The Conspiracy

by John Hersey

  The least that can be said is that Epicharis has a talent for attracting love and gratitude.

  March 27

  To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police

  This comes by way of Cleonicus:

  “Seneca to Lucan, greetings:

  “Why have you not written to me?

  “Since the visit I described in my last, I have been having anxious days. You can imagine that I expected a prompt second visit of some kind, further discussions, an ear for an answer from me. But no one came. I lived the life of a lonely farmer-philosopher. I waited and waited. Nothing from the man who visited me. Nothing from you.

  “I had come to the view that I could not refuse this nomination, and I prepared my mind as well as I could for power or for death. Still no visitor, no message even.

  “I have taken great pleasure recently from my topiary garden. I will not bore you with that. You reproach me with being in a country daydream, but I am much in the city in my thoughts, at your side, so to speak.

  “Day and night I think back over our correspondence of recent weeks. One keeps wondering whether he has been able to say what he really meant. You make an interesting distinction in your last letter between the writer and the man he is. Perhaps I would have to admit the possibility of such a duality—that as a writer one is simply an instrument, a stylus as distinguished from the hand that moves it. And perhaps the hand has other work to do besides manipulating the stylus.

  “Your vehemence puts me in doubt. I have always wanted your love, Lucan. You puzzle me. The very intensity of your reproaches seems to reach out to me, as if in a cry for help and love; but your words keep me at arm’s length. I keep wondering whether I have said something in the past or in these letters which either hurt you or went so roughly against the grain of your thinking that you felt cut off from my love.

  “I remain your Seca. Write to me and reassure me. I must hear.

  “Farewell.”

  To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS

  In his wisdom Himself chose yesterday to expose his Person in a walk with Poppaea through the Forum to the Capitol. I argued against it, with what effect you can imagine. I had a squad of the Guard accompany him, keeping a decent distance so as not to make too great a show of unusual precautions. All went well, I am thankful to say—except for one incident.

  In front of the Basilica Julia, about fifty paces from the Arch of Tiberius, the Consul Vestinus appeared, having come down the hill from the Capitol. He had with him his offensively exquisite personal bodyguard. As the Consul made obeisance to Himself, this group of mincing armed dancers, approaching well within the confines staked out by the Praetorians walking with Himself, formed a semicircle around Vestinus and joined him in bowing.

  Because Vestinus knew of Himself’s displeasure with the private guard, and because these young armed men approached dangerously close to the Person, this act, couched in gestures of humble submission, was most offensive.

  Himself was enraged but said nothing—grandly accepted the insulting homage.

  Now, Paenus, your task: Find out if Vestinus is involved in the business.

  March 28

  To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police

  Since you harp so much on my incompetence, it gives me satisfaction to report to you that Natalis, whose surveillance you resisted so long, was followed yesterday on a trip, which he had announced to his household as having as its destination Allia. Where did he go? To Nomentum, where he spent four hours walking in the vineyards with Seneca.

  March 29

  To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police

  The agent in Mela’s house sends us this:

  “Lucan to Epicharis, greetings:

  “You bid me go back to my poem, as if it were a meal and I had simply lost my appetite and should sit down and force something down my gullet. It is not as simple as that.

  “I go walking in the back streets of Rome, hoping that I may find my way through the twisting alleys back to myself, back to the poet in me. Today I was walking in a little street of carpenters’ shops not far from the Tiber and near the warehouses below the island. The sun was high, and light poured down into the narrow gorge of this alleyway redolent with odors of sawdust, of the curls of planing, of glue, varnish, and sweat. Suddenly there was a tiny, dark, vaulted arcade off the street, and through at its far end was an open courtyard, full to the brim with sunshine that seemed liquid. The arcade was bracketed by two mirror-makers’ shops, and both walls of the arcade were lined with scores and scores of mirrors, rectangular ones of polished stone from the one shop, smaller round ones of brilliant metals from the other. The luminosity from the street and from the courtyard sparkled magically in these mirrors, and I was drawn irresistibly into the cavern, whose proper medium was darkness, now punctuated but not quite dissipated by the glistening of the mirrors.

  “At the center of each side was an especially large stone mirror, and when I stepped between these two, which were directly opposite each other but were not exactly parallel, I suddenly saw my figure repeated endlessly in mutual reflections. I drew back at once, for I was deeply moved by the idea of the two empty mirrors reflecting in infinite layers of contemplation the void that stood between them. I tried to peek around the edge of one to get a look at this endless reverberation of still and pure space, but at once my head appeared—my heads, scores and scores of them retreating into invisibility; and I drew back again.

  “I think of the place between those mirrors as a metaphor for my poem. Whenever I move into it, these days, I see the many images of myself, and I am not pleased; I draw back. I want the poem to be a magical dialogue of reflections, with pure Rome between the mirrors, Rome as it truly was (is), with all its pain, wonder, and glory, its contradiction of love of liberty and love of tyranny, its need for Caesar and for Cato, its vitality and squalor and pride and bustle. But I feel that I distort this Rome when I intrude on it. I have reached the point where I cannot bear to peek around the frame.

