XIV AD 64: Finding the light

 

 

Nero was feeling queasy. When he’d entered the royal box, under a gold-tasselled dais, it had been all right: the crowd spontaneously erupted into cheers and applause, some people even chanting, “Divus Caesar! Divus Caesar!”

Tigellinus, who followed his master like a shadow, smiled with satisfaction: this whole thing was looking to become a great success. But he had to remain vigilant, everything depended on that. The retinue surrounding them was composed entirely of guardsmen, heavily armed under their white togas. They looked like normal clients on a day out, but formed a living redoubt around the emperor.

Before they sat down, Nero on a gilded, throne-like armchair, and Tigellinus on a bronze folding chair next to him, the praefect hissed into the emperor’s ear, “Wave at the people, Divus, wave with dignity and condescension. Can you do that for me?”

And with a big, childlike smile, Nero did what he was told. The crowd purred with pleasure. The people still loved him! But you really had to prompt him all the time, Tigellinus grumbled inwardly. The little pipsqueak was not a born politician.

The Circus of Caligula was packed. At least the bend of the racing track closest to the Tiber: that was where an arena had been cordoned off for the games. The people of Rome had come out in great numbers to the Vatican hill, because they needed their minds taken off their sorrows. Their mighty city was in ruins; they’d all been affected one way or another, losing loved ones, or their homes, or still suffering from burns. It would be a welcome change to have a nice old-fashioned show like this, with acrobats, and gladiators fighting to the death like in the good old days, and a traditional execution by beasts. It was only a small event, an extra, improvised do, not your usual day-long festival. And the executions would be last, to underline the guilt of those vile Christians. The convicts everyone held responsible for the calamity deserved to die in gruesome pain! Those Christians were all arsonists and slanderers, accusing the emperor of lighting the fires, to hide their own heinous crimes.

When the gladiators started drawing blood, Nero nudged his neighbour with his elbow and whined, “Tigellinus! I’m going to be sick!”

“Just close your eyes, Divus. And no matter what happens, don’t walk away. You may puke on my shoes if you have to, but remain seated!”

“Oh, I hate this… I hate this!”

“Just you wait,” the praefect thought, “what will you do when the lions start shredding those poor Christians to pieces?”

Another person was pondering that exact same question only a few dozen seats to the side and half a dozen tiers higher than the royal box, also feeling queasy. Thanks to Senator Antonius Soranus Canio, Sextus Pomponius Sacer had an outstanding place, just a couple of rows behind his patron. He had an excellent view of the arena, but the gladiator fights were not engaging his attention. He was biting the knuckles of his forefinger and fretting, worried sick. What if it were true? What if Feli had been right and Claudia had actually understood that hysterical miming correctly? Of course his wife was bound to fear the worst, as women were wont to do, but still. With some help from Canio, Sextus had done all he could to find out more about Desi’s fate, but to no avail. They had run up against a wall of official obfuscation, they had lost themselves in a maze of administrative evasion, and the fact that the authorities were in complete disarray because of the great fire hadn’t helped either. No one could give them any news of Desiderata Pomponia… But surely they would not just throw her to the lions, like Claudia claimed that Felicitas had told her? And where was Feli anyway; where was his slave; had she bolted?

Nearby, but a lot closer to the royal dais, Gaius Calpurnius Piso and Rufrius Crispinus were sitting next to one another, with the rest of the conspirators scattered inconspicuously around them. You had to be careful, although not a soul seemed to have cottoned on to their plot. They were still respected members of the highest classes, sitting very close to the emperor. Only the blind girl knew their secret, but she would be executed shortly, and they were looking forward to witnessing her grisly end. However, the two leaders felt frustrated: their plans had hit a snag. They had Nero exactly where they wanted him, but they could not get at him: Tigellinus was just too crafty and cautious. And he had put all his eggs squarely into Nero’s basket, to his own advantage, that much was clear, so there was no swaying or coaxing him. Rufrius leaned forward and waived at the current Praefect of the Praetorian Guard, sitting by the emperor under the dais, further down the front tier. They exchanged amiable smiles, from an old to a new commander. The fit-looking young men all around Nero and Tigellinus were guardsmen, no doubt about it. It was so infuriating: the praefect had no idea who his adversaries were, yet he’d managed to thwart them completely!

