CHAPTER XXIII PERILS OF BRITANNICUS

‘Cast thine eye
On yon young boy. I’ll tell thee what, my friend,
He is a very serpent in my way;
And, wheresoe’er this foot of mine doth tread,
He lies before me. Dost thou understand me?
Thou art his keeper’

Shakespeare, King John, iii. 3.

At this time a change came over the fortunes of Onesimus.

Pudens had been dismissed from his post among the excubitors of the Palace, under the semblance of honourable promotion, but in reality because Nero was doubly displeased by his fidelity to Britannicus and by the blow which (as he had accidentally discovered) Pudens had given him during the nocturnal encounter. But, as he had been an excubitor for so long, he had been accustomed to keep some of his armour and a few books in a room in the Palace, and he sent Onesimus to fetch them.

As he went to this room under the guidance of one of Cæsar’s slaves, Onesimus heard a low voice singing the burden of one of the Phrygian songs with which he had been familiar in old days at Thyatira.

He was a creature of impulse, and, without thinking what he was doing, he took up the refrain of the song.

Immediately the door opened, and a beautiful dark-eyed girl asked in an agitated voice, and in the dialect of Phrygia, who had taken up the song.

The sound of his native tongue sent through the heart of Onesimus that indescribable thrill which we feel when past recollections are suddenly brought home to us in long-accumulated arrears. Greek had been spoken in the household of Philemon. He had scarcely heard his native Phrygian since he had been a free-born child, before he had incurred the stain of being sold as a slave. He answered in Phrygian that he had known the song since he was a child at his mother’s knee in Thyatira.

‘In Thyatira?’ said the girl; then gazing at him long and earnestly, she flung up her arms and exclaimed, ‘Can this be Onesimus?’

‘Do you know my name, lady?’ he asked in surprise.

‘Look at me,’ she answered. ‘It is twelve years since we met, but do you not recall—’

He fixed his eyes on her face and said in a troubled voice, ‘You are like Eunice, the daughter of my mother’s sister, with whom I was brought up as a child.’

‘Hush!’ she exclaimed; ‘step aside for a moment, Onesimus; I am Eunice, but for many years I have not been known by that name. When the fortunes of our house were ruined I too was sold as a slave with you to the purple factory of Lydia; but a freedman of the Emperor Claudius saw me and brought me to wait upon the Empress Messalina. He thought my name too fine, and changed it to Acte.’

‘Acte?’ burst out Onesimus; ‘then you are,’—he broke off and remained silent.

A blush suffused the girl’s cheek. ‘A slave,’ she said, ‘is forced to do her master’s bidding. Nero loved me sincerely, and I loved him, and I was ignorant and very young. But it is past. The affections of Nero are turned elsewhere; yet none can say that I have ever used my influence for any but kind ends.’

‘I reproached you not, Acte,’ said Onesimus, ‘if I must call you by your new name. I have far too much wherewith to reproach myself.’

‘Meet me here,’ said Acte, ‘two hours after noon, and you shall tell me all your story, and how I can help you.’

Onesimus came that afternoon. He and Acte had been like brother and sister in the house at Thyatira in happier days, and he told her his sad story and all his sufferings, and how he had been rescued by the compassion of Pudens, and how, even in the house of Pudens, he had not shown himself worthy of the centurion’s kindness, and how he loved Junia—and all his fears and all his hopes.

‘Should you like to be one of Cæsar’s household?’ asked Acte. ‘If so, I do not doubt that I can get you a place by mentioning your name to the steward of the Empress.’

For the slave of a poor soldier the offer involved immense promotion and still larger possibilities. The thought of Junia checked Onesimus for a moment, but Acte told him that, if he rose in the house of Cæsar, there lay before him the far nearer chances of emancipation and riches, so that he would be more likely in due time to make Junia his own. She did not conceal from him that, in such a community as the sixteen hundred imperial slaves, the temptations to every form of wrong-doing were far deadlier than in a humble and more modest familia; but she longed to have near her one whom she could trust as a brother and a friend. Onesimus had acquired at Thyatira a good knowledge of all that concerned the purchase and the preservation of purple. It would not be difficult for Acte, without her name appearing in the matter, to secure him a place as the purple-keeper in the household of Octavia. She knew that Parmenio, the servus a purpura, had died recently, and that the qualifications for the post were a little less common than those which sufficed for the majority of slaves.

