothing at all!"

I knew that my words would be wasted but I said them anyway. "Rachel, you are in the grips of a suicidal madness. Life can be sweet, you know that. Many of them have felt terrible pain. Many have recanted even before they were mutilated, so can you. Come to your senses, if not for your own sake, for mine. I don't think I can bear to lose you."

There was pity in her smile. She closed her eyes, crossed her arms, rocked herself like a child. "Poor Epaphroditus, you don't know what sweetness is. Sweetness is what I'm tasting now as I stand poised on the threshold. It flows from him to me like a river of honey. I have no wish to think of the poor souls who made the long pilgrimage only to turn away at the gate. Leave me now, I'm tired of this world and he's gathering me to himself. Leave me. Go!"

Half an hour later, at dusk, I saw her again, masked fixed into place, being carried out in a fancy litter like a great lady.

Nero saw my long face and for the first time that day I saw him smile. "Jealous Epaphroditus? Never mind, you can't win them all, especially when you're competing with a god."

It was already quite dark when he asked me to go down to the track with him. He'd changed into the costume of Bacchus, god of joy. A chariot was waiting for him drawn by twelve athletic young women who were dressed in animal skins like Maenads. The circle of crucified Christians was singing a hymn, the same one that Nero and I had heard in the graveyard. Chained to a stake near the gilded obelisk (another theft from Egypt) which formed the focal point of the oval track was Winged Victory: Rachel, hidden behind the inscrutable silver mask of the goddess.

We climbed into the chariot with its human horses. It was festooned with vines and bunches of ripe grapes. The gloom left Nero's face the moment he touched the reins. He signaled to the team of seven torchbearers, costumed as satyrs, who were waiting in front of the chariot. They trotted off in single file, touching their torches to the flammable tunics wrapped around the crucified Christians, so that if the touch of the first did not catch, one of those following would.

Nero bellowed the ancient Bacchic cry: "Eoi Dionysus!" which was the signal for the Maenads to take off in pursuit of the satyrs. Our passage around the track marked by the growing circle of flame. By the time we completed the circuit, the tunics that had been set alight first were already burning brightly, illuminating the faces above them. There were a few who screamed in agony. But many seemed to be experiencing the opposite, crying out joyfully as the flames licked at them.

The satyrs and Maenads, all of them fast runners, were at top speed now. As we flew around the track the burning bodies flickered past us. After a second circuit Nero veered the chariot off the track at the foot of the obelisk where Winged Victory rocked herself in the cradle of her rapture. One of the satyrs had followed with his torch. He passed it to Nero who held it above his head in the gesture of triumph, began waving it in time to the rhythmic cheering of the Neronians.

He smiled at me, an unearthly smile, neither compassionate nor cruel. It reminded me of the grin that hangs on the lips of archaic Greek statues. He held the torch out to me. "Take it to her, it's her farewell gift from me."

The torch hissed like a snake in my hand. Faggots had been piled high under Rachel's feet. I smelt the resin in which they'd been soaked. Her death would be mercifully quick. When I held the torch up to the mask it lit up the eye sockets. I could see that her large eyes were looking at me.

A croak escaped me. "Rachel..."

There was a muffled sound from behind the mask. For a moment I thought she was trying to say something. Instead she'd begun to sing. The torch fell from my hand. I watched as the flame crawled over the faggots like some infernal lichen. Rachel's wings caught fire. Her body convulsed. Her song, an appalling mixture of ecstasy and agony, was choked off by coughing which was soon drowned by the triumphant roar of the pipe organs, the mighty chorus of voices singing Nero's
Hymn to Bacchus
, Bacchus who sprang to life in the form of a column of flame that was embracing Rachel.

 When she was gone Nero pulled a red liberty cap out of his pocket, put it on my head and applied the ritual slap to my cheek. "There," he said, "now you're free too."

That evening Nero had a little reception for me, to celebrate my freedom. I wasn’t feeling free at all. I was burdened by the horrors I had seen in the Circus of Caligula. I was enslaved by my grief at Rachel’s death. But I sat there with my red cap on sipping expensive wine out of an ornate, silver drinking horn from Parthia, pretending to pick at delicacies that cost more than their weight in gold, squid stuffed with minced oysters, rock eel stewed in mulberry sauce. I even left a magnificent mullet to the others. Poppaea was there, subdued for a change in spite of the undiluted wine the taster was serving to get the party going. Perhaps Rachel’s death had upset her too. Tigellinus tried to make up for the initial lack of high spirits by flashing his magnificent smile at everyone. He stooped low enough to make a joke about Winged Victory being no Phoenix that rose from its own ashes. Poppaea winced. I shot him an angry look he apparently didn’t see. There were the usual dancing girls and mimes but they didn’t amuse me. After apologizing that his uncle Seneca couldn’t attend because of bad health, Lucan recited some verses I didn’t bother to follow. Finally Nero accompanied himself on the kithara as he sang a pleasant composition that had come to him that afternoon, he said. It told the story of Eurydice’s rescue from Hades.

When all the guests, except for me, seemed to be cheerfully in their cups, Nero called for order. “Friends, I have arranged something special for you, quite a miracle actually. Please follow me.

We filed into a room that was dimly lit by four torches set near corners of a bed on which lay a motionless figure entirely covered by a shroud. Nero positioned himself at the head next to a citron wood table that carried a pitcher of water cooled by snow, you could see it floating on the surface – Nero’s favorite decoction. The chattering stopped. People exchanged puzzled glances.

All eyes turned to Nero when he cleared his throat. “Well, as you all know this has been a rather disappointing day. I really was expecting this magician Christ to make his eagerly awaited appearance, but as you all know unfortunately he didn’t. As far as I can make out, he didn’t raise anyone from the dead, however surreptitiously. Well so much for the Christ, now how about the Antichrist? Can he perform a miracle like that? Let’s see.” Nero raised the pitcher above his head as if in benediction. “Mighty Hades, lord of the underworld, Orpheus so charmed you with his music that you gave him back his wife Eurydice. As a sign that Nero’s music charms you too, I beg you to release someone for me as well.”

Nero looked at the circle of faces gaping at him. No one seemed to have the faintest idea what was going on. “In the name of Nero,” he intoned as he emptied the freezing water over the shrouded body, “rise up!”

Something underneath the shroud stirred. A voice, a woman’s, gasped. Hands moved under the shroud, lifted it away from the face. My heart stopped. Rachel!

Tigellinus laughed first, he must have known of the deception all along. Poppaea’s face lit up, she obviously hadn’t. Almost everyone knew Rachel, she was one of the great beauties of the court, normally she would have been dining with us this evening. Everyone was laughing now, howling with mirth at the audacity of Nero’s trick. At the last minute some other young woman had been swapped for Rachel, burnt instead of her. It was almost as clever as the collapsible boat that had nearly killed Nero’s mother.