The Devil Will Come

TWENTY-SIX

Rome, AD 68

AT THE AGE of thirty, pudgy and balding, Nero no longer looked anything like his ubiquitous image on statues and coins. The years since the Great Fire had taken their toll.

In the hours of the day when he was sober he had obsessed and labored over every detail in the construction of his Golden House. The Domus Aurea wasn’t so much a palace as a statement. A vast tract of burnt-out Rome was now his and he could shape the land at will into his golden image. When it was done, a flabbergasted visitor would see a vista of open countryside filled with woods, pastures, exotic animals and grand buildings surrounding a lake, all set in a valley surrounded by hills.

The main residential complex dazzled the eye because its 360-meter south-facing façade was built so that its gilded surface caught and reflected the sun throughout the day. Its vestibule was tall enough to house a colossal effigy of Nero, the largest statue in Rome. There were dining rooms with fretted ceilings of ivory and with panels that could be opened by slaves to shower his guests with flower petals. There were pipes for sprinkling guests with perfumes. The main banquet hall was circular and set on a revolving platform that slaves slowly rotated throughout the day and night to mimic the earth moving through the heavens. His heated baths were supplied with sea- and sulphur water.

Its construction greatly enriched a bevy of Lemures corporations but drained the coffers of the empire. But Nero felt wholly entitled. When it was sanctified and dedicated he would say that finally he could live like a human being.

As he moved from room to sumptuous room, from one debauchery to another, the empire groaned under his profligate rule. The Roman statesman Gaius Calpurnius Piso had tried to unseat him a year after the fire before Nero got wind of the affair and slaughtered the multitude of plotters and all their blood-kin. The following year there was a Jewish revolt in Judea which required Nero to implore his esteemed general Vespasian to come out of retirement.

Cost overruns at the Domus Aurea and other Roman building projects and the massive expense of keeping order within his far-flung empire led Nero to bleed more taxes out of the provinces.

‘Get me more money!’ he was always bellowing to Tigellinus who would oblige as best he could, carving out his personal take from every transaction. He’d grown used to Nero’s increasing demands. More money, more food, more wine, more spectacles, more orgies, more blood – especially Christian blood.

None of this bothered Tigellinus in the least but he and the leading Lemures families were growing worried about losing the control they had enjoyed since the days of Caligula. How they wished that Balbilus were still among the living to read the star charts and tell them what was due.

A new and serious threat had emerged in the form of Gaius Julius Vindex, the over-taxed governor of Gallia Lugdunensis, and Gaul was in open rebellion. True, Nero’s legions had defeated Vindex at the bloody battle of Vesontonio but, far from continuing to fight for Nero, the victorious Praetorians promptly proposed their own commander Verginius as the new emperor. He refused to participate in treason but support was growing across the empire for Galba to seize power from the fat, crazed lyre-player in the Golden House.

Yet whatever adversity befell him during these troubled times Nero could always find escape in a jug of wine and solace in the arms of Sporus.

In the summer of 65, Nero, who was immune to the notions of regret and remorse, committed the one act he would have taken back if he could. In a drunken rage brought on by something he couldn’t even remember the next day, he stomped his wife Poppaea Sabina and her unborn child to death. When he awoke the next morning, bilious and hungover and saw her broken carcass on the marble floor and her blood on his hands and feet he wailed like a child.

He’d killed his own mother, he’d raped a Vestal Virgin, he’d committed countless unspeakable acts but none of them had ever stuck with him like the murder of Poppaea. After she was gone it occurred to him that he missed her terribly. An emptiness gnawed at him and he attempted to fill it as quickly as he could. Every time he heard of a woman who looked like Poppaea he had her brought to him and if the likeness was appealing enough he kept her as his concubine. But none met his expectations like a boy, a freedman named Sporus, who bore an uncanny resemblance. Nero took to him immediately and rewarded the lad with castration to seal the deal.

When his wounds healed Nero had him wigged, gowned and made-up like Poppaea and married him in a formal ceremony where Tigellinus held his nose and gave the ‘bride’ away. He took him to his bed every night and told him he’d slit his throat if he ever whispered about his tail. And while tongues wagged all over the city, Nero perpetually pestered his Greek surgeons about some way of turning the eunuch into a proper woman so he could kiss his face while they fornicated.

