Empire (23 page)

The boys were indeed nearby, but they were no longer laughing. Something had gone wrong. Nero’s face, naturally ruddy and prone to blemishes, turned a darker shade of red and was twisted by a sudden fury. He hurled his wine cup at Britannicus. The boy dodged and the cup went hurtling past Vespasian’s nose. Startled, the baby Domitian began to wail again.

Britannicus put on an exaggerated expression of shock. “But, Lucius Domitius,” he said, addressing Nero by his birth name rather than his adopted name, “I merely wished you a happy birthday—”

“You will address me by my proper name, brat!” cried Nero. His ringing voice penetrated every corner of the room. The guests fell silent.

Britannicus raised an eyebrow. “But how can I do that, big brother? Earlier today, the augur explained that ‘Nero’ means ‘strong and valiant’—and you, Lucius Domitius, are weak and cowardly.”

Britannicus’s friend Titus stifled a giggle.

“That’s a lie, you little bastard!” said Nero. “What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be eating in the other room with the children?”

Agrippina approached the boys to stop the row. Claudius remained on his couch and seemed hardly to notice what was happening.

Britannicus left the room, followed by a small coterie of freedmen and attendants, the remnants of Messalina’s faction in the imperial household. He carried himself with remarkable poise for a nine-year-old.

Young Titus looked to his father. Vespasian nodded, and the boy left the room with Britannicus. Vespasian shook his head. “That Britannicus—willful and wayward, just like his mother! I should go after the boy. Perhaps I can persuade him to apologize to Nero. I managed to broker a peace between those Celtic tribes up in Britannia, you know. Maybe I can do the same thing here.” He departed along with Domitilla and the infant, who continued to wail.

Paulina returned to her husband’s side. Agrippina joined them. “What
am
I going to do about that boy?”

“I suppose you mean Britannicus,” said Seneca. “But more to the point, what are we going to do about Nero? He can’t call the emperor’s son a bastard in public. It won’t do.”

Agrippina nodded. “And yet . . . one does hear rumors about Britannicus.”

“Rumors?” said Paulina.

Agrippina looked sidelong at Titus, as if deciding whether to confide in him, then went on. “Not that the child is a bastard—though we all know what a whore Messalina was. No, there are some who believe that Britannicus is the child of neither Messalina nor Claudius, that their baby was stillborn and Messalina substituted some other child in the crib, eager to present Claudius with an heir. I ask you, does Britannicus look like either of his purported parents?”

“A changeling, you mean?” Seneca snorted. “That’s the sort of thing that happens in old Greek comedies.”

“When it happens in real life, the results are far from comic.” Agrippina turned to Titus. “Senator Pinarius, I make no secret of the fact that I favor astrology and know little about augury. But I wonder, in this case, could augury be of help?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Might there be a way to interpret the auspices so as to determine the true identity of a particular child? Your skills at divination are so great, and Claudius has such complete confidence in you. . . .” Agrippina peered at him intently.

Unnerved by her scrutiny, Titus glanced at Claudius. His cousin had sunken deep into his couch and was gazing slack-jawed at his wine cup. Then Titus looked at the young Nero, who was over his tantrum and was
flirting with one of the younger female guests. Claudius was the past; Nero was the future. Agrippina seemed to be asking for Titus’s help on behalf of the young man who would almost surely be emperor one day, perhaps sooner rather than later. Titus’s first loyalty would always be to his calling as an augur, to strive for the correct interpretation of the will of the gods; but could he not do that and please Agrippina at the same time?

“To determine whether a given individual is a changeling, traditional augury might be of little use,” said Titus carefully, “but there are other forms of divination to which one might draw the attention of the emperor, who is interested in all forms of prognostication. Cousin Claudius recently charged me with compiling a list of every omen and portent reported in Italy, and together we review that list at regular intervals. Only yesterday, in Ostia, a pig was born with the talons of a hawk. Such an occurrence is invariably a message from the gods. Freakish weather, swarms of bees, rumblings in the earth, strange lights in the sky—all require careful interpretation. I have a secretary who closely examines the registry of deaths, looking for any unusual patterns; on a given day, perhaps every man who dies in Roma has the same first name, for instance. You’d be amazed at all the connections you begin to see, when you look for them.”

