Speculative sullivan the.., p.43
Speculative Sullivan: The Collected Short Fiction, page 43
Polybius leaped to his feet as the thing that had been my dear Drusilla decayed into a moldering pile of bones in a few short moments.
The three of us gazed upon this memento mori in astonishment. Drusilla had been laid in the grave almost a year earlier, and now her condition was precisely as it would have been had she not been animated by a Christian demon all the while.
I could stand no more. Gagging, I rushed up into the light. The morning sun burned my eyes, after the shadows of the Catacomb, as I rushed through the already busy streets to the comfort of my home.
With a strigil, I scraped the grit of that terrible night from my body, and washed away the caked blood of a minor wound. My tears mingled with the steaming, oiled waters of the bath as I wept over the memory of my lost Drusilla and the terrible things I had witnessed on my first and only night as a hunter of evil spirits.
I did not accompany my companions on their nocturnal missions again. It was enough that I had attained permission from Tigellinus to found the secret society of vampire hunters. I could not bear the thought of entering the Catacombs ever again. I saw no one. Even my beloved spectacles could not lure me out of my house.
One Publius Manilianus Sulla was accused of betraying our group of moonlight warriors. It seems that Sulla, a direct descendant of the Republican tyrant, had only attended meetings at night. He had slain neither lamia, werewolf, nor vampire (though, in truth, few such crepuscular beings were killed by any of my comrades), and rumor had it that he was once a Christian himself. I recall that he had mentioned that fact from the outset, and of course we vampire hunters had always met after dark, but his throat was nonetheless cut in the vestibule of the Temple of Mithras itself, despite the flimsy evidence against him.
The vampire hunters disbanded shortly after this, feeling that their work was finished. Fewer supernatural beings had stalked the night, it seemed, than had been previously suspected. And the grisly nature of such work took its toll on a man very quickly.
I stayed at home for quite some time, and at last began to venture out evenings to visit quiet inns. But I didn’t go back to the Temple of Mithras, and I did not seek out my former companions. I had suffered more than Piso or any of the others, so they could not doubt my sincerity. I simply did not have the heart to see them anymore. I gave up drinking wine, sold my slaves and animals, and took up the study of the classics.
A year passed, then another, then two more. I purchased a farm south of the Ostia Gate, near the Salarian and Nomentan Roads, where the solitude suited me. I hired two freedmen to grow figs and grapes, and kept to myself, living off a percentage of their profits. My interest in philosophy increased, and at last I turned to theology. I read prophecies of the fiery apocalypse, a notion which had more adherents than ever, in spite of the efforts of Caesar and Tigellinus to stamp it out. I learned that the Jews had been predicting this ending of all things on Earth for over two and a half centuries. Small wonder that such an insignificant event as the killing of five thousand Christians hadn’t changed their minds. If anything, it had reinforced their beliefs. Fanatics cannot be reasoned with.
In a way, I admired their tenacity. And surely I had no reason to disbelieve in their demons and monsters. I had first hand evidence of such phenomena, after all.
At first I missed the noise of the city, but I soon came to appreciate the quiet. The cool evening air restored my vigor, and there were farms in the proximate vicinity, if I needed people.
The months passed pleasantly in this manner. Rather than seeing my life coming to a close, I felt that it was just beginning. While I devoted myself to meditation and scholarly pursuits, Poppea had died, some say murdered by Caesar; Tigellinus had been stricken with a fatal, wasting disease, and had left Rome for the provinces; my former friend Piso’s illustrious cousin of the same name had been convicted of conspiring to assassinate the Emperor and set himself upon the throne. As if the Senate would stand for another esthete, for the vain Piso was a singer and artist with a mercurial temperament much like Nero’s. He and his co-conspirators were quickly executed, the great Petronius among them.
At any rate, all the murders, spying, secrecy, and the like finally did Lucius Domitius in. The Senate declared him an enemy of the state and he fled, bound for Egypt.
