Domina (Paul Doherty Historical Mysteries) (17 page)

‘No!’ She shook her head. ‘Macro, send messages to the legion commanders!’

‘Oh, they’ll be loyal enough,’ Macro laughed. ‘And the Praetorian Guard take their orders from me.’

Agrippina sat, sucking on her lips.

‘Let it be. Let it be,’ she murmured.

Agrippina stayed on in the palace where she and Macro managed everything. The news of Caligula’s illness spread through Rome, and people grew hysterical, or pretended to, with grief. The Palatine was besieged by mobs eager for news. Five days after that infamous banquet, Caligula awoke. He pulled himself up in bed and stared around, smacking his lips. His eyes were clear with a mischievous, malicious look, as if it had all been a game. As Agrippina carefully explained his illness. Caligula heard her out, nodding wisely, before demanding to be washed and fed and have Drusilla sent to him.

Caligula kept glancing at Agrippina out of the corner of his eyes, and now and again he would wink at me as if we were sharing a joke. I’ll be honest, the look on that man’s face made me shiver. Whatever soul Caligula possessed before, had died during those five absent days, and thereafter the king of demons controlled his mind.

‘So, he said he’d sacrifice himself, did he?’ he declared, tapping his chin and referring to a Roman citizen Afraneus. ‘Promised to commit suicide if I recovered? Well I have, haven’t I, Parmenon?’ He grinned and winked, clapping his hands. ‘The Gods have blessed me. So, Afraneus must fulfil the vow!’

It was the beginning of the terror.

The following day Afraneus was arrested. Naked, except for a loin cloth, he was paraded through Rome and tossed off the Tarpeian rock. Another official had reputedly offered to fight as a gladiator if Caligula recovered. The Emperor kept him to his promise and made the unfortunate man battle it out in the amphitheatre. Drusilla and Agrippina were in no danger, but the atmosphere at court became tense and watchful. Caligula showed little overt hostility to anyone in particular until one night, at a banquet, he abruptly turned on Macro who had been offering advice on some petty matter.

‘How dare you lecture me?’ Caligula roared. ‘How dare you set yourself up as my superior?’

‘That is not true,’ Agrippina intervened.

‘Isn’t it?’ Caligula yelled.

The Praetorian Prefect leapt to his feet and made ready to leave.

‘You won’t get far!’ Caligula shouted.

Two German auxiliaries, favourites of the Emperor, appeared in the doorway. Tall and blond-haired, they looked like twins and were nicknamed Castor and Pollux. Macro spun round, and glanced beseechingly at Agrippina. She could only stare sorrowfully back. We’d been invited to these banquets for days following the Emperor’s recovery and until now nothing had happened. Caligula had lulled our suspicions until springing like a hunting panther.

‘We should kill him now,’ Agrippina whispered to me.

She moved further up the couch to elicit support from Drusilla but that empty-head was drunk and half asleep, her face pressed against the headrest.

Macro tried reasoning with Caligula. ‘I have only ever wanted to help . . .’

‘Assassin!’ Caligula screamed. ‘You are under arrest! The charge is treason!’

The mercenaries seized Macro and dragged him from the room. I never saw him again: he was dead by the following morning. Macro’s fall was the sign for a new bloodbath. Silenus, Caligula’s former father-in-law, was arrested and openly accused in the Senate: his response was to cut his throat in front of all his colleagues. Gemellus, Tiberius’s grandson, was released from house arrest, but then his fate followed the same pattern as Macro’s. He was invited to a banquet, where Caligula shared his couch, and sniffed the young man’s breath.

‘What are you doing?’ Caligula screamed. ‘Taking antidotes for poison? Are you accusing me of trying to poison you? You, who prayed for my death!’

‘I have not prayed for your death,’ Gemellus replied. ‘I take no antidote, it’s cough medicine!’

Caligula refused to accept this. ‘It’s an antidote!’ he insisted.

Gemellus, give him his due, realised his time had come. ‘There is no antidote against Caesar,’ he bravely retorted.

He was allowed to leave the banquet, but the following day Praetorians were sent to his house and forced him to open his veins.

Caligula’s conduct became wilder and more outrageous. He attended the marriage of a noblewoman Orestilla, where he sat next to the bride and sent a note to the bridegroom, inscribed ‘Don’t make love to my wife!’