  “Perhaps the trouble is that all of Rome is in me—not just the love of liberty, as I used to think, but the love of tyranny, too; and looking in the mirrors is displeasing because though I may be a creator I am still only a man. All this stems from an absurd fastidiousness in me. I know that I cannot stay out of my poem—that my poem must perforce be the essence, not of Rome, but of Lucan. Still, the facing mirrors repel me.

  “I am at peace these days only when I am with you. Here in Rome I want to shout, quarrel, shock people. I must break away and come to you. I will. I will.

  “Farewell.”

  March 31

  To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police

  From Cleonicus: Old man Seneca is befuddled by the pressure he feels himself to be under. Thinks he is being mysterious about certain things, but from this letter we can now be sure that his rival is Piso.

  “Seneca to Lucan, greetings:

  “How thankful I am, my nephew, for three people in this world I can trust with the heart of my heart. Paulina. You. My dear Cleonicus. When you think that one of these is a woman and another is a former slave of mine, it becomes clear that human transactions need not all be matters of self-interest, of hard dealings by hard men, of the strong using the weak. You three love me. I love you. It is as simple as that.

  “At last I have had a visit from the city—but an unsatisfactory one, Lucan. Antonius Natalis. You know him.

  “I have known this fellow for many years, and I have not, to be honest, had a high opinion of him. Our acquaintance has been casual, one based on the fact that he was an intimate, and I a social friend, of a man you know very well. I don’t care for men who do nothing with themselves. Natalis’s grandfather made a fortune in the grain trade and bought several large country estates, on the rents of which Natalis
’s father and now Natalis have lived well enough. This one is a fop—dresses himself with a woman’s care and spews the deadliest gossip. He has not trained himself for any usefulness whatsoever; knows neither rhetoric nor even any commercial skills. I suppose you know that he has made a hobby or pastime of studying Greek literature, but in conversations I have found this side of him to be shallow and affected. I know that you speak highly of him; I have heard you make a judgment that he ‘has sympathies,’ or, as I think you put it, ‘has correct and true sympathies’—meaning, I presume, that he agrees with you on the things about which you are so emotional.

  “Natalis, on entering my house, seemed for a time quite unable to tell me why he had called on me, but when the room was for a moment free of slaves he asked me in a whisper to walk outdoors with him where we could not be overheard. We strolled among the vines. Still for a time he was most awkward. Finally he blurted out that he had come as a messenger of goodwill from our mutual friend.

  “Why, Natalis asked, did I shun this man’s company? Why had I cut myself off from him? This person and I had once been good friends, says Natalis—should not good friendship be nourished by frequentation?

  “Mind you, this Natalis said not a word about all that business my previous visitor had mentioned, not a word about this certain man being the other choice. It was all in terms of ‘friendship’—a message from a friend with hurt feelings.

  “This messenger was obviously not the one to whom I should give any positive answer on my own behalf. I did not like it. I excused myself to Natalis, saying that I have been in poor health; I need rest; this is why I have retired to the seclusion of Nomentum; I cannot see even old friends at this time.

  “In short, I refused to talk to the other man. I could only guess that his motive for this invitation was to try to persuade me to accede to him, to swing my supporters to him. Of course I have no intention of doing this, and in the state of uncertainty in which I find myself I do not dare to speak to anyone.

  “Why have you not written to me, or come to me? I am puzzled by your silence.

  “Farewell.”

  April 2

  To PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police, from TIGELLINUS

  Secret. Secret.

  I have read and thought carefully about Seneca’s last two communications to Lucan, and I have taken note of the Natalis visit.

  Have Seneca poisoned. Work with extreme care. I have not discussed this with the authorities, who might not approve. Extreme care, do you understand me? This must appear to be the result of a sickness. Do not consult Locusta as to what to use; find other advice. She might go to the authorities, for whom she has so often officiated. But do not use any method other than a subtle poison.

  Extreme care, Paenus. Your life and mine, and perhaps another’s, depend on this mission.

  April 5

  To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police

  Urgent.

  The informer Valerius has come to us just now with the following information.

  This took place about an hour ago, at the public toilet at the baths of the Field of Mars. Lucan entered and seated himself. The toilet was crowded. From under him, in a few moments, came the sound of a fart for which, Valerius says, Lucan must have been saving up for days; a noise from a legend, Valerius says, which echoed without end in the marble-walled toilet.

  At once the others who were defecating in that large room heard Lucan intone in a theatrical voice, mimicking the public delivery of none other than Himself:

  “You might have thought it thundered under the earth…”

  Every literate man who was shitting there recognized this as a famous line written and read by Himself at the Neronia, and everyone fled from the toilet in terror. They had to arrange their clothes as they ran. Several stumbled and were trampled.

  April 7

  To TIGELLINUS from ALBINOFULVUS, Chief Magister, Imperial Stables

  In response to your oral commands of last week I have been on a tour of all the stables within three days’ journey of Rome. I am glad to say I have found two superb fours, neither of which have raced here, one from the Alashkert line you suggested, the other from a longer-shanked, heavier-haunched strain of grays from farther south, from the region of the middle Tigris River. The latter are derived from desert herders’ horses, bred to run hard in soft footing, immensely strong.

