The Splendor Before the Dark

by Margaret George

  I should go to bed, call the slave to prepare me. But instead I stood staring at the mask and the crown. I should be happier. I was happy, but . . . I reached out and took the crown, turning it over and over in my hands. The leaves were still firm and green, the victory fresh.

  A slight noise behind me made my hair stir on the back of my head. There was supposed to be no one here; I thought myself alone. I whirled around in the direction of the noise. A ghostly white figure stood in the shadowy corner.

  Oh, all the gods! An apparition! I dropped the precious crown, and it fell to the floor.

  The figure came closer, and I backed up. It was walking stiffly and painfully toward me.

  It was Poppaea. Poppaea herself. I stood, paralyzed, held helpless between joy and terror.

  She did not speak, but approached, slowly and deliberately, until she was an arm’s length away. Unable to stop myself, I reached out and embraced her.

  This was no bloodless spirit or cold mask but a warm being. Her hair, the luxuriant amber curls that were her personal glory, tumbled under my fingers. I grabbed her head, plunging my hands through the hair, and, pulling her face to mine, kissed her, the long kiss of yearning and reunion.

  I could not question it. She was here again. She had promised, she had said that if at all possible, she would return, like Protesilaus had done, if only for a brief time. Perhaps only for a few moments. No matter, I would seize those few moments, if that was all we had.

  But the shock of it made me unable at first to feel true joy or wonder; it stunned me, and in the fear that she would disappear momentarily, I could not pause to think clearly again. I embraced her feverishly, clutching at her, covering her with kisses.

  She felt the same—but not quite the same. Or had I forgotten already, forgotten some small personal characteristic? Then at last emotion returned, and the ecstasy of having her again overcame any hesitation, and I felt like a starving man confronted with a heap of food, not knowing what to taste first.

  Formally, as if we were in a ritual, I took her hands and led her to the bed. Still neither of us spoke, as if that would break the spell. Perhaps it would. Time enough for that later; I did not dare shatter the illusion, the apparition, or whatever it was. It was here, it was with me, it was warm to the touch, solid and breathing.

  To hold her once again . . . it was impossible, but it was happening. Or was it? Was it just one of those vivid dreams, dreams that seem entirely and frighteningly true while we sleep but vanish in the dawn, leaving a strange aftertaste for the rest of the day? I was plunged into the hallucination, embracing the phantom Poppaea, so like her in some ways and so alien in others. In the hours that followed, I cannot even recall them exactly, because like a dream, they made no sense, they were illogical and jumbled and perceived through a haze of wonder and fear. After hours of it, I finally fell into a fitful sleep.

  * * *

  • • •

  The voice that awoke me shattered my illusions.

  “I have done what I promised.” The voice in the dawn was not Poppaea’s but Sporus’s. “I told you I could do better than the mask. Now I have kept my word.”

  I sat bolt upright. “What have you done?” But, suddenly, I knew.

  “There is no going back,” he said. “Now you have your Poppaea again, as near as flesh can make her.”

  The stiff and painful walking . . . “No!” I said. “Why?”

  “I have told you. I could not bear seeing you suffer so, missing her. Now you need not.”

  “But it was in vain! Nothing can bring her back. You are not she.”

  “Ah, but will you know that? After a while, we will merge . . . and the real Poppaea will be swallowed up in me. You will accept me as her.”

  “You’ve made a eunuch of yourself for nothing! I will always know it is you.”

  “You didn’t last night.”

  “I was stunned, hardly able to comprehend what was happening.” But didn’t I, at some level? Even in the dream, it wasn’t right. It was not a true woman I held in my arms.

  “But your heart was lightened for those hours.” He reached out and smoothed my hair. “Admit it.”

  “Even so, last night can never be duplicated.” The shock that had disabled my reasoning would not come again.

  I was, illogically, angry at Poppaea herself. She had betrayed me; she had not come back as she had promised. There was no Protesilaus and Laodamia or us. The painting she had ordered in the Golden House was a cruel mockery.

  “Do not be so sure. What the heart wants, it creates.”

  “Leave me!” I ordered him. “Leave me!”

  As the first rays of the sun lightened the chamber, he stole away, taking her with him. The auburn wig that had felt so real last night lay abandoned in the bedsheets.

  The victory wreath was still on the floor where I had dropped it. I got out of bed and picked it up. I had trampled the leaves, stepping on them on the way to bed. I smoothed them out, aghast at the desecration. How could I have damaged this crown, so precious to me?

  But I had lost my mind, been overcome with a loss of reason like no other. All else had fallen by the wayside. I suspended my awareness because I needed to. When the gods grant you an impossible wish you do not question them, and if anything seems amiss you do not question that, either.

  He was right—I had been truly happy for those brief hours. But they had been based on a willing delusion on my part and on a ghastly and appalling sacrifice on his.

  LVIII

  Tigellinus was the first to know, followed by Statilia. Neither seemed troubled by it. Tigellinus joked, saying, “I can perform a marriage ceremony if you like. We are, after all, here in Greece where such things are not amiss.” He looked over at Statilia. “Or would that make him a bigamist? He is, after all, legally married to you.”

