The Confessions of Young Nero

by Margaret George

  “I fear so. None of my remedies are working. I feel quite helpless.”

  “He can’t die!” It was close to a howl.

  She sighed. “He can. And he will.”

  “No!”

  “I have seen too many die before him to mistake it.”

  “But what is it?”

  “I cannot say. It is mysterious. As if his body suddenly said, ‘Enough.’”

  “Bodies don’t do that!” I cried. “Something must be making him die.”

  “You are young and haven’t lived long enough to know. In fact, bodies do decide to die, and we never know why. Only the gods—”

  “I curse the gods!”

  She looked alarmed. “Don’t do that. Never do that.”

  “Why? What can they do that is worse than this?”

  She shook her head. No one had to bend to talk to me now; I was too tall. She looked straight at me. “Now, I know how young you are. But keep your innocence as long as you can. Let them hold their cruelty back so you don’t see the full extent of it for a while.” She brushed her hair back, and with that movement I almost knew her. Almost. Then it slipped away. “Go upstairs. Be with him. Stay with him till the end. I heard him calling for you once; I know you are a comfort to him.”

  XVI

  LOCUSTA

  I was horrified when I turned to see young Lucius standing behind me at my workbench. I had been so careful; usually I had my wares delivered by a slave to Agrippina so I would not be seen on the premises. She had warned me that Lucius was deeply fond of Crispus but she assured me that he would suspect nothing.

  “He’s a dreamy boy, spends most of his time thinking about the Trojan War, or his athletics, or paintings and music. He doesn’t notice much of what goes on in the real world.”

  But she was wrong. I could sense that he was acutely aware of the world around him, and that he would be devastated by Crispus’s death.

  I tried to prepare him. I also tried to disguise my voice and keep my face turned away, hoping he would not recognize me. It had been years since I’d met him at Lepida’s, and he’d been a small child then, but just looking into those intelligent eyes told me he had stored away the encounter somewhere, and it might awaken in his mind.

  I cursed myself that I had needed to prepare something on-site. I should have used something else. This was the second potion, to speed the action of the first. Agrippina had ordered that it be slow acting, so as to look natural. But now he was far enough along that it was time for the finale.

  I was surprised when Agrippina had contacted me. After all, they—she and her family—had declined my help to remove Caligula. But I had not shown my disappointment at the time; it would have been unprofessional.

  Now my professionalism was taxed again. I wanted to grant Lucius’s wish, be like the goddess Atropos, who can decide not to cut the thread of life after all. I could still reverse the effects of the drug. But that would harm my own reputation. A poisoner whose poisons fail to work is a poisoner out of demand.

  But what I could do was give my victim a reprieve. Let him recover slightly, enough that Lucius could talk to him, say good-bye, so he would not feel that he had been robbed even of that opportunity.

  As for Agrippina, she could just wait a while longer for her desired outcome. She had said that he had outlived his purpose in her life, as well as living way too long anyway. “Sixty years is long enough to do anything you want to do, do you not agree? Anything you have not done by then, you are not going to do.” She lifted her chin slightly, having passed judgment and pronounced it easily.

  “But why now?” I asked. “He is not harming anyone, and he seems to give you your freedom to do whatever you like—at least, that is what I have heard.”

  “His money and status gave me protection against that whore Messalina and her plots against little Lucius and me, but now that Lucius is older, the danger is past. He’s become a pest, an encumbrance. So I’d like to have his money without the bother of his presence.”

  Her ruthlessness brought out the same in me.

  Why, lady, I could easily poison you as well. Remove you from the world. Lucius would be better off under someone else’s care, since you do not love him or respect his feelings. Of course I would not do that—unprofessional, and I was hired only to kill Crispus. But I was tempted. She was a loathsome creature.

  But a poisoner does not have the luxury of moral choice. We are just instruments, instruments of those who hire us. Ours not to question. Ours not to disobey.

  XVII

  NERO

  I should have rushed, but instead I walked, slowly. I did not want to enter the room and see Crispus in any state but robust health. Somehow I felt if I did not enter the room, then nothing was happening to him, nothing could happen. But my feet took me closer and closer, and then to the threshold.

  I peered in. Light poured from the window behind his bed, dazzling me. I blinked and only then did I see the shrunken figure in the bed, the body making a long white mound under the covers. I came closer and moved out of the blinding sunlight. Only then did I really see him.

  His eyes were closed, his lips moving slightly as he breathed in and out. Smoking pots of herbs stood in the corners, making a haze in the room, as if a veil had been drawn over him.

  Should I wake him? It did not seem right. But to never speak to him again—

  He stirred and his swollen eyes opened. “Lucius,” he said. I had to bend close to hear him.

  “I am here,” I said.

  “Lucius,” he repeated, as if too weak to say more than just that one word. Then, “I did not go to your competition. Did you win?”

  The competition . . . it seemed so long ago. I had not won anything but the wrestling. “I did win one thing,” I said. “I wish you could have been there.” Immediately I wanted to smack myself for saying such an insensitive thing. “But I know you would have been there if you could,” I hurried to add.

