“No care and caution will avail against the knife of the assassin,” Nero said gloomily. “It is only by striking down conspirators and assassins that one can guard one’s self against their weapons. Julius Caesar was killed when surrounded by men whom he deemed his friends.”
Beric could not deny the truth of Nero’s words. “That is true, Caesar, and therefore I do not presume to criticise or even to have an opinion upon acts of state policy. These are matters utterly beyond me. I know nothing of the history of the families of Rome. I know not who may, with or without reason, deem that they have cause of complaint against you, or who may be hostile to you either from private grievances or personal ambitions, and knowing nothing I wish to know nothing. I desire, as I said when you first spoke to me, to be regarded as a watchdog, to be attached to you by personal kindness, and to guard you night and day against conspirators and assassins. I beseech you not to expect more from me, or to deem it possible that a Briton can be qualified to give any opinion whatever as to a matter so alien to him as the intrigues and conspiracies of an imperial city. Did I agree with you, you would soon doubt my honesty; did I differ from you, I should incur your displeasure.”
Nero looked up at the frank countenance of the young Briton.
“Enough,” he said smiling, “you shall be my watchdog and nothing more.”
As time went on Nero’s confidence in his British guard steadily increased. He had his spies, and knew how entirely Beric kept himself aloof from intimate acquaintanceship with any save the family of Norbanus, and learned, too, that he had refused many large bribes from suitors. For a time, although he knew it not, Beric was constantly watched. His footsteps were followed when he went abroad, his conversations with others in the baths, which formed the great centres of meeting, and stood to the Romans in the place of modern clubs, were listened to and noted. It was observed that he seldom went to convivial gatherings, and that at any place when the conversation turned on public affairs he speedily withdrew; that he avoided all display of wealth, dressed as quietly as it was possible for one in the court circle to do, and bore himself as simply as when he had been training in the ludus of Scopus. There he still went very frequently, practising constantly in arms with his former companions, preferring this to the more formal exercises of the gymnasium. Thus, after a time, Nero became confirmed in his opinion of Beric’s straightforward honesty, and felt that there was no fear of his being tampered with by his enemies.
One result of this increased confidence was that Beric’s hours of leisure became much restricted, for Nero came to require his attendance whenever he appeared in public. With Beric and Boduoc among the group of courtiers that followed him, the emperor felt assured there was no occasion to fear the knife of the assassin; and it was only when he was at the baths, where only his most chosen friends were admitted, or during the long carousals that followed the suppers, that Beric was at liberty, and in the latter case Boduoc was always near at hand in case of need.
Nero’s precautions were redoubled after the detection of the conspiracy of Piso. That this plot was a real one, and not a mere invention of Nero to justify his designs upon those he hated and feared, is undoubted. The hour for the attempt at assassination had been fixed, the chief actor was prepared and the knife sharpened. But the executions that followed embraced many who had no knowledge whatever of the plot. Seneca was among the victims against whom there was no shadow of proof.
After the discovery of this plot Beric found his position more and more irksome in spite of the favour Nero showed him. Do what he would he could not close his ears to what was public talk in Rome. The fabulous extravagances of Nero, the public and unbounded profligacy of himself and his court, the open defiance of decency, the stupendous waste of public money on the new and most sumptuous palace into which he had now removed, were matters that scandalized even the population of Rome. Senators, patricians, grave councillors, noble matrons were alike willingly or unwillingly obliged to join in the saturnalia that prevailed. The provinces were ruined to minister to the luxury of Rome. The wealth of the noblest families was sequestrated to the state. All law, order, and decency were set at defiance.
To the Britons, simple in their tastes and habits, this profusion of luxury, this universal profligacy seemed absolutely monstrous. When they met together and talked of their former life in their rude huts, it seemed that the vengeance of the gods must surely fall upon a people who seemed to have lost all sense of virtue, all respect for
