One afternoon she sent me upon an errand, during the execution of which I witnessed an occurrence which foreshadowed events that were to have extraordinarily evil effects upon the reign of Tiberius and the history of Rome; and upon my return home I experienced an adventure that eventually brought me the greatest happiness I have ever known in life and the most poignant sorrow.
I was to take a letter to the house of Sejanus; and that in itself was strange, as Sejanus was by now the Emperor's favorite and must, for that reason alone if for no other, have been anathema to Agrippina. What was in the letter I do not, of course, know. There is no telling what that mad brain might have conceived to write to an enemy, but I am quite sure that it was no love note. From what I saw that evening in the house of Sejanus, it may have been a warning or a threat.
Taking my time, I strolled down from the Palatine Hill, loitering before the rich shops of the jewelers, the florists, and the perfumers on the slope of the Sacred Way. The shops of the jewelers fascinated me most, for it seemed inconceivable to me that there could be enough money in all the world to purchase even a part of what was exhibited there; and I knew that there was much more within the shops that I did not see.
There were displayed the iron seal rings for men and the gold rings of the equestrian class along with a display of countless baubles designed to attract the eye of woman. There were brooches of marvelous workmanship and set with precious stones, with which the stola is fastened upon the shoulders; and there were bracelets, chains, necklaces, and earrings of such marvelous beauty as almost to take one's breath away. In the window of one shop was displayed, by favor of the Emperor that magnificent pearl which Julius Caesar is said to have given to Servilia and for which he was reputed to have paid six million sestertii.
Still loitering, for I had no mind to return to the house of Agrippina and the company of Caligula any sooner than I had to, I entered the Forum, which is always a scene of interest and activity. I stopped before the Basilica of Julius to watch the backgammon players on the pavement of the outer colonnade. A little farther on, several men were playing at dice, though if they were playing for money there was no indication of it; and I do not think they were, as there was a member of the city watch looking on.
A beggar approached me, asking for money. He was a very old man. He carried a board on which was crudely painted a scene depicting a shipwreck. The old fellow told me that he had been a sailor on that ship. What that had to do with his having been reduced to beggar y, he did not explain, nor why it should entitle him to alms. I thought him a fraud, but I gave him a copper; then I heard a crier exhorting all and sundry to come and see a two-headed baby. That certainly was a fraud and poorly done: what appeared to be the mummified head of a little monkey sewn to the neck of another monkey mummy. As it was getting late, I passed by the "Asiatic giant" and the "mermen" and continued on my way toward the house of Sejanus, past groups reading the daily news posted on a bulletin board and others gossiping about some new scandal, arguing the respective merits of the Blue and the Green racing stables, or just arguing. The Romans love to hear themselves talk.
It was dusk by the time I came to the door of Sejanus' house. A slave answered my knock and asked me what I wished.
"I bear a letter from Agrippina for Sejanus," I said.
He bade me enter, and then jerked his thumb in the general direction of the peristyle. "The noble Sejanus is there," he said.
I thought it rather lax on the part of the slave to admit me thus and direct me to his master without first gaining the latter's permission, but as it was none of my business, I continued on as he had directed. I had, of course, come to the side entrance, which let directly into a corridor that opened into the peristyle.
It was not quite dark as yet, nor yet was it very light; and as I reached the end of the corridor at one corner of the portico which surrounded the pool, I stopped to look about me for Sejanus. It was well for me that I did. If I had not done so, I should certainly not be alive today; for what I saw was Livilla, the wife of Drusus the son of Tiberius, in the arms of Sejanus.
They were so heatedly engaged that they did not notice me, and I backed quickly into the darkness of the corridor. A moment later, I found the slave who had admitted me and handed him the letter. "I could not find your master," I said. "You may give him this when you see him." I breathed a sigh of relief as I stepped out into the cool air of the Roman night.
What I had seen filled me with sorrow for Tiberius. As for Drusus, he probably had some other man's wife in his arms, being a dissolute and licentious fellow, so I didn't waste much sympathy on him. But poor old Tiberius! Here was the man upon whom he was heaping honors and power, seducing the wife of his son. But that was Rome: these were Romans. I was, as always, proud to be a barbarian.
It was evident that I had done too much loitering, for it was now quite dark as I made my way through the narrow streets of the city, and I had no torch. Rome was then, as it still is, overrun by thieves and footpads at night, men who would not hesitate to knock one over the head or slit one's throat for a sestertius or even less.
However, I was not afraid. I was large for my age and correspondingly strong and agile, the two latter attributes having been considerably developed by the training in swordplay and boxing given me by Tibur: and, last but not least, I am the greatgrandson of Cingetorix. Nevertheless, I kept my eyes open; for even a greatgrandson of Cingetorix can be struck down from behind.
I was passing the mouth of a narrow alley when I heard a scream. It was the scream of a terrified woman, and mingled with it were the gruff voices and oaths of men. Had I had good sense, I should have passed on and minded my own business, but I did nothing of the kind. Instead, I did the most foolish thing that I possibly could have done: I ran quickly up the alley in the direction of the cries and presently came upon two young thugs trying to drag a girl into a doorway.
