David Wishart - Nero

'Not people. Slaves. And not so innocent either.'

'How many does it take to cut one person's throat?'

He scowled. 'Don't be so bloody literal! Do you think one or two of them didn't know before the event? That that bastard of a chef kept it a total secret?'

'Even so…'

'Even so nothing!' Arruntius turned to go, having mentally, I suspect, washed his hands of me as a kindred spirit. 'Executing them all will make sure it never happens again. The next time some crack-brained sod takes it into his head to murder his master he won't get within a mile. I'll see you around, Petronius.'

When I finally got to the palace Seneca was already in the anteroom. He looked grey as death.

'Petronius.' He gave me a stiff nod.

'Seneca.' I was equally cool; we hadn't seen each other in months, and even then we'd hardly been on speaking terms. Luckily the secretary appeared at that moment and led us straight through to the emperor's private suite.

Lucius, too, looked haggard. Although it was late in the day he hadn't shaved and he was wearing a rumpled tunic. Even before the slave had closed the door behind us he was holding up a placating hand.

'I know!' he said. 'I know! Don't look at me like that. There's nothing I can do.'

Seneca lowered himself into a chair. His hands were shaking.

'You once said, my dear fellow, when you were asked to sign an order for execution that you wished you'd never learned to write.'

'This has nothing to do with me! It's the law!' Lucius turned towards me. 'Titus, you tell him!'

'You're the emperor.' I sat down too. 'You're above the law.'

'I am not! ' Lucius's hand thudded on to the desk beside him. 'The Senate made the decision. The Senate's responsible, not me.'

'You have the power of veto.'

'Darling, I can't! Honestly! Don't you understand?' I stared at him. 'Don't blame me, blame the Senate and their fucking, twisted, Roman ideas of justice!' I thought of Arruntius. Twisted was a good word. 'You weren't there, either of you, when Cassius made his speech.'

'He was only one voice,' Seneca said quietly. 'There must have been others.'

'Oh, yes.' Lucius was pacing the room. He was almost in tears. 'Lots of them. Mostly agreeing, because Cassius's argument was a clincher with these hide-bound bastards: "It's the law as our fathers made it, gentlemen, it's how we've always done things. We've had enough changes these last few years. Make your stand now, before it's too late. Vote for the good old Roman ways!"' He stopped and faced us. 'Do you think I'm a fool? That I didn't see the implications?'

'Cassius made it a political issue.' I felt sick. That was what Arruntius had meant about sending a clear message to the liberals.

'Of course he did! And most of the Senate are with him. I can't fight them, I don't dare, not over this!' Suddenly, Lucius spat. 'Barbarians! Fucking barbarians! I hate them!'

'They're not barbarians.' Seneca had clasped his hands in front of him. His eyes were lowered. I thought perhaps he was praying. 'Just misguided.'

'As misguided as you think I am?' There was no answer. I held my breath, but Lucius didn't press the issue; he was almost gentle. 'My dear, what would your historians — your good, solid, patriotic, Roman historians- write about Cassius and me if we both died tomorrow? They'd say that Nero was a sport of nature, a degenerate who aped the Greeks and gave public performances in theatres. And Cassius? A good old-fashioned Roman who defied tyrants like his namesake. Whose side would you cheer for, Seneca, even when the corpses were counted?'

Seneca said nothing, only looked at his hands. Lucius threw himself onto a couch and slopped wine into a cup.

'They'll regret this, you know,' he said conversationally. 'All of them. I won't forget.'

Seneca and I exchanged glances. Lucius caught us, and smiled with his mouth, not his eyes.

'Oh, don't worry, my dears! I'm not my Uncle Gaius, I don't mean that!’ he said. ‘But they will regret it, eventually. Now piss off, I'm feeling low. Interview over. Request denied.'

We left.

They died. All of them. All four hundred.

I think even Cassius would've hesitated if he'd known what the execution of those four hundred slaves would mean in the long run, and not only for the Senate. Eleven months later, a gentleman named Antistius Sosianus gave Lucius the opening he needed by reciting verses satirising him at a dinner party.

The verses were pure doggerel, and if they'd been written before the Pedanius incident I think Lucius would've ignored them as he'd already done others; like many artists he was so sure of his own talent that anyone who refused to recognise it was beneath contempt. However, he decided to use the situation to send a clear message to the Senate. Through a sympathetic intermediary, Sosianus was charged with treason.

The Senate were shocked. When Lucius had come to power he had promised to end the treason trials which had scarred Claudius's reign and were a notorious money-spinner for professional informers. A throwaway line or an ill-advised joke blown up out of all proportion could result in death or exile, and most of the victims were senators or their narrow-striper relatives. The very thought that the emperor might reintroduce them sent a cold draught up more than one patrician back-passage. I was a bit worried myself.

'But, Titus, it's a lovely plan!' Lucius insisted when I called in at the palace accidentally-on-purpose to test the wind on behalf of some broad-striper friends. 'A bit of fear's good for them. It's what they understand. Besides, they don't appreciate how lucky they are having me in charge, they really don't.'

We were walking in the palace gardens. Lucius stopped occasionally to pick a spray of evergreen for the garland he was plaiting.

'You lived through some of the trials yourself.' I tried to keep the tone light. 'Do you really want all that nonsense back again? Inoffensive old buffers put to death just because they wear a purple cloak to a party?'

'Of course not! Don't be silly.' He frowned at a peacock cut from the centre of a boxwood hedge. 'I just want them to see that things could be a lot worse if I were that way inclined. Besides, Sosianus is a smarmy little bugger. Rome would be better off without him.'

I felt cold. 'You'll let the Senate execute him?' Technically, the penalty for treason was death. 'Just for a bit of bad poetry?'

'Oh, no.' He giggled. 'I'm not a monster, darling, you should know that by now. They'll want to, of course, because I shall be terribly upset and angry, and the sycophantic bastards will assume I'm as callous as they are. I'll step in at the last moment and show them how a proper civilised person behaves.' He set the garland on his head and tilted it over one ear. 'It's a salutary reminder, Titus, that's all. And the poor hack can spend his exile polishing up his iambics.'

In the event Lucius didn't have to intervene, which I'm afraid was partly my fault, although I never told him: he never could resist the grand theatrical gesture. The case went exactly as he'd said it would. The consul-elect, a prime crawler named Marullus, demanded the death penalty, and he would have got it if I hadn't already told old Thrasea Paetus — one of the few decent members of the Senate — what Lucius's real feelings were. As a result, Sosianus escaped with exile.

Although Sosianus's trial frankly bordered on farce, six months later Lucius made a decision that had much more immediate — and far-reaching — consequences.

I found out about it on a routine visit to the palace to make the final arrangements for the Spring Festival party Lucius had asked me to organise. As usual his secretary showed me in to the private suite. On the guest couch to the emperor's right, chewing his way through a hot-house peach, was a man I'd been trying to avoid for over two years.