‘I thank you,’ she lisped. ‘For the food, the wine, the company.’ She waved her hand airily in the direction of the musicians. ‘And I do admire your knowledge of Roman history.’ The smile faded from her lips. ‘If it’s true,’ she continued, ‘that Claudius is descended from Aeneas of Troy and if my midwives are correct, it would seem that Aeneas is going to have another descendant. Doesn’t that please you, Agrippina?’
‘I’m ecstatic for you,’ my mistress cooed. ‘Please accept my sincere congratulations. I can assure you,’ Agrippina popped a grape in her mouth, ‘both you and your children are never far from my thoughts.’
‘And you and yours,’ Messalina retorted, ‘are never out of mine.’
On such a note the banquet ended. Claudius, drunkenly murmuring about the Auguries, was helped to his litter. Agrippina and Messalina kissed, looking more like gladiators saluting each other in the arena, and the imperial party left in a blare of trumpets and a line of spluttering torches. Agrippina clapped her hands and pronounced herself satisfied.
‘Be careful,’ I warned.
‘Oh, I’m going to be, Parmenon,’ she whispered. ‘I am going to be very, very careful. I sincerely hope Messalina is as well. Now, was the music appropriate? Do you think Claudius was impressed by my knowledge of Roman history?’
‘Rome has no finer actress,’ I applauded.
She slapped me on the hand. ‘Well, they’ve gone,’ she continued, ‘and I’ve got business to do. It’s going to be a busy night for us, Parmenon.’
She went out, and when she returned, two burly, shadowy figures entered behind her. My heart skipped a beat: their outlines were familiar. I glimpsed thick hair falling down to the shoulders and bearded faces. Castor and Pollux stepped into the pool of torchlight.
‘By all the Gods!’ I exclaimed.
Both Germans glanced at me, those icy-blue eyes studying my face carefully.
‘You’ve got nothing to fear,’ Agrippina assured me. ‘These men took an oath of allegiance to my brother, and now he’s dead, they owe it to me.’
Agrippina stepped forward and looked at each from head to toe. They were now dressed in simple tunics, no longer the red and white of the Emperor’s personal guard. Silver torcs circled their necks, copper bracelets were round their wrists. They still looked very dangerous in their marching boots, with broad daggers hanging from the belts across their shoulders.
‘They have taken an oath of allegiance,’ Agrippina declared, ‘and we have shared bread and salt. They are my shadows, protection for me and my son.’
Chapter 11
‘He goes along the shadowy path from which, they say, no one returns’
Agrippina made the two Germans take a similar oath of loyalty to myself, a macabre ceremony carried out by torch and candlelight. The two Germans ate bread and salt and swore their loyalty by earth, sea and sky. When this makeshift ceremony was over, Agrippina ordered me to follow her down into the cellars of the house; a place I seldom visited, with its warren of galleries and passageways. Agrippina led us to a heavy reinforced door at the end of a corridor. Castor opened it and stepped inside. I sensed someone else was there; there was a moan, a clink of chain. Torches were lit and I gazed upon Progeones, manacled to the wall. Agrippina’s torturers had taken his eyes out, leaving nothing but black, bloody sockets.
‘Here he is,’ Agrippina mocked. ‘The man who carried Caligula’s execution list and had the temerity to betray me.’ She leaned closer and whispered in the man’s battered ear. ‘Well, Progeones, do you want to die?’
He groaned and nodded. He didn’t know who I was, having lost all sense of reality. A man in such pain looks forward only to death.
Agrippina studied his face once more then left. She never mentioned him again but I discovered later that the Germans took him out into the countryside and buried him alive.
The horrors of that night were not yet over. Agrippina had the rest of her retinue summoned. We shared a litter and, preceded by torch-bearers, were taken along winding roads and alleyways to the Lamian Gardens on the Esquiline. It was a haunting, forbidding place, bathed only in the light of a pale moon. Agrippina didn’t say anything as she led us across the lawns to the edge of a secluded cypress grove. Here, the Germans, who were usually frightened of nothing, refused to go any further. Their fear and panic spread to the rest of the retinue. Agrippina berated them but they just stared back and refused to take a step further. She snatched a torch, cursed in exasperation and led me on.
The glade was circular, as if man-made, fringed by the dark cypress trees, totally deserted except for a few rocks piled in the middle. Agrippina paused at these. I do not have a fanciful imagination but the longer I stood there, the heavier weighed the silence: oppressive, no sound at all, no night bird, no rustling in the grass, not even the slightest breeze stirred those trees. It was as if we were studying a mural or a painting. Agrippina was pale-faced, her hand shaking so much I had to take the torch. I followed her gaze. A mist, or what looked like a mist, snaked out from the trees, creeping across the grass. When it reached the rocks it began to rise. I experienced a nameless terror, a panic as if someone was quietly menacing me with unseen horrors. Agrippina began to speak. She was invoking protection against the powers of darkness. I pressed her shoulder, and found it ice-cold. A sound came from the mist, like a rustling on the breeze, before a harsh guttural voice spoke.
May the Gods be my witness: my heart chilled, my bowels and my stomach curdled with fear. Caligula! The dead Emperor’s ghost had risen from his grave. He was standing behind me whispering in my ear, those same awful sounds he had made when talking to himself. The glade assumed a horror all of its own. A shadow seemed to race across yet there was little light from the moon, and our torches spluttered weakly. A place of hideous terror.
‘This is Caligula’s grave, isn’t it?’ I asked.
‘It is,’ Agrippina answered. ‘The stories are all over Rome, of how this place is haunted by demons.’ She glanced at me, eyes beseeching. ‘He comes to me, Parmenon, in the dark watches of the night. I see his blood-spattered face and he begs me for burial.’ She paused. ‘I have tried to arrange it but no one will help me.’
I summoned my courage and did what she asked. Hoes and mattocks lay about, dropped by slaves who’d attempted the task only to flee. I removed the rocks and dug at the soft soil beneath. I soon disinterred the corpse, which was wrapped in soiled, dirty sheets. Partly cremated, the fire had at least cleansed and purified the remains. The face was indistinct, obliterated by dark scorch marks, although it was easy to recognise the shape of the head and that monstrous tuft of hair on the nape of the neck which had not been touched. Agrippina’s bodyguard recovered their courage and, urged on, they collected dry kindling. I hardly looked at what I carried but laid it on the ground and helped the others build the makeshift funeral pyre, before placing the corpse on top. Agrippina murmured a few prayers and coated both cadaver and wood with the contents of an amphora of oil. A torch was brought and then all that remained of Caligula, friend of the Gods, was consumed by fire.
Agrippina never mentioned her brother’s funeral again. She returned to our house and continued the role of the noble recluse. She settled down to the life of a peace-loving matron, totally devoted to her son, ever ready to entertain the Emperor with lectures, masques and declamations, most of them connected with Rome’s history. She and Messalina watched each other like sparring leopards. If the Emperor couldn’t come, Agrippina entertained his freedmen, Narcissus and Pallas, powerful officials in charge of the treasury, the courts and access to the Emperor.
I accompanied her everywhere. Agrippina never referred to the Emperor, the court or contemporary politics, even when Claudius began the usual purge of the Senate and settled grudges with those who had insulted and belittled him over the years.