The Nero Prediction

by Humphry Knipe

  The astrologer raised his eyes to the ceiling as if he could see through it to the stars. "Caesar the planets are in an extremely unusual configuration. All of them are clustered into two signs, the first and the last, Aries and Pisces, all within forty-five degrees of each other."

  Nero's smiled mischievously. "Well, they're bound to be putting their heads together, aren't they? To discuss what they're going to do about my reign."

  Balbillus glanced at Agrippina for guidance and then pursed his lips disapprovingly.

  For Agrippina was frowning. "Do not presume to mock Fate, my son."

  "I'm sorry, Balbillus, I suppose that did sound a little flippant. Please go on."

  "On this day, the day in which the seeds of the coming year are planted, both the malefics, Saturn and Mars, have positioned themselves in your third house, your House of Siblings. Caesar, beware your brother."

  A puzzled frown. "Britannicus! Why would Britannicus want to harm me? I keep telling him he can be emperor whenever he wants so that I can devote more time to music. But I don’t think he wants to be Caesar either."

  I believed that was true. I saw him sometimes, skulking around the palace like a ghost. He didn’t seem to hold anyone close, not even his sister, Nero’s “wife” Octavia, that skeletal presence.

  Balbillus nodded, a slow steady movement like a pendulum. "He may indeed not wish to harm you, but it's destiny, revealed by his planets, that will decide his Fate. And yours."

  Nero pressed thumb and forefinger to his eyelids as if he were trying to erase an unpleasant thought from his mind. "I will not banish Britannicus. He's perfectly harmless and he’s already had enough tragedy in his life, Messalina! He’s Messalina’s only son. He’s my brother, Messalina’s son and so my brother-in-law also. For heaven's sake, we're throwing a huge coming-of-age party for him this afternoon!"

  Agrippina’s whisper was soft as a puff of wind through pine trees. "Nothing happens by chance, my son. Do you think it is mere co-incidence that Britannicus becomes a man on the same day that he becomes a threat?"

  "The indications do seem to be clear, Caesar," said the astrologer, carefully I thought. "Either you cause his death or he causes yours."

  Nero's eyes widened and color fled his face. "What?"

  Balbillus unrolled the second scroll. "This is Britannicus's chart. As you see, Jupiter is in his first house. All the ancients agree that this indicates one destined to destroy the brother born before him. Caesar, the brother born before Britannicus is you."

  Nero shot a glance at Agrippina, an appeal for reassurance it seemed to me. "When? Can you tell when?"

  "During the coming year Caesar, that is what the planets indicate."

  "Impossible. He's only fourteen. It doesn't make sense."

  "Britannicus is no ordinary boy, my son. He is the son of an emperor. Should you be destroyed he will succeed you. He who is Britannicus's regent will control the world. Can you suppose that there are not already contenders?"

  Nero clenched his fists. "But I'll go down in history as the most dreadful monster that ever lived. Mother I forbid you to kill Britannicus."

  Agrippina sat very still. Only her eyes moved, black and giddying as deep wells, on their way to fasten themselves on me. "I see."

  It was with a sense of dreadful fascination that I watched Agrippina take Britannicus under her wing that afternoon at his coming-of-age celebration, introducing him to everyone, it seemed, whose name her nomenclator could remember. In the palace she ignored the shy young orphan. But now it was her own son she was ignoring, so completely that eyebrows were being raised and questions asked.

  I had one myself. Did Agrippina think that jealously alone would make Nero erase Britannicus?

  "Take a memorandum," Nero told me that night after spending half an hour plucking indecisively at his bottom lip. "My mother's receptions are terminated. In fact I want her out of the palace as soon as possible. I also want her Praetorian escort taken away, and that includes her handsome German bodyguards. Immediately, do you understand?"

  Although fortified by the word “handsome”, my apprehension melted in a sudden glow of admiration for the man who was at last standing up to that frightening woman. "Yes Caesar," I said with a slavish upswelling of joy that made him smile, "I have it all down!"

