Nero's Heirs by Allan Massie

recognise the young man who stumbled through the door, falling against me. I pushed him off, and he swayed, and would have fainted (as I supposed) had I not taken him by the shoulder and guided him to a stool by the table. He sat for a moment with his back to the wall, his legs quivering. His face was streaked with dirt and tears and what might have been blood, and his tunic was torn. Then he uttered a deep sob and buried his face in his hands so that I could not see his features but only the tangle of black curls now presented to me.
    My mother, aroused by the sounds, joined us from her chamber. She took one look at the young man, who had, with a start of terror, lifted his head.
    'Sporus?' she said. 'So the Emperor is dead?'
    'At my hand,' he said. 'Perhaps. In part. I don't know. I hope not. It was terrible.'
    My mother told me to fetch wine, while she busied herself heating up what remained of the broth we had had for our supper. Sporus gulped down the first cup of Marino wine as a parched traveller drinks water from a well, and held out his cup for more. I sipped mine and watched him. His hand still shook, and every now and then, though he must have known he was for the time being safe, he darted anxious looks at the door.
    'Were you followed here?' I asked.
    He shook his head, but there was no certainty, only hope, in the gesture.
    'Let the boy be,' my mother said. 'Give him time. He's worn out, and no wonder. He'll tell what he has to tell when he has some food and drink in him.'
    She placed bread on the table, and then soup. Sporus hesitated, as if the thought of sustenance disgusted him.
    'Eat,' my mother said, 'then drink more wine.'
    At last he was ready.
    This is his account. I assure you it is authentic. I wrote down his story when he had finished speaking and fallen asleep. I have kept the document with me throughout the upheavals of life. You know yourself, Tacitus, that I have ever been an orderly man, and one who sets great store on documentary evidence.
    He told the story haltingly, with false starts and changes of direction. I've tried to capture the way he gave it to us, but I admit I've tidied it up a bit. After all, it went on till dawn's pink fingers were touching the sky.
    So he said: 'He was lost. I think he has been losing himself for a long time, and now he had lost the world. He knew that, but he wouldn't confront the reality. So his plans changed all the time, and he couldn't give his mind to them because his mind recoiled. Once he even interrupted a meeting of the loyal advisers who remained to him because one of Phaon's slave-girls, a virgin, ten or eleven, had caught his eye, and he had to have her without delay. It let him suppose things weren't as they were. Another time, when he was dictating a letter he was going to send to the Senate, a letter in very high and serious tones, he had me - I'm sorry, milady, but I have to try to tell it as it was, for my own sake, though I don't know why - he had me masturbate him as he dictated. When he got hard ... no, I'm sorry, I won't go on, I can see it disgusts you. But that's the life I've been compelled to live for years, you know, ever since . . . let's just say, ever since he first caught sight of me. And yet, can you believe it, I was fond of him, he could be charming and . . . no, let it pass . . .
    'This was when we were in Phaon's villa. That's four miles out of town, between the Nomentana and the Salaria. Phaon was one of his freedmen, you won't know him. We had come to Rome the day before, nobody knew that because we'd slipped in by night and nobody recognised him as we hurried to the palace. He'd a cloak over his face. I think that's when I knew it was all over, and the only questions remaining were how and when. I mean, that the Emperor didn't dare show his face in Rome, it was unthinkable. That night he had a new plan. He was going to appear on the rostra and beg the people's mercy - ask for pardon for all he'd done that had displeased