The Kingdom of the Wicked (48 page)

       'If we are thinking of life as a drama we cannot overcrowd our stage, can we? Enough of that for the moment, though this aphorism of dear dead Selvaticus is worth imprinting on the imperial brain — True freedom begins only when we have slain the gods of biology. I have a boy for you.'

       'A boy? What do I want with a boy?'

       'What you want with a boy is what you want with the removal of a mother — release from the biological tyrants. To put it bluntly, liberation from the womb.'

       'But I like girls. And I adore dear Acte.'

       'Liberation, dearest Caesar. Come with me.'

       They had been sitting together in one of the imperial gardens, among winking leaves, speaking loudly as though on the stage, surrounded by undeferential birdsong. Now they were carried in the wide litter that had once belonged to Messalina to a little house just north of the Theatre of Pompey. Here Gaius Petronius knocked thrice and was welcomed by an old Greek satyr who cordially embraced him. When the Emperor was introduced he went down on the marble and kissed the imperial feet, until Nero grew embarrassed by the sight of a bald crown turned into a lateral pendulum. Then it was the best of the host's Falernian with little snacks of toasted cheese on fried bread, and the boys were brought in. Exquisite, this one, a German lad, all the way from Colonia Agrippinensis. Take the little horror away. Or this, Greek of course, or this Syrian beauty. Finally the Emperor went to an airy cubicle, exquisitely clean and delicately scented, with a blond boy named Sporus. It was, really, a revelation.

       If his mother was not permitted to come to Rome, nothing prevented her from using the internal courier service and berating her son for unnatural practices (of these, presumably, incest was not one):

              . . . I am almost tempted to start believing in one of these crackpot religions of Asia which posit an eternal struggle between the forces of light and those of darkness and show plausible enough evidence that evil beings get into human brains and force them to perform filthy things. Do not think that Rome does not hear of the abominable perversions you and your friend Gaius Petronius the dirty poet are getting up to. If Rome hears I hear too, and, more pertinently, the faction that supports Britannicus hears very clearly and plots measures to cleanse the imperiate of monstrosities that were thought to be done for with the death of Gaius Caligula. Your stepfather the divine Claudius, one of the finest men who ever breathed, and not one ounce of perversity in him, must be turning in his grave or weeping on the shoulders of his fellow gods to think that the Roman Empire has been delivered into the hands of such a monster. Yes, I have begotten a monster and do not know in what way I have offended that such a shame and a misery should fall upon me in my exile and loneliness. If a mother's curse carry any weight with you know that a mother's curse is radiating from Tusculum. You have disgraced the Empire and yours, etc.

       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 civilization.

       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 learned 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 but 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 but 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 halfdrowned, 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 body. 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, rater.'

       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.'