Nero

13

The emperor wore a saffron Greek tunic, longer and far more lavishly embroidered than the usual Roman version. The way he moved and the way he held himself suggested drunkenness; not falling or aggressive drunkenness, but pleasant intoxication. He stood in the doorway beaming at us.

'Lucius, love.' Acte got up quickly from the bench where she was sitting — we were on our feet, too — and tucked his arm under hers. 'You remember my friends, the Lady Silia and Titus Petronius?'

'Yes, of course.' The emperor gave an even wider smile. 'Of course! How lovely to see you again, darlings. Did you enjoy my little dinner party?'

The question sounded so natural that it chilled me. I looked at Acte. Her face was pale under her make-up.

'Very much, sir,' I said.

The smile didn't waver. 'How nice. I'm so glad. You must come again. Acte will arrange it.' He hugged her and planted a kiss above her cheekbone.

I laid my hand on Silia's elbow and began to edge past him towards the door. Lucius stopped me.

'Oh, no, no, no!' His free hand, laden with gold rings, waved us back towards our stools. 'Don't rush off, my dears, I won't hear of it. We so rarely have visitors, real visitors. Sit down, please.'

We sat. Lucius threw himself onto the last vacant stool and crossed his legs. The tunic rode up exposing the pasty-white skin of his naked thigh, dotted with thick red hairs. The silence was painful. Finally Acte broke it.

'Petronius was just saying I should count myself lucky living here in the palace, love,' she said brightly.

'What, this place?' His brows came down. 'Oh, it's adequate, I suppose, but I wouldn't call it grand. One day I'll build you a proper house, dear. Somewhere fit for a human being to live in.'

Acte's tired face relaxed in a smile. 'That's nonsense,' she said. 'This is big enough for anyone, and much too grand for me.'

He reached over and hugged her. 'Isn't she lovely, Titus?'

'Quite adorable,' I said, blandly ignoring the use of my first name.

'I'm serious.' Acte kissed the tip of his nose. 'It's like living in a mausoleum with all this marble around.'

'But it won't be just marble, darling. We'll have gardens, real ones, not the table-napkin vegetable plot we've got just now. Perhaps a lake or two with a few islands. You'd like that, wouldn't you?' He turned his still-smiling face on me. 'You see my lovely girl, Titus? Not like the others. They're all on the make, all my other so-called friends. Seneca's had millions out of me already, the greedy old pig, and as for Mother, she is really grasping, I mean really!' He frowned. 'Not that I mind, of course. And you don't mind my calling you Titus, do you?'

'Not at all, Caesar,’ I said. ‘I'm flattered.'

'Only if Acte likes you then you must be nice.' He kissed the tip of her broad nose and let her go. 'Very nice. Good. Then that's settled. I feel that we're going to be great friends. Great friends.' Oh, Serapis! This I didn't need! 'You have natural good taste, Titus. I can tell.'

'Thank you, sir.'

'You too, Silia.' His smile embraced us both. 'I consider both of you to be very special friends indeed. Don't think I don't know who I have to thank for bringing Acte here.'

So much for subterfuge. I glanced at Silia, who had coloured to the roots of her impeccably styled wig. For the first time I began to have a sneaking respect for young Lucius. The lad wasn't as daft as he looked.

He turned back to me. 'And you enjoy the theatre, of course. Anyone with real taste must.'

'Oh, I do. Very much. Such as it is in Rome.'

'Right. Right.' He nodded. 'Here it's a nonsense. All pirates and padded phalluses and stale old jokes. Roman theatre's dead. There're no greats and never have been. Except for darling Seneca, naturally.'

'Naturally.' I kept my face straight; Seneca had yet to notch up an actual performance for one of his interminably boring melodramas, but those I had read showed he was no Euripides.

'Of course the poor old dear's no Euripides.' My surprise must have been evident in my expression, because Lucius smiled at me in a most disconcerting way. I wondered if he had somehow caught my thoughts; he could, I was already beginning to realise, be very perceptive as well as very charming. 'But at least he tries. It's a pity he's such a' — he giggled — 'oh, such a terrible Roman.'

I nodded. 'I quite agree,’ I said. ‘All that blood and guts. Not to mention the — ' I stopped myself just in time: I'd been about to say 'incest', but that would've been tactless in the extreme. 'Not to mention the other unsavoury features.'

'Oh, I don't mind the blood. It's only pretend, only stage blood, and it is rather…exciting in a way, Titus, don't you think?' His eyes glazed over for the barest instant and then were clear again. 'But the Greeks, now, the Greeks are simply splendid, aren't they? Look at her! She could never be Roman.'

He was pointing over my shoulder, to something that hung on the wall behind me. I turned to see one of Acte's decorative masks. It was old, made of thin wood and horsehair: the face of a tragic heroine. The artist had painted lines of exhaustion and privation at the corners of the mouth and on the forehead. Its blank, empty eye-sockets stared back at me.

'Electra.' Lucius was smiling. 'Isn't she simply gorgeous? She belonged to Acte's father. Didn't she, darling?'

'That's right.' Acte's voice was curiously brittle. 'Dad gave me her as a keepsake. He was too old to play Electra by then anyway.' She spoke, I thought, with a certain bitterness.

