Empire - Saylor Steven - Страница 35

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Narcissus announced that a messenger had arrived with news about Messalina.

“Yes, where is she?” said Claudius, his voice slurred by wine. “Why is she not here for d-d-dinner?”

Titus felt a sinking sensation.

Claudius continued to eat. Chewing on a chicken bone, he said, “Well, Narcissus?”

“Messalina is dead, Caesar.”

Claudius sat back, looking baffled. He blinked a few times, gave a twitch of his head, then shrugged. He reached for his cup and drank more wine. He picked up another piece of chicken.

Narcissus waited, ready to be asked for more information. Claudius said nothing. Eventually, Narcissus cleared his throat and recounted the details. “Caesar’s agents surrounded her apartments in the Gardens of Lucullus. Her slaves offered no resistance. She was given a knife and offered the opportunity to take her own life. She announced that she would do so, but she lacked the courage. When she faltered, one of Caesar’s agents took the knife from her and finished the job.”

Messalina, stabbed to death! Titus was stunned by the enormity of it.

Claudius took a bite of chicken and chewed for a long time, staring into the distance.

“Does Caesar have any further orders?” asked Narcissus.

“Orders? Yes, Tell the b-b-boy to bring more wine.” He turned to Titus. “You are a good man, cousin. A man I can trust! Do you know, I think I shall make you a senator. Your grandfather was a senator, wasn’t he? We lost a few senators today and they’ll need to be replaced. How would you like that?” Claudius nodded thoughtfully. “I shall make you a senator on one condition: if I should ever think of m-m-marrying again, you must stop me. You will put it to a vote and have me stripped of my office. If I should ever so much as m-m-mention m-m-marriage, I give you and the other senators permission to kill me on the spot and put an old fool out of his misery!”

After dinner, Claudius bade Titus good night and retired. The same courier who had fetched Titus earlier reappeared to escort him out of the imperial house. They passed through the room where Titus had waited. Something was different.

“The statues,” he said. “Where are they?”

“What statues?” said the courier, looking straight ahead.

“The statues of Messalina and Mnester.”

“I don’t recall any such statues in this room,” said the courier.

“But you told me that story, about how the coins of Caligula had been melted down…”

The courier shrugged and quickened his pace.

Even the pedestals were gone, and the green marble floor beneath had been polished to show no trace. The images of Messalina and Mnester had vanished as if they had never existed.

The weather was mild for mid-December. A crowd of dignitaries and members of the imperial household stood around the perimeter of the Auguratorium on the Palatine. The occasion was the fourteenth birthday of young Nero, the son of Agrippina, grandson of Germanicus, great-greatgrandson of Augustus, and great-nephew and now adopted son of Claudius. Titus Pinarius was present, wearing his trabea rather than his purple-bordered senatorial toga and carrying his lituus. He was to perform the augury for the young man’s toga day, his passage to manhood.

Chrysanthe was among the guests, looking beautiful as always and only slightly uncomfortable in the company of the Roman-born matrons, who would always think of her as an Alexandrian. She devoted most of her attention to their son, Lucius, who at four was deemed by Titus to be old enough and sufficiently well behaved to attend such a ceremony and watch his father at work.

While he waited to be called upon, Titus surveyed the crowd. Many of the women were dazzling in their finery, but none stood out more than Nero’s mother. At thirty-six, Agrippina was still a strikingly attractive woman. Her hair was parted in the middle; long curls streamed like ribbons on either side and were gathered by a purple-and-gold fillet at the back of her head. Her stola was a garment of numerous layers and folds, woven of a fabric of many colours. Her beaming smile showed her prominent canine teeth – a sign of good luck, many believed. Fortune had certainly smiled on Agrippina in recent years.

Despite his vow never to marry again after his humiliation by Messalina, Claudius almost immediately married Agrippina. It seemed the widower felt incomplete without a strong-willed and beautiful woman to manipulate him. Claudius’s choice of a bride had scandalized the city, since marriage between an uncle and a niece was incest. To forestall the fears of the populace that some supernatural calamity might result, Claudius had called on Titus to look for omens and precedents that favoured his marriage to Agrippina, and Titus had obliged. Agrippina was grateful for this service. Titus’s prestigious role at this day’s event was the latest proof of her favour.

Fortune had not always smiled on Agrippina. The untimely deaths of her parents, her humiliating exile under Caligula, the loss of two husbands – she had endured all these trials and emerged triumphant. She had even outwitted the machinations of Messalina – for most people now agreed that it was Agrippina and her son who had been threatened by the jealousy of Messalina, and not the reverse. It was said that Messalina had once sent an assassin to kill Nero in his crib, but the man had been frightened off by a snake in the baby’s bed – actually the skin of a snake, placed there by his clever and vigilant mother. Agrippina had become a stirring exemplar of Roman womanhood. She had survived every setback, and her marriage to her uncle Claudius had made her the most powerful woman in Roma.

Also in attendance was the nine-year-old son of Claudius and Messalina, Britannicus. He was dressed in the old-fashioned long-sleeved tunic still worn by many patrician boys. His hair was long and unkempt. He seemed a bit shy and standoffish, observing the proceedings with a lowered brow and sidelong glances. What sort of fellow would he grow up to be? wondered Titus, trying to imagine a combination of his wildly different parents. What must the boy’s life be like these days, three years after the terrible death of his disgraced mother? Claudius had once been a doting father, but it seemed to Titus that he now neglected the boy. No doubt Britannicus reminded Claudius of Messalina. How did Claudius feel about a son who looked so much like the woman who had made a fool of him, and had been put to death on his orders?

Certainly Agrippina had no love for Britannicus. She had not only persuaded Claudius to adopt Nero, making him first in line of inheritance ahead of Britannicus, but had arranged for Nero to be recognized as an adult a full year earlier than was traditional – a young man’s toga day was usually between his fifteenth and seventeenth years – so that he could begin accumulating the honours and rewards of a public career. This was clearly in service to her agenda of elevating her son, but there was also a sound political argument for advancing Nero as quickly as possible. As long as Claudius had no adult heir, potential rivals might be encouraged to plot against him. And if Claudius should die, an orphaned Britannicus would be highly vulnerable, while Nero was just old enough, especially with his mother behind him, to act as a plausible ruler. Also to his advantage was the fact that Nero was the direct descendant of the Divine Augustus.

Neglected though he might be, young Britannicus was not alone. With him was his constant companion, a boy a year or so older, Titus Flavius Vespasian, son of the general of the same name. Titus had been brought up alongside Britannicus, with the same teachers and athletic instructors. The boy’s bright smile and outgoing personality presented a contract to Britannicus’s withdrawn, almost furtive manner.

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