Suetonius claims that an earthquake shook the ground while Caesar was on the road south, but this is nonsense. To be fair, it must be remembered that the great historian was not even born at the time. As for his assertion that the Emperor came upon a corpse which frightened him into opening his cowl so that an old guardsman saw his face and saluted him, well, that is far more likely. In the event, Caesar’s enemies somehow learned where he had gone.
He ended up at his villa near the Ostia Gate, on a bank of the Tiber rather than a bank of the Nile. He was accompanied by Nymphidias Sabinas, the new Praetorian Prefect; his male wife Sporus (whom the Emperor had castrated during the intervening years); Acte the Greek freedwoman, his erstwhile lover; and Epaphroditus, some sort of Imperial bureaucrat who had won Caesar’s favor in recent times. These four, at least, remained loyal to him, and a larger entourage later joined him at the villa.
Caesar went to sleep, exhausted by his fears and the journey to his summer home. It was a hot night, the ninth of June, and he dozed fitfully.
When he awoke at midnight, he found that his praetorians were gone. Seized by panic, he shouted for the personal German bodyguards, who were still with him, and he sent messages around to the summer homes of his former friends. He could rouse no one. He was so disturbed by this turn of events that he went to see for himself if there was anybody in the vicinity who might give him succor.
One of my freedmen, Rufio, reported this to me, and I set out at once for the Emperor’s summer home, only an hour’s walk from my own farm.
“Who is that?” the German in charge shouted at me in his heavy, barbaric accent as I approached the front gate of the mansion in the darkness.
“I am Metellus Strabo,” I said, “friend to Caesar.”
He had his men search me, and when he saw that I was unarmed, was about to admit me to the immense house. It was at that moment that Caesar returned, accompanied by half a dozen more bodyguards.
“I shall have them all flayed alive,” he screamed. “Do they think me a fool, pretending they are not home? They have snuffed the wicks of their lamps and feigned absence, and they will pay for their duplicity dearly!”
Of course, by this time nobody believed that anybody would pay except the Emperor. Nevertheless, the German guards stood at attention before him. He had changed a great deal in the past four years. His skin was sallow, and he had become very fat. He was sweating badly, his jowly face shiny in the torchlight.
“And who is this, come past midnight to assassinate me in my sleep?” he said, glaring at me.
“It is Strabo, my lord,” I said, kneeling before him. “I was your venator only four years ago.”
He sized me up. “Ah, yes, my cousin’s spouse, Strabo. I remember you now. What are you doing here?”
“I have come to offer my services to you, your majesty.”
This seemed to lift his spirits a bit. “Well, then, at least there is one loyal citizen left in Rome.”
He bade me rise and enter the house with him. As we made our way through a corridor and into a sumptuously appointed bedroom, a huge man with powerful muscles and sinews emerged from an antechamber.
“Ah, Spiculus,” Caesar said. “We would have you near us tonight. Attend me closely.”
But wild-eyed Spiculus, famous gladiator though he was, looked as though he would rather be someplace else.
Phaon, a freedman, and one of Nero’s most trusted advisers, came scurrying in. “The Germans are deserting!” he cried.
But the Emperor already knew something was amiss. All of his expensive silks and bed clothes were gone. He knocked over a bust of himself, which shattered as it crashed onto the floor, and pulled an ornate, bejeweled box out from a hidden recess behind it. Opening the lid, he gazed in horror at the emptiness within.
“My poison!” he cried. “Will they not even permit me to commit suicide with dignity?”
He flung the box away, and it clattered across the marble floor. For a moment he stood forlornly, as if neither Phaon nor I were in the room with him.
“Spiculus!” he suddenly shouted. He was calling for the gladiator to come and kill him, but Spiculus, too, had seen to his escape before the legionaries showed up at the villa. Gladiatorial combat is one thing, and fighting soldiers armed with the Senate’s power quite another.
“Have I neither friend nor enemy?” Caesar cried, and rushed toward the back of the house. Phaon, Acte, and I followed him down to the river. He was about to throw himself into the dark waters, but we restrained him.
“How dare you put your hands on the living god!” he demanded.
