FIFTEEN
Rome, AD 64
IT WAS MAY, the loveliest month, when the meadow grasses were tender and spring flowers were in full color. As the daylight waned and the breezes blew, the crowd of revelers swelled and jostled at the edge of the lake. It would be a long, exotic night, one that would be talked about for generations, a night of spectacle and danger.
It was Tigellinus’s doing. Gaius Ofonius Tigellinus was rich, flamboyant and powerful beyond measure. Officially he was Prefect of the Imperial Bodyguard but in practice, he was the Emperor’s chief fixer and procurer and tonight he had organized the party of the century. They were surrounded by woodland at the Campus Martius, the splendid villa built decades earlier by Agrippa, Augustus’s son-in-law. The center-piece of the property was the great artificial lake, the Stagnum Aggripae, fed by an elaborate aqueduct, the Aqua Virgo, and drained by a long canal into the Tiber.
Along all the banks of the 200-meter lake guests entertained themselves with wild abandon. There were taverns and brothels and dining halls that had been constructed just for the day. Exotic birds and wild beasts brought from far-flung corners of the empire were everywhere, some roaming freely, others, like tigers and cheetahs, tethered by chains with enough slack to let them snare drunkards with their teeth and claws. Whenever this happened, a swollen roar of amusement would draw hundreds more spectators to watch the hapless man or woman getting torn apart.
The coming darkness and flowing wine set in motion pure licentiousness. One brothel was populated with only noblewomen. In another, professional prostitutes cavorted openly and nakedly and spilled onto the grass. Promiscuous women of all sorts were available – noble and slave, matrons and virgins – and all were obliged to satisfy any request. Slaves had sex with their mistresses in front of their husbands, gladiators took daughters under the gaze of their fathers. All was allowed, nothing was forbidden. As night fell, the surrounding groves and buildings shone with lights and echoed with shouts and moans. There was pushing and shoving, brawls and stabbings. And the night was still young.
At the main pavilion a few dozen of the most important guests reclined on benches and couches. There were Senators, courtiers, diplomats, the richest merchants. Tigellinus sat in the front, the lake lapping only a meter from his sandals. For the night he had shed his heavy uniform as commander of the Imperial Guards for a toga but he’d been tempted to go even further, as some of the high-born guests had done, and wear only a belted tunic. Tigellinus was tall and stern with a heavy brow that made him look like a brawler. At his left, taciturn as always, sat the swarthy astrologer Balbilus. He was in his seventh decade of life but still looked powerful and fit, imperious and unapproachable. To his left sat another of the Emperor’s gray-haired toadies, the freedman Acinetus. He had been handpicked by the Emperor’s mother, Agrippina, to be one of her son Nero’s tutors during his nonage and later he carried out the Emperor’s ill-fated plan to drown her by sinking her royal boat. Finally Nero had to dispatch rather more overt assassins to finish the job. When confronted by sword-wielding men in her chambers, Agrippina cried for them to ‘Smite my womb’ – for bringing a son into the world who was detestable even by her own despicable standards.
Behind Nero, bored and drunk, the Emperor’s bejeweled wife Poppaea slouched low, holding her goblet out for one of her handmaidens to refill. Even though she had tired bloodshot eyes and a blotchy rash which her Greek doctor had been unable to remedy, she still had the fetching looks that had first placed her in favor.
Tigellinus leaned over and asked Balbilus, ‘Why so glum?’
‘You know why. For the second time we have achieved what we always wanted: one of us as Emperor. And this is what he gives us. Listen to the Senators grumbling! I fear a revolt, perhaps violence against him. And us. They killed Caligula. It can happen again. We may not get a third chance.’
Tigellinus snorted. ‘There was a comet two weeks ago when Nero was in Beneventum, was there not?’
‘Yes. A clear sign of danger.’
‘And you advised him to expunge the threat by purging certain elements in the aristocracy.’
‘And you, good Prefect, chose well in your slaughter.’
‘And that is precisely why you shouldn’t worry.’ Tigellinus whispered the rest. ‘He will fulfill all our desires. He knows his destiny. Yes, perhaps he’s gone a little mad – this kind of power has that effect – but he’s not so mad as to have lost his way. Let him be merry and indulge himself in his own way.’ He winked. ‘This is what he does. This is who he is.’
Peter the Apostle was hobbled by bad knees and a constant ache which sent lightning bolts of pain down the back of one leg. The journey ahead was going to be arduous, as it would have been even for a younger man, but he’d risen early, washed himself in a trough behind the small stone house in Golgotha and watched the rising sun brighten the hills.
The house had been owned by a brother of Phillip, one of Jesus’s twelve, and upon the man’s death it had passed to his wife Rachel. She had been the second to awake that morning and when she saw Peter was no longer in his bed she sought him out.
‘Must you go to Rome?’ she asked.
He was seated on the stony orange ground. ‘I must.’
‘You’re precious to us,’ she said. ‘We don’t want to lose you. Matthew is gone, and Stephen, and James, and Matthias, and Andrew, and Mark, all martyred like him.’
The rising sun caught Peter’s eyes and made him squint. ‘When I was a young man, Jesus said something which has stayed with me during my long life. He said, “When you are old you will stretch out your hands and another will dress you and take you where you do not want to go.” I do not want to leave you and my beloved brothers and sisters, Rachel, but I fear it is my destiny.’
She did not try to argue with him. ‘Well, come on then, at least let’s get some hot food into you before you climb onto that mule.’
Fresh breezes swirled through the central courtyard and gardens of Nero’s villa at the Campus Martius. Out of sight the vast party heaved and groaned its way toward dawn. Nero sat on a padded marble bench, absently throwing tidbits of food from a crystal bowl to the lampreys in his fish pond while Balbilus and Tigellinus paced and debated.
‘May I enter?’ Acinetus called out from between a pair of peristyle columns.
‘Be quick,’ Nero demanded.
Acinetus tugged two handfuls of cloth, each from the shoulder of a young girl’s toga. ‘Do they please Your Excellency?’
Nero looked the flushed, sobbing girls up and down. ‘Who are they?’
‘The twin daughters of Senator Vellus.’
Nero smiled. ‘Good. I hate that bastard.’
‘I knew you’d be pleased,’ Acinetus said.
‘How old are they?’
‘Twelve or thirteen I should think.’
‘Take them to my rooms and wait there.’ He called Acinetus over and whispered, ‘When I’m done with them be sure to make good use of their tender flesh. My fish, dear Acinetus, are famished.’ He turned back to the other men. ‘You were saying?’
‘I was telling Balbilus what he already knows – that the mood in the city is pleasantly ugly,’ Tigellinus said. ‘The Roman mob has come to hate the Christians even more than they do the Jews.’
‘Of course they do,’ Balbilus agreed. ‘The Christians are an arrogant, loathsome lot who don’t even pretend to pay homage to you. At least the Jews go through a pantomime.’
Tigellinus added, ‘And the Christians grow in numbers by the month. They breed like mice.’
‘I utterly despise them,’ Nero said, yawning. ‘Their piousness is nauseating. The way they pretend that their weakness is a strength – “Turn the other cheek,” they say, “so they may strike you again.” To which I say, when they turn a cheek don’t waste time by striking them again: run them through with a sword and be done with it.’
‘Sound advice,’ Tigellinus said.