She had stopped screaming, as one of the men had clapped a hand over her mouth, but she struggled and fought against them, and it was evidently this that had delayed them enough so that I caught up with them before they could get her through the doorway. One of the men struck her on the side of the head just as I arrived, and almost simultaneously my fist caught him behind an ear. He went down in a heap, and then the other fellow threw the girl aside and came for me. This was the first opportunity I had had to put Tibur's instructions to practical use. I was sorry that he was not there to see me: he would have been very proud of me. I landed on the lout at will and pounded him into a pulp almost before you could say Jupiter Pluvius.
As soon as the fellow had released her, I had told the girl to run, and thinking that reinforcement might come to their aid at any moment in this disreputable alley, I came to the conclusion that discretion was the better part of valor and, having beaten down number two, I started to back away toward the avenue from which I had entered the alley, when I heard the girl cry out: "Quick! Behind you!" So she hadn't run, after all. I wheeled just in time to meet number one, who had regained his feet and some of his senses and was coming for me with Roman courage: a dagger aimed at the back. Now the proper defense for this attack had been thoroughly and sometimes painfully drilled into me by Tibur, but it was the girl's warning that saved me. To seize the fellow's wrist, twist him around and break his arm, and fell him with a blow to the jaw were things that were accomplished by Tibur's methods in not much more time than it takes to tell it.
Then I grasped the girl's hand and hustled her out of that alley. "Why didn't you run when I told you to?" I demanded, for it had frightened me a little to find her still there after I had thought that I had disposed of her two attackers, when it was entirely possible that more of their kind might come from the squalid hovels that lined both sides of the alley.
"It is a good thing for you that I didn't," she replied quite truthfully.
"I guess you're right," I said. "That fellow might easily have gotten me. It was very brave of you, and I thank you."
She s
aid that she was the one who owed thanks. She said a number of things that made me selfconscious and uncomfortable. One would have thought, to hear her, that I had massacred an entire tribe of the Belgae single-handed.
I asked her which way she was going, and she said to the house of Helvidius Pius at the foot of the Caelian Hill; so I told her that I would accompany her all the way to the door. As you know, the Caelian Hill would be in the direction I was going, though beyond the Palatine Hill, where was the palace of Agrippina.
Although it was night, it was not dark as there was a full moon, and by its light I could see the features of my companion. She was a girl of about my own age. As a matter of fact, she was just two years younger than I, as I learned later, and she was extremely good-looking and well-formed. Her hair was very blonde, which, with her darker eyes and lashes and eyebrows, made a lovely contrast. She did not look Roman, and as I could see by her apparel that she was a slave, I judged that she was not. Of course, she might have been a Roman who had been sold into slavery by her parents as was often done, but for some reason I hoped that she was not a Roman. I knew but one Roman of whom I was really fond. That was Tibur, but I tried not to hold it against him for, after all, one has not much choice as to one's parents.
She had evidently been appraising me, though it had not been obvious, for she said, "You, too, are a slave, and you are not Roman, are you?" But then women are far more observing than men in matters that pertain to personal appearance.
"I am not Roman," I replied, rather proudly. "I am a Briton." I put a lot of pride into that statement, and it was genuine pride. "You do not look like a Roman yourself," I added. "I am not, thank the gods," she replied. "You and I are almost neighbors. I am a Belgian."
"I have been to Belgium," I said. "I was with my father when he went with a hundred warriors to conquer the Belgae."
The girl laughed, and so did I. "Did he succeed?" she asked.
"He did not; we were taken prisoners."
"When was that?"
"In 768."
"I was seven years old then," said the girl, and thus I learned her age: she was fifteen.
"I shall never forget 768, for it was that year that I was stolen by a raiding party of Gauls and sold into slavery." Then she asked my name.
"I am called Britannicus-Britannicus Caligulae Servus."
"Oh," she exclaimed, "you are the slave of Caesar."
"Or one of them," I corrected. "The house of Agrippina is as full of Caesars as a German beard of lice--and they are about as annoying."
"You should not talk like that to strangers," she cautioned. "Do not forget that there is always the Via Flaminia for slaves," and she shuddered.
"I am not afraid to talk that way to you," I said.
"Why?" she asked.
Now that was a difficult question to answer, as there was no very practical reason why I should trust her, and I admitted it, "But," I added, "I would wager a million sestertii that you would never report me."
"Never," she said, and then she added, with a laugh, "a million sestertii! What a rich slave you must be!"
"Well," I said, "I have two hundred sestertii that I won from Caligula at dice."
Her laugh was most intoxicating: everything about her was intoxicating. I had never imagined that there could be such a girl, but of course I had not had much experience with girls. Besides that, I had based my estimation of them, and it was a very low one, on my observation of that egregious pest, Agrippina Minor, who was not eight years old and eight times as obnoxious as she had been at one.
But this girl was different; she didn't have the face of a bilious sheep and the stride of a legionary. She floated along at my side like a forest nymph, with the moonlight in her hair and life and laughter in her eyes. I wondered how anyone could have permitted her to go abroad alone in Rome at night, and so I asked her.
