The Nero Prediction by Humphry Knipe Read Free Book Online Page B

Agrippina fawned on Claudius. She can be very charming if she wants to be. Besides there was Lucius. When Agrippina, Julia Livilla and Tigellinus were exiled and his father died, all in the same year, Lucius, only two at the time, was sent to live with Domitia Lepida, his father’s sister and of course Messalina’s mother. He stayed with them until he was four. He was a beautiful child. Messalina adored him. She used to dress him up like a doll. In spite of the eleven year age difference, they remained very close, which suited Agrippina perfectly. Somehow she knew Messalina was the key.”
    “The key to what?”
    Euodus shot me a glance that was as quick as a cat’s paw but he didn’t say anything.
     
    When Agrippina came out her seclusion the evening of the seventh day after Messalina’s death, she sent for me.
    “I thought she was in mourning,” I said to her messenger, a handsome boy who was about her son Lucius’s age.
    He scowled as if I’d said something monumentally stupid. “She was but she’s not any more. She saw the emperor an hour ago. Now she wants to see you.”
    When the boy showed me into her reception room she was sitting where I’d first seen her, between Isis and Kronos whose name the Romans spell as Chronos and call Saturn. “Stop doing that, you’ll get your clothes dirty, she said when I made my obeisance, face down on the floor. “I’m a Roman, not some Oriental potentate. Get up. We’re going visiting.
    “Usually he comes to me,” she said as she swept half a step ahead of me down one of the endless palace porticoes that led to the south wing of Tiberius’s old palace, ignoring the bows of everyone she passed. “But I want you to meet him in his laboratory.”
    The blue liveried janitor kept his eyes on the floor while he held open the door for us. Inside was a large waiting room fogged by incense and crowded with courtiers conversing in whispers. Everyone rose to their feet when we entered, raising their hands in greeting. Agrippina nodded at several of them, a short, choppy gesture. She even smiled once revealing the double canine tooth on the left side of her mouth, an unsettling feature I hadn’t noticed before. 
    A tall, thin Egyptian with haunted eyes and a shaved head, also dressed in blue livery, swept to our side. “Hail domina,” he said once he’d made a deep bow. “My master is with a client but I will tell him that you are here.”
    “Do you know who that is?” Agrippina asked, pointing to a larger-than-life statue that stood besides to door the Egyptian had closed behind himself. It depicted a man perhaps fifty years old, intelligent and bold, who wore a pointed Phrygian cap on his head and wrapped in a mantle decorated with embroidered stars, the cloak of heaven. It had to be the astrologer who had foreseen his own peril and so had escaped Tiberius’s lobsters.
    “Tiberius Claudius Thrasyllus, domina.”
    She seemed pleased that I knew. “Yes, a fellow Alexandrian. Brilliant just like his son. Our family is fortunate to have them. But then of course nothing happens by chance.”
    Seconds later the Egyptian emerged with a man in his fifties, red jovial face, prominent brows, hooked Roman nose. He was a senator, you could tell that by his red boots and the purple edge to his toga.
    Although his consultation had obviously been cut short, he wreathed his face in smiles when he saw her. “Greetings Agrippina! Being unmarried suits you. I’ve never seen you more beautiful!”
    “Thank you consul Vitellius. But do tell me, are you still carrying Messalina’s shoe around with you?”
    Another torrent of smiles. “A family tradition. We Vitellii used to be cobblers and old habits die hard. The answer to your question is no. The shoe’s on the other foot now. I would much rather carry around one of yours!”
    “How gallant of you! I wish they’d told me it was you in there. I would have been happy to wait until you had finished.”
    “Oh, but we did!” He