The Confessions of Young Nero

by Margaret George

  In the three years since we parted I have made a comfortable life for myself here in Velitrae—more than comfortable. I now have a pottery factory in Sicily that turns out expensive ware, sold in Spain, Italy, and Gaul, and it has made me rich. I live the life of a respected and powerful domina, mistress of an estate. Men have come calling, thinking I might be needful of a mate. They have ranged from honorable, young, and handsome to scheming, old, and ugly. They come in almost as many styles as my pottery.

  In Rome, despite all the divorces, a woman who has been married only once, such as Agrippina the Elder, is revered, called by a special name, univira—perhaps because she is so rare. Although we were not formally married, I feel bound to Nero forever and find my eyes do not wish to look elsewhere.

  O Ceres, hear my prayer. Deliver him from her!

  LXVII

  NERO

  We spent those halcyon days enjoying not only the villa but the wide blue bay sparkling under its summer sun. As she promised, Poppaea visited her relatives in their Pompeian homes, bringing me along as if I were an unknown person from out of town. I rather enjoyed it—the whole game of pretending not to be emperor but just the well-to-do husband of a local girl.

  Her family had been patrons of the town and endowed many public buildings and events over the years. As we strolled through the streets we noticed cracks and damage from the recent tremors. Plaster had fallen from some walls, one of the pillars in the Temple of Isis had toppled, and a fountain had ruptured, so water was trickling out at its base. But these were minor harms, and the town basked under a benevolent sky, its vine-entwined arbors, stocked fishponds, and flowery gardens exuding contentment. The thought of returning to Rome dampened my mood. I was not ready; I wanted to stay here longer, where life was easy and steeped in pleasantries. Where there was no Senate, no petitioners, no spies. I even enjoyed reading the exuberant graffiti that festooned the walls in bright red—slogans, caricatures, poems. I laughed out loud when I saw a cartoon of myself.

  “Not a bad likeness,” she said. “And look at the words under it—‘Imperator Felix’—Fortunate Emperor.”

  “No one more fortunate,” I said. And indeed that was true.

  • • •

  Of course there was still business to attend to and we did that in the mornings at the villa, when scribes and secretaries stood by to take dictation, and messengers were waiting to deliver letters. Poppaea, an astute businesswoman, had much responsibility for her property and commissions. She had her own signet, her own secretary for correspondence, and her own messenger service. I kept my own separate and worked in a different room. Tigellinus and Faenius kept a steady stream of notices coming to me, from the most trivial to the more important. There were encouraging reports from General Corbulo in Syria in his campaign against Parthia, and my Nile explorers had sent a new summary of what they had found so far: heat, stinging insects, snakes, and crocodiles. But not the source of the Nile. Following one of the forks of the great river below Meroe, they were stopped by a huge marsh that stretched in all directions. After traveling fifteen hundred miles south, they had to turn back.

  In with these innocuous messages came another: Crisis. Octavia is dead.

  In an hour came more information. She had died, some said, of her own hand. But other reports were that she had been murdered. Her guardian soldiers reported seeing two strangers land on the beach. Octavia went out—alone—for her regular midday walk that day but never returned. A knife was found by her body, and her veins had been opened. Then, on its heels, a third message with more details. Her body was found in the warm bath so she would bleed more freely, the knife on the floor beside it.

  Octavia dead. I put my head in my shaking hands. How could she do this? But she was proud and perhaps could not endure what she envisioned as life there with no escape. I had never conveyed my plan to bring her back—indeed, how could I safely at that point? But I was unable to imagine that she had taken this route. It had to have been murder. Murder. But who would have the authority to order this? She was Claudius’s daughter and the first wife of the emperor. That could not be ignored or set aside. So whoever had done it was bold and had access to means to intimidate anyone who would question the order.

  Suddenly I realized: the instigator had pretended the order came from me. No one else could be obeyed for such an order.

