Domina (Paul Doherty Historical Mysteries) (29 page)

Agrippina returned to her chamber, her face as pale as that of a ghost. She sat at her writing desk, hastily scrawled a note on a wax tablet and told me to send Creperius with it to a house in the Jewish quarter across the Tiber. Once this was done I returned to the chamber.

‘What is this nonsense?’ I demanded. ‘Do you really need to consult a soothsayer to learn what the future holds?’

Agrippina refused to listen. Creperius returned and said that Joah the Israelite would meet her immediately. Agrippina ordered a plain litter to be brought to the side door of her private apartments, and Acerronia and I were ordered to escort her. The bearers, all trusted slaves, took her at a soft-footed run down through the alleyways of the Palatine and across the bridge into the Jewish quarter. Joah’s house was unpretentious, flanked on one side by a cookshop, and on the other by a small warehouse. Joah was tall and lean with a gaunt face, cascading white hair and a moustache and beard of the same colour. He had large, deep-set eyes and the sort of magical presence which appealed to his select clientele of wealthy, Roman women. He opened the door before I even knocked.

‘Tell the Augusta to come in.’ He looked at me closely. ‘And you and her waiting woman. You can be trusted, Parmenon, can’t you?’

I don’t know whether he truly had magical powers or was just shrewd enough to know that I worked closely with Agrippina.

The room he ushered us into was dark and lit by flickering oil lamps. ‘I have the answer to what you are going to ask,’ he declared, closing the door behind us. The magician strode across and placed a hand on Agrippina’s shoulder.

‘Lie down on the floor!’ he urged. ‘Parmenon, Acerronia, stand in the corner. Do not react to what happens.’

Agrippina pulled off her headdress and lay down. Immediately strange shrieks and cries seemed to echo from the earthbeaten floor, and the air became thick with the odour of pungent sharp spices. The light seemed to grow, showing great spider webs that glimmered on the floor and crept over Agrippina’s prostrate body. Only then did I glimpse the altar half way down the room. Joah drew what looked like a white, gleaming circle round Agrippina’s body. The light became as intense as that of the corona of the sun during an eclipse. I had to shield my eyes even as I marvelled at the magician’s trickery. How he created that illusion, I have never understood. He ordered Agrippina to hold a small sheaf of corn in her left hand and, with her right, to count out thirteen grains of corn. As Agrippina obeyed, Joah scooped these up and put them in a small copper cup which he poured into a silver bowl and filled with water.

‘Drink!’ he urged Agrippina.

She later told me that the grains of corn sparkled like diamonds whilst the water seemed to fire her blood. She lay back again, as Joah made signs over her face and the phenomena disappeared. We were just in an ill-lit, dank room with the mother of the Emperor of Rome lying on a dirty floor. Joah helped Agrippina to her feet and kissed her fingers.

‘Well?’ Agrippina demanded.

‘It is finished,’ Joah murmured, stepping back. ‘Another woman will take your place.’

‘Acte?’ Agrippina spat out.

Joah shook his head. ‘No, another woman!’

We left that magician’s house and returned to the Palatine, where Agrippina brooded for days. Joah was either a true prophet or possibly just a very shrewd observer of court affairs. The open opposition, behind which I could detect Seneca’s hand, began with murmurs and whispers. Court cases were begun against her and the Emperor railed that his palace was becoming a meeting place for her litigants. He visited his mother less and less and eventually it was tactfully suggested that Agrippina should leave the palace and move to a nearby house. She had no choice but to obey. Although she was allowed to take her possessions, the guards were withdrawn: she was no longer a member of the imperial circle.

Nero seemed intent on demonstrating to his mother the depths of his decadence. He organised an elaborate, mock naval engagement on an artificial lake of salt water but the display got out of hand and many of the sailors were killed: Nero declared himself disgusted with such bloodshed. He next staged a ballet of the Minotaur legend with an actor disguised as a bull actually mounting another playing the role of Pasiphaë. The crowd were treated to the sight of the bull copulating with the hind quarters of a hollow heifer. At night Nero, disguised in a cap or a wig, prowled the streets and the taverns looking for mischief. Occasionally he’d visit the theatre in a sedan chair to watch the quarrels amongst the pantomime actors, joining in when they came to blows and fought it out with stones and broken benches. His feasts started at noon and would last till dawn, with an occasional break for swimming in warm baths or, if it was summer, snow-cooled waters. On one occasion he floated down the Tiber to Ostia and arranged for a row of temporary brothels to be erected along the shore in which married women, pretending to be inn-keepers, solicited him for custom. He never wore the same clothes twice and would stake thousands of gold pieces on the throw of a dice. He always insisted on being accompanied by a lavishly garbed retinue, and even the mules of his pack train were shod with silver.

