The Nero Prediction (11 page)

Of course Agrippina had known that Balbillus would find her footprints in the future, footprints that oozed with the blood of the man he'd been honored to call his friend. Now he was an accessory to regicide, everyone would assume that he'd computed the day of the murder for Agrippina. She held him in the palm of hand.

"As you know." Those were the words Balbillus succeeded in holding back when he returned to the room where she waited. “Tomorrow is the auspicious day, Augusta,” he said instead. “The moment is half an hour before midday."

To Agrippina it was no coincidence that just then, from the direction of Claudius's bedroom, the death-wail sounded. Her smile was as serene as the summer sea. "Balbillus you belong in the company of the greatest astrologers of all time for so correctly predicting the succession of my son and the death of his adopted father Claudius. Your reward is the prefecture of Egypt, prepare for your immediate departure."

Balbillus dropped his eyes to hide his humiliation, lifted them only when he'd purged them of emotion, when he'd forced himself to accept that he was about to look into the face of the most powerful mortal on earth, someone who would from now on explore the uncharted realms of the future safe from his prying eyes. “Thank you Augusta, I am most honored."

In fact he felt defiled.

I watched with Agrippina from a balcony when precisely half an hour before midday, to the surprise of most of the battalion of Guards stationed outside, the palace gates were thrown open and out came Nero at the side of Sextus Afranius Burrus, the Praetorian commander. Spiculus the Sting, who seemed to stalk as he walked, was one step behind with his Germans, Nero’s bodyguards now.

"Claudius is dead," Burrus announced, "he died peacefully in his sleep from a congestion which took hold of him last night. I present to you his son, Nero Claudius Drusus Caesar. He grants you his generous patronage. I'm certain that in return you will give him your unqualified allegiance, just as you once gave it to his great-great-grandfather Augustus. Hail Caesar!"

There was a moment of stunned silence.

"Hail Caesar!" shouted a claque of voices, just a little too soon to be spontaneous. "Hail Caesar, hail Nero Caesar!"

Nero was bundled into the litter that would carry him to the Guards' camp. The escort commander asked Nero for the customary password.

A dramatic pause, then his reply. "The best of mothers."

"Hail Caesar! Hail Nero Caesar!" became a mighty roar as the cry spread through the city.

Triumph glowed from Agrippina like heat from a furnace. She turned to me. "Now do you believe me Epaphroditus? You are who I think you are!"

Fratricide

March 17 – May 13, 55 A.D.

You are who I think you are. A creature of the stars , a conduit of destiny, an instrument of Fate reaching down from heaven, my instrument.

First Messalina. Then Lollia Paulina. Now Claudius. How long was the list of Agrippina's victims? Was I destined to play my part in killing them all? What was the final, fateful act that must remain unrevealed until the appointed time? That she was destined to kill me too?

Balbillus, about to depart for Egypt now that the sailing season had recommenced and at pains to show that he was eating out of the hand of his new patroness, revealed the identity of her next victim at his Moon of the Year reading which he delivered an hour before sunrise on the day of the Liberalia, Freedom Day. The Moon of the Year was an opportunity for astrologers to interpret the meaning of the current planetary positions for their clients. It was timed to coincide precisely with the new Moon or the full Moon preceding the spring equinox which was when the Sun crossed the cusp of Aries, the first sign of the Zodiac. The seed of everything was in its beginning.    

Agrippina was with Nero in his study when I entered. She sat motionless in a chair, hands folded on her lap, staring out of the window into the darkness. 

Nero paced up and down, picking nervously at a plate of dried Syrian figs whenever he passed it. "Ah, there you are, Epaphroditus. Mother insists you take down every word because this is my very first reading as emperor. Personally I think I'd rather not know the future seeing nothing can be done about it anyway."

An indulgent smile relaxed the compression of his mother's lips. "That is not entirely true, my son. Knowledge of the future allows us to compose ourselves for the inevitable. Surely Seneca has taught you that. He’s a Stoic."

The chamberlain Graptus cleared his throat at the door. "Tiberius Claudius Balbillus, dominus," he said.