Onesimus, therefore, grasped at the dazzling bait of better pay and loftier position. That evening he spoke to Nereus, who, after consulting Pudens, told him that there would be no difficulty, whether by exchange or otherwise, in permitting his acceptance of the offer which had been made to him.

The great men who visited Cæsar looked down upon the hundreds of slaves who thronged the Palace as beings separated from themselves by an immeasurable abyss of inferiority; but to the mass of paupers who formed the chief part of the population servitude to the Emperor seemed a condition of enviable brilliance. We are told that when Felicio was promoted to the post of Cæsar’s cobbler, he at once became a personage of importance, and was flattered on every side. Onesimus had much the same experience. Among those who knew him he found that he had risen indefinitely by the exchange which transferred him to the office of servus a purpura in the household of Octavia.

He was received into the slaves’ quarters with the showers of sweetmeats and the other humble festivities which welcomed the advent of a new slave; and on the evening of his admission Acte sent for him.

‘Onesimus,’ she said, ‘I have it in my power to befriend you; and if you will be faithful you may rise to posts of the greatest importance. But such promotion must depend on your character. May I trust you?’

‘Surely, Acte!’

‘Then let me confide to you a secret of the deepest import. You have seen the Prince Britannicus?’

‘Yes. He looks a noble boy.’

‘I fear that his life is imperilled—it is not necessary to say by whom. I could weep when I think of the dangers which threaten him. Your office will give you opportunities of sometimes seeing him. It is not possible that I should meet you often; but here is a coin which has on it the head of Britannicus. If ever I send you one of these coins, as though I wanted you to purchase something, will you come to me at once? It will be a sign that he is menaced.’

Onesimus promised; and, in truth, the need for watchfulness was very pressing; for, on the day which followed the evening of the Saturnalitian games, Nero, fretting with jealousy and alarm, summoned Julius Pollio, the tribune on whom had been bestowed the post which Pudens had occupied, and sent him with a message to Locusta. She was allowed to move about the Palace, but was under the nominal charge of the guardsmen.

It might well seem amazing that a youth whose disposition was not innately cruel, and who a few years before had been a timid, blushing boy, caring mainly for art and amusement, should have developed, in so brief a space of time, into the murderer of his brother. But the effects produced by the vertigo of autocracy on a mean disposition are rapid as well as terrible. He had soon discovered that it was in his power to do exactly what he liked; and when he had learnt to regard himself as a god on earth, to whose wishes every law, divine and human, must give way, there was no vice of which he did not rapidly become capable. What was the life of a young boy, who stood in his way, to one who had unchallenged power over the life and death of millions of subjects over all the civilised world?

And yet the fate of his predecessors showed him that the pinnacle of absolute power was a place of constant peril. The loss of empire would mean inevitably the loss also of life. Was this peevish lad to be a source of constant danger to the darling of the soldiers, of the mob, and of the world?

He had no reason to approach Julius Pollio with any of the circumspection with which Shakespeare represents King John as opening his designs to Hubert. When, at the suggestion of Tigellinus, he had appointed Pollio to supersede Pudens, he knew the sort of man whom he would have at his beck. He simply said to the tribune—

‘I want some poison. Locusta is under your charge. Tell her to prepare some for me.’ He did not trouble himself to mention the person for whom the poison was intended.

Locusta was too familiar with her trade to hesitate. Had she not taught many a guilty wife, in spite of rumour, in spite of the populace, to bury undetected the blackening body of her husband? Her fiendish nature rejoiced at the consciousness of secret power. She supplied Pollio with a poison which was, she assured him, of tried efficacy, and she again received a large sum of money in reward for her services. Nero knew that among the wretches by whom his mother had surrounded Britannicus, and not all of whom had been removed, it would be easy to find some one who would administer the poison. He decided that the deed should be done at some private meal, and by the hands of one of the boy’s tutors, who never thought of shrinking from the infamy. In that midnight and decadence of a dying Paganism the crime of ordinary murder was too cheap to excite remorse.

