The Magic Circle (30 page)

“Don’t say that!” cried Caligula. Pulling his arm away, he looked at Claudius with eyes strangely devoid of human expression. Then, with a smile that sent chills up Claudius’s spine, he said, “Did you know that I fuck my sister?”

Claudius was completely dumbstruck. Caligula had been known to have fits as a child, falling on the ground and frothing at the mouth, a symptom common to the Caesars. But now, as he stood there in the fresh air on the bright green lawn of the Field of Mars beneath the brilliant blue sky on this seemingly normal spring day, Claudius realized that this was no ordinary madness. He knew he must make some response to his nephew’s remark, and make it quickly.

“Good heaven!” he chortled. “No, no, I hadn’t guessed such a thing at all—and what a surprise! Indeed, how
could
I have guessed? I mean, you’ve said ‘my sister,’ but in fact you have three of them, and each one lovelier than the next!”

“Everyone in the family is right about you, Uncle Claudius,” said Caligula coldly. “You
are
a complete fool. Now I’m rather sorry I’ve made you my first co-consul, to rule the state with me. Though I’ve always liked you better than anyone in the family, I really might have chosen someone more astute.”

“Now, now, that appointment can always be changed at any time—though of course I’m pleased and overjoyed at the honor,” said Claudius hastily, wondering what on earth to do. He waited, praying for divine guidance, until at last his nephew spoke.

“I’m not talking about my
sister
!” Caligula hissed under his breath, though the guards posted around the field weren’t even within shouting distance to overhear them. “Don’t you understand? I was speaking of the
goddess.
”

“Ah—the goddess,” said Claudius, trying hard not to avoid Caligula’s gaze, though his dark eyes were burning into him like awful coals.

“The
goddess
!” Caligula screamed. His hands were balled into fists in fury. His face had resumed its blackened color. “Don’t you understand? I can’t make a mere
mortal
my empress!
Mortal
brothers and sisters cannot marry! But gods
always
marry their sisters—it’s always done—that’s how they do it! That’s how we know that they’re really
gods
, you see: because
they all fuck their sisters
!”

“Of course,” said Claudius, tapping his head as if he’d just had a revelation. “But you didn’t
say
it was the goddess, that’s why I was confused. Your sister the goddess. Of course. So you’re speaking of—Drusilla!” he finished, praying wildly to all the
real
goddesses he could possibly think of that this was the right answer.

Caligula smiled.

“Uncle Claudius,” he said, “you’re a fox. You knew all along, but were just pretending in order to make me have to tell you. Now, let me share with you all my ideas on what I think we should do to save the empire.”

Caligula’s ideas on how to save the empire were astounding even to Claudius, whose predilection for expensive women and lavish, drunken banquets was well known. In the one hour they spent touring the Augustan mausoleum and temple together, discussing how the structure might be completed, Claudius quickly calculated what such ideas must represent in terms of cost.

Caligula had already bestowed rare jewels upon the comedian Mnester and many of his other favorites. And when Herod Agrippa, brother-in-law of the Galilean tetrarch Herod Antipas, was released from the prison where he’d languished by order of Tiberius these past six months, Caligula had made a public display of replacing the iron chains he’d worn in prison with gold ones of equal weight. If only a small portion of his other projects went forward as planned, Claudius calculated, it would consume all of Tiberius’s private fortune—a legacy of twenty-seven million gold pieces—and would substantially deplete the state treasury as well.

“Here at Rome, I’ll complete the Augustan temple and the theater of Pompey,” the young emperor said, ticking it all off on his fingers. “I’ll expand the imperial palace across Capitoline Hill, connect it with the temple of Castor and Pollux, add an aqueduct for the gardens, and create a new amphitheater for Mnester to perform in. At Syracuse I’ll rebuild all the ruined temples. I’ll dig a canal through the isthmus to Greece, restore the palace of Polycrates on the isle of Samos, bring back the statue of Olympian Jupiter to Rome where it belongs—and I also plan to create a new temple to Didymaean Apollo at Ephesus, the design and construction of which I shall personally supervise myself.…”

It went on this way the whole of the morning until they reached the palace. It was only then, once they were within Caligula’s private apartments, that Claudius was able to ask a question that had been nagging his mind all morning.