  Who would dare? Who had access to my signet or my messengers? Even Tigellinus and Faenius were not empowered to use them.

  As I sat there, the sunlight playing merrily on the walls, I knew. Poppaea.

  For as long as an hour I sat there nursing the dreadful knowledge, not trusting myself to go to her. Perhaps it was not true. Perhaps I was utterly wrong. That she would deny it, I knew. But as the minutes passed, the truth grew stronger, sinking deep into me. Finally I stood and made my way into her tablinum—workroom—where she was bent over her desk, writing.

  The curve of her neck as she wrote was as graceful as a swan’s; her beauty was a shield that deflected any evil aura. But this evil had come from behind the shield, not outside it.

  “Poppaea,” I said. She turned and looked at me, a smile on her face, tendrils of hair falling on her cheeks. “I have something for you.” I thrust the three letters into her hands.

  She read them slowly, her expression not changing. Then she laid them down and stood up. “A tragedy,” she said. She reached out to touch my shoulder and I shrunk away. Never would I have predicted I would ever recoil from her touch. “I know you will grieve for her.”

  “You did it.”

  I expected a denial or an evasion. Instead she lifted her chin, looked me right in the eyes, and said, “Yes. I did. I did it not for me, or for you, but for our child. It must be safe; it cannot have rivals or enemies. She was your enemy, though you never would have admitted it. She was plotting to be rescued from the island so she could marry one of the remaining descendants of Augustus. Their child would have eclipsed ours.”

  “She wouldn’t have had a child.”

  “Now you’ve come to believe your own story about her being barren,” she said. “She was barren because she had no chance to conceive. But Mr. Augustus-Descendant would have put that right.”

  “How do you know she was plotting?”

  She gave a small laugh. “You have your spies, I have mine. I tell you, this is the truth.”

  It was impossible to prove. But not impossible to believe. It could have been true. But could have been, might have been, probable, not impossible are not the same as true.

  “I did this for our child. And I would do it again—will do it again—if I see a threat against it.” She cupped her hands protectively around her belly, pressing the material down to reveal her growing shape. “Here!”

  Suddenly I saw, in that gesture, another from the past.

  Mother. Clutching her belly. Strike here! This is the womb that bore Nero!

  The womb that bears an emperor . . . I had struck once; now Poppaea had done likewise. My act to preserve my own life, hers to preserve my child’s.

  Hesitantly, she reached out for me again. This time I did not push her away.

  Now I knew why I had seen my own self in her. That dark side of me, the third Nero that I had repudiated, yet could not flee, the side that I could not reveal to Acte, was reflected in her. We were truly the same, for better or worse, made of the same material. If I embraced her, I was embracing myself. And I did, uniting all my sundered selves.

  LXVIII

  The beauty of Pompeii palled on me. The glittering water nearby was only a reminder that similar water lapped the shores of Pandateria, its blue surface the last lovely thing Octavia had seen. The water, the water . . . waters that Mother had sailed on, waters that surrounded Octavia. Rome was inland. To Rome I would hurry back, even though the summer heat was mounting.

  Tigellinus and Faenius were relieved to see me. Tigellinus, whos
e worry had stamped two deep lines on his forehead, grinned and let out a laugh. “Welcome, Caesar, and just in time. We want no mobs, no riots, no marching on the palace. Your presence can mollify them. We have withheld the information about Octavia, but it cannot keep much longer. This will give you a chance to make up a story.”

  “What, do you—even you—think I ordered this?” But people would think as I had—that no one else had the authority. Or the daring to issue a false order.

  He looked puzzled. “Didn’t you?”

  “No!”

  He nodded. But his calm acceptance signaled that he had interpreted my denial as a routine one, meaningless. “Then who?”

  I had to pretend I didn’t know. But that would trigger an investigation. “I don’t know,” I said. “Someone who wants to blacken my name.” Let them look for this bogus person.

