The Nero Prediction (29 page)

I was watching Rachel’s face. At first her eyes were wide with confusion. Confusion was followed by an expression of the most profound horror. Her lips moved soundlessly at first as she examined the grinning faces around her animated by the dancing flames of the torches.

Nero raised his hands for silence. “Behold, she speaks!”

But Rachel didn’t speak. She burst into tears, tore at her freshly groomed hair, cried out in heart rending despair. “Oh my dear Christ what have I done to deserve this? I was expecting to wake up in paradise but I have woken in hell!”

Nero led the roar of laughter, acknowledged the applause with raised hands and a practiced bow. “Enough of me!” he cried. “This is Epaphroditus’s moment. My newest freedman, I present you with this slave. The papers have already been drawn up. You have the power of life and death over her now. Reward her if she pleases you, punish her if she doesn’t. Sell her when you want. She’s your property now!”

Not knowing what to do after Nero led his guests back to the dinner couches, I sat at the foot of the bed with by face in my hands, listening to the distant sounds of conviviality.

Rachel’s grief seemed inconsolable, so I didn’t try. Eventually the sobbing slowed. Her voice sounded very small. “You didn’t know?”

I looked at her. Her eyes were swollen from crying, the eye-liner they had applied ran in black streaks down her cheeks. But she was still the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. “Of course not. How did it happen? You were in that costume, they were about to take you out…”

“After you left, when I heard people screaming in the arena, my faith failed me. They gave me something to drink, said it would dull the pain of the fire. In a moment of weakness I drank it. That’s why my savior damned me.”

“And you slept until Nero woke you?”

“Yes. I truly did think I had woken in hell. You … you are a free man now?”

“Yes. But of course it won’t make any difference. No one is free from the patronage of the emperor.”

Her voice grew bolder. She was already more like herself. “And me? What are you going to do with me?”

“What do you want?”

“I’d rather die than live with the Beast.”

My heart broke because I knew I would rather die than live without Nero. “Then go,” I said, my voice husky with emotion. “I give you your freedom.”

She gave a cry of pleasure, very much like she made in bed, fell to her knees in front of me, pressed her hands together in the attitude of worship. “Thank you, oh thank you my love! I’m sure of it now. You will be called very soon.”

Scorpions Spawn

August 2, 64 A.D. – March 17, 65 A.D.

The next morning at his dawn reception Nero made me his Secretary of Petitions. I was now the man to go to if you wanted anything from the emperor. I sank to my knees, so astonished that the only thought passing through my mind was how soft the marble floor beneath me had suddenly become.

Nero frowned with impatience. "Get up man, you're my partner now. The world's on the cusp of a Golden Age, even those suicidal Christians sensed that. You're destined to help me usher it in."

I threw myself into the work. There was plenty of it. First Rome. No more narrow winding alleys, only wide, straight streets lined with elegant porticos. Everywhere stone and concrete to be used in place of timber. Petitions and bids relating to this enormous project poured in by the thousand and I was the one to evaluate them. I turned down as many bribes as I could, partly out of honesty, partly out of my conviction that someone was always watching me, a slave, a freedman, I often saw them out of the corner of my eye, usually in the distance, my old disease. But some were offers I couldn’t refuse and so I grew rich.

Simultaneously I helped Nero and his architects design a giant public park in the burnt out city center. It was going to be the focus of the Golden Age. Its major structure was a complex of art galleries, music halls and shady porticos built on the Oppian hill. Nero called it the Golden House. The remains of the slum that had occupied the swampy valley between the Palatine and Esquiline hills was cleared and became a tear-shaped lake five hundred paces long and nearly a hundred and fifty wide at its broadest part. On its banks deer pranced and sheep grazed, their fleeces dyed imperial purple.

