‘They’ve no right to exist.’
‘How ridiculous! You look as if you wanted to eat them, darling! Why shouldn’t they exist?’
‘Because they’re against the State. That’s good enough for me. If they didn’t actually burn Rome, they might do something as bad or worse some day. You’ll see if we leave them alive! They’re against property.’
‘Slaves always are! But who cares? A lot of wretched little Jews. You’re only drawing attention to them with all these arrests. What does the Emperor think?’
‘Same as me. You can take that for a fact, Flavia.’
‘Oh—can I? You know, I don’t believe in facts I can’t see for myself.’ Flavia jumped up crossly. She’d had another of these quarrels with Candidus the night before. She could say things that hurt him, and she knew he wanted to kill her—and Tigellinus—but didn’t dare. That was all very fine a situation, and one got a lot of kick out of it once or twice, but it didn’t get any further. It stuck. And then her father had come back from the country and trotted along to pay her a visit and bleated about the home and the family. She’d picked up her embroidery—the same piece she’d been doing last month, but he’d never notice!—and sat and ached with the tedium and stupidity of it, half longing for the crash—to tell him and see what he’d say! Dig it in and hurt! See them wriggle, him and Beric—if only she could! It would serve him right for talking about grandchildren. So now she was irritated and impatient, and all she wanted at the moment was to see Nero; somehow she couldn’t believe he was just an echo of Tigellinus!
And Tigellinus was thinking about Nero too. If only he could be sure that the Emperor agreed with him wholeheartedly! For instance, this business of the execution of the Christians in the Arena: it was good policy: it would go to show there wasn’t, after all, to be any nonsense about turning the Games into a wretched, amateur, Greek business, with nothing but races and singing, and wrestling under a set of rules that stopped anything funny happening! If you got the sand well soaked with blood a few times it would get all that out of people’s heads. The Emperor had seemed to agree, he’d thought up new ways of dealing with the criminals, got an imagination, he had. Yes, too much: an imagination like a showman’s—so that however a thing turned out in the end, it couldn’t be as good as you’d figured it. So the Emperor was always getting disappointed. Upset. If you didn’t picture things yourself, then whatever was done for you was always fine. If only Nero’d been that way! Then you’d have known what to do. Not made mistakes. Not ever. And he wouldn’t ever look at you with those bloody queer eyes of his as though he were looking right through you. Nasty, that was.
Having said a tender goodbye to Flavia, Tigellinus went straight to see Nero; he had started worrying again about the master of the world. Supposing, after all, the Praefect of the Praetorians didn’t understand him? Then? Well, then you had the Praetorians anyhow. For what they were worth. You would probably get enough warning if the Emperor—changed his mind about you. He counted over the number of freedmen and slaves at the Palace who were in his pay. So long as they weren’t still more heavily in someone else’s pay. Bloody awful not being able to trust a soul, he thought. Not even little Flavia. And he pitied himself heavily.
The Emperor received him almost at once, but insisted on his looking at the architects’ models for the new palace, the Golden House. ‘What’s it all going to cost?’ Tigellinus asked, poking at the pretty little wax and ivory things. ‘But don’t you worry, Majesty,’ he added, ‘that’ll be all right. There’s money about in Rome; you trust me and I’ll get it for you.’
Nero looked sideways at Tigellinus with that veiled suspicious glance that made him seem so much older; he was only twenty six, and he could have anything in the world he wanted—if only he’d known what. ‘Some of the Senators,’ said Nero, ‘have more than they deserve. Ugly old devils. They oughtn’t to be allowed to live, as ugly as that. Plotting. Calling themselves Stoics. With as much idea of philosophy or anything Greek as—you!’
Tigellinus laughed, ‘I don’t need to. You do all that for me, Majesty. That’s why we’re such a good couple. Husband and wife, as you might say.’ He passed one hand round the Emperor’s narrow shoulders and squeezed his arm. ‘They talk treason too. And they’re such a pack of old fools they get themselves overheard by my chaps. They don’t mean half of it, but they like making noises about Brutus and that. Then they get into trouble. But we’re always prepared to believe they’re loyal subjects again when they fork out a nice little present to pay for these pretty palaces of yours.’
