Nest of Vipers

by Luke Devenish

  The girl Lepida told her sister what had happened outside their mother’s receiving room door but the younger girl didn’t believe it. Domitia wanted to march up the stairs to see for herself, but Lepida’s horror at the prospect was so real that Domitia knew something very frightening was taking place in their house.

  ‘It was the blind woman – the one at the wedding. Her husband hunts down the traitors.’

  ‘But our mother is not a traitor!’

  Lepida wanted to echo this denial but now found that she couldn’t. Perhaps their mother was a traitor, and this was why the blind woman had come? ‘What does “traitor” even mean? Nobody seems to know.’

  Domitia tried to define it but found that she barely could. ‘It’s someone who hates Rome.’

  ‘Is that really our mother?’

  Domitia shook her head vehemently, but Lepida was still unsure. ‘She talked to a very strange man at the wedding … What if he was a traitor?’

  Domitia didn’t know what to think and the two girls found comfort in crying for a time. When their tears had dried, they were left feeling angry.

  ‘How dare this blind woman offend us by upsetting our mother?’ said Domitia, the younger girl, wiping a hand under her nose. ‘We are the Aemilii. What is she?’

  ‘Not even patrician,’ whispered Lepida.

  ‘What would the great Augusta Livia do in this terrible situation? Or widow Agrippina?’

  ‘They would both be outraged.’

  ‘And their fury would give them courage,’ Domitia declared.

  There was barely two years’ difference in their ages, but Lepida assumed a motherly role and took Domitia’s hand. They retrieved a sharp knife from the kitchens, and when the worried slaves tried to accompany the girls, aware that something distressing was taking place in the rooms above, Lepida thanked them for their concern but said she would call upon them only if the situation was dire. They were patrician ladies, after all, and should be able to handle dangers with nothing more than their wits. The slaves agreed, hiding their relief, but wanted the girls’ brothers to accompany them. Lepida rejected this, too. Their younger brother, Aemilius, was only seven and yet would hog all the glory once their mother was rescued. Besides, he was in the Forum with his tutor, and they could not waste time waiting for him to return home. The slaves then pointed to Ahenobarbus, Lepida’s twin, who glanced up from his place by the fire. Not only was he cursed with ugly red hair, he was also mute and half-witted. The girls pronounced him useless in a crisis and left Ahenobarbus gazing into the kitchen furnace.

  Still holding hands, but with Lepida now clutching the knife, the sisters crept up the broad marble stairs and along the corridor to their mother’s room. The door was now wide open. Inside, they found Aemilia sitting in her favourite chair, staring blankly at the walls.

  Lepida dropped the knife and rushed to her first. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Where is the blind woman?’ said Domitia.

  The anxiety was all too much and both girls burst into tears again.

  ‘The Praetorian Prefect’s wife has gone,’ said Aemilia. There was an unsettling edge to her voice, a desperation – or exhilaration – that their mother was just managing to keep at bay.

  ‘What did she want? Why was she here?’

  ‘To blackmail me. To force me to help her against my will.’

  The sisters wept again.

  ‘Oh Mother! What did you do?’

  ‘I did as she asked. I had no choice.’

  Only now did the girls see the strange items spilled on the floor at their mother’s feet. Little tablets made of clay and wood, pieces of twine and hair, a stylus, feathers from birds. Lepida stared at the dried-up husk of a toad. ‘Are you going to die?’ Lepida sobbed. ‘Is this woman going to take you away as a traitor?’

  ‘Ssh,’ said Aemilia, smoothing her oldest girl’s hair. But she didn’t answer the question. Whatever fear she had felt when Apicata had revealed what she knew, Aemilia felt free of it now. The blind woman had been right. Her heart was lighter for sharing a burden. ‘That man I spoke to at the wedding was a soothsayer,’ she said. ‘I was reckless and foolish to do it, but there he was just waiting to be spoken to, and so I did.’

  Both girls went very pale.

  ‘It’s illegal to speak to such a person – I know it, girls. It has made me a criminal. That’s what the blind woman has used against me. That and, well, some other things.’

