Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  My jaw dropped a little at so unexpectedly receiving the longed-for acknowledgement. ‘Thank you, domina,’ I said.

  On her way to the door with the painting under her arm, she kissed little Tiberius as he played with his toys. The boy didn’t know why. ‘Are you sad, mama?’

  There were indeed tears in her eyes. ‘No, son.’ He had never seen her like this. ‘I am happy.’

  I made to follow her but Livia stopped me. ‘Stay here with little Tiberius.’

  ‘Aren’t you going into the street, domina?’

  ‘I’m going out. It’s of no concern.’

  ‘But it’s not safe – especially with – ‘ I indicated the precious painting.

  ‘Cybele will protect me.’

  ‘Domina – ‘

  But she pulled the door tightly closed behind her. Singing to herself, Livia cradled the wrapped painting in her arms all the way to Aurelia’s house. It wasn’t very far, just a little further up the rise of the Palatine from her own home. Livia darted through the lane, keeping a veil across her face so that no-one would recognise her.

  She announced herself to Aurelia’s nomenclator slave, having arrived unnoticed by the throng in the street. When Livia emerged again some hours later she had a far greater treasure in her keeping. It had cost her the one thing she could never have parted with at any other time. But it didn’t matter.

  Cleopatra’s greatest weapon of conquest was now hers.

  Livia stepped into her own atrium again and was startled to see Tiberius Nero staring at the space on the wall where her Timanthes had hung.

  ‘You’re home tonight. This is unexpected.’ She kissed him on the cheek as if she was delighted to see him.

  ‘My plans were cancelled. Now I don’t know what to do with myself,’ said Tiberius Nero airily. She saw the ardour in his eyes and knew that he had already thought of an alternative.

  ‘Why don’t you retire to the bath?’ she suggested. ‘When I’ve finished instructing the slaves on tomorrow’s housework I’ll join you there.’

  Tiberius Nero was pleased and began pulling off his toga as he wandered down the passage towards the heated bathroom. ‘Where has your painting of the mother and son gone?’ he called over his shoulder.

  Martina’s eyes glittered from where she waited hidden in the entrance hall, unseen by her new mistress’s husband. Livia answered him recklessly, gesturing for the slave to stay where she was. ‘I’ve taken it down so that I can give it to the Temple of Cybele.’

  Tiberius Nero stopped, stunned, and turned round to face her again. ‘After everything that happened to us in that cave? Now you want to give your Timanthes to such a goddess?’

  ‘She allowed us to hear the prophecies, didn’t she?’

  ‘You were inducted into her horrible rites, but I wasn’t,’ he reminded her. ‘I was clean. The goddess had no knowledge of me. So whatever it was that the haruspex meant, I don’t think Cybele had much to with it.’

  ‘Whatever it was?’ Livia repeated, for all appearances hurt by his words. She well remembered Tiberius Nero’s former theory that the whole thing had been a ruse by her father so he could claim dead Caesar’s throne. Tiberius Nero didn’t know it, but if this had been so, Livia wouldn’t have been at all disappointed.

  ‘Then I will give it to Juno instead,’ Livia said. ‘You’re right. Cybele’s cult is a foreign evil.’

  Tiberius Nero looked at her closely and she willed herself not to flinch. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why Juno?’

  ‘Why do you want to give it away?’

  She shrugged as if the artwork had lost its shine in her eyes. ‘It’s all I have left from my father.’

  ‘You loved him.’

  ‘But we’ve been given a new start, haven’t we? And we won’t get very far if we drag the memory of my father with us. Tell your friends what I’ve done with the painting – it’ll make us both seem reformed.’

  ‘What is behind this really?’ he asked.

  False tears came to Livia’s eyes. ‘I will ask Juno to grant me another son.’

  ‘But you don’t need to sacrifice so much. You’re a fertile woman. Another son will come in time, won’t it?’

  ‘I want to ensure it does,’ Livia said.

  Tiberius Nero looked lovingly at her for another moment before continuing on his way to the bathroom.

  Martina stepped from the shadows of the entrance hall.

  ‘He must never see you,’ Livia hissed, shaken at having told so many unplanned lies. ‘I can’t keep you here; I’ll find another arrangement for your living quarters.’

