CHAPTER III

INSTRUMENTA IMPERII

The autumn twilight had by this time faded, but one silver lamp, standing on a slab of softly glowing marble, shed a dim light through the room when the freedman was ushered into it. He was a man of portly presence, and of demeanour amazingly haughty for one who had once bawled ‘Sea-urchins for sale!’ in the Subura, and come over the sea from his native Arcadia with his feet chalked as a common slave. His immense wealth, his influence over the Emperor, and his advocacy of the claims of Agrippina to her uncle’s hand, together with the honours bestowed upon him by the mean adulation of the Senate, had raised him to the pinnacle of his power. Agrippina had stooped to the lowest depths to purchase his adherence, and now there was absolute confidence between them. He was ready to betray the too-indulgent master who had raised him from the dust and heaped upon him gifts and privileges, for which the noblest Consul might have sighed in vain.

Pallas was in a grave mood. The air was full of portents. A tale was on every lip among the common people that a pig had been born with the talons of a hawk. A swarm of bees had settled on the top of the Capitol. The tents and standards of the soldiers had been struck with fire from heaven. In that year a quæstor, an ædile, a tribune, a prætor, and a consul had all died within a few months of each other. Claudius had nominated two consuls, but had only nominated them for a single month. Had he misgivings about his approaching fate? Agrippina was not superstitious, and she listened to these stories of the Greek freedman with the indifference of disdain. But it was far otherwise when he told her that Narcissus had been heard to utter very dangerous speeches. He had said that whether Britannicus or Nero succeeded, he himself was doomed to perish. Britannicus would hate him as the man who had brought about the death of his mother Messalina. Nero would hate him, because he had opposed his adoption, and the marriage of his mother to the Emperor, both which events had been achieved by the rival influence of Pallas. Still Narcissus was faithful to his kind master, and Britannicus was the Emperor’s son. The freedman had been seen to embrace Britannicus; he had spoken of him as the ‘true image of Claudius;’ had stretched forth his hands now to him and now to heaven, and had prayed ‘that the boy might grow speedily to man’s estate, and drive away the enemies of his father, even if he also took vengeance on the slayer of his mother.’

Agrippina listened to this report with anxious disquietude, and Pallas told her further that lately the Emperor had often pressed Britannicus and Octavia to his heart; had spoken of their wrongs; had declared that they should not be ousted from their place in his affections by the crafty and upstart son of such a wretch as Domitius Ahenobarbus, of whom it might be said, as the orator Licinius Crassus said of his ancestor, ‘No wonder his beard was of brass, since his tongue was of iron, and his heart of lead.’ Claudius often repeated himself, and when he saw his son he had several times used the Greek proverb, ὁ τρώσας καὶ ἰάσεται, ‘he who wounded shall also heal you.’

But worse news followed, and Agrippina grasped the side of her couch with an impulse of terror, when, last of all, Pallas told her that, on that very evening, the Emperor, in his cups, had been heard to mutter to some of his intimates ‘that he more than suspected the designs of his wife; and that it had always been his destiny to bear the flagitious conduct of his consorts for a time, but at last to avenge it.’

As she heard these words Agrippina stood up, her arms outstretched, her fine nostril dilated, her whole countenance inflamed with rage and scorn. ‘The dotard!’ she exclaimed, ‘the miserable, drivelling, drunken dotard! He to speak thus of me! Pallas, the hour for delay is over. It is time to act. But,’ she added, ‘Narcissus is still here. He loves his master; he watches over him with sleepless vigilance. I dare attempt nothing while he remains about the Court.’

‘He is crippled with the gout,’ answered Pallas. ‘He suffers excruciating agony. He cannot hold out much longer. I told him that you strongly recommended him to try the sulphur baths of Sinuessa. He is nearly certain to take the hint. In a week or two at the latest he will ask leave of absence, for his life is a torture.’

‘Good!’ whispered the Empress; and then, dropping her voice to a whisper, she hissed into the ear of the freedman, ‘Claudius must not live.’

‘You need not drop your voice, Augusta,’ said Pallas. ‘No slave is near. I placed one of my own attendants in the corridor, and forbade him on pain of death to let anyone approach your chamber.’

‘You ventured to tell him that?’ asked Agrippina, amazed at the freedman’s boldness.

‘Not to tell him that,’ answered Pallas. ‘Do you suppose that I would degrade myself by speaking to one of my own slaves, or even of my own freedmen—I who, as the senate truly says, am descended from Evander and the ancient kings of Arcadia, though I deign to be among Cæsar’s servants? No! a look, a sign, a wave of the hand is sufficient command from me. If anything more is wanted I write it down on my tablets. I rejoice—as I told the senate when they offered me four million sesterces—to serve Cæsar and retain my poverty.’

‘The insolent thrall!’ thought Agrippina; ‘and he says this to me who know that he was one of the common slaves of Antonia, the Emperor’s mother, and still has to conceal under his hair the holes bored in his ears. And he talks of his poverty to me, though I know as well as he does how he has amassed sixty million sesterces by robbery in fourteen years!’ But she instantly concealed the disdainful smile which flitted across her lips, and repeated in a low voice, ‘Claudius must die!’

