Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  The man’s voice was kind, almost fatherly. Or perhaps more like a big brother. The man wanted to help Thrasyllus; the man was on his side. But the man couldn’t help Thrasyllus if Thrasyllus wouldn’t help himself. And if Thrasyllus wouldn’t help himself, then, in a way, Thrasyllus would really be hurting himself. And it wasn’t very nice to hurt, was it, the man asked him.

  Thrasyllus tried to explain that this thing that he did with his mind and his hands and his eyes – this ‘gift’, as his mama called it – was not something that just happened all the time. He couldn’t control it.

  The man told him that was nonsense. The man told him he had heard amazing tales about someone called Thrasyllus who had great skills as a haruspex – but the man did not know that this haruspex was actually a six-year-old boy until he struck up a friendship with someone who knew Thrasyllus quite well, and who liked him: the sacristan at the Temple of the Great Mother.

  The man then asked Thrasyllus to capture the pigeon.

  Thrasyllus said no, and the man beat him viciously on the legs with a long wooden rod.

  When the man finished he asked Thrasyllus whether he knew that fortune-tellers and soothsayers were forbidden in Rome. He asked him whether he also knew that anyone who was caught using or even seeking the services of someone who could read the future was also marked for death with the wild beasts.

  Thrasyllus had never been told such a thing. The man beat him on the legs again and Thrasyllus reconsidered his answer. He said that perhaps he had suspected it – and perhaps it explained why his mama kept him so hidden.

  The man then asked why Thrasyllus thought that soothsayers like him were forbidden. Thrasyllus didn’t know, but when the man went to reach for the rod again, he tried to think of a better answer. He said that soothsayers might be threatening to great kings.

  The man congratulated him on guessing it right and asked Thrasyllus to continue. Thrasyllus floundered, trying to think of more to say, until the words that succeeded in pleasing the man fell into his mouth. It would be threatening to a great king, Thrasyllus said, to know that people around him were discovering what would happen in the future.

  But there might be good things ahead, the man suggested; a bright future. How could it be bad to discover such things?

  It didn’t matter, Thrasyllus told the man. It didn’t matter whether the future was good or bad. What only mattered was that in knowing the future, people might also attempt to change it.

  How could that be, the man asked him, when the future was determined by the Fates? Didn’t Thrasyllus know that the three crone sisters determined the outcome to everything? Had he never heard of Clotho, who sat at the spindle spinning the string of life? Had he never heard of her sister, Lachesis, who measured out what had been spun? And hadn’t he even heard of Atropos, the ugliest of the three, who sat with her terrible shears in her hand, watching and waiting until she thought the string of life was long enough and snipped it? Hadn’t Thrasyllus heard of any of them?

  Thrasyllus said that he knew the Fates to be very powerful. But they were not so strong that their decisions couldn’t be altered by that other goddess, Fortune. Men who feared for their destinies could pray to Fortune to have their destinies changed. Sometimes Fortune listened, Thrasyllus said.

  The man asked Thrasyllus for the names of those who had come to him to learn about the future. Thrasyllus said that he didn’t know any. The man beat him on the legs so savagely that the rod broke in two.

  Then the man took up the longer section of the broken rod and thrashed Thrasyllus on the back and buttocks as he attempted to crawl away. There was nothing to hide beneath in the cell except straw, so Thrasyllus tried to throw handfuls of it over himself as protection from the pain. But nothing stopped it; there was no end to the blows.

  Thrasyllus heard himself insisting that he had told the truth – that he knew no names because none were ever given to him, only faces. And since the return to Rome he had not even had that. His mama kept him hidden away.

  The man stopped beating him and sat still, watching Thrasyllus for a very long time. When Thrasyllus finally went to speak again, he was shocked to discover that he had captured the pigeon without realising it. The bird had already calmed itself inside his cupped hands. The man handed him a little knife. Thrasyllus cut the bird’s head off and slit its guts onto the cell’s cold floor.

  When he held the entrails high in his hands, letting the blood run down his arms he suddenly knew who the man was. And then he knew a great deal.

  He told the man the same words that he said some years before in the cave. His mama had coached him back then to say one thing, but when the time had come he had said something else entirely. He hadn’t been able to help himself. He had seen the truth as clearly then as he saw it now. So he told the man about the two – the two from whom four would come – and the four who would rule. He told the man about the two houses joined, where one would take the other’s name. But never the blood – Thrasyllus assured him of this – the blood would stay pure for all four.

  The man asked him if one house was the House of the Julii, and Thrasyllus said he didn’t know. When the man grew angry again Thrasyllus said that one of the houses might be the Julii; in fact, now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure it was. Indeed, he was certain.

  The man asked him to identify the other house – the name the Julii would blend with their own, knowing that their blood would still be pure. Thrasyllus didn’t know this either, so the man gripped him by the throat and crushed the air from him. Could it be the Claudii, the man asked. Unable to breathe, Thrasyllus thought then that it might be. In fact, he was certain.

