The Nero Prediction (40 page)

In spite of the shrillness of Sporus's voice, Vindex's call for universal revolution, which is how this pamphlet ended, could hardly be heard above the howls of mirth, the ironic applause, the pounding on tables, the thumping of feet, with which this priggish denunciation of Nero's genius was received by the Neronians.

Eventually the master raised his hand for silence. "For art's sake encourage Vindex not to do himself any harm. Tell him his true vocation awaits for him here in Rome, on the comic stage!"

After dinner I walked with Nero on the beach. It was moonless. Venus, a jewel on the soft throat of night, blazed above the western horizon as she pursued majestic Jupiter, seventeen degrees ahead of her, around the racetrack of the stars.

Nero threw up his hands. "Venus is visiting my House of Children, did you know that? I can feel them, vast new creations twitching with life inside me."

It wasn't his music that was worrying me. It was how to get as far away as possible from Nero by the middle of June, I didn’t want Tigellinus or anyone else to hatch a plot with me caught in the middle of it. Getting his permission to leave was the problem, he'd become so dependent on me. If I could get him to crush Vindex he'd feel more secure. Perhaps then he would let me go. 

I said, "Lets move against Vindex immediately, get him out of the way."

Nero sniffed. "A waste of time. There's no one behind him, no one at all."

Three days later a dispatch reported that Vindex had recruited a large army of Gauls.

Nero turned up his hands. "All right. I suppose we'd better return to Rome."

There was more bad news at Antium. Vindex’s army had swelled to over a hundred thousand. This didn't upset Nero as much as the sore throat he'd picked up at sea. "Take down a note to the Senate. Tell them I'd move immediately against Vindex if it wasn't for this throat infection. Say that as soon as my throat's better I'll go straight to Gaul and pop Vindex's bubble."

"Your throat? Caesar I don't think you can allow a sore throat to stop you."

Nero frowned at the slowness of my comprehension. "Of course it can. I can't sing Vindex into submission with a sore throat. Why do you look surprised? I'd have thought that you of all people would have realized that I've established a new world order, with entirely new rules of engagement. Of course I could crush Vindex with just one of the Rhine legions Verginius Rufus is bringing down from Germany, but that's not how things are going to be done any more. I want to fight my Gallic war my way, not Julius Caesar's. At my triumph there'll be pictures of choirs and orchestras, not soldiers and siege engines. They'll carry placards which say: 'I came, I sang, I conquered!"

Three days later a barge floated at the center of the Golden House's tear-shaped lake. On the barge was an object, tall as the mast of a four-decked galley, thrusting itself skyward under a drape of white cloth.

Senators and knights murmured uneasily as they took their seats on the wooden stands that hugged the north shore. The summons to attend Nero had come at sunset, after dinner for most of them. Some were the worse for wine. All of them were uneasy. What had happened in Gaul? What was the thing under the drape? What did it have to do with Vindex?

A trumpet sounded. The torches illuminating the stands were snuffed out. Others on the barge sprang to life. A figure in tragedian's costume appeared, dwarfed by what towered above him. Nero. The applause quickly wore thin.

His voice reached out to us across the water. "You are of course all aware of the little problem we appear to be having in Gaul. To some this has been a cause of discomfit, even anxiety, particularly when the captain of the rebel forces has made disparaging remarks about my ability to defend the empire. That's why I've assembled you here, to put your minds at rest. My apologies for the lateness of the hour, but I thought it best to invite you here the moment my chief weapon against Vindex was ready for demonstration so that you may see for yourself that your future is in good hands."

Nero pointed at the two brilliant lights hanging low in the western sky. The brighter of the two was Venus who was now within seven degrees of overtaking Jupiter. "Mother Venus, I dedicate my creation to you in the certainty that it will bring you both victory and Vindex's head."

This little pun (Vindex means victory in Latin) tickled up a nervous laugh which soon subsided into expectant silence. The mystery had been too well kept. What was hiding under that vast drape?

Nero clapped once and it began to fall away, like the sheath of some monstrous night-blooming flower, leaving exposed a double row of huge gilded tubes that seemed to reach to the stars. An enormous organ, its longest pipes fifty feet tall. There were gasps of amazement, a burst of applause, confused shouting, uneasy whispers.