‘The plan has its perils,’ said the freedman.

‘Not if it remains unknown to the world,’ she replied. ‘And who will dare to reveal it, when they know that to allude to it is death?’

‘If you are the daughter of the beloved Germanicus,’ he said, ‘the Emperor is his brother. The soldiers would never rise against him.’

‘I did not think of the Prætorians,’ said Agrippina. ‘There are other means. In the prison beneath this palace is one who will help me.’

‘Locusta?’ whispered Pallas, with an involuntary shudder. ‘But the Emperor has a prægustator who tastes every dish and every cup.’

‘Yes! The eunuch Halotus,’ answered Agrippina. ‘He is in my pay; he will do my bidding.’

‘But Claudius also has a physician.’

‘Yes! The illustrious Xenophon of Cos,’ answered the Empress, with a meaning smile.

Pallas raised his hands, half in horror, half in admiration. Careless of every moral consideration, he had never dipped his hands in blood. He had lived in the midst of a profoundly corrupt society from his earliest youth. He knew that poisonings were frequent amid the gilded wickedness and hollow misery of the Roman aristocracy. He knew that they had been far from infrequent in the House of Cæsar, and that Eudemus, the physician of Drusus, son of the Emperor Tiberius, had poisoned his lord. Yet before the cool hardihood of Agrippina’s criminality he stood secretly appalled. Would it not have been better for him, after all, to have followed the example of Narcissus, and to have remained faithful to his master? How long would he be necessary to the Empress and her son? And when he ceased to be useful, what would be his fate?

Agrippina read his thoughts in his face, and said, ‘I suppose that Claudius is still lingering over the wine cup. Conduct me back to him. Acerronia, my lady-in-waiting, will follow us.’

‘He has been carried to his own room,’ said Pallas; ‘but if you wish to see him, I will attend you.’

He led the way, and gave the watchword of the night to the Prætorian guards and their officer, Pudens. The room of the Emperor was only across the court, and the slaves and freedmen and pages who kept watch over it made way for the Augusta and the all-powerful freedman.

‘The Emperor still sleeps,’ said the groom of the chamber as they entered.

‘Good,’ answered Agrippina. ‘You may depart. We have business to transact with him, and will await his wakening. Give me the lamp. Acerronia will remain without.’

The slave handed her a golden lamp richly chased, and left the chamber. There on a couch of citron-wood lay the Emperor, overcome, as was generally the case in the evening, with the quantities of strong wine he had drunk. His breathing was deep and stertorous; his thin grey hairs were dishevelled; his purple robe stained, crumpled, and disordered. His mouth was open, his face flushed; the laurel wreath had fallen awry over his forehead, and, in the imbecile expression of intoxication, every trace of dignity and nobleness was obliterated from his features.

They stood and looked at him under the lamp which Agrippina uplifted so that the light might stream upon his face.

‘Sot and dotard!’ she exclaimed, in low tones, but full of scorn and hatred. ‘Did not his own mother, Antonia, call him “a portent of a man”? I am not surprised that my brother Gaius once ordered him to be flung into the Rhone; or that he and his rude guests used to slap him on the face, and pelt him with olives and date-stones when he fell asleep at the table. I have often seen them smear him with grape juice, and draw his stockings over his hands, that he might rub his face with them when he awoke! To think that such a man should be lord of the world, when my radiant Nero, so young, so beautiful, so gifted, might be seated on his throne for all the world to admire and love!’

‘The Emperor has learning,’ said Pallas, looking on him with pity. ‘His natural impulses are all good. He has been a very kind and indulgent master.’

‘He ought never to have been Emperor at all,’ she answered, vehemently. ‘That he is so is the merest accident. We owe no thanks to the Prætorian Gratus, who found him hidden behind a curtain on the day that my brother Gaius was murdered, and pulled him out by the legs: still less thanks to that supple intriguing Jew, Herod Agrippa, who persuaded the wavering senate to salute him Emperor. Why, all his life long he has been a mere joke. Augustus called him “a poor little wretch,” and as a boy he used to be beaten by a common groom.’

‘He has been a kind master,’ said the freedman once more; and as he spoke he sighed.

The Empress turned on him. ‘Will you dare to desert me?’ she said. ‘Do you not know that, at this moment, Narcissus has records and letters in his possession which would hand me over to the fate of Messalina, and you to the fate of the noble C. Silius?’

‘I desert you not,’ he answered, gloomily; ‘I have gone too far. But it is dangerous for us to remain alone any longer. I will retire.’

He bowed low and left the room, but before he went out he turned and said, very hesitatingly, ‘He is safe with you?’

‘Go!’ she answered, in a tone of command. ‘Agrippina does not use the dagger; and there are slaves and soldiers and freedmen at hand, who would come rushing in at the slightest sound.’

