Nest of Vipers

by Luke Devenish

  ‘Yet it doesn’t do to advertise,’ I continued. ‘I am actually a god, you see – a god in mortal form. It was once my belief that I was the god Attis made mortal, the son and lover of the Great Mother, Cybele, goddess of the East. But this changed. The events I am about to detail exposed that I am not Attis at all, but another god. In time I shall reveal my true self to you.’

  ‘Good,’ said Acte, looking up. ‘A suitable beginning.’

  ‘Only suitable?’

  ‘It won’t hurt to edit it a little later,’ she replied. ‘Keep going, Iphicles.’

  I narrowed my eyes, but continued all the same. ‘I began my journey towards divine self-discovery when I made the greatest sacrifice any man can – freeborn or slave. I cut off my testicles and gave them as offerings to my then mistress, Livia Drusilla, who was herself the goddess Cybele in mortal form. My purpose at that time was only to serve her, and through this service I intended to do all that I could to fulfil my goddess’s prophecies. Serve and fulfil I did. And the prophecies grew to be many.’

  ‘Good,’ said Acte again.

  ‘You do not need to tell me “good”, Acte.’

  ‘No? Then I won’t. I’ll simply write.’ There was a twinkle in her eye.

  I went on. ‘Lately I have arrived at the other purpose of my mortal life. More than simply enabling prophecy, my task on this earth is to record it. And yet now that I have commenced upon such a history, I can feel the strength falling away from my body in the tiniest of drops, like beads of perspiration. I am dying, I think. This great task is killing me. But perhaps it is a good death? Surely, when I am done, I will ascend to my reward?’

  Acte pulled me from my reverie. ‘One question must be answered before any of this, Iphicles.’

  I was annoyed. ‘What question is that?’

  ‘If you’re not in a mood to take this history seriously then perhaps we should wait until tomorrow to resume it,’ said Acte, laying her stylus flat on the tablet.

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘My mistress?’ I said. ‘My domina? Is that what you’re alluding to?’

  ‘Yes, your domina,’ said Acte. ‘Livia Drusilla. At the point where our previous work on the history ended, you had drugged her and kept her in a state of endless sleep.’

  I felt somewhat ashamed.

  ‘Do I need to remind you that you violated her in that drugged state, Iphicles, and did so repeatedly?’

  I couldn’t look at her.

  ‘The same domina you say you loved beyond all others?’

  ‘You know my reasons for all that,’ I replied.

  ‘Perhaps. But how can you claim you loved her?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘No other issue is of greater importance. Did Livia die or did she recover?’

  A chill gripped my spine.

  ‘Iphicles?’

  ‘We will get to all that in time. I swear it.’

  Acte frowned again at my evasion.

  I cleared my throat, hoping she’d pick up the stylus. ‘There are three women I wish to bring to the foreground first, you see. They are the women on whom this entire section of my history pivots. I cannot emphasise their significance enough, Acte. In the Rome of their day, while my domina was so … incapacitated, there were no other women more loved than these three – or more loathed.’

  ‘How could they have been both?’ The stylus remained where it lay.

  ‘It was how Rome was, back then. These women polarised the people. And each woman schemed for the same thing.’

  ‘And that thing was?’

  ‘To achieve what my domina had achieved. To be the Augusta. To be Empress of Rome.’

  Acte took the stylus in her hand again. ‘Which woman succeeded?’

  I looked to the evening sky. She would have to wait and see.

  ‘Very well. So was one of these women Agrippina, perhaps?’

  ‘She is the first of the three,’ I nodded.

  ‘Very good. And the second?’

  ‘Blind Apicata.’

  ‘Excellent. And who is the third?’

  ‘A woman I once overlooked.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Livilla.’

  Unable to place this woman, Acte read back through some of the tablets again to find reference to her. ‘Oh yes,’ she replied. ‘Here she is.’

  ‘Livilla was Castor’s wife,’ I said. ‘Castor, the son of the Emperor Tiberius. Castor, who was kind yet jealous, and who hated the Praetorian Prefect Sejanus with all his heart.’

  ‘I’d barely noticed her,’ said Acte. ‘Shall we start with this Livilla, then?’

  ‘Yes. But the slave-boy will be our focus.’

  ‘Which slave-boy?’