Finally the gladiators were done fighting, and half of them were dead. A good show. Time for the executions. After the arena stagehands had carried away the bodies and strewn some fresh sand on the blood, the condemned were brought in. Sextus looked up, squinted at the arena, and his breath faltered, his face turned white. Desi was there! She was the very first convict to emerge through the tunnel right beneath him, under the stands where he was sitting. And Feli was walking close by, next to her, holding her arm lightly like she always did. Then there followed a group of about twenty women and children. The crowd went wild.

Something started to scream inside the father’s shocked mind as well, “Desiderata!” As she was positioned and turned around right in front of the royal box by her handlers, everybody could clearly see the hollow cavities under her brows. “Poor Desi!” How could they do this? She was a citizen’s daughter; she was entitled to a fair trial first! She seemed very calm; Feli was the nervous one, cowering behind her mistress. Sextus marvelled: Desi seemed resigned to her fate, you couldn’t escape the impression that she wanted to die like a true Roman. Then he thought, “How about me? Will I be able to stand this?” He had the disturbing feeling that Feli had already spotted him, that she was staring at him reproachfully. “No, I can’t stand it!” he concluded, “I’m going to be sick…” And in contrast to the emperor, nobody was preventing him from leaving his seat. He stood up brusquely and started to make his way to the end of the tier, brushing along the other men’s legs. Then he made for the exit a few tiers up and disappeared into the closest exit tunnel. As soon as he was inside the vaulted passage, he leaned over and vomited against the wall, feeling a deep sense of shame on top of the overwhelming nausea. As it happened, a tunnel like this was called a vomitorium.

Meanwhile Nero was nudging his neighbour again, insistently: “Tigellinus! Tigellinus! Isn’t that aunty Plautilla? You know: one of Poppaea’s godmothers?”

“Yes, yes, Divus: Dame Plautia Petronii is a Christian too. She’s the daughter of Aulus Plautius and the widow of Publius Petronius, who used to be our legate in Syria and Judea. That is where she picked it up.”

“But she’s a Roman citizen! Of noble birth, even, like you say. She can’t just be thrown to the lions; what were you thinking? Get her out of there at once!”

“No can do, Divus, and don’t blame me… Dame Plautia volunteered to die. I pleaded with her, believe me, but she was adamant… I guess a Roman lady is entitled to die as she chooses; an undignified way to go for sure, but we have to respect her choice.”

“But Tigellinus, this time I’m really going to be sick!”

“As I said before, Nero: close your eyes. And think about this: you’re the commander in chief of all the legions of Rome, so you must show your people that you’re a man.”

The emperor looked on in wonderment as the stage hands erected a collapsible cage around the women and children; his wife’s friendly godmother was standing at the front of their group, looking up at him.

 

As the angry howls of the lions reached her from within the dungeon, Desi tried to start whistling. She pursed her dry lips and blew too hard and no sound came out. It was not that easy after all. The crowd was making too much noise and she was too jittery to control her breathing. The lions would show up at any moment now. She concentrated fiercely, focussing on that part inside her head where she knew that her ability to whistle resided. “Wake up, oh you daemon of my whistling, I need you badly at this very moment!” She moistened her lips and suddenly regained control of her breath, and started twittering and warbling.

Desi could not see how the man in the first row of the stands dangled a chunk of meat at the end of a rope in front of the tunnel entrance. But when the first lion came out and the handler lifted the meat just in time, Feli tapped her shoulder, and she knew: here they come!

The lions were rearing for a fight. After they’d been taunted and tormented viciously by their handlers, they were bent on revenge, baying for their blood, but when they emerged into the blinding sun behind their leader, the men were not there. Only women and children, they could smell it while they blinked with their blinded eyes. The leader of the pride, an old and experienced female, even marvelled at the fact that the two young ones standing at the front, in particular, were smelling to high heaven of female human pee… Where were the men? Where were the cowards hiding? Did they think lions were stupid?

The animals now deploying around Desi and Feli were very hungry, obviously, but they were also feeling out of sorts, somehow. Their carers from the zoo could have told the arena handlers that, but they hadn’t bothered, because their “babies” had been requisitioned highhandedly, and taken away from them on orders of the emperor himself. Well, dear emperor, good luck with these traumatized poor creatures. The gardens of Lucullus had not been affected by the fire, but the lions and the other wild animals in captivity had been through Hades while Rome was burning. All their instincts told them to flee the fire, but they were stuck in pens and cages, and had gone through a frenzy of panic night after night. One of the consequences was that they’d lost their appetite. Even after the fires had stopped, the beasts had been eating very little, and only after much enticing and coaxing with the tastiest morsels… and as Desi had already theorized, these lions had not been trained to see living human beings as meat, anyway.

