Empire r-2, page 14
part #2 of Rome Series
But it was too late. Messalina sat upright and crossed her arms. Her pretty face was twisted by a vexed expression. “The Secular Games – that was where she made her move!”
“She?” said Titus.
“Agrippina, Claudius’s niece. The bitch!”
Mnester cringed and shifted toward the far side of the couch. “Now you’ve set her off,” he whispered.
“It was during the Troy Pageant,” Messalina said. “Were you there that afternoon in the Circus Maximus, Titus? Did you see?”
“The Troy Pageant? No, I missed that.” Watching patrician boys dressed up as Trojan warriors perform maneuvers on horseback was a pastime he considered more suitable for doting mothers and grandparents.
“Then you missed Agrippina’s triumph. I was there, of course, with Claudius and little Britannicus in the imperial box. Before the pageant commenced I stood with Britannicus and we waved to the crowd. There was hardly any applause at all. What were people thinking, to pay so little honour to the wife, and more especially to the son of the emperor? Eventually I sat down, thoroughly disgusted.
“In the box with us was Agrippina. Claudius invites her to everything. He says it’s his duty as her uncle, since both her parents are dead and Agrippina is a widow again, raising her son alone. After I sat, Claudius called on her to stand, along with that spotty-faced brat of her, little Nero. Numa’s balls! I couldn’t hear myself think over the applause and the cheering. It went on and on. Why? All I could think was that people had been reading that insipid memoir of hers, in which she paints such a puffed-up portrait of herself and all her suffering. Have you read it, Titus?”
“No, I haven’t,” he said. Strictly speaking, this was true, but Titus knew most of the stories in Agrippina’s book because his wife had read it. Chrysanthe had been greatly inspired by the tale of a woman born into privilege but forced by Fate to fend for herself and her young one. At bedtime, after finishing a chapter, she had breathlessly repeated the stirring details for Titus’s edification.
Messalina clearly had a different impression of Agrippina’s story. “You’d think she was Cassandra at the burning of Troy, the way she goes on about her woes. Daughter of the great Germanicus and an irreproachable mother, both struck down in their prime – well, everyone’s parents die sooner or later. Sister of Caligula, who turned against her, confiscated her possessions, and exiled her to the Pontine Islands, where she was forced to dive for sponges to support herself. Of course she doesn’t mention her incest with Caligula, or the fact that she plotted to do away with him. Widowed twice and forced to raise the Divine Augustus’s one and only great-great-grandson all by herself – though the suspicious death of her last husband left her very wealthy indeed. Poor, long-suffering Agrippina! Her campaign to endear herself to the people certainly seems to be working, to judge by their reaction at the Troy Pageant. And once the cheering started, the spotty-faced brat stepped in front of his mother and began turning this way and that, smiling and making gestures to the crowd – what do you actors call it, Mnester, ‘milking’ the audience for applause?”
Mnester grunted, trying to stay out of the conversation.
“Then Agrippina announced that Nero would be participating in the Troy Pageant, despite the fact that he was only nine and the other boys were all older, and down he went to put on his mock armour and take up a wooden sword and mount his pony. More cheering! Though I must admit, for a nine-year-old, he handled himself rather well on horseback.”
“Born to ride,” muttered Mnester.
Messalina snorted. “What a little showman! Precocious, Claudius calls him, as if that were a compliment. Some people find his affectations charming; I think there’s something repulsive about the boy. And about his mother as well. Parading one’s sorrows in public and seeking accolades from the mob is terribly vulgar, don’t you think?”
Her gaze demanded a response. Mnester gave Titus another surreptitious kick, and Titus vigorously nodded his head.
“It’s so obvious what the scheming vixen has in mind,” said Messalina. “She thinks her little Nero should be the next emperor.”
“Surely not,” said Titus.
“Claudius isn’t getting any younger, and Nero will reach his toga day ahead of Britannicus, and the brat is a direct descendant of Augustus. Of course, so was Caligula, and we all know how that ended.”
“Do you really think Agrippina is thinking that far ahead?”
