Domina (Paul Doherty Historical Mysteries) (28 page)

I recalled Agrippina and her young son sitting in the gardens at Antium or her estates in Tusculum.

‘Nero is Agrippina’s Achilles heel,’ I replied. ‘She will make the same mistake that all mothers do. A mother’s love is limitless and unconditional, her loyalty is undying; like all mothers, she expects her son to reciprocate.’ I paused. ‘Seneca has demonstrated that Agrippina can be criticised with impunity. He’s depicted her as a greater fool even than Claudius, whilst also reminding Nero that she cleared his path to the throne. The next step Seneca will take is to start asking Nero if it is truly he that rules, or his mother? It will be easy to turn that young man’s head.’

‘And then what?’ Pallas demanded.

‘Seneca will go for the throat. He’s studied his young student very closely, and really it’s a matter of logic, isn’t it, Pallas? If Nero can be dominated by one woman, his mother, then why not another . . . ?’

‘Acte?’

‘Acte,’ I agreed. ‘She’s wealthy, civilised, courteous, extremely beautiful and alluring. She bears more than a passing resemblance to a young Agrippina. Seneca has chosen well. What do you know of her?’

‘Some say she’s a courtesan,’ Pallas replied. ‘Others claim she lives a chaste life, which will appeal to our Emperor. Apparently Seneca brought her into Rome and persuaded his friend Serenus to set her up in a house in a fashionable district. The young woman has been paraded before Nero like a prize mare. If rumour is to be believed, Nero’s interest in her is growing by the day.’

‘But all Emperors have favourites,’ I replied. ‘Nero is only seventeen, it will just be a passing infatuation.’

‘Oh, it will pass all right,’ Pallas agreed. ‘But Nero’s youth is his very weakness: he’s determined to show his mother that she’s no longer the most important woman in his life; that he loves Acte, or someone else, more than he does Agrippina.’

I could see where Pallas was leading. Agrippina was truly vulnerable. She adored her son and, for the first time ever, would experience the pangs of jealousy.

‘Now we come to the purpose of this meeting.’ Pallas picked up a stack of coins and tossed them from hand to hand. ‘If Agrippina can be persuaded to keep her temper, to ignore Seneca’s provocation, to maintain a still tongue . . .’

‘All will be well,’ I finished.

‘All will be well. If Agrippina attacks, however . . .’ He threw the coins on the table. ‘Then the game is lost.’

I left the treasury with Pallas’s warnings ringing in my ears. On that same day I begged for an interview with Agrippina and warned her exactly what Seneca was plotting. She laughed at my worries but promised to heed my advice, although I could see it was already too late. When I mentioned Acte, red spots of anger appeared high in her cheeks and her eyes narrowed. The damage was already done.

‘You could try and remove Seneca?’ I suggested.

‘Impossible.’ She shook her head. ‘If I have made one mistake in life, Parmenon—’ She smiled. ‘What am I saying? I’ve made many – Seneca must rank as my greatest. I’ll heed what you say.’

She brought the interview to an end and was already at the door when she called my name.

‘Tell me, Parmenon, do you think Narcissus was mocking me with those games, that banquet?’

‘I don’t think so, Domina, I know. He may be a wounded animal but Narcissus is still dangerous.’

Agrippina kept her head down. ‘Wounded you say? Thank you, Parmenon.’

A few days later Narcissus was taken ill on a journey. He had barely left the city when the slaves heard moans and thrashing coming from the litter. They pulled back the curtain, to discover Narcissus hardly breathing, his skin clammy and cold, complaining of pains throughout his body. They hurried him back to Rome but it was too late, and Narcissus died, strangely enough close to Messalina’s tomb. Seneca sent Praetorians to his house, to search for papers and certain letters, but to his fury all they found were charred fragments: Narcissus, or someone else, had taken great pains to destroy any incriminating documents.

Narcissus’s funeral rites were barely over when Nero despatched a letter to Pallas thanking him for his hard work at the treasury, and pointing out that, as the burdens of state must be affecting Pallas’s health, it was time he retired. Pallas had no choice but to agree. He left in style with an escort of German guards, the personal retinue of Agrippina, walking before him, as he sat enthroned in a litter. Eight Abyssinians carried it shoulder high whilst his servants and friends, slaves and household retainers trooped behind in a solemn procession. Nero watched him go, standing on the top step of the treasury. He waved goodbye, waggling his fingers as if Pallas was a fellow pupil leaving a school.

