Claudius the God (64 page)

‘Yes, Caesar. I’ve taken the soundings myself.’

So I went to the sluice-gates and sacrificed and uttered a prayer or two - they included an apology to the nymph of the lake, whom I now begged to act as guardian deity of the farmers who would till the recovered land - and finally lent a hand to the crank at which a group of my Germans was posted, and gave the order, ‘Heave away!’

Up came the gates and the water rolled crashing into the channel. An immense cheer went up. We watched for a minute or two and then I said to Narcissus: ‘Congratulations, my dear Narcissus. Thirteen years’ work’ and thirty thousand - ‘

I was interrupted by a roar like thunder, followed by a general shriek of alarm.

‘What’s that?’ I cried.

He caught me by the arm without ceremony and fairly dragged me up the hill. ‘Hurry!’ he screamed. ‘Faster, faster!’ I looked to see what was the matter, and a huge brown-and-white wall-of water, I wouldn’t like to say, how many feet high, on the model of the one that runs yearly up the Severn River in Britain, was roaring up the channel. Up the channel, mark you! It was some time before I realized what had happened. The sudden rush of water had overflowed the channel a few hundred yards down, forming a large lake in a fold of the hills. Into this lake, its foundations sapped by the water, slid a whole hillside, hundreds of thousands of tons of rock, completely filling it and expelling the water with awful force.

All but a few, of us managed to scramble to safety, though with wet legs - only twenty persons were, drowned. But the dining chamber was torn to pieces and tables and couches and food and garlands carried far out into the lake. Oh, how vexed Agrippinilla was! She blazed up at Narcissus, telling him that he had arranged the whole thing on purpose to conceal the fact that the channel was still not dug deep enough, and accused him of putting millions of public money into his own pocket, and Heaven only knows what else besides.

Narcissus, whose nerves were thoroughly upset now, lost his temper too and asked Agrippinilla who she thought she was -Queen Semiramis? or the Goddess Juno? or the Commander-inChief of the Roman Armies? ‘Keep your paws out of this pie,’ he screamed at her.

I thought it all a great joke. ‘Quarrelling won’t give us back our dinners,’ I said.

I was more amused than ever when the engineers reported that it would take two more years to cut a new passage through the obstruction. ‘I’m afraid that I’ll not be spared to exhibit another fight on these waters, my friends,’ I said gravely. Somehow, the whole business seemed beautifully symbolic. Labour in vain, like all the industrious work that I had done in my early Years of monarchy as a gift to an undeserving Senate and People. The violence of that wave gave me a feeling of the deepest satisfaction. I liked it better than all the sea-fighting and bridge-fighting.

Agrippinilla was complaining that a precious set of gold dishes from the Palace had been. carried away by the wave and only a few pieces recovered: the others were at the lake-bottom. ‘Why, that’s nothing to worry about,’ I teased. ‘Listen! You take off those beautiful shining clothes of yours - I’ll see that Narcissus doesn’t steal them - and I’ll make the Guards keep the crowd back and you can give a special diving display, from the sluice-gate. Everyone will enjoy that tremendously: they like nothing so much as the discovery that their rulers are human after all. But, my, dear, why not? Why shouldn’t you? Now, don’t lose your temper. If you can dive for sponges, you can dive for gold dishes, surely? Look that must be one of your treasures over there, shining through the water, quite easy to get. There, where I’m throwing this pebble!’

To console Agrippinilla for her losses, I gave her, some days later, a very valuable present a snow-white nightingale, the first ever reported of that colour. Narcissus, as an apology for his rudeness, gave her a talking blackbird. The blackbird talked-almost as well as a parrot, and the white nightingale sang quite as well as the ordinary brown sort. Agrippinilla could not easily conceal her delight. in these birds. My family, by the way, has always shown a weakness for pet animals. There was Augustus with his watchdog, Typhon; Tiberius with his wingless dragon; Caligula with the horse Incitatus. My: sister Livilla kept a thievish, mischievous marmoset; my brother Germanicus a black squirrel, and my mother Antonia a large pet carp, This fish would answer to its name, which was ‘Leviathan’, swimming up from its lair among the water-lilies in its pool and allowing my mother to feed and tickle it. It was a present from Herod Agrippa, who had fixed a little pair of jewelled earrings in its gills. She used to claim that when it opened and shut its mouth it was addressing her, and that she understood it. I never had a pet myself. I have always felt that in these cases one gives more than one gets, and there is a temptation to believe the creature both more affectionate and more sagacious than it really is.

