The Nero Prediction

by Humphry Knipe

  It was too late to turn Nero into a skeptic so I asked, "When does she re-enter it?"

  "May 24."

  "Then that's when we strike."

  "Oh no, all she'll be able to do is console me because she'll be moving backward and therefore very weak. June 12, when she begins to move forward again, that's when we'll declare musical war against Vindex."

  Needles pricked my scalp. That was the day after Balbillus predicted I would kill him.

  Almost exactly a month later, at the beginning of May, Nero was picking at the keys of the giant water organ when momentous news arrived from Gaul.

  He shook his head as I approached him with the dispatch. "It's no good. I can't play without Venus's help."

  I held out the letter. "Vindex is dead."

  An expression, rapidly growing in intensity, of the most undiluted rapture. "Vindex dead!"

  "Yes, and his army destroyed."

  "Verginius Rufus! I knew he'd remain loyal! You see, he understands what I'm trying to do."

  "Unfortunately there's more. Verginius's legions have acclaimed him emperor."

  "What?"

  "He refused the title."

  "Of course he did."

  "But his position remains unclear. When declining the acclamation he said that it's up to the Senate and the people of Rome to choose an emperor. We have to establish that we're in control, immediately."

  "We are in control, and we are preparing for war, you know that better than anyone. But how can I perform when Venus is retrograde? You've heard me sing since she turned her back on me. I croak like a frog. When Venus moves forward again, so shall I."

  All through May it went on, the mobilization. Magnificent orchestral compositions, overwhelming in their awful solemnity were rehearsed by an army of musicians. Huge pipe organs were turned out at a frantic rate. Special wagons were constructed to carry them to the front. Young women, selected for their beauty, not their virtue, were recruited for the legion of Amazons that was going to escort the new Dionysus into battle. Their hair freshly cropped, dressed in high girdled garments of imperial purple which bared their legs, they danced in formation on the field of Mars brandishing light double-headed battle-axes above their heads as they warded off the arrows of ignorance with crescent-shaped shields. The cheerleaders of musical war.

  Nero's face glowed as he watched these drills but inside him the worm of doubt, spawned by the seventy-third year, fed.

  The morning after the news of Galba's defection, and his age, Nero had sent an urgent dispatch to Balbillus in Alexandria commanding his immediate return. Even with the most favorable winds he couldn't reasonably be expected to show up in less than a month.

  Nero couldn't wait that long. "Find me an astrologer Epaphroditus. In fact see how many you can find me. There must be at least one who can advise me."

  I prevaricated. "Caesar, is it wise for so many to know your stars?"

  The vertical furrow on his brow deepened. "The seventy-third year is upon me, I feel its cold breath on my neck. On the night of June 9 the Moon enters Pisces. 'There will be blood in the stars when the Moon shines on the fishes.' That's what the Oracle of Delphi said. I have to know if it's my blood."

  The stifling days of June had already begun, loud with a buzzing plague of flies. They fed on the sweat of the astrologers who eyed each other resentfully as they waited their turn to be admitted to see Nero. All of them predicted that Nero was not in danger, all of them went away loaded with gold.

  After days of readings he still wasn't satisfied. "Are you sure I've seen every single one?"

  "Yes Caesar, except for the charlatans and there are thousands of those."

  That night, during the third hour after sunset, the Moon entered Pisces. The next morning, precisely twenty-two hours before the fatal dawn, shortly after Nero's morning salutation at which hardly a familiar face was present, a small man who should have been in Lisutania came calling, someone with a pretentious gait and high soled shoes and too many rings on his fingers. Ptolemy.

  My astonishment amused Nero who was watching for my reaction. "He's been waiting in the wings and we've had a few words already, enough to establish that the stars haven't changed their minds about my musical career. But Ptolemy insisted that you be present, to take notes I suppose, because he's made a great discovery."

  Arrogance conceded just enough space on the astrologer's face for a grin of triumph. "Greetings Epaphroditus. I was expecting you to invite me to read Caesar’s stars. You certainly seem to have invited everyone else."

  I did my best to hide my revulsion but I couldn't keep the irony out of my voice. "After thinking it over I decided it would be a waste of your valuable time."

  "So it's all clear to you?"

