The Nero Prediction (16 page)

Nero frowned. "Balbillus, are you trying to tell me something? Mother is exhausted and she still has to say her good-byes. Do get on with it."

"Very well, Caesar. You are being stalked by a secret enemy."

Nero looked shocked. "An enemy? Why should anyone be my enemy? I haven't threatened anyone. I haven't attached anyone's property. I even hate signing the death warrants of convicted murderers. Why would anyone want to harm me?"

"The enemy is indicated by transit Mercury, the messenger, flying swiftly through Pisces. Tonight he's in an unlucky square with your Mercury which is in your House of Enemies. Beware of one who is ruled by Mercury, Caesar."

"Mercury? But thousands of people are ruled by Mercury!" A terrible thought seemed to strike him. He looked at Agrippina. "You're ruled by Mercury, aren't you mother? Balbillus, you're not suggesting that my own mother is plotting my downfall?"

"Yes!" a voice screamed inside me, "yes she is!" But the loudest sound I made was the scratching of my pen.

Agrippina's question cut the silence. "Is that what you are suggesting, Balbillus?"

"As the Augusta knows, the astrologer looks at the stars and interprets them according to the rules of his science. He can do no more and must do no less."

Nero's lips trembled. He whispered as if his assassin was already at the door. "When, Balbillus? Can you see when it will happen?"

"Yes, Caesar. The opposition of the Sun and the Moon will occur at forty minutes after midnight. This, the moment when the Moon is perfectly full, is the first instant of the ancient New Year. Thereafter, although imperceptibly at first, the Moon begins to wane. As she wanes she becomes vindictive.”

“Why would she do that?” Nero asked plaintively.

“She’s a woman, Caesar. That’s what happens to women when their bloom fades.”

“I suppose that’s true. Go on.”

“Unfortunately your natal Saturn, the planet that rules your chart, stands in her way. Because she has become vindictive she will attack him. This is a time of great peril for you, when the Moon will threaten you with misfortune and send enemies against you."

Nero winced. "I must remember to double the guard."

"You must certainly exercise every precaution Caesar, because your very life is in danger."

Nero's mouth fell open. "What?"

There was a superficial calm to Balbillus's voice but the undertone of urgency was unmistakable. "On her way towards your Saturn the vindictive Moon will move into a dangerous square with your Mars who will fuel her malicious rage. Beware or your death will be violent and it will be soon."

"How soon?" Nero croaked.

"Tonight, exactly four hours before dawn."

"Will the danger pass?"

"Yes Caesar, the danger is as transitory as the angles made by the hurrying Moon."

"When will I be safe?"

"Almost exactly one hour later. By then the Moon will have overtaken your Saturn. Once she begins to move past and then away from him the moment of danger will have passed."

Nero sprang to his feet. "Then there's no time to waste. I must sacrifice to divine Julius to spare me his fate." He turned to Agrippina. The note of appeal in his voice was almost child-like. "Mother, will you pray for me?"

Agrippina rose too. "Yes, son, I shall pray to Julius. I shall pray to Augustus my great-grandfather. And I shall pray for you."

It was midnight and the Moon was directly overhead when Agrippina said her farewells to Otho and Poppaea. Nero accompanied her to the wharf where Anicetus, an ex-slave who had risen to the position of prefect of the fleet, stood at attention next to a galley decorated with garlands and banners.

"Greetings Anicetus," said Agrippina, "and thank you for the guard-of-honor, but this is not my boat."

The Greek's teeth looked huge and startlingly white in the bright moonlight. "A little accident, Augusta. Someone who looked too deeply into Bacchus's wine sack steered his boat into yours. This one here is brand new and the fastest in the fleet. We'll have you home in no time."

Agrippina looked for her boat. "Where is mine?"

Nero put a hand on her shoulder. "It's in for repairs, mother. Nothing major. It'll be ready by morning. Besides, you'll enjoy a nostalgic little trip on a military craft. Remember how much you enjoyed going everywhere on naval warships when you were a little girl?"

Agrippina looked up at the Moon. As she did so a trumpet sounded seven times for the seven planets, a choir of young boys, quite close but out of sight, began to sing a hymn. It was the moment of opposition, the moment when a shiver passes through the flux, unsettling everything, disturbing ghosts, creating werewolves, a moment that inspires the insane.