  ‘An important one.’

  ‘Has he been in the history before?’

  ‘He hasn’t – but now he must enter.’

  ‘Who is he, Iphicles?’

  I felt a tear swell in my eye. I brushed it away before it had the chance to roll down my cheek. ‘He is my son.’

  Acte looked down respectfully at the wax tablet, her hand poised. ‘I didn’t know.’

  I closed my eyes and saw a tiny speck of light within the darkness. ‘Clio,’ I whispered. ‘Muse, is that you?’ The speck of light twinkled like a star and the first of the new words began to fall upon my tongue, and as they did, the first drops of perspiration left my body once more. Mortal death edged closer.

  ‘There was a phrase I used for this slave,’ I said, my eyes still closed, ‘a phrase the Emperor Tiberius coined, although he meant it for Sejanus. He loved that man like a son, you know.’

  ‘I do know,’ said Acte softly. ‘Yet you felt it better fitted this slave – your own son. What was the phrase, Iphicles?’

  I opened my eyes and told her.

  THE PARTNER

  IN MY

  LABOURS

  Mercuralia

  May, AD 20

  Forty-five years earlier: the Senate and

  People of Rome award Praetorian Prefect

  Lucius Aelius Sejanus the insignia of

  the Praetor

  The young slave was bewildered by what had been said to him, so Livilla repeated it. ‘We adore you, Lygdus, we truly do. You’re a pet to us, boy.’

  He clung to these words from the corner of the animal pen where he had tried to hide. ‘Your pet, domina?’

  ‘My little lamb,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’m telling you. You’re our most special of slaves.’ She leaned forward and whispered into his ear so that none of the other servants would hear. ‘You’re the one I love most.’

  Pleasure flushed Lygdus’s young face. Never before had something so kind been said to him. It was like she had seen inside his heart. He had never known the woman who had borne him. His mistress was the only mother he had. And to think that she loved him … ‘I love you too, domina,’ he replied.

  ‘Good slave,’ Livilla said, standing up again with a smile. She adjusted a long strand of ebony hair from where it had come loose from her pins. She smoothed her day gown with her palms. All would be right now.

  Lygdus righted himself, getting up from the corner where he had flung himself when they had tried to break the news.

  ‘Do you know what is expected of you now?’ Livilla asked him.

  In truth, he did not. He looked to the faces of the other watching slaves in the pen around him. They all looked away, not meeting his eye, except for the Greek steward, Pelops, who grinned openly at him, concealing something in his hands. ‘Yes, domina,’ Lygdus lied, holding her cherished words against the soft flesh beneath his ear where she’d whispered them.

  ‘Just devotion,’ she said, ‘what you’ve always given us – and friendship and truthfulness.’

  ‘Yes, domina.’

  ‘You’re thirteen years old – nearly a man. And my daughter is approaching her womanhood. She’s very pretty, isn’t she, Lygdus?’

  ‘Very,’ he said automatically.

  ‘A temptation for some
,’ said Livilla, nodding affectionately at him and, perhaps, Lygdus half-sensed, a little sadly. He thought for a moment that he’d given her confirmation of something she hadn’t even asked.

  ‘Have I done something wrong?’ he asked, trembling.

  ‘If what must happen today does not happen, then I’m quite sure you will do wrong in time,’ Livilla said. ‘But with today will come a transformation – and through that, release. You will never be at risk of doing wrong again.’

  ‘I won’t need to be beaten?’

  Livilla shook her head, and the strand of dark hair fell from her pins once more. She was so beautiful to him; so dark and alluring. ‘You won’t be punished in any way,’ she said. ‘You will be perfect – our perfect slave.’

  ‘That’s what I want to be,’ he said, staring into her nightblack Claudian eyes – the eyes that she shared with her grandmother Livia. ‘That’s all I could ever want, domina,’ he whispered.

  Livilla clicked her fingers and two male slaves seized Lygdus from either side. He struggled but Livilla’s tone was soothing again. ‘No one’s going to hurt you, Lygdus. In your transformation you’ll feel no pain at all.’

  She clicked her fingers a second time and the slaves forced him to the ground. He tried to crouch on his knees but they kicked his legs out from under him so that he lay flat upon his back on the cold earth. The ground was spongy and moist. He looked up and saw the cobwebs and dust that clung to the rafters, and he wondered how many other lambs had shared this view. That was what she had called him – her little lamb.

