David Wishart - Nero

'Oh, I don't mind the blood. It's only pretend, only stage blood, and it is rather…exciting in a way, Titus, don't you think?' His eyes glazed over for the barest instant and then were clear again. 'But the Greeks, now, the Greeks are simply splendid, aren't they? Look at her! She could never be Roman.'

He was pointing over my shoulder, to something that hung on the wall behind me. I turned to see one of Acte's decorative masks. It was old, made of thin wood and horsehair: the face of a tragic heroine. The artist had painted lines of exhaustion and privation at the corners of the mouth and on the forehead. Its blank, empty eye-sockets stared back at me.

'Electra.' Lucius was smiling. 'Isn't she simply gorgeous? She belonged to Acte's father. Didn't she, darling?'

'That's right.' Acte's voice was curiously brittle. 'Dad gave me her as a keepsake. He was too old to play Electra by then anyway.' She spoke, I thought, with a certain bitterness.

Lucius swung back to me. 'You know Euripides's Electra , Titus?'

'In outline, yes. But not well.'

'Oh, but you must read it, my dear! It's a simply marvellous play!' He jumped to his feet and lifted the mask from its nail. 'Let me show you what you're missing! Acte, darling, you take Orestes!'

With his back towards me he fitted the mask over his face and head. Then he turned. His shoulders dropped into the actor's stance. The mask's eye-sockets were no longer empty; they glared at us across the room with an almost feral intensity. Suddenly Lucius was no longer the emperor, or even a gushing, half-drunken youth, but someone…different. So different that I felt a shiver run down my spine.

His head twisted sharply to one side, as if the mask's ears had caught a sound beyond our hearing and its eyes had followed, staring out into the far distance.

'Lucius, love, no. Please, no,' Acte said quietly, but his arm was already up in the traditional gesture of an actor commanding silence. My scalp crawled.

'"What's that?"' The voice that hissed between the parted wooden lips was much higher and stronger than Lucius's light tenor. The words themselves were Greek. '"Forces from Mycenae?"'

Acte drew in her breath sharply.

‘No, Lucius,' she whispered. 'Not that scene. Not now.'

The mask's eyes never wavered. Lucius's whole body was motionless and rigid as an iron bar. For a long time no one spoke. Then Acte made an odd sound in her throat, part sigh, part sob. '"No,"' she said in Greek, her voice as deep as Lucius's was high: Orestes, Electra’s brother. '"It is my mother, who gave me birth. Look how fine her dress is, how splendid the coach in which she rides."'

I recognised the scene myself now; and knowing the scene and its ending I knew why Acte had not wanted us, especially, to see it played.

The mask swung towards her and tossed its hair backwards. At the same time Lucius's right foot came stamping down to emphasise his first word. As a mime of savage, violent joy it was beautifully performed; Paris himself could not have done better.

'"Good!"' The eyes burned. '"She is stepping straight into our trap."'

I risked a sideways look at Silia. Her gaze was fixed, like a rabbit's confronted by a snake. I leaned over and gripped her hand, hard; Lucius, I knew, would not notice. Serapis knows what god had him, but he held him fast.

'"What shall we do, then?"' Acte's face was completely drained of colour, her voice expressionless; the words were words only. '"Shall we…"' She stopped; then, in her own voice, 'Lucius, love, don't make me say it! Finish this now!'

'No.' It was not Electra's voice, nor Lucius's, but something between the two. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck lift. '"Shall we…"what? Say it. Say it! '

Acte's head drooped like a cut flower. The gesture of defeat, I knew, was not part of the play.

'"Shall we kill her?"' she whispered. '"Shall we kill our own mother?"'

I felt Silia's fingers stiffen under mine. Her hand was trembling. I squeezed it gently.

The mask came up, tossing the horsehair ringlets. '"Has pity seized you, then?"' The words came in a low, venomous hiss.

'Lucius, please! ' Acte cried.

Lucius's body stiffened, waiting. Again, after a long silence, came Acte's strange half-sob of unwilling compliance.

'"But how can I kill her?"' she said; I could barely hear the words. '"How can I kill the one who gave me birth, the mother who reared me?"'

'"Kill her as she killed our father!"' I could see a thread of spittle on the wooden lips. '"Kill her as she killed — "'

' No! That's enough!' Acte leaped to her feet, tore the mask from the emperor's face and threw it across the room. The light wood shattered as it struck the wall.

Lucius stood blinking and staring like an owl caught by the sunlight. In the corner of his mouth, a muscle twitched. He raised his hand blindly to his lips and wiped them. For a long moment he and Acte faced each other. Then he walked over to the ruined mask, picked it up and hung it as best he could from its nail. His hands were shaking.

'It's only a play,' he whispered. 'Only a play.' His eyes, still glazed, turned towards us. 'Titus. Silia. You tell her, darlings. I didn't mean it. Not really.'

We said nothing. I knew that Silia, like me, was too shocked to speak. Our hands were still locked together as if we were children afraid of the dark.

'Come with me, love.' Acte held out her hand. Her voice was low and strained. 'You're over-tired. Petronius and Silia will excuse us, I'm sure.'

I nodded. Something seemed to have got hold of my throat, and it was squeezing the breath out of me. Lucius shook himself, gave a sudden sharp laugh, and then smiled one of his brilliant smiles.

'You see how much she loves me, poor girl?' he said, and staggered towards the door. Acte gave us a quick frightened glance over her shoulder and followed.

A moment later, the young slave Chryse appeared. Silently — and nervously — she escorted us down the staircase and back to the palace gates.

'He's mad, of course. Quite mad,' Silia said calmly as I dismissed the litters and helped her past the bowing door slave.

'Of course.' I tried to keep my own voice under control; not by any means an easy task under the circumstances. 'But quietly mad or dangerously mad? That's the question.'

'My dear Titus.' Silia looked at me gravely. 'There's no such thing as a quietly mad emperor. And after today's performance I am very glad I'm not Agrippina.'

We went home and made love; but neither of our hearts were really in it.

The Winter Festival came and went, and by halfway through February we had still seen nothing of Acte. Then towards the end of the month a letter arrived from the palace; not a dinner invitation this time but a summons to an evening interview with Lucius, subject unspecified.

I showed it to Silia while she was being made up for her morning visits.

'What do you think this is?' I said.

Silia read the letter and laid it on the dressing-table in front of her. 'Goodness knows, dear. Maybe he just wants to see you again. You did seem to make quite an impression.'

'Nonsense. We've only met twice, and neither occasion was particularly felicitous.'

'That, my dear, is putting it mildly.' She held her cheek out to Lalage for the final powdering. 'None the less, darling, don't laugh but I suspect that for some reason the poor lamb looks up to you.'

I laughed.

'It's true, Titus. Isis knows why. Maybe he simply likes your beautiful eyelashes.'

'Silia, I have no desire to get involved with Lucius. For a start, it's just too bloody dangerous.' Absolutely true; if one believed the rumours current in the Market Square (and I did), since Agrippina's hold over him had slackened Lucius's private behaviour had become increasingly erratic, and his friends and advisers were finding it more and more difficult to control him. Cut loose from the maternal apron strings the young man had discovered the joys of sowing his wild oats; and that, given the power that Lucius wielded, was no light matter.