Nero raised his arms for silence. "Senators, people of Rome, behold the weapon with which Nero will roll back mighty armies. It features a new keyboard that I designed myself and a much larger hydraulic chamber to ensure a plentiful supply of air at even pressure. I intend to set out with it against Vindex as soon as we've solved a few little transportation problems."

There was an awful silence during which Nero positioned himself at the keyboard. Into that silence there came a low rumbling noise, seemingly from the bowels of the earth, which grew steadily in intensity until it became an eruption of ominous sound which vibrated the entrails: menacing growl after low menacing growl like anger deep in the throat of a colossal dog, a three-headed Cerberus scaring off the living from the entrance to hell.

Nero's hands darted across the keyboard and men whose hearts had pumped iced water when they fought hand-to-hand battles with berserk Germans jumped with fright as a titanic demon of sound leapt up out of the pipes and stormed across the water. As it hit the shore it broke like a wave sending hissing serpents slithering between their feet.

No organ recital in the theater, no accompaniment to the drama of conquest and death in the arena, prepared the ear for what came next. Enabled by his new keyboard, by the sheer size of the mighty pipes, by the virtuosity of his genius, Nero reached up into the infinite void where the originals of everything exist in a state of eternal perfection and plucked down musical forms never before reproduced on earth: duplicate and triplicate harmonies that rippled over each other in a rapture of sound.

And yet when I tore myself away from the enfolding arms of beauty to fulfill my commission of gauging the reaction of those who sat in the stands with me, an awful chill sank its teeth into my bones. I sensed that the earth was splitting under me, that one foot rested on firm ground, the other on folly. The expression that senators and knights tried to hide behind their hands was not joyful wonder, it was confusion and dismay.

On which foot should I rest my weight? I turned my attention back to Nero, opened my ears. A surge of music like hot spiced wine drove the cold out of me. The stars were transformed into doves swooping down with Venus's simmering chariot in tow. Gathered in her arms I was sped through the void wrapped in a cloud of love. I wept with joy, with shame that I'd ever doubted for even one instant on which side of the divide I stood.

I had risen with Nero. It would be a privilege to fall with him. But kill him, I would never do that.

The Moon was perfectly round the next night when the courier arrived caked with mud, bleary-eyed with exhaustion. His instructions were to deliver his dispatch to the emperor in person.

Nero squinted at me. "Open it, Epaphroditus. If it's another insulting note from Vindex, read it to yourself, I'm beginning to find him repetitive."

I broke the seal.

Nero saw me wince. "What is it? It's about Vindex, isn't it? I hope he's raised the price on my head. His offer to exchange his for mine was an insult."

"Galba," I croaked. "Vindex has hailed him emperor. Galba's refused the acclamation but has accepted the position of legate of the Senate and Rome."

Nero chortled with relief. "Galba? Governor of Spain? That must be one of Vindex's little jokes. Why the man's in his dotage!" 

Tigellinus, reclining at my elbow, laughed just as easily. "The senile old fool's obviously decided that hoary old prediction is about to be fulfilled."

Nero squinted at him. "What prediction?"

"Oh the one by Tiberius's astrologer Thrasyllus, Balbillus's father. Something about Galba tasting the imperial power late in life. It's nothing more than a joke, after all he's already in his seventy-third year."

I gave Tigellinus a killing look but he avoided my eyes. Somewhere off to my left I heard Nero's strangled bleat. "What did you say?"

Tigellinus's tone was too ingenuous. "About Galba?"

Nero was whispering now. "Balbillus's prediction. The Delphic oracle."

"Caesar?"

Nero curled up on his couch, his hands over his eyes, his forehead slick with the snail trail of fear. "The seventy-third year. Don't you understand? The seventy-third year, not mine but his, Galba's!"

The Final Curtain

April 2 – June 10, 68 A.D.

The Praetorian Prefect put his hand on my neck. I noticed how callused it was from working his horses. "Come on Epaphroditus, get if off your chest."