‘They ought to be proud,’ Nero said, looking sombrely at his models. ‘I am giving Rome the most beautiful buildings in the world!’
‘Old Gallio must have made pots when he was Governor of Achaea,’ said Tigellinus. ‘We might catch him out.’ He wondered what Nero would say to that, whether the Emperor was still half-afraid of his old tutor Seneca—in spite of Seneca having been safely banished to the country—and wouldn’t have Seneca’s adopted brother touched. But Nero seemed aware and acquiescent: enough to move on. Tigellinus added that everything was ready for the next Games. These Christian atheists would then get what was coming to them. It would be the finest show there’d ever been yet. ‘All Rome’s going to be crazy over you for that,’ he added.
‘They ought to be,’ said Nero, ‘they ought! When I consider what I do for them. Things that none of the others ever thought of doing. The music. The spectacles. Strength through joy! They ought to be crazy about me. To love me. They ought to do more than love me!’
‘They’ll honour you,’ said Tigellinus. ‘Your name will live for ever. Things will be called after you. Solid things.’
‘My Golden Palace.’
‘They’ll remember Nero’s reign long after old Augustus is forgotten.’ But Nero was fidgeting. Tigellinus made a great effort of the imagination. ‘Towns will be named after you. Cities. Altars will be dedicated to you everywhere.’ Ah, that was better. ‘A god, that’s what you’ll be. A regular god.’
‘I feel like a god,’ said Nero, ‘sometimes. Coming into the Arena, slowly, grandly, at the head of the great procession serpent-stretching behind me, lifted on the voices, the closing, rising cheers, the love, lifted above the sand that is so soon to take the blood. Lifted and floating.’ He raised his arms, moving about the room on the balls of his feet, hovering round his models. He went on, his voice rising a little, ‘I am the Will of Rome and the people know it, the ordinary people who love me. For whom I make the great blood sacrifices. You said they loved me! It is only the hideous old men, the Senators, who refuse to know I am the Will. Some day I shall make them. I have been merciful, but my patience will not endure everything. Heads must roll! If they thwart me, they thwart the Will and Voice of Rome. They become enemies of society. Isn’t that right, Tigellinus, isn’t that right?’ But before Tigellinus had time to think of an answer, the Emperor began again. ‘The Epicureans as well, they are enemies of society. They want to thwart the natural wish of the people for gods and the gift of the gods, the natural wish for a leader! I have read some of the books of the Epicureans. Why have they not been suppressed?’
‘Most of them have been, Majesty.’
‘All must be, all! Atheism is as much a crime against men as against the gods. Men need gods.’
‘They need the Divine Image on earth, Majesty,’ said Tigellinus, getting his cue. ‘They need to see it walking among them, doing the things they like doing themselves.’
But Nero was not listening; he was leaning now on the marble sill, looking down and out over Rome, screwing up his eyes so as to see it less blurred. Even here, even still, there was the faint, sour, sultry smell of an August city, the remains of an ashy taste in the air. ‘Roses!’ Nero cried out suddenly, ‘oh, my God, roses! Will someone be quick?’
After the room had been filled with flowers, Tigellinus took his leave. He understood Nero; it was all right. But sometimes rather exhausting. He had made up his mind to
catch Gallio out: old fool, coming round in his toga, grunting about justice! He’d have had Flavius Crispus too, but for the fact that he was a certain little lady’s father. Not that she’d mind most likely—grand little bitch! But you never knew. Besides, it might look bad.
Nero had asked for a particular singing girl; two boys had dashed off to fetch her. She was Asteropé, the daughter of one of his old nurses, Alexandra; she looked like a pure Greek, spoke a rather affected Attic, and knew all his poems by heart; he treated her exquisitely. At the moment he was making a wreath of buds for her with his own hands, as Apollo might have done for a favourite Muse. With her he would be able to be good, to escape from one of his selves into the other.
