The Nero Prediction (6 page)

“Is that why you called her a whore?”

He was smiling, seemed to be relishing the thought, but he said, “That’s enough about her.”

We watched the horses for a few minutes. Although my curiosity gnawed at me like an itch that can’t be scratched, I changed the subject. “Lucius took me to Augustus’s Forum. Showed me his family tree.”

“One big happy family, eh?”

I ignored his sarcasm. “What happened to Agrippina’s husband?”

“You mean husbands. The first one, Lucius’s father, died of dropsy when Lucius was two. A mad one that. Fancied himself a charioteer just like his father. Whipped up his horses and ran over a boy on purpose on the Appian Way. His family name is Ahenobarbus which means bronze beard – that’s where Lucius gets his red hair from. Someone once said no wonder they had bronze beards because they had faces of iron and hearts of lead.”

“Hearts of lead? What does that mean.”

“The opposite of light hearted, I suppose. They take themselves very

seriously.”

“Does Lucius?”

Euodus shrugged. “He’s only ten.” He turned his attention back to the chariots.

I persisted. “What about Agrippina’s second husband?”

“Crispus was his name,” Euodus said after a long silence. “Very rich. He was married to Messalina’s mother, Domitia Lepida, but Lepida divorced him when Claudius, became emperor. Crispus wasn’t lonely for long, rich men never are. Agrippina married him within a few months. She lost him about a year ago. I don’t expect she was too sorry to see him go because she kept most of his money. She needed it. Her previous husband didn’t leave her much.”

Keeping in mind the murderous history of the imperial family, I wondered if she’d poisoned him. “He died? What of?”

Euodus knew what I was thinking. He flashed me a quick warning glance. “Some kind of stomach complaint.”

“How old is Agrippina?” 

He kept his eyes fixed on the chariots doing practice laps. “Next month she’ll be thirty-three.”

“Was she born here in Rome?”

“No, in an army camp in Germany, she never lets anyone forget that. Her father was Germanicus Julius Caesar who was busy pacifying the Germans at the time. She was barely walking when he celebrated his German triumph in Rome and almost four when she watched him die – poisoned – in Antioch for visiting Egypt without permission.”

“Germanicus needed permission to visit Egypt?”

“All senators do. It’s a law laid down by Augustus, in case someone tries to be another Pompey and grab Rome’s breadbasket. Germanicus was arrogant enough to give it the finger. That sent Tiberius a very clear message.” Euodus grinned and flashed his mischievous green eyes at me. “Tiberius answered it.”

“What about Agrippina’s mother?”

“A she wolf also named Agrippina, Agrippina the Elder, Augustus’s granddaughter. Insisted on going on military campaigns with Germanicus so he could father her children. Ended up with nine of them including Caligula and our Agrippina. She wanted to found a dynasty.”

“Nine children! What happened to all of them?”

For the moment there were no chariots on the track. Euodus wiped his hands over his face as if he had to erase the present to reach back into the past. “All dead, killed, except for your mistress. The old she-wolf never forgave Tiberius for murdering her husband. When Tiberius’s son died, and her own sons were now directly in line for the succession, things between her and the emperor went downhill. Tiberius got the Senate to exile her to an island, nothing more than a rock in the sea, for what he called her ‘arrogant mouth’. When she insulted an officer there he beat her up so badly she lost an eye.”

Euodus glanced at me to see how I took that. Then he went on, “Tiberius had already ordered the eldest of our Agrippina’s brothers to kill himself six years before. Now he set about eliminating the second. Drusus Julius Caesar, this was the youngsters name. Threw him into a cell right up there in the palace. Starved him to death. Agrippina, she was living in the palace at the time, managed to see him a few times. She spread the story that he was so hungry he was eating the straw in his mattress. His mother starved herself to death in sympathy. She must have thought it was the end of her dynasty.”

“But Caligula was still alive.”

“Yes, living with Tiberius on Capri. She despised Caligula for being a worthless pervert. Turned out she was right. Caligula was assassinated because of his insane behavior, leaving Agrippina and Julia Livilla.”

“That makes eight. What happened to the other daughter?”

“Drusilla. Caligula’s favorite. When she died, no one knows why, he declared her a goddess. She was only twenty-two.”

“And Julia Livilla?”

“She lasted four years longer. Messalina had her killed soon after Claudius became emperor. She managed to persuade him that Livilla was trying to stir up trouble with Seneca, the philosopher, of all people, just like she and Agrippina and Tigellinus had stirred up trouble during Caligula’s reign. The victim was twenty-four and the murderess was sixteen. It was Messalina’s first great crime.”