IT is now September in the fourteenth year of my reign. Barbillus has lately read my horoscope and fears that I am destined to die about the middle of next month. Thrasyllus once told me exactly the same thing for he allowed me’ a life of sixty-three years, sixty-three days, sixty-three watches, and sixty three hours. That works out to the thirteenth of next month. Thrasyllus was more explicit about it than Barbillus: I remember that he congratulated me on this combination of multiplied seven and nines: it was a very remarkable one, he said. Well, I am prepared to die. In court this morning I begged the lawyers to behave with a little more consideration for an old man; I said that next year I shouldn’t be among them, and they could treat my successor as they pleased. I also told the court, in the case of a noblewoman charged with adultery, that I had now been married several times, and that each of my wives in turn had proved bad, and that I had showed them indulgence for, a while, but not for long: so far I had divorced three. Agrippinilla will get to hear of Nero is seventeen. He goes about with the affected modesty of a high-class harlot, shaking his scented hair out of his eyes; every now and then; or with the affected modesty of a high-class philosopher, pausing to ponder privately, every now and then, in the middle of a, group of admiring, noblemen - right foot thrown out, head sunk on breast, left arm akimbo, right hand raised, with the finger tips pressing lightly on his forehead as if in the throes of thought. Soon he comes out with a brilliant epigram or a happy couplet or a profound piece of sententious wisdom; not however his own Seneca is earning his porridge, as the saying is. I wish Nero’s friends joy of him. I wish Rome joy of him; I wish Agrippinilla joy of him, and Seneca too. I heard privately, by way of Seneca’s sister (a secret friend of Narcissus’s who gives us a lot of useful, information about the nation’s latest darling), that the night before Seneca received my order for his recall from. Corsica he dreamed that he was acting as, schoolmaster to Caligula. I take that as a sign.

On New Year’s Day this year I called Xenophon to me and thanked him for keeping me alive so long. I then fulfilled my, promise to him, though the agreed fifteen years term is not yet over, and won from the Senate a perpetual exemption from taxes and military service of his native island of Cos. In my speech I gave the House a full account of the lives and deeds of the many famous physicians of Cos, who all, claim direct descent from the God Aesculapius, and learnedly discussed their various therapeutic practices; I ended up with Xenophon’s father, who was my father’s field-surgeon in his German wars, and with Xenophon himself, whom I praised above them all. Some days later Xenophon asked permission to remain with me a few years longer. He did not put his request in terms of loyalty or gratitude or affection, though I have done much for him - what a curiously unemotional man he is! but on the grounds of the convenience of the Palace as a place for medical research! The fact was that when I paid Xenophon this honour I was counting on him to help me carry out a plan that called for the utmost secrecy and discretion. It was a debt that I owed to myself and to my ancestors: it was nothing less than the rescue of my Britannicus. Let me now clearly show why I deliberately preferred Nero to him, why I gave him so old-fashioned an education, why I guarded him so carefully from the infection of, the court, from contact with vice and flattery. To begin with, I knew that Nero is fated to rule as my successor, carrying on the cursed business of monarchy, fated to plague Rome and earn everlasting hatred, to be the last of the mad Caesars. Yes, we are all mad, we Emperors. We begin sanely, like Augustus and Tiberius and even Caligula (though he was an evil character, he was sane; at first) and monarchy turns our wits. ‘After Nero’s death surely the Republic will be restored,’ I argued; and it was my intention that Britannicus should be the one to restore it. But how was Britannicus to live through the reign of Nero? Nero would surely put him to death if he remained at Rome, as Caligula had put Gemellus to death. Britannicus must be removed, I decided, to some safe place where he could grow up virtuously and nobly like a Claudian of ancient times, and keep alight in his heart the fire of true-liberty.