  "Yes, thank you, quite clear."

  Nero's forehead creased in an uncomprehending frown as his murder was discussed in front of his face. "What's clear Epaphroditus?"

  I ground my teeth at the humiliation of being forced to feed Ptolemy's impudence. "My future, dominus. Balbillus read my stars shortly before he left for Alexandria.”

  An impatient wave of the imperial hand. "Oh, enough about you. Ptolemy, what have you discovered about me?"

  The small hands covered with large rings spread. "Caesar, tomorrow at sunrise your life completes a full circle."

  Nero's eyes looked as if they were going to pop out of his head. "Full circle? What's that supposed to mean?"

  Ptolemy told Nero what Balbillus had told me: that tomorrow at dawn, when the sign that was rising at his birth was setting, the planets would be aligned in the same pattern of aspects as when he took his first gulp of air.

  A frown, black as a thundercloud, crossed Nero face. "Don't toy with me man. 'There will be blood in the stars when the Moon shines on the fishes,' the oracle of Delphi told me that. My astronomers say the Moon entered Pisces last night. If you think that there's a plot to kill me, say so. Epaphroditus will soon put a stop to that."

  It was Ptolemy's finest moment. "Indeed Augustus, he's just the man to do it."

  Nero gave me a happy little smile. "It's all in his stars, did you know that Ptolemy? He's fated to shield me."

  Ptolemy winked at me in a loathsome gesture of collaboration from the side of his face that Nero couldn't see. "Yes Caesar, I did. But to get back to yours, the blood in the stars prediction must refer to the movements of Venus. As you've just pointed out, the Moon entered Pisces last night. Venus, who is in your House of Children and Pleasures, stops moving backward half an hour before sunset this evening. All of tomorrow she remains stationary. Then the day after tomorrow she begins to move forward again, the very day that the Moon leaves Pisces! Caesar, the indication is clear. The period while Venus is stationary is the most dangerous time for you. She’s your ancestor, star of the Julian family."

  Nero was sweating. His lips trembled. "What must I do?"

  "It's important to do nothing at all until Venus moves forward and the Moon no longer shines on the Fishes. That will be the time for you to move forward also. Follow Venus and Saturn eastwards, for the east is where you'll realize true musical greatness, possibly in Palestine since Saturn, your star, is also the star of Palestine."

  Nero instantly recovered his spirits. "I should follow my star to Jerusalem? Of course I should, Palestine's certainly better than nothing. Mind you, they're a stubborn bunch, those Jews, they're still holding out against Vespasian. Oh, I know what I'll do! I'll sing to them from under the walls, that'll melt their resolve. Vespasian will be so impressed he'll dress up his soldiers as satyrs and escort me eastwards, oh yes and we'll keep going all the way to India. Of course, how blind I've been! That's exactly what Fate intends: I've always known that Nero is to be transfigured into Dionysus!"

  I could tell that Ptolemy was trying to catch my eye so that he could feast on my despair. I robbed him of the pleasure.

  That evening only Nero's inner circle was invited to dine with him under the Golden House’s revolving dome, the temple
of astrology.

  How that charmed circle had shrunk! Even Statilia was already hiding from the summer heat in Antium where Nero promised to join her as soon as he'd sorted out a few things, as he put it. Tigellinus wasn't there either. He was spitting blood, his letter said, and confined to bed. Nymphidius Sabinus, the other Praetorian Prefect, would come in his place.

  Nymphidius was late. While Nero waited he somehow managed to give the impression of being perfectly convivial, entertaining us with comic songs, sung to his catchy tunes, which made a mockery of his enemies.

  But the smiles were sickly and the laughs hollow. No amount of wine would dissolve the knot in my belly which tightening with every creak of the rotating ceiling, the footfalls of time.

  Nymphidius arrived at sunset, death in his face. He dropped his voice to a whisper but forced laughter and light applause abruptly gave way to a profound, attentive silence. "Grave news, Caesar, which you may want to hear in private."

  Nero's cheeks were rosy from wine and approbation. He plucked the strings of the air with his right hand. "Go on, man."

  "Reports are coming in from everywhere of desertions to Galba's cause."

  A dreadful frown. "Desertions?"