  ‘Say a prayer …’ His domina’s voice floated to Lygdus from somewhere far away.

  ‘To which god?’ he whispered.

  He heard her footsteps echo on the paving stones outside as she left the pen and made her way towards the garden and the house beyond. He tried to raise his head to glimpse her retreating form. ‘Domina … To which god, domina?’

  The grinning steward’s face was like a death mask. ‘Cybele,’ Pelops smirked. ‘She’ll have a place in her heart for you, son.’

  Two more slaves came forward and took Lygdus’s ankles, forcing his legs apart. A sudden fear coursed through him as he tried to struggle.

  ‘Keeping still ensures that nothing goes that needn’t,’ Pelops said. One of the slaves reached up and snatched at Lygdus’s loincloth, pulling it away and exposing him. He was erect; they all saw it – the effect of his domina whispering in his ear. ‘Keep still,’ Pelops ordered.

  Lygdus now saw what Pelops had kept hidden within his hands. It was a razor. He went to scream but a hand clapped hard across his mouth.

  ‘Don’t want the domina hearing this – it upsets her,’ said Pelops, unwinding a piece of string.

  Lygdus shrieked into the hands that silenced him. The steward went between his legs and wound the string around his scrotum until his testes glowed purple. Pelops flicked the razor and Lygdus felt a pain that was worse than any he had known. Two crimson streams of blood shot across the earth. All hands released him.

  ‘My blood!’ Lygdus cried. The flow didn’t stop, pooling where he lay, soaking into the soil. ‘My blood will drain away …’

  ‘It knows when to stop,’ said Pelops. The other slaves filed out of the pen.

  ‘What if it doesn’t?’ Lygdus sobbed.

  Pelops shrugged. ‘Then you won’t be the first.’ He joined the slaves outside and Lygdus was left alone.

  What were his domina’s words? Lygdus tried to remember what she had said that had so filled his heart. But they were forgotten now, lost in his pain. All Lygdus could hear was Pelops’s voice, like another kiss on the soft flesh beneath his ear: ‘You won’t be the first.’ But this was a lie. Surely no other slave had suffered like this in the name of ‘transformation’? Surely no other slave had been sent on this path to ‘release’?

  He was the first, the very first. He was the only slave to suffer such a fate in Rome.

  But he was wrong, of course, naive as he was. There was certainly another. Soon, very soon, we would meet.

  The two lost children clambered and leaped and slid among the rocks, hurting themselves in their efforts to impress one another and to seem immune to all that fate had dealt them. They never cried – it was a point of honour. They were cousins in blood, descendants of the Divine Augustus, who would not have cried either, no matter how badly his skinned knees and stubbed toes hurt him. They awoke before dawn and went straight to the most bountiful of their hunting grounds, plucking crustaceans from the little pools, finding pretty shells and time-smoothed stones and tiny jewel-coloured fish.

  The crustaceans were edible, delicious even – they had established this very soon after they had been washed ashore – and when Burrus showed Nilla how to strike a spark from the dry, brittle grass that dotted the dunes, and how to feed the spark with driftwood until the smoke became a blaze, they had the means to eat the crabs and anything else they caught. It became another point of honour for Nilla never to let the fire go out. She woke in the night and tended it, before snuggling against the sleeping Burrus’s warm, brown back. When Burrus thought there might be oysters and clams beneath the waves, Nilla joined him in practising at holding her breath. When each felt they could hold it far longer than they had ever thought possible, they flung themselves into the waves, clutching stones for weight, and succeeded in dislodging molluscs from the sea bed.

  The children’s outer clothes turned to rags, falling from their bodies and lying discarded in the sand. When Burrus lost his loincloth in a dive, he didn’t care; his Lady Nilla would have to accustom herself to his nakedness. When he awoke one morning to see that Nilla was naked too, he made no comment on it. They were savages now, he imagined; the niceties of life at Oxheads meant nothing to them, and never would again. He and Nilla were like man and wife. If Burrus felt a growing sexual desire for her, he didn’t understand the impulse for what it was; he was still too young, and so was she. To Burrus, it was protectiveness he felt, nothing more. And yet he loved her with all his being.