But it was impossible that all this should pass unobserved. Acte had been brought under Christian influences, and was anxious by all means in her power to atone for the unintended wrong which her beauty had inflicted upon Octavia. Nero was no longer her lover, though she still lived in the Palace, and held a high position as one for whom the Emperor had once conceived so strong an infatuation. She had her own slaves assigned to her, and of these some were Christians. In her self-imposed task of watching over the life of Britannicus she asked them to obtain information of any circumstance that seemed to threaten him with danger. From them she learnt that Nero had been closeted with Julius Pollio; that Pollio had paid a visit to Locusta; and that, when Locusta had sent a small vial to Nero, the Emperor had summoned to his presence the tutor of Britannicus, who had been observed to carry away the vial in his closed hand. Her spies further told her that, by watching and listening, they had ascertained that the poison was to be given to the son of Claudius, not at supper but at the light midday meal which he took with Titus. After they had been enjoying vigorous exercise in the morning the boys usually showed an excellent appetite.

More than this they could not discover; but this much Acte confided to Onesimus, and implored him to keep watch, and if possible, devise some means by which to forewarn Britannicus of his imminent peril.

At first the quick Phrygian youth, who was understood to be under the patronage of Acte, had been a favourite in the household, and he found little difficulty in making friends with the cooks and other slaves who superintended the meals of the imperial family. By a visit to the kitchen—in which he flattered the cook and his young assistants by the lively curiosity which he expressed about the various dishes, and the enthusiasm with which he admired their skill—he learnt that, as a special treat, a beccafico was to be sent in for the prandium of Britannicus, and he conjectured that it would be poisoned. That the cook was innocent of any evil design he was sure, and he guessed that the fig-pecker would be poisoned by some slave of higher office about the young prince’s person. But he knew not how to forewarn the unsuspecting boy. The time was short. It was not easy to find an excuse by which he—whose duty lay in a different part of the Palace—could find access to the apartments of Britannicus. And whom could he warn? There was scarcely an instance known in which any one had dared to interfere between an emperor and his victims. In the general paralysis of servility, in the terror inspired by the little despicable human god, in the indifference to bloodshed caused by the games of the amphitheatre, why should any one be troubled by one death the more?

But Onesimus, less familiar with a world so plague-stricken with torpid corruption, felt in his heart a spring of pity for the doomed boy. After rejecting plan after plan as impossible, it flashed upon him that he might get a message conveyed to Titus. He had but a few minutes left, and Titus could not be found until he and the prince, still warm and glowing from their game of ball, entered the parlour. Onesimus grew desperate, and, boldly summoning a young slave, sent him to Titus with the extemporised message that the centurion Pudens urgently desired to speak with him.

Titus went into the hall, and recognised Onesimus as the youth whom his own kindness had first brought under the notice of Pudens. The Phrygian led him to a remote part of the hall, behind one of the statues of the Danaides, and whispered to him, ‘Britannicus is in danger. Let him not touch the bird which has been provided for his lunch. Oh, stay not to ask me anything,’ he added, when Titus seemed inclined to question him further; ‘hurry back, if you would save his life.’

Titus hurried back, but the meal was quite informal, and Britannicus, hungry with exercise, had already helped himself to the dainty set before him.

‘Give me some of that fig-pecker,’ said Titus desperately; ‘I am very fond of those birds; we catch them at Reate.’

Britannicus at once handed the dish to him with a smile. ‘I don’t know what Epictetus would think,’ he said, ‘of a Stoic who is fond of dainties.’

‘It is meant exclusively for you, Sir,’ said the pædagogus, hastily. ‘I wonder that Titus should be so greedy.’

Titus blushed; but the remark helped him out of a serious difficulty. He had thought in vain how he could avoid eating the bird which Onesimus had told him was poisoned.

‘After that remark,’ he answered, ‘of course I cannot touch it.’

‘Then give it back to Britannicus,’ said the tutor.

‘Nay,’ said the prince; ‘if Titus is to be called greedy for liking it, I must be greedy too. I have had enough. Besides there is a taste about it which I do not like. Bread and a few olives are more than enough.’

He pushed away his plate, and when they had risen from the table, he looked curiously at his friend.

Titus blushed again. ‘I know,’ he whispered, ‘that you will not think me greedy, Britannicus.’

‘Titus,’ he answered, ‘you know something.’

‘Ask me nothing,’ said Titus; ‘I was only just in time, if, indeed, I have been in time.’

