Tiberius (27 page)

Sejanus threw himself back in the chair and stretched his arms above his head. He laughed. I have seen lions, in the arena which I detest, move like Sejanus, with the same grace and menace. He laughed again.

"Poor Piso," he said, "poor bugger, he knows it's all up with him."

"But the document, the letter."

"There is no letter. You know there isn't."

"And none has been forged?"

"My men turned the place upside down. Piso was indignant. He told me, 'You know perfectly well there's nothing to be found'. The fact is, in his strange way, he has thought of forging a document, of course he has, but something held him back."

"Honour?"

"Perhaps. Fear more likely. He still hopes you will halt the prosecution. He still maintains he never went beyond what he understood your intentions to be. Not till the last moment, when he invaded Syria. He knows he did wrong there. He knows they have got him on that count."

"Sejanus," I hesitated, embarrassed as I had never been with him before, "when you saw Piso before he took up his appointment, how far did you go?"

He smiled, yawned, stretched himself again.

"It's a bit late to ask that," he said. "Tiberius," he continued. "There's nothing for you to get tense about. All you have to do is let the law take its course."

"Let the law take its course?" Livia snapped her fan shut. "Are you mad? When you start sacrificing your friends to your enemies, I believe you to have taken leave of your senses. Don't you understand, child, that woman is implacable? When she attacks Piso, that's only the first step. You are her real target. Besides, it's absurd to think Plancina could be guilty of murder. I've known her since she was a little girl."

There was no evidence of murder, nothing but spiteful rumours. Some were ridiculous. It was suggested that Piso had first tried to poison Germanicus on an occasion when they had been neighbours at dinner. Even some of Germanicus' friends found it too fantastic to suppose that he should have attempted this in front of witnesses which included Germanicus himself and his slaves. Piso scoffed at the charge and offered his own slaves for torture, demanding too that the waiters at that dinner-party should be put to the question. But the defence faltered everywhere else. Evidence that Piso had bribed troops, subverted discipline and invaded the province was overwhelming. Realising this, Plancina, who had sworn that she would share his fate, now desperate only to save herself, resolved to conduct a separate defence. That evening it was necessary to double the number of guards who escorted him home.

Towards nightfall I was informed that Piso's secretary was seeking an audience. I declined to see him. There was nothing I could do, and I had no wish to compromise my own position by entertaining such an emissary in conversation. I therefore returned the message that I was confident Piso would act in a manner worthy of his ancestors.

I do not know how Piso received my message. At some point during the night he abandoned hope. He gave a note to one of his slaves and, announcing that he was ready for sleep, dismissed Plancina and his attendants from his chamber. He was found in the morning with his throat cut. A bloody sword lay on the floor beside his body.

The news was brought to me in the cold morning. Black clouds scudded across the sky. I watched a procession of worshippers, heads covered, move towards the Temple of Mars the Avenger. Jackdaws were flung in wild flight by the winds. The slave fell on the ground before me, extending a hand which clutched a sealed document.

Piso had written:

Conspiracy and hatred have ruined me. There is no place left for innocence and honesty. I call the gods to witness, Caesar, that I have always been loyal to you, and dutiful to the Augusta. I beg you both to protect my children. Marcus accompanied me to
Syria, but had first advised me against doing so; his brother Gnaeus has never left Rome. I pray that they who are innocent should not share in my misfortune. By my forty-five years of loyalty, by our joint consulship, by the memory of our friendship, I, whom your father the divine Augustus honoured, and whom you befriended, implore you to spare my unfortunate son. It is the last thing I shall ask of anyone.

I passed the letter to Sejanus.

"He doesn't once mention Plancina," I said. "Well, all friendship is but a memory now, but we shall see that his son does not suffer . . ."

To please my mother, I argued Plancina's case before the Senate.

Piso was rash, but he was murdered by public opinion as surely as if the mob had lynched him as they threatened to do. On the day of his funeral Agrippina gave a dinner-party. I declined an invitation to attend.

How many nights I have gazed at the majesty of the skies, and thought of Piso during his last hours on earth, deserted, empty of hope, finally absolute for death. There have been many times I have envied him.

5

T
here was a moment of joy: Drusus' wife Livilla gave birth to twins. I had hoped this would draw them together. It failed to do so. I accused Drusus of neglecting his wife.

"I thought I'd given her enough to occupy her, Father," he replied. "Anyway, it's easy for you to give such advice. You don't have to put up with her bad temper."

"Perhaps, but it is not seemly that I should hear constant reports of your quarrels."

"Who brings them to you? Sejanus, I suppose. You put too much trust in that man. Indeed, it grieves me, Father, that you seem to rely more on him than on me, your own son."

He had no reason to think that, and I told him so. But this awareness of ill-feeling between Drusus and Sejanus was a new cause of distress.

There was soon another, though it brought Drusus and myself together. His mother, my poor Vipsania, was dying. I had never thought of her dying before me. Though we had only once seen each other since our divorce, she had been a warm presence in the background of my life, like a place where you have been happy. Drusus and I travelled in wet weather to Velletri, where she had been living in a villa inherited from her father; she had been long separated from her husband, Gallus.

Vipsania took her leave of Drusus first. Then he told me to go in. I had not in the end been certain that she would wish to see me.

I would not at first have recognised her, for disease had eaten her away, the flesh had fallen from her face, and her eyes spoke of the pain she suffered. She stretched out her hand. I took it in
mine, kissed it and fell to my knees by the bedside. We remained like that for a long time. There was a peculiar musty smell in the room, and the air was close and heavy.

