The Splendor Before the Dark

by Margaret George

  I was indeed hemmed in, a prisoner in Rome, held immobile in the robes of the emperor, I thought when I awakened. Was there no escape?

  Egypt. I could go far away, far from Rome, take a different identity. They could never find me there. They might look for me in Greece but would not think of Egypt. What a world was awaiting me there—the allure of the ancient wisdom and monuments that were old before Rome was born. The ghosts of Antony, of Cleopatra, of Alexander would welcome me.

  Cleopatra. I hunted for the coin, found it, and started carrying it on my person. I surrender her and her dreams into your safekeeping. I had tried, I had tried my best to transform Rome, to bring an eastern sensibility to its stony coldness, but I had failed. Now I needed to take refuge in a more compatible place while I was still young enough to make a new life. I would take Acte with me. She could no longer object to being an emperor’s wife. She would be a simple musician’s wife.

  But no. Quickly a lassitude overcame me. Nothing mattered; it was all one, whatever happened. This must be how the gods felt, who would go on for eternity but nothing could touch them. And they could not truly care for anything.

  I made plans, strange plans for what I could do with Vindex. I would go to Gaul and address his troops, appeal to them so touchingly that they would all throw down their arms. I was a good orator, and the sight of the emperor would be so arresting I would win them over.

  Thus alternated these delirious moods, played out against backgrounds of a thudding heart by day and terrifying dreams by night.

  There could be one infallible means of escape to set my mind at ease. I sent for Locusta.

  * * *

  • • •

  It has been a long time, Caesar,” she said, standing before me as tall and stately as ever. She seemed unchanged, one of the few things that were. “How may I help you?”

  I had been slumped on a couch but straightened my back when she came in. “Much as I enjoy your company, there is only one reason I would send for you,” I said.

  “For whom is this intended, and in what setting?” Ever the professional.

  “For me,” I said.

  Now her expression changed. “Why?”

  I noted that she did not launch into a lecture about how wrong it would be. “It may be necessary. There is rebellion in the empire, and a rival emperor has declared himself. If I lose . . .”

  She did not argue or say that was unlikely. “You would rather not be here to greet him,” she said. “I understand.”

  “I want this only for peace of mind,” I said. “Only as a last resort. I am not ready to depart the stage.” The stage, with its statues come to life. “But when the audience does not applaud any longer, it is time.”

  “Very well,” she said. “I am saddened to hear it. I had thought danger came from Rome and that it had passed after the conspiracy. It has been many years since there has been an insurrection from the army.”

  “Yes, it has,” I said. “But when a soldier’s loyalty to his commander is stronger than to the emperor, the seeds are sown.” In the name of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, I swear allegiance to Imperator Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus as supreme commander. I will obey the emperor willingly and implicitly in all his commands. Would that vow hold? Or was it already trampled underfoot?

  “So . . . where and under what circumstances do you see the use of this?” she asked.

  “In privacy. While I still have time. In a quiet hour of night.”

  “I assume you want it to be quick?”

  “Oh, yes. But not painful. If I have to compromise speed for comfort, that is acceptable.”

  She thought for a moment. “I know how to compound it. I will include a pain easer to mask the effects so you will not . . .” She did not need to go into details. “It will be quick as well. You will have exactly what you want.”

  “I knew I could rely on you,” I said.

  The business concluded, we then talked of the things old friends would—my days in Greece, her academy, challenges and successes in her business, my marriage to Statilia, the shrine to Poppaea. Just the concerns of our everyday lives.

  * * *

  • • •

  A few hours later, I held the vial in my hands. It was a slender glass cylinder of the sort that usually held perfume. But this was a perfume to infuse a shroud. I tilted the bottle, and the dark liquid within winked as it shifted.

  It was startling to see death in a bottle and to know that it had the power to remove me from life and whisk me to the underworld, to the grim gray shore lined with asphodels. It was very close, that shore.

  I looked around the room, where the victory wreaths from Greece were hung. In the competitions in Greece, I had tasted the very essence of being alive. Now if I unstoppered this bottle I would taste death. It was incomprehensible.

  I could throw it out. But death would come in some form, sooner or later. I could not banish death. But this way I could harness it.

  I put the bottle in a gold box. Out of sight. After I had hidden it, I suddenly wondered what had possessed me. Was I mad? I would never be able to bring myself to use it. I was too intensely alive.

  LXXI

  LOCUSTA

  I had heard of the turmoil in Gaul, and of Galba’s move. But I had let Nero tell me of them. My part was to listen and be of service. At last the poison I had prepared for him at the first, that later found its home in another, was being called back to its first target. Thus we fight hard to evade our own fate but cannot always succeed. I hoped that he would keep his intention of not using it unless the situation was hopeless. But I knew also that his weakness was what has been described as too easily elated by small victories, too easily cast down by small defeats. In just such a frame of mind he might drink the potion.