  Martina regarded her with a feline smile, not at all concerned. ‘You really are quite naughty,’ she said. ‘We’re going to make a very pretty pair.’

  Livia felt her heartbeat increase, unable to pull away from Martina’s night-black gaze – the same gaze as her own. ‘Don’t address me so informally. I’m your domina now.’

  Martina laughed, the noise of it ringing through the house. Livia raised her hand to strike the slave’s face in fright – but Martina froze Livia’s arm in the air with a look. ‘Why did you purchase me, Lady?’ she whispered. ‘Why did you pay so much to that fat, bald bitch?’

  Livia felt the stirrings of fear. ‘I can’t explain it now.’

  ‘Of course you can. You know your own mind, don’t you?’

  Livia fought against spilling her secrets in the middle of the atrium, where anyone could see it, where everyone could hear. Martina blinked – and Livia found she could lower her arm again. It throbbed with pain.

  ‘When the Egyptian queen found me she was very specific in her requests,’ said Martina. ‘She knew exactly what she wanted.’

  ‘What was that?’ Livia’s voice was small and hoarse.

  ‘Caesar.’ Martina said simply. She ran her hand across the space where the Timanthes had hung on the wall. The outline of the frame was etched in smoke from the oil lamps. ‘And when that king met his end, she set her eyes on another one.’

  ‘Antony?’

  Martina nodded. ‘She didn’t need me after that, although she still loved me, of course. And I loved her. But it was time to move on. Have you ever seen the queen?’

  ‘She came to Rome once but my father forbade me to watch her procession.’

  ‘He was right to – she’s hideous. Uglier than a jackal. She has no physical charms at all. But that didn’t matter, not when she had Martina.’ The slave-girl waited for what she knew would come from her new domina and was rewarded when Livia fell to her knees.

  ‘I bought you because I want you to help me,’ Livia pleaded, her breathing shallow. ‘I want you to help me like you helped the great queen.’

  ‘So is it a great king of your own that you want?’ Martina purred, stroking Livia’s cheek.

  My domina’s eyes were wide and glazed as she nodded. ‘I only want more, you see. I want more than I have … I don’t know why. I can’t explain it. But something burns inside me. It makes me need more. But I don’t want to hurt anyone. Not really. If I gain the love of this man then my husband can divorce me. He’ll only be sad for a short time. He’s still a Claudian by name. He’ll find another wife easily and learn to love her too.’

  ‘You want to leave your husband for this king?’

  ‘Yes,’ Livia confessed. ‘I’ve always wanted to leave him. I married him because my father wanted it and I thought perhaps I wouldn’t mind. But my father was killed, and I do mind this husband, I really do.’ The desperate impulses behind Livia’s decision creased and lined her face. ‘I love Tiberius Nero in a way – but not in the same way that he has grown to love me.’ She finished on an emphatic note. ‘So I want to leave him.’

  ‘It makes no sense,’ said Martina.

  Livia struggled against the strange compulsion Martina had brought upon her to explain her motives. ‘There were those who said we had to be married,’ she stammered. ‘My father was one of them. There were reasons. Good reasons. It affects the future.’
>
  Martina just nodded.

  ‘But I believe they were wrong. I believe my husband is the wrong man. I’ve always believed it. The words were misinterpreted.’

  ‘Shhh,’ Martina whispered, placing a finger to her mistress’s lips. ‘I understand now.’ She shrugged her shoulders from her gown, letting it slip to her waist and exposing her pointed breasts, heavy and full. They were minutely inked with inscriptions and illustrations that spiralled in patterns from the centre of each engorged nipple.

  Martina softly moaned in pleasure as her new domina was unable to stop herself from kissing and licking the teats. ‘The price to win you a king will be my freedom,’ she said. ‘You must set me free. Then I’ll help you.’

  The words reached Livia from somewhere far away, but she had enough of her wits still untouched by this strange delirium. ‘If you’re no longer my slave, then how will I command you?’

  Martina rubbed her ‘abhorrence’ up and down on the space in the wall where the painting had been; sinking and rising from her knees like a cat smearing its scent upon a favourite. Livia hungrily suckled at her breasts. ‘I thought you understood this now,’ Martina murmured. ‘I command you.’