She was alone with Claudius, and seeing that it would be many hours before he woke from his heavy slumber, she gently drew from his finger the beryl, engraved with an eagle—the work of Myron—which he wore as his signet ring. Then she called for Acerronia, and, throwing over her face and figure a large veil, bade her show the ring to the centurion Pudens, and tell him to lead them towards the entrance of the Palace prisons, as there was one of the prisoners whom she would see.

Pudens received the order and felt no surprise. He who had anything to do with the Palace knew well that the air of it was tremulous with dark intrigues. He went before them to the outer door of the subterranean cells, and unlocked it. Even within the gate slaves were on guard; but, although no one recognised the veiled figure, a glance at the signet ring sufficed to make them unlock for her the cell in which Locusta was confined.

Agrippina entered alone. By a lamp of earthernware sat the woman who had played her part in so many crimes. She was imprisoned on the charge of having been concerned in various murders, but in those awful times she was too useful to be put to death. The phials and herbs which had been her stock-in-trade were left in her possession.

‘I need,’ said the Empress, in a tone of voice which she hardly took the trouble to disguise, ‘a particular kind of poison: not one to destroy life too suddenly; not one which will involve a lingering illness; but one which will first disturb the intellect, and so bring death at last.’

‘And who is it that thus commands?’ asked Locusta, lifting up to her visitor a face which would have had some traces of beauty but for its hard wickedness. ‘It is not to everyone that I supply poisons. Who knows but what you may be some slave plotting against our lord and master, Claudius? They who use me must pay me, and I must have my warrant.’

‘Is that warrant enough?’ said Agrippina, showing her the signet ring.

‘It is,’ said Locusta, no longer doubtful that her visitor was, as she had from the first suspected, the Empress herself. ‘But what shall be my reward, Aug—’

‘Finish that word,’ said the Empress, ‘and you shall die on the rack to-morrow. Fear not, you shall have reward enough. For the present take this;’ and she flung upon the table a purse full of gold.

Suspiciously yet greedily the prisoner seized it, and opening it with trembling fingers saw how rich was her guerdon. She went to a chest which lay in the corner of the room and, bending over it with the lamp, produced a small box, in which lay some flakes and powder of a pale yellow colour.

‘This,’ she said, ‘will do what you desire. Sprinkle it over any well-cooked dish, and it will not be visible. A few flakes of it will cause first delirium, then death. It has been tested.’

Without a word Agrippina took it, and, slightly waving her hand, glided out of the cell. Acerronia awaited her, and Pudens again went before them towards the apartments of the Empress and her ladies.

CHAPTER IV

THE CRIME

‘Une grande reine, fille, femme, mère de rois si puissants.’—Bossuet, Oraison Funèbre d’Henriette de France.

‘Boletos ... optimi quidem hos cibi, sed immenso exemplo in crimen adductos.’—Pliny, N. H. xxii. 46.

A fortnight had elapsed since the evening which we have described. Claudius, worn out with the heavy cares of state, to which he always devoted a conscientious, if somewhat bewildered, attention, had fallen into ill health, which was increased by his unhappy intemperance. Unwilling at all times to allow himself a holiday, even in his advancing years, he had at last been persuaded to visit Sinuessa, near the mouth of the River Vulturnus, in the hope that its charming climate and healing waters might restore him to his usual strength. He had there enjoyed a few days of quiet, during which his suspicions had been lulled to sleep by the incessant assiduities of Agrippina. His children had accompanied him, and Agrippina had been forced to conceal the furious jealousy with which she witnessed the signs of affection which he began to lavish upon them. She did not dare to delay any longer the terrible crime which she had for some time meditated. She stood on the edge of a precipice. There was peril in every day’s procrastination. What if Pallas, whose scruples she had witnessed, should feel an impulse of repentance—should fling himself at his master’s feet, confess all, and hurry her to execution, as Narcissus had hurried Messalina? The weak mind of Claudius was easily stirred to suspicions. He had already shown marked signs of uneasiness. Halotus, Xenophon, Locusta—they knew all. Could so frightful a secret be kept? Might not any whisper or any accident reveal it? If she would end this harassing uncertainty and reap the glittering reward of crime, there must be no delay.

She had intended to carry out the fatal deed at Sinuessa, but Claudius felt restless; and as a few days of country air had refreshed his health and spirits, he hurried back to Rome on October 13, A.D. 54. She felt that, if she was not prompt, Narcissus, the vigilant guardian of his master, might return, and the opportunity might slip away for ever.

They had scarcely reached the Palace when she bade Acerronia to summon Halotus to her presence as secretly as possible.

The eunuch entered—a wrinkled and evil specimen of humanity, who had grown grey in the household of Claudius.

‘The Emperor,’ she said, ‘is far from well. His appetite needs to be enticed by the most delicate kinds of food. You will see that his tastes are consulted in the supper of this evening.’

‘Madam,’ said the slave, ‘there is nothing of which the noble Claudius is fonder than boletus mushrooms. They are scarce, but a small dish of them has been procured.’

‘Let them be brought here, that I may see them.’