  “Marriage ends at death, so lawyers assure us,” she said. “As did his to Poppaea, and mine to Vestinus. However, marriage to a ghost—well, there is nothing illegal about that!”

  I was rather shocked. Was nothing sacred to her? Did she not regard our marriage as something to be defended? I had hoped that she would be pregnant by now, but so far, nothing.

  “I am glad you two think this is amusing,” I said. “Perhaps you can cheer Sporus up in his recovery. He would probably appreciate a nice bouquet of flowers.”

  They just laughed.

  Suddenly I wanted to go to bed with Statilia, to wash the episode of the night before from my mind, to expunge it. But did I really want to forget it?

  I left them both chuckling and spent the day watching the other competitions, trying to lose myself in them and regain my equilibrium.

  * * *

  • • •

  The sweet air wafting across the mountainside whispered of vanished history, lost deities, stories from the beginning of time. Here was supposedly the center of the world, the place Zeus’s eagles had identified, marked now with a large stone, the Omphalos, resting in the inner sanctum of the Temple of Apollo.

  Here, far away from the rest of the world on the slopes of this sacred mountain, it was easy to believe that life was meant to be calm, kind, devoted to the arts and to higher things. But below us on the plain, easily visible, lay old battlefields, and on the other side of Mount Parnassus lay Thermopylae. Greece had been the site of many battles, and their warriors were as extolled as their poets. In spite of the warm cedar-scented breezes, the quiet beauty of the trees standing like green sentinels on the rocky slopes, my mind could not be serene.

  Sporus. The encounter in the night was deeply troubling, in a way that no walk around Delphi could soothe. For a few hours Poppaea had been brought to life, brought back by my extreme longing and Sporus’s devotion. The door to Hades yawned open; the barrier that no one could cross had suddenly been breached. I had held her in my arms, suspending disbelief for a few hours in
my shock and joy. But once I knew, I had fallen back to earth with a jolt, further from her than ever. Like Orpheus, I stood once more on familiar ground, alone. And she remained below, taken from me a second time. My true battle had been against death, a contest I could never win.

  From a distance I could hear the sounds of the lyre competition in the theater. The notes were faint, but they reached me where I sat overlooking the steep drop to the valley below. Shadows were creeping across the landscape, lengthening toward the close of day. I closed my eyes and let the music speak directly to me. In just this way had Orpheus played his lyre, the liquid beauty of the melody reaching directly into the heart of his listeners.

  Liquid . . . liquid took many forms, assumed the shape of its container. Could identity be the same? Was it truly fixed, one person a man forever, another person a woman forever? The eunuch, who is an altered man, does not become a woman, but he is no longer a man, either. What was Sporus? He had been a man, and now he was not. He could simulate Poppaea but could not duplicate her in the most intimate fashion.

  But did that matter? If I could have her partially back, would that be better than nothing? Or is a faulty imitation only a mockery?

  If the demarcation line between man and woman is indistinct, one perhaps fading into another, then why could not I assume whatever identity I pleased on any given day? Or anyone else do the same, for that matter? The whole world might be a dancing sphere of beings who constantly took other identities.

  Was that not what the gods did? In our stories of them, were we merely recognizing what we instinctively knew? Zeus took many forms—a swan, a bull, even an ant. Apollo sometimes assumed the guise of a mortal shepherd. Sporus could sometimes be Poppaea.

  And I could sometimes be emperor, other times an artist and charioteer.

  Why did others have so much trouble with this?

  How dreary to be the same day after day, one person only, imprisoned in one identity!

  * * *

  • • •

  I would have to consult the oracle. I could not shirk it. Delphi was renowned for the oracle, not the games. And although I trembled to know my future, better to know it and prepare for it.

  The first step was to bathe in the Castalian Spring, to purify myself. I could not approach her otherwise. I gave orders that the basin where the spring emptied be cleared of sightseers and gawkers, so I could have privacy. They obeyed—I was the emperor, after all. Early the next morning I stood before the hollowed rock basin and looked at the placid clear water, a few ripples traveling across its surface. It would be cold, that I knew. It was known to be frigid, bracing. I threw off my loincloth and plunged in.

  My feet could not touch the bottom, and I paddled furiously. My arms were numb already, and my legs were paralyzed and heavy. The water came from a source not far removed from winter snow. I swam back toward the lip of the basin. Surely I was purified now.

  The day was overcast, with lowering gray-bottomed clouds hanging over the valley. Wearing the white robe of the petitioner, I approached the temple, where I had to offer a goat in sacrifice, Apollo’s preferred animal for this site. When the priests doused it with sacred water, it trembled from the hooves up as it was supposed to, meaning the god had accepted me. They then slayed it and put it on the altar in the forecourt.

  Three priests came forward to escort me into the temple. The oracle was in her sunken grotto at the back of the building.

  What would I ask her? There were so many things I longed to know. Will I ever be happy again? When I return from Greece, what shall I do? What should be my vision as emperor? What will be my legacy? How can I shape it?