He ordered Orestilla to be taken to his own quarters and married her himself. A few months later he divorced the woman but ordered her never to make love to any man for as long as the Emperor lived. Sometimes his conduct was simply malicious. He made his uncle, Claudius, the constant butt of his jokes. Caligula would throw olive, fig and date stones at him and put slippers on his hands as he dozed in a wine-drenched sleep. Caligula would roar with laughter when the old man woke and tried to rub his face with his hands.

Agrippina ignored all this. She withdrew from court, more concerned that nothing would occur to upset the impending birth of her child. The boy was born in December, after a difficult delivery. The portents were good, though Agrippina kept them quiet. ‘Now is not the time,’ she whispered to me, ‘to remind my mad brother that there’s another Caesar in Rome.’

‘What shall we do?’ I urged.

‘We must wait,’ she replied. ‘The same as we had to do with Tiberius on Capri . . .’

At first I admired my mistress’s cunning and coolness, until two events abruptly changed this. In June the following year Drusilla suddenly died, and Caligula’s grief was ostentatious, bloody and dangerous. She was granted a public funeral, and during the time of official mourning, it became a capital offence to laugh, bathe, or even dine with one’s family. Caligula tried to console himself for the loss of his sister. He married a disreputable noblewoman, Lollia Paulina, who insisted on turning up at dinner parties drenched in jewels and pearls worth millions of sesterces. She actually made her slave carry the receipts around to show would-be admirers how much she was worth. Caligula soon tired of her and dear Lollia went the way of all the rest. Next he married Caesonia, a woman of high birth and low morals, who already had a number of children by other husbands. When I informed Agrippina of this, her rage was as surprising as it was fierce. She leapt off the couch, dropping all the accustomed poise of a noblewoman in retirement. She paced up and down her bedchamber, beating her fists against her thighs.

‘He is mad but he can still beget!’ she exclaimed. ‘And never forget that Caligula is the son of Germanicus. Or might be,’ she added in a half-whisper.

‘I beg your pardon, Domina? What did you say?’

Agrippina looked over her shoulder at me, with that lopsided smile on her face. She went over and kicked the door shut.

‘Have you ever really studied Caligula, Parmenon? Does he look like me? Or Drusilla? Or Julia? My mother bore him but that does not mean he is Germanicus’s son.’

‘You could lose your head for that,’ I whispered back. ‘And your son would disappear into a pit.’

I placed my hand on her shoulder – when we were in private she allowed such liberties.

‘Are you going to kiss me, Parmenon? Make love to me?’ she teased.

I never knew what would have happened if I’d tried. Perhaps it was her coldness which always stopped me. Agrippina regarded sex as a gladiator did a sword or shield, a weapon to be used.

‘Or are you going to force me?’ she grinned. ‘Like Metellus did?’

‘I am going to warn you,’ I advised. ‘Progeones is in this house: he would betray you at any time.’

‘Nonsense! He’s mine and always will be.’

‘If he heard what you’ve just said,’ I went on, ‘he would sell the information to any of your enemies who would not hesitate to use it. The slightest hint that the Emperor is a bastard would bring about the cruellest punishments.’

Agrippina swallowed hard and broke free from my grip. She went over into a corner, crossing her arms like a young girl being scolded by her father.

‘I’ve heard rumours,’ she said. ‘Even my mother once hinted at it. That could be why Caligula and poor Drusilla became lovers, since the blood-tie was not so strong.’ She sighed. ‘Now she’s gone. I thought we could keep Caligula distracted with one woman or another but Caesonia is different: she’s as fertile as a brood mare. Caligula is still a young man. In five or ten years Rome could have a nursery full of “Little Boots”.’ She rubbed her hands together. ‘I am sure Caesonia will become pregnant, but Parmenon, we cannot allow her, her husband or any offspring to live.’

‘If Caligula dies?’ I asked. ‘Do you think the Senate will accept your baby son as Emperor?’

Agrippina shook her head. ‘He’s of Germanicus’s line but he’s still too young. No, Uncle Claudius will do nicely for the moment.’

‘Him!’ I exclaimed. ‘That doddering idiot!’

‘He has the imperial blood, Parmenon. If the Senate accepted a madman like Caligula, they’d take a baboon from Africa.’

That was Agrippina’s one great weakness. She would not listen and, once she decided to act, did so impetuously.

