The Splendor Before the Dark by Margaret George

Author:Margaret George [George, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2018-11-06T00:00:00+00:00

XXXVIII

Tigellinus and Faenius escorted me back to the private room. Perhaps they were afraid I could not stand on my own, or might collapse, and they must be there to catch me. But my walking was not what was affected.

Poppaea was waiting, with food and drink. But I wanted none of it. The only drink I craved was the waters of nepenthe, that would erase sorrow, make me forget. The drug of forgetfulness that Homer extolled. Where was it? Where could a man go to find it?

“Rest, Caesar,” said Faenius. “That last was difficult to hear.” He patted a couch, well pillowed. I sank down on it. The judgment bench’s wood was hard. But that was the least of it.

“What has happened?” asked Poppaea.

“I can’t talk about it,” I said. “Not now.” There had been too much, too fast—the widening plot, the death of Seneca, and now the revelations of Lucan. His accusations rang in my mind. He had called me stupid, blind. Perhaps he was right. How could I not have known?

But . . . I had sensed something amiss. Yes. I recalled now the cutting remarks of these conspirators about the Golden House, about the rebuilding of Rome, about people cursing whoever had started the Fire, about the Circus Maximus race being “fixed.” But a ruler who took umbrage at every little remark would soon become so suspicious and touchy that he would degenerate into what they had called me—a tyrant. I had thought to be no such thing. But, perhaps a ruler who did not take umbrage readily was soon a dead one, oblivious to danger around him even as the knives flashed.

No more. This morning saw the death of my tolerance. It would be buried with Seneca’s ashes. The gods had saved me from my own folly of trust, but they would not do it again. Inside, something hardened that had grown soft over the years, the years since the dangerous passages I had navigated as little more than a child in order to survive to manhood. I had not forgotten my skills, just let them sleep, thinking I was past needing them. I was wrong.

There was still this afternoon to get through, the trial of Scaevinus. Later there would be trials of all the others named, but those were not my personal friends, and the level of betrayal was not so monstrous.

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