  "Yes Caesar. The Rhine armies, Britain, all of Greece _"

  "Greece!" Nero jumped to his feet so quickly that he knocked over the table sending his two priceless fluorspar cups, carved with heroic scenes from Homer, to their doom on the marble floor. "Not Greece!"

  The Praetorian Prefect shook his head at the perfidy of it all. "Yes Greece too, Augustus, that's how they've repaid you for giving them their freedom. However I take a great deal of comfort in the promise that no harm will come to you if you go into voluntary exile."

  "What? Exile, like poor Oedipus?"

  Nymphidius nodded several times as if in appreciation of the literary analogy. "Yes Augustus. Everyone, especially Galba, is extremely anxious to avoid civil war. I advise just a temporary break from Rome, it's no longer safe for you here, there are too many unruly elements. But Egypt remains loyal. I beg you to withdraw there, to Alexandria, it's the perfect haven from which to arrange your return to private life, it can be to you what Rhodes was to Tiberius. They understand you there, appreciate your genius. They’re dying to hear you sing."

  "All right, I'll consider it, but I'll need a Praetorian escort. Can you promise me that?"

  Nymphidius took and insulting amount of time to consider the request. "Galba has offered the Praetorians enormous bribes, Caesar. I have to tell you that there are those among the men, and the officers too, who want to accept."

  "Send Tigellinus to me, I don't care how sick he is. He'll soon root out the traitors."

  "Caesar, Tigellinus is too weak to get out of bed. When he moves he coughs, when he coughs he spits blood. I can buy you the time you need to get to Ostia if you go tonight."

  Nymphidius left, dinner was adjourned, Lucusta was summoned to Nero's bedroom. "Something quick and painless," he told her.

  The pale face framed by black hair had retained its serenity but not its youth. She handed him an envelope containing brown powder that looked like ground pepper. I'd already seen it once too often. "The dried viscera of the sea-hare," she said. "It remains the quickest relief from pain."

  "Just the stuff for the Senate, I'll serve them sea-hare soup at a giant banquet. That'll put an end to all this nonsense. Do you have enough?"

  Lucusta didn't presume to get the joke. "That is the last of my stock, dominus."

  "In that case I'd better not lose it. Let's see." He picked up the little gold box that housed his dice and as if under some sort of compulsion threw them. "Ones! Oh how unlucky!" He put the poison in with the dice and slipped the gold box into his pocket. "Fate is warning me to hurry."

  Twenty minutes later we were in the Servilian Gardens palace, Nero's new home since the fire. A gift from the orator Servilius Nonianus ten years previously, Nero had subsequently filled it with famous works of art. But that wasn't its appeal now: it was a minute away from the road that led to Ostia, the sea and the swift galley that would take Nero to a new life in the east.

  Two hours after our arrival we were told that Clodius Macer, legate of Africa, had deserted and that Tiberius Alexander, Prefect of Egypt, the man who'd discovered that 666 spelt Nero Caesar, was wavering.

  Nero rattled the dice inside the golden dice box as he paced the room. "Obviously Ptolemy was right, I mustn’t try to do anything at all until Venus moves forward again. Oh, I'm so tired I can't think. I need to spend a little time relaxing in the park, then I'll know what to do."

  We returned to the Golden House where a much-depleted orchestra, obedient to Nero's strictest instructions, was struggling through selections from his music book.

  Nero put the dice box with its sea-hare poison next to his bed in the sleeping quarters he kept there. He fell asleep instantly.

  I drew a light cover over him.

  Shortly afterwards Spiculus, looking uneasy for a change, admitted my slave Epictetus. "It's an urgent summons from Tigellinus."

  In spite of the circumstances, I was annoyed. "Since when does the Praetorian Prefect send for the emperor?"

  "Sir, it's you he wants."

  Tigellinus wasn't in bed. Instead he was dressed and looking better than I'd seen him in months, his violet eyes clear and innocent. "How is he?" he asked as if Nero was the one who was ill.

  "Sleeping. He's been asking for you. Nymphidius said you were near death."

  "Might as well be, there's nothing I can do for him."

  "How can you be so sure? How many evil hours has Nero already survived? Who's to say that this is not just another false alarm?"