There were tears in Nero's eyes. As he kissed Agrippina farewell they ran down his cheeks. She threw her arms around him, hugged him tightly, repeatedly kissing his wet face.

She walked up the gangplank. The boat cast off. The oars broke the mirror of the water. Agrippina put the tips of her fingers to her lips and then held out both hands to Nero. It was the same gesture she'd used when she watched the guards take him away to be hailed emperor.

She'd changed her mind! She didn't want me to kill Nero after all! I heard a step behind me, turned.

Mnester took something out of his cloak, held it out to me. A dagger. "Here it is. In one hour and twenty minutes, when I give you the order, use it."

It was an eerie sight: my right hand reaching out for the weapon. I pointed at Agrippina with my left. "But don't you see? She's changed her mind."

"She hasn't. Her arms are raised, fingers extended. That's the signal."

"Epaphroditus!" Nero called to me.

I hid the dagger in my sleeve. "Yes dominus?"

"Suddenly I'm quite tired. Take my apologies to Otho and Poppaea, tell them I'm going to make an early night of it. No rest for you, though. I want you to go straight to work transcribing Balbillus's reading and I want to see it within the hour. Bring it yourself and make sure you wake me. Spiculus will admit no one but you."

A chill, sharp as a needle, shot up my spine.

Matricide

March 18, 59 A.D.

A fly entombed in liquid amber, only the amber moved. There was no sensation of motion as I climbed the stairs to the second floor balcony where Nero was sleeping under the stars. The stairs were broad and white and awash with moonlight. Behind me was Mnester who'd just been told that nine minutes of the ninth hour had passed. Ahead was Spiculus with his Germans. He let me pass with a quick nod. I gripped the transcription of the Balbillus reading tightly in my right hand. Inside the scroll was the poisoned dagger, wrapped in paper like Claudius’s poison four years ago.

The huge balcony was paved with white marble. At its center was a dark rectangle, Nero's bed. Beyond it was the bay and above the bay was the Moon, perfectly round, but already irritated by the wasting worm. The slow wave of amber in which I was embedded flowed smoothly over the marble towards Nero's bed. I looked down at him. His face was beautiful, child-like, carved in marble, already dead and deified. I unrolled my transcription of Balbillus's delineation, grasped the dagger, looked up at the Moon.

Her light seared my eyes. The vague shadows on the disk became a mouth twisted into a shriek of elemental rage. "Finish him now!"

A bolt of rage from deep inside me melted the amber and I broke free. Never! The dagger's blade rang out as it hit the marble floor. I fell to my knees next to the bed. "Dominus," I said as I plucked at the coverlet. "Wake up, it's Epaphroditus!"

The portico flanking the balcony came alive with sound: the swish of garments, the brush of leather against marble as a semicircle of figures emerged from deep shadow: Tigellinus, Balbillus, Otho, Poppaea, two colonels of the Praetorian Guard, pale as ghosts.

The witnesses.

At their center was the man whose wax image lay on the bed in front of me, whose voice rang with the somber timbre of the tragic stage: Nero Caesar. Artist. "Who sent you, Epaphroditus?"

"Your mother, dominus."

"Why?"

"To kill you."

Nero turned to the witnesses. "To kill me. Do you believe me now? Send the signal."

A bonfire sprang to life on a nearby cliff-side shooting sparks high into the still air.

Nero glued his eyes to the Moon. "Good-bye mother."

When the sailors on the galley saw the signal they cut the rope attached to a cluster of lead weights hanging high above the deck sending them crashing through the roof of Agrippina's cabin. Moments later the trick cabin turned on its axis and ditched Agrippina and her lady-in-waiting into the sea.

One of the galley sailors later swore he heard Agrippina order her fellow-swimmer to call out, "Help me, I'm the emperor's mother!" The oar that dashed out the faithful lady's brains confirmed Agrippina's suspicion that the she'd better look for rescue elsewhere. So she hid herself among the flotsam. When the galley winched the collapsed section back into place and raced away in the direction it had come, she began to swim for the shore. It seemed that nothing could kill her.

Minutes after the galley returned to Otho's villa the news that Agrippina had slipped and fallen overboard swept through the bay's sleeping villages. Campanians are addicted to excitement, especially at midnight, so thousands jumped out of bed and rushed down to the beach waving torches. Others lit bonfires and waded out waist deep, searching the water. Those who could went out in boats.