"Don't try to speak," I said. "It's enough that we are together again."

She disengaged her hand and stroked my brow . . .

Did it happen like that? Or does my memory deceive me? Sometimes these few minutes with Vipsania have the clarity of a dream, the kind from which one awakens with a calm assurance of having been granted a vision of a more profound reality than that in which daily life is spent. There is a re-ordering of experience, as if a veil has been lifted. And yet her chamber was already a gateway to the tomb. Drusus felt none of this. He wept to lose his mother, while I remained dry-eyed. Yet my loss of what I had long ago lost was sharper: I was given a glimpse of what had been denied me. When I leaned over and kissed her cheek, from which life was already fleeing, I sealed our acknowledgment, with which we had lived for thirty years, that love and tenderness are hopeless against the fact of power. I turned out of her chamber and set my face to a funeral as bald as a winter mountain-face.

"It's odd to think," Drusus said, "that my mother was the half-sister of that hell-cat Agrippina."

"I hadn't realised you dislike Agrippina so."

"Dislike her? Surely you understand, father? She's determined to destroy us both."

"I no longer know what I understand."

"What's more, she will bring up her children as our enemies."

Drusus pushed the wine towards me. We both drank.

"It seems to me," he said, "that our family is overstocked with impossible women."

"Your mother was never impossible."

"No," he agreed, and called for more wine.

"But my wife is," he said, "and Agrippina, and my grandmother, and as I recall, my stepmother Julia. What have we done to deserve them?"

A little later he fell asleep. This was how we mourned Vipsania: in drunkenness and self-pity. But it wasn't only Vipsania we mourned, I thought. Our sadness had deeper roots than mortality. Death, after all, can come as a friend; death brings welcome relief from pain, as in the case of Vipsania, perhaps from dishonour, as with Piso; perhaps from the tyranny of the eternal
‘I’
.

"Would you like more wine, my lord?"

I looked up. One of Drusus' slaves was leaning over me. He was called Lygdus, a eunuch from Syria, a gift, I recalled, from Piso. He smiled, nervous but eager to please. The scent of attar of roses floated towards me. He placed a pale brown, thin-fingered hand on the flask. I felt a surge of cruelty, which disgusted and excited me. These creatures, I thought, are completely in our power. But then, who isn't in mine? Am I not the master of the world? Isn't that what they say? A master who despises men, fears assassination (but why, when I long for death to release me from my responsibilities?) and shuns company. The boy waited. I looked at him; he dropped his gaze. Apprehension expelled the desire to please. He waited.

I had had reports on this Lygdus of course. Such things have become necessary. He was said to be familiar with his master, a cherished favourite. There is always someone like that in the household of any man of virtue. It is our way of sweetening our arrangement of things, which by its nature offends notions of humanity. And men are rarely indifferent to eunuchs; they either despise them or desire them, sometimes both. A eunuch occupies a peculiar status in our imagination; he is a sort of object on which we can lavish irresponsible tenderness or employ to satisfy our innate cruelty.

"Are you fond of your master?"

I spoke in Greek, to put him at his ease. He replied in the same language, haltingly.

"My lord is very good to me."

His fingers plucked the fringe of his short tunic.

"Is he often in this condition?"

"Oh no, my lord, this is exceptional. He is distressed on account of his mother's death. Shall I fetch you more wine, my lord?"

"No," I said, "wine is no answer tonight. Look after your master. He is very dear to me."

He bent over to ease Drusus' head, which had slipped off the couch, into a more comfortable position. The short gold-fringed tunic rose up his buttocks. The sand-coloured legs were long and shapely.

"Go to bed," I said, and twisted my fingers hard till the knuckles ached. "I will tend to your master tonight."

Drusus was dear to me; so was Sejanus; and the animosity between them intensified. Each was jealous of what he supposed to be the other's influence over me. My efforts to dispel the suspicion each entertained for the other were vain. My only comfort lay in my certainty that both were utterly loyal.

Their quarrels, however, disturbed me. On one occasion at least, Drusus lost his temper -
1
cannot recall the cause, if indeed I ever knew it — and struck Sejanus in the face. He complained — it was reported — that Sejanus was a threat to the security of the empire, citing as an example my decision that the Praetorian Guard, whose commander Sejanus still was, should be concentrated in a new camp on the north side of the city. I had approved the suggestion for two reasons. In the first place it relieved citizens from the burden of having the Guard billeted in their houses; second, it was an aid to discipline and efficiency. There was nothing sinister in the proposal in any way.

I was irritated by their quarrels because both were vital to the administration of the empire. As Augustus had frequently remarked, this is too great a task for a single man, and it is necessary that the Princeps should have helpers whom he can trust and who are willing to collaborate with each other. Drusus' jealousy of Sejanus impeded the smooth functioning of the machinery of state. There was no dispute as to policy. Indeed, as I pointed out to Drusus, Sejanus was barely concerned with the formulation of policy, and had never evinced a wish to be saddled with that responsibility. He was content with an executive role. "My forte," he fequently said to me, "is carrying out your policy. I am here to help you by making things run smoothly. I am sorry that Drusus distrusts me, and I wish he could see that he has no occasion to do so." Indeed, Sejanus was so disturbed by his consciousness of my son's ever-growing hostility, and his knowledge of how this affected me, that he more than once offered to resign all his offices and retire into private life. "For the last thing I desire," he assured me, "is to be a cause of friction between you and Drusus, and for that reason it may be better that I remove myself from the scene, since I am convinced that the animosity which Drusus now entertains is ineradicable."