Halotus returned in a few moments, followed by a slave, who set the mushrooms before her on a silver dish, and retired. They were few in number, but one was peculiarly fine.

‘I will consult the physician Xenophon, whether they will suit the Emperor’s health,’ said Agrippina. ‘He is in attendance.’

Passing into an adjoining room, which was empty, she hastily drew from her bosom the little box which Locusta had given her, and sprinkled the yellow flakes and powder among the sporules on the pink inner surface of the mushroom. Then returning she said,

‘Halotus, this dainty must be reserved for the table of the Emperor alone, and I design this mushroom particularly for him. He will be pleased at the care which I have taken to stimulate his appetite. And if I have reason to be satisfied with you, your freedom is secured—your fortune made.’

The eunuch bowed; but as he left the room he thrust his tongue into his cheek, and his wrinkled face bore an ugly smile.

The evening came. The supper party was small, for Claudius still longed for quiet, and had been glad, in the retirement of Sinuessa, to lay aside the superb state of the imperial household. Usually when he was at Rome the hall was crowded with guests; but on this day he had desired that only a few friends should be present. At the sigma, or semicircular table at which he reclined, there were no others except Agrippina, who was next to him, Pallas, Octavia, and Nero. Burrus, the commander of the Prætorian camp, was in attendance, and Seneca, Nero’s tutor; but they were at another sigma, with one or two distinguished senators who had been asked to meet them.

Except Halotus and Pallas, there was not one person in the room who had the least suspicion of the tragedy which was about to be enacted. Yet there fell on all the guests one of those unaccountable spells of silence and depression which are so often the prelude to great calamities. At the lower table, indeed, Burrus tried to enliven the guests with the narrative of scenes which he had witnessed in Germany and Britain in days of active service, and told once more how he had received the wound which disabled his left hand. But to these stories they listened with polite apathy, nor could they be roused from their languor by the studied impromptus of Seneca. At the upper table Nero, startled by a few vague words which his mother had dropped early in the day, was timid and restless. The young Octavia—she was but fourteen years old—was habitually taciturn in the presence of her husband, Nero, who even in these early days had conceived an aversion, which he was not always able to conceal, for the bride who had been forced upon him by his mother’s ambition. Claudius talked but little, for he was intent, as usual, on the pleasures of the table, and all conversation with him soon became impossible, as he drained goblet after goblet of Massic wine. Agrippina alone affected cheerfulness as she congratulated the Emperor on his improving health, and praised the wisdom which had at last induced him to yield to her loving entreaties, and to take a much-needed holiday.

‘And now, Cæsar,’ she said, ‘I have a little surprise for you. There is, I know, nothing which you like better than these rare boleti. They are entirely for ourselves. I shall take some; the rest are for you, especially this—the finest I could procure.’

With her own white and jewelled hand she took from the dish the fatal mushroom, and handed it to her husband. He greedily ate the dainty, and thanked her. Not long after he looked wildly round him, tried in vain to speak, rose from the table, and, staggering, fell back into the arms of the treacherous Halotus.

The unfortunate Emperor was carried out of the triclinium by his attendants. Such an end of the banquet was common enough after he had sat long over the wine, but that he should be removed so suddenly before the supper was half over was an unwonted circumstance.

The slaves had carried him into the adjoining Nymphæum, a room adorned with rare plants, and were splashing his face with the water of the fountain. Xenophon was summoned, and gave orders that he should be at once conveyed to his chamber. The guests caught one last glimpse of his senseless form as the slaves hurriedly carried it back through the dining-hall.

Seneca and Burrus exchanged terrified glances, but no word was spoken until Agrippina whispered to Pallas to dismiss the guests. He rose, and told them that the Emperor had suddenly been taken ill, but that the illness did not seem to be serious. A night’s rest would doubtless set him right. Meanwhile the Empress was naturally anxious, and as she desired to tend her suffering husband, it was better that all strangers should take their farewell.

As they departed, they heard her ordering the preparation of heated cloths and fomentations, as she hurried to the sick room. The Emperor lay gasping and convulsed, sometimes unconscious, sometimes in a delirium of agony; and it was clear that the quantities of wine which he had drunk might tend to dilute the poison, possibly even to counteract its working. Hour after hour passed by, and Claudius still breathed. Xenophon, the treacherous physician, saw the danger. Assuring those present in the chamber of the dying man that quiet was essential to his recovery, he urged the Empress to have the room cleared, and to take upon herself the duties of nurse. His commands were obeyed, and under pretence that he might produce some natural relief by irritating the throat, Xenophon sent for a large feather. The feather of a flamingo was brought, and when the slaves had retired, he smeared it with a rapid and deadly poison. The effect was instant. The swollen form of the Emperor heaved with the spasm of a last struggle, and he lay dead before them.

Not a tear did Agrippina shed, not one sigh broke from the murderess, as her uncle and husband breathed his last.

‘It must not be known that he is dead,’ she whispered. ‘Watch here. I will give out that he has fallen into a refreshing sleep, and will probably awake in his accustomed health. Fear not for your reward; it shall be immense when my Nero reigns. But much has first to be done.’