  ‘How did you even know what he was?’ Lepida whispered. ‘I saw that man – he just looked like a dirty slave to me. Or a beggar.’

  Aemilia tried to explain it. ‘I had never seen him before in my life. I didn’t even know his name. I still don’t. But I just knew what he was. He was staring at me so intently, you see. He wanted me to talk to him.’

  ‘But why?’

  Aemilia smiled, and in doing so her heart felt lighter still. It seemed so appalling in the bleakness of her circumstances, yet she actually felt happy. She realised the significance of what had befallen her. ‘It was destined that he would speak to me – and that the blind woman would overhear it. The gods intended both things to occur. The blind woman’s blackmail is not a curse at all, but a blessing, girls. We are destined to prosper from it.’

  ‘The gods?’ said Domitia.

  ‘One god – Veiovis, our god of deception. I have learned that he favours us, you see.’

  The girls just stared at their mother.

  ‘But he is a very bad god,’ said Lepida. ‘A lying god …’

  ‘Not for everyone. Behind every lie is a truth.’

  ‘Mother, he is a frightening god – there are vermin in his temple,’ said Domitia. ‘He doesn’t even have priests.’

  ‘Perhaps he has no wish for them?’

  The frightened sisters stared into their mother’s beautiful brown eyes. Desperation was etched deeply on her soul, but excitement boiled there too. She was balanced on a sword’s edge.

  ‘Please,’ whispered Domitia. ‘What did the soothsayer tell you about Veiovis, Mother?’

  ‘He told me about the rarest of birds,’ Aemilia began, ‘and the woman who is so long asleep …’

  The Nones of June

  AD 20

  Two weeks later: laws against celibacy lead

  to profit for those who inform against the

  ‘deliberately childless’

  The young midwife stared in confusion at the object in her hand. It was the length and breadth of a woman’s finger, nothing more, and yet it had weight to it. It was heavy, covered by a small linen sock. The young woman went to take it out for closer inspection.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ said Apicata.

  The midwife stopped. ‘What is it?’

  Apicata told her and the midwife dropped the thing as if it was poisoned. It bounced dully at the fountain’s edge and sank to the bottom of the shallow courtyard pool.

  ‘Pick it up,’ said Apicata. Her tone was such that the midwife obeyed, dipping her hand in the water and retrieving the thing. She held it fearfully in her fingers.

  ‘It is not addressed to you, therefore it cannot hurt you,’ said Apicata. ‘It is harmless for you.’

  But the midwife couldn’t stop shaking. Apicata reached out and gripped the young woman’s arm. ‘Do you know who I am?’

  Of course the midwife did.

  ‘What I do, I do in response to provocation. I have been pushed to do this thing – do you understand me?’

  ‘I do, Lady.’

  Apicata retrieved a small purse that hung from her girdle and gave it to the young midwife. ‘This is yours. There’ll be another just like it once I’ve learned of what happens when my little present is found.’

  The midwife emptied the purse into her hand. There were five gold coins, a staggering amount of money. She stopped shaking as she stared at the shining Emperor’s heads. ‘I will tell you as soon as it’s done, Lady.’

  ‘Don’t bother. I will only pay yo
u when I’ve heard the account from others. But do not worry. I have no doubt at all that I will hear.’

  The young midwife slipped the coins back inside the purse and placed the sinister little object and its sock in with them. She briefly wondered if the golden Emperor’s heads would be tarnished by their companion, corrupted in some way. Then she decided it didn’t matter. Money was money, no matter how little it might shine by day’s end.

  The warm morning in early summer brought people into the open air. Hundreds flocked through the annual slave fair, which was held on the Field of Mars before the start of the festival for the war goddess, Bellona. Some shopped in earnest but many more just browsed, the slave fair being a great haunt for those who enjoyed ogling the less fortunate. But the widow Agrippina strode across the market flagstones with the sole purpose of restocking her household. Malaria had returned to Rome with the warmer weather and she’d lost half her staff to the pestilence.