Britannicus was silent. He suspected that some attempt had been made upon his life, and that it had been partially frustrated by the faithfulness of his friend. He had no doubt on the subject, when, a little later, he was seized with violent pains. Happily, however, he had scarcely more than tasted of the beccafico, and in the fit of sickness which followed, nature came to his relief. His recovery was aided by the pure and glowing state of his health. After a few hours of excruciating agony he sank into a long refreshing sleep.

He woke in the twilight, to find himself lying on a couch, while Octavia and Titus, sitting on either side of him, were rubbing his cold hands.

‘Where am I?’ he asked. ‘Oh, I remember!’ And he said no more; but he took the hand of Titus, and drew his sister near to him and kissed her.

The hearts of all three were too full for words, but as they sat there a message came that the Augusta was coming to visit them.

Agrippina was of course admitted, and left her attendants at the door. As the lovely haughty lady entered, they could not help observing, even by the dim light of the two silver lamps which had just been lit, that a change had passed over her features, and that she had been weeping. Haughty they still were, but wrath and disappointment and failure, purchased at the cost of crime, had stamped them with an expression of agony, as though she wore the brand of Cain. When she heard of the sudden illness of Britannicus, she divined its cause too well. While her power was waning so rapidly, she had been no longer able to maintain the elaborate system of espionage which had helped her when she was Empress; but she, too, was aware that Pollio had visited Locusta, and the misgiving had seized her that the poison might be meant for herself. That it turned out to be for Britannicus was hardly less appalling to her. She felt that her imprudence had made Nero jealous of him, and that his death would deprive her of her last resource. She rejoiced, therefore, unfeignedly at the boy’s recovery, and when she visited him he saw that, for the first time, she spoke with genuine kindness to Octavia, and that her expressions of pity and condolence to himself were sincere. There was no feigning in the hot teardrops which fell on his cheek when she kissed him, and as he lay there, weak and pale, she felt, with deepening remorse for the wrongs which she had inflicted on him, that he did not shrink from her embrace.

Nero, too, sent messages of enquiry to ‘his beloved brother’ by his freedman, Claudius Etruscus. As he heard them, the old spirit of Britannicus flashed out.

‘Tell Cæsar,’ he said, ‘that this time his poi—’

Before the word could be spoken, Titus with hasty gesture placed his hand over his friend’s mouth, and Agrippina, knowing well that every syllable would be reported, and interpreted in the most malignant manner, turned her queenly head to the freedman who had brought the message.

‘Tell the Emperor that his brother is much better, but is still light-headed. Claudius Etruscus,’ she said, ‘you pass for an honest man. I pray you, do not mention to Nero anything which Britannicus has spoken in his delirium.’

Etruscus bent low, and, touched by passing pity at the scene which he had witnessed, he determined to abstain from reporting what he had heard. ‘The Augusta,’ he said, ‘has always been kind to me. Her wish shall be obeyed.’

But Nero was restless and anxious, and was pacing to and fro like a caged wild beast. The thought of plots and perils haunted him. That morning, as he passed along the covered way which led from the Palace into the theatre, he had seen the red stain of the blood of Caligula on the walls—a red stain which could not be washed out—and felt a spasm of suffocation as if a dagger were at his throat. He was frightened to hear from Etruscus that Agrippina was with his brother. Were they conspiring to bring about a revolution? He would himself go and see.

He had been drinking, and as he entered took no notice of Titus or of Octavia. To Agrippina he only vouchsafed a cold salute, and she, dreading another scene in the presence of witnesses, rose and left the chamber. He took the cold hand of Britannicus in his own hot and feverish grasp, and a pang of hatred shot through him as he felt it shrink at his touch. The boy was propped up on his couch with pillows, and a hectic spot burned on each of his pallid cheeks; but his eyes were filled with strange light, and, as he fixed them on the face of Nero, they seemed to read his inmost soul.

Nero averted his glance. He dared not look upon his victim. Indeed, under that steady gaze, the consciousness of his crime brought the tell-tale crimson over his face. He was not yet too far gone to blush, though the days were rapidly approaching in which he would wear a front of brass.

He muttered some hypocritical words of condolence, which rang false and were overdone. Britannicus spoke not.

Octavia said, ‘Pardon his silence, Nero; he is too weak to thank you.’

‘I did not ask you to interfere,’ answered Nero brutally.

‘I give you such thanks as are due,’ said Britannicus in a faint voice; but he tried to withdraw his hand from Nero’s grasp.