She hurried to her room, and despatched messengers in all directions, though it was now near midnight. She sent to the Priests, bidding them to offer vows to all the gods for the Emperor’s safety; she ordered the Consuls to convoke the Senate, and gave them secret directions that, while they prayed for Claudius, they should be prepared for all emergencies. Special despatches were sent to Seneca and Burrus. The former was to prepare an address which Nero might, if necessary, pronounce before the Senate; the latter was to repair to the Palace at earliest dawn and await the issue of events.

Meanwhile she gave the strictest orders that the Palace gates should be guarded, and that none should be allowed to enter or to leave unless they could produce written permission. All this was easy for her. The Palace was full of her creatures. Britannicus and Octavia had been gradually deprived of nearly all who were known to be faithful to their interests. They were kept in profound ignorance that death had robbed them of the one natural protector, who loved them with a tenderness which had often been obscured by the bedazed character of his intellect, but which had never been for one moment quenched. All that they learnt from the spies and traitors who were placed about their persons was that the Emperor had been taken suddenly ill, but was already recovering, and was now in a peaceful slumber.

Having taken all these precautions, and secured that no one except Pallas or herself should be admitted during the night into the room where Xenophon kept watch beside the corpse, Agrippina retired to her chamber. One thing alone troubled her. Before she retired she had looked for a moment on the nightly sky, and saw on the far horizon a gleam unknown to her. She called her Greek astrologer and asked him what it was. He paused, and for a moment looked alarmed. ‘It is a comet,’ he said.

‘Is that an omen of disaster?’

The learned slave was too politic to give it that interpretation. ‘It may,’ he said, ‘portend the brilliant inauguration of a new reign.’

She was reassured by the answer, and laid herself down to rest. Though greatly excited by the events of the day, and the immense cares which fell upon her, she slept as sweetly as a child. No pale faces looked in upon her slumber; no shriek rang through her dreams; no fancy troubled her of gibbering spectre or Fury from the abyss. She had given orders that she should be awakened in a few hours, and by the time that the first grey light shuddered in the east she had dressed herself in rich array, and, with a sense of positive exultation, stepped out of her room, calm and perfumed, to achieve that which had been for years the main ambition of her life.

CHAPTER V

THE MOCKERY OF DEATH

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Agrippina had long contrived to secure the absolute devotion of her slaves, clients, and freedmen. In that vast household of at least sixteen hundred persons, all courteously treated and liberally paid, there were many who were ready to go any lengths in support of their patroness. Among them was the freedman Mnester, who knew but little of her crimes, but was enthusiastic in her interests. She made constant use of him on that eventful day.

Among her slaves were some of the Chaldæai and casters of horoscopes, so common in those times, in whom she placed a superstitious confidence. Her first care was to consult them, and she determined to take no overt step until they should announce that the auspicious hour had come. She then hastened to the chamber where Xenophon still kept his watch beside the man whom he had murdered. He kept that watch with perfect indifference. His was a soul entirely cynical and atheistic; greedy of gain only, case-hardened by crime. The bargain between him and the Empress was perfectly understood between them. Enormous wealth would be the price of his silence and success; death would punish his failure.

There was nothing to be seen but the dead form covered from head to foot by a purple coverlet.

She pointed to it. ‘He must still be supposed to be alive,’ she said. ‘The Chaldæans say that the omens are still inauspicious. How are we to keep the secret for some hours longer?’

‘Asclepiades teaches,’ answered the physician, with the scarcely veiled sneer which marked his tone of voice, ‘how good it is that the pains of dying men should be dissipated by comedy and song. The Empress can order some comedians to play in the adjoining chamber. If they cannot avail the divine Claudius, they will at least serve to amuse my humble self, and I have now been in this room for many hours.’

‘Does any one suspect that he is dead?’

‘No, Augusta,’ he answered. ‘To dissipate the too suspicious silence, I have occasionally made curious sounds, at which I am an adept. They will delude any chance listener into the belief that my patient is still alive.’

For a moment her soul was shocked by the suggestion of sending for the mummers. But she saw that it would help to prevent the truth from leaking out. For one instant she lifted the purple robe and looked on the old man of sixty-four, who had thus ended his reign of fourteen years. She dropped it over the features, which, in the majesty of death, had lost all their coarseness and imbecility, and showed the fine lineaments of his ancestors. The moment afterwards she was sorry that she had done it. That dead face haunted all her after life.

Leaving the chamber without a word, she gave orders that, as the Emperor was now awake, and had asked for something to amuse him, some skilled actors of comedy should be sent for to play to him from the adjoining room. They came and did their best, little knowing that their coarse jests and riotous fun did but insult the sacred majesty of death. After an hour or two Xenophon, who had been laughing uproariously, came out, thanked them in the Emperor’s name, and dismissed them.