“Of course! The maudlin memoir, the way she grooms Nero and presents him in public, her fawning deference to Claudius, her calculated role as the virtuous widow – oh yes, with Agrippina everything is a means to an end. She and that whelp of hers need to carefully watched.”
Mnester rolled farther away. The coverlet slipped and exposed his meaty buttocks. Messalina abruptly picked up the whip with the ivory handle and gave him a cracking lash across his backside. “What are you smirking at?”
“I wasn’t smirking, Lycisca!” Mnester hid his face in a cushion and his whole body trembled. Titus thought he was quaking with fear until he realized that the actor was trying to hide his laughter.
“You lout!” Messalina gave him another lash.
“Please, Lycisca!” cried Mnester, though to Titus it appeared that he made no effort to avoid the blow, but instead raised his hips and wriggled them a bit. So far, Messalina had spared Titus the whip, and though it was stimulating to see a naked, well-built fellow like Mnester take a thrashing, he did not care to receive one himself, not even from Messalina. Also, he was tired. If this was the prelude to more lovemaking, Titus was not sure he was up for it.
He need not have worried. The conversation had put Messalina in a foul mood, and Mnester’s giggling had cooled her ardour. She told Titus to dress, and when he was again in his trabea, she handed him a little sack of coins.
“What’s this?” he said.
“Your fee. Isn’t it customary to pay an augur for his services?”
“But I performed no augury.”
“Nonetheless, you performed. And your wife will be expecting you to bring home a little something to add to the household coffers, won’t she? Now off with you.”
“Will you want to see me again?” Titus asked.
“Who knows? No, don’t pout! I hate it when men pout. You were a raging stallion, you were an elemental force of nature, you made me melt with ecstasy – honestly. Of course I’ll want to see you again. But now get out!”
Titus left the house on the Esquiline with mixed feelings. An afternoon of debauched lovemaking was the last thing he had expected that day, and to be paid for his services made him feel a bit like a spintria, as people had taken to calling the male prostitutes of the city, adapting the word that Tiberius had coined. Still, his performance must have been superior, for Messalina, who clearly could have any man she wanted, said she would want to see him again.
The autumn day was short. Shadows were gathering; it was the hour for lighting lamps in the streets. Tripping lightly down the slope of the Esquiline and passing through the Subura, Titus passed the alley that led to the shabby tenement where Kaeso lived. What a dreadfully dull existence his brother led, compared to his own eventful life.
AD 48
Days passed, and then months, and Titus received no further summons from Messalina. He felt a bit piqued that she seemed to have forgotten him, but it was probably for the best. His afternoon as Lycisca’s plaything had been a novel experience, but when he thought of the danger, it took his breath away. Besides, Titus was quite happy with his home life. No man had ever had a more loving wife than his Chrysanthe.
It was from Chrysanthe, of all people, that Titus heard the rumour that explained why Messalina had lost interest in him. “You won’t believe what I heard from the neighbor’s wife this morning,” she said one day when Titus returned home from performing an augury at a temple on the Quirinal Hill.
“Try me.”
“It’s about the emperor’s wife.”
“Oh?” Titus attempted to look only mildly curious.
“Everyone knows she’s a wanton woman.”
“Really? I’ve always heard that Messalina is a steadfast wife and mother.”
Chrysanthe made a rude sound. “That would describe the emperor’s niece, Agrippina, but hardly his wife. You are clearly in the dark about that woman, husband, as is your friend the emperor. Of course it’s no surprise that Messalina should have taken an occasional lover. Claudius is so much older, and based on the behaviour of previous members of the ruling family, starting with the Divine Augustus’s daughter, it seems these imperial women are incapable of behaving decently. But now Messalina may have gone too far. They say she’s settled on a single lover, the senator Gaius Silius. That was how Silius got himself appointed consul this year, through Messalina’s influence.”
Titus had met the man. He was young for a consul, broad shouldered, undeniably handsome, vain, and ambitious – just the sort of man Messalina might take for a lover. “Go on.”
