Agrippina pointed to the door. ‘Leave me. Let no one come in.’
Agrippina kept to her word, except in one small detaiclass="underline" we stayed in Rome a further day to hear the verdict passed against Julia and Seneca. Both were exiled: Seneca, with all his stomach and liver troubles, to Corsica; Julia, that beautiful butterfly, was despatched to Pontia. Messalina showed her little mercy — within weeks the island was visited by Praetorian guards and soon afterwards we heard of Julia’s death.
Agrippina retreated to her villa at Antium with its flowery grottoes and shady colonnaded walks. She returned to her studies, corresponded with friends and entertained. She taught Nero how to swim and fish. She gave up pottery but took an active interest in gardening, in particular the development of certain poisons. She tested and preserved these before developing antidotes. She hired physicians, leeches and apothecaries, who would comment on the properties of certain substances and plants. Agrippina was a keen student. At the same time, she was careful not to be seen as posing a threat to anyone in Rome.
‘It’s not enough,’ she declared one morning, ‘for me to hide here, Parmenon. Messalina must be distracted. She must think I’m safe, comfortable and well away from the court.’ She picked up a hand mirror and studied her olive-skinned face. ‘I’m twenty-six years of age,’ she stated. ‘Do you know, Parmenon, it’s time I married. Oh no, not to a prince of the blood or a victorious general. I have chosen my man: he’s very rich, very witty and will keep me amused.’
The lucky, or unlucky, man, depending on your perspective, was Passienus Crispus, a constant visitor to Agrippina’s villa and a former friend of her brother Caligula. In his heyday, Passienus had been a great orator with a sharp wit. He was also very wealthy, owning property at Tusculum, in Rome and elsewhere. A small, balding man, Passienus’s tart observations on life caused merriment without provoking hostility. An old dowager of Rome once alleged he’d accused her of buying old shoes.
‘I didn’t say you bought them,’ Passienus replied. ‘I said you sold them.’
The remark caused bellows of laughter throughout the city and the dowager dared not show her face for months. Even Tiberius and Caligula met their match with this court jester; they took no offence when Passienus said of them: ‘Never did such a good slave have such a bad master!’
Caligula used to love teasing him. One day he questioned Passenius on the orator’s romantic liaison with his beloved sister Drusilla.
‘Have you slept with her?’ Caligula demanded.
Anybody else would have fainted away. To have said ‘No’ could be taken as an insult to her beauty; to say ‘Yes’ could be construed as treason. Passienus, however, just hitched his toga up and calmly replied, ‘Not yet, your Excellency.’
Caligula hooted with laughter, and pounded Passienus on the back. He kept repeating the remark to himself for days, a constant source of chuckling amusement. Passienus had always been Agrippina’s friend, lending her money, attending her banquets, one of the few men who could genuinely make her laugh. In his role as court jester, I suspect, he had secretly used his influence and wealth to advance Agrippina’s cause in Rome. Messalina would see him as no threat. Agrippina and Passienus were allowed to settle down into quiet, boring nuptial bliss.
Passienus was overwhelmed, flattered to be a kinsman, a member of the imperial family. Agrippina wove her web around him. Once, under the influence of wine, Passienus cheerfully admitted to me that Agrippina was a marvellous lover: energetic and enthusiastic in bed sports. I told him to keep such opinions to himself. He was a likeable, cheerful rogue, thirty years Agrippina’s senior, and he soon settled into his role as her companion and protector. She used him as she used every man. Passienus had a finger in many pies and he had the wealth to finance an army of informers. Nonetheless, Agrippina kept well away from Rome, staying at Antium or travelling north to Tusculum. She never spoke to me of her relationship with Passienus. She was absorbed with Nero as well as listening carefully to whatever news Passienus brought from the city.
Within four years of the marriage, Passienus began to suffer the effects of dropsy. I happened to remind her that her first husband, Domitius, had suffered from the same ailment.
‘It’s quite common,’ Agrippina evenly replied, ‘in men of that age group, of a certain social class. I am doing all I can to help.’
Passienus became a shadow of his former self, more subdued and withdrawn, as if concentrating on a problem to which the solution constantly evaded him. More and more Agrippina took over their affairs. I noticed that Passienus had little love for Nero and the boy responded in kind.
Nero was developing into a sturdy, copper-headed dumpling, with thick lips, a podgy nose and striking blue eyes, which he would constantly screw up as if short-sighted. A clever boy who learnt his lessons quickly, Nero was also a consummate actor. He loved singing or dancing, and composing his own poetry and every visitor to his mother’s household was always entertained by Nero’s childish songs, poems or performance in some play. He was a creditable athlete, graceful at running and swimming, and with no fear of horses. Acting, however, was his great passion — that and his mother. Perhaps their separation in his early years had created an insatiable hunger for her presence. He clung to her and she responded, allowing him to share her bed as protection against his constant nightmares. Even when Passienus joined her, Nero slept on a couch in the same room. One morning I heard Passienus arguing with Agrippina about it — he never protested again.
As Nero grew older, I became more interested in the little monster. I would often find him crouching by Agrippina’s door, listening or peering through the keyhole. The servants and slaves gave him the run of the villa, treating him with fawning adoration. Of course there were also whispers and gossip about their relationship. One maid made the mistake of telling others that she had seen Nero wearing his mother’s clothes. Within a day she disappeared and was never seen again.
Passienus avoided the boy as much as he could. I once heard him refer to Nero as ‘that little horror’ but generally he had the sense to keep such sentiments to himself. I didn’t like Nero’s cloying sweetness, the mock adoration in those chilling blue eyes as he questioned me, particularly about his mother and the activities of Uncle Caligula. I tried to answer as tactfully as possible. Nero had a sharp mind and keen wit, and would pester me until he was satisfied.
Agrippina still used me to send messages into the city.
‘You are nondescript, Parmenon,’ she declared. ‘You can enter rooms and stand silently without being noticed. You are a born spy.’
I baulked at the insult but she threw her arms round my neck and kissed me on the lips. ‘Not my spy,’ she murmured. ‘More my shadow.’
I never knew exactly what I took into Rome, letters hidden away in a flask of wine, coded messages which only the recipient could understand. I would collect the gossip and the scandal, scooping it up like a fisherman would a catch in his net, and bring it all back to Agrippina. I told her how the Lamian Gardens were still haunted by Caligula’s ghost, whilst the same eerie phenomenon had been experienced in the place where he’d been assassinated. Nero overhead this, absorbing every detail avidly. Of course, he questioned me closely later and made me repeat all the ghastly stories.
On one beautiful afternoon at Tusculum, a slave reported that one of the hanging cages in the garden had been forced and the songbird was missing. Usually, a chamberlain or steward would have dealt with such a matter but they were all enjoying a wine-soaked siesta. I decided to take care of the problem myself. I inspected the cage, became intrigued and went deeper into the garden, where I heard a childish voice chanting in the bushes. I quietly moved these apart, to see Nero kneeling inside. His body shielded a small rock, a makeshift altar on which the songbird had been sacrificed. The bird had been slit from throat to crotch, its innards spilt out in a bloody mess. Nero had dipped his fingers into the blood and daubed his face as if he was a priest.