The old female lion, the queen of the pride still standing in front of Desi, turned her ears forward. The crowd was making a lot of noise and she wanted to hear the strange warbling sound coming from the young female human facing her. Was she really singing like a bird? How charming! Immediately she was transported back to happier days, before the fires, when cheerful crowds had strolled past their cages and marvelled at them. One day a young female just like this one had serenaded them. She had a beautiful voice; she sang a melodious hymn to Venus just in front of their cage to see what effect that would have on the beasts. Well, they’d all closed their eyes and purred; it was the most enchanting sound they’d ever heard! The females of the human species were fascinating creatures, the old queen thought, although she didn’t care much for the males… She stretched her forelegs and eased herself to the ground, then she turned her head left and right towards the others, who started following her example one by one. They all lay down and focused on the birdsong from the girl with no eyes.

All this happened in only a few moments, within a couple of heartbeats, and the way the crowds witnessed it made it appear nothing short of miraculous. It looked like the lions burst forth into the arena, panting with rage, then stopped, and saw the blind girl standing erect and fearless, apparently indifferent to death, her little slave cowering behind her. And instead of attacking and tearing those two to pieces, the lions kneeled down in front of them one by one… The crowd went very quiet, and suddenly they could hear that the girl was whistling like a bird, and they thought that they understood: she was hypnotizing the beasts like some oriental snake charmer!

Then they heard a thin, solitary voice coming from the highest tiers, at the back of the stands, where the women and slaves were confined.

“That’s my baby! Desi! I’m here!”

“Mater!” Desi thought, but she carried on with her whistling. Claudia had probably been crying all along, but her solitary wails had been drowned out by the roar of the crowd.

And again the crowd went wild. “Let her go! Let her go!” they started chanting.

In the royal box Nero rose to his feet without even thinking. This was extraordinary! Tigellinus tried to pull him down by the folds of his purple toga, but the emperor just pulled his arm up and ignored him. He raised his right hand and silenced the crowd.

“Citizens! Let us pardon the Christians today. Let us put this calamity behind us and start rebuilding Rome, better than ever before… That is my will!”

The crowds roared their approval, and Nero sat down again, smiling extatically.

Tigellinus hissed and scoffed by his side, shaking his head, no longer bothering to hide his contempt.

“What?” Nero demanded, turning to him, “you’re always criticizing. Didn’t I just give my people what they wanted? Didn’t I make a nice little speech?”

“Yes, Divus, but how do you propose to implement your pardon? Who’s going to round up those beasts without the Christians getting hurt, eh? At any moment now they’ll start attacking everything that moves, and then you’ll just look like a fool!”

“Oh… I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Precisely!”

 

Inside the cage Plautilla had come to the same conclusion. Even if young Nero had just pardoned them publicly, he’d done it a bit too late, and they were still in a very sticky situation. It was too early to thank the Lord. It was more like that moment when the Christ himself had said to the Father, “Not what I want, but what you want.” Nevertheless, no matter how it all turned out, the events that had already taken place here today would make a huge impression. Thanks to Desi and her childish bravery, they would not die for nothing.

 

But even before Nero had risen to his feet, Feli had come to a decision of her own. She did not hear Desi’s birdsong; she did not hear Claudia crying nor the crowds chanting, but she was scanning the whole scene and analysing all the details of what she could see. The emperor himself was there, she could recognize him by his purple toga, but also from the portraits on the coins. Then, not far from the emperor, she recognized the men from the baths: their leader was sitting right next to the man who wanted to become the next emperor. She’d seen him only once, at a distance, walking down the great hall of the baths with his retinue, but she recognized him all the same… bad news, that! They were the ones responsible for Desi’s arrest, so if the two girls managed to escape, they’d have to make themselves scarce in order to keep out of these men’s clutches. Then there was the whole setup with the cage and the cord tied around Desi’s waist. Desi had explained the nasty little game that the strange-looking little man had thought up for their execution. It didn’t matter: if the lions didn’t attack Desi straight away, they could even use this to their advantage. Feli intended to yank the cord at a strategic moment, so the cage would fall apart. The other convicts suddenly becoming available to them would surely not fail to distract the beasts and divert their attention, long enough, maybe, for the two of them to make for the exit like they’d planned… Feli was already gripping the ripcord in her hand.

