The Nero Prediction (3 page)

Tigellinus's head tilted in a listening posture as if he could somehow hear the distant roar of that mighty Roman crowd, a quarter of a million voices, through the shriek of the Egyptian cicadas. "The day before yesterday I received a letter from her, from Agrippina. She said she’d had a dream that I would find someone with the birth time she was interested in here in Alexandria. Certain matters are coming to a head in Rome. Agrippina needs help immediately. She needs it from you, she needs it from me also. I need eyes and ears in the imperial palace. Your eyes, your ears. As long as I have them I will say nothing about what you and the Copy Master were up to and all the interesting possibilities that raises. You will be treated like a visiting prince in Rome. Betray me …” His tone became almost loving. “But I don’t think you will betray me, will you?”

I was gaping with astonishment, giddy, my life had been turned on its head so quickly. I stumbled over my words. “No sir … never … I will never -”

Tigellinus gestured briskly to the freedman who’d been standing just inside the door. “You leave immediately. Euodus will travel with you. He will keep in touch with you daily. Obey him without question because his instructions will have come for me."

Although I knew that this man had just sunk a hook into me, I blurted out my thanks.

Tigellinus smiled for the first time, showing his perfect white teeth. It was a warm smile, reassuring, winning. “Here,” he said, handing me a wooden box made of lacquered wood. The lid was decorated with a dreadful lion headed man with four wings and a serpent wrapped around its naked torso. Its hands were crossed over its chest. Both held large keys. It stood on a globe that was crossed with an X like the one on Phocion’s moneybag. “This is for you. A parting gift. Do you recognize the figure?”

We have several lion headed gods and goddesses in Egypt but I didn’t recognize this one. “No sir.”

“His Egyptian name in Kar-Knum which the Greeks translated as Kronos. He’s lord of the four winds. See the keys in his hands? Those are the keys to the future because Kronos, of course, is also Lord of Time. Well, what are you waiting for? Open it!”

I opened the box. Inside was a hand, neatly severed at the wrist. Its fat fingers were covered with rings.

The First Murder

September 23 – October 16, 48 A.D.

Euodus and I left Tigellinus’s farm after lunch, escorted by the same bodyguards who had walked with us from the Castellum. We walked to the harbor in silence which gave free play to my swarming thoughts.

Was Phocion really dead? The thought tore my heart but I was sure he was. He must have known that the Copy Master had seen him try to get into the Records Office, must have realized that the fat man would guess that he had come for my certificate, that I was the one the Romans were looking for. When he heard the Copy Master was being interrogated, he knew it was his turn next. That’s why he’d hanged himself, to save himself from torture. He might also have wanted to protect others, too, names he would have been forced to reveal. Mark perhaps? What did Mark mean by ‘You have been chosen’? Chosen for what? A gull cried mournfully. We’d reached the harbor.

A fast, single banked passenger galley was waiting for us. It cast off immediately and was soon speeding through the glassy water. The Pharos lighthouse, wonder of the world, towered four hundred and forty feet above us as we passed out of the mouth of the harbor into the open sea. High above it, tiny smudges in the sky, vultures circled. I saw that Euodus was watching them too. 

It was calm, at first, nothing more than gently undulating blue-green slopes as we glided over them, the drum keeping time for the rowers beating like the ship’s heart. Three hours later, when it was already dark, the beam of the lighthouse began to settle into the sea like a bright star twinkling with a myriad colors. It reminded me of the star Phocion had taken me to watch rising just two months before, the ceremony he had taken me to ever since I could remember. As always, an hour before dawn we joined the silent congregation which crowded a long narrow aisle, in the great temple of Isis in the center of the city – her temples were everywhere but this one, on the sea side of the old Ptolemaic palace, was the most revered. The aisle, closed to the sky except for a round oculus in the eastern wall, was bordered by massive stone columns carved in the shape of palm trees that supported the lofty roof. All eyes were fixed on where the beautiful statue of the goddess Isis loomed in the darkness against the western wall. I had seen miniature copies of the statue, of course. They were sold by the thousand by street vendors in the market places because she was by far Egypt’s most popular goddess whose worship was spreading around the world. On her head was her crown, still invisible, a disk that was set between cow’s horns, the sign for the royal throne. In her arms was her son, the infant Horus, the falcon god whose eyes were the Sun and the Moon.

