The Kingdom of the Wicked

by Anthony Burgess

  Nero was reading this when Gaius Petronius, the dirty poet, was carried to him on an open litter by his slaves, genuinely dirty from the mud of the Roman gutters, with cuts and bruises untreated on his face and limbs and, in his hand, a large carrot that he alleged had not merely been stuffed but hammered up his anus. His exquisite robe was torn and his hair, which he wore long and over whose dressing he spent an hour at least every morning, was hacked off in places by, apparently, a butcher’s knife. Nero nodded as he listened to the loud plaints. More than mother’s curses were radiating from Tusculum (probably Antium; his mother was a foul liar): she was sending a slave secretary to Rome with ready gold to pay nocturnal bravoes. ‘Yes, yes, dearest Gaius,’ the Emperor soothed. ‘It is time to put on a comedy of the kind you have frequently suggested. Let us celebrate the feast of Minerva at Baiae and arrange something really exquisite to crown it all. My poor dear friend.’ Then he wrote a letter and had two copies made, one for Antium and the other for Tusculum. In it he said:

  Dearest mother, your words strike to my very heart. I see all too clearly now how I have been led astray by unscrupulous companions who, while professing both friendship and loyalty, have been in the pay of Britannicus and other enemies of the state. I have been a fool and beat my breast for my folly. The Empire needs your wisdom and political gifts; your wayward but repentant son desperately needs his mother. Let us be reconciled under the aegis of the goddess of wisdom and celebrate our reconciliation with wine, kisses and the public self-abasement of your always loving, etc.

  Petronius had been made responsible for the arrangements of the entertainment at Baiae, but it was deemed prudent to keep him out of the way when Agrippina (as she did, as she was bound to do) arrived on her hired galley from Bauli, beautiful as ever, dressed as Minerva with a live owl on her shoulder. There was an unfortunate accident as her craft pulled into the shore: one of the decorative barges, on which nymphs and satyrs swayed demurely, singing a song of the Emperor’s own composition on the beauty and wisdom of the honoured guest, rammed the galley, and a boatman with a boathook, trying to push the galley away, made a hole in its flimsy side. Underwater swimmers, some of them from the choral party of satyrs, made further holes in the hulk and the vessel, visibly letting in water, was towed away rapidly for repairs. ‘It is as well, dearest mother,’ Nero said, embracing her. ‘I have a boat more in keeping with your status waiting to take you back.’ She suspected nothing; her long dull exile had made her wish not to be suspicious; she genuinely wished reconciliation and the commencement of new intrigues in the centre of imperial civilisation.

  It was a fine party, with no ephebes or catamites, only decent adulterous matrons and staid senators who got quickly drunk. There were boars roasted whole on spits, the members of swans and peacocks in sharp sauces, tarts and flummeries and much wine. The company begged Nero to sing, but he said: ‘Ah no, my friends, totally unseemly in an emperor. I have learnt my lesson, ah yes, and am ready to join the grave and judicious, submitting once more to my blessed mother’s influence.’ And he kissed Agrippina lovingly. At nightfall lanterns were lighted in the trees, and a host of owls were loosed from cages. Agrippina’s own owl, frightened by the collision, had flown away to roost and did not reappear: at least nobody came across a bird with little golden anklets and tiny bells. When it was time for Agrippina to leave, Nero escorted her with trumpets to the landing stage, where he prepared to hand her into the barge he had provided, its superstructure hung with gold curtains. ‘Dearest mother, it was a joy to have you. We’ve been apart too long,’ he said.

  ‘No doing of mine, my son. You made it clear that I was not welcome in Rome.’

