The Splendor Before the Dark Read online

  Together Poppaea and I had selected the ornamentation of the Domus Transitoria; the ceiling was white stucco embedded with gems and sparkling glass. The artist who had done it—where was he? Was he safe?

  The passageway was quiet and cool. One would never know conditions were anything but ordinary. But as I walked farther in, I smelled it, faint but distinctive: smoke. Smoke was in the corridor. That meant there was fire at the other end, in the new part where the smell of fresh paint should still linger, but now was replaced by ash and smoke.

  I scrambled out and rushed up the hill. My palace was on fire!

  When I reached the top, Nymphidius had returned and was standing surrounded by his men. A pile of clothing and equipment was heaped nearby.

  “There’s smoke in the Domus Transitoria!” I gasped. “That means it’s on fire in the Palatine portion!”

  “The fire is reaching its arms around the Palatine, then,” he said. “Are you still determined to go with us?”

  “Yes. I cannot stay here!”

  Tigellinus joined us just in time to hear my words. “He is stubborn,” he told Nymphidius. “I have tried to persuade him otherwise.” He could not say he had tried to order me.

  “We will be careful. And it starts with putting on protective clothing.” Nymphidius pointed to the pile. “I have soaked all this with water, mixed with vinegar. It will stink, but better stink than burn.”

  I, along with some thirty men, dug out the clothing and put it on: tunic, cloak with arms, high boots, and a close-fitting leather helmet. It was clammy and heavy.

  “Now take your equipment,” said Nymphidius. “An axe, a grappling hook, a bucket. At the base of the hill the fire engines are waiting, filled and ready, and another wagon with the wet blankets and mattresses to spread out for jumpers. Long before we get to the area of the fire we will encounter crowds. We must stick together and push through them and not get separated. For this I am issuing wide white bracelets. Put them on your left arm. Hold up your arm if you feel you are losing us, so we can spot you.”

  At his signal, we descended the hill. His instructions had been so spare. He had not told us what to do if we encountered a blaze, if people caught fire, if stones or wood were flying through the air. Perhaps there was nothing we could do but dodge. At the base of the hill the wagons were waiting, as he had told us. I was impressed with his organization and control. The fire engines, filled with water, had hand-turned pumps. The hoses were coiled and waiting, but I doubted they could reach very high. No man had the strength to supply enough power to propel the water higher than about twenty feet.

  “Onward!” Nymphidius cried, holding up his left hand with the bracelet. The wagons rumbled forward, and we followed, en masse. As we traversed the streets, everything was still intact, but as Nymphidius had predicted, we were almost swept away by the sea of surging people fleeing the city, out into the fields of the countryside. Ahead of us, the ominous cloud of smoke hung over the city.

  But as we came closer to the Forum, passing into the crowded center of the city, the Subura, we suddenly entered an area aflame. We first realized it when swirls of embers began landing on us, sizzling as they were extinguished by our wet clothes. “It’s in Region Eight!” yelled Nymphidius, and that was the last thing I heard before the roar of the fires and the screams of the people drowned him out.

  Houses were ablaze—but not all of them. One house afire might have houses on either side still safe—but not for long. I saw a stream of water from our hoses directed at one of the houses, but it was puny and had little effect on the fire. The heat was intense, and the heavy clothes I was wearing made it almost unbearable. But I could not discard them—I would roast directly.

  Flying pieces of wood glowing with sparks burst out of the houses, landing on people, and crushing some. At my feet a child was felled beneath a wayward beam, and I managed to kick it off, but the child was dead. I looked up at the blazing houses, with yellow writhing tendrils of flame coming from the windows, like a living thing. Then the windows burst outward, exploding in a ball of fire. Screams from within the house stopped as the floors collapsed.

  Then I heard Nymphidius again. “This way! The insulae!” And we pushed our way through toward that area. But on the way I was blocked by a group of menacing men. These were not panicked citizens but purposeful agents carrying buckets of tar and sticks and lighted brands. Deliberately they cast them into the houses that were not on fire.

  “Stop that!” I cried, grabbing the forearm of one. He flung me off easily.

  “Shut up!” he spat. His companions kept dipping their sticks into their tar buckets, igniting them, and tossing them into houses.

  “Stop it!” I ordered them, again to no effect. Then I realized they had no idea who I was, disguised as I was by the fire-prevention clothes. Just then I saw them hindering some of Nymphidius’s firefighters as they attempted to put out fires.

  They held up threatening hands to me. “We do this under authority!” they said.

  “Whose authority?” I demanded.

  “One whom we obey,” they said.

  “I am the emperor!” I cried. “I have power over anyone who is ordering you to do this. Stop, if you value your lives!” I commanded them.

  The men merely laughed, not believing me. Or perhaps not caring, knowing I could never identify them. But the people around us heard and misunderstood. “It’s the emperor! He’s telling them to start fires!”

  “No!” I cried. “I am not with these men!”

  “Yes you are,” yelled a woman. “You are with them. Why else are you standing talking to them? And in secret, with none of your royal guards around? Where are the Praetorians? You have slipped away from them on purpose.”