  "Galba. Verginius Rufus and the Rhine legions, Clodius Macer in Africa, Tiberius Alexander in Egypt. Quite a chorus."

  "Because they've been fed Balbillus's prediction?"

  "Not only that. It's because they know about you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "They know you’re fated to kill him."

  I was choking. "Rubbish!"

  "Really? Then who encouraged Nero's musical ambitions right from the start? Who helped him murder his mother with that lovely touch of personally returning her poisoned dagger to her? Who made enemies of the Claudians by encouraging Nero to divorce Octavia? Who made him believe that a comet predicted a Saturnalia when it was in fact warning Rome of the great fire? Who suggested the Christians suffer poetic justice for spreading it? Who sparked Piso's conspiracy by swapping Nero's birth time for a roll in the hay with that witch Epicharis?" A cutting smile, mockery in the icy eyes. "Didn't know I knew about that one, did you? Best of the lot, who did the home-baked astrology that sent Nero yodeling through Greece in pursuit of his quest to become Alexander-of-the-lyre when things were falling apart for him here in Rome? Come on, Epaphroditus, face the glorious fact. You are Fate's Anointed, born when Sirius was rising on the very cusp of New Year’s Day, the man destined to give the world a fresh start."

  I was angry now. "There's no force on earth or in heaven that can induce me to kill Nero, surely you believe me when I say that? Wash defeat out of your eyes. Help me. If we can keep Nero alive until the day after tomorrow, when Venus begins moving forward again, the tide will turn in his favor because everyone believes that it will. He'll recover his spirits and march against Galba. It will be the beginning of something extraordinary."

  Tigellinus's laugh brought him perilously close to a cough. "If that's what you think you'd better hurry Nero over to the camp and get him to sing to the Praetorian Guards. Nymphidius Sabinus has just bought them with Galba's money."

  "What?"

  "Nymphidius. He's Galba's, has been from the moment he heard of the return of Nero's planets. He'd be a fool if he wasn't."

  "How did he find out?"

  "I told him."

  "You! I was right, wasn’t I? You're the one who put those prophecies into the mouth of the Oracle of Delphi!"

  "Of course. Nero's destined to fall
. Galba destined to rule. That's all fixed. Why not let it happen without civil war?"

  "Galba! You're Galba's man and so is Balbillus! How long?"

  "Two years. Ever since the great comet touched Nero's ruling star shortly before it disappeared and inspired Balbillus to discover the return of Nero's planets. Ever since Balbillus found that he'd miscalculated the length of Nero's life. Ever since he found out that his father Thrasyllus had predicted that Galba would rule. That's when Balbillus and I went to Ptolemy because Ptolemy's been reading Galba's stars for years. He confirmed Thrasyllus's prediction."

  "Of course he did," I spat out. An inward rush of thought showed me Tigellinus, the Praetorian Prefect and Balbillus, the imperial astrologer, crawling at the feet of that odious little man, trading Nero's life for Galba's protection. I went on, "It doesn’t make sense. All those men, some of them great men, who rose up against Nero after the comet, after Balbillus's discovery that Nero was doomed, why did you help me eliminate them?"

  "I've just told you. Galba was the one destined to rule, not one of them."

  "You mean that you were Galba's creature, not theirs."

  Tigellinus didn't answer but neither did he smile.

  I said, "The return of Nero's planets. Verginius Rufus, Macer, Tiberius Alexander, of course they all know?"

  "Everyone knows. I believe that at last even Nero knows."

  I sharpened my words with irony. "Obviously you've just been granted another audience with Ptolemy."

  "Yes. He brings Galba's guarantee that I'll be given immunity if the transition is smooth. So will you. All the rest of Nero's freedmen will die."

  A moment of darkness. "Why not me?"

  "Because we need you. After all, you're the one who's fated to kill him."

  "Impossible."

  That brilliant warm smile. "We'll have to wait and see, won't we?"

  THE EVIL HOUR

  June 10 – June 11, 68 A.D.

  The orchestra was no longer playing in the grounds of the Golden House when I returned. The gilded gates stood open and unguarded, the majestic colonnades deserted, the eerie silence broken only by the distant bleating of the purple sheep. Spiculus and his German bodyguards were gone.