Faintly, at first, as light from the dawn sky streamed through the oculus, the disk in the goddess’s crown began to glow eerily in the darkness – it must have been made of highly polished silver. A sigh of ecstasy escaped from hundreds of throats as the glow was transformed into a holy fire that danced with all the colors of the rainbow. On either side the statue, great drums began to beat.  A priest with a loud voice intoned: “Behold, the soul of Isis has returned from the Land of the Dead! She commands the Nile to rise! Thanks be to you, great goddess, for bringing us a New Year!” As suddenly as the fire on the crown of Isis had come, it was gone. The silver disk reflected nothing more than the familiar ruddy glow of the dawning sky.

Phocion hurried me outside onto a vast balcony that faced east. Like the vaulted room we had left behind, it was crowded with devotees, all staring east where a single star, just above the horizon, was dissolving into the morning sky. “There she is,” he said. “the Messiah’s heavenly mother. On the day he returns she will return also.”

As the last rays of the Pharos lighthouse sank into the bosom of the sea I said my final farewell to Phocion because I needed a clear mind to prepare myself for a perilous world in which I was simultaneously bound to serve a secret master and a royal mistress. Tigellinus needed a spy at the center of imperial power, supposedly so he could defend Agrippina. But why did Agrippina need someone with my stars so urgently that she had gone to such extraordinary lengths to find me? Why didn’t she just find herself a sixteen-year-old in Rome - there must have been dozens of sixteen-year-olds in that great city of two million people who was born at the same time as I was? Why did I have to be from Alexandria? “Time is of the essence,” Tigellinus had said when he had seen us off. Whatever Agrippina believed I was fated to do for her, it was clear that Tigellinus was convinced she needed me to do it very soon.

 Shrieking like an eagle the storm blew out of the north at midnight. Within minutes foaming waves snapped at the oars like rabid dogs. I heard one break with a sharp crack.

“This storm will founder us! We have to turn back!” the captain was yelling at Euodus.

“Take your choice. Perish at sea or perish at the hands of my master!” Euodus yelled back. “I swear to you the sea will be more merciful!” On we went, hour after hour, thrusting ourselves into the teeth of the gale. Alone in the passenger cabin, I had to cling to a strut holding up the ripping canvas canopy to prevent myself from being thrown across the deck. Seasickness overwhelmed me. Soon I was dry retching bile. I was afraid I was going to die until my misery became so severe that I was afraid I wasn’t. Exhausted I dropped my head onto my satchel and closed my eyes. I dreamt that something cold and wet was crawling up my chest. I looked and saw it was the Copy Master’s hand, encased in a shell of rings. With a sudden leap it fixed itself around my throat, throttling me. I woke screaming. There was no hand around my neck, but there was a sound from somewhere inside my satchel, a scratching sound. With shaking hands I opened the bag. The sound was coming from the box that held the Copy Master’s hand. A blind, mindless terror took possession of me. I grabbed the box and crawled out onto the pitching deck. Fearful tridents of lightning illuminated Euodus clinging to the mast as he screeched Sicilian curses at the rowers. I pulled myself to my feet and flung the box as far away from the boat as I could. Shortly before it disappeared into the glassy wall of a wave I could have sworn it opened and something birdlike flew out and was swept by the wind homewards to Egypt.

The effect was instantaneous. The wind gusted a few more times, the last gasps of a dying beast, and then it was gone just as quickly as it had come. The sky cleared and the sea calmed. The captain had the rowers fed while he examined the stars. Within half an hour we were back on course.

"Why must I be in Rome before the Ides?" I asked Euodus the next morning while he splashed himself with a bucket of seawater.

"We'd better for your sake."

"But the storm wasn’t my fault!"

Euodus turned his naked back on me as he stooped to pick up a bottle of olive oil. It was striped with the scars, straight and thick as white fingers, that scored his skin from the waist to the base of his neck. I'd seen whip marks before, the Copy Master had been liberal with them, but never anything as brutal as this. What had Euodus done to merit such a lashing that must have come very close to killing him?