  After dinner I reported as usual to Euodus at the Circus Maximus. "Balbillus says that Britannicus is destined to kill Nero," I told him.

  The freeman seemed only faintly interested. "Really? What did Nero say to that?"

  "He didn't believe it."

  "But Agrippina did."

  "Of course. She wants Nero to kill Britannicus."

  "Perfectly sensible."

  "Are you saying that Fate can be changed?"

  Euodus sighed. "I think we’ve had this conversation before. The stars warn Nero. Nero heeds the warning and takes preventative action. The danger is averted. The fated sequence of events has remained unaltered. Do I have to keep reminding you that what is not fated is impossible?"

  I’d found a few of the skeptic Carneades’s tracts in the palace library. They were dusty from being unread and they unsettled me. He made a number of very telling points, for example that twins born at the same time often had very different destinies. "It seems like circular reasoning to me," I said very respectfully.

  "The only thing going around in circles is your head. You'd better screw it on tightly because you've got a long night ahead of you."

  "Why?"

  "Agrippina needs to write a note, a long note. You're to take it down for her."

  "Why me? There are dozens of shorthand writers in the service, why does she want me?"

  Innocence hooded the mockery in Euodus's voice. "The note is sensitive. She trusts you."

  "I certainly don't want to be trusted by her."

  "What you want doesn’t matter."

  "We'll see about that, I'm going to Nero!"

  Euodus chuckled, could there be a more irritating sound? "There you go again, wriggling on the hook."

  Nero, already dressed for bed, was tuning his kithara. "Caesar," I said, "the Augusta needs me."

  He nodded. "That's right. Mother needs you to take down some notes, something to do with winding up her affairs in the palace. She says you write more quickly than anyone else in the service, so of course I said yes. The sooner she’s gone the better."

  Agrippina was standing at the window when I entered, her back to me. She spoke without turning. "You are prepared?"

  "Yes Augusta. I assume that as usual you want me to take down your dictation in shorthand and then transcribe it."

  "Take it down in longhand. I do not want you to remove the document from the room."

  "The Augusta is aware that we will have to proceed more slowly?"

  "It will give me time to compose my thoughts."

  I put away my stylus and wax tablets, spread out a sheet of paper and dipped a pen into ink. "I'm ready, Augusta."

  "I was born in Germany, among people I was told were barbarians, but after a life spent in Rome, I am no longer certain that we Romans are less barbaric."

  So began Agrippina's memoirs, because that was the "note" she dictated to me. The poisoning of her father Germanicus in Asia. Her mother starved to death on Pandateria. The murders of her brothers and sisters. This was nothing more than an introduction to, and justification for, the main part of the narrative: how she'd murdered Messalina and then Claudius so that she could set her son Nero on the throne.

  After the confession the lamentation. She'd hoped that Nero would be a second Augustus, a philosopher prince who with her guidance would preside over a golden age. But oh, how wrong she'd been! Unlike Britannicus, Nero had turned out to be lazy and mean spirited. He was in every way unworthy of the position to which she'd raised him. Not only was he squandering Britannicus's patrimony, he was corrupting him as well.

  "I appeal to the citizens of Rome to forgive me," the narrative ended, "and invite them to join me in dethr
oning Nero and hailing Britannicus as the best hope we have of regaining our freedom."

  I couldn't believe my ears when Agrippina delivered this treasonous call for revolution with the same grim equanimity with which she'd delivered the rest of this damning confessional. I knew she was staring at me but didn't want her to see the anger in my eyes.

  "That's all," she said. "Leave the scroll with me. A courier comes for it at dawn."

  Keeping my eyes averted, I collected my writing materials. By this time the ink on the paper had dried. I rolled it up and slipped it into an envelope. Only when I was ready to leave did I break the ominous silence. "It’s done, Augusta."

  "Look at me."

  Fortunately by this time I'd cooled down a little. She was sitting in her chair between Chronos and Isis, her black eyes smoldering in the dreadful calm of her face. "You will be escorted directly to your quarters by a man who will kill you if you attempt to leave. At no time speak of what you have heard tonight. Understand?"

