Nero_s Heirs

by Allan Massie

  I hesitated. There was no sound of the soldiers. They might have left the building. They might not after all have thought of the skylight. If the aunt had said we were out, they might be content to await our return. Down below in the lane a pedlar with a donkey was selling his wares. There was no other movement, nothing to alarm us. But we could not remain there and, when Domitian muttered that it might be safe to return the way we had come, I asked him if he wanted to walk into a waiting reception committee of the Guard.

  We worked our way round the building. It was late afternoon, heavy with rain-swollen clouds. Then, about twenty feet below us, there was a balcony, a rickety dangerous-looking thing protruding from an apartment on what I judged must be the floor second from the top of the building. We had tried two skylights opening out of different staircases and found them unbudgeable. The wood had swollen and they were fixed fast. I looked at the balcony. I could jump down there without difficulty but would it hold? And would the shutters that must open on to it be closed and fastened from within? And if they were, could I get back up to the roof?

  We went round the roof again. There was no other way off that I could see. It began to rain. Domatilla was shivering, more from anxiety than the cold. I explained what I intended to do. She shook her head. Domitian would neither meet my eye nor offer an alternative plan.

  So, gripping the edge of the roof, I lowered myself and, with my feet kicking the empty air, dropped to the balcony below. It shuddered as it took my weight, but didn't come away from the wall as I had feared it would. Whether it could take three people's weight was another matter.

  The shutters were indeed closed and fastened. I rattled them, and held my breath. If the apartment was empty, then I would try to force them open. If it wasn't…

  I heard movement from the other side of the shutters. I called out, gently. A dark shape appeared behind them. The sound of a bolt being withdrawn, and they were open. I found myself looking at a woman. She had a large moon-face and a dark complexion. She did not speak, but waited, seemingly impassive. I blurted out apologies for disturbing her, explained that my friends and I had been stranded on the roof. She nodded, and stepped back. I said, 'We're not dangerous, not criminals. Will you let us leave the building by way of your apartment?'

  Again she inclined her head, saying nothing. I still wasn't sure, apologised again, began to offer a further explanation.

  'That doesn't concern me. I don't want to know,' she said. Her accent was southern, with the little lisp of Basilicata.

  I turned away, called up to Domitian, told him to lower Domatilla, and to take her weight as long as he could. Then she was in my arms. The balcony shuddered again and quickly I thrust her from me and into the room. 'Now yourself,' I called. 'Don't jump, let yourself hang down.'

  I stretched out my arms to receive him. Shouts came from the roof beyond. Domitian uttered a cry, little more than a whimper. Then his feet appeared. He dropped, instead of hanging, and, as I caught him, his weight caused me to sway backwards against the flimsy balustrade. I heard a creak, flung him into the room. He landed, sprawling. I heard footsteps on the roof above, and a voice shouted, 'He's gone over the edge.' The balcony shuddered and swayed again. I felt it tear itself away from the wall, and, just in time, leapt into the room. Behind me I heard it crash into the lane. The woman looked at me. There was no expression on her face. Tm sorry about the damage,' I said. 'I'll pay for it, of course.' She spread her hands wide, in a gesture of denial.

  "We never use it,' she said. 'I've told the landlord for months now it isn't safe.'

  'You might have killed us,' Domitian said. 'As it is, I've cut my knee.' The woman closed the shutters and bolted them.

  'I don't want to know anything,' she said. 'As far as I'm concerned you're not here. But whoever was after you is going to see there are no bodies in the lane.'

  A girl, dressed in a stained shift and rubbing sleep from her eyes, came into the room. She left the door open behind her and I had a glimpse of a tumbled bed. 'What's happening?' she said.

  'Nothing. You've seen nothing. Go back to bed. As for you,' she said to me, 'I'll thank you to be on your way, whatever that is.'

  'I've lost my bearings,' I said. "Which lane does the door of this block open on?' 'I don't know about that. We just call it the lane.'

  I looked at Domitian. He was trembling again – a reaction from fear which I have often seen since in battles.

  I said: We'll have to chance it. We came a long way over the roof. There was only a small detachment of the Guard. They can't have posted men at every doorway in the block.' He took me by the sleeve and led me into a corner of the room.