“What a paragon of altruism you’ve proven to be to the Roman people, my dear Gaius!” he told his nephew, who had seated himself on a bejeweled throne atop a small flight of steps that placed him several feet above his uncle, so Claudius had to strain to be heard. “They will surely be gratified for their love and the faith they’ve placed in you. And you say you’ve even arranged to resume the bread and circuses, as resplendently as in the days before Tiberius put a halt to all such things! But the role of tax collector hardly seems your style. Therefore, it’s clear you’ve hatched some clever way to replenish your coffers?”

“You’d speak to a
god
about grubbing after money?” Caligula replied disdainfully.

Taking up the golden Thunderbolt of Jove he liked to carry about at public affairs of state, he meditatively began cleaning his fingernails with its tip.

“Very well, since you’re my co-consul, I suppose I should tell you,” Caligula said, looking down at Claudius from his golden perch. “You recall Publius Vitellius, the aide-de-camp to my father Germanicus? He was there when Father died, at only age thirty-three, on his last campaign in Syria.”

“I knew Publius very well,” said Claudius. “He was my brother’s most trusted ally, even in death. You were only a child at the time, so perhaps you don’t know it was he who brought Piso—an agent and friend of Tiberius—to trial on charges of poisoning your father. Tiberius too might have been charged in the murder, if he hadn’t burned Piso’s secret instructions when they were presented before him. But Tiberius had a long memory for such betrayals, and did not soon forget the Vitellii. Publius was later arrested and accused of being a member of the Sejanus conspiracy. He tried to slash his wrists, then fell ill and died in prison. Later his brother Quintus, the senator, was publicly degraded in one of those senatorial purges Tiberius demanded.”

“So doesn’t it make you wonder,” Caligula said slowly, “why Grandpa would destroy two brothers in a family—and then, not long before he died himself, he’d turn around and appoint their youngest brother as imperial legate to Syria?”

“Lucius Vitellius?” said Claudius, raising his brow. “I suppose, like everyone else in Rome, I assumed his appointment was more of a … personal favor.” Then he added awkwardly, “Because of young Aulus, that is.”

“Well, really, who might deserve such high honors better than a father of someone like Aulus?” said Caligula sarcastically. “After all, the lad generously gave up his virginity to Tiberius when he was only sixteen. I should know, I was present upon the occasion. But that’s not my point.”

Caligula arose, came down the steps, and paced about the room, slapping his thunderbolt in the palm of his hand. Then he set it on a table and picked up a full pitcher of wine, poured some in a goblet, and rang a nearby bell. The taster, a boy of nine or ten, entered at once and drank the wine off, while Caligula filled two more goblets to the brim. Taking one and motioning his uncle to help himself to the other, he waited until the taster bowed and left the room. To Claudius’s astonishment, his nephew then unlocked a large box on the table and plucked out two costly pearls, each the breadth of his thumb, and dropped them into the wine goblets to dissolve.

“I’ve had Tiberius’s papers brought over from Capreae, and I’ve read them all,” Caligula resumed after having a swallow from the goblet and wiping his mouth. “There was one of great interest from Lucius Vitellius, written just after he took up his appointment in Syria more than a year ago. It refers to some objects of great value once belonging to the Jews, which were buried atop a kind of holy mountain in Samaria—objects that it seems the former protégé of Sejanus, Pontius Pilate, had been after. Apparently Pilate murdered a number of people in trying to lay his hands on them.”

Claudius, the only genuinely poor member of the royal family, privately wondered if he could fish out the pearl and rescue it behind his nephew’s back before it dissolved. But he thought better of it and took a sip of the rarely enhanced wine.

“What exactly did Vitellius say these objects were? And what’s become of them and of Pilate?” he asked.

“Pilate was removed from his post, but was held at Antioch under guard for at least ten months, waiting for a troopship that would be returning directly to Rome,” said Caligula. “It arrived here the same week Grandfather died, so I arranged to have Pilate detained here for questioning—though I didn’t really need to, for I’d been able to put a few pieces of the story together on my own some time ago, and make a few guesses. As you know, my first act as emperor just after the funeral was to release Herod Agrippa from prison, and I bestowed on him the tetrarchies of Lysanias and his late uncle Philip in Syria, as well as the title of king. I’ve instructed, when he returns there, that he perform a service for me.”