  “You will have to calm the people,” said Faenius. “They will be angry and sorrowful that she is dead. And it would help if you could name whoever’s guilty and have them punished. Just to . . . er . . . clear yourself.”

  The old adage Cui bono?—who benefits?—usually lighted a trail to the guilty one. Obviously Poppaea benefited most of all. But I must protect her.

  “That family was doomed,” I said, to deflect suspicion. “Messalina executed, Britannicus felled by epilepsy, now Octavia struck down by assassins.” Not to mention Claudius poisoned by Mother. But I would not mention it.

  “Yes, very sad,” said Tigellinus briskly. “Very sad.”

  Faenius shook his head in concurrence.

  • • •

  For now, we made no announcement of Octavia’s death; and the news leaked out very slowly, so by the time everyone knew, it had lost its immediacy. The demonstrations and mobs did not materialize; it was as if they had mourned her once, when she first left the palace, and then put her out of their fickle minds. I was her only mourner, as the person who knew her best and also the one who had, by happenstance beyond our control, blocked her chances of happiness in her short life. And it was short. I could remember the little child clinging to Messalina, and that was not so long ago. A small window in time to have opened and then shut so quickly.

  When at length the death was formally announced, the official story was that she had committed suicide, after its being revealed that she was plotting an escape and allying herself to a traitor seeking my overthrow. The Senate duly issued a decree of national thanksgiving at the timely exposure of the plot and at my deliverance. Just as they had for Mother’s “plot.”

  The Senate . . . should it change its name to “Your Obedient Slave and Minion”? For that best described what it had become.

  • • •

  As the heat—both real and political—of the summer subsided, Poppaea joined me in Rome, and our marriage was announced. This time she was received warmly, and when I named her Augusta, the obsequious Senate applauded us. Livia had received the title only after the death of Augustus; the lady Antonia, only after her own death; and Mother, only on account of her lineage in addition to her marriage to Claudius. Poppaea was not of that class or rank, but this time—unlike with Acte—I was able to impose my will on anyone who might object to her elevation or claim that she was not worthy.

  When her pregnancy became known, we basked in excited approval. There had been no baby born in the ruling imperial household since Britannicus, more than twenty years past. In providing the people with something to anticipate, we guided their eyes to focus on what lay ahead, not behind.

  Poppaea settled easily into the palace but shunned Octavia’s quarters. “I don’t want to go there,” she said. “An angry presence is lurking there to fasten itself on me and revenge itself.”

  “You are thinking of the Furies,” I said. “But she is no Fury. Really, her demeanor was always gentle.” However, she had plotted to kill me in her gentle manner.

  “In life, yes,” she said. “But people change in death.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Into nothing.”

  “What of ghosts?”

  “Ghosts are not people. They are something else. I know not what—remnants of the person?”

  “I hope I come back as a ghost. Better that than obliteration.”

  “Better eternal fame than being a ghost,” I argued.

  She put her arms around me. “Why are we talking of these things? They are far in our future. Yet . . . I do not want to die wrinkled and old.”

  “Enough of this. We have a child to look forward to. A child coming first thing in the new year. A favorable omen. The beginning of a new life for us.”

  • • •

  Only a few weeks after this, Pompeii was hit with a severe earthquake. Unlike the tremors that had rumbled when we were there, this one was violent and caused extensive damage and many deaths. We first learned of it in Rome when a vast tidal wave generated from the quake raced north and swamped two hundred grain ships anchored in the harbor at Ostia. Then news came of what had happened in the city. Every public building had been damaged—some were in ruins—even the great Temple of Jupiter, a copy of the one in Rome. Pipes and aqueducts were shattered, leaving the city without water and many people homeless, wandering the streets in a daze. The cries of distress were heartrending, and I sent agents posthaste with relief funds and supplies for rescue and rebuilding.

