‘Fool!’ she whispered to me. ‘But most men are fools, aren’t they, Parmenon? They think with their balls and lack all patience.’
She turned away, joining the plaudits for Sejanus. I looked down at her feet. The scroll she’d tossed there had disappeared.
After the Games I followed her back to the Domus Livia on the Palatine. The house had once belonged to Augustus’s wife but she’d now died and been turned into a God. Well, not exactly, as her son Tiberius was reluctant to grant her the honour, but the people considered her as such. They regarded Livia as the model of chastity. I suppose they were right, for every other woman in her family had taken lovers with the same greed and gusto as a starving man snatches bread. The Domus was supposed to be a palace, but Tiberius, or rather Sejanus, had let it fall into disrepair. Steps were chipped, the paintwork was flakey, the baths were dusty and dirty, the water system cracked and there was a general shortage of money shown by the empty oil lamps, faded cushions, stained couches, and tables and chairs which rocked when you touched them.
Agrippina had a chamber on the first floor overlooking a dusty courtyard. I was invited there as soon as she returned. She lay on a couch beneath the window, leaning against the headrest, staring up at the ceiling, her sandals and shawl tossed on the floor. She tapped the side of the couch.
‘Come here, Parmenon.’
I stared. Yesterday I had been wandering the narrow lanes of Rome, and now a member of the imperial family was asking me to sit on the edge of her couch.
‘Come on!’ she urged. ‘Sit here! I won’t bite you.’ She grinned mischievously. ‘Yet!’
I took a step forward.
‘No, first open the door, quickly! See if anyone’s in the corridor outside.’
I obeyed but the gallery was empty. Dust motes danced in the pale afternoon sun which streamed through one of the high windows. I closed the door.
‘Again!’ Agrippina whispered. ‘Open the door quietly and look down! Do it quickly, quietly!’
I obeyed but still saw no one there. I closed the door and she beckoned me over. I sat on the edge of the couch and stared down at her. She looked even more beautifuclass="underline" her eyes had turned a dark blue, her skin had the sheen of porcelain, her lips seemed fuller and redder. I wondered what it would be like to kiss her.
‘If Livia was still alive,’ she murmured, pulling herself up and resting on her elbow, ‘and she walked through that door, you’d be strangled and I’d be off to exile. You’re uncomfortable, aren’t you? You are almost sitting with your back to me, having to twist your neck round. Do you know who taught me that? Livia! She had a genius for making people feel uncomfortable: she taught me a lot more as well.’ She gently pushed me off the couch. ‘Kneel down.’
She sat on the edge of the couch, and I knelt on the floor before her. I could have refused, I was a free-born Roman citizen, but I was fascinated. I had never expected this to happen. Agrippina clasped her hands before her.
‘You are Parmenon,’ she began. ‘And you are related very slightly, may the Gods be thanked, to that human spider, that vile viper, the Prefect Aelius Sejanus. He’s a very, very dangerous man, Sejanus. Our Emperor’s dark shadow! A man of infinite ambition. You know he wants to be Emperor? Oh yes! He has pretensions enough. After all, if the line of Caesar can produce an emperor why not that of Sejanus?’
‘Yes, but-’ I protested.
‘But, but what?’ she mimicked. ‘Who’s in the way! Livia’s been dead two years. My father twelve!’
‘Your brothers?’
‘Drusus is in prison. He’s been lowered into a pit called the Sepulchre. Sejanus arranged that. They are going to starve him to death. And Mother? You are going to ask about my mother, aren’t you?’ she continued. ‘And my other brother Nero. Well, I’ll tell you where they are. Nero’s in Pontia and Mother’s on Pandateria, a little island. They say she’s gone mad, and they had to restrain her so forcibly she lost an eye. Can you imagine that, Parmenon? The kinswoman of Caesar Augustus, with her eye knocked out by a centurion, being force-fed by sweaty ex-gladiators, and roaming the rocks like a mountain goat?’
‘What about young Gaius?’ I replied.
‘Oh, you mean “Little Boots”. Well, he’s with the old fox in Capri. Only the Gods know what’s happening to him. Anyway!’ She moved a lock of hair away from her forehead. ‘I’ve told you enough. You can now trot back to Sejanus and report all the juicy bits.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘Go on!’
I remained kneeling.
‘Go on!’ she repeated.
‘If I do, you die!’
‘Aye, Parmenon, and so do you.’ She ruffled my hair with her fingers. ‘We are both trapped, aren’t we? You go and tell Sejanus’s minions what I have said and I’ll join my mother, or brother, on some lonely island.’ She pointed to the floor. ‘Or my other brother Drusus in the cells below. As for you, Parmenon, as time passes Sejanus will start to wonder. Why should young Agrippina open her heart to a stranger? Can this Parmenon be truly trusted?’
I strained my ears and hoped the gallery outside was empty. This remarkable young woman had trapped me.
‘Do you know why I chose to sit here, Parmenon? Because that door is thick and there are no ledges outside this window. I’ve also checked the walls and floor carefully. No spy-holes, no little apertures for the ear. So, what are you going to do, Parmenon? Choose life or death?’
‘I am. .’
‘What are you going to say, Parmenon?’ she mocked. ‘That you are only a servant, a scribe? You are only a flea on Sejanus’s table.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. I am taking a gamble. I watched you at the amphitheatre. You don’t like bloodshed, Parmenon.’
‘I always think of my own skin.’
‘No, Parmenon, somewhere you’ve got a soul and a heart. I rather like you, you don’t act like an informer or a spy. So, let me draw you deeper into the net. We haven’t got much time. At the moment everybody’s drunk after the Games — nothing like a little blood is there, Parmenon, to whet the thirst and stir the cock — and Sejanus’s spies will be slaking themselves before they remember their duty. That’s their great mistake: blood blinds them. Such is Rome under Tiberius. Have you heard the poem, Parmenon?’ She closed her eyes.
‘“Tiberius is not thirsty for neat wine. What warms him up is a tastier cup, The blood of murdered men”.’
I shivered. Agrippina was muttering treason. Both of us could be handed over to the executioners to be strangled, our corpses tossed down the Steps of Mourning before being thrown into the Tiber.
‘He’s mad,’ Agrippina continued. ‘Tiberius is mad; either that, or possessed by a demon. Perhaps both. Do you know what my father told me, Parmenon? When Tiberius was a general, he used to study his maps in his tent the night before a battle, and suddenly the lamps around him would abruptly go out.’ She made me jump as she snapped her fingers. ‘Extinguished just like that! Tiberius always took it as a sign that his demon was nearby and he’d be lucky in the coming fight.’