‘But the world is now wholly Roman, with the exception of Germany, the East, the Scythian deserts’ north of the Black Sea, unexplored Africa, and the farther parts of Britain: so where can my Britannicus be safe from Nero’s power?’ I asked myself. ‘Not in Parthia or Arabia: there could be no worse choice. Not in Germany: I have never loved the Germans. For all their barbaric virtues they are our natural enemies. Of Africa and Scythia I know little. There is only one place for a Britannicus, and that is Britain, The northern Britons are racially akin to us. Queen Cartimandua of the Brigantians is my ally. She is a noble and wise ruler and at peace with my province of South Britain. Her chieftains are brave and courteous warriors. Her young stepson, who is her heir, is coming here in May, accompanied by a band of young nobles and noblewomen, as my guests at the Palace. I shall make Britannicus his host and secretly bind the two together in blood-brotherhood, according to the British rite. These Brigantians will remain here for the entire summer. When they sail back (and I shall send them back by long sea, from Ostia direct to their port in the Humber) Britannicus will go with them in disguise. He will, have his face and body stained blue, and will be dressed in the red smock and tartan trousers of a young Brigantian nobleman, with gold chains around his neck. Nobody will recognize him. I shall load the Brigantian prince with gifts and bind him with the holiest possible oaths to keep Britannicus safe, and to hide his identity from everyone but the Queen. He will bind his companions with the same oaths. At Cartimandua’s court Britannicus will be presented as a young Greek of illustrious birth, whose parents have died and who has been left penniless and who has come to seek his fortune in Britain. At Rome he will not be missed. I shall give’ out that he is unwell, and Xenophon and Narcissus will assist me in the fraud: Presently I shall announce his death. Xenophon has a written order from me giving him the-right to claim the body of any dead slave in the hospital on the island of Aesculapius for use as a subject for dissection. (He is writing a treatise on the muscles of the heart.) He can surely find a suitable corpse to offer as Britannicus’s._ At. Cartimandua’s court Britannicus will grow to manhood: he will teach the Brigantians the useful arts that I have been at pains to have him taught. If he bears himself modestly he will never want for friends there. Cartimandua will permit him to worship his own gods. He will avoid the society: of Romans. On Nero’s death he will reveal himself and return as the saviour of his, country.’

It was an excellent plan and I did all I could to put it into execution. When the Brigantian prince arrived, Britannicus was his host, and formed a close friendship with him. Each taught the other his own language and the use of his country’s weapons. They worked and played together all summer long. They bound themselves by the blood-rite, unprompted by any suggestion of mine, and exchanged gifts. I was pleased that things were going so well. I told Xenophon and Narcissus of my plan. They undertook to help me. They made all arrangements. But see what has happened! All my ingenuity has been wasted., Three days ago Narcissus brought Britannicus to me, very early in the morning, when all the Palace was asleep. I embraced him with a warmth that I had abstained from showing him for years. I explained to him why it was that I had treated him as I had done. It was not cruelty or neglect, I said, but love. I quoted to him the Greek line that Augustus had quoted to me just before his death: ‘Who wounded thee, shall make thee whole.’ I told him of the prophecy and of my desire to save from the wreckage of Rome the person whom I most loved - himself. I reminded him of the fatal history of our family and begged him to fall in with my plan; in which lay his only chance of survival.

He listened attentively and finally burst out: ‘No, Father, not Father, I confess that I have hated you ever since my mother’s death. I thought the very worst of you. To me you were a pedant; a coward, and a fool, and I was ashamed to be known as your son. I see now that I misjudged you and I ask your pardon. But no, I cannot do what you ask, me to do. It is not honourable. A Claudian should not paint his face blue and hide away among barbarians. I am not afraid of Nero: Nero is a coward. Let me put on my manly-gown this New Year. I will still be only thirteen, but you can forgive me the extra year: I’m tall and strong for my age. Once I am officially a man I’ll be a match for Nero in spite of the start you’ve given him, and in spite of his mother. Make us your joint-heirs and then we’ll see which of us two gets the upper hand. It is my right as your son. And I don’t believe in the Republic, anyway. You can’t reverse the course of history. My great-grandmother Livia said that, and it’s true. I love the days of old, as you do, but I’m not blind. The Republic’s dead, except for old-fashioned people like you and Sosibius. Rome is an Empire now and the choice only lies between good Emperors and bad ones. Make me joint-heir with Nero and I’ll, defy the prophecies. Keep alive a few years longer, Father, for my sake. Then when you die, I’ll step into your shoes and rule Rome properly. The Guards love me and trust me. Geta and Crispinus have told me that when you’re dead they’ll see that I become Emperor, not Nero. I’ll be a good Emperor, just as you were until you married my stepmother. Give me proper tutors. My present ones are no use to me. I want to study public speaking, I want to understand finance and legal procedure, I want to learn how to be an Emperor!’