"My mistress sent me with a love note to a young man who lives on the Subura."
"She must be a fool," I said. "Who is she?"
"Caesonia, the daughter of Helvidius Pius."
"I should think that a woman old enough to have a lover would know better than to send a young girl out on the streets of Rome at night."
"Caesonia is very young and thoughtless, and very selfish, too. She is two years younger than I."
"You mean that a thirteen-year-old girl has a lover?" I demanded.
"Oh, yes, but then Caesonia is mature for her age and remarkably well-developed."
"But evidently not above the ears," I suggested.
The girl laughed. "The daughter of a rich senator does not have to be developed above the ears," she said.
By now we had come to the side door of the house of Helvidius Pius. The girl turned to me and held out her hand. "I thank you so much, Britannicus," she said. "That seems very meager reward for the service you did me, but what has a slave to offer?"
"Your friendship," I said.
"That you have and shall have for always."
"It is enough."
"I hope that we shall meet again," she said. "And now, good night."
I pressed her hand again and turned away, but of a sudden I remembered something and wheeled around. She had entered the house and was closing the door.
"Your name!" I cried. "I do not even know your name."
"Attica," she said, and closed the door.
Chapter VIII
A.U.C.776 [A.D. 23]
I DID not see Tibur for a couple of days after my encounter with the two thugs. He had gotten a few days leave and had been away on what must have been a beautiful drunk. He looked like the wrath of Jupiter Tonans the morning that he showed up for duty. The big gorilla never was much to look at, and I can assure you that a black eye and a knife wound across one cheek added nothing to his pulchritude. Besides these, his eyes were bloodshot and bleary.
When I saw him, I had to laugh. "You must have run into a Briton," I said.
"It was a door," said Tibur.
"It should be pitted against our best gladiators in the arena," I suggested.
"Shut up!" growled Tibur.
"You should have had me along to protect you," I taunted. "What you need is a man who can best two thugs in a dark alley-two thugs armed with daggers."
"What are you gabbing about, barbarian?" he demanded. Tibur only called me barbarian when he wished to annoy me. I am a barbarian and I am proud of it, but I don't relish being called barbarian in a certain tone of voice. The Jews are that way, too. They run around bragging about being Jews; but if anyone calls them Jew, in that tone, they get mad. "You talk as though you had bested two thugs in a dark alley-two thugs armed with daggers," he added. Then he laughed a nasty laugh.
"I did, you fungus," I said. "In an alley not far from the house of Lucius Aelius Sejanus, the evening of the day after you went away to get beaten and stabbed by a door."
Tibur's eyes opened as far as they could, which, in their present condition was not far.
"In an alley not far from the house of Sejanus?" he repeated, questioningly.
"That's what I said, baboon."
"Two days ago?" he asked.
"Two days ago."
"Just what happened?" he asked. For some reason he seemed to be giving serious consideration to my story.
I told him.
"You knocked them both down; you beat one of them up badly; you broke the arm of one. Is that what I understood you to say?"
"It is."
"In an alley near the house of Sejanus?"
"Still the same place," I assured him.
"Well, you killed one of them," he said.
"I wish I had killed them both."
"So do I," said Tibur.
"Why?" I inquired. "You don't even know what they had done."
"I know what one of them did," he said. "I came out of a house on the other side of the alley to see what the fuss was, just as the watch came hotfooting it along with the same general idea in mind; and this cuckoo that you neglected to kill told them
that I had attacked them and killed his friend."
I had to laugh.
"It is no laughing matter, you blockhead," snorted Tibur. "The watch took me off to jail, and it is only because I am a member of the Imperial Guard that I am not there yet and in a good way to be thrown down the Gemonian steps or sent to the mines or the galleys for life. I may be yet. They have reported the matter to the Praefect of the Guard."
This was serious. Of course I wasn't going to let Tibur be punished for something that I had done, although I knew that it would go much harder with me than with him, Tibur being a freedman and a citizen, the latter a corollary implicit upon his membership in the Guard.
"Did the one I killed happen by any chance to be a citizen?" I asked. Tibur nodded. "A noble Roman," he said.
That might mean the Via Flaminia for me after all. It seemed to me that the threat of that hateful road hung constantly over my head like a sword of Damocles. I saw it at that moment as though I already hung upon one of its crosses; I saw the tortured creatures struggling; I heard their groans and screams. I saw those whom death had mercifully released, and those who had hung so long that their skeletons showed through their rotted flesh. I saw the ravens and the vultures circling high, swooping low to the grisly feast, for I had been along the Via Flaminia many times.
When we rode out for pleasure, Caligula usually directed our driver to the Via Flaminia. He had two reasons: one was that he knew I loathed the place; the other that he enjoyed watching the agonies of the crucified.
"But for the compassion of Caius Caesar Caligula," he once said to me, "you might be hanging there, Britannicus. At a word from Caius Caesar Caligula, you would be. Eventually, you probably will be," and then he laughed.