Construction of the Golden House, which overlooked the lake from a position close to the tower from which Nero had sung while Rome burnt, began even before the plans were complete. Its gilded and jeweled façade, two hundred paces long, faced due south so that it glittered from dawn till dusk like an ethereal fire. On the second floor was a dining hall with a circular roof shaped like an inverted bowl that was powered by a huge water-driven paddle wheel so that it revolved on a track to mimic the daily revolution of the heavens around the earth. The signs of the Zodiac were painted on the rim of this revolving dome so that the ring of fantastic creatures circled once every twenty-four hours. The planets, including the Sun and the Moon, were suspended from the dome by a circle of hooks so that the positions of these heavenly bodies relative to each other could be adjusted daily. The temple of folly was the way I thought of it then.

"Secret enemies," Balbillus babbled. "The triple conjunction of the Sun, Venus and Mercury warns of secret enemies."

Time had looped back on itself. Two hours before sunrise, six months and eighteen days after Rachel’s resurrection, I was down in Baiae again taking notes at Nero's Moon of the Year reading. Once again, also, the Moon was full just it had been the night that Agrippina had sent me to kill Nero. The terror of that memory helped me keep a straight face.

 "But it's situated in my House of Music!" complained Nero who by this time, to my relief, had recovered from his bout of feverish excitement. He also appeared to have forgotten all about the Christians and changing Rome’s name to Neropolis, both subjects that I steered well clear of. "I've already drawn the positions of the planets into my chart. Surely its crystal clear, isn't it, that something wonderful is going to happen with my music?"

Balbillus pinched his chin thoughtfully, well aware that Nero, like the emperor Tiberius before him, spent hours puzzling over his chart in private. "True, Caesar, your music could be implicated, but the triple conjunction is in a square with your ascendant which indicates that it brings misfortune."

"Not enemies?"

"No, they are indicated by Mars in your House of Calamities. He's in opposition to your Mercury who is in your House of Enemies."

"Ah, now I get it. Enemies of my music! Seneca's one of course. He hates me because I've discovered the singing play. So does Thrasea and his whole faction of Stoics who go about with long faces because they think it adds to their gravity. But I'm the one the people love, they love me for my music."

Balbillus shook his head. "The stars don't indicate open enemies, Caesar. They warn of secret enemies, men whom you may think of as friends."

"Friends? That could be more serious. When, is there any indication of when they're going to turn against me?"

"The danger extends itself throughout the year but you should especially beware the Games of Ceres on April 19. Mars will then be on the your descendant and in opposition to your Sun. This configuration threatens a fall from a high position."

"I won't become a Tiberius and allow fear to send me scuttling off to an island. In any case, I can't avoid my destiny, can I? What’s the expression? ‘What’s not fated to happen is impossible’."

Balbillus turned up his palms. "Indeed, Caesar. If it's your destiny not to heed a warning from the heavens, then you can’t heed it."

Nero rose. "Then I shan't. If my friends wish to strike me down like Julius Caesar's did, so be it. Better still Epaphroditus, you take care of them, you're my shield, aren't you? Work with Tigellinus. Now please excuse me, I seem to need a lot more sleep these days and I've got a rehearsal at dawn."

Nero was rehearsing seven days later when I went, on his behalf, to a reception given by Seneca. As the Secretary of Petitions it was I who decided who would have access to the emperor's ear. A mere ex-slave with more power than a Consul! How they hated me, the blue bloods of Rome.

This was why I'd prepared my entrance, perhaps too carefully, taking particular care not to be pompous. I'd watched too many freedmen make fools of themselves by putting on haughty airs. The key to Roman aristocratic deportment was complete candor, the impression that there was nothing to hide. I'd learnt that from Nero.

Seneca's guests were already in his garden, strolling down landscaped terraces which descended to the sea or standing in knots around ancient statues which, for the sake of pathetic affect, had been allowed to lose their covering of paint so that patches of bone-white marble showed through.

When I made my appearance they all glanced at me, perhaps to confirm with their own eyes that Nero had openly insulted Seneca by sending an ex-slave in place of himself. A moment later I couldn't catch an eye except for the hostile stare of Marcus Scaevinus, a senator who'd already drunk too much wine, and his reedy parasite Natalis, a knight, whose nudge had brought me to the senator's attention.

"Where's the emperor?" Scaevinus growled.

I made a point of looking surprised at his tone of voice. "He was unfortunately detained by -"

Scaevinus narrowed his bloodshot eyes as he cut me off. "An out-of-tune kithara?"

