The Nero Prediction (30 page)

The sternpost, which curved backwards towards the prow like the tail of an angry scorpion, was carved into the shape of a gigantic phallus. The prow-post was the head of Bacchus, hair decorated with oozing grapes, an expression of fierce ecstasy on his face. There were similar boats everywhere, lit by the colored paper lamps that perched in their rigging like phoenixes. Lascivious shouts rolled across the water from ship to ship. There was something about the rocking of the boat, about the enveloping arms of liquid, about the way the sky bent over you, that inflamed the senses. It was why, in Baiae, lust sets sail.

But the ship would have sailed without me if I'd discovered that one of its passengers was Quintianus, he of the bald pate and mauve blubbery lips who'd been talking about tables when Seneca had snubbed me.

Epicharis's breath was already heavy with wine. "Ignore him, I can promise that he'll ignore you. This is a night for abandonment, what everyone craves is anonymity."

A drum took up an unsteady beat somewhere in the bowels of the boat. A sudden, fiendish shriek of flutes announced the emergence of a troop of Maenads through a hatch disguised as the mouth of a grotto. Gradually, as the tempo built up, some of the guests joined the frenzied dance. The revels had begun.

They included scenes that depicted every convolution of sexual experience spiced with the whiplashes doled out by beautiful young priestesses. Men equipped like Priapus and costumed like satyrs demonstrated the virile arts on beautiful young representatives of both sexes. I'd even heard Quintianus whinnying in a falsetto while his rotund rear was being serviced by the two young men with bulging loin-cloths and insolent expressions who followed him about. 

There was the sound of thunder, although the sky was clear. A creature that was not of this earth came up from the hold. Her top half was a beautifully formed woman with seaweed green hair but her bottom half was a scaly fish.

Atargatis.  

Epicharis pulled me towards her, slid her tongue into my ear. "Do you know the Syrian goddess? What she offers is an ancient potion that has survived only among the devotees of her cult. I've drunk it before. It's the elixir of love."

I drank with her, straight from a wineskin. The potion was sweetened with honey but the aftertaste was bitter.

Epicharis put her hand over my eyes. "Forget who you are, just as all of us are already forgetting who we are. Close the eyes of reason, see only with your senses. That's the only way to see the truth of Atargatis."

Dancers in Asiatic costume followed the fish goddess as she swayed her wet, shimmering body in the sinuous undulations of the Syrian dance. Her suggestive hand movements beckoned not to the body but the soul.

A man costumed as the rustic god Liber with a huge, engorged penis reclined on a gilded couch in front of the dancers. Atargatis danced for him as she drank deep. When her wineskin was empty she threw it overboard with an abandoned gesture and slipped into his arms.

Somewhere a drone instrument started up, its single deep note sending delicious shivers coursing through my body. Epicharis's robe fell open. The pink nipples of her breasts thrust upwards as she drew my mouth down towards hers. Her breath reeked of the elixir, redolent of dank, dark places. We sank onto a couch and became one. I didn’t allow the suspicion that someone was watching me blunt my passion.

I returned to the imperial villa shortly before sunrise and left instructions not to be disturbed unless summoned by Nero. As usual someone was following me, I was sure, but I was too tired to care.  It wasn't until half way through the third hour that I arrived at my desk. I found I couldn't concentrate on my work. Epicharis was the only woman who aroused me more than Rachel had, and love is the one appetite that is stimulated by satisfaction.

Even before reviewing my first petition, I sent a note to her, asking to see her in the afternoon. I was at dinner, and Nero had joked more than once about my air of distraction, when her reply was delivered. It was to the point, merely specifying sunset and a particular quay at the harbor. I was there early but it was dark before she arrived with an escort of three sailors. The sight of her sent a flood of delicious memories washing through me but when I tried to embrace her she brushed me away.

"Not now," she whispered.

I followed her onto a trim yacht with a love nest just in front of the mast where I resisted the lure of her distinctive perfume until we were well away from the shore.

Again she rejected me. "We have to talk."

"What about?"