A stream of visitors began to call secretly at her house. Agrippina was sifting which ones would listen to her, who was sympathetic? Whom could she trust? Slowly her plan began to develop: Caligula’s speedy assassination in Rome would be followed by letters to the legions on the frontiers. I watched helplessly. She would not be advised or warned. There were three main plotters: Agrippina, her sister Julia and Drusilla’s former husband Lepidus. Julia was involved because she was terrified of her brother. Lepidus, after Drusilla’s death, had fallen from favour. Progeones and I became unwilling bystanders and spectators. I was used as a messenger. Often at night I’d slip along dark streets carrying cryptic messages to various houses. I would deliver these faithfully word for word, before taking an answer back to Agrippina.

It was a dangerous time! Caligula’s madness worsened by the week. He turned up at the Senate and terrified everyone by saying how marvellous Tiberius had been, how wrong they all were to criticise him. This speech marked a renewed persecution. The prisons filled. Caligula liked to visit the torture chambers, eating and drinking whilst his victims experienced a slow, agonising death. Caligula would advise the executioners to go about their work slowly so that the victim would know he was dying. Agrippina, despite her plotting, still tried to restrain him. She sent begging letters but Caligula’s only reply was:

‘Let the people hate me as long as they fear me!’

Justice was sharp and cruel. Parents had to attend the execution of their own children. One father was forced to watch his son die and then invited to dinner immediately afterwards. Caligula joked and jested throughout the meal. The owner of a school of gladiators who had displeased him was beaten to death with chains. Caligula would only allow the corpse to be removed when the stench from the putrefied body became too great. Writers were burnt alive in the arena. A Roman knight was tossed to the beasts in the amphitheatre. He ran across the sand and begged Caligula for a pardon, claiming his innocence. Furious, Caligula ordered that his tongue should be removed before he was thrown back to the waiting lions. Other more hideous punishments were perpetrated. At one infamous banquet he had the hacked limbs and bowels of a senatorial victim stacked in a steamy heap on a table so all the guests could see. Caligula broke the brooding silence with a mad fit of laughter.

‘Don’t you realise?’ he shrieked. ‘I could have all your heads with one cut!’

No one was spared. He had Caesonia, his new wife, paraded naked before guests, accusing them of treason if they looked, and demanding whether his wife disgusted them if they turned away.

By the time the summer heat reached Rome, Caligula was tired of the city. He’d grown particularly concerned by a prophecy given to Tiberius that Caligula had no more chance of becoming Emperor than of riding over the Gulf of Naples on horseback. Caligula was determined to prove this wrong. He marched his troops down to the bay and ordered his engineers to build a bridge more than three miles long from Puteoli to Baiae. Merchant ships were anchored together in a double line and a road, modelled on the Appian Way, built across them. So many ships were commandeered that the corn imports from Egypt suffered. Caligula didn’t care. He arranged for wayside taverns to be built on this makeshift road, together with resting places, even running water was supplied.

Caligula proudly proclaimed that even the God Neptune was frightened of him. The bridge was finished and Caligula had decided it was time to prove the prophecy wrong.

‘You are coming with me, sister!’ he yelled at the banquet held the night before. ‘And you, Parmenon. You’re my lucky mascot, Parmenon. Do you know that?’ His cadaverous face broke into a wolfish grin. ‘I have met him, you know,’ he whispered to me, filling my cup to the brim so the wine splashed out over my hands.

‘Who, Excellency?’ I replied.

‘Tiberius,’ he whispered. ‘He comes to my bedchamber, drenched in blood. What a hideous sight!’

‘Your Excellency, he didn’t die of wounds.’

Caligula grinned, winked and tapped the side of his nose. ‘You didn’t see what I did to his corpse afterwards,’ he replied. ‘I did enjoy myself.’

And then he turned away to bestow slobbering kisses on Caesonia. Agrippina, on the couch before me, watched this red-haired, florid-faced woman intently. My mistress reminded me of a cobra about to strike. Once we were away from the banquet she turned to me.

‘The bitch is pregnant!’ she murmured. ‘It’s time we acted!’

The following day Agrippina and I joined Caligula in a splendid chariot. The Emperor wore the breast-plate of Alexander the Great, ransacked from the Conqueror’s tomb in Alexandria. He also insisted on wearing full armour, a purple cloak trimmed with gold and adorned with jewels from India, as well as a crown of oak leaves. He then made sacrifice to Neptune and rode across his makeshift road. Backwards and forwards we went, both that day and the next, until I thought I would drop. Caligula rewarded his soldiers and invited all the onlookers onto the bridge.