Empire - Saylor Steven - Страница 52

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The song was about the burning of Troy – Troy, most glorious of the ancient cities, more beautiful than Memphis or Tyre, which the Greeks had conquered by deceit and burned to the ground; Troy, from which the warrior Aeneas had fled to Italy and founded the Roman race. Troy had burned; now Roma burned. The song seemed to come from a half-forgotten dream. The melody, slowly strummed upon the lyre, cast an eerie spell.

Titus suddenly realized that it was the voice of Nero he heard. Stepping back and gazing up, Titus saw a figure in purple and gold standing at the parapet of the tower, strumming a lyre and gazing at the city. The young emperor had returned to Roma and found the smoldering ruins of Troy.

Nero reached the end of a verse. The music stopped. There must have been others with him on the parapet, for the silence was followed by quiet applause and voices urging him to sing another verse. Nero obliged. Titus listened, enthralled, but one of the vigiles, his face black with soot, put his hands on his hips and spat on the ground.

“This fire is the most terrible thing to happen to Roma since the Gauls sacked the city,” the man muttered, “and what does the emperor do? He sings a pretty song. Can’t hit a note, can he?”

Titus had no idea what the man was talking about. To him, the song was unspeakably beautiful, strange and mysterious, unbearably sad yet filled with hope. It did not matter that Nero was not a great singer; he had the soul of a great poet. What a contrast Nero presented to Kaeso, who had stared at the flames and grinned like an idiot. Nero responded with a lament that would wring tears from a god.

Gazing up, listening raptly to each word of Nero’s song, transported by each note, Titus clutched the fascinum in his hand, glad to have it back in his possession at last. At that moment he felt that all his ancestors were watching him, just as all the gods were surely watching Nero.

With his wife and son beside him, Titus Pinarius stood before the wax effigies of his ancestors in the vestibule of his house. As he looked from face-to-face and recited each of their names to honour them, Chrysanthe lit small candles and Lucius set one candle in each niche. Were his son’s hands shaking? They were all nervous and excited about the day’s upcoming events.

Titus was thankful that he had taken the wax effigies when he fled the city; unlike the objects the looters had stolen or destroyed, the masks of the ancestors were truly irreplaceable. Returning them to their niches had been the first step in restoring the house to its former glory. Titus had not yet found a skilled artisan to repair the floor mosaics – such artisans were in tremendous demand – but the wall paintings had been meticulously cleaned, the broken statue of Venus had been reassembled and patched and painted so that one could hardly tell it had been damaged, and many of the stolen or destroyed furnishings had been replaced. He had even found an antique folding chair almost identical to the one Cato had owned. In the months since the fire, thanks to a great deal of hard work and at considerable expense, Titus’s household had gradually returned to normal. Many people in Roma had not been so fortunate.

Titus had looked after the images of his ancestors, and they had looked after him; of that he had no doubt. That was one of the reasons he honoured them on this special day, when the emperor was about to pay him and his family a great honour.

Titus wore his senatorial toga with a purple stripe. His son also wore a toga, a garment he was still not used to. His wife was in her finest stola, a gown of beautifully embroidered ocher linen. Her hair was arranged in the style made fashionable by the emperor’s strikingly beautiful young wife, Poppaea Sabina, with multitudes of ringlets framing her face.

The ceremony was concluded. They retired to the garden to await the day’s events. Nothing in the garden was as beautiful as Chrysanthe, thought Lucius, feeling proud, as he often did, of the choice he had made for a bride so many years ago. Nor was anything in the garden as fragrant as Chrysanthe. “You smell of rose petals and milk,” he whispered in her ear.

She smiled. “Credit the emperor’s wife. Poppaea has made it fashionable for the best women in Roma to bathe in milk.”

“And will you become a Jewess, like the empress?” asked Titus, teasing her. It was widely known that Poppaea had shown favour to the Jews in Roma and had regularly received their scholars and holy men. Some claimed she had secretly converted to the religion.

“No more than you have become a Christian,” said his wife, teasing him back. She gestured to the fascinum, which Titus was wearing to mark the special occasion. Titus did not find this jest particularly funny. It seemed to him that Kaeso must have altered the amulet in some way to make it look even more like a cross. Nevertheless, Titus wore the fascinum openly and proudly, refusing to hide it inside his toga.

There was a knock at the door, followed by a flurry of excitement in the house. Even the slaves were excited, and with good cause. It was not every day that the emperor himself came calling.

Hilarion rushed into the garden. “They’re here, Master!”

“Are they coming in?”

“I think not, Master. The man at the door says you’re to come out and join them.”

“Then we mustn’t keep them waiting.” Titus took his wife by the hand and allowed his son to lead the way.

The retinue in the street was even larger than Titus had expected. There were secretaries and scribes, a troop of Praetorians, several senators in togas, and even a colourful group of actors and acrobats. In the middle of the retinue, carried by some of the brawniest slaves Titus had ever seen, was a large litter set on gilded poles and decorated to look like a giant swan. A hand adorned by many rings pulled back a purple curtain. Smiling broadly, Nero made a gesture of welcome. Sitting next to him was the beautiful Poppaea, her blonde hair done up in an elaborate fashion that Titus had never seen before.

Portable steps were produced. Chrysanthe entered the litter first, followed by Titus and Lucius. They settled amid plush cushions across from the emperor and his wife. Titus felt Chrysanthe tremble and he took her hand. Poppaea smiled at this gesture of intimacy and likewise took one of Nero’s bejewelled hands in hers.

“We’re not pressed for time. I thought we might take a little tour of the city on the way to our destination,” said Nero.

“Certainly,” said Titus. “There’s so much construction going on, all over Roma, I can’t keep up with it.” Actually, Titus was well aware of almost every building project in the city, but the tour would be a treat for Chrysanthe and Lucius, and he was enormously flattered by the emperor’s offer to spend time with his family.

Nero smiled. “My great-great-grandfather famously said that he found Roma a city of bricks and left her clad in marble. I found a city of scorched marble but shall leave her covered in gold.”

As they were carried aloft through the city, Nero proudly pointed out the rapid progress that had been made on reconstructing various temples and public structures. The rebuilding of the Circus Maximus was one of the largest projects; it would be some time before it was ready to reopen, but Nero had plans to make it more splendid and beautiful than before. There were also curiosities to be seen. Up on the Palatine, the ancient Hut of Romulus had been spared by the fire, and though most of the oldest parts of the imperial residence had been burned, the laurel trees flanking the original entrance had survived and remain intact.

“Surely that’s an omen, father,” declared Lucius, overcoming his shyness in front of the imperial couple, especially Poppaea, whose beauty could have intimidated any man.

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