But Agrippina had hastened to one of the audience rooms, in which the Palace abounded, and sent for Britannicus and Octavia, and for their half-sister Antonia. She embraced them with effusive fondness. It was her special object to detain Britannicus in her presence, lest if but one faithful friend discovered that Claudius was dead, he might summon the adherents of the young prince, and present him to the people as the true heir to the throne. With pretext after pretext she detained him by her side, telling him of the pride and comfort which she felt in his resemblance to the Emperor, calling him a true Cæsar, a true Claudius. Again and again she drew him to her knee; she held him by the hand; she passed her jewelled fingers through his hair; she amused him with the pretence of constant messages to the sick-room of his father. And all the while her soul was half-sick with anxiety, for the Chaldæans still sent to say that the hour was inauspicious, and she did not fail to observe that the boy, as much as he dared to show his feelings, saw through her hypocrisy, resented her caresses. He burned to visit the bedside of his father, and was bitterly conscious that something was going on of which he and his sisters were the special victims. For he was a noble and gifted boy. Something he had of the high bearing of his race, something, too, of the soft beauty of his mother. His tutor, the grammarian Sosibius, had done for him all that had been permitted, and though Britannicus had purposely been kept in the background by the wiles of his stepmother, the teacher had managed to inspire him with liberal culture, and to enrich his memory with some grand passages of verse. Nero was more than three years his senior, and in superficial qualities and graces outshone him; but keen observers whispered that though Britannicus could not sing or paint or drive a chariot like his stepbrother, and was less fascinating in manner and appearance, he would far surpass Nero in all manly and Roman virtues. The heart of Octavia was full of unspeakable misgivings. Motherless, unloved, neglected, she had known no aspect of life except its tragedy, and none had as yet taught her any possible region in which to look for comfort under the burden of the intolerable mystery.

The morning hours passed heavily, and Agrippina was almost worn out by the strain put upon her. In vain she tried to interest Britannicus in the talking-thrush, which had greatly amused him on previous occasions. She went so far as to give him her white nightingale, which was regarded as one of the greatest curiosities in Rome. It had been bought for a large sum of money, and presented to her. Pliny, among his researches in natural history, had never heard of another.5 At another time Britannicus would have been enraptured by so interesting and valuable a gift; but now he saw that it was the object of the Empress simply to detain him and his friends from any interference with her own designs. He thanked her coldly, and declined to rob her of a possession which all Rome desired to see.

At last he grew beyond measure impatient. ‘I am certain,’ he said, ‘that my father is very ill, and that he would wish to see me. Augusta, must I be kept in this room like a child among women? Let me go to the Emperor.’

‘Wait,’ she said, ‘for a little longer, dear Britannicus. You surely would not waken the Emperor from the sleep which may prove to be the saving of his life? It is getting towards noon; you must be hungry. The slaves shall bring us our prandium here.’

It was said to save time, but Britannicus saw that it would be vain to escape. The door was beset with soldiers and with the slaves and freedmen of the Empress. Some great event was evidently at hand. The halls and corridors were full of hurrying footsteps. Outside they heard the clang of armed men, who marched down the Vicus Apollinis, and stopped at the vestibule of the Palace.

Then Pallas entered, and, with a deep obeisance, said, ‘Augusta, I grieve to be the bearer of evil tidings. The Emperor is dead.’

Octavia burst into a storm of weeping at the terrible intelligence, for she had been partially deceived by the protestations of Agrippina. Britannicus sat down and covered his face with his hands. He had always assumed that he would at least share the throne with the youth whom Claudius, at the wearying importunities of his mother, had needlessly adopted, and had repented of having adopted. But he loved his father, who had always been kind to him, and at that dreadful moment no selfish thought intruded on his anguish. After the first burst of sorrow, he got up from his seat, and tenderly clasped the hand of his sister.

‘Octavia,’ he said, ‘we are orphans now—fatherless, motherless, the last of our race. We will be true to each other. Take courage. Be comforted. Antonia,’ he added, gently taking his half-sister by the hand, ‘I will be a loyal brother to you both.’

CHAPTER VI

THE ACCESSION OF NERO

‘Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!’

‘Agrippina terris alterum venenum, sibique ante omnes, Neronem suum dedit.’—Pliny, N. H. xxii. 46.

Agrippina did not attend any longer to the children of Claudius; she threw off the mask. For by this time the sundial on the wall marked the hour of noon, and the Chaldæans were satisfied with the auspices. Her quickened sense of hearing caught the sounds for which she had long been listening. She heard the Palace doors thrown open. She heard the voice of Burrus commanding the soldiers to salute their Emperor. She heard shout on shout, ‘Nero Emperor! Nero Emperor! Long live Nero! Long live the grandson of Germanicus!’

She sprang out into the balcony, and there caught one glimpse of her son. His fair face was flushed with pride and excitement; the sun shone upon his golden hair which flowed down his neck; his slight but well-knit limbs were clothed in the purple of an Emperor. She saw him lean on the arm of the Prætorian Præfect as, surrounded by some of the chief military tribunes, he walked to the guard-house of the cohort which protected the imperial residence.