It all went back to childhood, that split between the selves. It was his mother’s doing, mostly, that tough and able and immoral woman, Agrippina; she was forever forcing him, a sensitive, short-sighted, pretty little boy, to be what she wanted—the Roman, the leader, the Emperor-to-be, character-building him into the Roman pattern. And he would run away from her, back to his two nurses, Greeks both of them, Eclogé and Alexandra, and they would be gentle, petting and praising him, listening to his stories of what he’d been doing, and giving him sweets and soft talk when he cried, instead of scolding or smacking him. Till he was quite a big boy, they would take him on their knees, and sing him Greek baby songs, about a lovely, lovely world where delightful and affable godlings would spring from tree or fountain with handfuls of presents.
So still he was caught between his mother and his nurses, even though Agrippina was dead—and how hard she’d been to kill, but murdering her couldn’t get her out of his mind, nor yet the longing she had planted there for the little boy who cried to turn into the will and voice of Rome, to become the super-Roman of all time. Eclogé and Alexandra had retired to the country; it was months since he had seen either of them. But there were successors. There was Octavia, his Roman cousin, whom he had been made to marry, the girl so full of Roman virtues that it terrified him to sleep with her—so that he had to drive her off, divorce her, kill her… Just as Britannicus too had to be killed, the virtuous Roman youth, the prig, the rival: yes, had to be stamped out. But Seneca had known about Britannicus, the old hypocrite, talking down his nose about philosopher kings; he must have known, all those interminable weeks before the poison finally worked! And there had been plenty of Greeks. Acté herself, his own first choice, and probable virgins like this girl Asteropé, and others: boys too, virgin Greek boys such as tempted the delightful gods in the other dream, the dream in which the little boy became the will and voice of Hellas.
But perhaps Poppaea would be an escape from both; not Rome: not Hellas. She was not out of a dream; she was living for something else, for the individual, herself and him. She had leaped straight from her first husband into his arms. She had the same fears as his, and the same elations. Some day they would have a son—a wonder-child …
Asteropé came into the room, with her smooth, snooded hair, smelling of winter violets, and knelt at his feet. He crowned her with the wreath he had made himself; when she spoke them, his poems sounded purest classic. Perhaps after all he should have been a poet. Only a poet. Innocent. Living in a rush hut in some wild glade. Under the red, echoing cliffs of cloud-browed Parnassus, watching the gods stepping enormously about their business between earth and heaven. He leant back, shutting his eyes. No, it was nobler to be a god than even to sing about gods! To assume the difficult, divine mantle, dispensing life and death. He began now to think slowly about methods of death for those who affronted and refused the gods. Christians and Epicureans and such. Superb wild beasts, beautiful as the panthers of Dionysos, would be his ministers. And fire. Flames in the night. What a marvellous sight Rome had been, burning … that wonderful sky, pulsing with reflection. He had given himself one supreme moment to regard it as an artist, although he had been so immensely energetic, sane and statesmanlike—everyone said so, everyone!—in dealing with the fire, both at the time and afterwards. The Roman virtues. He had them after all. His mother might have been proud of him! His mother … He shook his head angrily, chasing away these thoughts. Watching him, the girl Asteropé threw herself back a little and put increased spirit and sensitivity into the poem she was chanting for him.
CHAPTER II
Ends and Means
Crispus came back from the country early in September; he had not intended to do so. Balbus was still out of town and so were many of his friends. The country was at its best. He had intended Flavia to come out and spend a nice week with him and his mother; it would have been good for the two young people to learn to miss one another. But as things were, he was too uneasy. Anything might be going on in Rome. He came back to find Beric anxious and not very communicative. Manasses was in the Mamertine prison, charged merely with being a Christian. ‘But that was dealt with last month,’ said Crispus, ‘and—finished with. I shall go and explain that, although the boy was suspected of this thing at one time, it is no longer true. You see how necessary my preventive measures were, Beric.’
‘No good,’ said Beric sombrely, ‘Manasses himself didn’t deny that he was a Christian.’
‘But I can’t make this out. The boy must have known that such an admission was—as things look just now—tantamount to a death sentence.’
‘Yes, he knew that.’
