The Nero Prediction

by Humphry Knipe

  Her light seared my eyes. The vague shadows on the disk became a mouth twisted into a shriek of elemental rage. "Finish him now!"

  A bolt of rage from deep inside me melted the amber and I broke free. Never! The dagger's blade rang out as it hit the marble floor. I fell to my knees next to the bed. "Dominus," I said as I plucked at the coverlet. "Wake up, it's Epaphroditus!"

  The portico flanking the balcony came alive with sound: the swish of garments, the brush of leather against marble as a semicircle of figures emerged from deep shadow: Tigellinus, Balbillus, Otho, Poppaea, two colonels of the Praetorian Guard, pale as ghosts.

  The witnesses.

  At their center was the man whose wax image lay on the bed in front of me, whose voice rang with the somber timbre of the tragic stage: Nero Caesar. Artist. "Who sent you, Epaphroditus?"

  "Your mother, dominus."

  "Why?"

  "To kill you."

  Nero turned to the witnesses. "To kill me. Do you believe me now? Send the signal."

  A bonfire sprang to life on a nearby cliff-side shooting sparks high into the still air.

  Nero glued his eyes to the Moon. "Good-bye mother."

  When the sailors on the galley saw the signal they cut the rope attached to a cluster of lead weights hanging high above the deck sending them crashing through the roof of Agrippina's cabin. Moments later the trick cabin turned on its axis and ditched Agrippina and her lady-in-waiting into the sea.

  One of the galley sailors later swore he heard Agrippina order her fellow-swimmer to call out, "Help me, I'm the emperor's mother!" The oar that dashed out the faithful lady's brains confirmed Agrippina's suspicion that the she'd better look for rescue elsewhere. So she hid herself among the flotsam. When the galley winched the collapsed section back into place and raced away in the direction it had come, she began to swim for the shore. It seemed that nothing could kill her.

  Minutes after the galley returned to Otho's villa the news that Agrippina had slipped and fallen overboard swept through the bay's sleeping villages. Campanians are addicted to excitement, especially at midnight, so thousands jumped out of bed and rushed down to the beach waving torches. Others lit bonfires and waded out waist deep, searching the water. Those who could went out in boats.

  Nero wore out his sandals pacing the balcony. "How much longer until I'm safe?" he asked Balbillus.

  The signs of the planets embroidered on the astrologer's midnight blue robe glowed like phosphorus in the moonlight. He scanned the eastern horizon where Venus, running two hours and twenty minutes before the Sun, had just risen. "The Moon advances past your Saturn within the hour," he announced. "After that she can't harm you."

  A few minutes later I had to tell Nero that his mother had just been fished out of the drink off lake Lucrinus.

  He looked up at the Moon which made his eyes shine like yellow glass. His lips trembled like a moth's wings. "Not dead?"

  Balbillus took a step closer so he could speak in an undertone. "It's the malice of the Moon. She won't let your mother die."

  "But if she lives she will go to the Senate, to the Praetorians. She will say that I'm a matricide. No one will believe that she tried to kill me first. Tigellinus, wake Seneca and Burrus. They know what she is. They'll know what to do."

  Ten minutes later Tigellinus, all grim determination, escorted Seneca and Burrus onto the balcony. "I've told them of the attempt on your life, Caesar, and also about the boat."

  "Good. Well, gentlemen, you know the problem. What's the solution?"

  Seneca the Stoic, perpetually pouting as if savoring the taste of his words before he delivered them to the world, sounded suitably unruffled but for once he came right to the point. "If she knows you tried to kill her, she could be dangerous."

  Nero toyed morosely with the poisoned dagger. "Of course she knows about the boat and of course she's dangerous. Don't you understand, she's just tried to murder me!"

  Seneca's fingers, reaching up to smooth hair that was no longer there, disturbing the moonlight reflecting off his bald pate. "What I meant, Caesar, is that if she accuses you of attempted matricide, she could swing the Praetorians and the Senate around to her side."

  Burrus, straight as a sword and always abrupt, was now even more so because of his painful throat complaint. "Tried to kill you once, will do so again. Eliminate her."