  'We could stay here,' he said. 'There's only this woman and the girl. If they make trouble you and I could deal with them. We could tie them up.' 'No,' I said. 'Why not? Then we could wait till it's dark.'

  'No,' I said. 'She let us in. She didn't have to. Besides, with the curfew, we would be in more danger in the streets after dark than we are now.'

  The woman said, 'We haven't seen you, like I said. Now be on your way.' There was still no expression on her moon face. Domitian said: 'Could you send the girl down to the street to see that it's safe?' The woman shook her head.

  Domatilla said, 'Don't mind my brother. We're very grateful to you, really we are. Now we'll be off. I am sorry about the balcony.'

  The girl looked at me. She had slanting eyes, almond-shaped, with long lashes. She hitched up her shift and scratched her thigh. She gave me a smile. I said to the woman, 'Again, we're grateful.' The girl said, 'I don't mind going down and having a look-see.' She smiled at me again. 'It could do no harm.' 'No,' the woman said. You'll stay here.' 'There's no need,' I said, 'but thank you.'

  We didn't speak as we descended the stairs. At the corner of the last flight, I had the others wait while I went down to the lane. It was deserted, except for two old men arguing fiercely and aiming futile blows at each other. I beckoned to Domitian and his sister. I put my hand on his elbow when they joined me.

  'Walk slowly,' I said. 'Casual. No hurry. We don't want to draw attention to ourselves.'

  His arm was rigid. It was with difficulty that he obeyed. When we were out of the lane and had turned two or three more corners and got ourselves into a busy street, he said, 'Where are we to go?' 'Have you no ideas?' He shook his head. 'AH right then. Leave it to me.' 'What about your mother's?' he said.

  'I'll take Domatilla there, but not you. We have to get you out of the way first. You're the one in demand.'

  There was a boy from Rieti who had been a fellow-student of ours and who lived in this quarter. His parents were dead and he lived on his own while struggling to make a living practising law. He was a reserved and silent youth whose contempt for the corruption of the times was deep-grained. I had always been impressed by his honesty and his refusal to advance himself by the customary means of flattery of the great and toadying to those who might be useful to him. I had no doubt that he would receive Domitian and give him shelter, all the more because he felt himself superior to him. So I led Domitian there, and he was accommodated as I had expected.

  'I can't put the girl up,' Aulus Pettius said. 'It's a question of propriety, not reputation, you understand.'

  'That's all right,' I said, 'she's going to stay with my mother, but you will understand I can't place my mother in danger by asking her to take in Domitian, too.'

  'What absurd and ignoble times we live in,' he said. It occurred to me that he was receiving Domitian precisely because his need of a refuge confirmed his own disgust with the degeneracy of the Republic. He had once described Nero to me as 'that base comedian who plays at being Caesar'. I liked the contempt, though the description was inaccurate. Nero played more enthusiastically at being a great poet and actor. My mother was happy to receive Domatilla.

  'But,' she said, 'you will have to find somewhere else to lodge yourself while she's here. It's not that I mind what people say, but the girl has a reputation to be protected, and it
would be wrong to give evil tongues any opportunity to spread scandal about her.'

  'I can't thank you enough,' Domatilla said. 'I don't know what would have become of Dom if you hadn't been there.'

  She knew all too well of course. She kissed me good-bye. It was a chaste kiss owing to my mother's presence, but even that small measure of affection had my mother clicking her teeth in disapproval.

  Later in the afternoon, I returned to the moon-faced woman's apartment. I brought a small gift, and told her I had come not only to thank her, but to make sure that she had come to no harm. She nodded her head, but gave no thanks for the gift. 'I didn't need a reward,' she said. The girl said, 'I knew you'd come back.'

  She poured me a cup of wine. The woman withdrew to the kitchen. The girl stretched herself out. She was still wearing the same shift and displayed breasts and thighs.

  'She'll make us some food,' she said. 'She's not my mother, you know.' 'So what is she?'