  Poppaea’s villa suffered from some collapsed walls, and the roof over several rooms near the baths fell in. It would cost a great deal to repair. But no one had been hurt. Some of her relatives had sustained minor injuries and house damage that would be costly to repair. But the weather was still warm and there would be time before winter to take care of the most glaring devastation.

  • • •

  As distressed as we were by the damage in Pompeii, Rome presented a never-ending parade of concerns vying for my attention. Some were more diverting than others, and so to end the backlog of prisoners waiting on appeal to me, I decided to spend several days hearing them. Any citizen had the right to appeal to the emperor, but that did not mean the hearing would be speedy or even that the emperor would hear the appeal in person. Usually I assigned members of the Consilium to hear the appeals and render judgment, reserving only a few for myself. This time I asked Epaphroditus, recently promoted to become my head secretary and administrator, to select a few he thought would interest me. He presented a list of ten men with a variety of cases, from smuggling (could be interesting) to contested wills (possibly interesting, depending on what was being fought over) to religious clashes (why would that be interesting?). I pointed to that name and request.

  “Paul of Tarsus—why is he on this list?” I asked Epaphroditus.

  “I thought you were interested in affairs of the east,” he said. “He is a good representative of some of the oddities that flourish there. Of course, if you’d rather not—”

  “What is he here for? All it says here is ‘religious clash.’ Did this happen in Tarsus?”

  “No, the original arrest happened in Jerusalem, under the jurisdiction of Prefect Felix. After his arrest, Paul appealed to Caesar for a trial in Rome, as all Roman citizens are entitled to do. He was transferred to Caesarea for his own safety, as the Jewish zealots were baying for his blood. Once there, Felix ignored him and Festus inherited him when he replaced Felix as governor.”

  “But why was he in danger in Jerusalem? Why would anyone want to murder him?”

  “Apparently he is an itinerant preacher who goes all over Greece and Asia talking about a Messiah for the Jews. Everywhere he goes, there are riots. In Ephesus he tried to disrupt the worship of Artemis—imagine!— right in the shadow of her temple. Well, of course they tried to kill him. It’s the same story everywhere.”

  “Who is this Messiah? Why isn’t he here, arrested, if he’s the root cause of the trouble in the province?”

  Epaphroditus laughed. “He can’t be here. He’s
dead. Executed by the prefect of Judea for instigating rebellion with his band of followers.”

  “Just now?”

  “No, years ago. Thirty years ago.”

  “Then how can he be the Messiah?”

  “Because he rose from the dead.” Epaphroditus kept a straight face.

  “This is ridiculous. I won’t waste my time with this. Give him to a deputy.”

  “I agree, a dead man as Messiah is ridiculous; but this man, this Paul, has been causing trouble in his name all over the eastern provinces nonetheless.”

  “How long has he been here?”

  “He’s been waiting two years to see you. He’s under house arrest but has a lively stream of visitors—believers and new converts to his cult. He even claims there are some in the imperial household who have embraced this belief. I really think you ought to acquaint yourself with him.” He paused. “Gallio had dealings with him in Corinth ten years ago. He was causing a ruckus, as usual.”

  “I will send for Gallio, and we will hear him together. It will be helpful to have a knowledgeable witness present to help examine him.”

  When I told Poppaea about the impending interview, thinking it a light topic that would make her laugh, she sat up straight. “I want to be there!” she said. “I want to see one of them.”

  “One of who?”

  “One of those people who are insulting Judaism, trying to destroy it.”

  “I do remember now that you are partial to Judaism, that you have studied it. So you have heard of this man?”

  “Not this man, but of the grotesque distortion of Judaism that this—I won’t dignify it by the word ‘religion’—heretical sect presents. It must be destroyed, like the cult of Baal long ago!”

  She was trembling. I hated to see her so upset. And over something as preposterous as the dead so-called Messiah. “Calm yourself. It is of no matter, just a ripple in the stream. Judaism has survived the pharaohs, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians; it can survive a crazy preacher.”