The Nero Prediction Read Free

them so life-like you could hear them snort. 
    I had the distinct impression that he took a deep, quiet breath as he turned. His shoulders were broad, his waist tapered, his clean-shaven face elegantly chiseled, his velvet blue eyes large and compelling. There was an iron ring on his finger that told me he was a Roman citizen. He examined me from head to foot as if I were a statue he was appraising. I certainly stood as still as one, my eyes riveted to his, like a cornered mouse stares in fascination at the cobra that has trapped him in a corner.
    “He’s not quite what I expected,” he said in a calm pleasant voice.
    The freedman flashed his strange smile. “He’s had an uncomfortable night.”
    “Lovely,” the citizen said. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
    “Dominus?” I squeaked because I was unsure whether he was calling me lovely, because that is what Epaphroditus means in Greek, or just calling me by my name.
    “They tell me you tried to run away. Why did you do it?” he asked, very cordially.
    I couldn’t lie to this man, no more than the paralyzed mouse can flee from the snake. “I was told I was going to be killed.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “An astrologer, dominus.”
    “Really! What was his name?”
    I swallowed hard but it wouldn’t stay down. “Phocion.”
    “Phocion.” Tigellinus seemed to relish the word as if it were a particularly savory oyster. “Why did Phocion think you were going to be killed?”
    “Because the Romans were looking for someone with my birthday, sir.”
    “You told him your birth date?”
    “No sir, I don’t know when I was born. But Phocion said he knew the very hour.”
    “How well did you know him?”
    “Since I was a child, sir. He was a friend of my mother’s when she was alive. She died at my birth.”
    “Amazing! He knew you all those years and he didn’t tell you your own birthday. Why?”
    “He said … he said something about forbidden knowledge.”
    Tigellinus sat on an Egyptian chair that was carved with gilded hieroglyphics. His voice remained calm, faintly bored even, but it had an undercurrent that frightened me. “What else did he tell you about your horoscope?”
    “Sir, he said it foretold astonishing things.”
    The Roman raised both eyebrows, glanced at his freedman who stood behind me. “Astonishing things, fancy that! A sixteen-year-old pen pushing slave is destined for astonishing things!” He took Phocion’s well-worn money bag out of his pocket, I recognized it instantly from the large X that had been embossed on it, bounced it in his hand so it jingled. There seemed to be shards of ice in his dark blue eyes when he looked back at me.
     “A hundred silver tetradrachmas. A lot of money. Where did you get it?”
    “Phocion, sir. He gave it to me so I could buy passage on a ship.”
    The Roman looked up at the ceiling painted with joyful scenes of the Egyptian afterlife, papyrus marshes teeming with wildfowl, fat cows, years of plenty without end. “Would you have any idea why Phocion hanged himself from the rafters of his room?”
    Grief gripped me by the throat. If it were not for the dispassionate way Tigellinus was looking at me, as if he were waiting for me to break down, I think I would have. “No sir I don’t,” I managed to get out.
    “Are you sure you didn’t get this from the Copy Master?”
    “No sir, Phocion gave it to me.”
    “We questioned the Copy Master, you know. Eventually he told us that he was giving you money for forging famous documents that he then sold as originals. Forgery, you should lose your hand for that.”
    “The Copy Master forced me to do it, dominus. He used his whip. He only gave me a few coppers.”
    Tigellinus tapped his fingers on his thigh as if he were keeping track of the seconds. “The Copy Master knew Phocion.”
    It wasn’t a question but I answered it anyway. “Yes sir. Phocion used to work in the Records Office.”
    Tigellinus’s tapping on his knee stopped abruptly.