She gave my hand a chaste squeeze. "How is the emperor?"

I told her that Nero was in high spirits and that he was composing a new musical.

It was only when we were off Agrippina's villa at Bauli, which is just south of Baiae, that she took off the mask of the intelligent lady of fashion and became the woman who had just given me the most passionate night of my life.

Her lips seemed to swell with desire in the light of the single paper lantern hanging from the mast. "Epaphroditus, I've consulted my horoscope. I'm about to have a love affair which could end with my heart being broken."

An echo of Atargatis's elixir tingled through my body. "What makes you think I'll hurt you?"

She fell silent for a moment as if she were reluctant to tell me. "Are you aware that there was a conjunction of the Sun, Mercury and Venus during the Full Moon of the Year?"

"Yes, Balbillus mentioned it."

"It took place in my seventh house which is of course not only the House of Marriage and Partnerships but of love affairs also. Unfortunately the conjunction is exactly square my Mars. I'll enjoy passion from this affair, such as the passion of last night. But with it comes grave danger."

"Not from me, I swear it."

"Why should you have free will and no one else?"

“What if there is no such thing as Fate? What if is no sympathy between heaven and earth. What if the movement of the planets means nothing at all?”

She gave me a quick, startled glance, then looked away. “Then I would feel so terribly alone,” she said.

I followed the line of her eyes. She was looking towards the shore, at the great somber villa, eerily unlit in spite of the festive season. Agrippina's. A single light shone on the second floor, in a sea-facing room. Her office. In a horrible moment of inward vision I could see her sitting at her desk, drenched from her ordeal at sea, deathly pale, her eyes burning like fireflies in the hollows of her skull as she stared at the two charts in front of her. My shadow's horoscope and Nero's. Our futures written in code.

I started when a hand touched me. Epicharis whispered as she touched me again, and there was sadness in her voice. "I didn't believe it when I was told. But it’s true, isn't it? You did steal the emperor's horoscope from his dying mother."

This came as a nasty shock although I did my best to sound annoyed. "Who told you that?"

"The same man who said that you use it to take advantage of Nero, to manipulate him."

"That’s nonsense!"

Epicharis's eyes were awash with tears, her lower lip trembled, the sound that escaped her was a little cry of misery.

I squeezed her hands which I noticed were a lot warmer than mine. "What do I have to say to convince you?"

She squeezed back. "Reveal a secret to me that will bind us together like man and wife," she whispered. "Tell me the time of Nero's birth."

I shoved her away from me so violently that the boat rocked. "How dare you ask me that?”

“Why not? I thought you didn’t believe in astrology,” she said, quite archly.

“But everybody else does. That’s why it’s so dangerous.”

Very quietly, Epicharis began to cry. "I’m asking because I'm in love with you, that's why I dare. My informant is the man I thought I loved before I met you."

"Mela?"

"I can't give you his name. When I told him that I'd fallen in love with you he flew into a terrible rage and threatened to denounce you. I begged him, on my knees, to tell me why. That's when he said you’d taken some documents from Agrippina's study and that Nero's horoscope was among them."

I caught myself too late. "I never knew -"

Apparently she didn’t catch my slip. "Epaphroditus, he's a man of honor but he's desperate. He has good reason to believe that the emperor is about to order his suicide. He's racked by anxiety and will do anything to escape it. He's convinced that a comparison of his chart with Nero's will resolve the issue, one way or the other."

"How can I-"

Her voice was as soft as a dove's, her hand ran down the inside of my thigh. "I know this man, I respect him. The secret will go no further, I swear it. Then you, too, will have peace of mind because you'll also have me."

Another step I couldn't stop myself taking it. "I only glanced at it. All I remember is that the Sun was on the eastern horizon."

She gave a little cry of pleasure, then she was in my arms. I undid her breast band. Her lips gorged themselves on mine, her tongue slipped into my mouth.

How sweet it was, the kiss of death!

Bewitched

March 18 – March 19, 65 A.D.