Nero rose in a towering passion. ‘I came to inquire about your illness. You meet me with scowls and ingratitude,’ he said, flinging away the hand of Britannicus. ‘If you do not choose to behave as a brother, I will make you feel that you are a subject. Octavia and Titus, you may retire.’

‘Oh, do not leave me alone. I am very ill,’ pleaded the poor prince. ‘Indeed, indeed I cannot be left alone.’

The terrible thought which had flashed through the mind of Nero—the thought that, if left alone, the boy might be killed that night—had woke its reflection in the mind of Britannicus. But Nero strode angrily out of the room, and neither repeated nor withdrew his command.

‘May the spirits of all the good protect thee!’ said Octavia, as she fondly kissed her brother. ‘I dare not stay; it might be the worse for thee if I did.’

‘But I will stay, Empress,’ said Titus, ‘and I will do my best for him.’

When the young Empress had withdrawn, Titus beckoned to her faithful freedwoman Pythias, and told her to send for Onesimus. He came, and Titus, after slipping into his hand an aureus, which the Empress had left for him as a reward for his faithful warning, begged him to be on the alert, and to return in an hour. The Phrygian went to Acte, and told her all that had occurred. She kept him near at hand, and in a short time informed him that two of Nero’s worst creatures —Tigellinus and Doryphorus—were closeted with the Emperor, and that there was too much reason to fear that some deadly measure would be attempted that evening.

Such was indeed the case. For now, to the joy of Tigellinus, Nero had openly declared that Britannicus must be swept out of his path; had even admitted to him that poison had been attempted, and had failed.

‘How soon do you wish the deed to be done?’ asked the wicked adventurer.

‘If we are to prevent some accursed plot,’ said Nero, ‘it cannot be too soon.’

‘To-night?’

‘To-night, if you will,’ answered Nero, ‘but it must be secret. There must be no scandal. A story must be trumped up. The Augusta must be deceived. Octavia must be deceived. None of his adherents must know of it, unless they can be trusted to hold their tongues.’

‘Nearly all the people about him are in our pay,’ said Tigellinus. ‘I think it can be done.’

That night no soldier was on guard near the room of Britannicus, and Titus regarded this as a fatal sign. When he received from Onesimus the intelligence which Acte had given him, he said that he would draw his own bed across the door of the Prince’s room inside, so that none could enter without his knowledge. He asked Onesimus to keep watch in concealment outside, and make a noise if any one should approach.

‘I can imitate exactly the bark of the Empress’s lap-dog,’ said Onesimus, ‘for Aponia, who has charge of it, often lets me tease it. If I make this noise in the quiet of the night it is sure to set other dogs barking, and then I will spring out of my hiding-place as if the sound had awoke me.’

Proud of the confidence reposed in him, proud to be the guard of a Cæsar’s life, Onesimus put on a black lacerna, shrouded himself in a dark corner, hidden behind the shield of an Amazon. The Palace sank to deep silence, broken only by the faint, distant tramp of the sentinel who kept watch outside the passage which led to the cubiculum of the Emperor.

About an hour after midnight he heard a stealthy footstep approaching, and saw the occasional gleam of a lantern which was hidden under the cloak of the murderer. Breathless with anxiety, he watched and listened. The slave came near to the room of Britannicus. Noiselessly he placed his lantern on the floor, then he drew a large dagger, and Onesimus saw its blade flash in the light as the wretch examined it. One instant more and his hand was thrusting an oiled key into the lock.

Then it was that Onesimus gave a short, sharp sound like the bark of a pet dog. The murderer started violently. Onesimus repeated the sound, which was immediately taken up by a dog which belonged to one of the freedwomen. Hesitating no longer, he leapt out of his shelter with the challenge, ‘Who goes there?’ and at the same moment Titus, who had slept in his clothes, unfastened the door, and sprang in front of it with a sword in his hand.

Without staying an instant longer the murderer dashed down his lantern and fled, for slaves and freedmen were heard stirring on every side. Onesimus did not attempt to pursue him, but quietly slipped back to his own cell. He knew that for that night the dark plot was frustrated and Britannicus was safe.

To the slaves whom the noise had disturbed Titus only said that he had been troubled by the nightmare, and bade them return to sleep. But not a few of them shrewdly suspected that they had not been told the whole truth.