  Then another house began to sway and fall, and everyone scattered. Everyone but two men who stood, praising their god.

  “Oh, great and glorious name of Jesus! It is the beginning. The beginning of the end, the end you promised.” One of them bent down and grabbed the end of a glowing stick. “It’s the Day of the Lord at last! And we are given the gift of speeding its coming!” He flung the flaming brand into a house. “Thank you, Lord!”

  Their thanks was short-lived; as if in answer, the house collapsed and buried them under it.

  I had entered a nightmare. I swerved around the collapsed house, hunting for Nymphidius and the other men, but I had lost them. No matter. I knew how to get to the insulae. But I was shaken by the brazen looters I now saw rushing into houses, emerging with armloads of stolen goods, and the religious fanatics who were exploiting the fire for their own ends. I had not anticipated this, but I should have. There is no tragedy that evil men do not repurpose.

  Suddenly a river of fire poured out the door of a house; it rippled and shimmered like a real river, but this was pure fire. From inside came a growl, like a monstrous animal, followed by another vomit of fire. I was pummeled and squeezed by the tight-packed crowds fleeing it and carried in a direction I had no control over.

  Now I was at the insulae, those tall apartment buildings that were the most dangerous of all. They could be five or six stories, of wood or mud brick, rickety and more flimsy the higher they were. I found Nymphidius by spotting the fire engines and wagons, lined up outside one building. The men were spreading out the blankets and mattresses, and I joined them, hauling the heavy material out of the wagons. The side of the building was a sheet of red-yellow flames already, and people were hanging out the windows, terrified.

  Nymphidius gestured to them as soon as the blankets and mattresses were in place. “Jump! Jump!” he yelled. Some obeyed, and the ones in the lower floors landed safely. But the ones in the higher floors hit hard, and not everyone survived.

  We stood looking at the dead people, mangled upon the blankets. There were some very small children. They had hit the hardest. I felt sick. One of the firemen beside me said, “It is a kinde
r death than fire.” He was right. But the fire was the true cause of it.

  Just then one of the insulae next to us, seemingly untouched, shot out sparks and then suddenly exploded with no warning. Flying debris went everywhere, bodies along with beams and stones and furniture. Charred bodies rained down around us, blackened and unrecognizable as people except for the shoes that were still on the carbonized skeletal feet. Now I did get sick and pulled off my heavy, stifling helmet to kneel on the pavement. But as I straightened up, wiping my mouth, cinders singed my hair and I only saved myself from catching fire by smothering it, clapping my helmet back on my head. Inside the helmet I felt the heat of the embers trying to kill me before they slowly died out, their mission extinguished along with them.

  “It is a monster,” said Nymphidius. “Have you seen enough? I told you that you should have stayed back at the camp.”

  “Like a coward?” I said. “I have to see it, have to know what we are facing.”

  “A fire is a living thing,” said Nymphidius. “The apartment building looked safe. But it harbored the enemy inside, an enemy that was feeding, breathing, hiding, waiting, growing strong. Only then did it reveal itself. When it was too late for us to stop it.”

  “I am not sure we have the power to stop it, only to slow it and to rescue its victims. And even in that we are pitifully weak, outflanked by the enemy.” That was the horrible truth of it.

  “I need to refill the fire engines,” he said. “And my men need to rest, rotate shifts. We must retreat, back to the Esquiline and Region Four.”

  “I need to see the Palatine,” I said. “I have to go on.”

  Nymphidius did not bother to try to dissuade me. “Not alone. Take one of the Praetorian tribunes with you. Subrius Flavus is by the wagons. I’ll call him.”

  I did not want to return to the wagons and the blankets with their grisly spread. I would wait. Soon Subrius appeared. He was one of those men who looked wide, with a broad face and torso, although he wasn’t fat. But under all the protective clothes it was impossible to see what anyone really looked like.

  “I will accompany you, Caesar,” he said. “Where do you wish to go next?”

  I knew without hesitation. “The Forum. And the Palatine.”

  He frowned. “That is heading into the heart of the fire,” he said.

  “I have to see where it has spread,” I said. I dreaded the sight, but I had to see it. I had to know.

  He gave an almost imperceptible sigh and pointed. “This way, then.”

  We fought our way against the tide of frantic people and past more burning buildings. The noise of the fire grew greater, louder, sucking the air. The smoke became denser, and I had to cover my nose and mouth with a handkerchief. My eyes, uncovered, were stinging and aching. In the artificial darkness created by the smoke, I could not see very far in front of me, but still I could discern the stumbling people, some helping others, carrying invalids and the helpless, others ruthlessly pushing everyone aside and trampling them. Some people were carrying bundles of their own belongings; others were thieves laden with stolen booty.

  Then suddenly we were out into the Forum, in the open spaces there. It was intact. It had not caught fire yet. The marble buildings, and the space between them, would retard the fire. But the fire was creeping closer to it, and suddenly I saw a flame shoot up through the open roof of the Temple of Vesta, and I knew it was not the sacred flame.