  I nodded because I did understand. She was about to destroy her own son.

  A man whose scars told me that he'd earned his freedom in the arena escorted me to my quarters and posted himself outside my door. I thought about making a bolt for it but there was something about the way the man moved which persuaded me I wouldn't get far before he broke my neck. Not far enough to reach Nero. I lay on my bed listening to his boots creaking as he shifted his weight outside my door. By the second hour call after midnight apprehension was beginning to transmute into nightmare. I was being shaken awake. A colonel of the guards stood over me. He smiled while he searched me for weapons as if he were searching for the point of a joke. Behind him was Spiculus, whose quick gray eyes saw everything. It was his speed that had given him his nickname, he stung like a bee.

  “Come."

  Nero was in his study, dressed in a tunic, plucking irritably at his kithara. More Germans stood against the walls, the blades of their spears twinkling ominously in the torchlight. Something awful had happened.

  He struck a discordant key when he saw me, and then another. "Epaphroditus, I've heard the most disturbing rumor. Mother has dictated a book to you in which she says terrible things about me. Is that true?"

  Thank the gods he knew! It meant he probably already had the situation under control. "Yes Caesar, you commanded me to do it."

  He raised an eyebrow, weighted his words with irony. "It must’ve been dull reading though, the way it put you to sleep."

  "No dominus, she calls for revolution. A courier comes for the manuscript at dawn. He mustn’t leave with it."

  Now Nero sounded hurt rather than angry. "Epaphroditus, the stars say that you're destined to be my shield and lucky charm, mother told me that and I've always believed it. So why didn't you come to me immediately. You of all people?"

  "The Augusta had a gladiator escort me to my quarters. He stood guard outside my door with instructions to kill me if I tried to leave."

  Nero turned to the colonel. "He was guarded?"

  "We didn't see anyone."

  A suspicious squint. "What's in the book?"

  "Everything, Caesar. It's for your ears only."

  Nero sent the colonel out of the room and I told him what was in Agrippina's memoir.

  When I finished he gave the colonel his orders. "Between now and first light someone will go to my mother's quarters to fetch a document," he told him. "I suspect that he will come through the rear entrance. When he emerges he must be taken."

  The red tide of dawn had barely lapped the beaches of the eastern horizon when the dying night disgorged a figure outside the rear entrance to Agrippina's wing of the palace. He knocked on the door twice, then twice again. It swung open and a hand, it looked like a woman's, passed him a scroll.

  The door shut and the bolt was driven home.

  "Now!" yelled the colonel.

  Four Germans sprang from the oleanders and pounced on the courier, huge, powerful men, veterans of dozens of bloody battles in the amphitheater.

  There was a flurry of movement, the thud of blows, curses and the cracking of branches as they were sent flying back into the hedge. A figure hurtled away from us in the dark with two of the Germans, the first to recover their feet, a few yards behind.

  The courier.

  "Stop him!" Nero howled.

  "Use your spears!" bellowed the colonel.

  The courier began to run zigzag, swift as a bat. A spear flew past his left shoulder. The second imbedded itself in his back. Without even breaking stride he reached back and plucked it out as if it were a straw.

  Two Germans who had been watching a side exit rushed into the road ahead of the courier, uncertain what to do. One was knocked flat on his back but the other managed to get in a stab with his sword before he was brushed aside.

  Spiculus pounced out of a shadow. There was a flash of steel, fast as a cat’s paw, a lethal sting. The courier went down. A single cough and the ragged breathing stopped.

  Nero was calmer now. His voice had regained the ring of authority. "Search him," he said to me.

  I squatted next to the body. The face was scarred, you could see them under the short beard, the nose broken. It was the face of a professional pugilist. But that wasn't why I was staring at it. I'd seen it before, a vague memory but one that filled me with unease.

  "Get on with it man," Nero said.

  The scroll, which the courier had tucked inside his tunic, was soaked with blood. Nero broke the seal, began unrolling it. I brought him light.