  As the trusted companion slave of her youngest son, Little Boots, who was busy this morning with his tutor, I was included among the retinue of friends, surviving servants, freedmen and beggars that now accompanied Agrippina everywhere. Some forty attendants milled about but I managed to hold my place behind her shoulder. At Agrippina’s left and right, her two greatest friends, Sosia and Claudia, guided her through the market clamour with radiant, public smiles.

  Short and squat, Sosia Galla was loved for her sharp eye and quick mind. She was fiercely loyal to beautiful Agrippina. Sosia thought nothing of kicking the ankles of those who moved too slowly in front of them and then smiling challengingly when they turned on her to complain. Claudia Pulchra, at Agrippina’s right, was a Claudian cousin possessing a dark allure that almost eclipsed Agrippina’s famed golden hair and milky skin. Claudia’s loyalty was as steadfast as Sosia’s, and both friends harboured scars on their hearts from Agrippina’s husband’s untimely death.

  There was a buzz of excitement in the crowd that the widow was among them. Agrippina’s celebrity burned as brightly as the sun. No other woman’s face was then as known and as loved by Rome – not even my sleeping domina’s. And no other woman’s tragedy was known as intimately, or was so passionately discussed. If Rome could have crowned its queen, the crown would have belonged to Agrippina.

  The caged slaves awaiting auction were the focus of the three women’s attention, but my eyes were on the other features around us. ‘Look, Lady,’ I spoke before thinking. ‘They’re giving the domina new hair.’

  Agrippina looked. The Field of Mars’s statue of Livia was having a fashionable bronze hairstyle fitted, so that she wouldn’t look outdated. I thought this was happy news, of course, but I should have known better than to express it to Agrippina. The widow hated my domina.

  ‘It means that the Augusta is still in people’s hearts,’ I explained to her. ‘They want her to keep up with the times.’

  Agrippina said nothing and Sosia cast a censuring look at me. Rome was still even to learn of my domina’s ‘illness’, although the goddess Rumour was concocting stories to explain Livia’s long absence from public view.

  The din of panpipers and musicians playing tambourines and cithara increased in volume for a moment, then ceased, creating expectation in the crowd.

  ‘The mangon is appearing,’ Claudia motioned.

  Agrippina could not be expected to bid personally, so that was my role here. The lavishly dressed mangon – or slave trader – looked like he was off to a festival banquet instead of a slave sale. He came into view from behind his caged captives, rubbing his hands together cheerily and greeting customers he recognised in the crowd. He saw Agrippina with her friends and changed his expression to one of deep respect, bowing to her, before he continued greeting others. Agrippina absorbed this with dignity, and I could tell she approved of it, as did Sosia and Claudia.

  ‘He knows who you are, Lady,’ I said, ‘and he respects you.’

  ‘Good,’ said Agrippina. ‘You can use that to drive down his price.’

  The gate on the first of the slave cages was released and the mangon’s assistants poked sticks through the bars at the dozen grime-caked men. With nothing to protect them, they cowered, before realising they were expected to come out so that the buyers could examine them. Agrippina frowned as they started to emerge.

  ‘Sardinians,’ said Claudia, using the slang term for cheap captives not necessarily from Sardinia but from anywhere with a repressed population. Nerve-wracked, they looked like Britons to me. A commotion from behind the cages caught our attention. A woman was screaming, begging for her life in Latin. A ripple went through the crowd as all craned their heads to see what was happening. But Agrippina and her friends looked away from the distasteful scene.

  I saw the source of the drama – a female slave was being dragged from a holding area that was covered from view. She was older and with few physical charms. The clothes she wore were rags but I could tell that they had once been fine garments. She was not a regular slave.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Claudia whispered to me, still looking elsewhere.

  ‘A woman is being taken away by the mangon’s men.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She is not being offered for sale,’ I muttered.

  ‘Has she committed a crime?’ asked Sosia, who was too short to see, even if she’d wished to.

  ‘Yes,’ was all I could say. It didn’t matter what that crime was, only that the wretched woman had been accused of it and was now facing the price.

  ‘They won’t do it here, will they?’ said Claudia, appalled, as she realised this too.

  Agrippina gave her friend a look and moved a short distance away to speak with some other members of her retinue.

  ‘No, Lady,’ I whispered.

