The Nero Prediction (25 page)

I was careful not to sound too glib. "I'm trying to, that's why I went to see the Peter. I have to tell you that I was a little disappointed. I was expecting more."

"Simon Peter is a holy man, but the lord has tried him beyond his measure. He bids the faithful be passive as sheep being led to the slaughter. We believe that Christ is the Messiah who wishes us to turn the butcher's knife against the butcher."

I caught my patronizing tone too late. "I see."

The beak sniffed suspiciously. "Who brought you the knowledge?"

I improvised on the truth. "A woman of the court. A concubine of Nero's. She lifted up my spirits when I was despondent. She gave me hope for a better life."

The beak nodded. "What was the cause of your oppression?"

"Nero. He's worse than the vilest beast. You can't imagine how demeaning it is to serve him."

The beak's face darkened in a dangerous way. "I can. Do you mean you'd be happy to see the end of him?"

"Yes."

His hand crushed mine. "Then Mark saw the truth. My name is Zebah. These other men are my brothers. We will see you safely back to the palace.”

“Is it you who have you been watching me?”

“It was I who saved you once from senator Montanus’s man.”

“Why?”

“Because you are chosen.”

“For what?”

Zebah threw back his head and stared at me fiercely down his nose. “When the time comes, you will be told.”

Nero clapped his hands. "I knew he was alive, I just knew! I can see it all now. I perform on the kithara, I begin to sing. Moments later the Christians attack. I confront them, defenseless except for my kithara. I play. They throw down their weapons and weep with joy. Pure poetry."

Poppaea, eyes dewy with admiration, clapped her pearl-encrusted hands. “Oh Augustus, it certainly is!”

“Although Tigellinus will probably think it’s too risky," I said.

"Only if the Christians are tone deaf. But you did say that they sing, didn't you?"

"Yes dominus, they sing hymns."

"That decides it. Arrange to go to another of their meetings. I want to send someone along with you to give me a full report, someone who understands music."

I arranged it through Rachel. I told her that I'd dreamt a man in a white robe was holding his arms out to me, but that I was stuck waist deep in mud and couldn't go to him.

There were tears in her eyes. "He is calling you, I knew that he would because the time is so very nearly at hand. The day after tomorrow, in the evening, there will be another great meeting. Mark the Lion will speak again."

This time I rode in the gardener's cart with her. Although the figures who followed stayed at least fifty paces behind us, they were illuminated by the Moon who was by now in her second quarter. I'd expected only one man, Nero's musician, not several burly figures in dark cloaks.

Who were they?

 I must have shuddered when the cart turned off the road into a Jewish cemetery because Rachel put a reassuring arm around my shoulders. "Don't be afraid, no harm will come to you. He's here."

Hundreds of torches lit a city of modest tombs. People spoke in whispers. Everywhere there was a sense of hushed expectancy. Rachel's warm hands enclosed mine. Now that she was with her fellow Christians there was something different about her, something softer, more open. I'd never desired her more.

"Can you feel it?" she whispered.

I nodded.

She squeezed my hands. "Excuse me for just a few minutes. There are brothers and sisters I must talk with."

I watched her swaying walk. In spite of the straight and narrow path she now trod, she walked like a courtesan. A trumpet sounded. A moment later Rachel brushed the back of my neck with her fingers.

My tongue was half a step ahead of my wits. "Is he here?"

It was almost tangible, the way she cooled. "What?"

I did my best to recover. "I thought you went to speak with someone."

She nodded but didn't answer.

In response to the trumpet call, the earth seemed to split open and a file of white-robed figures carrying torches rose up out of it and formed themselves into a large circle.

Rachel smiled at my astonishment. "Don't be afraid. There are natural galleries under the ground, catacombs, miles of them. It's where we bury our dead so that when Christ resurrects our bodies, we will all be together, families and friends."

 Mark the Lion headed the stately procession. His beard seemed to be even longer than the last time I’d seen it. Rachel and the gardener were sitting on either side of me. There was no way that I could take down a transcription without being seen.

"Is it all right if I take notes?"

Rachel's smile had a touch of pity. "What for? The end is upon us, there's no need for notes."