“But Divinitas,” Acte said in her seductive voice, “there is someplace nearby where you can go.”
He stopped struggling. “Where?”
“Is this not Strabo standing next to you?” she asked rhetorically. “And does he not have a farm close by?”
This seemed to calm him a bit. “Have you indeed, Strabo?” he asked.
“Less than four miles away,” I said. “No one will think of searching for you there.”
“Let us make haste,” said Phaon.
Caesar permitted us to lead him back up the slope. He had lost a sandal in his attempt at drowning himself, but he did not bother to look for it. So, wearing one shoe like the mythical Jason, he found two horses and commanded me to lead him to my house. Acte, Phaon, Sporus, and the others would follow. The Emperor raved all the way to the junction of the Nomentan and Salarian roads, and then he became strangely quietened. The trees arched over us in the darkness like the vault of some great tomb.
“What place is this?” Caesar said in querulous tones. “Do we follow the course of the Tiber or of the Styx?”
In truth, I must admit that my property was somewhat overgrown. But the thickets surrounding my farm kept away strangers, which suited my hermitic nature.
At last we could ride no farther. Caesar dismounted and slapped his horse so that it loped away. I did the same, and led him through the bushes and the brambles until we came to a cave used for keeping fruits and vegetables cool in the summer.
“If I cover the entrance, no one will find you in there,” I said.
The Emperor blanched. “Buried alive, like some Christian in the Catacombs?” he said. “I think not, Strabo!”
“Then shall we go on to my house, Caesar?”
We made our way along a reed path to my humble dwelling. Once the Emperor stopped to scoop some water in his cupped hands from a stagnant pool.
“So this is Nero’s famous drink!” he shouted dramatically. But he did not raise the water to his parched lips. Perhaps he imagined himself as Socrates faced with the cup of hemlock. It must be remembered that he was an actor, after all.
Tearing his cloak on the brambles, Lucius Domitius pushed his way to a low tunnel burrowed straight into the cellar of my house. In an adjoining storeroom, I laid my robe on an old mattress for him to lie on. His maunderings were becoming alarmingly incoherent.
“Nero, liberator of Achaia,” he said, “reduced to this. Never has Rome known a greater patron of the arts.”
“Let us not forget the great things that have happened in Parthia under your reign, Caesar,” I said. “There you are still beloved.”
“Yes, yes, Strabo, thank you.” He looked at me pathetically, still sweating profusely. “I thirst.”
I fetched him some water, but he again refused to touch it. This time he was not play-acting Socrates. I suppose he really thought I might try to poison him. He might have believed anything in his agitated state. “What a loss I shall be to the arts!” he raved, over and over again. “What a loss I shall be to the arts!”
“You must make a good end, Caesar,” I said to him.
“Of course you are right,” he replied, jowls aquiver. “But I am afraid to cross over into the underworld.”
“The Senate will send someone to do it for you, if you do not attend to it yourself,” I said.
“Will you dig a grave for me here in your cellar, Strabo?” he asked, suddenly sober. “A few bits of marble, some water and firewood for dealing with my corpse forthwith . . . nothing much for a god, eh?”
I wept to hear him speak so.
“What would they do to me, Strabo?” he asked. “What would those vile rodents in the Senate do?”
“I’m afraid you would be punished in ‘ancient style,’ Caesar,” I said. “The Republican way.”
“And what is that?”
“The victim is stripped naked, his head is placed between the tines of a large wooden fork, and he is then flogged to death before the people.”
The Emperor sighed and looked away, contemplating such an end. Then he withdrew a dagger from one of the folds of his robe. Its handle was fashioned from porphyry, inlaid with jade and gold, its gleaming blade ending in two wicked looking points set side by side.
But he cast it aside in despair, crying, “The proper time for my death has not yet come!”
He grasped at the hem of my garment. “Strabo, you do it first. It will give me courage!”
“But I cannot, Caesar,” I said honestly.
“How ugly and vulgar my life has become,” he wailed, “to spend my last moments with a disobedient churl.”