Claudius began to think his mind had really cleared a bit with that first sip of wine, for he’d just come to understand that this god-obsessed nephew of his might not be as mad as he seemed.
In vino veritas
, he thought, and he had another healthy swallow.

“One must recall,” Caligula said, “I lived six years with Grandfather at Capreae, where I saw and heard a good deal—not all of it mere debauchery. Five years ago something happened. Perhaps you’ll recall it. Tiberius had an Egyptian pilot brought here to Rome, then he met with the fellow himself out on Capreae—”

“You mean, the same Egyptian who appeared before the senate—the one who claimed he’d overheard, while sailing near Greece one night around the spring equinox, that the great god Pan was dead?” said Claudius, quite interested. He took another swig.

“Yes, that one,” said Caligula. “Grandfather was secretive about the meeting, and never discussed it. But I knew whatever he’d learned from the Egyptian had changed him. I spoke of this one day, with the husband of my sister Drusilla—”

“The goddess,” suggested Claudius with a hiccup, but Caligula ignored him.

“Five years ago,” he went on, “when my brother-in-law Lucius Cassius Longinus was consul here in Rome, his own brother—an officer named Gaius Cassius Longinus—was serving with the third legion in Syria. On the very same week of the spring equinox he was the duty officer assigned to Pontius Pilate, in charge of a public execution at Jerusalem. Something happened there he recalled as very strange.”

“You mean to say this rumor about the death of the great god Pan may have to do with these valuable objects Pilate was seeking?” said Claudius, a bit foggy from the wine. “And because of something you learned about them from your brother-in-law, you’ve let Herod Agrippa out of jail and appointed him king, so he can help solve the mystery of what’s become of them?”

“Precisely!” cried Caligula, picking up his thunderbolt and thrusting it high as if about to hurl it to the ceiling. “Uncle Claudius, you may be every bit the drunkard everyone believes you are, but you’re no fool—you’re a genius!”

Taking Claudius by the arm, he drew him back to the throne, and they sat on the steps together as the younger man leaned toward his uncle.

“As I say, five years ago, on the Friday before the equinox, Pilate ordered a rabble-rousing Jew to be crucified along with some criminals, knowing the bodies had to be taken down before nightfall by law, since it was just before the Jewish sabbath when they couldn’t be removed. The way to hasten death, I’m told, is to break their legs so the lungs collapse and they smother.”

Perhaps it was the drink, thought Claudius, but it seemed the light had dimmed in the room and his nephew’s eyes had taken on an odd gleam while describing this unappealing procedure. He had another swallow.

“This was Gaius Cassius Longinus’s first crucifixion,” Caligula went on, “so when it was time to dispatch the bodies he simply rode up on his horse and stabbed the one in the middle to get it over with. But once done, Gaius noticed something odd about the spear in his hand. One of the troops must have handed it to him just before they went to the execution site, for it wasn’t his. It was old and battered and seemed made of some primitive metal. He remembers that the hilt was hand-tied to the blade with something like fox gut. He thought little of it until the bodies were hauled away and he returned to Pilate’s headquarters before heading back to Antioch. Pilate asked Gaius if he had the spear, suggesting it was some bit of official regalia he needed back—though I doubt that was likely. Only then did Gaius realize it had vanished.”

“You think this was one of the objects?” said Claudius. His eyes had begun to ache, perhaps from the wine or the sudden odd darkness in the room. “But it hardly sounds precious or mysterious to me, and where did it come from?”

“What tells me it’s mysterious is that it has disappeared, never to be found,” said Caligula. “What tells me it’s precious is that Pontius Pilate wanted it several years before that massacre on the mountain—which also means he believed at least some of those objects had already surfaced from the ground. As to where it came from or where it’s gone, I suspect my grandfather was trying to find that out just when he died, as he was hastening home to Capreae and stopped at Misenum. And I’ve every cause to believe that he had the answer within his grasp right before his death.”

“Tiberius?” said Claudius. Setting down his goblet at last, he peered at his nephew in the oppressively gloomy light. “But he possessed twenty-seven million in gold. Why should he go to such lengths for greater wealth?”