As a result I managed to get down no more than an outline, and that only of the last few minutes of the oration when Rachel and the gardener were carried away by their rapture.

"What is this kingdom of heaven which is about to descend upon us?” Mark roared. “It's a world of the spirit: eternal and good and wrapped up in God. What is the kingdom of this earth that it will replace? It's the world of the flesh: of corruption and evil that belongs to the Beast. But do not be contemptuous of the Beast. Instead, beware of him for Satan has made him sly and subtle. Behold a frog comes out of his mouth which sings with a sweet voice but which is hungrier than the howl of the ravaging wolf.

"Most people say 'Oh, there is still time. I'll attend the baths a little while longer and then I'll repent.' But there is no more time. You have seen the signs and heard the prophecies. The baths are the temples of the Beast. They, and the theaters and the circuses and the arenas and all the rest of his filthy kingdom are on the point of destruction. The kingdom of god is at hand. The angels are already gathering in the final harvest. The chaff is about to be separated from the wheat and thrown onto the fire.

"Now the chaff I am speaking of is the things of this world, the world perceived by the senses. Why worship the things that the eye beholds, when the eye is destined to grow dim? Why worship what the ear hears, because the ear will soon be deaf? Or what the tongue savors, for the tongue will soon taste only ash?

"Soon, very soon, he will come in person, bringing his kingdom with him. A terrible fire will spring from his eyes and consume the world of the Beast. Whatever there is in any man that belongs to the Beast will be burnt by the fire. Pity those who wear the mark of the Beast for nothing will be left of them but ashes which will blow away in the wind.

"Therefore waste no thought for this world but let your spirits rise up bright as the star that rises to herald the New Year. Know that you, who are nothing in this world, will be the princes and princesses of the one that is to come."

This oration was followed by a prayer that was followed by a rousing hymn. During the chorus an enraptured voice rose above the others from somewhere close behind me.

Heads turned, faces smiling with approval. The voice sounded awfully familiar.

Nero. 

I only half succeeded in strangling a loud guffaw. Nero was wearing a cowl but what if he were recognized? How could the four Germans standing behind him defend him from the outrage of hundreds, even if one of them was the fabled Spiculus?

Rachel heard me, recognized Nero. An expression of loathing, too quick for her to check, flitted across her face. I preferred that to the expression of melting pity that she then turned on me.

While Rome Burns

July 17 – July 23, 64 A.D.

Rachel didn't return to the palace that night. The next morning I went to Antium with Nero. However as the Moon waxed she appeared to me frequently, slipping into my mind when I least expected her. Always she was as I'd last seen her, on her knees, hands clasped in prayer, face raised to heaven as I followed Nero and his bodyguards into the night. Praying for my soul.

Nero’s Antium palace, a vast new structure built over Augustus’s original villa, descended down the steep sea cliff in steps until it reached the water. Its most splendid architectural feature was a gigantic, semi circular peristyle crowned by a temple of Fortuna, patron goddess of the city. While Antium's sea air and the festive atmosphere made others languid, there was as usual no bounds to Nero's energy. He reveled late into the night with Poppaea, Tigellinus and the others, but while they slept late he was in the grand, two tiered theater at dawn, rehearsing. The conviction that he was destined to wage musical war against Christ and his followers obsessed him. "Your Christians haven't contacted you yet, have they?" he asked me one evening.

"No dominus, not yet."

“What not even that girl of Poppaea’s, the one they tell me you’ve taken a fancy to? She’s one of them, isn’t she?”

“Augustus, she disappeared after that Christian meeting where you sang.”

“Oh dear, I hope it wasn’t my voice!” he said, laughing at his joke before I dared to.