‘Prætorians,’ said Burrus, in a loud voice, ‘behold your Emperor, Nero Claudius Cæsar.’

‘Nero?’ asked one or two voices. ‘But where is Britannicus?’

They looked round. No one was visible but Nero, and their question was drowned in the cheers of their comrades.

‘Bring out the richest lectica,’ they cried; and it was ready in an instant. Nero was placed in it, and Burrus, springing on his war-horse, and followed by the select cohort of imperial cavalry, rode by his side. The Præfect was in full armour, and his cuirass was enriched with gems and gold. He held his drawn sword in his hand, lifting it again and again to excite the soldiers to louder cheers.

Then followed the very delirium of Agrippina’s triumph. Messenger after messenger entered to tell her that the air was ringing with endless acclamations in honour of her son. The beautiful and happy youth promised to the soldiers the same donative of fifteen sestertia to each man which Claudius had given at his succession, and the guardsmen accepted him with rapture, and hastily swore to him their oaths of allegiance.

Then with gleaming ensigns, and joyous songs, and shouting, and clapping of hands, they bore him in long procession to the Senate House, to obtain the ratification which the Conscript Fathers dared not refuse. At first, indeed, there had been a few shouts, ‘Britannicus! Where is Britannicus? Where is the true son of Claudius?’ And she inwardly made a note of the fact that the centurion Pudens and the knight Julius Densus had been among the number of those who raised the shout. Britannicus, too, had heard the cry, faint as it was by comparison; but when he attempted to escape out of the room, Agrippina imperiously waved him back, and Pallas detained him by the arm. He sat down in despair, and once more covered his face with his hands, while now it was the turn of Octavia to caress and comfort him. But the plot was already accomplished. The few who would have favoured his cause seemed to be swept away by the general stream. The boy had been kept so designedly in the background, that many of the people hardly knew whether he was alive or dead. He felt that he was powerless, and he had heard among the shouts of the soldiers the cry, ‘All hail, Augusta! All hail, the daughter of our Germanicus!’ He resigned himself to his fate, and Agrippina, intent on her own plans, and absorbed in the intensity of her emotions, no longer noticed his presence.

Suddenly, however, he started from his seat, and stood before her. His face was pale as death, but his eyes shone with indignant light.

‘Why am not I, too, proclaimed Emperor?’ he exclaimed. ‘I do not believe that my father meant to rob me of my inheritance. I am his son, not his adopted son. This is a conspiracy. Where is my father’s will? Why is it not taken to the senate, and there recited?’

The Empress was amazed at the sudden outburst. Was this the boy who seemed so meek and so helpless? This must be seen to!

‘Foolish boy,’ she said; ‘you are but a child. You have not yet assumed the manly garb. How can a boy like you bear the burden of the world’s empire? Fear not; your brother Nero will take care of you.’

‘Take care of me!’ repeated Britannicus, indignantly, restraining with difficulty the torrent of wild words which sprang to his lips. ‘It is a conspiracy!’ he cried. ‘You have robbed me of my inheritance to give it to your son Ahenobarbus.’

Agrippina lifted up her arm as if she would have struck him, but Pallas interposed. Firmly, but not ungently, he laid his hand on the young prince’s mouth.

‘Hush,’ he said, ‘ere you do yourself fatal harm. Boy, these questions are not for you or me to settle. They are for the Senate, and the Prætorians, and the Roman people. If the soldiers have elected Nero, and the senators have confirmed their choice, he is your Emperor, and you must obey.’

‘It is useless to resist, my brother,’ said Octavia, sadly. ‘Our father is dead. Narcissus has been sent away. We have none to help us.’

‘None to help you, ungrateful girl!’ said Agrippina. ‘Are not you now the Empress? Have you not the glory of being Nero’s bride?’

Octavia answered not. ‘Our father is dead,’ she said again. ‘May we not go, Augusta, and weep by his bedside?’

‘Go!’ answered Agrippina; ‘and I for my part will see that he is enrolled among the gods, and honoured with a funeral worthy of the House of Cæsar.’ Then, turning to her attendants, she issued her orders.

‘Put a cypress at the door of the Palace. Let the body be dressed in imperial robes, and incense burned in the chamber. See that every preparation is made for a royal funeral, and that the flute-players, the wailing-women, the designatores, with their black lictors, be all in readiness.’

But while Agrippina was giving directions to the archimimus who was to represent the dead Emperor at the funeral, and was examining the waxen masks of his ancestral Claudii, which were to be worn in the procession, the boy and girl were permitted to visit the chamber of the dead. They bent over the corpse of their father, and fondled his cold hands, and let their tears fall on his pale face, and felt something of the bitterness of death in that sudden and shattering bereavement, which changed for ever the complexion of their lives.

Nero, meanwhile, was addressing the Senate amidst enraptured plaudits in the finely turned and epigrammatic phrases of Seneca, which breathed the quintessence of wise government and Stoic magnanimity. He would rule, he said, on the principles which guided Augustus; and the senators seemed as if they would never end their plaudits when to the offer of the title ‘Father of his Country’ he modestly replied, ‘Not till I shall have deserved it.’