  ‘All over, all all over. Make your arrangements for return. I need you.’ Quite how these words were meant was not clear, for the son kissed his mother not only on the lips but on the breasts, gently pulling her robe from her shoulders to do so the more sincerely or intimately. Then she got aboard, and the rowers pushed the land away before settling to their strokes. Agrippina lay on the couch thoughtfully placed under the canopy, a couple of servingwomen and her freedman Lucius Agerinus with her. It was Agerinus who first noticed something irregular about the canopy: two of its wooden supports were beginning to crack under the weight of something hidden under the golden cloth; moreover, the craft was lower in the water than it ought to be. He said: ‘Somebody’s been playing tricks with this boat. Let me—Oh, no. Out, madam, quick.’ And he pushed her into the water as a lump of what looked like lead came down, braining one of the two servingwomen. The struts of the canopy broke entirely and more lead hurtled. The rowers dove overboard, but few of them could swim. The Dowager Empress, however, disclosed an athleticism Lucius Agerinus had never suspected, and, himself swimming, watched her ply lustily, hands joined and then circling away in a steady rhythm, strong legs paddling, towards the shore. He looked back, spewing water, to see the boat sink and desperate arms weave at the air before going under. Touching the shore at last, he found Agrippina sitting in her wet and dredging for breath.

  Lucius Agerinus splashed along the coast to Baiae, where he found the festive lanterns doused but lights still on in the canvas pavilion where the imperial party had got drunk and done honour to the name of Minerva. There he found Nero fondling rather absently the limbs of a Syrian catamite. Gaius Petronius, whom Lucius Agerinus had thought to be banished, was also there, wearing a yellow wig. ‘Caesar,’ the freedman said, ‘I come to report an accident. The vessel in which the Empress Agrippina was being conveyed—’

  ‘Yes? Sunk, has it? My poor mother. My beloved wretched mother.’

  ‘The gods be praised, Caesar. Your mother and myself are the only survivors. We swam ashore together.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Nero asked, with an excessive show of relief.

  ‘In a workman’s hut three miles down the coast.’

  ‘Brave mother. Lucky mother. And you – what is your name?’

  ‘Lucius—’

  ‘Never mind. She sent you to kill me, didn’t she? Thinks it’s my fault. Vindictiveness to the last. Aufidius! Crespus!’ Two bodyguards came running into the pavilion. ‘An assassin among us. You know what to do.’

  In the workman’s hut Agrippina sat wrapped in a rough blanket, sipping hot wine. The old man who lived in it had built a small fire in a brazier. He was lonely and garrulous, saying: ‘A question of workmanship, lady. Things are not half so well made as they were in the glorious days of the Emperor Augustus. A falling off, if you catch my meaning. And now they have this mere lad as an emperor, up to all sorts of tricks. Encourages a falling off in everything – bad behaviour, dishonesty, rotten workmanship. Sorry I can’t give you better hospitality, lady – you see how things are. A poor labourer not used to receiving visits from the gentry.’

  ‘You’ll get your reward.’

  ‘Oh, what I say is ordinary decency is its own reward. Not that I wouldn’t be grateful for a good word put in for me with the Office of Works. A good worker – look at these hands – tough like leather and hard like horn. I get on with the work and no fooling—’

  It was then that Aufidius and Crespus came in, daggers drawn. She looked at them and nodded. ‘A charge of conspiracy,’ Aufidius said, ‘with the pretender Britannicus. Your attempt at assassination failed. Come as you are. Don’t resist arrest. We have orders to take appropriate action in the case of—’ What she was doing now: leaping for the door with her blanket around her. Crespus struck and she lay moaning. Aufidius finished her off with two more stabs. The workman, terrified, said:

  ‘See – I did nothing. I know nothing about who she is or anything. Just took her in half-drowned, that’s all. I don’t meddle in high matters. I won’t say anything, honest.’

  ‘True,’ Aufidius said. He held him and Crespus cut his throat.

  Later the son, drunk, had the body of his mother brought to him. He looked at it, naked, the wounds cleansed and dry. ‘I think of that time when Messalina had the axe,’ he said. ‘A beautiful bo
dy. What, Gaius, should be the aesthetic approach to the corpse of one’s mother? It’s only a matter of form, colour, isn’t it? She’s dissolved into – what’s the term?’

  ‘Morphology.’

  ‘Beautifully proportioned. Fine skin. What do I do now to prove my conquest of the gods of biology, as you call them? Rape the corpse? No. Prepare a eulogy, I suppose. Or do I mean an elegy?’