  “You must keep on trying,” he said. “Always keep trying.”

  I wanted to throw myself on my knees and cry out, Without you, it will be hard to keep trying. You alone of my family cared what I did. Instead I just said, “Yes, sir.”

  He struggled to raise himself up on his elbows but lacked the strength. From his supine position he said, softly, “You know I must meet the Boatman soon, although I am not sure I believe in him.” A slight smile pulled at his lips. “I hope I recognize him. But he is sure to recognize me. Remember me, Lucius. Remember me, as I will remember you as the son of my old age.”

  Don’t leave me! I wanted to moan. Don’t leave me! But how selfish could I be? How could I hinder his departure like that? “And I you as the father I had at last.” I took his cool hand and squeezed it.

  “Let go of his hand,” a voice hissed. Mother. “He might have something catching!”

  She was standing in the doorway, slender and still. Then she glided over, took my hand out of his, covered his hands with the sheet.

  “If he has something catching, then you should not touch him, either,” I said. I knew the mysterious illness that was claiming him was not something that would seep into me, and somehow, I knew that she knew it, too.

  “I am careless of my life when my dearest husband needs me, but I must preserve yours,” she said. She patted his covers tenderly. He looked at her a moment, then closed his eyes again.

  “It is time for the afternoon dose,” she said, reaching for a small bottle on the nearby table. She poured a bit out into a tiny glass. It looked perfectly clear, like rainwater. A slave came forward and helped raise Crispus up so he could swallow. She poured it slowly into his mouth, which he had obediently opened.

  “There, dear one. Rest,” she said.

  I stumbled out of the room and into the dim hallway, then sank onto a marble bench around the corner. My heart was beating as fast as if I ha
d run a double stadion. But at the end of that race, I had entered another world. A world without him.

  I do not know how long I sat there. Fright and a detached calmness alternated in me. Finally the waves of emotion smoothed out and I returned to the world. Only then did I notice the low voices in the hall around the corner.

  “Three more, I would say.”

  “How long?” This was Mother’s voice.

  “Five days? You wanted it to be slow.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “I only did what you requested.”

  “I know.” The voices were getting closer. I just sat there.

  Rounding the corner were Mother and the woman I had seen in the basement. They stopped dead when they saw me. Mother recovered first.

  “My dear Lucius is as upset as I am,” she said. “This is such a blow.”

  “I know. I spoke to him earlier. It is I who urged him to come upstairs.”

  “You?” Mother looked surprised. “Locusta, I wish he had not had to see the suffering. That is what I would have spared him.”

  Locusta. Then it all came back, swimming out of my dark deep sea of memories. The woman at Aunt Lepida’s, the woman I had burst in upon when they were all having their secret meeting. Long ago, when Caligula was still alive.

  The poisoner! Would she remember me? Would she know I now remembered her? “I—I—I have to go!” I said, rising as slowly and deliberately—no sign of panic, of alarm—as I could. I walked stiffly down the hallway and then, when I was around the next corner, I took off my sandals and ran as fast as I could to get out of sight of them.

  Where could I go? I rushed out of the house and into the garden, then put my shoes back on, pulled open the gate, and ran out of the grounds. The river. I would go to the river, hide by the banks. I had to be alone, where Mother could not see me—and I could not see her. The murderess! My mother was a murderess.

  The banks of the Tiber were dry, with weeds and thornbushes guarding the waterline. It had been some time since the waters were high and the banks overflowing. The wind was sighing gently, making the dry stalks rustle and murmur. I sank to my knees and started crying, my sobs blending with the kindly sound of the wind.

  I was completely alone in the world now. The one person who should have been my protector was a murderess!

  I stayed there until it got dark and the air grew chilly. I stayed there until I had got used to the knowledge that had driven me there in panic and despair. I stood up and made my way back to the house, a thousand years older than the boy who’d left it.

  XVIII

  From that day on I entered into an almost dreamlike state, where I could see what was going on around me but I did not care, or it did not seem real. Crispus’s funeral, and the cremation, and the laying of his ashes to rest in his family tomb. Mother pretending to mourn, whispering softly and veiling herself in black. There were athletic competitions, but I did not care if I won or not, and my legs were sluggish. There were lessons with Anicetus and Beryllus, but I did not retain much. I really did not care about chariot racing, so when the long-sought invitation came from Claudius to view the races from the palace, I said I was ill and could not come. Mother was angry with me, but she could not prove I was not ill and I lay listlessly on my bed, never wavering from my story.

  It was sweet to float along, caring for nothing, yearning for nothing, feeling nothing. I had reached the state that some philosophers strive for, with no effort on my part: detachment, unswayed by the world beyond me.

  But slowly unwanted thoughts crept in, seeping through the barrier of protective blankness I had put up around me. They came at night, when all was quiet except for the sounds of owls in the trees around the villa and the distant rumble of carts through the streets of Rome across the river. At first they came softly, lapping around my sleep. My mother’s face began to appear in dreams, coming closer to me, kissing me, then suddenly melting into a skull. I would wake up shaking and covered in a cold sweat.