  'She just took me in. Now, you could say I'm a lodger. I pay rent, quite a lot, depending…'

  'I see,' I said, and reached down and, putting my arm round her, raised her up. She turned and kissed me. I slipped my hand under her shift. For a moment she let it rest there. Then she led me through to her room and the tumbled bed.

  XXXIV

  I didn't send all that last chapter to Tacitus; an edited version merely. I am even puzzled as to why I wrote it in such detail. At first I thought it was because it showed me in a good light, and therefore demonstrated Domitian's ingratitude. But that isn't really so. I even doubt now whether Vitellius would have put Domitian to death had I not intervened to save him. It would have been foolish, given Vitellius' own uncertainties, and the negotiations he still maintained with Flavius Sabinus. To have killed Vespasian's son would have been to destroy any chance of extricating himself from his own terrifying position. For that is the truth, I've no doubt: Vitellius was living in a nightmare, and fully conscious of the likely consequences of his unthinking weakness which had compelled him to give way to the demands of Caecina and Valens. Yet there were also moments when he believed in himself as Emperor.

  Aulus Pettius kept Domitian safe. He was never forgiven. Within a few weeks of becoming Emperor Domitian ordered him to remove from Rome. I suppose he was fortunate Domitian acted so early in his reign, while the balance of his mind was not completely overthrown. I last heard of Aulus Pettius living in misanthropic retirement in the wild country of Boeotia. He used to write to me occasionally. I was his only correspondent. Later, that was to be one of the charges brought against me: that I had maintained a treasonable correspondence with an exile. Certainly our letters, which were intercepted and copied, could not fail to have displeased Domitian. We wrote of him with disdain. But I have run ahead of myself. I find it hard now to keep my thoughts in order. This enterprise on which I embarked so reluctantly has come to exert a strange fascination over me.

  Was it to recall the girl Sybilla that I wrote that last chapter in such detail?

  She was Sicilian. At first I took her for a prostitute and the moon-faced woman, whose name was Hippolyta, for her pimp or madam. The relationship was different and more complicated. Hippolyta had indeed found her on the streets, fallen (as Sybilla told me) in love with her, and bought her from the man who ran her. That was extraordinary enough. What was more extraordinary was that Hippolyta tolerated Sybilla's desire for men, though, as the girl told me, 'only one at a time'. She kept her mostly a sort of prisoner in the apartment, and Sybilla did not object. 'What is there out there,' she said, 'except the opportunity now and then to pick up a man? Now that I have you, for the time being, I've no need to go out.'

  She was an inventive and delightful lover, all the more delightful because she despised and forbade any expression of emotion. I did with her all that I had longed to do to Domatilla. Sometimes, as I lay panting in her arms, damp skin against hot damp skin, her thick black hair over my face, I would see through the tresses the moon face of Hippolyta watching us. She never said anything, just looked, then turned away.

  How strange that those two weeks of intense political excitement when the fate of Rome hung in the balance, my life perhaps with it, and the smell of blood hovered in the air, should have been for me days, too, of an equally intense eroticism. The other day, passing a stall where a merchant was selling spices, I found myself trembling. All at once I was a young man again, and did not know why, till, breathing in, I smelled Sybilla's body, which she never washed but sponged with an infusion of spices. That was real, as my other memories of her are not. What do they amount to? I can't even picture her face: only a little mole to the side of her mouth, just above a rather thick upper lip. And what else? The feel of her strong thick thighs as she wrapped her legs round me. I see Hippolyta's moon face more clearly than I see Sybilla's, though my lips and tongue ran over every inch of it.

  Balthus lies among the hounds again. These memories of Sybilla revive my desire for him. It is as if by forcing myself on the boy I could regain what I found in congress with her – an absurd fancy.

  1 shall write nothing of Sybilla to Tacitus, but she dominated my life in the days that followed.

  One day I said to myself: does it matter who is Emperor so long as I have this?

  Another day, Domatilla, in my mother's house, said to me, 'Is something wrong? You don't look at me as you used to.'

  XXXV

  Some would have us believe that in happier times men contended over principles, now for office and power alone. Not having lived in these golden days, I cannot tell whether our times are degenerate, or whether politics has ever been a business condemned to nastiness and brutality. You, Tacitus, as a learned historian, will be able to settle this unanswerable question.

