and filth – a discarded shoe, broken bits of pottery, a child’s wooden doll with its limbs missing, and at one landing not one but two rats, whom Titus interrupted in the act of copulation. How could Kaeso stand to live in such a place?
Titus knocked on the door. He heard movement within; in such places, the walls were so thin that one could hear everything. Kaeso opened the door. He smiled broadly. “Greetings, brother!”
Kaeso was as ill-groomed as ever – a bird’s nest could have been concealed inside his bushy beard – but in high spirits. Titus took this for a good sign. Perhaps their meeting would go well. He noticed that Kaeso was wearing the fascinum on a bit of twine around his neck.
“Greetings, brother,” he said.
“Come inside.”
Artemisia briefly looked in from the other room and perfunctorily greeted him, then disappeared. How plump and plain she looked, without make-up and with her hair unwashed. Chrysanthe was holding up much better, despite having given birth to their son and three daughters. Poor Artemisia had not even become a mother because her husband saw no point in bringing new life into the world.
“You seem happy, Kaeso.”
“l am.”
“May I ask why?”
“You won’t like the answer.”
“Probably not. But try me.”
“I am happy because the end of the world is very close now. Very close! Perhaps it will happen within the year.”
Titus groaned. “And this idea makes you happy?”
“Of course. It’s what we long for, to shed the trapping of this foul place and be reunited with Christ, to see the naked face of God revealed in all his glory.”
Titus sighed. “And how will the world end, Kaeso? How could such a thing even happen? What fire could be big enough, what earthquake terrible enough, what tidal wave high enough to wipe out all of creation? Will the stars come crashing down? Will the sun burn out, and the moon explode like a dandelion? The very idea of the world ending is nonsense!”
“The one God is omnipotent. He made all of creation in six days, and he can destroy it all in the blink of an eye.”
“If this god is omnipotent – and if there are no other gods to stand in his way – why does he not simply fix this world to his liking, likewise in the blink of an eye, and put an end to the evil and suffering you say is all around us? What sort of god is this you worship, who plays a cruel waiting game with his worshippers?”
“You simply don’t understand, Titus. It’s my fault; I lack the power to explain it to you. If you would come to one of our gatherings, there are men far wiser than I-”
“No, Kaeso, Senator Titus Pinarius will not be seen at a gathering of Christians!” The idea was so ludicrous, Titus laughed out loud.
“You mock me, brother, but of what are you so proud? Of your special status in the world, your friendship with the emperor? You were friends with the last emperor, too. Yet you did nothing, said nothing, when cousin Claudius was murdered.”
Titus felt the blood drain from his face. “You don’t know that Claudius was murdered.”
“Of course I do. Everyone knows. Ask your senator friends. Or ask my neighbours. The niece he took in his incestuous marriage – violating even Roman standards of decency – put poison in his mushrooms, and when that failed to act quickly enough, Agrippina called for a physician to treat him, and the physician put a feather down Claudius’s throat to make him vomit. But the feather was dabbed with an even more potent poison, and that was the end of poor Claudius. Did you even mourn for him, brother?”
Titus was taken aback. That the common people had some vague notion of how Claudius had met his end did not surprise him, but Kaeso knew the actual details, and if Kaeso knew, then everyone in the city must know.
Perhaps, Titus thought, that was not such a bad thing. If people believed that Agrippina was a poisoner, that would make her violent death more acceptable, once they learned of it.
“No one knows for certain if that feather had poison on it or not,” said Titus. “It may be true that Agrippina, as a devoted mother, took extreme measures to promote her son-”
“Her son, who turned his hand to murder with just as much enthusiasm. Or will you claim that young Britannicus met a natural end? He was poisoned as well, wasn’t he, only a few months after Nero’s ascension? The poor boy! And did you, as Claudius’s friend and cousin, lift a finger to protect Claudius’s orphaned son?”
The jab was well aimed. Far from protecting Britannicus, Titus, at Agrippina’s bidding, had done his share to promote the notion that the boy was a changeling, so as to discredit any claim he might have to rule.
“I had nothing to do with either the death of Claudius or the death of Britannicus,” said Titus.
“But you know who murdered them.”
“ I f they were murdered.”
“Titus, my poor, deluded brother! You move among these people as an Egyptian snake handler moves among serpents. They may not have bitten you yet, but their venom has poisoned you nonetheless. Nero’s venom has seeped into you, polluted you-”
“You dare to call Nero a snake? In five years, that remarkable young man has done more for this city than any emperor since Augustus. If you ever left this hovel and took a walk through the decent neighbourhoods of Roma, where decent people live, you’d see how happy those people are. Those are the people who don’t want the world to end, because Nero has made this world a better place.”
“And what do all Nero’s earthly achievements count for, when you consider that he murdered his own mother?”
Titus was stunned. He himself had only just been informed of Agrippina’s death by a messenger who came directly from Baiae.
“How can you know about Agrippina? Living in this hole, a nobody among nobodies?” A dark suspicion struck him. “Is there some network of spies among the Christian slaves? Does that network reach even to the imperial house hold?”
Kaeso laughed. “You think all Christians are Jews, slaves, outcasts, or beggars. If you only knew the truth, Titus! There are people of every rank among us, even fine, upstanding Roman ladies. Not all can aspire to Jesus’s example of poverty, but all can look forward to the day when we shall be redeemed and united in the afterlife-”
“Then there is a network of Christian spies, even in the imperial household?” Titus recalled something Nero had once said, that the Christians might be seditious. Titus had long ago decided that his brother’s obsessions were maddening but harmless, but could it be that the Christian cult was more sinister than he had thought?
“Tell me something, Kaeso. Every so often I come across some bit of information about your cult, whether I want to or not. Someone recently drew my attention to a purported holy text which contained a quotation from Christ himself. When I read it, I found it so alarming I memorized it: ‘If any man comes to me, and hates not his father, and his mother, and his wife, and his children, and his brother and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.’ Did your god actually say such a terrible thing?”
Kaeso nodded. “A follower of Christ must be ready to reject all the attachments of the material world in favour of spiritual rebirth-”
“You don’t have to explain the words to me. I understand them well enough,” said Titus in disgust.
A bit of light happened to reflect off the fascinum, drawing Titus’s attention to it. “You dare to wear the fascinum of our ancestors – you, who do nothing to honour our ancestors, who profess to despise all they accomplished and handed down to us! You, who would profess to hate our father and to hate me, merely to please your god?”
Kaeso smiled and touched the fascinum. “This amulet is not what you think it is, Titus. It is a symbol of Christ’s suffering and a promise of his future resurrection, of the resurrection of all who believe-”
“No, Kaeso, it’s a link to the past, a talisman handed down to us from a time before Roma was founded. You would pervert it into something else entirely, with your hatred of the gods and your hatred of Roma!”
“The gods you worship are not gods, Titus. If anything, they’re demons, though I tend to believe that in fact they do not exist at all, that they never did exist-”