Agrippina tried to hide herself away from all this but Nero kept up the insults. He would send her mushrooms, calling them ‘the Food of Gods and Goats’ and taunted her by granting Locusta a house in Rome as well as country estates. He despatched lawyers and their clerks to stand under her window, disturbing her with jeers and cat-calls. Mysterious gifts of food arrived, some of them blatantly poisoned.

I tired of this nonsense and opened my treasure chests to hire bodyguards, who drove away the litigants and ensured that any gifts brought to the house were immediately destroyed. Agrippina’s hair began to turn grey, and her face became gaunt as she lost weight. Nero had perfected his sadistic teasing of her. He would visit Agrippina in a profuse show of solicitude and concern, and build up her hopes, as he sat at her feet, wide-eyed, listening to her advice. Then he would jump to his feet, crowing with laughter, and leave, mimicking what she had said.

Agrippina, now full of guilt over Britannicus’s death, also tried to comfort the young Octavia, who was in a parlous state: her face was ashen and, in spite of her youth, she was losing clumps of hair from worry. Terrified of what had happened to Britannicus, she refused to leave her chamber, and would fret herself sick if her nurse, an old family retainer, left her sight.

Agrippina tried to fight back but Nero’s cruelty became even more barbed. I was in the Forum when I first heard rumours that Nero had been seduced by his own mother. On investigating these stories, I discovered that Nero had paid his servants to ransack the brothels of Rome until they found a woman who looked remarkably like Agrippina. Nero then had the woman dressed in his mother’s clothes, and would sit closeted with her in his litter. When he emerged, people could tell from the stains on his tunic and his air of dishevelment that, as one wit put it, ‘he’d not been discussing the problem of Parthia!’. I tried to protect Domina but Nero ensured such rumours reached her, and in despair she took to her bed, refusing food and drink.

I called on the services of every physician and quack in Rome, but they examined her and walked away, shaking their heads. Nero’s game became more intense, and he sent the woman masquerading as his mother to the house. I intervened and courteously turned her away. It was a chilling experience: she was the image of Agrippina until she opened her mouth and spoke, displaying her blackened teeth. At last I decided to sue for terms. For days I kicked my heels outside Seneca’s office until that wily, old Spaniard granted me an audience. He studied me with black, hooded eyes, a faint smile on his lips.

‘Your mistress will know peace, Parmenon, once she leaves both the Emperor and Rome alone.’

‘Exile?’ I asked.

‘When she leaves Nero and the Empire alone,’ he said, flicking his hand as a sign of dismissal.

By the end of the week, despite her feeble protests, Acerronia and I put Agrippina in a litter. We packed whatever possessions we could and took the road to Antium. Perhaps I should have waited for Nero was soon distracted from his cruel games against his mother, not by Acte, but by the new love of his life, the beautiful, exquisite Poppea. By that time, however, we were out of Rome. Agrippina began to recover even before we reached Antium, curious about where we were going and mocking what little retinue the Emperor of Rome’s mother possessed.

So we came to Antium, and enjoyed soft summer days, good food and delicious wines, and Agrippina took a new lover, Callienus, a Greek actor. We became accustomed to spending more and more of our afternoons together in the garden, reminiscing about the past and wondering about the future. Even then Agrippina was still convinced that her son’s love was only dormant, not dead. Because of that, she accepted Nero’s invitation to Baiae and that last, splendid feast. Because of her deep unconditional love for her monster of a son, she took ship across the Bay of Naples at night and was almost drowned by his minions. In the end, because of her all-consuming love, she and I sheltered in a dark, cold villa and waited for her beloved son to finish the task he had begun.

‘With you I would love to live,
With you I’d willingly die’

Horace, ‘
Odes
’ III. 9. 24.