  I stood still and watched. This was the very essence, the heart of Rome, and it was succumbing to ruin. This was the center of the Rome I was responsible for, the Rome I was supposed to protect. I alone knew the sacred secret name of Rome, as Pontifex Maximus, the head priest of the state religion. It was not written down anywhere, only whispered from one Pontifex to his successor. As long as that sacred name was known, Rome could continue, could reconstitute herself. But if something happened to me—if I perished right here—Rome would perish along with me. Tigellinus had been right to try to keep me from danger, but there was danger everywhere. A quiet night alone in the palace could also be dangerous. It was nobler to die on my feet fighting a huge evil than to be ignominiously murdered in a corridor, like Caligula.

  I turned from the heartrending sight. “Down here!” I told Subrius, and headed toward the Capitoline end of the Forum. We passed the Temple of the Divine Julius, the arch of Augustus, the Rostra, the Curia, all standing proud and serene as their marble grew darkened by soot and ash.

  The Capitoline Hill ahead of us looked safe. To our left was the Palatine, and I pointed to the steep path leading up it. Subrius shook his head.

  “Stay here, then,” I said. He made as if to stop me but knew he did not have the authority. “Wait for me.”

  Before he could protest, I turned and hurried up the pavement, although it was very hard to breathe now. But I had to see. I had to. This side was still quiet, but the other side of the Palatine faced the origin of the fire, which was still roaring and spreading. I reached the top and there it was—a hideous, hot, bellowing fire on the other side, its flames so high they bested the top of the Palatine. The waves of heat drove me back, staggering. It was impossible to approach any closer. Crackles and groans rose from the dying buildings. A writhing column of flame undulated on the rim, twisting and turning like a dancer. I stood hypnotized, a captive of its strange beauty. A puff of wind blew the curtain of smoke away, and I saw my Domus Transitoria on fire, hissing and spitting. The place where I had sat with my poet friends and had enjoyed long leisurely meetings, with a fountain splashing gently behind us, was now consumed with fire, the fountain turned to steam, the columns blistered and swaying. Then, mercifully, the veil of smoke fell again and hid the sight from me.

  I must retreat. At any moment the fire would spread farther up here, racing from tight-packed building to building. I would be trapped. I rushed down, the heat searing my back, pursued by the demon that laughed behind me.

  Subrius was standing impatiently as I joined him. “It’s starting to go,” I said. “It will ignite completely soon. Let us retreat across the river to my house at the Vatican Fields. I will stay there tonight.”

  Taking great care to skirt the burning areas, which meant going far afield through the Campus Martius, which looked unharmed, we finally crossed the Tiber across from my Vatican properties. My residence there was safe, and it was unlikely the fire would jump the river and come here.

  “Stay here and eat,” I told Subrius. “Then return to the Esquiline and give a report to Nymphidius. Tell him I will return in the morning.”

  The slaves quickly prepared a meal for him, and I was able to tell them what I had seen and assure them they were safe. Subrius said little. Perhaps he was always quiet, or perhaps what we had seen today drained all talk from us. I appreciated his silence as he ate slowly.

  It was still light on this side of the river when I sent him on his way. I did not need to tell him to stay far north of the city.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He nodded and took his leave.

  Wearily I sought out my bedchamber, after asking for something to eat. When the food came—just bread and some dried figs, all that was on hand—I found I had no appetite at all.

  I took to my bed, having washed off the soot, sweat, and dirt. In spite of the protective clothes, my arms and legs were red and blistered from the heat, and my hair badly singed. But that was immaterial. My city was being destroyed, and I was powerless to stop it, beyond small measures. Only the gods could stop it now. And this day had taught me that between literature and real life lay a chasm. It was one thing to sing of Troy and imagine Priam’s anguish, the suffering of the people of Troy, but quite another to behold it actually happening, to have the dead and destitute be people I could touch and smell—my own people.

  IV

  There was no real dawn, for the fire kept the sky illuminated in lurid red all night. Finally, in the east, th
e normal color of day appeared. I had not slept, not really. Dreams of fire blended with memories of what I had seen, and it was impossible to tell them apart. I stumbled out of bed, my arms and legs smarting from the burns. As soon as I could dress, I would return to the Esquiline.

  Today was the fourth day of the fire. Where had it spread in the night? The red stain in the sky dashed any hopes that by a miracle it had died out. And where were the people who had escaped into the countryside? They must be found, counted, and helped.

  I was on my way quickly, telling the slaves to ready the grounds for use as a refugee shelter. I walked by myself, unguarded, so I could pass through the city unnoticed and judge for myself its state. As I passed back through the Campus Martius—which still looked unharmed—I realized the public buildings there could be used as shelter as well. That is, if the area remained safe. Clouds of smoke were hovering overhead and the fire had sent an arm creeping up the city side of the Campus, by the Via Lata. I kept well north of it all, passing through the areas of the Quirinal and Viminal Hills, until I finally reached the Esquiline by noon. In the low-lying areas I could see the fire blazing high and hear the sound of cries and destruction.

  Nymphidius and his men were grouped at the top of the hill, ready to put on their protective clothing and venture out again. As soon as he saw me, he came over and relieved me of the gear I had carried all the way.