  Furtively fumbling at my loins, I squinted at them through the gap in the curtain that divided the atrium from the study, where I had retreated when Martina came into the atrium. I was within seconds of a soundless climax, but a noise behind me made me spin around with my penis in my hand. It was little Tiberius.

  ‘Is mama home?’ he asked in his innocence, not thinking my actions odd.

  ‘She’s going out again,’ I whispered. As I guided the little boy back to his sleeping cubicle I tried to cover my bursting manhood under my tunica.

  When I returned a minute or so later, Livia and Martina had vanished. From the other end of the house I heard amorous Tiberius Nero calling for Livia from his bath. I quickly finished the task of relieving myself, but it was a dissatisfying, lonely pleasuring worthy only of an ugly slave.

  Lupercalia

  February, 39 BC

  One month later: the signing of the Pact of

  Misenum between Antony and Octavian

  of the Second Triumvirate and Sextus

  Pompey of the rebel legions of Sicily

  For a man so great, Octavian’s home at Oxheads on the crest of the Palatine Hill was a model of old Roman modesty. The flow of rooms from atrium to garden was strict and traditional. Octavian’s study lay precisely in the middle of the house, benefiting from the bracing draughts that flowed from the impluvium in the atrium roof on one side to the open air of the peristyle courtyard on the other. The downstairs library and bedrooms had no windows, only doors to either of the open roofed areas. The upstairs apartments had views across the roofs and gardens of the neighbours. No floor in the house was heated. The murals were humble and unpretentious, like all the household furnishings. There were no cushions on the chairs. Octavian’s wife, Scribonia, a famed beauty some years older than her husband, was modest in her deportment, as were all the slaves.

  But the letter that was passed to Octavian by his steward before sunrise was modest only in economy: I am helpless with desire for you, it read.

  Octavian was shortly to walk to the Temple of Vesta to lodge the worthless scrap of papyrus he had signed with Sextus Pompey at Misenum. But the papyrus scripted in my domina’s neat hand delayed him as he read and reread her words. Her proposal was one of sheer carnality but her tone was vulnerable: a combination Livia hoped – from her brief experience of meeting Octavian – would greatly appeal to him.

  The eyesight of the elderly magistrate Gaius Mamurcus was failing with each passing month. But his eyes weren’t so bad that he couldn’t see what blighted the pretty young noblewoman’s slave who stood before him. He didn’t blame my domina for her chosen course of action, but he did wonder if she had considered all the options.

  ‘Why not seek to sell her again, my dear, if you wish to be rid of her?’ he suggested, as Livia regarded him politely. ‘Or if she is too displeasing to raise a return at the slave market, send her to the vivaria. The animal keepers are always keen for live food – and she would also entertain people. You would be putting her to good civic use.’

  Deemed for this occasion as a lesser slave than even Martina, I reacted in quiet terror to hear this so casually suggested. But Martina merely smiled seductively at the half-blind magistrate while Livia arranged the promised manumission.

  ‘She is a valued slave to me,’ Livia said. ‘I wish to reward her with freedom, as is my right as her mistress.’ She pointedly kept her eyes from mine as she said this, not wanting me to wonder why a slave she had owned for mere weeks was being freed ahead of me, the slave who had served and suffered for her husband my whole life. But if she had looked in my eyes she could have seen that I would never have spoken with such impertinence. I didn’t seek my freedom. I would never seek it.

  ‘You have a good heart then,’ said Mamurcus to Livia. ‘Do you have your manumission tax for me to lodge on your behalf at the Temple of Saturn?’

  Livia produced a small bag of coins. Mamurcus signalled and one of his roughneck lictors took it, pouring it into a fat-palmed hand without ceremony. He whispered the sum he counted into Mamurcus’s ear. The old magistrate squinted at the figures on the ‘right of possession’ papers he held and then frowned.

  ‘Perhaps you misunderstood. It is five per cent of her value,’ he said to Livia patiently.

  She held out another small bag and the same lictor took it. Pleased, Mamurcus snatched the bag from his lictor’s hand before the roughneck had even opened it. ‘No need to count,’ he said cheerily, dropping it inside the folds of his toga. ‘You’ve been more than generous to Saturn already.’