“Remarkable!” said Agrippina. “But how does one correctly decipher these signs?”

Titus smiled. “The judgment of an augur begins with training but grows with experience. I’ve spent many years studying manifestations of the divine will.” He looked at Nero, noting his large head and prominent brow. “Tell me, has a physiognomist ever examined Britannicus?”

“Not to my knowledge,” said Agrippina.

“Nor to mine,” said Seneca.

“Their branch of science is very specialized. Based on precepts laid down by Aristotle and Pythagoras, they examine the face and the shape of the head for indications of a person’s destiny. Physiognomists talk mostly about the future, but perhaps they can see the past as well. If there is, as you suspect, something . . . untoward . . . about the origin of Britannicus, the truth might yet be revealed to the emperor. Yes, I think the first step to discovering the truth might be to summon a physiognomist. I know an Egyptian practitioner—ah, but here comes your son.”

Nero, having sufficiently charmed the young female guest, gathered the folds of his purple-and-gold toga and approached them.

“Brothers!” he said, rolling his eyes, as if to explain his altercation with Britannicus. “You have a brother, don’t you?” he asked Titus. “A twin, Seneca told me.”

“Yes.” Titus sighed. Yet again, Kaeso was being forced into his thoughts.

“Are you
identical
twins?” asked Nero. The young man’s curiosity appeared to be entirely innocent, but Titus still cringed.

“In appearance, at least when we younger. Otherwise, we’re so different that I should like to think he was . . . a changeling.” Titus glanced at Agrippina.

“Why do we never see him?” said Nero. “You’re always coming by to see the emperor in his study. Yet we never see your twin.”

“My brother is . . .” This was not the first time Kaeso’s unsavory behavior had caused Titus embarrassment, yet he had never come up with a good way to explain his brother’s complete withdrawal not just from public life but from decent society. How could anyone in the imperial household possibly understand Kaeso’s bizarre beliefs and perverse behavior? What excuse could Titus make this time for Kaeso? Should he say that his brother was insane? A drunkard? Crippled by illness?

“My brother is . . .”

Seneca finished the sentence for him: “A Christian.”

Titus turned pale. “How did you know?”

Seneca laughed. “The tutor of the emperor’s son must know a great many things, Senator Pinarius.”

Agrippina frowned. “How can a Roman patrician be a Christian? I thought that was the name for a sect of the Jews.”

“So it is,” said Seneca. “But here in Roma, as in many other cities around the empire, they have recruited others to join their cult. Mostly slaves, one presumes. The Christians actually welcome slaves, and you can imagine why the less reputable sort of slaves find such a cult attractive—Christ-worship is yet another activity they can carry on in secret behind their masters’ backs. But they are not all slaves. I’m told there are a few Roman citizens among the Christians. They teach that this world is a terrible place, dominated by evil men—indeed, they believe that Roma and all it stands for is evil—but they also think this world will soon end, to be
replaced by another world, in which their dead god shall come back to life and rule for eternity. A suitable religion, if one can call it that, for disgruntled slaves, but hardly for citizens of the city whose destiny is to maintain order in the world and uphold respect for the gods.”

“It sounds seditious,” said Nero. “If these Christians hate Roma so much, let them go back to dusty Judaea and await the end of the world there. Didn’t Claudius banish the Jews?”

“That edict proved to be impractical,” said Seneca. “It was short-lived and only haphazardly carried out, but it did serve as a warning to the Jewish sects in the city to keep the peace. They no longer stone each other in public, much less riot in the streets. They’ve learned to keep their feuds to themselves, at least here in the city. As a result, you don’t hear much about the Christians these days.”

“And that includes this mysterious Christian brother of Senator Pinarius,” said Nero. “But of Titus Pinarius I suspect we will be seeing much more in the years to come.” Nero bestowed on Titus his most charming smile.

On the day in late March that news reached Roma of the death of the young emperor’s mother, Titus Pinarius lit candles in the vestibule of his house and whispered a prayer before each of the wax masks of his ancestors, thanking them for his good fortune.

