_INSTRUMENTA IMPERII_
‘It is the curse of kings to be attended
By slaves who take their humours for a warrant
To break into the bloody house of life.’
SHAKESPEARE, _King John_.
The autumn twilight had by this time faded, but one silver lamp,
standing on a slab of softly glowing marble, shed a dim light through
the room when the freedman was ushered into it. He was a man of
portly presence, and of demeanour amazingly haughty for one who had
once bawled ‘Sea-urchins for sale!’ in the Subura, and come over the
sea from his native Arcadia with his feet chalked as a common slave.
His immense wealth, his influence over the Emperor, and his advocacy
of the claims of Agrippina to her uncle’s hand, together with the
honours bestowed upon him by the mean adulation of the Senate, had
raised him to the pinnacle of his power. Agrippina had stooped to the
lowest depths to purchase his adherence, and now there was absolute
confidence between them. He was ready to betray the too-indulgent
master who had raised him from the dust and heaped upon him gifts and
privileges, for which the noblest Consul might have sighed in vain.
Pallas was in a grave mood. The air was full of portents. A tale was
on every lip among the common people that a pig had been born with
the talons of a hawk. A swarm of bees had settled on the top of the
Capitol. The tents and standards of the soldiers had been struck
with fire from heaven. In that year a quæstor, an ædile, a tribune, a
prætor, and a consul had all died within a few months of each other.
Claudius had nominated two consuls, but had only nominated them for a
single month. Had he misgivings about his approaching fate? Agrippina
was not superstitious, and she listened to these stories of the Greek
freedman with the indifference of disdain. But it was far otherwise
when he told her that Narcissus had been heard to utter very
dangerous speeches. He had said that whether Britannicus or Nero
succeeded, he himself was doomed to perish. Britannicus would
hate him as the man who had brought about the death of his mother
Messalina. Nero would hate him, because he had opposed his adoption,
and the marriage of his mother to the Emperor, both which events had
been achieved by the rival influence of Pallas. Still Narcissus was
faithful to his kind master, and Britannicus was the Emperor’s son.
The freedman had been seen to embrace Britannicus; he had spoken of
him as the ‘true image of Claudius;’ had stretched forth his hands
now to him and now to heaven, and had prayed ‘that the boy might grow
speedily to man’s estate, and drive away the enemies of his father,
even if he also took vengeance on the slayer of his mother.’
Agrippina listened to this report with anxious disquietude, and
Pallas told her further that lately the Emperor had often pressed
Britannicus and Octavia to his heart; had spoken of their wrongs;
had declared that they should not be ousted from their place in his
affections by the crafty and upstart son of such a wretch as Domitius
Ahenobarbus, of whom it might be said, as the orator Licinius Crassus
said of his ancestor, ‘No wonder his beard was of brass, since his
tongue was of iron, and his heart of lead.’ Claudius often repeated
himself, and when he saw his son he had several times used the Greek
proverb, ὁ τρώσας καὶ ἰάσεται, ‘he who wounded shall also heal you.’
But worse news followed, and Agrippina grasped the side of her couch
with an impulse of terror, when, last of all, Pallas told her that,
on that very evening, the Emperor, in his cups, had been heard to
mutter to some of his intimates ‘that he more than suspected the
designs of his wife; and that it had always been his destiny to bear
the flagitious conduct of his consorts for a time, but at last to
avenge it.’
As she heard these words Agrippina stood up, her arms outstretched,
her fine nostril dilated, her whole countenance inflamed with rage
and scorn. ‘The dotard!’ she exclaimed, ‘the miserable, drivelling,
drunken dotard! He to speak thus of me! Pallas, the hour for delay
is over. It is time to act. But,’ she added, ‘Narcissus is still
here. He loves his master; he watches over him with sleepless
vigilance. I dare attempt nothing while he remains about the Court.’
‘He is crippled with the gout,’ answered Pallas. ‘He suffers
excruciating agony. He cannot hold out much longer. I told him that
you strongly recommended him to try the sulphur baths of Sinuessa.
He is nearly certain to take the hint. In a week or two at the latest
he will ask leave of absence, for his life is a torture.’
‘Good!’ whispered the Empress; and then, dropping her voice to a
whisper, she hissed into the ear of the freedman, ‘Claudius must
not live.’
‘You need not drop your voice, Augusta,’ said Pallas. ‘No slave is
near. I placed one of my own attendants in the corridor, and forbade
him on pain of death to let anyone approach your chamber.’