Agrippina, after having ordered the details of the funeral procession, finally dismissed her murdered husband from her thoughts, and gave directions that her son, on his return to the Palace, should be received with a fitting welcome. She summoned all the slaves and freed men of that mass of dependants which made of the Palace not a household, but a city. They were marshalled in throngs by their offices and nationalities in the vast hall. They were arrayed in their richest apparel, and were to scatter flowers and garlands under the feet of the new Emperor as he advanced. The multitudes of the lowest and least distinguished slaves were to stand in the farther parts of the hall; next to them the more educated and valuable slaves, and next to them the freedmen. In the inner ring were placed all the most beautiful and accomplished of the pages, their long and perfumed curls falling over their gay apparel, while some who had the sweetest voices were to break out into a chorus of triumphal songs. Then Nero was to be conducted to the bath, and afterwards a sumptuous banquet was to be served to a hundred guests. There was but a short time for these preparations; but the wealth of the Cæsars was unbounded, and their resources inexhaustible, and since the slaves were to be counted by hundreds, and each had his own minute task assigned to him, everything was done as if by magic.

The afternoon was drawing in when new bursts of shouting proclaimed that, through the densely crowded streets, in which every lattice and balcony and roof was now thronged with myriads of spectators, Nero was returning from the Curia to the Palace with his guard of Prætorians.

Walking between the two Consuls, with Burrus and Seneca attending him in white robes, followed by crowds of the greatest Roman nobles, and by the soldiers clashing their arms, singing their rude songs, and exulting in the thought of their promised donative, the young ruler of the world returned. The scene which greeted him when the great gates of the Palace were thrown open was gay beyond description. The atrium glowed in zones of light and many-coloured shadow. The autumnal sunbeams streamed over the gilded chapiters, glancing from lustrous columns of yellow and green and violet-coloured marble, and lighting up the open spaces adorned with shrubs and flowers. The fountains were plashing musically into marble and alabaster basins. Between rows of statues, the work of famed artificers, were crowded the glad and obsequious throngs of the rejoicing house.

Agrippina was seated on a gilded chair of state at the farther end of the hall, her arms resting on the wings of the two sphinxes by which it was supported. She was dressed in the chlamys, woven of cloth of gold, in which Pliny saw her when she had dazzled the spectators as she sat by the side of Claudius in the great festival at the opening of the Emissarium of the Fucine Lake. Beneath this was her rich stola, woven of Tarentine wool and scarlet in colour, but embroidered with pearls. It left bare from the elbow her shapely arms, which were clasped with golden bracelets enriched with large stones of opal and amethyst.

The moment that she caught sight of her son she descended from her seat with proud step, and Nero advanced to meet her. He was bending to kiss her hand, but the impulses of nature overcame the stateliness of Roman etiquette, and for one instant mother and son were locked in each other’s arms in a warm embrace, amid the spontaneous acclamations of the many spectators.

That evening Agrippina had ascended to the giddiest heights of her soaring ambition. Her son was Emperor, and she fancied he would be as clay in her strong hands. Alone of all the great Roman world it would be her unspeakable glory that she was not only the descendant of emperors, but the sister, the wife, and the mother of an Emperor. She was already Augusta and Empress in title, and she meant with almost unimpeded sway to rule the world. And while she thus let loose every winged wish over the flowery fields of hope, and suffered her fancy to embark on a sea of glory, the thought of her husband lying murdered there in an adjoining room did not cast the faintest shadow over her thoughts. She was about to deify him, and to acquire a sort of sacredness herself by becoming his priestess—was not that enough? She sat revolving her immense plans of domination, when Nero joined her, flushed from the banquet, and weary with the excitement of the day. While he was bidding her good night, and they were exchanging eager congratulations on the magnificent success of his commencing rule, the tribune of the Palace guard came to ask the watchword for the night.

Without a moment’s hesitation Nero gave as the watchword, The Best of Mothers.

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But late into the darkness, in the room of death, unnoticed, unasked for, Britannicus and Octavia mingled their sad tears and their low whispers of anguish, beside the rapidly blackening corpse of the father who had been the lord of the world. Yesterday—though his impudent freedmen had for years been selling, plundering, and murdering in his name—two hundred millions of mankind had lifted up their eyes to him as the arbiter of life and death, of happiness and misery. By to-morrow nothing would be left but a handful of ashes in a narrow urn. Of all who had professed to love and to adore him, not one was there to weep for him except these two; for their half-sister, Antonia, had been content merely to see the corpse, and had then retired. No one witnessed their agony of bereavement, their helplessness of sorrow, except the dark-dressed slave who tended the golden censer which filled the death chamber with the fumes of Arabian incense. And for them there was no consolation. The objects of their nominal worship were shadowy and unreal. The gods of the heathen were but idols, of whom the popular legends were base and foolish. Such gods as those had no heart to sympathise, no invisible and tender hand to wipe away their orphan tears.