“The shocking thing is, she calls Silius ‘husband.’ Can you imagine? As if Claudius didn’t exist. Or soon might not exist.”
“How could the neighbour’s wife possibly know such a thing?”
“Slaves talk,” Chrysanthe said. This was her standard explanation for the otherwise inexplicable transmission of certain rumours. She raised her eyebrows. “They say Claudius is so addled, he truly knows nothing about it.”
Titus was briefly struck by the irony that Chrysanthe, who was young and had all her faculties, had never suspected Titus’s infidelity. The omniscient slaves had stayed quiet about that, at least!
Titus frowned. Chrysanthe’s news, if it was true, posed a dilemma. Could Messalina seriously be thinking of doing away with Claudius? Had she carried her play-acting as Lycisca to a stage beyond harmless dalliance, to the point that she was considering murder and a palace revolt? If so, surely Titus had an obligation to warn his old friend and mentor about Messalina’s seditious behaviour, but how could he do so without compromising himself?
He would have to sleep on the matter.
Titus lost no sleep that night over the question of Messalina and her new “husband.” He simply pushed the matter to the back of his mind. Why had he thought that some action was called for on his part? If even the neighbour’s wife knew such a rumour, then everyone knew it, so it hardly fell to Titus to run to Claudius to warn him that his unfaithful wife might or might not be plotting against him.
The next morning, Titus received a summons to the imperial residence, in the form of a message from the emperor himself. The courier handed him a little wax tablet bound in elaborately decorated bronze plates and tied with a purple ribbon. Inside was written, in a crabbed hand that must have been that of Claudius himself, “Come, my young friend, quick as asparagus! I require a very private augury.”
The reference to asparagus meant nothing to Titus, but he quickly put on his trabea and fetched his lituus.
It had been some time since Titus had been inside the imperial residence. As the courier led him through various rooms and corridors, he noticed changes in the decor – new mosaics on the floors, freshly painted images of flowers and peacocks on the walls, gleaming new statues of marble and bronze. Since Claudius cared little about decoration, Titus assumed it was the hand of Messalina that he saw at work.
He and the courier were made to wait in a room where two statues faced each other across a green marble floor. The marble statue of Messalina presented a familiar image. There were several statues of her around the city, all depicting her as a dutiful mother. Her body was wrapped in a voluminous stola with one fold draped over her head like a mantle. With a serene expression she gazed upon the naked baby Britannicus cradled in her arms.
Across from the Messalina was a bronze statue that Titus had never seen before, depicting a nude, heroic figure. Gold covered the naked flesh, while the Greek helmet cradled in the left arm, the upraised sword in the right hand, and the nipples on the muscular chest were chased with silver. The precious metals shone with fiery brilliance in the slanting rays of morning sunlight. The shoulders were so broad and the hips so narrow that one might have thought the artist had taken liberties, but Titus could attest that the portrayal was accurate. The inscription on the pedestal said AJAX, but the model had clearly been Mnester.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said the courier.
“Stunning. It must have cost a fortune.”
The courier smiled. “There’s an interesting story about that. After Caligula was gotten rid of, the Senate voted to have every one of the coins that bore his likeness taken out of circulation and melted down. They never wanted to see his face again! The bullion sat for a long time, until the emperor gave instructions to use the silver and gold to decorate this statue. The emperor is certainly fond of Mnester, but they say it was his wife’s idea to make this statue.”
“Is that right?”
“She said it was proper to use Caligula’s coinage to honour Caligula’s favourite actor.”
“I see.” The two statues had been situated so that they faced each other across the room; the eyes of the two figures appeared to meet, as if exchanging knowing looks. It was cruel of Messalina, thought Titus, to flaunt her affair, even in this covert manner, in the very heart of the palace, under her husband’s nose and in front of his visitors.
At last Titus was called for.
A thorough inspection was required of anyone entering the emperor’s presence. Not even women or children were exempt from the indignity of being searched for weapons, and even the lowliest scribe was made to empty his stylus box. Titus had been through the process before and was ready to have his lituus examined and the folds of his trabea shaken. But on this day the examination was more thorough than ever. He was taken to a private room and politely asked by a hulking Praetorian to remove his trabea.