In June the gardens of the Domus Aurea were at their most fragrant but the only ones who seemed to notice were the slaves who tended the flower beds and fruit trees. Nero and his court were otherwise occupied with news of the traitor Galba who was gaining steam as the summer heat began to bear down.

Nero had briefly rejoiced at the defeat of Vindex weeks earlier, not for least because he’d heard the Gallic governor had called him a bad lyre-player, but Galba had taken up the mantle of rebellion and was rolling his legions towards Italy. It reassured the court not a bit when Nero had announced his mad plan for defeating the insurrection: he would travel to the advancing legions armed with wagons laden with theatrical props and water organs accompanied by concubines who would be given masculine haircuts and dressed as Amazonian warriors. When he met Galba he would, at first, do nothing but weep. And thus, reducing the rebels to penitence, he would stage a grand performance for them with songs of victory he was composing.

After dark one day, a messenger arrived at the Domus Aurea with a message for Tigellinus. He read it and shook his head. The time had come for him to leave. He’d been expecting the news and his slaves had already cleaned out his villa and loaded the carts and wagons. General Turpilianius, the last of the loyalists commanding the advance force against Galba, had defected. Tigellinus had no desire to die for Nero and despite the riches that had accrued to him over the years he still had a bitter taste in his mouth over Nero’s torching of his precious Basilica Aemilia. No, he would decamp to his estate in Sinuessa and keep a low profile there among other Lemures families. They would find a way forward. They always did.

‘What is it?’ Nero drunkenly asked Tigellinus when he entered the dining hall.

‘A dispatch from the field.’

Nero put his arm around Sporus and knocked over a precious glass goblet in the process. ‘Well, tell me what it says then! I’m busy, can’t you see?’

‘Turpilianius has gone over to Galba.’

Nero stood wobbly on his feet. His secretary, Epaphroditus, ran to his side to steady him.

‘What shall we do?’ Nero demanded.

Tigellinus thought for a moment and before stamping off he delivered a line from the Aeneid, a biting, sarcastic send-off. ‘Is it such a wretched thing to die?’

Nero sputtered as his courtiers fled and the dining hall emptied. He managed to compose himself enough to rasp a few orders to those who remained. He wanted a fleet prepared at Ostia to take him to Alexandria. In the meanwhile he’d leave his Golden House that very night. It was too large to defend every entrance and he was feeling vulnerable there. The walled Servilian Gardens across the Tiber were more secure. Nero threw gold at any of his Praetorian and German cohorts who would flee with him but most of them deserted on the spot.

‘Where’s Sporus?’ he ranted to Epaphroditus. ‘Bring him to me!’

Epaphroditus found him in the kitchens, speaking to a man at a rear door by the herb garden. The man disappeared into the night.

‘Who was that?’ Epaphroditus asked.

‘Just a friend,’ Sporus pouted.

‘You have but one man to attend to, wretch,’ Epaphroditus said, ‘and he commands you.’

As Nero and his small entourage made their way across the Tiber, the majority of the Senate marched to the Praetorian barracks, declared Nero an enemy of the state, and gave their allegiance to Galba. Nero’s German Cohorts were ordered to stand down.

It was after midnight when Nero and Sporus finally bedded down for the night in Nero’s chamber at the Servilian Gardens.

Nero suddenly sat bolt upright.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ Sporus asked wearily.

‘Something’s wrong,’ Nero announced, leaping up and calling for Epaphroditus. The man confirmed Nero’s fears. The imperial bodyguard had melted away.

Nero bolted hysterically from the villa to the riverbank and when it appeared that he might fling himself into the dark waters one of his few remaining friends, the freedman Phaon, suggested they flee to his own villa a few kilometers to the north. Some horses were found and Epaphroditus dressed Nero in an old cloak and a farmer’s hat since their route led directly past a Praetorian barracks. His last entourage was small indeed: Phaon, Epaphroditus and Sporus.