‘You ventured to tell him that?’ asked Agrippina, amazed at the
freedman’s boldness.
‘Not to _tell_ him that,’ answered Pallas. ‘Do you suppose that I
would degrade myself by speaking to one of my own slaves, or even
of my own freedmen--I who, as the senate truly says, am descended
from Evander and the ancient kings of Arcadia, though I deign to be
among Cæsar’s servants? No! a look, a sign, a wave of the hand is
sufficient command from me. If anything more is wanted I write it
down on my tablets. I rejoice--as I told the senate when they offered
me four million sesterces--to serve Cæsar and retain my poverty.’
‘The insolent thrall!’ thought Agrippina; ‘and he says this to me who
know that he was one of the common slaves of Antonia, the Emperor’s
mother, and still has to conceal under his hair the holes bored in
his ears. And he talks of his _poverty_ to me, though I know as well
as he does how he has amassed sixty million sesterces by robbery in
fourteen years!’ But she instantly concealed the disdainful smile
which flitted across her lips, and repeated in a low voice, ‘Claudius
must die!’
‘The plan has its perils,’ said the freedman.
‘Not if it remains unknown to the world,’ she replied. ‘And who will
dare to reveal it, when they know that to allude to it is death?’
‘If you are the daughter of the beloved Germanicus,’ he said, ‘the
Emperor is his brother. The soldiers would never rise against him.’
‘I did not think of the Prætorians,’ said Agrippina. ‘There are other
means. In the prison beneath this palace is one who will help me.’
‘Locusta?’ whispered Pallas, with an involuntary shudder. ‘But the
Emperor has a _prægustator_ who tastes every dish and every cup.’
‘Yes! The eunuch Halotus,’ answered Agrippina. ‘He is in my pay; he
will do my bidding.’
‘But Claudius also has a physician.’
‘Yes! The illustrious Xenophon of Cos,’ answered the Empress, with a
meaning smile.
Pallas raised his hands, half in horror, half in admiration. Careless
of every moral consideration, he had never dipped his hands in blood.
He had lived in the midst of a profoundly corrupt society from his
earliest youth. He knew that poisonings were frequent amid the gilded
wickedness and hollow misery of the Roman aristocracy. He knew that
they had been far from infrequent in the House of Cæsar, and that
Eudemus, the physician of Drusus, son of the Emperor Tiberius, had
poisoned his lord. Yet before the cool hardihood of Agrippina’s
criminality he stood secretly appalled. Would it not have been better
for him, after all, to have followed the example of Narcissus, and to
have remained faithful to his master? How long would he be necessary
to the Empress and her son? And when he ceased to be useful, what
would be his fate?
Agrippina read his thoughts in his face, and said, ‘I suppose that
Claudius is still lingering over the wine cup. Conduct me back to
him. Acerronia, my lady-in-waiting, will follow us.’
‘He has been carried to his own room,’ said Pallas; ‘but if you wish
to see him, I will attend you.’
He led the way, and gave the watchword of the night to the Prætorian
guards and their officer, Pudens. The room of the Emperor was only
across the court, and the slaves and freedmen and pages who kept
watch over it made way for the Augusta and the all-powerful freedman.
‘The Emperor still sleeps,’ said the groom of the chamber as they
entered.
‘Good,’ answered Agrippina. ‘You may depart. We have business to
transact with him, and will await his wakening. Give me the lamp.
Acerronia will remain without.’
The slave handed her a golden lamp richly chased, and left the
chamber. There on a couch of citron-wood lay the Emperor, overcome,
as was generally the case in the evening, with the quantities of
strong wine he had drunk. His breathing was deep and stertorous; his
thin grey hairs were dishevelled; his purple robe stained, crumpled,
and disordered. His mouth was open, his face flushed; the laurel
wreath had fallen awry over his forehead, and, in the imbecile
expression of intoxication, every trace of dignity and nobleness
was obliterated from his features.
They stood and looked at him under the lamp which Agrippina uplifted
so that the light might stream upon his face.