“Surely that’s not necessary.”
“It is,” said the Praetorian.
“And if I refuse?”
“You’re here at the emperor’s request. This is the prescribed procedure. You can’t refuse.” The guard crossed his arms. Titus saw that the man had positioned himself to block the door. He felt a tremor of uneasiness.
As he removed the trabea, he was reminded of his first visit to the imperial residence, long ago, and the audience with Caligula. He drove the memory from his mind with thoughts of how Caligula had met his end, bleeding from thirty stab wounds. That was the reason, after all, for this indignity: Claudius had never forgotten the violent manner of his predecessor’s death, and had no intention of meeting a similar fate.
Once upon a time, it had seemed that the emperor was invulnerable and untouchable, protected by the gods; the beloved Augustus and the detested Tiberius both lived to be old men and died in bed. But the violent end of Caligula changed all that. His murder proved that an emperor could be made to bleed and to die just like any other mortal. Caligula’s assassination rid the world of a monster but set a terrible precedent; that was why Claudius, instead of rewarding the tribune Cassius Chaerea, eventually had the assassin put to death. No man could be allowed to kill an emperor and get away with it, not even by the man who had benefited most by becoming the next emperor.
At last the indignity was done with, and Titus was allowed to dress. Clutching his lituus, he was shown not into a formal reception room but into the emperor’s private study. The shelves were crammed with scrolls and the tables covered with scraps of parchment. Maps, genealogical charts, and lists of magistrates were hung on the walls. The dust in the air made Titus sneeze.
Claudius was fifty-eight but looked older. His purple toga was askew, the way one sometimes saw togas on old men who could not look after their appearance and had no one to do it for them. There was a dark spot just above his chest; while Titus watched, Claudius clutched that bit of cloth and used it to wipe the spittle from the corner of his mouth. He seemed fretful and distracted, shuffling through piles of scrolls and glancing this way and that before looking at Titus.
“You must p-p-perform an augury for me, Titus.”
“Certainly, Caesar.” This was the title Claudius preferred to Dominus. “What is the occasion?”
“The occasion?” Claudius put his fist to his mouth and made a strange noise. “The occasion is a decision that I have to m-make.”
“Can you tell me more?”
“No, not yet. But I can say this: someone will d-d-die, Titus. If I make the wrong decision, people will die, and for no reason. Or I could d-die. I could die!” Claudius gripped the folds of Titus’s trabea. Titus saw fear in his cousin’s eyes, such as he had seen on the day of Caligula’s murder.
“People have died already, of course, because of her. Because I was an old fool and believed everything she told me. Polybius, with whom I spent many happy hours in this room, reading b-b-books no one but the two of us had ever heard of… and my good friend Asiaticus, whom I would have acquitted of treason except for her meddling… and young Gnaeus Pompeius, the last descendant of the triumvir, stabbed to death in his b-b-bed in the arms of a b-b-boy – all dead, because she wanted them dead! And when I think of the family members and old friends I’ve sent into exile, because of her scheming – oh, Titus, you are lucky man, that you never crossed her!”
Titus nodded, his mouth dry.
“But before I say another word, you m-m-must take the auspices. I’m afraid to do it myself.”
“But I still don’t understand the purpose of the augury.”
“You needn’t know. The gods know my mind. They know what I intend to do. You must merely ask if they favour my intentions – yes or no. Here, we can do it in the garden off the study. There’s a clear patch of sky to the north.”
With Claudius standing behind him, Titus marked a section of the sky. For long, tense moments the two men watched in silence, until finally two sparrows appeared, flying from right to left. Titus was ready to declare that the auspice was negative, when from nowhere a hawk descended on the sparrows, seizing one of them in its talons. The hawk with its prey flew in one direction, the surviving sparrow in the other. From the empty sky a single sparrow feather drifted down and landed on the far side of the garden.