Lucius swung back to me. 'You know Euripides's Electra, Titus?'

'In outline, yes. But not well.'

'Oh, but you must read it, my dear! It's a simply marvellous play!' He jumped to his feet and lifted the mask from its nail. 'Let me show you what you're missing! Acte, darling, you take Orestes!'

With his back towards me he fitted the mask over his face and head. Then he turned. His shoulders dropped into the actor's stance. The mask's eye-sockets were no longer empty; they glared at us across the room with an almost feral intensity. Suddenly Lucius was no longer the emperor, or even a gushing, half-drunken youth, but someone…different. So different that I felt a shiver run down my spine.

His head twisted sharply to one side, as if the mask's ears had caught a sound beyond our hearing and its eyes had followed, staring out into the far distance.

'Lucius, love, no. Please, no,' Acte said quietly, but his arm was already up in the traditional gesture of an actor commanding silence. My scalp crawled.

'"What's that?"' The voice that hissed between the parted wooden lips was much higher and stronger than Lucius's light tenor. The words themselves were Greek. '"Forces from Mycenae?"'

Acte drew in her breath sharply.

‘No, Lucius,' she whispered. 'Not that scene. Not now.'

The mask's eyes never wavered. Lucius's whole body was motionless and rigid as an iron bar. For a long time no one spoke. Then Acte made an odd sound in her throat, part sigh, part sob. '"No,"' she said in Greek, her voice as deep as Lucius's was high: Orestes, Electra’s brother. '"It is my mother, who gave me birth. Look how fine her dress is, how splendid the coach in which she rides."'

I recognised the scene myself now; and knowing the scene and its ending I knew why Acte had not wanted us, especially, to see it played.

The mask swung towards her and tossed its hair backwards. At the same time Lucius's right foot came stamping down to emphasise his first word. As a mime of savage, violent joy it was beautifully performed; Paris himself could not have done better.

'"Good!"' The eyes burned. '"She is stepping straight into our trap."'

I risked a sideways look at Silia. Her gaze was fixed, like a rabbit's confronted by a snake. I leaned over and gripped her hand, hard; Lucius, I knew, would not notice. Serapis knows what god had him, but he held him fast.

'"What shall we do, then?"' Acte's face was completely drained of colour, her voice expressionless; the words were words only. '"Shall we…"' She stopped; then, in her own voice, 'Lucius, love, don't make me say it! Finish this now!'

'No.' It was not Electra's voice, nor Lucius's, but something between the two. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck lift. '"Shall we…"what? Say it. Say it!'

Acte's head drooped like a cut flower. The gesture of defeat, I knew, was not part of the play.

'"Shall we kill her?"' she whispered. '"Shall we kill our own mother?"'

I felt Silia's fingers stiffen under mine. Her hand was trembling. I squeezed it gently.

The mask came up, tossing the horsehair ringlets. '"Has pity seized you, then?"' The words came in a low, venomous hiss.

'Lucius, please!' Acte cried.

Lucius's body stiffened, waiting. Again, after a long silence, came Acte's strange half-sob of unwilling compliance.

'"But how can I kill her?"' she said; I could barely hear the words. '"How can I kill the one who gave me birth, the mother who reared me?"'

'"Kill her as she killed our father!"' I could see a thread of spittle on the wooden lips. '"Kill her as she killed — "'

'No! That's enough!' Acte leaped to her feet, tore the mask from the emperor's face and threw it across the room. The light wood shattered as it struck the wall.

Lucius stood blinking and staring like an owl caught by the sunlight. In the corner of his mouth, a muscle twitched. He raised his hand blindly to his lips and wiped them. For a long moment he and Acte faced each other. Then he walked over to the ruined mask, picked it up and hung it as best he could from its nail. His hands were shaking.

'It's only a play,' he whispered. 'Only a play.' His eyes, still glazed, turned towards us. 'Titus. Silia. You tell her, darlings. I didn't mean it. Not really.'

We said nothing. I knew that Silia, like me, was too shocked to speak. Our hands were still locked together as if we were children afraid of the dark.

'Come with me, love.' Acte held out her hand. Her voice was low and strained. 'You're over-tired. Petronius and Silia will excuse us, I'm sure.'

I nodded. Something seemed to have got hold of my throat, and it was squeezing the breath out of me. Lucius shook himself, gave a sudden sharp laugh, and then smiled one of his brilliant smiles.

'You see how much she loves me, poor girl?' he said, and staggered towards the door. Acte gave us a quick frightened glance over her shoulder and followed.

A moment later, the young slave Chryse appeared. Silently — and nervously — she escorted us down the staircase and back to the palace gates.

'He's mad, of course. Quite mad,' Silia said calmly as I dismissed the litters and helped her past the bowing door slave.

'Of course.' I tried to keep my own voice under control; not by any means an easy task under the circumstances. 'But quietly mad or dangerously mad? That's the question.'

'My dear Titus.' Silia looked at me gravely. 'There's no such thing as a quietly mad emperor. And after today's performance I am very glad I'm not Agrippina.'

We went home and made love; but neither of our hearts were really in it.