“Why did she do it?”

“She was afraid of Livilla.”

“And she wasn’t afraid of Livilla’s sister Agrippina?”

“Agrippina fawned on her, just as Agrippina fawned on Claudius. She can be very charming if she wants to be. Besides there was Lucius. When Agrippina, Julia Livilla and Tigellinus were exiled and his father died, all in the same year, Lucius, only two at the time, was sent to live with Domitia Lepida, his father’s sister and of course Messalina’s mother. He stayed with them until he was four. He was a beautiful child. Messalina adored him. She used to dress him up like a doll. In spite of the eleven year age difference, they remained very close, which suited Agrippina perfectly. Somehow she knew Messalina was the key.”

“The key to what?”

Euodus shot me a glance that was as quick as a cat’s paw but he didn’t say anything.

When Agrippina came out her seclusion the evening of the seventh day after Messalina’s death, she sent for me.

“I thought she was in mourning,” I said to her messenger, a handsome boy who was about her son Lucius’s age.

He scowled as if I’d said something monumentally stupid. “She was but she’s not any more. She saw the emperor an hour ago. Now she wants to see you.”

When the boy showed me into her reception room she was sitting where I’d first seen her, between Isis and Kronos whose name the Romans spell as Chronos and call Saturn. “Stop doing that, you’ll get your clothes dirty, she said when I made my obeisance, face down on the floor. “I’m a Roman, not some Oriental potentate. Get up. We’re going visiting.

“Usually he comes to me,” she said as she swept half a step ahead of me down one of the endless palace porticoes that led to the south wing of Tiberius’s old palace, ignoring the bows of everyone she passed. “But I want you to meet him in his laboratory.”

The blue liveried janitor kept his eyes on the floor while he held open the door for us. Inside was a large waiting room fogged by incense and crowded with courtiers conversing in whispers. Everyone rose to their feet when we entered, raising their hands in greeting. Agrippina nodded at several of them, a short, choppy gesture. She even smiled once revealing the double canine tooth on the left side of her mouth, an unsettling feature I hadn’t noticed before. 

A tall, thin Egyptian with haunted eyes and a shaved head, also dressed in blue livery, swept to our side. “Hail domina,” he said once he’d made a deep bow. “My master is with a client but I will tell him that you are here.”

“Do you know who that is?” Agrippina asked, pointing to a larger-than-life statue that stood besides to door the Egyptian had closed behind himself. It depicted a man perhaps fifty years old, intelligent and bold, who wore a pointed Phrygian cap on his head and wrapped in a mantle decorated with embroidered stars, the cloak of heaven. It had to be the astrologer who had foreseen his own peril and so had escaped Tiberius’s lobsters.

“Tiberius Claudius Thrasyllus, domina.”

She seemed pleased that I knew. “Yes, a fellow Alexandrian. Brilliant just like his son. Our family is fortunate to have them. But then of course nothing happens by chance.”

Seconds later the Egyptian emerged with a man in his fifties, red jovial face, prominent brows, hooked Roman nose. He was a senator, you could tell that by his red boots and the purple edge to his toga.

Although his consultation had obviously been cut short, he wreathed his face in smiles when he saw her. “Greetings Agrippina! Being unmarried suits you. I’ve never seen you more beautiful!”

“Thank you consul Vitellius. But do tell me, are you still carrying Messalina’s shoe around with you?”

Another torrent of smiles. “A family tradition. We Vitellii used to be cobblers and old habits die hard. The answer to your question is no. The shoe’s on the other foot now. I would much rather carry around one of yours!”

“How gallant of you! I wish they’d told me it was you in there. I would have been happy to wait until you had finished.”

“Oh, but we did!” He lowered his voice although it was still a resonant rumble. “Balbillus sees marriage in my stars. Can you believe it? At my age!”

Agrippina smiled, but this time I was on the wrong side of her to see her unnerving eye tooth. “And happily married too!”

The consul chortled. “That’s what I told him but he was quite insistent. I’d love you to take a look at my chart, if you have time. I owe it to my dear wife to at least get a second opinion.” He gave a broad wink. “Sometimes I think you’re a much better astrologer than he is!”

“That will be a pleasure,” said Agrippina, already on her way through the door. “I look forward to it.”