It was a harrowing final journey for an emperor. He held a handkerchief over his face to conceal his identity as they journeyed along the well-traveled road. As they passed a farmer and his mule, Nero’s horse lurched, forcing him to use both hands to steady the beast. When he lowered his handkerchief the farmer, who had once been a soldier, recognized him and cried, ‘Hail, Caesar! How could they declare you an enemy of the state?’

Nero said nothing and rode on.

They reached Phaon’s villa where Nero collapsed on a couch. ‘What do they do to an enemy of the state?’ he asked.

‘The punishment is the ancient one,’ Phaon said miserably, rummaging for a flask of wine.

‘And what is that?’ Nero cried.

‘It is a degrading fate, Caesar,’ Epaphroditus informed him. ‘The executioners strip their victim naked, hold his head down with a wooden fork and then flog him to death with rods.’

Nero began to whimper.

Horses were coming.

Nero panicked, grabbed a dagger and put it to his throat but then let it drop from his limp hand and clatter to the floor.

‘Will no one help me?’ he pleaded.

Epaphroditus retrieved the dagger and held it to Nero’s throat again, its tip just indenting the soft pink flesh.

‘Make sure my body is burned,’ Nero whimpered. ‘I want no one to see what I am.’

‘Yes, Caesar,’ Epaphroditus answered.

Nero looked at the fresco on Phaon’s ceiling. It depicted a seated woman playing a lyre. ‘What a great artist dies with me,’ he whispered.

‘I can’t do it,’ Epaphroditus said, his hand wavering.

Sporus was hovering behind him. The boy, who had been held down and castrated and then buggered for years, took hold of the dagger handle.

‘I can,’ he said, thrusting the blade through one side of Nero’s neck and clean out the other.

And as Epaphroditus knelt numbly beside his master’s body, Sporus turned and left the chamber alone, fingering the medallion in his pocket which had been given to him by the man in the herb garden.

It was a chi-rho symbol, a fine one, rendered in gold.

‘I am a Christian now,’ Sporus said out loud. ‘And I have rid Rome of this monster.’

London, 1593

It was an unseasonably warm May and the Mermaid tavern was sweltering. The tavern smelled of stale and fresh ale, old and new piss and a sickly miasma of sweat.

Marlowe was bone weary and mightily peeved that he wasn’t getting drunk as quickly as he would have liked. Seated at a long crowded table, he raged at the landlord about watered ale but the burly server ignored him and let him seethe.

‘I shall take my business elsewhere,’ he bellowed to no one in particular. ‘The ale is better in Holland.’

He knew Dutch beer well.

He’d spent much of the past year in the stinking port city of Flushing doing the double and triple dealings at which he had become so adept. Walsingham was dead, nigh on three years now, and Marlowe had a new master, Robert Cecil, who had continued to play on his father, Lord Burghley, for connections with the Queen. Cecil had successfully wheedled himself into Walsingham’s position as Secretary of State and chief spymaster. Robert Poley, Cecil’s loyal toad who willingly shuttled in and out of dank prisons to maintain his cover as a Catholic sympathizer, was put in charge of all Her Majesty’s agents in the Low Countries.

Marlowe often found his covert duties petty but they paid well – better than the theatre – and afforded him time to write plays to further the agenda that he admired: chaos, confusion and calamity. Burghley was infirm and not long for this world. The elderly John Dee had become dotty and the Queen had put him out to pasture as Warden of Christ’s College in Manchester. Robert Cecil was primed to become the most powerful Lemures in England and Marlowe was his man. He would ride his coat-tails to new heights of fame, wealth and power. He felt altogether deserving; he’d paid his dues.

He’d lived in a stinking room in the port city of Flushing, drunk Dutch beer in the inns and taverns, gathered intelligence masquerading as a Catholic supporter, counterfeited coins by day with a ring of conspirators and found the time to write for a few hours most nights.

And following his triumph with Faustus, each of his new plays had been well received. The Jew of Malta was next, then the historical drama Edward II, then Hero and Leander and finally The Massacre at Paris, which Pembroke’s Men had performed months earlier.