  Beyond us, among the auction crowd, people began to part and retreat as an ass-drawn cart trundled into the marketplace, led by a naked, leather-masked driver. Cries of disgust broke out from some as they realised what he was, while others – slaves, many of them, and freedmen with strong memories – could do nothing but stare. Claudia was compelled to look and she paled with dismay. ‘That’s not … him, is it?’

  I shook my head, blinking back tears of pity for the condemned slave woman. ‘No, Lady,’ I said. ‘The carnifex is too polluted to be here – he’s not allowed inside the city. He has sent a man in his image to retrieve her.’

  The ass-driver’s leather mask would strike terror in anyone, let alone a slave. It was a copy of the mask worn by the real carnifex – the public executioner – who was forbidden to offend the gods by showing his accursed face. The slave woman’s cries were terrible.

  ‘Make it swift for her, Cybele,’ I whispered in prayer to the Great Mother.

  The mangon’s men bundled the woman inside the stinking cart, binding her hands to an iron hook.

  Claudia saw what I had already noticed. ‘Her clothes are well made – she speaks in Latin. Is she a wellborn woman?’

  ‘Slavery can be the fate of even the greatest, Lady,’ I said. ‘She could be the mother of a chief.’

  ‘Which means she stood against Rome,’ said Agrippina, coldly. The widow had returned to us and was keen for this upsetting spectacle to end.

  Claudia shuddered, nodding. There was nothing more to add. But as the ass-drawn cart trundled away from the market, I felt the stirring of a tremor at my feet. It was tiny at first, barely there, but I felt it, a movement deep in the ground. At once my memory rushed back sixty years, to when I had felt such a tremor before. It had been in the cave of Cybele, where my domina and I had heard our destinies revealed. The earth bucked again now and I staggered in my shoes. I looked around but I knew the truth already – no one else had felt the tremor. I was alone in my experience. For a moment or two more I tried to appear as if all was right while the fair screeched on around me. But the beast continued to churn below the earth while I appealed in desperate silence to the skies.

  ‘What is wrong with you, Iph
icles?’ said Agrippina. ‘The carnifex’s man is gone.’

  I smiled and went to make a joke, but then my eye fell on the statue of my domina. The updated hairstyle, cast in bronze, slipped from the statue’s head, striking the skull of the sculptor’s assistant. The man fell to the ground as his fellows rushed to him. The heavy bronze hair had snapped in two.

  My mouth grew dry. The slave woman, the carnifex, the tremor and the statue – they were a portent, an omen. Together they made a signal meant for me and no one else. But what did they mean?

  The mangon clapped his hands, casting winks and smiles, anxious to get the proceedings underway and lift the spirits of the crowd. The stick-wielding assistants forced the disgorged captives to strip off their rags.

  ‘Shall I bid for any of these, Lady?’ I asked, hoping I had pulled myself together.

  ‘These men are good for nothing but field work – they’ll last two years at best. Health and skills are what I want today – good vernae. Slaves born in captivity – like you.’

  ‘Agrippina!’

  A voice behind us made us turn. Castor was approaching with a large retinue of his own. Agrippina’s older sons, Nero and Drusus, were among them.

  ‘Good morning, Mother,’ Nero called out.

  Her face lit up with pleasure as Castor’s mass of rowdy followers merged with her own. ‘Well, this is nice – some extra company while I shop today,’ Agrippina shouted above the noise. She and Castor kissed, and then the boys exchanged embraces with her, before everyone greeted Sosia and Claudia.

  Nero looked at the captives for sale. ‘I don’t think much of these – where will you put them all?’

  ‘I don’t want those poor men,’ Agrippina said. ‘I’m after household slaves to replace the ones I lost. They’re just selling off the dross first before they bring out the decent men.’

  Castor exchanged a quick look with the two boys. ‘You won’t need to be too extravagant today,’ he said to Agrippina.

  Sosia laughed.

  ‘When am I extravagant?’ said Agrippina, knowing why Sosia thought it funny. Agrippina was famously frugal. ‘All I want to do is restock my house in a fashion that Germanicus would have approved of.’