  They were happy. They hunted for food for hours on end, and when they caught it they ate it. With bellies full, they sat in the shallows, talking, laughing and inventing tales of heroism in which they were the players. When night came, they slept near the fire. At first they kept a distance between themselves – they were mistress and slave, after all – but when the nights grew colder necessity forced Burrus to hug his Lady tightly to him to stop the chattering of her teeth. She complained at first but he insisted. He would not let her suffer. Soon hugging each other was an unconscious thing, as unplanned as thinking or breathing.

  Nilla gave Burrus his freedom. She did so spontaneously; he hadn’t hinted that it was his heart’s greatest desire. She didn’t know the manumission ceremony and nor did he, but they had heard that a statement needed to be repeated three times, so Nilla said, ‘I set you free, I set you free, I set you free.’

  They were equal now. Nilla shyly told him that she had fallen in love with him. It had happened, she said, on their arduous swim, but in her heart she knew it was before. They had been on board a ship that was taking them to her parents in Antioch. But when Burrus had been beaten by Nilla’s two bullying brothers, he had thrown himself into the sea, and Nilla had followed him, without a thought of doing otherwise. To have done such a thing for one as lowly as a slave meant she must have loved him truly and not thought of him as lowly at all. Then Burrus had saved her. She had copied his swimming strokes and he had kept her from the waves. Now Nilla loved him as her mother loved her father, she told him.

  But Burrus told Nilla she was only a girl – that she was too young for love. Nilla sulked at that, but later Burrus confessed to his Lady that of course he loved her too. He had loved her since she was born and he would love her until he died. They kissed. It was funny and not unpleasant, but they didn’t kiss again. Each sensed that this was something for which they weren’t quite ready.

  ‘Will we ever be f
ound?’ Nilla wondered.

  Burrus said yes, but his heart told him no. They had seen no ships, no men and no smoke, except for that from their fire. This shore was a lost place, forgotten or unknown.

  ‘Are we still within the Empire?’

  Burrus thought it likely that they weren’t.

  Days became weeks and then something more, something no longer measured with time. Their skin turned pink and then red and then brown. Nilla’s long, fair hair went gold in the sun – a halo of fire in the breeze. Burrus’s thick, dark locks went lighter too, growing in curls that fell across his eyes. Their bodies became hard; they were strong now, agile. The last of their softness was swept away.

  Their only problem was water.

  When it rained, they tried to drink as much as they could, running around with their mouths wide open, catching the raindrops in their cupped hands. Sometimes water gathered in puddles in the land behind the dunes, but it quickly drained away and days went by before it rained again. There were cacti in the dunes. Burrus was the first to try one and he badly pricked his tongue. But the taste was sweet and water dripped from the flesh. With care, this sustained them for a time, but Burrus knew it wasn’t enough.

  ‘We need to find the mouth of a stream,’ he said, ‘some place where water comes down from the hills.’

  Nilla agreed, looking up and down the rocky beach. ‘Which way should we go to find one?’

  Burrus wanted her to think that he knew. ‘East,’ he said, confidently. ‘Towards the morning sun.’

  They took nothing with them. Their rags were long lost and when they were hungry they looked for cacti and crabs. The walk was hard, though the weather was consistent. The days were warm but the nights brought a chill. One night they lost control of the fire they’d started and a blaze swept through the scrub. Burrus and Nilla clapped and cheered at the thrill of destruction. When they awoke again in the dawn, they saw what the fire had left them. A litter of rabbit kittens, caught in the scrub blaze, was waiting as a cooked breakfast. Burrus made a prayer to Vulcan. As they gnawed upon the carcasses, they sensed movement in the bushes behind them.

  It was a man holding a sword.

  Although the sun was bright and warm upon her face, Apicata could see nothing of it. Her eyes were open and aimed at the smiling wedding guests, who nodded and bobbed to her in the gardens all around, but she could not see the expressions upon their faces. An unknown illness had claimed her vision, although her appearance betrayed little sign of it. To the world she still seemed sighted, at least until she was spoken to directly, when her unfocused gaze betrayed her. But the malady had not been wholly cruel. It had left a gift in place of what was stolen. Apicata’s ears heard more than the keenest of the palace dogs.