I’d seen Tiberius Claudius Balbillus many times in Alexandria, always at a distance, because for the past five years he’d combined his duties as imperial astrologer and friend of the emperor with being Director of Alexandria’s Museum and administrator of imperial buildings in Egypt.

Son of Tiberius Claudius Thrasyllus and Aka, princess of Commagene in Syria, he’d inherited his knighthood from his famous father. A slender, vital-looking forty-five, his black hair was cut short and he was clean shaven in the Roman manner. His laboratory was draped with twelve dark blue silk panels, three to each wall, on which the stars of the zodiac had been embroidered in silver cloth. Next to the table stood a huge lion-headed statue with its naked human torso entwined by a snake, holding keys in its hands, keys to the future. There he was again, Chronos, Lord of Time.

 Balbillus walked around his desk as we entered, smiling affectionately at Agrippina. He wore a tunic that was the same dark blue as the drapes on the walls. It was embroidered with the signs of the seven planets, also done in silver thread.

He didn’t bow. “Ah splendid,” he said with the soothing voice of a physician, “so here he is at last!” He examined me with his quick eyes. “Handsome boy, although not as fierce looking as one would have expected.”

“Yet but he’s the one,” Agrippina said. “He’s already proved that. Have you looked at his horoscope?”

“Full of hidden meaning. He was born the year that the phoenix was sighted in Egypt, the first time in one thousand four hundred and sixty-one years. Did you know that?”

Agrippina pursed her lips, a kissing movement. “Of course. That’s one of the reasons I knew he would be found in Egypt.”

 “Does he know his birth time?”

 “No. Tigellinus questioned him.”

“Anyone else know?”

“Someone called Phocion.

A street corner fortuneteller. The boy says he cast his horoscope.”

Balbillus looked at me again, that quick, clever glance. “And what did he find?” he asked me.

I cleared my throat. “He said…” I couldn’t go on.

“What?”

 “I didn’t know I had a horoscope until then, lord. That’s the first time I heard. He said it predicted I would have something to do with the empire.”

Balbillus smiled faintly. “You mean the Roman empire?”

“Yes sir.”

 “Really!” Balbillus’s eyes were back on Agrippina’s. “This Phocion of yours wasn’t such a quack after all. I’d like to speak with him, about his interpretation.”

“That would be a little difficult,” she said. “He rowed his own boat over to the west, as I think you Egyptians say.”

“You mean he killed himself?”

“Yes.”

The astrologer frowned. “Why?”

“I don’t think he wanted to be questioned, not by Tigellinus.”

I could have imagined it but I thought Balbillus shuddered. “I see.”

Agrippina changed the subject by coquettishly tilting her head to one side. She could indeed be charming if it suited her. “Do tell me about poor Vitellius! He’s just told me you said he’s going to get married!”

Balbillus smiled showing small, neat teeth. “Agrippina you know I can’t go into -”

“Of course you can! He’s insisting I read his horoscope. Says he wants a second opinion. Balbillus, everybody knows you’ve taught me all I know. You wouldn’t me to show you up, would you?”

Balbillus smiled again. Shrugged. “Look at the alignment of his planets when the transient Moon enters his seventh house. As you’ll see, it predicts marriage.”

“I already have,” Agrippina said with what came very close to being a laugh. “But are you sure it’s his marriage?” She glanced at me. Her face reminded me of the iron mask her son’s family was supposed to have worn. “Epaphroditus, you may wait for me outside.”

After that interview with Balbillus she sent me out of her study very seldom. I was always there when clients came calling, keeping a shorthand record of the conversation, often hidden behind a curtain. The only time she had me leave was when Vitellius called on her a few days after she bumped into him outside Balbillus’s door. Although I don’t know what went on during that meeting, it was clear that when Vitellius came out he had one of Agrippina’s shoes tucked under his toga because the very next day he was singing her praises to the Senate, reminding senators that she had the blood of Julius Caesar in her veins, that her son was the grandson of Germanicus, that her morals were above suspicion. The emperor Claudius, like Atlas, carried the burden of world rule on his shoulders. The last thing he needed was domestic strife. Who best to crack down on palace intrigues that had already caused the emperor so much grief, than a woman born of Germanicus and Agrippina the Elder, a woman who, as the whole Senate knew, had an old fashioned Roman character as resilient as steel? Messalina had been manipulated by the palace freedman with disastrous results. Was there any man alive, expect of course for the emperor himself, who could manipulate Agrippina?