Empire - Saylor Steven - Страница 31

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He stopped abruptly. Mnester was kicking him under the thin coverlet. He turned to see that Mnester was frowning and shaking his head, as if to warn Titus away from the subject.

But it was too late. Messalina sat upright and crossed her arms. Her pretty face was twisted by a vexed expression. “The Secular Games – that was where she made her move!”

“She?” said Titus.

“Agrippina, Claudius’s niece. The bitch!”

Mnester cringed and shifted toward the far side of the couch. “Now you’ve set her off,” he whispered.

“It was during the Troy Pageant,” Messalina said. “Were you there that afternoon in the Circus Maximus, Titus? Did you see?”

“The Troy Pageant? No, I missed that.” Watching patrician boys dressed up as Trojan warriors perform maneuvers on horseback was a pastime he considered more suitable for doting mothers and grandparents.

“Then you missed Agrippina’s triumph. I was there, of course, with Claudius and little Britannicus in the imperial box. Before the pageant commenced I stood with Britannicus and we waved to the crowd. There was hardly any applause at all. What were people thinking, to pay so little honour to the wife, and more especially to the son of the emperor? Eventually I sat down, thoroughly disgusted.

“In the box with us was Agrippina. Claudius invites her to everything. He says it’s his duty as her uncle, since both her parents are dead and Agrippina is a widow again, raising her son alone. After I sat, Claudius called on her to stand, along with that spotty-faced brat of her, little Nero. Numa’s balls! I couldn’t hear myself think over the applause and the cheering. It went on and on. Why? All I could think was that people had been reading that insipid memoir of hers, in which she paints such a puffed-up portrait of herself and all her suffering. Have you read it, Titus?”

“No, I haven’t,” he said. Strictly speaking, this was true, but Titus knew most of the stories in Agrippina’s book because his wife had read it. Chrysanthe had been greatly inspired by the tale of a woman born into privilege but forced by Fate to fend for herself and her young one. At bedtime, after finishing a chapter, she had breathlessly repeated the stirring details for Titus’s edification.

Messalina clearly had a different impression of Agrippina’s story. “You’d think she was Cassandra at the burning of Troy, the way she goes on about her woes. Daughter of the great Germanicus and an irreproachable mother, both struck down in their prime – well, everyone’s parents die sooner or later. Sister of Caligula, who turned against her, confiscated her possessions, and exiled her to the Pontine Islands, where she was forced to dive for sponges to support herself. Of course she doesn’t mention her incest with Caligula, or the fact that she plotted to do away with him. Widowed twice and forced to raise the Divine Augustus’s one and only great-great-grandson all by herself – though the suspicious death of her last husband left her very wealthy indeed. Poor, long-suffering Agrippina! Her campaign to endear herself to the people certainly seems to be working, to judge by their reaction at the Troy Pageant. And once the cheering started, the spotty-faced brat stepped in front of his mother and began turning this way and that, smiling and making gestures to the crowd – what do you actors call it, Mnester, ‘milking’ the audience for applause?”

Mnester grunted, trying to stay out of the conversation.

“Then Agrippina announced that Nero would be participating in the Troy Pageant, despite the fact that he was only nine and the other boys were all older, and down he went to put on his mock armour and take up a wooden sword and mount his pony. More cheering! Though I must admit, for a nine-year-old, he handled himself rather well on horseback.”

“Born to ride,” muttered Mnester.

Messalina snorted. “What a little showman! Precocious, Claudius calls him, as if that were a compliment. Some people find his affectations charming; I think there’s something repulsive about the boy. And about his mother as well. Parading one’s sorrows in public and seeking accolades from the mob is terribly vulgar, don’t you think?”

Her gaze demanded a response. Mnester gave Titus another surreptitious kick, and Titus vigorously nodded his head.

“It’s so obvious what the scheming vixen has in mind,” said Messalina. “She thinks her little Nero should be the next emperor.”

“Surely not,” said Titus.

“Claudius isn’t getting any younger, and Nero will reach his toga day ahead of Britannicus, and the brat is a direct descendant of Augustus. Of course, so was Caligula, and we all know how that ended.”

“Do you really think Agrippina is thinking that far ahead?”

“Of course! The maudlin memoir, the way she grooms Nero and presents him in public, her fawning deference to Claudius, her calculated role as the virtuous widow – oh yes, with Agrippina everything is a means to an end. She and that whelp of hers need to carefully watched.”

Mnester rolled farther away. The coverlet slipped and exposed his meaty buttocks. Messalina abruptly picked up the whip with the ivory handle and gave him a cracking lash across his backside. “What are you smirking at?”

“I wasn’t smirking, Lycisca!” Mnester hid his face in a cushion and his whole body trembled. Titus thought he was quaking with fear until he realized that the actor was trying to hide his laughter.

“You lout!” Messalina gave him another lash.

“Please, Lycisca!” cried Mnester, though to Titus it appeared that he made no effort to avoid the blow, but instead raised his hips and wriggled them a bit. So far, Messalina had spared Titus the whip, and though it was stimulating to see a naked, well-built fellow like Mnester take a thrashing, he did not care to receive one himself, not even from Messalina. Also, he was tired. If this was the prelude to more lovemaking, Titus was not sure he was up for it.

He need not have worried. The conversation had put Messalina in a foul mood, and Mnester’s giggling had cooled her ardour. She told Titus to dress, and when he was again in his trabea, she handed him a little sack of coins.

“What’s this?” he said.

“Your fee. Isn’t it customary to pay an augur for his services?”

“But I performed no augury.”

“Nonetheless, you performed. And your wife will be expecting you to bring home a little something to add to the household coffers, won’t she? Now off with you.”

“Will you want to see me again?” Titus asked.

“Who knows? No, don’t pout! I hate it when men pout. You were a raging stallion, you were an elemental force of nature, you made me melt with ecstasy – honestly. Of course I’ll want to see you again. But now get out!”

Titus left the house on the Esquiline with mixed feelings. An afternoon of debauched lovemaking was the last thing he had expected that day, and to be paid for his services made him feel a bit like a spintria, as people had taken to calling the male prostitutes of the city, adapting the word that Tiberius had coined. Still, his performance must have been superior, for Messalina, who clearly could have any man she wanted, said she would want to see him again.

The autumn day was short. Shadows were gathering; it was the hour for lighting lamps in the streets. Tripping lightly down the slope of the Esquiline and passing through the Subura, Titus passed the alley that led to the shabby tenement where Kaeso lived. What a dreadfully dull existence his brother led, compared to his own eventful life.

Days passed, and then months, and Titus received no further summons from Messalina. He felt a bit piqued that she seemed to have forgotten him, but it was probably for the best. His afternoon as Lycisca’s plaything had been a novel experience, but when he thought of the danger, it took his breath away. Besides, Titus was quite happy with his home life. No man had ever had a more loving wife than his Chrysanthe.

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