Atargatis's love potion had unhinged me. Or I'd been put under a spell by Epicharis who was probably a fully initiated member of the secret sorority of witches. I was busy pondering which of these best excused my astonishing blunder when a flying grape struck my cheek.

Nero popped the next one into his mouth. "What's the matter, Epaphroditus? I’ve never seen you with such a long face.”

A crooked smile hobbled about my lips. "No dominus, the organization of the festival -"

Nero's eyes twinkled merrily as he cut my lie short. "No use trying to  hide your peccadilloes from me. Cavorting late into the night with that hot pepper Epicharis, eh? What! Forgotten all about Rachel so soon?"

"No dominus."

"Of course you have, you dog! Now go take a nap under the stand. I don't want you nodding off when I'm singing."

While Nero sang late into the night I ached to see Epicharis so that I could sort out the tangle of passion and suspicion she aroused in me. It was nearly midnight before I could get away.

Seneca's gatekeeper pocketed the coin I gave him with a practiced air.  "Epicharis? No, she hasn't come in yet. Don't expect her neither."

"She is staying here?"

He gave me a sly smile. Like everyone else in Baiae he was half drunk. "Off and on, on and off. You know what it's like."

I had to check the impulse to strike him.

I was woken shortly after dawn. There was some sort of emergency.  Someone called Volusius Proculus, a vice-admiral of the fleet at Misenum, was in the atrium demanding an urgent audience with the emperor. He said he had important information that couldn't wait.

A large hairy man, legs like tree trunks, turned towards me as I entered. I recognized him immediately. He'd been the captain of the boat that had taken us to Agrippina that fateful night, the one who'd clubbed her to death. It must have been he who'd seen me take the scrolls from her office and who had reported the fact to Euodus. Euodus must have made the assumption that they were astrological charts because that's what Agrippina would have been consulting in her moment of crisis. That’s what had sent him bursting into my cubicle, catching me with the charts in my hands.

In order to keep him quiet, Tigellinus had purchased the captain's goodwill. But promotions hadn't followed fast enough and resentment had built up to the point where the captain once again began wondering aloud what papers I'd taken. This time he'd done it in bed.

My mind cleared as the vice-admiral crushed my hand. Epicharis was his woman, not mine, or perhaps she was simply her own. Right from the start all she'd wanted out of me was Nero's birth time. The pick-up at Seneca's reception, the night of Atargatis's love potion, the use of threat and promise to extract the secret from me, all executed with ruthless efficiency. So much for her but what about Proculus? What was he going to tell Nero?

"Do you remember me?" he boomed.

I oiled my tongue. "Greetings Proculus! Of course I remember you and your loyalty to the emperor during a time of crisis. Rest assured that if you have come to his assistance a second time, on this occasion I'll personally make sure that you receive a reward worthy of your loyalty."

The sailor worked his lips as he nibbled at the implied bribe. There was no way of being sure, but it looked like he would take it, if he could.

"What have you heard?" I asked.

Proculus's eyes narrowed under his bushy brows. "What I have to say is for the emperor's ears only."

"But what if he's heard it already? Would you wish to have him shaken out of his bed at dawn on a holiday to be told something he already knows?"

Nero was drying off the cold water he'd just splashed on his face when I showed Proculus into his bedroom. The beam of sunlight which came in with us burnished his hair red gold.

I didn't have to remind him of the vice-admiral's name. "Ah, Volusius Proculus, nice to see you again, at least I hope it is," he said as he shook his hand. "What's the matter?"

"Augustus, I have reason to believe that your life is in danger."

Nero looked at me for confirmation and I nodded my head with a little sideways movement to indicate that there was something in it, although not very much.

Nero raised an eyebrow. "You mean as we speak?"

"No, sometime in the near future."

"Why?"

"The information comes from a woman I know, who has connections with the highest ranking members of the Senate."

Nero frowned, turning his frown on me too, for making light of what could be a serious threat because the Senate was where his successor would come from. "The Senate's involved?"

The vice-admiral swallowed. "That I don't know for certain, Augustus. The woman advised me to put my ships on stand-by so that I could advance my career by acting decisively during the political tumult that would follow your fall."