Shakespeare, King John.
The autumn twilight had by this time faded, but one silver lamp, standing on a slab of softly glowing marble, shed a dim light through the room when the freedman was ushered into it. He was a man of portly presence, and of demeanour amazingly haughty for one who had once bawled ‘Sea-urchins for sale!’ in the Subura, and come over the sea from his native Arcadia with his feet chalked as a common slave. His immense wealth, his influence over the Emperor, and his advocacy of the claims of Agrippina to her uncle’s hand, together with the honours bestowed upon him by the mean adulation of the Senate, had raised him to the pinnacle of his power. Agrippina had stooped to the lowest depths to purchase his adherence, and now there was absolute confidence between them. He was ready to betray the too-indulgent master who had raised him from the dust and heaped upon him gifts and privileges, for which the noblest Consul might have sighed in vain.
Pallas was in a grave mood. The air was full of portents. A tale was on every lip among the common people that a pig had been born with the talons of a hawk. A swarm of bees had settled on the top of the Capitol. The tents and standards of the soldiers had been struck with fire from heaven. In that year a quæstor, an ædile, a tribune, a prætor, and a consul had all died within a few months of each other. Claudius had nominated two consuls, but had only nominated them for a single month. Had he misgivings about his approaching fate? Agrippina was not superstitious, and she listened to these stories of the Greek freedman with the indifference of disdain. But it was far otherwise when he told her that Narcissus had been heard to utter very dangerous speeches. He had said that whether Britannicus or Nero succeeded, he himself was doomed to perish. Britannicus would hate him as the man who had brought about the death of his mother Messalina. Nero would hate him, because he had opposed his adoption, and the marriage of his mother to the Emperor, both which events had been achieved by the rival influence of Pallas. Still Narcissus was faithful to his kind master, and Britannicus was the Emperor’s son. The freedman had been seen to embrace Britannicus; he had spoken of him as the ‘true image of Claudius;’ had stretched forth his hands now to him and now to heaven, and had prayed ‘that the boy might grow speedily to man’s estate, and drive away the enemies of his father, even if he also took vengeance on the slayer of his mother.’
Agrippina listened to this report with anxious disquietude, and Pallas told her further that lately the Emperor had often pressed Britannicus and Octavia to his heart; had spoken of their wrongs; had declared that they should not be ousted from their place in his affections by the crafty and upstart son of such a wretch as Domitius Ahenobarbus, of whom it might be said, as the orator Licinius Crassus said of his ancestor, ‘No wonder his beard was of brass, since his tongue was of iron, and his heart of lead.’ Claudius often repeated himself, and when he saw his son he had several times used the Greek proverb, ὁ τρώσας καὶ ἰάσεται, ‘he who wounded shall also heal you.’
But worse news followed, and Agrippina grasped the side of her couch with an impulse of terror, when, last of all, Pallas told her that, on that very evening, the Emperor, in his cups, had been heard to mutter to some of his intimates ‘that he more than suspected the designs of his wife; and that it had always been his destiny to bear the flagitious conduct of his consorts for a time, but at last to avenge it.’
As she heard these words Agrippina stood up, her arms outstretched, her fine nostril dilated, her whole countenance inflamed with rage and scorn. ‘The dotard!’ she exclaimed, ‘the miserable, drivelling, drunken dotard! He to speak thus of me! Pallas, the hour for delay is over. It is time to act. But,’ she added, ‘Narcissus is still here. He loves his master; he watches over him with sleepless vigilance. I dare attempt nothing while he remains about the Court.’
‘He is crippled with the gout,’ answered Pallas. ‘He suffers excruciating agony. He cannot hold out much longer. I told him that you strongly recommended him to try the sulphur baths of Sinuessa. He is nearly certain to take the hint. In a week or two at the latest he will ask leave of absence, for his life is a torture.’
‘Good!’ whispered the Empress; and then, dropping her voice to a whisper, she hissed into the ear of the freedman, ‘Claudius must not live.’
‘You need not drop your voice, Augusta,’ said Pallas. ‘No slave is near. I placed one of my own attendants in the corridor, and forbade him on pain of death to let anyone approach your chamber.’
‘You ventured to tell him that?’ asked Agrippina, amazed at the freedman’s boldness.