‘Take care!’ the Emperor cooed.

In one quick stroke Seneca had removed Agrippina’s most powerful and loyal ally. He returned to the attack. Acte appeared more and more in the Emperor’s retinue, and Nero singled her out for pleasant, private conversations, and quiet supper parties – just the two of them – followed by night walks in the gardens. He showered her with costly gifts, and granted her a suite of apartments in the imperial palace. Nero stopped visiting his mother as often as she wished, and even worse, when Nero wanted to be alone with Acte, Agrippina was shown the door.

Agrippina became like a woman obsessed. Unable to sleep, she neglected affairs of state, and spent most of her waking hours railing at Acte and her son’s ingratitude.

‘What am I to do, Parmenon?’ she cried.

‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘Domina,’ I fell on my knees before her, ‘Acte is not Narcissus, an enemy to be removed. Let your son have his way. Leave Rome for a while.’

It was the only time Agrippina ever struck me in anger. She refused to listen and instead ordered me from of her presence. I waited in the antechamber, hoping she would regret her actions. Suddenly the door to her chamber flew open and Agrippina swept out, her maids running behind her. She walked like a general down the galleries and corridors, to where Nero was drinking with a small party of friends. Bursting in, she openly confronted her son.

‘See,’ she shouted, pointing at Acte lying on a couch next to Nero, ‘what a spectacle my son offers to Rome! Nero the Emperor!’ she sneered. ‘Like a doting, old man lying at the feet of a former slave: a woman who can be bought to give a man an hour of pleasure!’

Agrippina stood in the doorway, as I and the other servants huddled behind her. She was beyond all reason.

‘Look at her!’ Agrippina shouted. ‘She’s nothing more than a painted whore but the Emperor of Rome has made her his official mistress. Is it for this that I made you Emperor, the legitimate heir of Claudius?’ She turned on Seneca who was lying on the couch to Nero’s left. ‘I thought I was choosing a tutor, the wisest man in the whole Empire, but in truth, I picked a fool. His student, my son, fornicates with a freedwoman whilst Octavia, his proper wife, is neglected and repelled and I, Germanicus’s daughter, am insulted and ignored!’

She stopped, shoulders heaving. She put a hand out and leaned against the lintel. Nero’s guests stared in disbelief, a frozen tableau in some play. Acte kept her head down, and Seneca looked astonished, his eyes screwed up in mock hurt. Nero had the measure of his mother. He picked up that emerald eye-glass and examined her closely.

‘Why, Mother? What is the matter? Have you been drinking? As you know, I invited you here this evening but you said you were unable to come.’ He shifted his gaze. ‘Is that you, Parmenon? Take my mother back to her apartments. She’s overcome with exertion.’ He let the eye-glass drop on its silver chain and waved his hand. ‘Now, leave!’

Agrippina withdrew. I tried to seize her by the arm, but she shook me off. Behind the closing doors I heard muffled conversation and the sound of laughter. Agrippina walked slowly back to her chamber. She dismissed the maids and spent the rest of that night pacing up and down, pondering her next move.

The following day Nero added insult to injury: he opened the storerooms of the palace where the jewels and ornaments were kept, and chose from the treasure an exquisite headdress and pendant which he sent as gifts to his mother. I was with Agrippina when they arrived. She had been trying to calm her rage by dictating letters to stewards and bailiffs on her estates outside Rome. When the servants presented the gifts, she knocked them out of their hands.

‘Tell my son,’ she hissed, ‘that everything he possesses actually belongs to me! He is only sending me what is already mine!’

I attempted to reason with Agrippina but she was possessed by anger. All she was conscious of was her waning influence over her son and the hated presence of Acte. Nero now decided to twist the cord a little tighter, telling her that in view of his love for Acte he might divorce Octavia and marry his new love, abdicate as Emperor and retire to Rhodes to live as a private citizen. The barbs struck home: he was rejecting Agrippina and everything she had worked for.

Agrippina brooded and refused to tell me what she was planning. Her next confrontation with Nero, during one of Nero’s eternal banquets, struck terror in my heart. Agrippina was given the place of honour, though Nero spent most of his time whispering to Acte, showing her every mark of public affection. The guests were all aware of Agrippina drinking a little too fast as she glared at her son: it was like waiting for a violent storm to strike on a beautiful summer’s day. Nero turned to fill his mother’s cup and she let it drop to the floor, the precious goblet smashing to smithereens.