“I do not speak so out of disobedience, Caesar,” I said. “I mean only that the points of your dagger will do me no harm.”
He sat up in amazement. “Are you a sorcerer, then, Strabo?”
“No, Caesar, I am a vampire.”
This will come as no surprise to the astute reader, but it was too much for the Emperor’s sensitive soul, and he cringed against the earthen wall behind the mattress.
“Pull yourself together, man,” he gasped to himself. “This is no credit to Nero.”
“Don’t be afraid,” I said.
“But how did you . . .?” He showed some courage, questioning me at a time like that.
“The Christians,” I said. “Their demons are as powerful as their God. That is why you have fallen, Caesar.”
“Yes, they have cursed me, and their magic is strong, as you say. How could I have known they might kill me from afar?”
“But there is a way to survive.”
“Will it be . . . painful?” he asked.
“No, for you will be entranced, and will feel nothing.”
Caesar considered that. “How did you become a vampire?” he at length asked in a gentle voice.
“I was bitten by the revenant of my dear wife Drusilla—your cousin—in the Catacombs, four years ago.”
“By the gods!” he said in astonishment. “Is there no end to the evil of these Christians?”
“I think not. They will one day be as puissant as Caesar, perhaps even more so.”
“You speak treason, but what does it matter now? The Christians have destroyed me. My life is over.”
“But I can make you immortal, Caesar.”
I saw a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Can you, Strabo? Can you really?”
I nodded. “They will think that you have been stabbed by your own twin-bladed dagger.”
“Indeed . . .”
“But we must hurry. The sun will be up soon.”
He looked at me, his ponderous lower lip trembling, and slowly loosened the robe around his fleshy neck.
“Come to me, then. Make me immortal.”
I moved closer.
A slave was cremated in Caesar’s place, and the faithful Acte saw that the ashes were taken to the burial place of the Domitian family, below the Pincian Hill. Galba assumed the throne, and in short order there followed Otho and Vitellius in what came to be known as the Year of the Four Emperors. At last Vespasian ruled for a decade, and stability returned. There was no more talk of restoring the Republic.
As the years passed, the myth of Nero grew, until he became the incarnation of evil itself, the anti-Christ of Revelations. But if St. John the Divine and his fellow Christians had seen him as I did that last night of his life, they would have known that he was once as human as any man.
Where did he go? Africa? Across the Danube frontier? There have been many pretenders claiming to be Nero, but as first the years, and then the decades, and at last the centuries have passed, the real Nero has been forgotten. Somewhere, he stalks the night as I do, seeking the sweet, hot taste of blood. And when he returns to his resting place each dawn, does he yearn for the dulcet tones of a kithara to soothe him to sleep? Does he pine to once again see the sun-baked hills of Rome on a summer’s day? I only know that he does not miss the arena as I do, since his high-strung nature was never suited for the circus. But surely his heart cries out for his beloved theater each dusk, as he awakens from his deathly sleep.
I thought I saw him once, more than fourteen hundred years after the events I have described herein. It was in Carpathia, for I have traveled far in my long span. One evening I passed by a church in a remote settlement of that backward, Hunnish land. There was a monument to the Voivode in front of the church, erected in remembrance of a mass which that stem monarch had once attended there.
Stopping in the moonlight to read the inscription, I saw the village priest emerge from the church’s massive, wooden doors. He was a heavy man, with red, curly hair and beard—the very image of Caesar—and there was a lovely, dark nun with him who might have been Acte. The man slipped his cowl over his head when he saw me, and the two of them backed away as one. I did not follow them into the vestibule, but rather, respected their privacy.
How had he managed such a thing, if that was indeed Nero? There are ways. Once, long ago, we followers of Mithras knew the truth, but nowadays people are convinced that the Christian Church is the implacable enemy of the vampire. Once, not so long ago, the Voivode was known as Dragon Vlad, the bloodthirsty one who, in the name of Christ, impaled thousands of his enemies on stakes. It is ironic that he himself now fears the stake—if little else.
