Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  ‘My love …’ she called pleadingly to him.

  ‘My Venus …’ he at last sang back in his lust.

  Then the she-wolves were released to devour her.

  I AM ONLY

  YOUR SLAVE

  The Ides of February

  44 BC

  One hundred and nine years earlier: the

  final weeks of Gaius Julius Caesar as

  Dictator in Perpetuum of the Senate and

  People of Rome

  The further my young master descended into the cave, the greater his discomfort grew. He looked back to where I followed and I smiled with feigned confidence that he would come to no harm. Tiberius Nero wasn’t fooled and turned his back to continue, placing a fresh mark against me. But I remained worried for him. I had served as his slave since we were both tiny boys and I loved him. This cave was an evil place.

  The rocky floor was uneven; small stones slipped under the soles of Tiberius Nero’s winter boots. He skidded and stumbled like a crippled child, ashamed of his ungainliness. His father and older brother were further ahead, not bothering to wait for him. Tiberius Nero struggled to keep the earthenware lamp held high in his right hand as he used his left to steady himself against the wall. I had neither a lamp nor boots; my skinny bare limbs stuck out brown and calloused in a too-short tunica. My feet had grown out of the hand-me-down street shoes I wore. But still I found the progress easier going than Tiberius Nero. The rock face was thick with a mucous-like substance under his touch and the lamp mocked him, being shaped like a little winged foot. He whispered a wish to the gods that his own feet would grow wings so that he could touch nothing more in this hole until he reached the thing his father intended him to see.

  ‘Have we come far enough?’ he called to the tall, aristocratic man walking some way in front of us. ‘Have we seen what you want us to view yet, Father?’

  Claudius Nero answered his eleven-year-old son without turning his eyes from the walls. ‘Not yet. Pass the time by looking closely around you.’ He scooped up the hem of his toga from the trickle of water he stood in and Drusus Nero, at fifteen the older brother to my master, did the same. I wondered if Claudius had put any planning into this expedition at all. He would have us believe that he hadn’t – he was dressed for the magistrates’ courts. But the ‘spontaneous’ excursion to visit this cave did not convince. Claudius was being evasive, and Drusus, if he knew the visit’s purpose, was saying nothing of it either.

  ‘Pay attention to the interesting rock formations,’ Drusus suggested.

  Tiberius Nero obediently squinted into the lamplight, where strange shafts of stone tapered from the ceiling, hanging in midair and narrowing to rounded points. Beneath, other tapered columns rose up to greet them like reflections. My young master imagined people impaled between them and wondered to me if anyone had suffered such a fate. I was pleased that he was at least talking to me and replied that enduring the cave itself seemed punishment enough. It was the right answer; he called me effeminate for finding the cave difficult, and at once felt better himself.

  We reached a new depth in the descent and the rocky tunnel became humid. It was like we had walked inside the sweat-room at the baths, and my young master complained at the closeness of it. His linen tunica clung to his skin as he struggled to stay in pace, the hems and folds of the toga praetexta he wore over the top of it snagging at his feet. It was suffocating. He stopped and pulled the outer garment off.

  ‘Why didn’t we bring any other slaves with us?’ he called to his father again.

  ‘Because we don’t need any.’

  ‘Then why did we bring Iphicles?’ He looked at me with disdain.

  ‘Because he is your companion slave.’

  ‘What about Drusus’s companion slave?’

  ‘I am a man now,’ Drusus said in a patronising tone to his brother. ‘I don’t need anything so childish.’

  I kept my eyes fixed on the cave floor so as not to shame my young master by seeing his expression. He threw his boy’s toga at me and I quickly folded it, leaving it on a dry rock to be picked up on the return journey.

  As I hurried to catch up, I heard a long, low groan from somewhere far beneath my feet. I stopped again. ‘What is that?’

  No-one answered me. Claudius Nero studied the walls.

  ‘That noise?’ I asked, risking a beating by daring to speak.

  Claudius Nero raised his hand to quieten me, listening.

  The sound was deep and guttural, like a giant’s call. The low rumble of it continued a while longer, holding me in its thrall, and then it ceased. From the tunnel ahead came the whistle of rushing air.