  My mother was a murderess. She had cold-bloodedly killed her husband. Who would be her next victim? Who else might she have killed, that I had not accidently stumbled upon? My father? No, she was far away on her island by then, exiled. Her reach was not that long. But could she have employed that woman, that Locusta?

  The thoughts came more boldly, as I lay awake in the darkness. Here was the horrible truth: I came from a family of murderers. Caligula had tried to kill me. Messalina had tried to kill me. It was rumored that Caligula had murdered Tiberius, smothered him with a pillow. There were questions about the death of Germanicus; again, poison was suspected, with Tiberius in back of it.

  This blood of murderers was coursing through me. Was a murderer inside me waiting to get out?

  “There is no such thing as ‘the blood of murderers,’” Anicetus had said, in one of the few lessons I had paid attention to since the death. “That is only in Greek plays.”

  But I felt I was living in a Greek play. They must have been based on something real. And then the most forbidden of all thoughts came: would she murder me? Immediately I told myself no, no, mothers do not murder their children, but then I remembered Medea. But that was only a legend, a Greek play, not real . . .

  Gradually those thoughts lost their grip on me, as every thought will, sooner or later. I learned to live with the knowledge I had; people can get used to anything, even horror, and it begins to feel normal. And the thought that I had inherited the blood of murderers seemed less threatening than that my mother, a proven murderess, might kill me. Thus we make peace with ourselves and our weaknesses, for there is always someone worse to focus on.

  • • •

  I grew; birthdays came and went. When I was nine Claudius celebrated the eight hundredth anniversary of Rome’s founding by holding a festival of games, the Ludi Saeculares, and one of the events was the Troy game, a traditional equestrian exhibition for boys too young to be soldiers but old enough to ride. Both Britannicus and I were chosen, and Mother went on and on about it.

  “It will be your first public appearance,” she said. “We must make sure it is auspicious.”

  “We?” I asked. “Will you ride along with me, then?”

  “Don’t be impudent. Just listen. This is the opportunity to show your princely demeanor. Riding and horsemanship were traditionally part of the education of a prince, but now that there are no princes—except you—”

  “And Britannicus,” I reminded her.

  “Yes, Britannicus. But he is only six and will look like the child he is, perched on a horse too big for him.”

  I shrugged. But I allowed her to dress me any way she pleased, if that would satisfy her. I must satisfy her whenever I could. The game itself was a ritual pageant that required a certain level of horsemanship, which by that time I had attained. It was unfair for poor Britannicus to have to participate at all, and not surprisingly, he did not do well. My performance, however, received thunderous applause. So they told me. I was quite removed in my mind, even while my body executed all the movements.

  Mother was gloating, and Messalina was glowering. I knew that Messalina’s hatred counted for more than Mother’s approval, at least as far as my immediate safety went.

  “There was simply no comparison between you,” Mother crowed. “You, a fine youth just on the brink of manhood, he, a timid, awkward little child. The crowd knew it; the crowd has chosen you over him.”

  It was the same crowd that cheered for the Greens one day and the Blues the next. I put no stock in it. I had done my part. It was over. Now I just wanted to steal away back to my room, withdrawing again into my private world.

  “Claudius has sent you a token,” she said. “Something to remember the games with.” She held out a small gold ring with a carved intaglio carnelian. It showed a young man on horseback. “He said he was proud of you.”

  That was generous of him, I thoug
ht. I pushed the ring onto my little finger and surprised myself by hoping very much that it would fit. It did.

  “He said it was Germanicus’s as a child, and that it belonged with you.”

  “He is kind,” I said. “I shall treasure it.”

  “Your grandfather would be pleased.”

  But now I really had to get away. I felt myself about to cry and did not know why.

  • • •

  Life continued in its predictable yet plodding trudge through the year, brisk and rainy spring giving way to dusty dry summer, on to golden autumn and then to stinging sleety winter, and so to my tenth birthday.

  “You chose the worst time of the year to be born,” Mother complained.

  “You are the one who chose that,” I reminded her. “I had nothing to do with it. Besides, the weather may be bad but it’s the best time of the year otherwise, because right around my birthday it’s Saturnalia.” I wished it could be Saturnalia all year long, instead of just seven days.

  Saturnalia, when they sacrificed at the Temple of Saturn in the Forum, then unbound his statue, thereby symbolically unbinding the cords of custom that confine us, was celebrated just two days after my birthday. For those few days each year, everything was turned upside down. Togas were replaced by loose Greek party dress, slaves traded places with their masters, free speech for all was allowed. Some people disguised themselves and roamed freely; others indulged in gift-giving parties, and drunkenness abounded.

  But what intrigued me wasn’t the license of drunkenness but a larger license, a license to transcend our borders, to burst out to freedom. I began to see a meaningful connection, a calling, in that it followed so closely upon my own beginning.

  “It’s a dangerous time,” my mother said. “People pretending to be who they aren’t—”

  “Or, perhaps, revealing who they really are,” I said.

  • • •