  I could have given him a harmless one, but that would have been unprofessional and would rob him of the death he needed, if he needed it. As well as I knew him, I knew he would have been humiliated by such patronizing treatment. He had an ancestor, Gnaeus Domitius, known for his cowardice whose physician had done just that. The man had downed the potion and then in a panic summoned the physician, who assured him he had watered down the poison, knowing Gnaeus would back out. So the indecisive man was relieved. But he was not an emperor facing the loss of his throne. Would Cleopatra have been relieved if the snake’s venom had lost its potency? It depends on what one is facing if the poison fails.

  Much had happened since he and Poppaea had paid their visit to me at my academy, consulting with me about Poppaea’s health. As I looked at him now, he seemed to have survived the subsequent upheavals intact, perhaps aided by his long tour in Greece, which may have bolstered his bodily health while injuring his political health.

  I had watched him grow from a boy to a man and then to an emperor. In first protecting him from my own poison, I had felt entrusted with his survival ever since, and I had never betrayed that trust. In answering his call now, did I now betray it—or would not answering it have been the true betrayal?

  LXXII

  NERO

  Caesar!” Nymphidius stood beaming before me, holding an armful of dispatches, spread out like a peacock’s tail across his forearms.

  I eyed them. Where to begin? From the grin on his face, I knew I could choose any of them and be pleased with the contents. “Just tell me,” I said. Cut through the Gordian knot of the dispatches.

  “Vindex is defeated!” he crowed. “Beaten. Dead.”

  I sank down on a couch, first astounded and then elated, and motioned him to do likewise. “Let us send for others, so we do not have to repeat the story.” I could wait for the details. In fact, the longer I waited, the hungrier I would be for them, and the better they would taste.

  I called for Epaphroditus, Phaon, Helios, and the leading Praetorians on duty at the palace. I also called for the best Falernum, both the amber kind and th
e aged black kind. Let the celebration begin!

  Once everyone was gathered, Nymphidius gestured toward the pile of dispatches. “Are you sure you don’t want to read them out yourself, Caesar?”

  “Later,” I said, nodding to him. “You summarize it for us.” I could feel the eagerness in the room.

  “Verginius, after taking his time, finally faced Vindex near Vesontio and utterly destroyed his forces. Twenty thousand Gauls fell. The Roman legions were especially brutal as they had built up a hatred of Gauls and wanted the plunder.”

  “How did Vindex die?” I asked.

  “He killed himself, after lamenting that he had failed in his mission.”

  “And no one else helped Vindex? Where was Galba?” I pressed.

  “Where he was then, I can’t say. He didn’t join the fight. But I can tell you where he is now: cowering in Clunia, a small town in the mountains of Spain. The word is that he was making ready to kill himself when a faithful retainer stopped him. He is a beaten man, though. Broken. Done for.”

  It was all I could do not to jump up and yell in victory. But I restrained myself and said, “Thanks be to the gods for our deliverance. And the legions under Gallus and Turpilianus were not needed?”

  “No. I am not sure how far they got.”

  No matter. No matter.

  My blood singing, limp with relief at my deliverance, I stood up. “Oh happy, oh fortunate day!” I cried, embracing the men one by one. “Rejoice with me!”

  I looked around at them. “We will have a huge victory banquet. And all of Rome is invited!”

  * * *

  • • •

  Twilights are lingering in early June, and I watched the pink-tinted sky above Rome change slowly to violet as the guests converged on the Domus Aurea. I had not used the entertaining pavilion since I returned to Rome, living exclusively in the lower part of the palace, but now it would be reinaugurated in all its glory. It was not completely finished in all details; that would take years. But the gardens were exuberant in their blooms and fragrance, the frescoes on the outer wall were complete, and there was no view so magnificent as the one sweeping across the valley below and on to the nearby Caelian Hill. The colossus glowed in the sunset, the last beams of sunlight winking off the tips of the crown.

  So many people who had thronged the courtyard in times past were gone—both from natural causes and from treachery and violence. Tonight Tigellinus was also absent, still recovering in his country home.

  But the senators were here, friendly and smiling. My enemies had been purged from the Senate, and now I could be at ease with them once again. Statilia stood with me greeting them, and if I ached to have Poppaea there beside me, I told myself sternly that it could not be. I kept Sporus away; I did not want to cause a scandal or expose him to ridicule. In Greece it was accepted well enough, but Rome was a different matter.

  As before, I opened the lower gardens to the general public, providing wine, food, and entertainment for them, and the sound of their voices carried up to the courtyard terrace where we all stood. Later we would go inside for our banquet, but for now it was so pleasurable to stand in the warm evening air and watch the flocks of birds winging away in the sunset, in great numbers, wheeling and diving. Such freedom, the sort men would never know.

  Darkness was falling; torches were lit. The servers ushered us inside, where the ivory inlaid couches, the food-laden marble tables, the lotus perfume droplets falling gently from the oculus, awaited us. Yes, much was taken, much was missing from the past, but tonight promised hope and fulfilling days to come.