The torchlight lit up the planetary symbols embroidered onto the astrologer's midnight blue robe. He threw up his arm. "Hail Caesar."

Nero seemed embarrassed by the military salute. "No need for that, Balbillus, we're all civilians here. Now what have you discovered?"

The astrologer unrolled one of the two scrolls he was carrying under his left arm and weighed down the corners with gilded crescents. "Here are the charts Caesar." 

Nero leant over the table, squinting for focus - he'd been growing noticeably more nearsighted during the past few years. He traced the two circles of symbols that were drawn around the wheel. "My planets surrounded by today's transits. You see mother, I've taken your advice and picked up a bit of astrology. Well, Balbillus, don't keep us in suspense, what does Fate have in store for me?"

 The astrologer raised his eyes to the ceiling as if he could see through it to the stars. "Caesar the planets are in an extremely unusual configuration. All of them are clustered into two signs, the first and the last, Aries and Pisces, all within forty-five degrees of each other."

Nero's smiled mischievously. "Well, they're bound to be putting their heads together, aren't they? To discuss what they're going to do about my reign."

Balbillus glanced at Agrippina for guidance and then pursed his lips disapprovingly.

 For Agrippina was frowning. "Do not presume to mock Fate, my son."

"I'm sorry, Balbillus, I suppose that did sound a little flippant. Please go on."

"On this day, the day in which the seeds of the coming year are planted, both the malefics, Saturn and Mars, have positioned themselves in your third house, your House of Siblings. Caesar, beware your brother."

A puzzled frown. "Britannicus! Why would Britannicus want to harm me? I keep telling him he can be emperor whenever he wants so that I can devote more time to music. But I don’t think he wants to be Caesar either."

I believed that was true. I saw him sometimes, skulking around the palace like a ghost. He didn’t seem to hold anyone close, not even his sister, Nero’s “wife” Octavia, that skeletal presence.

Balbillus nodded, a slow steady movement like a pendulum. "He may indeed not wish to harm you, but it's destiny, revealed by his planets, that will decide his Fate. And yours."

Nero pressed thumb and forefinger to his eyelids as if he were trying to erase an unpleasant thought from his mind. "I will not banish Britannicus. He's perfectly harmless and he’s already had enough tragedy in his life, Messalina! He’s Messalina’s only son. He’s my brother, Messalina’s son and so my brother-in-law also. For heaven's sake, we're throwing a huge coming-of-age party for him this afternoon!"

Agrippina’s whisper was soft as a puff of wind through pine trees. "Nothing happens by chance, my son. Do you think it is mere co-incidence that Britannicus becomes a man on the same day that he becomes a threat?"

"The indications do seem to be clear, Caesar," said the astrologer, carefully I thought. "Either you cause his death or he causes yours."

Nero's eyes widened and color fled his face. "What?"

Balbillus unrolled the second scroll. "This is Britannicus's chart. As you see, Jupiter is in his first house. All the ancients agree that this indicates one destined to destroy the brother born before him. Caesar, the brother born before Britannicus is you."

Nero shot a glance at Agrippina, an appeal for reassurance it seemed to me. "When? Can you tell when?"

"During the coming year Caesar, that is what the planets indicate."

"Impossible. He's only fourteen. It doesn't make sense."

"Britannicus is no ordinary boy, my son. He is the son of an emperor. Should you be destroyed he will succeed you. He who is Britannicus's regent will control the world. Can you suppose that there are not already contenders?" 

Nero clenched his fists. "But I'll go down in history as the most dreadful monster that ever lived. Mother I forbid you to kill Britannicus."

Agrippina sat very still. Only her eyes moved, black and giddying as deep wells, on their way to fasten themselves on me. "I see."

It was with a sense of dreadful fascination that I watched Agrippina take Britannicus under her wing that afternoon at his coming-of-age celebration, introducing him to everyone, it seemed, whose name her nomenclator could remember. In the palace she ignored the shy young orphan. But now it was her own son she was ignoring, so completely that eyebrows were being raised and questions asked.

I had one myself. Did Agrippina think that jealously alone would make Nero erase Britannicus?