‘Sot and dotard!’ she exclaimed, in low tones, but full of scorn and
hatred. ‘Did not his own mother, Antonia, call him “a portent of a
man”? I am not surprised that my brother Gaius once ordered him to be
flung into the Rhone; or that he and his rude guests used to slap him
on the face, and pelt him with olives and date-stones when he fell
asleep at the table. I have often seen them smear him with grape
juice, and draw his stockings over his hands, that he might rub his
face with them when he awoke! To think that such a man should be
lord of the world, when my radiant Nero, so young, so beautiful, so
gifted, might be seated on his throne for all the world to admire
and love!’
‘The Emperor has learning,’ said Pallas, looking on him with pity.
‘His natural impulses are all good. He has been a very kind and
indulgent master.’
‘He ought never to have been Emperor at all,’ she answered,
vehemently. ‘That he is so is the merest accident. We owe no thanks
to the Prætorian Gratus, who found him hidden behind a curtain on
the day that my brother Gaius was murdered, and pulled him out by the
legs: still less thanks to that supple intriguing Jew, Herod Agrippa,
who persuaded the wavering senate to salute him Emperor. Why, all his
life long he has been a mere joke. Augustus called him “a poor little
wretch,” and as a boy he used to be beaten by a common groom.’
‘He has been a kind master,’ said the freedman once more; and as he
spoke he sighed.
The Empress turned on him. ‘Will you dare to desert me?’ she said.
‘Do you not know that, at this moment, Narcissus has records and
letters in his possession which would hand me over to the fate of
Messalina, and you to the fate of the noble C. Silius?’
‘I desert you not,’ he answered, gloomily; ‘I have gone too far. But
it is dangerous for us to remain alone any longer. I will retire.’
He bowed low and left the room, but before he went out he turned and
said, very hesitatingly, ‘He is safe with you?’
‘Go!’ she answered, in a tone of command. ‘Agrippina does not use the
dagger; and there are slaves and soldiers and freedmen at hand, who
would come rushing in at the slightest sound.’
She was alone with Claudius, and seeing that it would be many hours
before he woke from his heavy slumber, she gently drew from his
finger the beryl, engraved with an eagle--the work of Myron--which he
wore as his signet ring. Then she called for Acerronia, and, throwing
over her face and figure a large veil, bade her show the ring to the
centurion Pudens, and tell him to lead them towards the entrance of
the Palace prisons, as there was one of the prisoners whom she would
see.
Pudens received the order and felt no surprise. He who had anything
to do with the Palace knew well that the air of it was tremulous
with dark intrigues. He went before them to the outer door of the
subterranean cells, and unlocked it. Even within the gate slaves were
on guard; but, although no one recognised the veiled figure, a glance
at the signet ring sufficed to make them unlock for her the cell in
which Locusta was confined.
Agrippina entered alone. By a lamp of earthernware sat the woman
who had played her part in so many crimes. She was imprisoned on
the charge of having been concerned in various murders, but in those
awful times she was too useful to be put to death. The phials and
herbs which had been her stock-in-trade were left in her possession.
‘I need,’ said the Empress, in a tone of voice which she hardly took
the trouble to disguise, ‘a particular kind of poison: not one to
destroy life too suddenly; not one which will involve a lingering
illness; but one which will first disturb the intellect, and so bring
death at last.’
‘And who is it that thus commands?’ asked Locusta, lifting up to her
visitor a face which would have had some traces of beauty but for its
hard wickedness. ‘It is not to everyone that I supply poisons. Who
knows but what you may be some slave plotting against our lord and
master, Claudius? They who use me must pay me, and I must have my
warrant.’
‘Is that warrant enough?’ said Agrippina, showing her the signet ring.
‘It is,’ said Locusta, no longer doubtful that her visitor was, as
she had from the first suspected, the Empress herself. ‘But what
shall be my reward, Aug--’
‘Finish that word,’ said the Empress, ‘and you shall die on the rack
to-morrow. Fear not, you shall have reward enough. For the present
take this;’ and she flung upon the table a purse full of gold.
Suspiciously yet greedily the prisoner seized it, and opening it with
trembling fingers saw how rich was her guerdon. She went to a chest
which lay in the corner of the room and, bending over it with the
lamp, produced a small box, in which lay some flakes and powder of
a pale yellow colour.
‘This,’ she said, ‘will do what you desire. Sprinkle it over any
well-cooked dish, and it will not be visible. A few flakes of it
will cause first delirium, then death. It has been tested.’
Without a word Agrippina took it, and, slightly waving her hand,
glided out of the cell. Acerronia awaited her, and Pudens again went
before them towards the apartments of the Empress and her ladies.