Never content and always striving, Marlowe found much to irritate him. He lived like a pauper compared with someone like Cecil. They were of the same stock, same education, similar intellect, but Cecil had a Burghley for a father and Marlowe’s father was a shoemaker. And on the literary side, he now had a formidable rival. A young actor and writer from Stratford-upon-Avon had burst upon the London scene with a play called Henry VI, which had debuted a year earlier with astounding financial success. William Shakespeare also lived in Shoreditch. They saw each other frequently at the Rose Theatre and local taverns where they circled one another warily like two bucks ready to charge at one another and bang antlers.

The only true pleasure in Marlowe’s life was Thomas Kyd, his great love, whom he’d persuaded to share a room in Norton Folgate.

He shouted for another flask of ale, insisting that it should come from a new barrel, and went to empty his bladder in the ditch behind the tavern.

There, in the shadows as was his wont, was Robert Poley.

‘Poley!’ Marlowe yelled at his black outline. ‘Is that you? Do you ever come into the light? You’re like the shades of Hades, lurking, lurking, always lurking.’

‘I’ll show myself well enough if you buy me a drink,’ Poley said.

‘Good. Come and be my dark company, then.’

Poley had come straight from Robert Cecil’s privy chamber.

They had been Walsingham’s rooms but Cecil had them decorated with better paintings and tapestries, finer silver and plate. He had improved his own bearing, too, adopting a slow, regal stride, commissioning the finest clothes and fussing obsessively over his pointed beard and thick swept-back hair.

‘What do you have to report, Poley?’ Cecil had asked.

‘I’ve done as you instructed and have been closely watching Marlowe.’

‘And how fares our talented friend?’

‘His indiscretions mount.’

‘How so?’

‘He’s sharing a bed with Thomas Kyd now. Openly.’

‘Is he, now?’

‘There have been rumors about Thomas Kyd which have been passed to me by our people in Rome.’

‘What rumors?’

‘It’s said that he is in the employ of the Church. The Pope has tasked his men to find Lemures and root us out.’

‘And you’re saying that Kyd is their spy?’

‘I am.’

Cecil had sighed. ‘Marlowe could have easily found pleasure among his own kind.’

‘He’s bent on destroying himself,’ Poley had said.

‘Then we must help him,’ Cecil had said. ‘But it must be done carefully. The Queen likes his plays. Still, I hear this new man, Shakespeare, while not one of us, is the better writer of plays. The Queen will soon enough be distracted by another bard.’

Marlowe poured strong liquor from a flask into Poley’s mug. They were at a small private table. ‘What occupies you these days, Poley?’

‘There are plans afoot,’ the other man said cryptically. ‘Foul winds blow from Flanders. Cecil aims to send us there before too long.’

‘Will he pay well?’ Marlowe grumbled.

‘He says he will pay exceedingly well. The matter is serious and if it is handled to perfection, Cecil believes it will strengthen his position with the Queen. Further, this venture could make all of us rich.’

‘Tell me more,’ Marlowe said, suddenly interested.

‘In a fortnight or so the plan will be ripe for discourse. When Cecil passes the word, we’ll meet at Widow Bull’s house in Deptford.’

‘Let me know,’ Marlowe said. ‘I’ve conducted a good fill of business there and it has a further advantage. Mrs Bull is a most excellent cook.’

Marlowe knew trouble was brewing when a week later a venomous letter was posted on the wall of a London church that was frequented by Dutch Protestants. It was a diatribe in blank verse aimed at stirring mob violence against these immigrants and their multitudinous vile ways. The missive evoked passages from Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and The Massacre at Paris and was provocatively signed ‘Tamburlaine’.

Marlowe hadn’t written the letter but the general assumption at Court was that he had.

To Marlowe’s horror, Thomas Kyd was arrested by the Royal Commissioners at Cecil’s command and under extreme torture at Bridewell Prison attested that he had seen Marlowe composing the letter.

The Queen was informed and the Privy Council, with Burghley and Cecil sitting in attendance, authorized a warrant for Marlowe’s arrest.

He was hauled off to Bridewell but was treated gently enough with nary an interrogation. In two days Poley arrived to bail him out.

‘Why is this happening, Poley?’ Marlowe demanded angrily when they were out on the streets. ‘You and Cecil know I had nothing to do with this Dutch letter.’

