‘Don’t you realise?’ he shrieked. ‘I could have all your heads with one cut!’
No one was spared. He had Caesonia, his new wife, paraded naked before guests, accusing them of treason if they looked, and demanding whether his wife disgusted them if they turned away.
By the time the summer heat reached Rome, Caligula was tired of the city. He’d grown particularly concerned by a prophecy given to Tiberius that Caligula had no more chance of becoming Emperor than of riding over the Gulf of Naples on horseback. Caligula was determined to prove this wrong. He marched his troops down to the bay and ordered his engineers to build a bridge more than three miles long from Puteoli to Baiae. Merchant ships were anchored together in a double line and a road, modelled on the Appian Way, built across them. So many ships were commandeered that the corn imports from Egypt suffered. Caligula didn’t care. He arranged for wayside taverns to be built on this makeshift road, together with resting places, even running water was supplied.
Caligula proudly proclaimed that even the God Neptune was frightened of him. The bridge was finished and Caligula had decided it was time to prove the prophecy wrong.
‘You are coming with me, sister!’ he yelled at the banquet held the night before. ‘And you, Parmenon. You’re my lucky mascot, Parmenon. Do you know that?’ His cadaverous face broke into a wolfish grin. ‘I have met him, you know,’ he whispered to me, filling my cup to the brim so the wine splashed out over my hands.
‘Who, Excellency?’ I replied.
‘Tiberius,’ he whispered. ‘He comes to my bedchamber, drenched in blood. What a hideous sight!’
‘Your Excellency, he didn’t die of wounds.’
Caligula grinned, winked and tapped the side of his nose. ‘You didn’t see what I did to his corpse afterwards,’ he replied. ‘I did enjoy myself.’
And then he turned away to bestow slobbering kisses on Caesonia. Agrippina, on the couch before me, watched this red-haired, florid-faced woman intently. My mistress reminded me of a cobra about to strike. Once we were away from the banquet she turned to me.
‘The bitch is pregnant!’ she murmured. ‘It’s time we acted!’
The following day Agrippina and I joined Caligula in a splendid chariot. The Emperor wore the breast-plate of Alexander the Great, ransacked from the Conqueror’s tomb in Alexandria. He also insisted on wearing full armour, a purple cloak trimmed with gold and adorned with jewels from India, as well as a crown of oak leaves. He then made sacrifice to Neptune and rode across his makeshift road. Backwards and forwards we went, both that day and the next, until I thought I would drop. Caligula rewarded his soldiers and invited all the onlookers onto the bridge.
The celebrations became frenetic. Many became so drunk and incapable, they fell off: corpses were washed up on the sands for weeks afterwards. Agrippina was furious, not so much with her brother’s madness, more that he might have a possible heir.
When we returned to Rome, she made a decision.
‘Caligula is to go to Germany. We must make sure he never arrives there.’ She took a bracelet off her wrist. ‘Give that to Lepidus. Tell him the die is cast!’
Chapter 9
‘The smoke and wealth and noise of Rome’
Mevania is a beauty spot a hundred miles north of Rome. Agrippina chose it as the gathering place for her fellow conspirators. A lovely setting to plot mayhem and bloodshed. The villa was cool with well-watered lawns, enclosed gardens, peristyle-shaded walks. It was some distance from the road, and Agrippina had it carefully guarded with all approaches watched. Despite my protests, the conspirators were invited and arrived one by one. Progeones, of course. Lepidus with his long head and shock of black dyed hair: a born conspirator with his twisted smile and bitter, cynical eyes. His weak, furrowed face mirrored unresolved grievances and spite. Then came a brilliant orator, a small, dapper man with flickering eyes and a surprisingly deep voice, dumpy legs and a chest like a barrel. I had heard him speak in the courts: he was brilliant. Agrippina planned to use him to turn the Senate.
Uncle Claudius should have arrived but failed to do so. Instead his representative Seneca made his first appearance in my life. Seneca, a Spaniard, looked every inch the Roman patrician and philosopher. He was of medium height and well built, with a strong, broad face, aquiline nose, and snow-white hair carefully combed forward. Seneca looked like a pompous Platonist except for the shrewd cast to his mouth and those deep-set eyes, which viewed the world with cynical amusement. Seneca had no doubts about the rightness of Agrippina’s cause. He reminded us all of Arrentius’s last words, only this time he recast them: ‘If life with Tiberius was bad enough, life with Caligula has been pure hell!’
Admittedly I was most uneasy. If you are going to form a conspiracy you must trust everyone involved. I knew little about these plotters. Time and again I broached the matter with Agrippina, but she acted as if she was possessed. She wasn’t so concerned about Caligula, more with the child that Caesonia was expecting. One evening, at the end of December, all was ready. The conspirators, or their leaders, gathered in Agrippina’s bedroom, a place of dark damascene cloths, jewelled cups, gold and silver statuettes, expensive furniture of oak, maple and terebinth, ivory-footed couches, stools and chairs made of tortoiseshell. Her large bed dominated the room. It was carved out of rare wood which reflected in its undulating grain a thousand different shades of colour, like that of the great peacock feathers adorning the wall above it.
Her son was not there. She had left him with trusted nurses in her house on the Via Sacre. We discussed how and when Caligula should die. Agrippina finally made a decision.
‘Rome would be too dangerous,’ she reasoned. ‘And when Caligula reaches Germany, he’ll be too well protected. I’ve invited him to visit me. We must do it here!’
‘By poison?’ Seneca asked.
Agrippina disagreed. She opened a leather bag and emptied three silver-embossed daggers out on the table.
‘It will be done publicly enough,’ she continued. ‘And I will take responsibility.’
Agrippina had assumed the role of the democrat eager to save the republic from a tyrant. She laughed as if aware of her theatricality and looked at us from under dark, arched eyebrows.
‘Who will strike the blow?’
‘I will not,’ I replied, getting to my feet. ‘Nor will I take the oath.’
‘Why not?’ Agrippina asked.
I left and walked into the coolness of the garden. The murmur of voices rose from behind me, the sound of a door being firmly closed. I was in a sulk. I hoped Agrippina would have followed me out but I was left to kick my heels.
At least an hour passed before she joined me. ‘The others claim you can’t be trusted,’ she said, sitting down beside me.
‘Well, say that I don’t trust them.’
‘What do you mean?’
Agrippina slipped her arm through mine and pulled herself closer. I smelt her delicious perfume, or was it a soap she used after bathing? Light, fragrant but still cloying to the nostrils.
‘Oh, I trust them, I suppose,’ I confessed. ‘But I don’t trust Caligula. He let you come here. He may be mad as the moon but he must suspect: someone in this villa is his spy.’
Agrippina refused to agree. Two days later Caligula arrived in a gorgeously decorated chariot pulled by four beautiful bays, their manes starred with special gems, breast-plates covered in sacred amulets. He had changed his role, now he saw himself as Charioteer of the Gods. Caligula himself stood upright like a victor about to prepare to receive the palm, helmet on his head, whip in hand, leggings of gold and red covering calf and thigh.