  ‘You mean the wind?’ asked Claudius Nero.

  ‘The other sound, domine,’ I said. ‘It’s stopped now.’

  Incredibly, he had heard nothing. ‘Movements of the earth. There’s no need to be worried, Iphicles.’

  My young master looked at me quizzically and opened his mouth to say something and then shut it again. I was amazed that he hadn’t heard it too.

  ‘I wasn’t worried,’ I whispered to him. ‘It’s just that it sounded like some beast – a dragon.’

  Tiberius Nero didn’t know what to say in reply, and so frowned at me instead.

  Drusus seized the opportunity to emulate their father’s authority. ‘No-one knows what lives below us,’ Drusus said to me in a voice he thought was reassuring. ‘But it must have been many miles down. We can’t be harmed by it.’

  Tiberius Nero frowned at his brother instead, and when Drusus continued in their father’s wake, Tiberius Nero whispered in my ear. ‘He’s trying to make out that he knows what’s going on today. But he knows nothing.’

  ‘What is going on, domine?’ I whispered back.

  He gave me a look as if I was cretinous, but I knew he had no idea either.

  Water dripped from the limestone walls, fat droplets falling onto our faces and arms. I licked at where the moisture gathered on my upper lip and found it salty. The air grew stale. We filled our lungs as far as we could just to take in enough to breathe.

  ‘It smells,’ Tiberius Nero further complained.

  ‘Say a prayer to Mephitis,’ gasped his father.

  The passage became so narrow now there was no longer an echo. The slick, uneven walls deadened the sounds of our progress.

  ‘Why are we really here, Father? What are we going to see in this cave?’

  ‘You’ll know when we get there.’

  ‘Why can’t you tell me now?’

  ‘Watch your step as we go on.’

  The true purpose was being kept from Tiberius Nero; he knew it for certain now. He and I had never known his father to hold secrets before and we both fought the butterflies that filled our anxious stomachs.

  Claudius stooped as the cave’s ceiling narrowed further again and he felt centipedes brushing against his cropped hair. My young master felt the wine-soaked bread he’d had for breakfast rise to his throat. Then he looked with greater disgust to the floor – we were walking in excrement. There were bones of animals amongst the dung.

  ‘Wolves,’ said Claudius. ‘This was once their den in winter, but they’re not here now.’

  ‘It is repulsive here, Father.’

  ‘Do you think I’m enjoying myself?’

  ‘Why can’t we just go outside again?’

  ‘Stop and listen.’

  There was a faint murmur of voices from somewhere ahead in the gloom.

  ‘Are there other people in here?’ my young master asked in amazement.

  ‘This cave is someone’s home,’ said Claudius, ‘and we are guests. So will you behave accordingly?’

  Tiberius Nero nodded.

  I stole a glance at Drusus to see if any of this was news to him too, but if it was, he didn’t betray it. He had attained his toga virilis – his robe of manhood – a year before, and he would not disgrace himself by acting as if he didn’t deserve to wear it.

  The narrow passage of the descent widened
again and we felt the first draft of the subterranean wind on our faces. The tunnel began to hiss softly. We came to a sharp bend and the wind held greater force, blowing the lamps out. We stood frozen for a moment in the dark. My young master placed his lamp on the ground and reached out for his father’s hand. He found only mine.

  ‘Are you still there, Father?’

  ‘There is no need to be afraid; today is going to be the most important day in our family’s life.’

  Claudius was standing behind us, but the reassuring hug, when it came, was not for my master but for Drusus.

  Tiberius Nero gripped my hand tighter. ‘Is it Drusus’s marriage day?’ he asked his father, his voice small in the dark.

  ‘Why would you think that, Tiberius Nero?’

  He didn’t know. It was the first thing that had come into his head. ‘Because you said it was an important day.’ In the dark, my young master couldn’t see his father’s expression, and nor could I. Drusus said nothing.

  ‘Your eyes should be adjusting now,’ Claudius Nero said with an odd tone in his voice.