Long ago, his late cousin Claudius had scolded him for knowing so little of his family’s past. “A man must honor his ancestors,” Claudius had said. “Who else made us, and how else did we come to exist?” Since that time, Titus had devoted himself to studying his ancestors, discovering all he could about them, learning from their examples, and paying homage to them like a dutiful Roman, trying to make his own life something of which his forebears would be proud.

At the age of forty-one, Titus was more prosperous and well regarded than ever—and glad to still be alive. It had not been easy in the six years since Claudius had died, navigating the treacherous politics of an imperial court split between a ruthless mother and a young son struggling to break free of her.

But now Agrippina was dead. In some ways, her death was a more profound event than the death of Claudius, for Claudius seemed to fade gradually away, while Agrippina still had her wits about her and might yet have regained control of Nero and the court. What a woman she was, and how little she allowed her womanhood to limit her ambitions! Titus recalled the incident when Armenian envoys had pleaded their cause before Nero, and Agrippina emerged from behind the screen where she customarily remained hidden and actually seemed about to mount the emperor’s tribunal and preside along with him; while the whole court was paralyzed with alarm, Seneca hissed at Nero to intercept his mother, and so a scandalous scene was averted.

Agrippina! The world would not be the same without her. A new age would begin.

So deeply did Titus feel the impact of the news that he found himself unable to contemplate the activities of a normal day. Only some unplanned and irregular activity would be suitable to such a strange day. Following this impulse, he decided to discharge an onerous duty that had long been weighing on him. On this day, he would visit his brother.

Once every year or two he forced himself to see Kaeso, to offer his brother yet another chance to return to a normal, respectable way of life. Titus felt he owed that duty to the shade of their father, if not to Kaeso, who always refused him.

He left his house with a small retinue, as befitted a senator of his standing. There was a scribe with a wax tablet to take down memoranda. There was another slave who was versed in all the streets and byways of the city, so that Titus need never wonder where the closest tavern or silver shop or eatery might be. There was another slave who knew the names not just of every senator and magistrate in the city but of every person Titus was likely to meet, no matter how important or inconsequential, so that Titus need never search his memory in vain for a name or a title. And of course there were a number of brawny bodyguards, well-behaved fellows whose sheer size was so intimidating that they seldom had to use force to defend their master or to clear a way for him through a crowd.

The day was typical of late March, bright and springlike one moment, blustery and overcast the next. Titus found the changeable weather invigorating and walked with a spring in his step. Agrippina was dead! The
news had not taken Titus completely by surprise. Recently, Nero had summoned Titus to consult him about omens regarding his mother’s and his own immediate future; the young emperor said nothing of what he had in mind, but he was clearly desperate to finally rid himself of Agrippina. Thank the gods it was Nero who trusted and consulted Titus at that precarious stage of the power struggle, and not Agrippina! Like many in the court, Titus had walked a tightrope between mother and son for years, afraid to offend either party or to irrevocably throw his lot with one or the other.

The story of Agrippina’s demise had played out like a comedy of errors. According to rumors, Nero had tried on more than one occasion to poison her, but each time Agrippina had either been forewarned or had taken an antidote to save herself. Then the ceiling had fallen in above her bed—surely not by accident—and Agrippina escaped being crushed only because she happened to have been lying next to the headboard.

Then, saying that he wanted to patch things up with her, Nero invited Agrippina to his seaside villa at Baiae to celebrate the feast of Minerva. There he presented her with a splendid pleasure barge and persuaded her to take a cruise on the bay despite the blustery weather. But this was not an ordinary ship: one of Nero’s engineers had devised it to collapse on itself and sink without a trace, a circumstance that could be blamed on the choppy waves or a sudden squall but surely not on the young emperor. The ship duly collapsed and sank, but Agrippina—who had once supported herself by diving for sponges—was such a strong swimmer that she made her way to shore. Nero decided that his desperate mother, like a wounded tigress, needed to be disposed of straightaway. In the beach house where the bedraggled Agrippina took refuge, assassins arrived and did away with her once and for all.