  The man became like a child in his awe. Thrasyllus was pleased and asked the man if he needed to fear being beaten again. The man said that he did – unless Thrasyllus could tell him the name of the Claudian woman whose womb would hold the four kings.

  Thrasyllus wept then and struggled desperately to see the woman’s name, but couldn’t. The man picked up the broken rod and stood over him, demanding that he pluck the woman’s name from the entrails or he would be beaten so hard he would die. Thrasyllus would be killed in the cell, the man told him; as a traitorous haruspex he was worth less than nothing. Thrasyllus crawled across the floor to where the entrails lay and squeezed the pigeon’s heart so tightly it vanished into his palm. When he opened his hand again there was no heart – it had gone. Then he saw the woman’s name.

  She was Livia, he told Octavian.

  Octavian was pleased again, so pleased he wept just like Thrasyllus did. This was the woman he most desired, he said. And Thrasyllus was pleased too.

  Thrasyllus asked if he could be released from the terrible cell and be freed to see his mama, now that he had told Octavian everything.

  Octavian said no – that would not be possible. Thrasyllus would be walled up inside the cell and would never leave this place again.

  As Octavian pulled the dungeon door behind himself to leave, Thrasyllus felt the stirring of the gift once more. He heard Cybele’s voice, a voice of warning: ‘There is a she-wolf in the shadows, king. Only when you have driven her from the den will your precious flock prosper.’

  Octavian heard these words from the other side of the door, but in his arrogant certainty he ignored them.

  Equirria

  October, 39 BC

  Six months later: the birth of a daughter,

  Antonia, to Antony and Octavia

  My domina appeared before Tiberius Nero at sunrise as he was about to enter the tablinum to greet his salutatio callers. Feeling shaky and weak – as he had been for some months now – he would gladly have returned to bed. But he couldn’t risk offence. In the year since his return from disgrace he had managed to assemble a small band of daily visiting clients, mostly from the plebeian and equestrian orders. Some of them had been his late father Claudius Nero’s clients and Tiberius Nero was eager to keep them dependent upon him.

  ‘Livia, you look beautiful this m
orning,’ he said. He was pale and clammy, his breath rattling in his chest. But he could still walk unaided.

  Livia said nothing – but the look of reckless determination in her face told him she was about to. Slightly perturbed, he ushered me ahead. ‘Tell my first visitors I will be with them shortly,’ he instructed me. ‘And begin the bread distribution in the atrium for those I don’t need to speak with personally.’

  I looked at Livia. She met my gaze and then looked right through me. I felt a wave of fear and excitement, realising that a day of great importance had arrived, even though I didn’t know yet what it would entail. ‘Are you alright, domina?’

  I asked.

  Livia said nothing.

  ‘Go, Iphicles,’ said Tiberius Nero. I closed the door behind him and began awkwardly greeting the waiting men for a moment until my excitement got the better of me. There was a tiny peephole in the door and I placed my eye to it while the mystified clients stared in some offence at my back.

  In the passage on the other side of the door, Tiberius Nero felt like sitting down. The muscles in his legs were aching. ‘You have that look you used to have when we were first married,’ he said to Livia.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I suppose it endeared you to me eventually, but I was still glad when you lost it.’

  Her expression didn’t change.

  ‘Is something wrong, Livia?’

  ‘I am unfaithful to you.’

  His jaw dropped.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tiberius Nero. But are you really surprised?’

  He scrambled for his tongue.

  ‘And I’m afraid it is even worse than that,’ said Livia. ‘I am carrying his child, not yours.’

  ‘Liar!’ he spluttered.

  Inside the crowded tablinum I went very still. The stunned clients began to pick up snippets of this conversation while I hung on every shocking word at the peephole.

  ‘It’s true,’ Livia said. ‘It’s not your child. I’m sorry.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Tiberius Nero demanded. ‘I’ve been sleeping with you night after night – you’ve been begging me for it, more than you’ve ever wanted to sleep with me in all our life.’

  Indeed, my domina had been begging for it – a side effect of all the aphrodisiac-drugged wine. I would hear her asking him to penetrate her as I lay on my lowly slave’s pallet outside their connubial room. But I also heard her judiciously scrubbing her cleft afterwards, and I knew the smell of the sylphium flower and what it did.

  ‘Every time you enter me I kill your seed when you’re asleep,’ Livia said, unnervingly calm. ‘But I’ve never killed my lover’s seed. You even helped me ask the She-wolf to make it happen,’ Livia went on. ‘I am grateful for that.’

  ‘Who is the pig? I’ll kill him!’ poor Tiberius Nero screamed.

  ‘Why don’t you beat the answer out of me?’