  Before the banquet proper began, I addressed the group. “Dear friends of Rome—for so are we all; no, more than that, sons and daughters of Rome—we gather here to celebrate the deliverance of the empire from the rebellion in Gaul. This is the third rebellion since I have been your emperor, and in all three, our loyal Roman legions have put paid to the enemy.” Everyone was listening intently, their faces earnest. “This one was the most unnerving because it was closest to home, and from a province thought to be entirely friendly,” I continued. “So friendly, in fact, that we did not think it necessary to station troops there. So friendly that its citizens were welcomed into the Senate.”

  The guests stood utterly still. “So the shock was all the greater. After all, if a viper turns and bites, who could be surprised? It is in his nature. But if a beloved dog charged with protecting the household suddenly turns into a wolf, yes, we would be more than surprised. That is what happened with Gaul. But rest assured, the wolf is no more and the land is safe.”

  Murmurs of approval swept through the company. “So I invite all of you to join with me in this celebration of victory and safety,” I concluded. I called for a goblet, had it filled, and took a long swallow. “Drink with me, keep me company!”

  The evening unfolded without incident; all was polite and in order, if a bit subdued. Perhaps that was the new guardedness, born of the recent upheavals. So be it.

  After dinner I had provided lyre, flute, and harp musicians, who played at one end of the room. Suddenly one of the senators said, “You have been a generous host, but still you withhold something from us. Your music. We have known of your prize-winning compositions in Greece but have not heard them. Please play one for us.”

  I was touched. No, let me be honest: I was flattered. I demurred at first but then sent a slave to bring my cithara from the lower palace. Upon his return, I sang the song of Troy I had composed that questioned the necessity of war.

  Whether flattery or not, I was supremely contented to be here in the Domus Aurea, one of my creations, while playing another. I needed to create in order to fully live. And I needed an audience to share it with me.

  Afterward, in the lower palace, Statilia wearily removed her gold earrings and replaced them in her mother-of-pearl jewel box. “I would pronounce that a success,” she said. “At least you weren’t pelted with rotten fruit.” She flopped down on one of the couches, kicked off her sandals, and put her feet up. Tilting her head back, she unfastened her hair bindings and let her hair tumble free.

  “I wasn’t expecting to be,” I said. “Why would you say that?”

  “I hear murmurs in Campania,” she said. “The Liberation of Greece was not popular. Neither was your long stay there. The people were quite outspoken about it.”

  “Well, that’s over,” I said. “I am back now.” More’s the pity. “I have gotten over my fit about it. Now I am just a placid donkey, plodding along obediently.”

  She laughed. “Ha. Never. Though sometimes you do act like an ass.”

  Usually I enjoyed her sharp tongue, but not tonight. “I don’t appreciate that,” I said. “I have had very difficult days since you have been away. The crisis in Gaul—Galba—”

  Nightmares. Omens. An imperial rival.

  “Yes, yes,” she said. “And we are all thankful it has turned out as it has. Come, don’t pout.” She got up and came over to me, leaning over and kissing the top of my head. “I do say, perhaps you should cut off the Apollo locks now.” She ruffled them.

  When would people stop telling me what to do? “I will when I want to.”

  She picked up her jewel box. “I need a bigger one,” she said. Suddenly she made for a chest under the window and opened it, running her hand along the bottom. “The last time I looked, I saw a carved box in here,” she said. “I think it was ebony.”

  I jumped up. “No, there’s nothing like that in there,” I said.

  Her hand had found the gold box with the poison vial. She brought it out. “This is pretty,” she said. It was locked.

  “I will order one just for you,” I said. “This particular one has a special meaning for me.”

  Disappointed, she shrugged and put it back. “If you do, put some emeralds on the lid to dress it up.”

  * * *

  • • •


  The next few days passed, somnolent summer days of thick honey-sunshine, drowsy shadows, rustling hedges. Statilia departed for Campania again. Such a hush lay on the land that even the butterflies slowed as they fluttered from flower to flower. Time seemed suspended, a rope bridge swaying over nothingness.

  Then, on the eighth of June, in the late afternoon, Nymphidius and Epaphroditus hurried into my quarters. I had just seated myself before a table and was preparing to have supper. My favorite cups of delicate murrhine were waiting to be filled with Massic wine, and I was turning one of them over in my hand, admiring the play of light in the stone, and the carved scene from Homer, showing Achilles and Ajax.

  This time there was no proud confidence, no strutting. Silently, cringingly, they handed me several dispatches.

  “Which one first?” I asked.

  Timidly Epaphroditus pointed to a red canister. “This one, Caesar.”

  I unrolled it gingerly, as if an asp lurked inside. It did.

  Rubrius Gallus had turned his legions over to Galba and declared his loyalty. Petronius Turpilianus, with his one legion, had been deserted by his troops. The legions of Verginius in Germany had hailed him as emperor and he had not declined it. The other four legions in Germany under Fonteius Capito had kept silent, not confirming their loyalty.