  Balbillus raised his hands and shook his head. "No. Caesar cannot succeed in killing her until the Moon has passed his Saturn. Until then she will protect Agrippina in order to spite the emperor."

  Tigellinus's jaw muscles worked as he ground his white teeth. "How long must we wait?"

  "The Moon will be conjunct transit Saturn within the hour, after that she starts moving ahead of him."

  A Guard colonel came up the stairs taking them two at a time. "There's a messenger from the Augusta."

  Everyone looked at Nero. He turned his back on us, a sweeping, flourish of a gesture accompanied by the resolute crossing of the arms that had been perfected by Julius Caesar. "Bring him."

  His name was Agerinus, one of Agrippina's freedmen. "The Augusta has survived by a great stroke of fortune, Caesar. She sends her greetings."

  Nero waved the dagger under the freedman's nose. "She also sent me this. Lock him up colonel, until this is sorted out." When the Guards were out of earshot he looked at me. "Epaphroditus, what do you think I should do?"

  "Let me return the dagger to your mother."

  Nero's eyes widened. "Return it? Of course, how brilliantly ironic! She'll know what to do with it, won't she?"

  "If she doesn't, Caesar, I'll tell her."

  "Oh Epaphroditus, what a lucky find you are! Anicetus, come here."

  Blinking nervously the prefect of the fleet shuffled forward. "Dominus?"

  Nero thrust his face uncomfortably close. "Take Epaphroditus to Bauli. Help him accomplish his mission. Make sure you don't fail me a second time."

  Anicetus blinked nervously. "You can rely on me, Caesar, to give you a fresh start."

  "Yes, that's it, isn't it? A fresh start. I feel that this is going to be the first day of my rule."

  A few minutes later the galley was once again racing over the glassy waters of the bay and the poisoned dagger was once more in my hand. An hour before dawn the marines were in position around Agrippina's villa. The usual night lights burnt inside but there was no sign of movement. A cock began to crow. It was either that (because the cock is the sacred bird of astrology) or the rising or setting of a time-telling star, that prompted Balbillus's assistant to signal Anicetus that the tide of destiny had ceased to flow against Nero.

  Anicetus and three of his officers brushed past the slaves standing at Agrippina's bedroom door. I followed, several paces behind. Only a single candle, the night light, burnt next to the bed on which she lay, her hair still wet from her swim.

  She sounded very tired. "Anicetus, you may go and tell your master that I am well."

  I laid the dagger across the palms of my hands, walked towards her. Her eyes widened when she saw what I was carrying. Then she rolled them up to my face.

  I could feel the fury burning like pepper in my eyes but I was pleased how calm I sounded. "Your son returns your gift. He feels you deserve it more than he does."

  Agrippina took the dagger. Holding it high above her stomach she glared at me. When I held her frightful stare she smiled and for the last time I saw her double canine tooth. "Tell him that I strike the womb that bore him."

  Leaving Anicetus and his officers standing around Agrippina's bedside, watching her struggle to die, I slipped away into the room next door, her study. There was a statue of her, frighteningly life like, next to the door. At the opposite side of the room was her desk. It was in disarray, unusual for Agrippina who always kept everything as neatly squared away as the arrangement of tents in the military camp where she was born. The straight-backed chair stood at an angle from the desk as if the person who last sat there had risen in haste. There were still tra
ces of water on it. I touched my fingers to a drop, tasted it. Salty. Agrippina had hurried to her desk the moment she returned home, in too much of a hurry to change into dry clothes. Why?

  I noticed something lying on the floor next to the desk. It was a volume of the new codex type that had fallen so that it lay open. I picked it up, turned the page. It was the tenth book of the Iliad.

  The first thing that occurred to Agrippina when she got home, wet as a drowned rat, was to seek consolation in Homer's description of Agamemnon heaving sighs as loud as thunder claps. It didn't make sense.