Natalis sniggered. "Or even a broken string?"

I was gratified to see fear flicker across the little man's pinched face when I struck back. "I'll be delighted to convey your personal interest in the emperor's musical instruments."

A woman's voice, ripe and rich, hailed me. "Epaphroditus!"

It was Epicharis, raven-haired, willowy and willful, an ex-slave and mistress of Mela, Seneca's brother. She disengaged herself from the brawny arm of the consul-designate Plautius Lateranus, handsome, blue-eyed Lateranus who'd been one of Messalina's lovers and who was now giving me a glance spiked with mockery and a grin spiced with contempt.

Epicharis sounded perfectly sincere, I thought that perhaps she was. We'd been acquaintances for years and quite often, when she'd had something to drink, I'd caught her staring at me under half-closed eyelids.

She said, "How very nice to see someone from the court, we were beginning to feel quite snubbed. Before you shake another hand, though, you must come and try some of the Baiaen seafood stew before it's all gone. It's really quite a masterpiece."

In fact it was. Much to Epicharis's amusement, I shed my imperial demeanor long enough to take down the recipe. 

"What? You've got it all down already?" she asked when I finished writing as soon as the server had finished rattling off its ingredients.

I showed her the ciphers. "Yes, in shorthand."

Epicharis smiled. It unsettled me the way she looked into my eyes. "You're teasing me."

"I'm not. Until quite recently, taking dictation was just about all I did."

The tip of her tongue slid mischievously between her lips. "All right then, read it back."

"Minced poached oysters, mussels and sea nettles put in a saucepan with toasted nuts, rue, celery, pepper, coriander, cumin, raisin wine, broth, reduced wine and oil,"

She looked to the server for confirmation.

He nodded, a lopsided, obsequious smile on his face.

Epicharis shook her head in disbelief that revealed the splendid pearl earrings hanging from her tiny ears. "Amazing! You could just sit there and keep a record of a whole conversation between two people and read back to them exactly what they said."

"I've done that often enough, which reminds me, I'd better go and pay the emperor's respects to Seneca. Come with me, I can do with an escort."

Her smile was quick and she took my arm. Seneca was talking about citron-wood tables with Afranius Quintianus, a fat senator with blubbery mauve lips and a head as bald as a mirror, who did nothing to hide his affection for boys past their prime. They both ignored me. When I thought I'd waited as long as politeness required, I interrupted them. In spite of his air of Stoic imperturbability a shadow passed over Seneca's face. Without as much as a nod to me he took Quintianus by the arm and walked away, still talking about tables.

I flushed with anger. Everyone must have seen the snub. Seneca would have to be reminded that I was no longer a slave.

I was on my way out when Epicharis fell into step with me, smiling as if nothing had happened. Even through the glaze of my fury I saw promises in her eyes. 

"What Seneca just did to you. He couldn't stop himself, you do realize that, don't you? It was his destiny."

"Yes, just as it is my destiny to do what I'm about to do."

She touched my bare forearm. Her fingers were smooth and cool. "What's that?"

"Report to the emperor."

"Does he expect you tonight?"

"No. But in the light of what just happened -"

We'd entered the portico which lead to the gate. Epicharis turned me towards the west where the Sun was setting behind the mountains of Misenum. "You'll tell him, but you won't tell him tonight."

"Why not?"

"This is Baiae. Today is the Liberalia, hard to tell from this cold-blooded gathering. But I have friends with warmer blood in their veins. They've had a ship fitted out for an all-night celebration of true pleasure. I want you to sail with us."

I tried to say no. Epicharis’s fingernails bit into my arm. Veil after veil seemed to fall from the eyes that stared into mine, each revealing a promise more seductive than the last.

We didn't leave the reception together, Epicharis thought that unwise. I met her at a quay where a boat rode at anchor, a three-masted Alexandrian grain ship, a hundred and sixty foot long and thirty-five wide, which had been refitted as a pleasure boat for the season. In addition to the sails that billowed from its three masts it was propelled by a single row of long oars manned by beautiful, athletic young slaves, all heroically naked.