  The walls were indeed taking on a faint glow of their own. There was another source of light ahead. The tunnel lost its damp and we continued to descend, the walls becoming dry and smooth. We realised there was strange writing daubed upon the rock face – a single word in Greek repeated many times. In some places it was huge, in others miniscule. This was the sign that Claudius had been looking for and he seemed relieved.

  Tiberius Nero tried to read it. ‘What is “Thrasyllus”?’

  ‘Not what – who.’ Claudius lifted the toga collar from his neck, placing it over his head to form a hood, before noticing for the first time that Tiberius Nero was now partially undressed. ‘Where is your toga?’

  ‘I took it off. It’s so hot.’

  Claudius looked troubled.

  ‘Why have you covered your head, Father? Is this a temple?’

  ‘In a way. At least try to look reverent in your expression when we get there.’

  We smelled smoke; something burning – food.

  ‘Are we going to eat down here, Father?’

  Claudius Nero didn’t answer any more. Walking ahead, he entered a vast natural hall. The ceiling soared hundreds of feet above to where piercing shafts of light broke through from the surface. The walls were lined with naturally formed ledges that looked like balconies, rising as far as eyes could determine. Oil lamps had been placed on those ledges that could be climbed to, casting the rock formations around them into ominous shapes and shadows.

  Claudius Nero took in the extraordinary sight and then turned to his older son. ‘This is the perfect home for such a renowned haruspex.’ Drusus nodded in agreement.

  I looked to my young master to see if he had understood the strange word, because I had not. But he was wide-eyed with the surroundings and had already forgotten that I was there. It seemed that haruspex had meaning to him but he didn’t share it.

  Every set of eyes turned to face us. There were men and women, perhaps twelve in all, grouped closely together. Only a few were freeborn; most were slaves like me in iron collars. I saw the glint of a cuirass and sword on one of the men and knew that he was an officer of the Republic’s legions.

  Behind this party, shifting like shades, I glimpsed more men in the dim recesses. Not part of the first group, they were dressed in flowing robes and were barely visible in the places where the light from the lamps didn’t reach. They paced and circled in patterns, stepping briefly under the shafts of pale sunlight from above, their bald heads glowing like polished stones. Each man had a drum around his neck on a long string. There wasn’t one man amongst them who wasn’t bloated and obese, his flesh dimpled.

  ‘Eunuchs,’ Tiberius Nero whispered, realising what they were.

  ‘I have brought him,’ Claudius Nero announced in a strong voice. ‘I have brought Drusus, my son.’

  There was silence.

  Squatting upon a lionskin in front of a cauldron on an open fire was a tiny, naked boy playing with knucklebones. No more than two years old, he was the only one who turned from staring at us to resume his own business.

  The slaves nodded at Claudius out of politeness but the man armed with a sword just stared intensely at him.

  ‘Who are all these people?’ I whispered to Tiberius Nero, but he ignored me.

  Claudius displayed his eldest son to the group. With outsized hands and feet on the end of long limbs, Drusus’s ill-fitting toga virilis seemed to swallow him like a cocoon.

  ‘Here’s someone you might remember,’ Claudius said to him.

  Among the group of slaves were a knot of four or five women, standing very closely together. We realised then that they were shielding something – or someone. Carefully they parted like a curtain, revealing their treasure: a pale, raven-haired girl of exquisite beauty. She was slim-boned and fine-featured, and tall for her age, which I guessed to be a year or so older than Tiberius Nero and myself. Her eyes were unmistakably Claudian, only darker than any I had seen before. Pinpricks of night-black onyx; they rested on Drusus without expression, revealing nothing of what she thought or how she felt inside.

  She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.

  I heard a little gasp and looked at my young master and saw that he had made the sound, as instantly smitten by this girl as I was.

  But his older brother Drusus peered at the girl with uncertainty. ‘Is this really Livia?’

  Clearly she had grown since the last time he had seen her. The girl nodded imperceptibly and looked for approval from the proud men who had escorted her to this place, the sons of the Claudii. They were all as one in their fine aristocratic looks – strong, sharp noses and cheekbones, coal-black eyes.