  I turned to the shelves behind me, looking for its companion volumes. They were directly in front of me, a neat row about shoulder high, their gilded spines glowing in the torchlight. The book's place on the shelf showed up like a missing tooth. Something in that gap caught the light. I tried to see what it was but my head cast a shadow that blotted it out. I put the book on the desk and removed two volumes on either side of where it should have been. What I'd seen was the gilded handle of a small cabinet built into the wall and normally concealed by the books.

  I looked over my shoulder. There was no one in the doorway. Something in the cabinet had drawn Agrippina straight to it, something that she had taken out and placed on the hastily cleared desk and then returned to its hiding place in such a hurry that she didn't have time to look for the book that had fallen off the desk.

  An irrepressible excitement took hold of me. I reached in and opened the cabinet. Inside was the white gleam of rolled paper. I reached in and took out the scroll lying on top of the pile and half unrolled it. The symbols of the planets were drawn inside a circle. There was no date of birth but at its center was my name. It was the horoscope of my false self, Fate's Anointed.

  Next door Agrippina was bellowing at Anicetus, demanding that he help her die. Obviously the poison on the dagger was working too slowly.

  “Proculus!” Anicetus barked at one of his captains, a hirsute man with legs like tree trunks. There was the dull thud of a club.

  She let out a dreadful groan. "Harder Proculus."

  Another thud. Silence.

  I slipped the roll of paper into my sleeve, closed the cabinet, replaced the books.

  Agrippina lay on the bed, her eyes glassy, blood seeping into the pillow under her head.

  Volusius Proculus, still holding his club, was bending over her, his ear to her gaping mouth. "She's gone, I think."

  Anicetus's eyes flickered in my direction as I entered like someone who all this time had been standing at the door. "Give instructions for the pyre,” he said to a soldier. “Tell them to use anything they can find, furniture if necessary, especially this couch."

  "It'll be ready by now," said the lieutenant, "I gave orders as soon as we had the place surrounded."

  "Good. Get her women to clean her up. I want her looking as if she's about to make one of her grand entrances. He'll be here any minute."

  It was still dark when Nero's galley hove to. His voice was plaintive, histrionic. "Where is my mother?"

  Anicetus pointed to the mansion.

  Surrounded by bouquets of flowers hastily plucked from the garden by torch light, Agrippina lay on a couch in the villa's Atrium, her arms crossed, her crushed skull covered with a hood, her expression not so much serene as distracted, as if she were already meddling in the affairs of another world.

  Anicetus had supervised the finishing touches himself, paying particular attention to her make-up. Agrippina had been a handsome woman once, and now she was so again, making allowances for age and death.

  Nero stifled a little gasp when he saw her, then sank to his knees next to the couch, took her hand and kissed it. For several minutes he held it while he stared into her face, his lips moving soundlessly. Ten minutes later Agrippina was roasting on top of a bonfire.

  The Moon was setting above the mountains of Misenum and the east was already rosy with dawn when we returned to the water, now a delicate wash of pinks and yellows. The sun rose, glorious and majestic, cauterizing the hemorrhages of the night. Nero stood alone at the prow of the boat, as he now stood alone at the prow of the world, gazing on a panorama of infinite possibilities.

  It was the first day of his rule.

  Embattled

  March 18 – June 59 A.D.

  I closed the door to my cubicle. It had no lock. I listened for footfalls, there were none. I sat on the bunk and unwound the scroll I'd taken from Agrippina's office. Ten years and six months after Phocion had discovered them, here were the stars of the man I pretended to be. There was something I hadn't noticed in the gloom of Agrippina's office. Two more horoscopes were wound inside the first.

  I placed my forged horoscope on the bunk next to me and examined the one underneath it. It bore no name, no date of birth, but it had the oily texture of paper that has been frequently handled and it was still wet in two places where the ink had been smudged by recent drops of water. This chart had two rings of planets outside the circle containing the birth stars. One of these rings was identical to the stars of the horoscope that was supposed to be mine. The other represented the positions of today’s planets. It had to be Agrippina’s horoscope.

  The third sheet, also a chart with a double ring of planets, had a name at its center. The center of the universe: Nero. I held the empire's most secret document in my hands, the emperor's horoscope.