We'd just left Nero who was suddenly very tired and needed to sleep for a while.

"You're closing in, aren't you?" I said grimly.

Tigellinus sounded mildly amused by my hostile tone. His violet eyes narrowed. "You're going to have to be more specific."

"All right, I shall be. At Nero's birth Balbillus predicted that Nero must beware the seventy-third year. The prediction is confirmed by the oracle of Delphi. The Delphic prophet kills himself in the presence of men especially selected by you. Was he pushed perhaps? When the news of Galba's treason comes in, by chance, by the merest chance, you mention that the rebel is in his seventy-third year. Of course Nero jumps to the obvious conclusion."

By this time Tigellinus’s smile was as tight as a bowstring. "Of course."

I removed the hand that patronized my neck. "Then I'm right. You are the master of the trapdoor."

"What?"

"The reins are in your hands, aren't they?"

"I wish they were. Unfortunately I'm a supporting player, just like you."

I watched Tigellinus's back as he walked away from me. Then I returned to Nero's bedroom and gazed at his sleeping face, wondering what to do, finding no answers.

He woke but his eyes were wide and wet, still brimming with dreams. "Epaphroditus...has Galba...?"

"You must hit him now, with everything you have, before the revolt spreads."

"I can't, Venus has just moved out of my House of Children and Pleasures into my House of Calamities. Balbillus left me a list of all the dates."

Of course he had, the same list that Vindex, Galba, Tigellinus and the astrologer Ptolemy Seleucus carried in their pockets.

"But she won't abandon me for long. At the end of the month something wonderful happens. She turns in her tracks and hurries back to my House of  Children and Pleasures."

It was too late to turn Nero into a skeptic so I asked, "When does she re-enter it?"

"May 24."

"Then that's when we strike."

"Oh no, all she'll be able to do is console me because she'll be moving backward and therefore very weak. June 12, when she begins to move forward again, that's when we'll declare musical war against Vindex."

Needles pricked my scalp. That was the day
after
Balbillus predicted I would kill him.

Almost exactly a month later, at the beginning of May, Nero was picking at the keys of the giant water organ when momentous news arrived from Gaul.

He shook his head as I approached him with the dispatch. "It's no good. I can't play without Venus's help."

I held out the letter. "Vindex is dead."

An expression, rapidly growing in intensity, of the most undiluted rapture. "Vindex dead!"

"Yes, and his army destroyed."

"Verginius Rufus! I knew he'd remain loyal! You see, he understands what I'm trying to do."

"Unfortunately there's more. Verginius's legions have acclaimed him emperor."

"What?"

"He refused the title."

"Of course he did."

"But his position remains unclear. When declining the acclamation he said that it's up to the Senate and the people of Rome to choose an emperor. We have to establish that we're in control, immediately."

"We are in control, and we are preparing for war, you know that better than anyone. But how can I perform when Venus is retrograde? You've heard me sing since she turned her back on me. I croak like a frog. When Venus moves forward again, so shall I."

All through May it went on, the mobilization. Magnificent orchestral compositions, overwhelming in their awful solemnity were rehearsed by an army of musicians. Huge pipe organs were turned out at a frantic rate. Special wagons were constructed to carry them to the front. Young women, selected for their beauty, not their virtue, were recruited for the legion of Amazons that was going to escort the new Dionysus into battle. Their hair freshly cropped, dressed in high girdled garments of imperial purple which bared their legs, they danced in formation on the field of Mars brandishing light double-headed battle-axes above their heads as they warded off the arrows of ignorance with crescent-shaped shields. The cheerleaders of musical war.

Nero's face glowed as he watched these drills but inside him the worm of doubt, spawned by the seventy-third year, fed.

The morning after the news of Galba's defection, and his age, Nero had sent an urgent dispatch to Balbillus in Alexandria commanding his immediate return. Even with the most favorable winds he couldn't reasonably be expected to show up in less than a month.

Nero couldn't wait that long. "Find me an astrologer Epaphroditus. In fact see how many you can find me. There must be at least one who can advise me."

I prevaricated. "Caesar, is it wise for so many to know your stars?"