  He read rapidly, in an undertone loud enough only for me to hear. "Dear friend. I hope that by now you have looked at the little memoir which I sent to you at midnight and that you agree urgent action must be taken to ensure that the succession of Britannicus proceeds with the least possible damage to the health of the republic.

  "As agreed, if you do not hear from me to the contrary today, by early evening copies of the manuscript must be placed in the hands of the Consuls and both Praetorian Prefects so that the revolution proceeds with the minimum loss of life.

  "I know you realize how much it grieves me to turn against my own flesh and blood, but Rome is great is because throughout her history her citizens have always put her interests before their own.

  "I remain your friend, Agrippina."

  Nero crumpled the scroll in his fist. His voice had an eerie calm about it. "That herbalist, you know the one mother says in her book gave her the poison she used to kill Claudius?"

  "Lucusta," I said.

  "Yes her. Find her and bring her to me."

  That evening, at dinner, Britannicus collapsed shortly after his mead was cooled with a draft of water containing an extract of sea-hare. By midnight his funeral pyre was waiting for him in the Campus Martius.

  "Go with him Epaphroditus," said Nero, "I'm going to have a talk with mother."

  In Rome rumor travels as fast as thought. The streets were lined with hastily attired people, many of them weeping as they paid their last respects to the young prince who had born his reversals of fortune with such touching fortitude.

  I wept with them.

  The resin-soaked wood of the pyre was a roaring inferno that illuminated those who stood close almost as bright as day. My attention was attracted by two figures who were looking in my direction. Neither of them showed any sign of grief. One was Euodus who smirked as he beckoned. His companion, the handsome one with the wry smile and the compelling violet eyes, nodded his head approvingly as if commending me for something remarkably well done. It was Gaius Ofonius Tigellinus. I remembered where I'd seen the courier before. He’d been with Euodus when he’d fetched me from the Castellum prison in Alexandria, he was the man who had run ahead to tell Tigellinus that they had found me. From somewhere deep in the shadows Tigellinus had helped Agrippina kill Britannicus. The man who thought he owned me, the man I most feared, was back in my life.

  "Congratulations Epaphroditus!" he said with a dark smile, "victorious again! You've exceeded my wildest
expectations but not Agrippina's. She sent us to take you to her immediately, to thank you in person. Afterwards we'll talk."

  Agrippina was in her chair flanked by her closest friends, Isis and Time. Nero paced up and down in front of her. Neither of them noticed me hovering at the door.

  Nero wasn't angry. He sounded appalled. "Mother, you even accused me of buggering Britannicus!"

  "I merely repeated the rumors that I had heard. Should you have been not enough of a man to strike down Britannicus, I would have believed them to be true. Now I know that they are not."

  "What about all those murders you confessed to? Messalina, Lollia Paulina and then Claudius ... they were not your doing?"

  "My son, everything that happened was destined to happen, we mortals are merely Fate’s hands.”

  "And you have confessed to everything?"

  "I have confessed to nothing."

  "So you never actually sent your confession to anyone?"

  "No, it never left my room."

  Nero's voice fell to a whisper. There was disbelief in it. "But if Britannicus hadn't died you would have murdered me with it, your own son, and made Britannicus emperor?"

  A whisper answered him. "It is Fate that decides, not I."

  "How can you say that! It was you who forced me to kill Britannicus, not the stars!"

  "Nero, my son, how do you suppose that Fate imposes its will upon earth if not through the control of natural forces: winds, floods, earthquakes, animals and, yes, people? What I did was surrender my will to the stars and in that emptiness the pure thought of Fate formed itself like condensing vapor in my mind. You do understand, don’t you?"

  Suddenly Agrippina's anger seemed far less dreadful than her approval. I dismissed myself and fled as if pursued by the Furies.

  Perhaps I should have stayed because Nero ended his little chat by asking Agrippina to make her departure from the Palatine immediate. A few days later she left, grim faced, at the head of an enormous wagon train of personal effects. It ought to have been a big relief to me, finally seeing her off. The fly in the ointment was that no sooner had the last of her wagons cleared the palace gates than a racing chariot pulled by four beautiful horses came in.