CHAPTER XXVII DEATH IN THE GOBLET

‘Fratrum, conjugum, parentum neces, alia solita parentibus ausi.’—Tac. Hist. v. 3.

A cry rang through the banquet-room!

It was the cry of Titus. Every guest started as if a thunderbolt had fallen. In that guilty time, when obscene wings flapped about so many gilded roofs, when the sword dangled by a hair over so many noble heads, when foes cut throats by a whisper, when any day might expose a man to denunciation for imaginary crimes by one of the slaves whom he regarded as his natural enemies, any sudden movement, any unexpected event, was enough to drive the blood from the blanching cheek. But when such a cry—so wild, so startling—rang over the tumultuous sounds of an imperial banquet, they knew not whether the very earth was not about to open beneath their feet.

What had happened?

Britannicus, as we have said, was in no alarm that evening. Of all times and places it seemed the least likely to attempt his poisoning. The fact that at this feast he had his appointed prægustator, and that two deaths would terribly reveal a crime, was, he thought, a sufficient safeguard.

But these were the very reasons why Tigellinus had arranged that Nero’s desire for his brother’s murder should be carried out that night. He fancied that no one would suspect Nero of choosing a scene of such festive splendour and unusual publicity for a crime so dark.

The ingenuity of wickedness easily got over the difficulty about the prægustator. This man was one of the smooth, civil, plausible wretches who abounded at that epoch. He was a Greek slave named Syneros, trained in the worst vices and ready to sell his soul at any time for a few sestertia. He handed to Britannicus a myrrhine goblet filled with some mulled Falernian, which he tasted first. It had been purposely made so hot that no one could drink it. The prince gave it back, and told Syneros to put some cold water to it. The slave did so, and into that cold water—which he had hidden in a vial of Alexandrian glass behind one of the coolers full of snow—had been already dropped the deadly potion which Locusta had given to Nero.

Britannicus drank it unsuspectingly, and Titus had taken it up and drunk a little, when his eye caught sight of Britannicus, and with the cry which had alarmed those three hundred guests he had dropped the myrrhine vase, crashing it to shivers on the mosaic floor.

For Britannicus had scarcely finished his draught when with one wild look he clutched the arm of Titus, and then, half supported by Clemens, sank speechless and breathless from his seat. It seemed as if in one instant the swift poison had pervaded all his limbs. His last conscious thought had been for another. Titus remembered with undying gratitude, that the clutch upon his arm had saved his life. He felt sure that with one and the same flash of intuition Britannicus had recognised that the draught was poisoned, and had tried to prevent Titus from drinking it.

But when the guests turned their eyes to the table where the young prince was sitting they saw the terror-stricken look on the faces of Titus and the other boys, and Flavius Clemens supporting in his arms the white and convulsed form of the son of Claudius. At that spectacle many of them leapt from their couches, and even began to fly in different directions. Who could tell what charges of plots might be founded on such an incident, and who might be involved in them? But those who were more familiar with the mysteries of the Court, though they had started to their feet, stood rooted in their places with their eyes fixed on Nero, waiting for some sign to guide or reassure them.

And then Nero showed the consummate coolness of villainy which could hardly have been expected from so young a murderer. He was short-sighted, but he could very well guess what had happened, and he had his little speech ready prepared. Indeed, he had been repeating it over to himself while he vainly endeavoured to get up a conversation with his mother or his wife. Putting his emerald to his eye,63 he raised himself on one elbow from his soft mass of cushions, and said, amid the dead silence—

‘Oh, I see what is the matter. My brother Britannicus, poor boy, has been afflicted from childhood with the comitial disease. His epileptic fit will soon be over, and all his senses will return. Pray resume your places, my friends. Do not let the mirth of the banquet be disturbed by this little accident.’

Agrippina was in a ferment of alarm. She could scarcely believe her ears. That ready lie about the epilepsy! She knew—and many of the guests knew—that Britannicus was a fine strong lad, who had never had an epileptic attack in his life. One thing only could have happened. Britannicus, in whom rested the last hopes of her vengeance and her ambition, must have been poisoned by his brother. Infernal gods! was it possible? Could this have been the deed of that youth whom it seemed but yesterday that she had clasped to her bosom as a lovely, rosy, smiling child? Panic, consternation seized her. ‘How long,’ she thought, ‘will he abstain from the prophesied murder of me, his mother?’ She panted; she shuddered in every limb; she required all her efforts not to faint; she grew white and red by turns, and those who were watching her saw the cup of wine which she seized shake so violently in her trembling hand that she spilled half its contents over her bosom.

‘She, at least, is as innocent of this as Octavia herself,’ whispered Seneca to Burrus. ‘But, oh! horror! where will these things end?’

Octavia looked as though she had been turned to marble. She spoke no word; she made no sign. Agrippina had tried in vain to prevent her speaking countenance from betraying the violence of her emotions; but Octavia, young as she still was, and little more than a child, had been taught from her earliest years to hide her emotions under a mask of impassibility; and, indeed, the blow which had thus fallen upon her was beyond her power to realise. The awful grief struck her dumb. One shrinking motion, one stifled scream, and she reclined there as though she were dead—as pale and as motionless, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, conscious of nothing, her white cheek looking all the more ghastly from the crimson roses which circled her dark tresses and fell twining over her fair neck.

But how should the mirth of the banquet be resumed? The stereotyped smile on the features of Seneca looked like a grin of anguish. The brow of Pætus Thrasea was dark as a thunder-cloud. Clemens and several of the prince’s boyish friends were weeping audibly and uncontrollably, while Titus, already feeling ill as well as terrified, was sobbing with his head on the table. Nero himself in vain attempted a fitful hilarity, which could wake no echo among guests of whom many—

‘Like the Ithacensian suitors of old time,

Stared with great eyes, and laughed with alien lips,

And knew not what they meant.’

So dense a cloud fell over their minds that it was a relief to all when, without waiting for the termination of the banquet, Nero dismissed his guests, availing himself of the excuse that the comitial disease had always been regarded as an evil omen, and that, though he hoped his brother’s attack would prove but slight, he saw how deeply it had affected the spirits of his friends.

They had come to that superb feast in pride and gaiety; they hurried home in horror and alarm.