David Wishart - Nero

Agrippina gasped. Seneca stopped abruptly; so abruptly that I distinctly heard his jaw click.

'Is something wrong, Mother?' Lucius was solicitous. 'A touch of wind from the mushroom, perhaps?'

'No. No, darling.' She was visibly fighting for self-control. 'It's just a twinge of that headache I mentioned.'

'Then perhaps I should send for Xenophon after all. Or even Locusta…'

'That won't be necessary,' she snapped. 'Darling.'

'Well, then.' Lucius beamed at Seneca and raised an eyebrow. Seneca swallowed and continued with his recitation. He was now an interesting shade of puce.

You know the piece, of course. It's a satire on Claudius's deification, a fictional account of the Idiot's arrival in heaven and the contemptuous treatment he receives there. It was, I had to admit, slickly penned, wickedly clever and, in places, achingly funny. It was also far and away the most gratuitously vicious literary attack on a human being I'd ever encountered. I'd no time for the Idiot in life, but Seneca's Pumpkinification sickened me. It was like kicking a corpse. You ask me why I have such a low opinion of the old hypocrite; go and read that little squib, my friends, and you'll have your answer.

The reading finished amid an embarrassed silence. Everyone was watching Agrippina, who had sat through it with a face like chiselled marble. As Seneca hastily put the roll away in the fold of his mantle, Lucius began to applaud, slowly and with deliberation. No one else moved.

'Lovely, darling! Absolutely lovely!' he said; then, turning to Agrippina: 'Wasn't it lovely, Mummy?' And, before she could answer: 'Now I think we should toast my divine stepfather's memory.'

Slaves stepped forward to fill the cups. There was still no talking. Lucius stood up and peered towards the back of the dining-room, shading his eyes as if trying to make out something in the far distance.

'Cooee!'' he shouted. 'Britannicus! Oh, Britannicus! Briti-briti-tannicus!'

There was no answer. Britannicus ignored him, pretending to be deep in conversation with the African governor's son. Acte, I noticed, was close to tears.

Lucius beamed. He turned to the head wine slave. 'Make sure his wine's well watered,' he said loudly. 'The poor child's obviously had too much already and it's gone to his ears. But now let's have that toast.' Snatching the man's jug he slopped wine into a goblet and pressed it into Agrippina's unwilling hands. 'There, Mother,' he said. 'You propose it for us. To the Pumpkinified…oh, I am so sorry, my dear! To theDivine Claudius!'

Agrippina stood up. Her eyes were on her son's. She raised the goblet.

'To your predecessor and father, the former emperor,' she said calmly. 'To the Divine Claudius.' She took the barest sip.

'Oh do come on, Mother!' Lucius's voice was bright and jagged as a new saw-blade. 'You can do better than that, a hardened drinker like you! You don't think the wine might be- oh, my! — poisoned, surely?'

She stared at him for a long time. Then, slowly, her eyes on his, she drained the cup and set it down empty on the table. We all waited for her to fall.

Someone at the back of the room — the African governor's son — shouted. Along with everyone else, I turned to see Britannicus writhing like a hooked gudgeon on the floor beside his couch.

'It's all right, darlings!' Lucius's voice was shrill with excitement. 'It's all right! The child's an epileptic! He's an epileptic! I tell you, it's all right! '

We were all on our feet now, staring at the writhing figure, but no one made any other movement. Silia's hand gripped my wrist, the nails digging hard into the flesh, and she was murmuring, over and over again, 'Oh, gods! Oh, gods!' Finally the boy stopped moving. There was a horrible rattling sound, followed by a long silence. Everyone, now, was looking at the emperor.

Slowly, he lay back down on his couch. His eyes glittered and he was breathing in short, shallow gasps as if he had just achieved a sexual orgasm.

'Oh dear, oh dear!' he said softly to Agrippina. 'Mummy's own little boy seems to have choked to death. So who's her darling now, then, we wonder?'

Their eyes locked for a long, silent moment. Then the empress swept down from the dais and out of the room.

I glanced across at Seneca and Burrus. They looked grey and old. Acte's head was on her arm, and she was weeping.

Two days later, when Acte finally showed her face by arrangement at Silia's, I still hadn't got the horror out of my bones.

'He's very upset,' she said. They were her first words, before she had even sat down.

Silia and I both stared at her. 'He's upset?' I said. 'Serapis!'

Acte rubbed her puffy eyes. She looked terrible, and I doubt whether in these two days she'd slept at all. 'Of course he is! He didn't enjoy doing it, you know. He felt really bad later.'

I couldn't trust myself to comment. Getting up from the folding stool where I'd been sitting when the slave brought her in I began to pace the room.

'Do sit down, Titus,' Silia said from her chair by the pool. 'You're making me giddy.'

'He was frightened.' Acte was glaring at me. 'He always lashes out when he's frightened. It's not his fault.'

'Even frightened people draw the line at murder, dear,' I said. 'Sane ones, anyway.'

'Lucius is sane!' Acte snapped. Then she dropped her gaze. Her long, slim fingers twisted together. 'Well…'

'Exactly.' I pulled up the stool. 'Admit it. The boy's barking mad.'

There was a long silence.

'It took him ages to admit he was responsible,' Acte said at last in a low voice. 'To me, I mean. To everyone else he's still insisting Britannicus had a fit or swallowed the poison by accident. Seneca and Burrus say they believe him, but you can see they're just being…careful.'

'Indeed,' I said drily. '"Careful" is right. Where was the poison, by the way?'

'In the water jug.'

'Ah. Clever.' That explained Lucius's instructions to the wine slave about further diluting the boy's wine. Everyone else's would've had the correct amount of water already mixed in. 'I'm surprised he didn't kill the other lad while he was at it. The governor's son.'

'Oh, but he wouldn't! Lucius isn't a murderer!'

'Oh, Serapis!' I turned away from her in disgust.

'What about Agrippina, dear?' Silia said quickly.

'She's keeping her distance.' Acte picked absently at a broken nail. 'But that's another thing. Lucius is terribly worried that she's angry with him.'

'He's what? ' I genuinely couldn't believe my ears. 'Oh, my dear girl! Oh, how simply marvellous!'

Acte had the grace to look embarrassed. 'Petronius, you don't understand! What his mother thinks is important to him, very important. He's afraid she doesn't love him any more.'

I took a deep breath. 'Let's get this straight, darling. The emperor insults Agrippina in public, pretends he's poisoning her, actually does poison her stepson in front of her eyes, and the poor dear's afraid that she mightn't love him any more?'

'That's right.'

'So what the hell does he expect? A round of applause?'

Silia held up a hand. 'Let Acte explain, Titus,’ she said quietly.

Acte frowned. 'Yeah, I know it sounds…odd, but like I said you don't understand because you don't know Lucius like I do. After everyone left he was okay. Really high, you know? So…'

' Okay means the same as really high in your vocabulary, does it? I see.'

'Titus!'

Acte shot me a sideways glance. 'He kept saying, "Now she'll have to love me," and "Wouldn't Uncle Gaius have been proud?"' Oh, Jupiter! 'But then when I finally got him to bed he just lay curled up, saying she wouldn't love him any more because he was bad.'