Luke Devenish: Nest of vipers

Portunalia

August, AD 65

Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus

Germanicus engages in a new series of reprisals against those he distrusts

The tar-soaked wick smoked for a moment, hovering above the brazier before it sizzled and spat and burst into flames. The choir on the terrace erupted into a hymn to Vulcan — the great god of fire — and we palace slaves, arranged along the walls and floors and terrace edges, muttered our rehearsed prayers. The expressions of the guests who watched on from the banqueting hall ran from excitement to disgust to jaded indifference, but the eyes of the condemned who were staked to the poles in the garden widened at the lighting of this instrument of their doom. The wretches gave out looks of such dread that the sycophants among the dinner guests applauded the sight. Other guests took their cue, the squeamish among them feeling ill at what was next for the condemned, even though they clapped and cheered for its commencement.

Our master heard nothing but approval in this noise, as he only ever did now. The thought of public opposition and loathing was more than he could bear. He basked in what he told himself was unconditional and undying love. He laughed at the cheers, sang along with the hymn and waved the long birch rod from which the tar-wick burned. Then he leaped from his dais with a howl, misjudging the distance and landing in the flowers. The dinner guests increased their clamour, as if our master were making a comedy for them — as if he weren't mad and obese and intoxicated at all.

The Christians writhed at their poles, staked in rows. Their imminent suffering was to be prolonged — they all knew it. Their deaths were meant for my master's entertainment. He had disliked past executions when the fun had been marred by the condemned bursting into thanks to their god, so these Christians were gagged. They would blaze in silence.

Musicians blasted on tubas and my master ran up the nearest garden path, the tar-wick held high in the air. 'Which one first?' he screamed over his shoulder to his friends. 'Which will be the first to burn?'

A tumult of hollering and pointing and throwing of food scraps came as each guest tried to outdo the others in identifying the inaugural performer.

'This one?' Our master poked his flaming birch at a staked Christian. 'Or this one? Or what about this pretty one? Look how pretty she is!'

The sycophants united in this choice and our master gazed up at the bound girl, roped high to her stake, her bare feet and legs coated in tar. 'What you are about to feel will bring pleasure to so many.'

He touched the tar-wick to her feet, holding it there and staring into her eyes as her agony commenced. The girl ignited with an intensity that knocked our master from his feet. The dinner guests shrieked with laughter and our master sprang up again, burping and hiccuping and then guffawing at his own antics, before falling into an abrupt silence that every guest and slave and singer and musician echoed in an instant.

Our master stared, mesmerised by the Christian girl as she burned like a sun — her rags, her hair, her flesh ablaze. The glow of her filled the evening garden like a sunset.

'Can you hear your Christ?' he whispered to her. 'Can you hear him now? What does he say to you? That you were wrong to have faith in him? That he is not a god at all?'

A voice was heard from beyond the garden walls, high and pure above the crackle of the flames.

' Parricide! '

Our master jerked from his trance as something was hurled over the wall, landing near his feet. It was a shoe, rough and wooden. A female guest screamed as she recognised it for the symbol that it was.

' Parricide! '

Another voice rang out, strong and deep. ' Where has your mother gone? '

A second object was flung into the garden, landing in the plants. It was the pair to the shoe.

' You've killed her, king! '

' Parricide!'

Watching from my slave's position by the wall, I knew what would come next.

'Stop them — ' the female guest who had screamed started to say. The third and final garment from the parricide's wardrobe was thrown into the banquet: a stinking, bloody wolf's skin.

' Now you've got something to wear when we condemn you, parricide! '

Fear flushed my master's face, and the woman now vomited oysters. The very worst of the invited sycophants stood up slowly on his couch, smiling widely and cynically at our tormented master, before placing his hands around his mouth and shouting, 'Hail, Caesar!'

There was shocked silence. Then the cry was taken up by all — guests, slaves, singers and musicians. The shouts of the accusers outside were drowned.

Our master's good humour returned; he smiled and nodded and gave a moment's thought to picking up his lyre. Then he caught my eye where I stood by the wall, and the look I gave was enough to make him forget the thought. He accepted some honeyed wine given to him by the beautiful, smiling Acte and flung his tar-wick aside, instructing the guards to light the rest of the condemned at once.

The dining slaves took this as their cue to offer trays of Trojan pig to the guests. Acte cast me a weary glance and I nodded, tilting my head towards the garden. She nodded back.

We made our leave to sit at a bench, well away from the party and the fires. We felt sympathy for the Christians — how could we not? Their suffering was undeserved. Rome had been destroyed by another's hands — they were innocent of it — but scapegoats were needed and the Christ cult's refusal to recognise all gods but its own offended too many deities. All the same, I was glad the condemned wore gags — and glad, too, that our garden bench was sufficiently upwind.

We had commenced the final days — we knew it now. There was very little time left to us; only the faintest echoes of long-ago prophecies remained, and soon they too would be silent and then forgotten. And so would we.

Acte and I settled in the warm evening air to return to our great labour. She had a small stack of fresh wax tablets already at hand.

'Do you think,' I asked, feeling the twinge of an old wound in my back, 'that what we're about to record will be confusing to someone who might choose to start reading the history here and not at an earlier point?'

Acte gave this consideration. 'We will help them, then,' she said. 'It is only fair. Why should they read of the earlier crimes and intrigues if they find greater enticement in the horrors ahead? Let us explain the most important past moments. The prophecies about the four great kings of Rome, for example — we should detail those.'