"Take a memorandum," Nero told me that night after spending half an hour plucking indecisively at his bottom lip. "My mother's receptions are terminated. In fact I want her out of the palace as soon as possible. I also want her Praetorian escort taken away, and that includes her handsome German bodyguards. Immediately, do you understand?"

Although fortified by the word “handsome”, my apprehension melted in a sudden glow of admiration for the man who was at last standing up to that frightening woman. "Yes Caesar," I said with a slavish upswelling of joy that made him smile, "I have it all down!"

After dinner I reported as usual to Euodus at the Circus Maximus. "Balbillus says that Britannicus is destined to kill Nero," I told him.

The freeman seemed only faintly interested. "Really? What did Nero say to that?"

"He didn't believe it."

"But Agrippina did."

"Of course. She wants Nero to kill Britannicus."

"Perfectly sensible."

"Are you saying that Fate can be changed?"

Euodus sighed. "I think we’ve had this conversation before. The stars warn Nero. Nero heeds the warning and takes preventative action. The danger is averted. The fated sequence of events has remained unaltered. Do I have to keep reminding you that what is not fated is impossible?"  

I’d found a few of the skeptic Carneades’s tracts in the palace library. They were dusty from being unread and they unsettled me. He made a number of very telling points, for example that twins born at the same time often had very different destinies. "It seems like circular reasoning to me," I said very respectfully.

"The only thing going around in circles is your head. You'd better screw it on tightly because you've got a long night ahead of you."

"Why?"

"Agrippina needs to write a note, a long note. You're to take it down for her."

"Why me? There are dozens of shorthand writers in the service, why does she want me?"

Innocence hooded the mockery in Euodus's voice. "The note is sensitive. She trusts you."

"I certainly don't want to be trusted by her."

"What you want doesn’t matter."

"We'll see about that, I'm going to Nero!"

Euodus chuckled, could there be a more irritating sound? "There you go again, wriggling on the hook."

Nero, already dressed for bed, was tuning his kithara. "Caesar," I said, "the Augusta needs me."

He nodded. "That's right. Mother needs you to take down some notes, something to do with winding up her affairs in the palace. She says you write more quickly than anyone else in the service, so of course I said yes. The sooner she’s gone the better."

Agrippina was standing at the window when I entered, her back to me. She spoke without turning. "You are prepared?"

"Yes Augusta. I assume that as usual you want me to take down your dictation in shorthand and then transcribe it."

"Take it down in longhand. I do not want you to remove the document from the room."

"The Augusta is aware that we will have to proceed more slowly?"

"It will give me time to compose my thoughts."

I put away my stylus and wax tablets, spread out a sheet of paper and dipped a pen into ink. "I'm ready, Augusta."

"I was born in Germany, among people I was told were barbarians, but after a life spent in Rome, I am no longer certain that we Romans are less barbaric."

So began Agrippina's memoirs, because that was the "note" she dictated to me. The poisoning of her father Germanicus in Asia. Her mother starved to death on Pandateria. The murders of her brothers and sisters. This was nothing more than an introduction to, and justification for, the main part of the narrative: how she'd murdered Messalina and then Claudius so that she could set her son Nero on the throne.

After the confession the lamentation. She'd hoped that Nero would be a second Augustus, a philosopher prince who with her guidance would preside over a golden age. But oh, how wrong she'd been!  Unlike Britannicus, Nero had turned out to be lazy and mean spirited. He was in every way unworthy of the position to which she'd raised him. Not only was he squandering Britannicus's patrimony, he was corrupting him as well.

"I appeal to the citizens of Rome to forgive me," the narrative ended, "and invite them to join me in dethroning Nero and hailing Britannicus as the best hope we have of regaining our freedom."

I couldn't believe my ears when Agrippina delivered this treasonous call for revolution with the same grim equanimity with which she'd delivered the rest of this damning confessional. I knew she was staring at me but didn't want her to see the anger in my eyes.

"That's all," she said. "Leave the scroll with me. A courier comes for it at dawn."

Keeping my eyes averted, I collected my writing materials. By this time the ink on the paper had dried. I rolled it up and slipped it into an envelope. Only when I was ready to leave did I break the ominous silence. "It’s done, Augusta."