Paul Doherty - Domina

My heart sank. I thought I was to be dismissed.

‘Brush it, feel it, smell its perfume. Go on!’

I picked up the brush from the ivory basket and obeyed. I held her hair to my face.

‘So,’ she said as if there had been no interruption in our conversation. ‘Messalina is expecting a brat?’ She sighed. ‘More obstacles eh, Parmenon? Someone else in the arena. I shall tell you what we’ll do!’

‘Yes, Domina.’

‘We’ll keep quiet and we’ll wait.’

I brushed Domina’s hair. It was the last time for many years.

From that day Agrippina transformed herself: she wore her hair tightly caught up as if she was a Roman matron. Her stola and dress would have been more appropriate for the fashion of the Republic than for the ostentatious finery of Claudius’s court. Her face went largely unpainted and rarely did I see jewellery around her throat or fingers. She also hired a tutor, that little turd Anicetus, who educated her in the history of Rome and the intricacies and subtleties of the Julio-Claudian family. I was fascinated. I had never seen such an actress. She was no longer the young, passionate, tempestuous Agrippina but a severe Roman matron. Her dinner parties became so conservative and boring I often fell asleep. Sometimes, rarely, she’d catch my eye and wink quickly. She invited her sister Julia more and more to her banquet evenings and afterwards they would stroll, arm-in-arm, around the gardens. Julia was very much like Drusilla: dark with a lush, sensuous body, provocative eye-catching gestures, and a twinkling laugh, but she was vapid and empty-headed. She soon fell under Agrippina’s sway, to whom she brought the gossip of the court and all the scandals of the city. Agrippina would sit, listen and nod wisely.

One evening Domina invited the Emperor Claudius to dine. Power, I suppose, changes people: Claudius could act the fool but he had soon proved himself to be shrewd and as ruthless as any of his predecessors — opposition both at home and abroad had been cruelly crushed. Agrippina welcomed him as her revered kinsman and led both Claudius and Messalina to the couch of honour. If Agrippina looked dowdy, Messalina was as brilliant as the sun in the heavens. She was not very tall but perfectly formed; just the way she walked made men’s heads turn. She had a round, doll-like face, a petite nose and full-lipped mouth, with strange dark-blue eyes offset by her red-gold hair. She wore more jewellery on one wrist than Agrippina had in her treasure coffers. She loved to dress herself in white. As she walked into the dining chamber, the light caught the jewellery at her throat and ears and she shimmered like some goddess appearing to mortals.

Agrippina courted her and tried to indulge her every whim. Claudius swallowed the bait whole, but Messalina suspected what Agrippina was plotting. Throughout the meal she drank little but listened with a sneer on her pretty face as Agrippina flattered Claudius and impressed him with her knowledge of Rome, its legends and customs. Claudius listened open-mouthed in admiration, until eventually he fell asleep as he always did. Messalina leaned across. She reminded me of how Helen of Troy must have looked: beautiful, treacherous and very, very dangerous.

‘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.’

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.