‘What do you think of Anicetus’s plan?’ he whispered. ‘Come on, Parmenon, tell him what’s wrong with it. You might win your life.’
‘If you kill me,’ I declared, my mind suddenly sharp and keen. I needed to live — for revenge. ‘If you kill me,’ I repeated, ‘and take my head back to Rome, the people will laugh, and the Senate will mock.’
‘Good!’ Nero murmured. He tweaked my nose playfully.
Anicetus tried to object but Nero held up his hand. ‘Go on, Parmenon,’ he urged. ‘Why will they laugh?’
‘They’ll say it wasn’t much of a conspiracy, Your Excellency.’ I replied. ‘Just one woman living in exile and her manservant. You can scarcely call my head that of a Parthian king or the commander of one of your legions on the Rhine.’
‘Very good!’ Nero wagged a finger in my face. ‘You see, Parmenon.’
I tried not to flinch at the stale wine on his breath.
‘You’ve been around for some time, haven’t you? You’ve danced with Tiberius, Uncle Claudius, Uncle Caligula, not to mention Sejanus and Macro.’ His face suddenly turned ugly. ‘If we are going to have a plot,’ he shouted at Anicetus. ‘Then it has to be a proper plot! Gods!’ He threw his hand up dramatically. ‘Can you imagine what they’d say?’ He mimicked Seneca’s voice. ‘And the lieutenant in this conspiracy was Parmenon! Who’s that, everyone will ask.’
Nero walked up and down like an actor on the stage. If Caligula had been mad, Nero was truly insane. He had built his own reality. To him everything was an act. I am sure he had forgotten about his mother’s corpse stiffening in her own blood.
‘And if we took you back to Rome?’ He came back and stood before me.
‘I wouldn’t confess,’ I replied. ‘Tigellinus can play with my ears, my tongue, my balls or the soles of my feet.’
Nero threw his head back and laughed.
‘Precisely! You see, Anicetus, the lesson you have learnt.’ He turned back and tapped me on the cheek. ‘What is that, Parmenon?’
‘Say as little as possible, Excellency.’
‘Say as little as possible,’ Nero repeated dreamily. ‘Cut his bonds!’ he ordered.
Anicetus reluctantly agreed. Nero grasped me by the shoulder and took me out into the courtyard.
‘I am giving you your life, Parmenon. Do you remember that day in the garden long ago when I was sacrificing the bird to Caligula? You never did tell Mother, did you? See how your Emperor rewards you?’ He pushed me away and stood back. ‘And you’re my link with Mother. I can’t slice through the umbilical cord completely. You’ll say as little as possible, won’t you?’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘Of course you will, because you’re like me, Parmenon, aren’t you?’ He drew closer. ‘You were in the audience at the beginning of this play and you want to see it through to the end, don’t you?’
He turned and talked as if into the darkness, chattering like a child. I suppose I could have killed him then, but I could think of nothing but Agrippina’s corpse.
‘You take care of her, Parmenon,’ Nero declared as if he could read my mind. ‘You take care of “the best of mothers”.’
He walked to the fountain and washed his hands again. He came back and dried them on my tunic, kissed me on each cheek as if I were a favourite uncle, and walked off into the darkness.
The villa fell silent. Nero, his minions, the marines and the Praetorians departed but I knew spies had been left to watch and see what might happen. I picked up Agrippina’s corpse as gently as a mother would cradle a child. Despite the blows to her head and the awful rent to her stomach, her face was peaceful and composed, although already the limbs were cold and stiffening. I feared further degradation, the monster changing his mind and coming back to take her head. Nero was insane: those who are both evil and mad have no sense of what is real. They live in a world of their own dreams and phantasms. Did I feel grief? Well, of course I did! An eerie grief, a profound, enduring sense of loss. My world had died with Agrippina. I stared into her face, kissed the half-open lips and took her out into the courtyard. I laid her on the wet flagstones and went back into the house, to which some of the braver servants and slaves had returned. Wide-eyed, with white, haggard faces, they moved like ghosts, helping me to collect kindling. I took Agrippina’s favourite couch, which was covered in purple and a cloth of the same colour edged in gold. I laid the corpse on it, climbing up the kindling to look once more on her face. I had two coins bearing her imprint, which I used to close her staring eyes. I brushed her hair the way she liked it so that it lay on either side of her face, not piled up like some Roman matron. Wild flowers she’d collected and pressed were placed in her hand. The villa was ransacked for her favourite ornaments and some of the pots she’d made in the kiln.