  I was a partisan of the Flavians, on account initially of my love for Titus and friendship with Domitian. Then I was inspired by the idealism of Titus' talk of the meaning of Empire. But can I acquit myself of selfish motive? Can I pretend that I was activated by love of my country or a desire for peace? And if I cannot, then can I suppose that those who deserted Vitellius for Vespasian – Caecina and Bassus first of all – had any such honourable motives? Is it not more probable that fear lest others should outstrip them in the fickle regard of Vitellius, and hope that their treachery would be well-rewarded, drove them to betray the man to whom they had sworn faith, when they suspected that his cause was on the way to being lost?

  In the city we awaited news from the north, not knowing even whether battle was joined, or whether neither side dared to be the first to attack. Rumours abounded, were discounted, though men know in their hearts that rumour is not always wild; it is sometimes correct.

  So, when it was reported that Antonius Primus, having defeated Vitellius' army before Cremona, had, being angered by the support that city had given to the enemy, permitted his soldiers to abandon themselves to the extremes of lust and cruelty, sacking the city, murdering the citizens, raping the women and boys, and finally setting fire to the buildings after four days of slaughter, some said the report was too horrible to be true, others that its horror could not have been invented. And, indeed, those who believed the worst were proved right, as is commonly the case.

  The news was brought to Vitellius, who had retired for a few days to a villa in the woods of Aricia between that town and Lake Albano. There, it was said, he rested himself in the shade of his gardens. Like those beasts which relapse into torpor when sufficiently well-fed, he chose to forget past, present, and the fearful future. It required the news of the disaster at Cremona to rouse him from sloth.

  But his first act on returning to the city was to deny the report which had brought him back.

  Flavius Sabinus told me that the so-called Emperor's judgement was no better than his nerve.

  'In concealing the gravity of his position,' he said, 'he is making it impossible to redeem the situation. He refuses to listen to any talk of the war. If anyone returns from the front with bad news, he either has him clapp
ed into prison or put to death. He behaves as if nothing can be true unless he chooses that it should be.'

  But, if Vitellius himself refused to look reality in the face, his partisans were alarmed by the rumours which his denial could not still. Thinking only of revenge, they sought out those who were believed to be traitors – though in the state of Rome then there could, honour being dead, be neither treachery nor true loyalty. Many innocent men, guilty of nothing but hope for a better future, were seized and put to death, or cut down casually in the streets. Flavius Sabinus himself dared not go abroad without an escort from the City Guard, and had doubts concerning their loyalty, though their mouths were stuffed with gold and their spirits raised with lavish promises of future bounty.

  He frequently expressed anxiety concerning Domitian's safety, and could not trust my assurance that I had taken care of that. Yet he had no choice but to rely on my measures. He did not dare to keep the boy with him, for he knew that his own life was in danger every day, every hour, and that if he was arrested or cut down, then Domitian would be too. I assured him that the student friend with whom he was lodged kept the house himself and would not permit Domitian to venture forth. He scratched his head, and muttered that he hoped it was for the best, and confessed that he could think of no better plan.

  'I dare not send him out of the city,' he said, 'for the Guards have set up road blocks and are interrogating every traveller. And I could not trust Domitian not to give himself away. If he survives, my brother will be eternally grateful to you. I'll see to it that he knows it is your work, for I am persuaded Domitian will never admit so much himself.'

  I might, I suppose, have taken offence at his care for Domitian's safety and lack of concern for mine. But his indifference was venial: I was not his brother's son; I could take my chance.

  Vitellius roused himself, or was roused by others. He entrusted the command of the Praetorians to his brother Lucius, no better in morals, but more energetic in manner. In what may have been intended as a gesture expressive of confidence, he even anticipated the elections, and nominated Consuls and other officers for several years in advance. He granted treaties, which he had no means of enforcing, to allies, and the rights of citizenship to provincials who could not enjoy them. He remitted tribute and even taxes. So, careless of the future, he scattered the resources of the Empire – all to win the plaudits of the mob, always impressed by the appearance of generosity. Some fools even purchased honours and offices, as if the prodigality of his gesture offered assurance of the permanence of his rule.