  The histrionic grief, Gaius Petronius thought later, deceived nobody. Nero stood in deep but highly decorative mourning. Acte smirked behind him; the Empress Octavia looked embarrassed. The Emperor cried: ‘I will write an elegiac poem and perform it publicly, whatever my learned mentors think. Has a son no right to lament the loss of his mother and present to an unfeeling world a salutary model of filial grief? She was everything to me – the womb that bore me, the breasts that nourished me, the care and wisdom that watched over my growth. There will never be another like her. Dearest mother, consigned to the shades, look down on your son, bring him guidance in dreams, watch with shadowy pride the progress of his reign and the growing glory of the Rome you loved. I would that the dead rose again, but alas – cities are destroyed and rebuilt to a newer glory, empires perish and rise again – but, once gone, we mere human creatures become dust, ash, nothing. Dear mother, live on in memory. A mother’s love is eternal. So is the love of a son. I weep, I weep – and nothing can console me. Vale, mater.’ Somebody at the back ironically applauded. It was suspected to be Burrus, but nobody could be sure.

  This, then, was the Emperor whom Marcus Julius Tranquillus was serving in Palestine and to whose justice Paul was to appeal. Julius was not long in becoming unhappy with his assignment. He had no confidence in Poncius Festus, who was inexperienced and infested with a number of prejudices, the chief of which was against the Jews. ‘Caesarea,’ Festus said, as the ship eased in. ‘Felix told me to stay here, to go to Jerusalem as little as possible. At least we breathe the wholesome air of the ocean at Caesarea. Not the stifling stink of Jewish superstition. They’re bad enough in Rome. What they’re like here – I shudder to think of it.’

  ‘So you start off with a prejudice.’

  ‘Oh, there’ll be no nonsense while I’m procurator. Keep them down. Remind them who’s master. No, I don’t like the Jews.’

  ‘You know I’m married to one?’

  ‘Yes. Of course. I’d forgotten. Well – the women may be all right. They probably don’t take this religious nonsense seriously. I’ve nothing against Jewish women. Very seductive, some of them. Good in bed, they say. You’d know more about that than me, of course.’

  ‘Procurator, with all respect, I don’t like your tone.’

  ‘No? Well, with all respect, you’ll have to put up with it. As long as we work together. I notice you didn’t seem keen to bring your wife with you.’

  ‘She prefers to stay in Rome. A year is not for ever.’

  ‘Better that way. She’d bring you too close to these people, get you absorbed. You have to stay aloof, that’s important. Know the language, do you?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Avoid speaking it too well. Keep your distance. Make them speak Greek or Latin. I suppose Felix has left a lot of unfinished business behind him. Jewish law, Jewish taboos, trials that go on for ever. Why can’t they learn to think like Romans? That’s what we’re here for, anyway. Bring Roman clarity of thought, Roman reason, Roman manners. A civilising mission.’

  ‘And, of course, we collect taxes.’

  ‘That too. After all, civilisation has to be paid for.’

  Paul was still at Caesarea, waiting for Poncius Festus to deliver judgement. His cell was commodious and he was permitted visitors. The chief of these was Luke. To Luke Paul dictated a letter about ‘Charity, which is another name for love. If I speak with the tongues of men – and of angels – and I have no charity, I’m nothing more than a cracked trumpet or a bit of struck metal. I may be able to prophesy, to understand mysteries, to have immense knowledge of all things, be able to move mountains indeed, but if I have no charity I have nothing. Nothing. I may sell all my property to feed the poor. I may submit to execution, burning, martyrdom. But if I have no charity it means nothing at all. Let me tell you what charity is like. It’s ready to suffer. There’s no envy in it. It isn’t – puffed up. It’s never unseemly, never selfish, thinks no evil, isn’t easily provoked. It submits, believes more than doubts, hopes more than despairs. It never fails – not in the way that prophecies fail, or words fail, or even knowledge fails. We know a little, we prophesy a little. But when the perfect thing comes – and that is charity – we don’t need even that little. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, but when I became a man I put off childish things. So the business of knowing more goes on. Now we see through a curtain, darkly and imprecisely. But some day we’ll see reality face to face. Now I know in part, but some day I shall know thoroughly – even as I’m known. And all this will come about through the power of love. There are three things as you know, all great – faith and hope and charity. But the greatest of these is charity. Got all that?’