I stacked all these round the corpse. I said a prayer to some unknown God, to the lightening sky or the breeze. I sprinkled incense and poured oil, and then I covered her face and climbed down. With a torch in one hand and a sword in the other, watched by slaves, some of whom may well have been in the monster’s pay, I saluted and hailed her name: ‘Agrippina, daughter of Germanicus, Imperatrix and Augusta!’ I lit the funeral pyre. The kindling roared, as the flames leapt up to the sky. The shrouded form disappeared in a sheet of blood-red fire and billowing smoke. I do not know how long I stood there watching, as the flames died and a light rain fell. I was aware of dawn, the sun rising, but still I refused to leave. I stood there until late afternoon. One of the servants brought me wine and something to eat.
‘Go on!’ she urged. ‘You must keep up your strength.’
A Praetorian came galloping through the gates, young and sharp-featured under the ornate plumed helmet. He paused, his horse’s hooves skittering on the cobbles before, yanking at the reins, he left as quickly as he had arrived. I collected the ashes in a funeral vase and buried them near Misenum on the promontory overlooking the bay. Julius Caesar had once owned a villa nearby. It had been one of Domina’s favourite spots for a picnic, where she’d sit, staring out at the sea and sky.
Afterwards I returned to Rome to watch and wait. I was left alone: there was no bill of indictment, no harassment by the secret police or the monster’s agents. It was as if I had never existed. Sometimes I received invitations to suppers at the Palatine and, occasionally, I attended. Now and again I would catch Nero watching me with those bulbous blue eyes in that fat, purpling face. He’d smile weakly and I’d smile back.
‘Nero can’t sleep at night,’ someone told me. ‘He has hideous dreams. He refuses to go back to Baiae: he claims he can hear the funeral flutes and pipes blowing from the headlands.’
I didn’t care. I haunted Rome like a prowling wolf, through the quiet districts where the nouveau riche had built their elegant mansions and laid out perfume-filled gardens. I rubbed shoulders with white-robed Arabs, Germans in their strange coats and trousers, Greek and Spanish slaves in their scarlet and gold liveries. I listened to their strange chatter and watched the aristocrats lolling in their litters. I was in the Forum in the early morning when the beautiful statues were bathed in the golden glow of the rising sun. Sometimes I’d sit at the foot of the statue of the She-Wolf, the great symbol of Rome, where an old Arab sold sulphur matches. I sniffed the odour of ripe fruit from the market and the cloying whiff of the perfumed ladies. In the afternoon I’d wander amongst the bookstalls. All the time I listened for news and scandal.
I was in the city when the monster burnt it, and the wind sent the flames roaring over the Palatine till they scorched the great Babylonian steps on the right flank of the river. Tigellinus encouraged Nero to compose a poem on the fire of Rome. Nero was stupid, or insane, enough to agree. When people pointed the finger of accusation, Tigellinus blamed that eccentric bunch of Jews known as Christians. Condemned as the perpetrators of the inferno, they were cloaked in animal skins, soaked in oil and used as human torches in the great gardens. Further arrests were made and Christians were forced to run round the amphitheatre pursued by ravenous animals. The crowds loved it. Nero boasted that he’d rebuild Rome, but all he managed was his Golden Palace, with its revolving roof depicting the sun and the moon and the main stars of the heavens. Nero would invite people to supper, bombard them with scented roses and force them to watch the revolving ceiling. They’d stagger out giddy and sick, especially if they had drunk too much Falernian.