Nero wore out his sandals pacing the balcony. "How much longer until I'm safe?" he asked Balbillus.

The signs of the planets embroidered on the astrologer's midnight blue robe glowed like phosphorus in the moonlight. He scanned the eastern horizon where Venus, running two hours and twenty minutes before the Sun, had just risen. "The Moon advances past your Saturn within the hour," he announced. "After that she can't harm you."

A few minutes later I had to tell Nero that his mother had just been fished out of the drink off lake Lucrinus.

He looked up at the Moon which made his eyes shine like yellow glass. His lips trembled like a moth's wings. "Not dead?"

Balbillus took a step closer so he could speak in an undertone. "It's the malice of the Moon. She won't let your mother die."

 "But if she lives she will go to the Senate, to the Praetorians. She will say that I'm a matricide. No one will believe that she tried to kill me first. Tigellinus, wake Seneca and Burrus. They know what she is. They'll know what to do."

Ten minutes later Tigellinus, all grim determination, escorted Seneca and Burrus onto the balcony. "I've told them of the attempt on your life, Caesar, and also about the boat."

"Good. Well, gentlemen, you know the problem. What's the solution?"

Seneca the Stoic, perpetually pouting as if savoring the taste of his words before he delivered them to the world, sounded suitably unruffled but for once he came right to the point. "If she knows you tried to kill her, she could be dangerous."

Nero toyed morosely with the poisoned dagger. "Of course she knows about the boat and of course she's dangerous. Don't you understand, she's just tried to murder me!"

Seneca's fingers, reaching up to smooth hair that was no longer there, disturbing the moonlight reflecting off his bald pate. "What I meant, Caesar, is that if she accuses you of attempted matricide, she could swing the Praetorians and the Senate around to her side."

Burrus, straight as a sword and always abrupt, was now even more so because of his painful throat complaint. "Tried to kill you once, will do so again. Eliminate her."

Balbillus raised his hands and shook his head. "No. Caesar cannot succeed in killing her until the Moon has passed his Saturn. Until then she will protect Agrippina in order to spite the emperor."

Tigellinus's jaw muscles worked as he ground his white teeth. "How long must we wait?"

"The Moon will be conjunct transit Saturn within the hour, after that she starts moving ahead of him."

A Guard colonel came up the stairs taking them two at a time. "There's a messenger from the Augusta."

Everyone looked at Nero. He turned his back on us, a sweeping, flourish of a gesture accompanied by the resolute crossing of the arms that had been perfected by Julius Caesar. "Bring him."

His name was Agerinus, one of Agrippina's freedmen. "The Augusta has survived by a great stroke of fortune, Caesar. She sends her greetings."

Nero waved the dagger under the freedman's nose. "She also sent me this. Lock him up colonel, until this is sorted out." When the Guards were out of earshot he looked at me. "Epaphroditus, what do you think I should do?"

"Let me return the dagger to your mother."

Nero's eyes widened. "Return it? Of course, how brilliantly ironic! She'll know what to do with it, won't she?"

"If she doesn't, Caesar, I'll tell her."

"Oh Epaphroditus, what a lucky find you are! Anicetus, come here."

Blinking nervously the prefect of the fleet shuffled forward. "Dominus?"

Nero thrust his face uncomfortably close. "Take Epaphroditus to Bauli. Help him accomplish his mission. Make sure you don't fail me a second time."

Anicetus blinked nervously. "You can rely on me, Caesar, to give you a fresh start."

"Yes, that's it, isn't it? A fresh start. I feel that this is going to be the first day of my rule."

A few minutes later the galley was once again racing over the glassy waters of the bay and the poisoned dagger was once more in my hand. An hour before dawn the marines were in position around Agrippina's villa. The usual night lights burnt inside but there was no sign of movement. A cock began to crow. It was either that (because the cock is the sacred bird of astrology) or the rising or setting of a time-telling star, that prompted Balbillus's assistant to signal Anicetus that the tide of destiny had ceased to flow against Nero.

Anicetus and three of his officers brushed past the slaves standing at Agrippina's bedroom door. I followed, several paces behind. Only a single candle, the night light, burnt next to the bed on which she lay, her hair still wet from her swim.