‘Someone is doing you mischief,’ Poley said, shaking his head. ‘Let’s find a tavern.’

‘Damn the taverns! What’s happened to Kyd?’

‘He’s being held. You were likely close to him these past days. He says you were the culprit.’

‘Under torture?’

‘I expect so,’ Poley said. ‘At least you weren’t touched. Cecil made sure of that.’

‘To protect me or the knowledge of the existence of my nether parts?’ Marlowe whispered.

‘Both, I’m sure.’

Marlowe suddenly stopped in his tracks. ‘I know who did this, Poley! By the stars, I know!’

Poley took a small step back as if expecting a blow.

‘I’m certain it was Will Shakespeare, that jealous worm, that sorry excuse for a playwright.’

Poley smiled because he had written the letter himself and was rather proud of the effort. ‘I’m sure you’re right about that. Before you’re off to Flanders you should kill the wretch.’

The Widow Bull laid on a fine meal in one of her upstairs rooms: a feast of neat’s tongue, lamb, capon and stag.

Marlowe was uncharacteristically anorectic. His appetite had been failing since the business of the Dutch letter and furthermore he had to suffer the daily indignity of reporting his whereabouts to the Privy Council while they continued their investigations.

Poley ate heartily, as did the other two men, Nicholas Skeres and Ingram Frizer, two Lemures hooligans and swindlers whom Marlowe knew well enough. Yet just because they were his kind didn’t mean he had to like them. He had no problem with killers but little time for uncultured ones.

Marlowe fidgeted and drank his wine. ‘What of Flanders?’ he asked.

Poley spoke through a mouthful of meat. ‘King Phillip of Spain is preparing an invasion force.’

‘He already lost one armada to Elizabeth,’ Marlowe said. ‘He’s itching to have another joust with the Lady?’

‘Apparently so,’ Poley said.

‘Well, I’m keen to go,’ Marlowe said. ‘Can you have Cecil give the word and let me away from these damnable shores?’

‘He’s preparing the ground,’ Poley said.

‘And what of you two?’ Marlowe said, pointing his dining knife in the direction of Skeres and Frizer. ‘Are you also to Flanders?’

The men looked to Poley who nodded at them.

Frizer rose. ‘Are you pointing a knife at me?’ he demanded huskily.

Marlowe rolled his eyes at him. ‘What of it?’

‘No one points a knife at me.’

‘Apparently you’re mistaken,’ Marlowe said sarcastically. ‘I just did. Perhaps I mistook you for a plump ox testicle, ripe for the skewer.’

Suddenly Frizer had a dagger in his hand.

Marlowe had never backed off from a fight in his life and now all his pent-up frustrations came to a satisfying boil. He was an able brawler and this wiry scoundrel would go down hard. Marlowe’s eating knife wasn’t very long or very sharp but it would do.

He started to stand.

But suddenly there were arms around his chest and shoulders, pinning him to his chair.

Nicholas Skeres had stolen around behind him and was holding him immobile.

Frizer was coming around the table fast.

Marlowe heard Poley say, ‘Do it!’

He saw the dagger streaking toward his eye.

He wouldn’t yell and he wouldn’t beg.

Like Faustus, about to be dragged to Hell, Marlowe reckoned he’d made his bargain.

The three men stood over Marlowe, waiting for his twitching body to become still. The flow of blood from his eye had receded to a trickle.

‘That’s that,’ Skeres said. ‘It’s done.’

‘Let’s divide the money, then,’ Frizer demanded.

Poley grunted and took a purse from his belt. It was heavy with gold.

‘An equal split?’ Skeres asked.

‘Aye,’ Poley said.

Later, in his chambers, Cecil asked Poley, ‘How did he die?’

‘He died well. A proper Lemures death. Violent. Quick. Quiet.’

‘Well, it’s over then. The Queen will soon enough be pleased he’s dead. I’m already pleased he’s dead. Make sure that no one examines the body beyond the wound to his head. Bury him in an unmarked grave. Make sure that Kyd dies, too. Let Marlowe’s legacy be his plays and his codes, not his tail. Hail Lemures, I say. Hail Marlowe.’