  The chill winter wind from the Tiber suddenly blew through the open galleries of the Basilica Sempronia and plucked the ‘right of possession’ papers from the old man’s hand.

  ‘Don’t lose them!’ Livia cried.

  One of the magistrate’s scroll boys ran out into the Forum in pursuit of the sheets while men streamed from the colonnaded offices of the financial departments around him. The boy recovered the leaves of papyrus paper, which were somewhat soiled but still clearly showed the details of Livia’s purchase.

  Mamurcus’s eyebrows rose when he read an item of the transaction he had failed to notice before. ‘But you have barely owned this girl for a fortnight.’

  ‘I still wish to liberate her,’ Livia insisted.

  Mamurcus clearly thought Livia to be of unsound mind and suspected she would regret such a hasty decision. ‘Come back tomorrow, then. It’s day’s end now. My evening meal is waiting.’

  ‘Please,’ Livia said, placing her hand on his knee. ‘It’s just a little thing to do, isn’t it?’ She had never released a slave before and was at sea with the process.

  Gaius Mamurcus raised himself stiffly in his curule chair. ‘Just a little thing? I can assure you, my dear, that liberating a slave is something that the Senate and People of Rome take very seriously indeed. There is a ceremony to adhere to.’

  Livia kept her hand on the old man’s knee, careful to lower her eyes modestly.

  Gaius Mamurcus squinted at his rod-carrying lictors squatting on the steps of the Basilica. All six burly bodyguards were keen to get home themselves, but Livia’s appeal had at least caught their interest. In his venerable old age the praetor urbanus Mamurcus was a pushover when it came to pretty young women. ‘Very well,’ he said, settling down in his seat again and tapping my domina’s hand. ‘I will certainly not debase the proceedings any, but I’m sure there will be no harm done in speeding things up somewhat.’

  Her relief was palpable, and Mamurcus clicked his fingers for the scroll boy’s attention. ‘The rod.’

  The slave fetched a short wooden rod from a basket. Mamurcus gave it to Livia. ‘Touch your slave lightly on the head with this and keep it there,’ he directed. Livia did so. ‘Now say the words.’

  ‘What a
re they?’ she asked.

  Mamurcus was clearly thinking it very lucky that the day’s last client was young, female and beautiful. Any other person would have been kicked out by now as a timewaster. ‘You need to say “I wish this woman to be free”,’ he replied indulgently. ‘And you must say it three times.’

  Livia did this.

  ‘Very good. Now give her a little box on the ear. Nothing violent, mind you. It’s just an affectionate gesture.’

  She lightly slapped Martina’s newly jewelled ear. The soon-to-be liberated slave wore an earring that was formerly Livia’s own. Martina was all smiles.

  ‘Very good,’ said Gaius Mamurcus. ‘Now take her by the shoulders and gently spin her on the spot while repeating the special words as you do so.’

  My domina followed the directions. ‘I wish this woman to be free,’ she muttered three more times.

  ‘Excellent. Now touch her on the head with the rod again one more time and we’re finished.’

  The tap to the crown of Martina’s beautiful hair was barely felt.

  ‘Lovely,’ said Gaius Mamurcus, stifling a yawn. ‘Quite lovely. And now your slave is free.’

  Livia sighed with contentment. Despite everything, the manumission process had proved to be both emotional and rewarding. She looked to Martina, expecting words of gratitude.

  ‘What do you say to your former mistress?’ Mamurcus prompted.

  Martina said nothing at all. She ran down the steps past the lictors and vanished into the late afternoon sun.

  Hebe held the polished silver mirror because Livia couldn’t hold it in her own hands, they were trembling so much. But she didn’t want Hebe to know how broken she was by what had happened – by Martina’s betrayal and by her own realisation that she could be so easily tricked like a child.

  What’s more, Livia had also been seduced by Martina into unnatural lust. Shamed and soiled by it all, she had been left with nothing in her hands to show for this fall except the stink of Martina’s sex. The fetid smell of the slave wouldn’t scrub off. Livia had scraped and scoured but she could still sniff the slave on her fingers. In her quiet despair she thought about plunging her hands into boiling water to be rid of it.