  The door flew open and there stood Euodus, smirking at me. "My, my! I did give you a scare, didn't I? I'll bet it has something to do with those papers. It really is something I should know about, isn't it? Remember, you keep no secrets from me."

  He held out his hand for the horoscopes. I passed them to him. His brow darkened. "So this is what you took."

  Somebody must have seen me going into Agrippina's office, Euodus must have been told. I fought for breath. "The horoscope was half open on her desk," I said. "When I saw my name I took it thinking I ought to show it to Tigellinus. I've only just discovered there are others here. I haven't had a chance to look at them."

  Euodus's green eyes mocked my lie. "Really?"

  I made it sound as if I was helping him solve a mystery. "The chair had drops of water on it. For some reason she seems to have consulted my horoscope before changing into dry clothing. Can you think why?"

  "Yes. She wanted to know where she'd gone wrong. I have no doubt she found out.” He looked at the papers again. “Zeus!"

  I'd never seen Euodus afraid before. I pretended not to know what frightened him. "What's the matter?"

  "Fated, fated, fated," Euodus was whispering to himself. He looked up from Nero's horoscope because that's what must have frightened him. "Remember the vultures that were circling over us when we sailed from Alexandria? I should have known then what you would bring me." An abrupt snap of command. "Stay here until I come for you or you won't last longer than a hungry dog's dinner."

  I walked in a tight circle around the cubicle, one step per second, the Persian walking exercise Balbillus used to calm his mind, the march of time.

  About an hour later Euodus returned without the horoscopes. He looked grim. "Go to Poppaea Sabina. Agree to do everything she asks. Then report directly to Tigellinus."

  Otho's chamberlain told me to wait outside the door that led to Poppaea's personal quarters. From inside came the muted wail of a flute accompanied by the patter of some kind of unobtrusive percussion instrument. The music, redolent of dreamy worlds, washed over me like a wave every time the door opened. People spoke in whispers as they passed, averting their eyes. The atmosphere was one of excitement, of intrigue, of delicious promise. Agrippina was dead, by suicide, after attempting the life of her son. Everyone knew that by now. They also knew that I'd played some important but unspecified role in these momentous events, just as I had in the death of Messalina. Best avoid me until the dust settled because this time my luck might have run out.

  I recognized some of the passers-by. Otho nodded at me as he left, but his mouth was tight. Poppaea had been a toy he
'd used to torment his imperial friend. But the friend had proved himself capable of matricide. Nero might no longer be someone with whom it was safe to trifle.

  A small man came in who wore high-soled shoes and an expression of preposterous self-importance. He was Ptolemy Seleucus, Poppaea's astrologer, the snake who'd correctly predicted when Messalina would die and that Lollia Paulina would set a dog on Agrippina in Augustus's mausoleum. He was shown into the scented inner sanctum. The door closed. The soft music lulled me. My eyes closed. I hadn't slept in two days.

  Someone was shaking me by the shoulder. It was one of the gorgeously liveried Nubians who guarded the door. "She'll see you now."

  Poppaea reclined on a couch, propped up with cushions embroidered with gold and purple threads. Incense hung in the air as thick as feather down. The musicians in the adjoining room played so softly that one didn't need to raise one's voice. Ptolemy sat at a table lit by colored candles. Their light flickered in his large dark eyes. I sank to my knees, touched my forehead to the thick Parthian carpet, waiting for Poppaea to speak first. I noticed that her toenails, like her fingernails, were painted with signs of the planets.

  "We greet you, Epaphroditus," she said.

  "I am honored to serve."

  The hint of a lisp gave the edge of irony to her words. "I'm aware that you served Agrippina well."

  I raised my eyes to hers. Her eyelids danced over the clear blue orbs, giving them a dozen different expressions in the space of a few seconds. The sheen painted onto the eyelashes reminded me of the iridescent glitter of an insect's wing. There was no resisting the allure of this woman.

  "She was convinced that you were destined to destroy her son, wasn't she? What sublime irony that you were destined to destroy her instead!"

  "It was a strange coincidence," I said.

  The smile widened. Poppaea glanced at her astrologer. "What do you think Ptolemy?"