As soon as the first lion had stopped in front of Desi, and then lain down, Feli had concluded that they were in business. She prepared her move carefully, like the champion latrunculi player she was. She quickly counted the beasts lying in the sand left and right. They were all there! She’d counted and re-counted them inside their underground cage the night before, so she knew exactly with how many they were… Time to make their move.

Feli rapped her knuckles on top of Desi’s head, in a way that signalled “let’s walk away calmly.” At the same time she yanked on the cord, and without looking back she started to steer Desi towards the entrance of the tunnel, that was still open, luckily, although they had to swerve between a few reclining beasts to reach it. The animals, understandably, became restless, some of them stirring, making to stand up. But their leader didn’t move, eyed them all insistently, and they understood they should stay put. Feli looked at the last lion lying closest to the tunnel suspiciously. The beast, a big male with a dark mane, looked back just as suspiciously, but let them pass without stirring.

 

And that is how, just as Tigellinus was telling Nero what a sticky situation he had now created, the problem seemed to solve itself spontaneously. The two girls just walked out of the arena; the cage collapsed and the women and children followed them in a single file; in an instant they were gone, leaving only the lions behind. That is what everybody thought they saw. Oh, how hard it is to get to the truth! How to convey exactly what came to pass, when so much was going on in such a short time, and so much of it was so contradictory? But it happened all the same. Or it appeared to. Nero turned to Tigellinus again and smiled smugly. “Do we still have a problem?”

“No, Divus, everything is hunky-dory now.”

 

And everything went according to plan. Through the bars of the barrier Feli unlatched the lock of the cage from inside and pushed open the door. The Christian men had already been herded in front of the other tunnel leading to the arena, waiting for their turn, but when the guards saw the women reappear inside the lions’ cage, and when Feli opened the door, they immediately started to flee. They only had the enraged beasts on their minds, the ones they themselves had been jabbing with their pikes, and they bolted, without a sound, without a word. Never did such toughs disappear so fast through every available exit!

Now Feli turned around towards Desi, because she had to take over, to help them find the entrance of the underground channel to the river. But immediately she saw there was an unforeseen problem: as the others streamed past them, out of the cage, Desi stayed put, pulling on the cord tied around her middle. It was stuck. It was stretched tight and Desi couldn’t move, no matter how hard she tugged.

“Oh no!” Feli thought. Stepping over to her friend, she gave her a rapid signal, “I’ll fix it!” and disappeared inside the tunnel, following the tight rope. And as soon as she emerged into the arena again, she understood. The big male closest to the entrance had put his paw on the very end of the ribbon attached to the cord… Never, in the history of the world, had any cat, large or small, been able to resist the urge to paw a loose piece of string, or anything like that, dangled in front of its nose, appearing to move with a will of its own. In fact the big male had shown great restraint while Desi and Feli had walked past him and he’d watched the cord and then the ribbon snaking right in front of him through the sand. But in the end, as the very last length of ribbon passed by, wriggling tauntingly, he couldn’t help himself anymore. He’d pounced at it. He’d whipped his paw down and caught it, pinning it to the ground. And he stubbornly refused to let go. Enough was enough.

Feli knew exactly what she needed to do. She stepped right up to the big brute, bent over, and blew into his nose as hard as she could. It worked like a charm. The lion let go of the end of the ribbon, and gave Feli one mighty slap with his paw, breaking her neck and killing her instantly. As her body hit the ground, her head swung into an impossible angle with her nape.

Inside the cage, Desi fell back as the cord came loose, then she pulled the cord and the ribbon in and collected them in her arms as fast as she could. If only they’d thought of doing this right away! She waited for Feli to join her, but she was not easy in her mind. She’d heard a slap, and Feli had uttered a strange squeal. Then Plautilla grabbed Desi’s armpits and pulled her up and through the open door. “She’ll catch up with us if she can!”

“No! Feli! No!”

But the men had already spotted the beginning of a tunnel, and they were pushing the women and children inside, telling them to just walk on. “You can see the light at the end,” someone said, “just walk towards the light, all of you!”

When they were all in the tunnel, stumbling forward in the dark, another man said, “I hope they’re not going to give chase!”