‘Then, why?’
‘Oh, can’t you see,’ said Beric, ‘it was the one thing that counted in his life—he was proud of it! He’d got to show it was worth dying for.’
‘I see,’ said Crispus, and added, ‘Manasses appears to have had more courage—of a misguided kind—than one expects of a dancing boy. But I trust the others have been warned by his fate.’
‘Perhaps,’ Beric said. He knew well enough how things were in the household, and particularly that, if Dapyx was arrested and tortured or even badly frightened, he might say anything about any of them, or else perhaps on his own accuse them of the sort of fantastic crimes that Christians were being accused of. He knew that Argas wanted him to speak to Dapyx, but he couldn’t. In some ways he didn’t want to speak to any of them; he wanted to stop and think; he wanted events to remain static until he knew how he fitted into them. But they wouldn’t do that.
Crispus was not only worried about Beric and what had been going on in his own household, but also about public matters. He had been talking to his cousin, Flavius Scaevinus. How long could the present state of affairs be tolerated? How long for that matter, could they themselves survive it? A tyrant only considers himself safe among slaves. Nero was getting worse. Perhaps the time had come to end this phase of Emperors. Or again, if it appeared necessary in order to please the common people, to continue with the title, it might be possible to restrict the Imperial power vastly, to have one of themselves wearing the purple, but strictly under the control of the Senate, which would come into its own again. Take, for instance, a man like Calpurnius Piso … So the talk went between the two cousins.
It was all extremely serious. The only relaxation which Crispus allowed himself, and which he could really enjoy, were his visits to his daughter. There she sat with her embroidery, the pet. And soon, no doubt, there would be hope of a grandchild. But now Balbus too came back to Rome. And the evening of the day he arrived his son and daughter-in-law duly came to pay their respects, and after she had left Candidus suddenly blurted out everything. The next morning Balbus went over to see Crispus and tell him. So that much of Crispus’s happiness came to an end.
Niger was there with the rest of the litter-bearers. He was living through a bad story; everything came wrong in it. Everything was against the man in the story. There had been other stories before, good ones, but they seemed to be over. This house had been part of one. He didn’t see now how he could ever get back into that story. Waiting in the yard, he saw Dapyx come out of the kitchen carrying two garbage pails. Another of the kitchen slaves, going by, gave Dapyx a light-hearted kick; he stumbled, tipping over one of the
pails, then went down on his knees, scrabbling hastily and awkwardly for the odds and ends of much that had slid out, looking round for the next kick or blow. The lobe of one of his ears was torn a bit; he saw Niger and looked at him with extreme hate. He was in a bad story, too. The expected blow for his spilled pail came; he squealed and held on to his torn ear. Niger looked away; beside him, the Cappadocian coughed, his hands on his chest. Zyrax was whistling and chewing something. The German was watching Dapyx being hurt; it was a kind of pleasure when other people were hurt, not oneself. Niger shut his eyes; he refused to let the good story be entirely taken from him; last night Persis had slipped away from her mistress and out to the shed where he was chained, and whispered a few words and closed his hand over a piece of white bread. Hard in his mind Niger began to remake the good pictures.
Josias came by. It was Josias who had talked to him that first time. Now Josias did not look his way; he was hurrying, his old limp catching him as it always did. But he had to hurry now, to be always doing something or looking as if he was. Josias saw Dapyx and Niger; he was frightened of them both, in different ways. If only he knew what was going to happen; if only they would stop hurting Manasses. If only Manasses would come back. If only he could do anything to save Manasses. If only he could speak about these things that were tearing and terrifying him. Shriek them out loud. It was so difficult even to see Argas alone, and Argas might be angry with him. He would never dare to go to another meeting again, not after that last one and the panic he had been in. That girl! He forgot how he had been assuaged for moments during the love-feast, how he had felt for a little time as though he and Manasses were together again, as though he had accepted what was being done to Manasses. He had dreamt again, after the love-feast, of the dye-factory in Tyre; but there was to be no getting away from it this time, because Manasses wasn’t there any more to save him. Because they’d got Manasses too.
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