  All of these questions burned for an answer. I had been happy with Poppaea. I was happy now in Greece, because I was suspended between two worlds. But beyond that? Did I want to take my place among the imperial immortals—Julius Caesar, Augustus—or among great artists? Truly, where did I belong? And would the ages remember me, or would I disappear into obscurity?

  I settled on one question. What does the future hold for me?

  The three priests walked with me into the dim interior of the temple, past the sacred hearth, then left me standing at the top of the short flight of steps that led down into the grotto, the adyton. After a few moments, a young acolyte dressed in white robes came to me and whispered, “Do you seek the revered oracle?”

  “I do,” I answered.

  “Follow me, then.” She turned and led me down the steps. The room opening up before me had a low ceiling and was divided into several small sections. From the corner of one eye I could see the tripod the oracle sat upon, but I was guided to another side of the room, where a curtained partition held benches for petitioners to sit. Today, though, there were no other petitioners, by my order.

  The acolyte said, “You may tell me your question and I will relate it to the revered oracle.” She edged up close so I could speak.

  “I will present my question myself,” I told her. Now was the moment to speak. “I am the emperor.”

  “Oh, most gracious leader, forgive me. I did not recognize you.” She knelt.

  “All the better,” I said. “Here I am an ordinary suppliant.”

  “Never ordinary,” she said.

  “Here I am ordinary,” I said “But I prefer to speak for myself.”

  “Very well. Follow me.” She led me out of the curtained area and into the grotto; I followed the slight form into the darkness. “Here I leave you,” she said.

  The chamber was cold, and I could hear dripping noises and the sound of an underground stream.

  I stood in the dim light and awaited the arrival of the oracle. I could see the sacred Omphalos, guarded by statues of two golden eagles, and a large statue of Apollo holding his laurel sprig. A strange odor filled the little room, unlike any I had smelled before.

  At last a figure appeared. She was tall and graceful, wearing a long white robe. She was not young, but a mature woman.

  “What do you seek of the oracle?” she asked. Her voice was odd, otherworldly.

  “To know my fate,” I answered.

  “And whence do you come?” she asked.

  “From the seat of the Roman empire,” I said.

  “Indeed?” she asked. Her voice was reedy and wavering.

  “I am the emperor!” I proclaimed. “The very person of the empire. The embodiment of it. Ask the god, What does the future hold for me?”

  “I shall consult Apollo,” she said. “Return to the place where you shall wait.” She pointed toward the curtained area.

  “Apollo is my patron,” I cried. But did she hear me?

  I made my way back to the bench, but instead of sitting quietly, I stood and pulled the curtain back enough that I could watch what she did. She made her way over to the tall-legged tripod and took her place on its seat, her legs dangling. An acolyte handed her a cup, filled, I presumed, with water from a sacred stream. Next she handed her a sprig of laurel, cut from a little bush to one side of the tripod. Then the acolyte began fanning at the foot of the tripod. There seemed to be an opening there, a crevice of some sort, deep below. She worked vigorously, directing the air upward toward the oracle, who kept her eyes closed and inhaled deeply.

  I did the opposite; I tried to breathe as little as possible. But even so, I could smell the peculiar vapors, and they spread coolly in my lungs. Little by little I could feel them in my head, too.

  The oracle was taking great gulps of air, panting. I heard her speaking, but the words made no sense; they were not any language I could recognize. She raised her voice and twisted on her seat, then cried out with an eerie croak.

  I waited for what seemed eons. The Trojan War could have passed. The war against Hannibal passed. The fumes from the sacred fissure below must be affecting my brain. Time was at a standstill. Finally the acolyte pulled the curtain aside, bade me emerge, and led me to
the oracle, who was standing stiffly, her limbs jerking. She glared at me and recited, “Your presence here outrages the gods you seek! Go back, matricide!”

  I leaned forward, clutched her white robe. “There is more to it than that; surely the gods know all!”

  She backed away, saying, “Nero, Orestes, Alcmeon, all murderers of their mothers!”

  “But for a reason!” I cried. “All of us, for a reason!”

  “Go back, matricide! Leave this place!” she recited.

  “I did not ask you about the past,” I said. “I have purified myself of the past in the Castalian Spring.”

  “Nothing can purify you!” she replied.

  “You did not ask Apollo the question I put to you. What does the future hold for me?”

  “Yes, I asked him. He said, ‘Beware the seventy-third year.’”

  The seventy-third year! That was ages away. I was only twenty-nine.

  I rushed toward her, to embrace her, so relieved was I. But she pushed me away. “Do not touch me!” she said. “Now go.”

  I stumbled out into the sunlight. The seventy-third year! Forty-four years from now. I had a very long time ahead of me. Years and years. Forever.

  LIX

  I fairly skipped up the Sacred Way back to my quarters. Forty-four more years. What things I could accomplish, knowing the gods had given me the gift of longevity. I could complete my engineering projects, could compose music that would surpass all I had done so far, could father sons and watch them grow to maturity, teaching them all I knew, sharing with them all the beauty of the world. I could administer and reform Rome with the care it deserved. I could campaign at the Caucasian Gates. I could visit Egypt and sail down the Nile. The years stretched out before me, a flowery carpet, unfolding benignly into the distance.