Whilst we sat and reminisced, Nero and his cronies put their heads together. I later found out exactly what had happened: after all, I was the man who assisted both Burrus and Seneca to end their lives. Oh yes, Agrippina was pushed into eternal night but I became the nemesis of those who had plotted her downfall.

After his mother left on the bireme, Nero was as happy as a lark on a spring morning. He closeted himself in his private dining chamber at Baiae, his minions around him. He was already preparing the funeral speech, in which he would praise Agrippina’s virtues and berate Neptune for taking the ‘best of mothers’ from him. He lounged on his couch whilst Anicetus sniffed at a garland of flowers. As the evening wore on, Nero became more restless, until at last a messenger arrived, the freedman Agerinus, who, although a member of our household, was a born informant. He’d been picked up by the trireme, and although suspicious, was still not sure whether the accident was genuine or arranged. He threw himself at Nero’s feet, blurting out, ‘The Empress, your beloved mother, has had an accident! The boat sank but the Gods of sea and sky were with her, and she swam to safety. She sends word for you not to be anxious.’

Of course, Agerinus had invented the last part, protecting Nero as well as himself. He could hardly have burst in and shouted, ‘The accident you arranged for your bitch of a mother went wrong and she’s now safe!’

Nero promptly dismissed him. As soon as Agerinus was out of the room, the little monster had an anxiety attack. He paced up and down, half swooning with fear, and threw himself down onto his couch.

‘Oh Gods!’ he bawled. ‘Mother has survived. She will arm her slaves, seek the Praetorian Guard’s protection and demand to speak to the Senate. What can I do to save myself?’ He turned to Burrus and Seneca. ‘What can I do? Help me!’

This precious pair simply stared back at him. Nero was correct: if it had been against anyone but her son, Agrippina would have marched on Rome, and the Praetorian Guard would certainly have been aghast at any attack on the daughter of their beloved Germanicus. I am sure their minds teemed with the knowledge that, if there were a coup, they would fall with Nero. Much as they might have wished to see the back of him, who could be the next Emperor? Thanks to Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero, with a little help from Agrippina, there were no successors left in the Claudian line. What if the troops hailed Agrippina as Empress or allowed her to choose the next Emperor for the Senate to confirm? There were other considerations: as a soldier, Burrus might not have liked the odds stacked against him. Seneca, although a hypocrite, was a well-known philosopher – how could the First Minister of Rome advise his Emperor to murder ‘the best of mothers’?

Nero sobbed on the couch, and lifted his tearful face. ‘Burrus, can’t you order your troops to strike?’

‘They will not do it,’ the Praetorian tribune replied. ‘They love your Excellency but they also love your mother.’ He waved a hand contemptuously at Anicetus who was still sniffing the flowers. ‘He started this, so let him finish it!’

As Burrus and Seneca withdrew, Anicetus threw the garland on the floor, got to his feet, stretched and said lazily, ‘Caesar, you go to bed, and dream happily. I have work to do.’

He then summoned two of his lieutenants, naval officers Hercules and Oberitius, as well as a group of tough marines. They took the fleetest horses in the stables and rode around the bay to Agrippina’s villa.

As I said, I discovered all this later. Since our escape, I’d been listening to Agrippina’s reminscences, and begging her to flee. But Agrippina knew it was the end. She just sat by the brazier sipping her wine. As the news of the accident and her escape had spread, people had flocked to the villa. Once they’d discovered it was not the accident they’d first thought, they soon disappeared. The maids and servants also slipped away into the night. As Agrippina heard their fading footsteps, she glanced at me and smiled.

‘Won’t you go too?’

‘I will stay, Domina.’

‘He will not harm me.’

I closed my eyes at the foolishness of it all. She had just escaped a drowning arranged by her son and, within hours of reaching safety, she’d started to excuse him.

‘Let us remember, Parmenon?’ she continued. Her eyes had a dreamy, far-away look and she’d go back down the years, laughing and joking about all people we had known: Claudius and his strange edicts about breaking wind at table; Tiberius’s ears; Passienus embracing his favourite tree. She was still talking when I heard the sound of galloping horses, and shouts from the courtyard. I sprang to my feet and, picking up a sword, put myself between the door and Agrippina. Anicetus, followed by his two lieutenants, burst the lock open and swaggered in. All three must have drunk heavily before they’d left Baiae, I could smell the wine on their breath. Agrippina got to her feet and gently pushed me out of the way.