The freedman oiled himself, taking his time. I was certain he wanted me to see the scars. "Agrippina will regard it as a test like the one that the emperor Tiberius put to Thrasyllus. Do you know the story?"

"No."

"But you do know that Tiberius lived on Rhodes for several years?"

I was eager to show off my knowledge of Roman history. "Yes. It was during his self-imposed exile when Augustus's health was declining. He thought it wise to lie low until the succession was decided."

Euodus chuckled at this, an irritating sound that was more like a cock’s crow. "Decided! You make it sound so civilized. In fact it was simply a matter of who would die first, Augustus or Tiberius. With either death or mastery of the world in store for Tiberius, you can imagine how much he itched to know the future. His problem was how to find a real astrologer in a profession overrun by charlatans. His solution was brilliant. He put out the word that a wealthy Roman was seeking astrological advice. Of course quacks flocked to him from all over the east. Tiberius interviewed them in person at his villa that was perched on a cliff towering hundreds of feet above the rocks of the sea. He had one of his most trusted slaves, a tongueless giant, lead them up to the villa one at a time up a goat path cut into the cliff. Tiberius gave them all exactly the same instruction: 'Cast your own horoscope'. When they'd finished all the varied and wonderful tales they told of their prospects, he sent them down the goat path again without even showing them his stars. They didn't get far. The giant hurled them down the cliff to where an old fisherman waited to stuff their bodies into Tiberius's lobster traps. That's how his table got the reputation for having the tastiest lobsters in Rhodes."

The freedman's tiny green eyes twinkled as he watched me digest this grim morsel. "One day the tongueless slave brought him your fellow citizen, Thrasyllus of Alexandria. 'Interpret your own horoscope,' Tiberius told him. Thrasyllus took his time. First he drew up his own natal chart. Then, consulting his tables, he started calculating aspects with reference to the planets of that particular day. The deeper he probed, the more agitated he became. Finally he threw himself at Tiberius's feet. 'Oh lord,' he said, 'an immediate and fatal doom hangs over my head!' A horoscope is the future written in code. An astrologer is a code breaker. Thrasyllus proved he could break the code. So he became the imperial astrologer. Well, my little pen pusher, what do you think of Tiberius's strategy?"

It took me a moment to recover from this flood of words delivered by someone who rarely threw together more than one sentence. "Unnecessarily cruel. Out of a consideration for humanity, a Greek would've exposed those quacks to ridicule rather than kill them."

Euodus was at work with his strigil already, scraping the oil off his skin. "Ah, but that's precisely why Rome rules Greece. The Greek allows a sentimental attachment to tenderhearted humanity to blur the sharpness of his reasoning. The Roman doesn't. Don't you see? How could an astrologer be expected to foresee that he was in peril of death unless that peril was real? And how do you make that peril real without killing astrologers who cannot foresee it?"

This neat rebuff, and the cackling tone with which it was delivered, made me blush with embarrassment, though I don't expect Euodus noticed that in the dim light of the swinging lantern. "Yes, I suppose there is no other way. But what's all this got to do with me?"

"Simple. If we get to Rome in time to fulfill your destiny it proves to Agrippina that she’s found who she’s looking for. If not...”

I didn't like the way he shrugged off the alternative, it reminded me of the way Tiberius's giant shoved astrologers off the cliff face.

The freedman stared at the horizon ahead of us. “What was that you threw into the sea?” he asked after a long pause.

There was no point in lying. “The box Tigellinus gave me. A dream told me the Copy Master’s hand was strangling me.”

“Exactly what I thought,” the freedman rumbled, as if to himself. “That’s why Fate called off the wind. It was Fate’s hand. She wanted it back.”

Two rowers died under the lash, Euodus had the captain drive the slaves so hard, but it wasn’t until shortly after dawn of October 15, the Ides, that we reached Ostia.

Euodus hurried me on shore the moment the gangplank went down. "A carriage!" he roared at the stevedores loading a big merchant ship, "where do I get a carriage?"

Men hurried past, some of them at the trot. Not very far away, towards the center of the town, trumpets sounded the reveille.

"What's happening?" Euodus asked the carriage master.