  Greatest of these is—’ Luke put down his tablet. ‘You believe all that?’

  ‘They’d better believe it, the ones who are going to have it read out to them. Yes, of course I believe it. You’re not staying to eat something?’

  ‘I have to see this new man again. Trouble in the belly. Cramps. Diarrhoea. Newcomers just will not leave the fruit alone.’

  ‘You’re his official physician?’

  ‘No. Just called in. I ply the trade. A man has to live. We can’t all enjoy the hospitality of a Roman prison.’

  ‘Rather excessive hospitality. Two years.’

  ‘As long as that? Everybody must have forgotten what the case is about.’

  ‘I don’t think so, Luke.’

  He was right. Festus and Julius met the leaders of the Sanhedrin at the confines of the Temple, which the two Romans duly admired. Ananias said: ‘We appreciate the courtesy visit, procurator. We’re glad that Roman law is in operation again. It’s been asleep for too long.’

  ‘Blame the functionaries of Rome for that,’ Festus said. ‘A change of Emperor, a reorganisation of the civil service. If you have cases for me to judge, bring them to Caesarea.’

  ‘There is one particular case that has slept since the departure of the procurator Felix. The man Paul. He lies in jail in Caesarea, as you will know. We humbly request that he be sent here to Jerusalem for the further investigation of his crimes.’

  ‘Crimes? Somebody mentioned these crimes to me, but I still don’t know what they are. Anyway, it’s the task of the judiciary to determine whether there are crimes or not.’

  ‘Oh, we’re sure.’ Festus looked at them, and he saw one of them lick his lips. The physician Luke had fed the procurator more than a white medicine. Festus said:

  ‘Did you have summary justice in mind? An accident on the road to Jerusalem? I’ve heard of these tricks before.’

  ‘We do not perform tricks, procurator. We leave those to the Nazarene enemies of the Roman state. We are at one with you in our love of justice.’

  ‘He’ll get justice. And he’ll get it in Caesarea.’

  In the open courtyard outside the praetorium in Caesarea Marcus Julius Tranquillus looked with great curiosity at Paul, whose wrists were chained together at the back, who was bald, ugly, ageing but, it seemed, much at peace with himself. He knew all about Paul, or rather Saul, fellow student of his brother-in-law, murderer turned Nazarene fanatic, traveller, religious orator, Roman citizen. He had read the file on Paul in the praetorial office. He did not at all understand the charge which the pompous Greek Jew Tertullus was enflowering with compliments to a Roman official who had as yet done nothing to deserve either praise or blame.

  ‘So, to conclude, most illustrious Felix—’

  ‘Festus is the name. Porcius Festus.’

  ‘I apologise. I’ve been speaking from the original brief. Most illustrious Festus, this man not
only profaned the sacred Temple of our fathers but persisted in teaching false doctrine to the scandal of all true worshippers.’

  ‘This,’ Festus said, ‘is an internal and local matter and does not concern Rome.’

  ‘But, illustrious one, his acts and words have been much to the detriment of public order and tranquillity, and those are very much the concern of Rome.’

  ‘What,’ said Festus, ‘does the defendant say?’

  To Julius’s ear what the defendant now said was spoken in admirable if provincial Greek with a rise of the voice at the end of each phrase, doubtless a device to ensure clarity but conveying the lilt of a question. ‘I have done nothing amiss – neither sin under the laws of religion nor crime under the laws of Rome.’

  ‘It’s that second part that concerns this court. You say that you’ve committed no crime against Caesar?’

  ‘I repeat: neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the Temple, nor against Caesar—’

  ‘Will you,’ Festus asked, ‘go up to Jerusalem and be judged there – before me – of the things of which you are accused?’

  Julius thought he saw a glint of complicity in the glance that the procurator cast at the man in black robes who was called the high priest. He certainly saw one of his own troops make a thumb-rolling gesture at a colleague; the colleague sagely nodded. Paul saw too. Paul said: