A sumptuous supper party was arranged, to which all of the court were invited, including Agrippina and me. The theme was Persian and the rooms and couches were decorated with exquisite Persian tapestries, whilst we were served with delicious dishes from that country. A special soup was brewed for Britannicus to avoid upsetting his delicate stomach, but finding it too hot he returned it and asked for some cold water to be added. The poison must have been added then. In less than a minute, Britannicus lurched off his couch, with his hands clutching at his throat, only to fall lifeless to the floor.
‘Do not trouble yourselves,’ Nero drawled to the guests. ‘My brother Britannicus is subject to fits.’
Two Nubians carried Britannicus’s body from the dining hall and the banquet continued. Agrippina and I managed to slip away and discovered Britannicus’s corpse sprawled on a couch in an adjoining room. Embalmers were already smearing it with creams and cosmetics to hide the livid, dark spots appearing all over the skin. Within hours the body was sheeted, taken out to a makeshift funeral pyre and consumed by flames.
Agrippina returned to her chamber, her face as pale as that of a ghost. She sat at her writing desk, hastily scrawled a note on a wax tablet and told me to send Creperius with it to a house in the Jewish quarter across the Tiber. Once this was done I returned to the chamber.
‘What is this nonsense?’ I demanded. ‘Do you really need to consult a soothsayer to learn what the future holds?’
Agrippina refused to listen. Creperius returned and said that Joah the Israelite would meet her immediately. Agrippina ordered a plain litter to be brought to the side door of her private apartments, and Acerronia and I were ordered to escort her. The bearers, all trusted slaves, took her at a soft-footed run down through the alleyways of the Palatine and across the bridge into the Jewish quarter. Joah’s house was unpretentious, flanked on one side by a cookshop, and on the other by a small warehouse. Joah was tall and lean with a gaunt face, cascading white hair and a moustache and beard of the same colour. He had large, deep-set eyes and the sort of magical presence which appealed to his select clientele of wealthy, Roman women. He opened the door before I even knocked.
‘Tell the Augusta to come in.’ He looked at me closely. ‘And you and her waiting woman. You can be trusted, Parmenon, can’t you?’
I don’t know whether he truly had magical powers or was just shrewd enough to know that I worked closely with Agrippina.
The room he ushered us into was dark and lit by flickering oil lamps. ‘I have the answer to what you are going to ask,’ he declared, closing the door behind us. The magician strode across and placed a hand on Agrippina’s shoulder.
‘Lie down on the floor!’ he urged. ‘Parmenon, Acerronia, stand in the corner. Do not react to what happens.’
Agrippina pulled off her headdress and lay down. Immediately strange shrieks and cries seemed to echo from the earthbeaten floor, and the air became thick with the odour of pungent sharp spices. The light seemed to grow, showing great spider webs that glimmered on the floor and crept over Agrippina’s prostrate body. Only then did I glimpse the altar half way down the room. Joah drew what looked like a white, gleaming circle round Agrippina’s body. The light became as intense as that of the corona of the sun during an eclipse. I had to shield my eyes even as I marvelled at the magician’s trickery. How he created that illusion, I have never understood. He ordered Agrippina to hold a small sheaf of corn in her left hand and, with her right, to count out thirteen grains of corn. As Agrippina obeyed, Joah scooped these up and put them in a small copper cup which he poured into a silver bowl and filled with water.
‘Drink!’ he urged Agrippina.
She later told me that the grains of corn sparkled like diamonds whilst the water seemed to fire her blood. She lay back again, as Joah made signs over her face and the phenomena disappeared. We were just in an ill-lit, dank room with the mother of the Emperor of Rome lying on a dirty floor. Joah helped Agrippina to her feet and kissed her fingers.
‘Well?’ Agrippina demanded.
‘It is finished,’ Joah murmured, stepping back. ‘Another woman will take your place.’
‘Acte?’ Agrippina spat out.
Joah shook his head. ‘No, another woman!’
We left that magician’s house and returned to the Palatine, where Agrippina brooded for days. Joah was either a true prophet or possibly just a very shrewd observer of court affairs. The open opposition, behind which I could detect Seneca’s hand, began with murmurs and whispers. Court cases were begun against her and the Emperor railed that his palace was becoming a meeting place for her litigants. He visited his mother less and less and eventually it was tactfully suggested that Agrippina should leave the palace and move to a nearby house. She had no choice but to obey. Although she was allowed to take her possessions, the guards were withdrawn: she was no longer a member of the imperial circle.
Nero seemed intent on demonstrating to his mother the depths of his decadence. He organised an elaborate, mock naval engagement on an artificial lake of salt water but the display got out of hand and many of the sailors were killed: Nero declared himself disgusted with such bloodshed. He next staged a ballet of the Minotaur legend with an actor disguised as a bull actually mounting another playing the role of Pasiphaë. The crowd were treated to the sight of the bull copulating with the hind quarters of a hollow heifer. At night Nero, disguised in a cap or a wig, prowled the streets and the taverns looking for mischief. Occasionally he’d visit the theatre in a sedan chair to watch the quarrels amongst the pantomime actors, joining in when they came to blows and fought it out with stones and broken benches. His feasts started at noon and would last till dawn, with an occasional break for swimming in warm baths or, if it was summer, snow-cooled waters. On one occasion he floated down the Tiber to Ostia and arranged for a row of temporary brothels to be erected along the shore in which married women, pretending to be inn-keepers, solicited him for custom. He never wore the same clothes twice and would stake thousands of gold pieces on the throw of a dice. He always insisted on being accompanied by a lavishly garbed retinue, and even the mules of his pack train were shod with silver.
Agrippina tried to hide herself away from all this but Nero kept up the insults. He would send her mushrooms, calling them ‘the Food of Gods and Goats’ and taunted her by granting Locusta a house in Rome as well as country estates. He despatched lawyers and their clerks to stand under her window, disturbing her with jeers and cat-calls. Mysterious gifts of food arrived, some of them blatantly poisoned.
I tired of this nonsense and opened my treasure chests to hire bodyguards, who drove away the litigants and ensured that any gifts brought to the house were immediately destroyed. Agrippina’s hair began to turn grey, and her face became gaunt as she lost weight. Nero had perfected his sadistic teasing of her. He would visit Agrippina in a profuse show of solicitude and concern, and build up her hopes, as he sat at her feet, wide-eyed, listening to her advice. Then he would jump to his feet, crowing with laughter, and leave, mimicking what she had said.
Agrippina, now full of guilt over Britannicus’s death, also tried to comfort the young Octavia, who was in a parlous state: her face was ashen and, in spite of her youth, she was losing clumps of hair from worry. Terrified of what had happened to Britannicus, she refused to leave her chamber, and would fret herself sick if her nurse, an old family retainer, left her sight.