  I was wondering whether the worshipped Person might not be pleased to take an exercise turn in a chariot behind one of these fours. Confidentially, if he would, I could render them safe by exercising them hard for three days straight beforehand. Even under these circumstances the worshipped Person would, I am sure, derive great pleasure from the hot, nervous energy of these fine beasts.

  The horses will in any case be at the peak of condition for the Circus of Ceres.

  I await instructions.

  April 10

  To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police

  You mocked a previous item on checkers, but read this and think about it.

  While playing yesterday with Sleepy-Eyes, Piso advanced three petty thieves to the far row and thus converted them into bandits—counters free to move, as you must know, in all directions. Scaevinus had managed to convert one. Piso then conducted a pursuit of Scaevinus’s single bandit with his three. He began to refer to Sleepy-Eyes’ bandit as “the terrible one.” When he finally managed to corner it against one side of the board, where his three blocked all escape and destroyed Piso’s counter, he jumped up and danced around the room—a most unusual celebration for one who almost never loses at thief-checkers. Scaevinus fell off his chair laughing. We are told that Piso was not drunk; Scaevinus, as usual, was.

  April 11

  To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police

  From our agent in Mela’s household this letter, which contains disturbing phrases:

  “Epicharis to Lucan, greetings:

  “You asked before you left how long I could remain serene. What does ‘how long’ mean? Perhaps I ask less of life than you do. What for me is a moment is for you a month. Please understand me, dear heart: I am not asking you to ask less of life. Your great beauty is your urgency. I kept thinking when we were talking about the future that your eyes were pools of Vulcan’s heat, and that in that heat irresistible instruments could be forged. I am no less dissatisfied than you are, but my method is to work in modest ways. If I can heal a single wound or relieve one tired frame, I feel mended, refreshed. You dream feverishly of…of what?…of a typhoon…of getting back to your poem.

  “You will. Soon. I feel sure of it.

  “I never think of you without awe for your gifts, among which is the gift of enlarging all that you touch.

  “When you left, I got out your books, and I put them around in the places you like best when you are here—one on the chair in the atrium, where you like to look out at the sea; one on your couch in the dining room; one on the extra table your father set up for you in the library—so I could pretend that you were still here. Your father does not mind; he smiles at my folly without knowing how much it means. I caress the books; I pick them up and read, as if looking into your eyes.

  “You seemed refreshed when you left. You will be back at work soon again. Avoid quarrels with Polla; they drain you. Think of me, smile, be at peace.

  “Farewell.”

  To ALBINOFULVUS, Chief Magister, Imperial Stables, from TIGELLINUS

  Himself has taken most warmly to your suggestion of the other day about the exercise-ride. We will set it for the day after tomorrow, if the weather is fine, at the eighth hour.

  I have been thinking about trying to build Himself’s pleasure in this Circus of Ceres, and I want your help. We will do this partly by our conversation with Himself day after tomorrow. But I have a further thought. To heighten th
e dramatic tension of the Circus itself, it would be a good plan to control, to some extent, the outcome of the races. I realize, considering the traditional inviolacy of the teams’ integrity, that this is a delicate matter.

  The point would be to have the Green team fall far behind at first, then, as the races followed, gradually catch up and at last take the day in the final race. This could be achieved in part by simply using your weaker horses in the early races and these two new fours only toward the end. But we must ensure the outcome.

  Let me know what you think. I will arrange to talk privately with you while Himself is driving day after tomorrow.

  April 14

  To TIGELLINUS from PAENUS, Tribune of Secret Police

  Cleonicus intercept, which I send you with great regret and in great distress. This kind of thing always happens when we work under pressure both of time and of the contempt of superiors.

  “Seneca to Lucan, greetings:

  “We have reached bad days, Lucan.

  “Yesterday came to me my faithful Cleonicus to say that a certain slave in my kitchen had been making preparations to poison me but had lost his nerve at the last moment and had gone in tears and terror to Cleonicus to confess. I asked to see the slave, and he was brought to me. He was a fresh-cheeked boy of about eighteen. I did not recognize him, though Cleonicus says he has been a slave of ours for six years. How sad this made me, Lucan—that among my servants and dependents there could be someone who is a total stranger to me. I suppose this is inevitable. There are seven hundred souls on my various estates, and to have known them all as I would like to have known them would have been a life’s work; I could not have been a philosopher and certainly not a porter of influential burdens at court.

  “This boy was in a terrible fright. At first I thought he was afraid that I would have him destroyed in some barbaric way. But no, he was not afraid of me. Worse, he had no feelings whatsoever about me, either of guilt or compassion or love or respect or fear. I was a stranger who happened to be his master. He was only afraid of the persons who had promised him not only his freedom but fifty thousand sesterces of hard Roman money to put me out of the way. How could a poor, uneducated slave resist such offers as those? Now he feared for his life.