CHAPTER V
_THE MOCKERY OF DEATH_
‘Esse aliquos Manes et subterranea regna
* * * * *
Nec pueri credunt, nisi qui nondum ære lavantur, Sed tu vera puta.’--JUV. _Sat._ ii. 149-153.
Agrippina had long contrived to secure the absolute devotion of herslaves, clients, and freedmen. In that vast household of at leastsixteen hundred persons, all courteously treated and liberally paid,there were many who were ready to go any lengths in support of theirpatroness. Among them was the freedman Mnester, who knew but littleof her crimes, but was enthusiastic in her interests. She madeconstant use of him on that eventful day.
Among her slaves were some of the Chaldæai and casters of horoscopes,so common in those times, in whom she placed a superstitiousconfidence. Her first care was to consult them, and she determinedto take no overt step until they should announce that the auspicioushour had come. She then hastened to the chamber where Xenophon stillkept his watch beside the man whom he had murdered. He kept thatwatch with perfect indifference. His was a soul entirely cynical andatheistic; greedy of gain only, case-hardened by crime. The bargainbetween him and the Empress was perfectly understood between them.Enormous wealth would be the price of his silence and success; deathwould punish his failure.
There was nothing to be seen but the dead form covered from head tofoot by a purple coverlet.
She pointed to it. ‘He must still be supposed to be alive,’ she said.‘The Chaldæans say that the omens are still inauspicious. How are weto keep the secret for some hours longer?’
‘Asclepiades teaches,’ answered the physician, with the scarcelyveiled sneer which marked his tone of voice, ‘how good it is thatthe pains of dying men should be dissipated by comedy and song. TheEmpress can order some comedians to play in the adjoining chamber.If they cannot avail the divine Claudius, they will at least serveto amuse my humble self, and I have now been in this room for manyhours.’
‘Does any one suspect that he is dead?’
‘No, Augusta,’ he answered. ‘To dissipate the too suspicious silence,I have occasionally made curious sounds, at which I am an adept. Theywill delude any chance listener into the belief that my patient isstill alive.’
For a moment her soul was shocked by the suggestion of sending forthe mummers. But she saw that it would help to prevent the truth fromleaking out. For one instant she lifted the purple robe and looked onthe old man of sixty-four, who had thus ended his reign of fourteenyears. She dropped it over the features, which, in the majesty ofdeath, had lost all their coarseness and imbecility, and showed thefine lineaments of his ancestors. The moment afterwards she was sorrythat she had done it. That dead face haunted all her after life.
Leaving the chamber without a word, she gave orders that, as theEmperor was now awake, and had asked for something to amuse him, someskilled actors of comedy should be sent for to play to him from theadjoining room. They came and did their best, little knowing thattheir coarse jests and riotous fun did but insult the sacred majestyof death. After an hour or two Xenophon, who had been laughinguproariously, came out, thanked them in the Emperor’s name, anddismissed them.
But Agrippina had hastened to one of the audience rooms, in which thePalace abounded, and sent for Britannicus and Octavia, and for theirhalf-sister Antonia. She embraced them with effusive fondness. Itwas her special object to detain Britannicus in her presence, lestif but one faithful friend discovered that Claudius was dead, hemight summon the adherents of the young prince, and present him tothe people as the true heir to the throne. With pretext after pretextshe detained him by her side, telling him of the pride and comfortwhich she felt in his resemblance to the Emperor, calling him a trueCæsar, a true Claudius. Again and again she drew him to her knee;she held him by the hand; she passed her jewelled fingers through hishair; she amused him with the pretence of constant messages to thesick-room of his father. And all the while her soul was half-sickwith anxiety, for the Chaldæans still sent to say that the hour wasinauspicious, and she did not fail to observe that the boy, as muchas he dared to show his feelings, saw through her hypocrisy, resentedher caresses. He burned to visit the bedside of his father, and wasbitterly conscious that something was going on of which he and hissisters were the special victims. For he was a noble and gifted boy.Something he had of the high bearing of his race, something, too, ofthe soft beauty of his mother. His tutor, the grammarian Sosibius,had done for him all that had been permitted, and though Britannicushad purposely been kept in the background by the wiles of hisstepmother, the teacher had managed to inspire him with liberalculture, and to enrich his memory with some grand passages ofverse. Nero was more than three years his senior, and in superficialqualities and graces outshone him; but keen observers whispered thatthough Britannicus could not sing or paint or drive a chariot likehis stepbrother, and was less fascinating in manner and appearance,he would far surpass Nero in all manly and Roman virtues. The heartof Octavia was full of unspeakable misgivings. Motherless, unloved,neglected, she had known no aspect of life except its tragedy, andnone had as yet taught her any possible region in which to look forcomfort under the burden of the intolerable mystery.
The morning hours passed heavily, and Agrippina was almost worn outby the strain put upon her. In vain she tried to interest Britannicusin the talking-thrush, which had greatly amused him on previousoccasions. She went so far as to give him her white nightingale,which was regarded as one of the greatest curiosities in Rome. Ithad been bought for a large sum of money, and presented to her.Pliny, among his researches in natural history, had never heard ofanother.[5] At another time Britannicus would have been enrapturedby so interesting and valuable a gift; but now he saw that it was theobject of the Empress simply to detain him and his friends from anyinterference with her own designs. He thanked her coldly, anddeclined to rob her of a possession which all Rome desired to see.
At last he grew beyond measure impatient. ‘I am certain,’ he said,‘that my father is very ill, and that he would wish to see me.Augusta, must I be kept in this room like a child among women? Letme go to the Emperor.’
‘Wait,’ she said, ‘for a little longer, dear Britannicus. You surelywould not waken the Emperor from the sleep which may prove to be thesaving of his life? It is getting towards noon; you must be hungry.The slaves shall bring us our _prandium_ here.’
It was said to save time, but Britannicus saw that it would be vainto escape. The door was beset with soldiers and with the slaves andfreedmen of the Empress. Some great event was evidently at hand. Thehalls and corridors were full of hurrying footsteps. Outside theyheard the clang of armed men, who marched down the Vicus Apollinis,and stopped at the vestibule of the Palace.
Then Pallas entered, and, with a deep obeisance, said, ‘Augusta, Igrieve to be the bearer of evil tidings. The Emperor is dead.’
Octavia burst into a storm of weeping at the terrible intelligence,for she had been partially deceived by the protestations ofAgrippina. Britannicus sat down and covered his face with his hands.He had always assumed that he would at least share the throne withthe youth whom Claudius, at the wearying importunities of his mother,had needlessly adopted, and had repented of having adopted. Buthe loved his father, who had always been kind to him, and at thatdreadful moment no selfish thought intruded on his anguish. After thefirst burst of sorrow, he got up from his seat, and tenderly claspedthe hand of his sister.
‘Octavia,’ he said, ‘we are orphans now--fatherless, motherless, thelast of our race. We will be true to each other. Take courage. Becomforted. Antonia,’ he added, gently taking his half-sister by thehand, ‘I will be a loyal brother to you both.’