  ‘You remember your beautiful second cousin, of course,’ said Claudius Nero to his oldest son. ‘Why don’t you take Livia’s hand now, so that we can begin?’

  Drusus stepped forward and did so; his big palm hot and wet as it enveloped Livia’s slim fingers. He was shivering, his own nerves showing now at last.

  Livia’s father stepped forward; the armed man in the officer’s uniform, barrel-chested with a broad, flat face. He was Marcus Livius, the only Claudian here without the distinctive nose – the result of a fall from a horse.

  ‘Remember I love you, Livia,’ he said to his daughter. ‘And your mama loves you from where she watches you in the afterlife.’

  ‘I love you and Mama too,’ said Livia softly.

  The sound of those first clear words from her voice only further transfixed me – and Tiberius Nero too beside me. Her father slipped back into the shadows and the nervous Drusus tried not to look to the slack-jawed faces of the eunuchs as he and Livia waited for what would happen. The little naked boy on the lionskin rose unsteadily to his feet and tottered away from the fire, headed for a dark, round pit in the cavern’s floor a little distance away.

  ‘The child,’ Drusus whispered to Livia, ‘the child will fall in that hole.’

  Livia coolly met his eye. ‘Have they told you nothing?’

  Drusus plainly couldn’t fathom what this meant and I under stood then that while he certainly knew more of what was to follow than Tiberius Nero and myself did, Livia knew yet more still. There were no surprises for her. ‘He’s going to fall in and hurt himself,’ Drusus tried to point out.

  The boy reached the edge of the pit and stood with his toes curling over the hole’s edge. He turned and looked directly at Drusus with pleading eyes and then he fell straight in.

  ‘He’ll be hurt!’ Drusus cried.

  The men of the Claudii said nothing, their faces hidden in shadow.

  ‘We must save him then,’ said Livia abruptly. She pulled Drusus by the hand towards the hole. ‘Help me get him out, cousin.’

  He was alarmed at Livia’s sudden determination to take action. ‘Not so hard – you’re hurting me.’

  At the pit’s edge she held him fast as they peered in. The drop was less than it had seeme
d from a distance: the pit was no deeper than it was wide. Tiberius Nero and I stared at each other in the dim light, and then we crept forward, bringing us closer to where they were. We felt a compulsion to see everything. No-one gave us permission to do so, but no-one stopped us either. The infant boy was seated inside on a ledge, unharmed and looking up.

  ‘Are you all right, little one?’ Livia asked.

  The child gazed back at her.

  Drusus felt his cousin’s hand shove hard at the small of his back. ‘Livia – stop it. What are doing?’

  ‘It’s the taurobolium – just get inside.’

  ‘The what?’

  She kicked at his feet and he lost his balance, falling from the edge and narrowly missing the child. Livia jumped in behind him. The interior of the pit was surprisingly soft and spongy, and moist to the touch. It smelled sickly sweet with a strange decay; like an offal pudding. The pit was entirely black. The walls and ledge left stains on their clothes.

  ‘Just endure it,’ said Livia, forcibly holding Drusus in place. ‘It’ll be over soon enough.’

  Drusus was too polite to slap away Livia’s grip. ‘What will?’

  She was dismayed at how little he really knew. ‘You’re the cause of all this. It’s because of you, Drusus – and because of me too, of course. The last time Thrasyllus spoke he was particular about the one we are looking for being from your line. You fit his words.’

  ‘My father told me none of this,’ said Drusus, offended now at how greatly Claudius Nero had left him in the dark.

  ‘You’ll find out everything soon enough,’ Livia replied. And then, taking pity on him: ‘I only know because in the prophecy before the last one I was named. That’s when I was let in on the secret.’

  Drusus said nothing else on the matter but his heart was racing with a new sense of self-importance, regardless of whatever might come from all this. The little boy placed his hand in Drusus’s own, looking intently into his eyes. ‘Don’t worry,’ Drusus whispered to him, smoothing his hair, ‘there is nothing to be frightened of.’ Not believing his own words, he stared into the darkness and waited.