“No they won’t,” Plautilla said, “Nero has publicly pardoned us. You men didn’t hear that…”

“Are you saying there’s no need to flee, then?”

“Well, Cephas, better not to trust the Romans right now. I don’t know where this tunnel leads, but let’s keep moving.”

“The tunnel leads to the Tiber,” Desi said, “do you see any sign of Feli yet?”

“No, my dear girl, I’m afraid she’s dead.”

“Tell me, deacon,” a little boy asked, “aren’t the lions going to chase us?”

“No, Cyril, I closed the door of their cage and secured the latch again.”

“Now she tells us!” Desi thought, “and how about Feli, then!?”

“I don’t know what happened out there,” the same man as before remarked, “but it looks to me like a miracle from God!”

“You can say that again, Cephas! We’re all here… we’ve escaped: this is a miracle if I ever saw one.”

Desi, who now accepted that Feli was dead, and that it was not Plautilla’s fault, still felt a sudden and unexpected burst of anger.

“Miracle, my foot!” she exclaimed, “Feli and I planned all this very carefully, you know.”

“Oh, but don’t you understand? God has been fulfilling his own plans through you and poor Feli. Obviously you two were God’s instruments, perhaps without even realizing it.”

“Praise the Lord!” some of the others answered, “let his will be accomplished.”

“Well, all I can say is that you have to be careful with this kind of reasoning, Plautilla. If you always get to decide what is God’s will and what isn’t, then in the end no one will ever be allowed to contradict you.”

“Oh? Ah… maybe you have a point. I’ll keep that in mind… in the future.”

They walked on in silence through the tunnel, getting closer to the end of it. In a few hundred yards they would emerge by the sluices near the riverbank, Desi knew. They would be able to hide until nightfall in the copses and bushes along the shore. Later they might follow the river upstream to the north, round the city, outside the walls, towards the east, and reach the cemeteries along the Via Tiburtina unseen. Desi knew there were some abandoned catacombs there, underground burial sites, where they could hide and lie low for a while, until things turned back to normal…

The deacon stroked her shoulder. “Are you holding out, there? You’re awfully quiet. Are we still good, you and I?”

“Yes… but it’s just, now that Feli is dead, I feel as if my heart has been torn out of my chest… and I can’t even weep! From now on I am dead to the world.”

As they kept walking towards the light, Plautilla put her arm around Desi’s shoulders, and she said quietly, “You know, we Christians are also dead to the world. That is how we live.”

 

The End

 

 

 

A brief note on the History

 

Nero had the bad luck of being the last emperor of his dynasty, the Julio-Claudians. After his death, the historians of the next regime were immediately put to work to give him a bad name, and did so with great gusto. Eventually his reputation was further ruined by the resentful Christians, when they finally took over.

An example of this is when Tacitus tells us that Nero “did not return to Rome until the fire approached his house”, implying he didn’t care much until he was personally affected. How can Tacitus possibly know what was going on inside Nero’s head? Writing fifty years after the facts, it is not likely he found any documents in the state archives that allowed him to make this claim about the emperor’s innermost state of mind.

As for the Christians, think about it: in AD 64, when the great fire took place, there could never have been that many Christians in Rome, only 32 years or so after Christ’s crucifixion. Don’t forget that this new faith was completely alien to the Roman mentality. Yet Tacitus reports nasty and extensive persecutions! Possibly a tall story based on the very first juicy rumours that emerged about the hated sect, just when he himself was writing the ‘Annals’ around AD 115.

Then nine months after the fire, in AD 65, Piso’s Conjuration came to light and failed miserably. The plotters were either exiled or ‘invited’ to commit suicide, which was astonishingly effective. If a Roman had to choose between death and dishonour, he’d choose death anytime. As the great fire occurred so close to this Piso business, I decided to blame it on the plotters in my novel, although there is no historical evidence to support this. There is nothing to disprove my crazy theory either.

So a Roman emperor could be untypically lenient for the members of his own class who tried to get rid of him. This was all part of the game. Maybe that is what happens when such military geniuses as the Romans conquer the world, plunder the riches of the conquered, and take away as many slaves as they want. They end up in their mighty city with too much leisure on their hands. And there’s nothing like power and boredom for breeding mayhem.

In AD 68, three years after Piso’s Conjuration was slapped down, Nero was finally done in by the ‘Revolt of Vindex and Galba’. This time it was Nero himself, aged 31, who was invited to comm