‘Why, Mother,’ Nero drawled. ‘What is the matter?’

Agrippina swung her legs from the couch, got to her feet and stood over him. ‘Why, son, have you forgotten?’ She gestured down the hall to where Britannicus sat with his friends. ‘He is no longer a child,’ she snapped. ‘He is Claudius’s true son, the real heir to the throne.’ Her voice rose. ‘The throne that you stole with my help – your mother whom you now insult. All Rome shall learn of all this! The army will choose!’

It was ridiculous scene. After Agrippina withdrew, for the first time in my life I pushed her through the antechamber into her own private writing office, where she stood like a little girl ready to be chastised. I could not forget Nero’s face at that banquet, those popping blue eyes, the effeminate curls and pouting lips.

‘Domina,’ I shouted, ‘you’ve signed our death warrants and that of Britannicus. You’ve challenged your own son!’

Agrippina did not break down in tears. She sat on a stool clutching the fringes of her robes, staring at the wall. In that moment her greatest weakness was exposed: this wasn’t about the empire or power, about who controlled the court and army, this was a mother who truly believed her son had publicly spurned her. She’d lashed out, uttering the first thing that came into her mind. I sighed and knelt beside her.

‘Domina, listen!’ I urged. ‘Would it be so bad if your son abdicated and took you with him to Antium to live as private citizens . . . ?’

Her eyes crinkled in amusement.

‘Why, Parmenon, you are quite a philosopher. You are right: all my life I dreamt of being the Augusta, a new Livia, mistress of an empire. I have achieved that but now I’ve lost my son, haven’t I, Parmenon?’

‘It can be rectified, Domina.’

I’ve told many lies in my life, but that was my greatest. Nero was no longer her son. He was what the empire had made him: a monster. Or had his father been right? Was there something in the blood, some evil taint? Did Nero have the same penchant for wickedness as Caligula and Tiberius? Of course he did!

He did not dare touch Agrippina but, like a panther, he turned on Britannicus. The young man was invited to another banquet, where, hoping to make fun of him, Nero asked to hear one of his poems. Britannicus performed so brilliantly that even Nero’s claque, a group of professional hand-clappers who wore their hair bushy and went under the name of ‘The Bees’, were impressed. Nero took a vile revenge: he attacked Britannicus and buggered him, heaping humiliation upon him. Caligula’s ghost had returned.

Nero spent more time with his foppish courtiers, consulting Seneca or Burrus if he wanted advice, whilst Agrippina stayed in her own apartments, where most of her household, apart from Acerronia and Creperius, were Seneca’s spies. The hangers-on and time-servers soon sniffed the breeze and realised what was coming. Agrippina was still physically safe but Britannicus, a mere shadow of his former self, had to be dealt with. He started to suffer from epileptic seizures, during which his face would turn blue, his neck would swell convulsively and he’d froth at the mouth. Britannicus one could see was marked down for death. I pleaded with Agrippina and she tried to do what she could, sending antidotes for Britannicus, warning him to watch what he ate and drank. But Nero brought Locusta the poisoner back into the palace and put her under the direct charge of one of Burrus’s lieutenants, the tribune Julius Pollio. All the court suspected what was happening. A poison was given to Britannicus but the dosage was too small, and after stomach pains he soon recovered. Nero was so annoyed that he beat Locusta with his own hands until she promised something that ‘would act like lightning’. The poison she concocted was served to a pig and within seconds it had dropped down dead.

A sumptuous supper party was arranged, to which all of the court were invited, including Agrippina and me. The theme was Persian and the rooms and couches were decorated with exquisite Persian tapestries, whilst we were served with delicious dishes from that country. A special soup was brewed for Britannicus to avoid upsetting his delicate stomach, but finding it too hot he returned it and asked for some cold water to be added. The poison must have been added then. In less than a minute, Britannicus lurched off his couch, with his hands clutching at his throat, only to fall lifeless to the floor.

‘Do not trouble yourselves,’ Nero drawled to the guests. ‘My brother Britannicus is subject to fits.’

Two Nubians carried Britannicus’s body from the dining hall and the banquet continued. Agrippina and I managed to slip away and discovered Britannicus’s corpse sprawled on a couch in an adjoining room. Embalmers were already smearing it with creams and cosmetics to hide the livid, dark spots appearing all over the skin. Within hours the body was sheeted, taken out to a makeshift funeral pyre and consumed by flames.