It was shortly after sunset and Nero was watching the Full Moon rise. As usual, courtiers were everywhere but he had waved them out of earshot. "I’m afraid of the Moon, Epaphroditus. Did I ever tell you that?” he said with a humble sincerity that borrowed nothing from the stage. “She always reminds me of mother, especially when she’s full or just beginning to wane. Balbillus says that astrologically speaking she actually is my mother. If it wasn’t for the Moon’s … I suppose ‘condition’ is the word, I would never have left Rome, not when something extraordinary might happen. I’ve told Tigellinus several times that I’m going to rush back immediately and perdition to the Moon. He won’t hear of it. He really is over concerned about my safety. If anything unusual does happen, be sure to tell me immediately. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”

Afterwards I walked on the beach alone, my back towards the revelers who, soaked with wine and sea water, were cavorted around the tent in which the orchestra played. Why did their high spirits seem suddenly so hollow to me? Had Peter been right after all, was there the glimmering of a different life in me? Or was it Rachel? Was I nothing more than yet another star-crossed lover pining for someone I was destined never to have? I scooped up a handful of dry sand and threw it at the stars.

I searched the southern sky for the comet. It was no longer there! On the previous evening, July 16, it had been faint but still clearly visible at the tip of Hydra's tail. No longer. It had remained in the underworld, was unfastening the triple locks.

When it disappears, so will his world.

I shook off the invisible cold thing that rose up out of the sea and wrapped itself around me. I hurried back to the tent, to Nero.

  He smiled when I told him that the comet had disappeared. "You see? Nothing happened. I didn't even sprain my ankle."

Just before midnight on July 18, Rome’s unluckiest day, the fire broke out.

There was nothing unusual about fire scares in Rome. Much of the city was connected by a spider web of alleys so narrow that buildings rubbed noses across them. In spite of Augustus's boast that he had left Rome a city of marble, she was still constructed largely of wood. With enough cooking fires alight to feed two million people, accidental fires large and small were a daily occurrence. But Rome had never experienced anything like this one.

An hour before dawn I had a dream. Phocion, dressed as I’d last seen him, was standing over my bed. “It is time for us to go to the temple,” he said. For a long moment I was sure it was the old astrologer, because I was aware that I was in bed and I could see him clearly looking down at me. I woke and he was gone and tears burnt my eyes.

It was indeed July 19, the morning that Sirius is reborn after being consumed by the Sun, the morning that Phocion would have been taking me for that vigil in Alexandria’s temple of Isis, knowledge that must have been hidden at the back of my mind until it revealed itself in the ghost of the astrologer who’d found the lucky stars the Copy Master had claimed were mine. Although my head still pounded from the excesses of the previous evening, I rose in honor of the man who was the closest I had to a father, someone who may actually have been my father. I threw on a light tunic, because it was a warm night, and opened my bedroom door. To my astonishment six or seven slaves, none of whom I knew, were kneeling in the corridor. They touched their heads to the carpet when they saw me.

“What are you doing here? Why do you kneel?” I asked. They kept their heads down and said nothing.

Puzzled, I walked up several flights of stairs to the semi circular peristyle and then some more to the temple of Fortuna which was the highest point of the palace.

The round bright Moon setting in the west revealed a single figure who was examining the eastern horizon intently through a glass lens of the type ground in Alexandria to correct nearsightedness. I could tell by the two yawning Praetorians standing guard a respectful distance away that it was Nero.

I’m not sure how he knew it was me but he did. It seemed as if he were expecting me. “Good morning, Epaphroditus,” he said. “I’m looking for Sirius. He’s just been reborn after being consumed the Sun. Marks the beginning of the Egyptian New Year, but I suppose you know all that already. It’s a very lucky day for you. Perhaps it’ll be a lucky day for me too.”

I thought of the slaves who had prostrated themselves outside my door. They’d looked Egyptian, but why had they bowed to me? Did they have anything do with my mysterious watchers?  A few minutes later, there Sirius was, right on the horizon, flashing thousands of colors. “Further south, dominus.”

Nero followed my directions. “Ah yes, what a sight! If only they could improve on this cursed glass. It’s nothing more than a blur to me.”

Nero heard the news just after his dawn reception, brought by a fireman still sweating from his furious ride. A fire had broken out just before midnight on the north east side of the Circus Maximus in the paint warehouse.

At first Nero didn't appear to hear him. He was tuning a new kithara in preparation for his morning rehearsal. “Just an ordinary fire?” he said eventually. “No one coming down from heaven on clouds of glory?”