  He gasped at her lack of shame and fear.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘Don’t I deserve your fists? I’ve given myself to another man. I’ve thanked him for his nice fat prick. I’ve talked with him for hours about your own inadequacies.’

  He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  ‘Please, Tiberius Nero. Beat me until I bleed,’ Livia taunted him. ‘Throw me into the street if you like. I’m sure my lover won’t avenge me. His power is nothing to yours – he’s no-one, you see. He’s the lowest man in Rome.’

  The recklessness filled her face, widening her starless eyes as she mocked him with her sympathetic smile. ‘The lowest man of all has sired the child,’ she whispered. ‘A man that is hated and loathed.’

  Tiberius Nero realised with horror then whom the father actually was – not a powerless man at all, but the only man with more power than anyone. Livia smoothed her hands at her rounded belly.

  He made to run from the passage but she was too fast for him and threw herself before the tablinum door, causing me to spring back from the peephole on the other side. Tiberius Nero lost his balance and fell. Realising the exchange would shortly be the talk of the city, I turned and ordered the bewildered clients to leave. But I could not stop myself from springing to the hole again, and only some of the clients actually left the room.

  Inside the passage the sight of Tiberius Nero floundering on the tiles brought Livia up short. She stooped to help him rise again, but then corrected herself, delicately placing her hands to her throat and leaving him where he was.

  ‘You’re unwell,’ she said, actually realising this for the first time.

  ‘I’ve a cold,’ he said. ‘I can’t shake it off. Help me up.’

  But she didn’t move, watching him struggle. ‘How long have you been like this?’

  ‘Livia.’

  ‘How long?’

  His arms fell loose and useless to the floor. ‘Since it started months ago. It weakens my heart, I think. I can’t breathe or stand.’

  She felt a rush of excitement at guessing who was somehow behind this.

  ‘I hope little Tiberius will be the man you can never be,’ she said after a moment. ‘But I know he will never be one of those from my womb who is destined to rule.’ She took her hands from her throat to her belly again. ‘The first of those will be this unborn boy.’

  The realisation hit Tiberius Nero. ‘What are you talking about …?’

  Livia said nothing.

  ‘The prophecy – ‘

  ‘I’ve long reinterpreted it.’

  Tiberius Nero’s heartbeat was irregular and frightening. ‘Go. Have his brat. But Tiberius is mine – the laws protect sons when their mothers are sluts. My boy stays with me, and he’ll be a king just like the prophecy said he would.’

  Livia shook her head. ‘You’re so ill. How will you care for him? He’ll need me.’

  ‘He’s mine!’ Tiberius Nero tried to lurch to his feet but couldn’t draw enough breath.

  On the other side of the door my temptation to help him was overwhelming. But my greater devotion to my domina kept me glued there, unmoving.

  ‘I’ll leave him with you for now then,’ Livia said, ‘but when I am remarried I’ll send for him.’

  ‘You can’t …’ Tiberius Nero choked. ‘You can’t do any of it. I won’t divorce you. I won’t give up my son.’

  ‘That means nothing to Octavian …’

  Poor Tiberius Nero began to weep, clawing his hand at his chest. Both repulsed and compelled by his suffering, Livia backed away to the tall bronze lampadarium near the wall, where it smouldered with embers placed in its tray to heat spices and incense. ‘I’m sorry, Tiberius Nero, I really am sorry,’ she said. ‘You’re not a bad man – and I know you’ve always tried to make your way forward as best you can. I’m sorry this has happened to you.’

  A trickle of blood ran from his nose.

  ‘I’m sorry for the pain of my infidelity too,’ she continued, ‘and the shame of it. I know people will deride you. It isn’t fair.’

  ‘Am I dying?’ he whispered.

  ‘You could be,’ she replied softly, knowing that Martina’s hand was somehow behind his illness.

  He wept again. ‘I grew to love you, Livia … you know I did.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with love.’ She gripped the lampadarium in her fingers and pulled until it toppled with a crash, sending a cascade of hot coals over him.

  Unable to scream, Tiberius Nero tried to slap and brush the embers but the coals began to glow. ‘Help me, they’re burning …’

  Just as when Livia’s change of fortune was revealed within the folds of Octavian’s toga, Tiberius Nero found himself staring up his wife’s smooth legs. She raised her long, white stola from the coals and stood astride him, giving him his final view of her privates. Then she let go a hot stream of urine, dousing his face and hair with it until she had put out the last of the embers.

  Livia stepped into the early morning street carrying nothing. She had left every last possession inside the house behind her.

  ‘Iphicles?’ Of
course, I was waiting for her, but Livia was surprised to find me there in my travelling cloak.

  I stooped to one knee and reached for her hand. ‘It will always be my duty to serve you, domina.’

  She allowed me to kiss and fondle her hand for a moment before sharply pulling it away. ‘Not any more.’

  I stared dumbly at her.

  ‘Go back inside.’

  Tears sprang to my eyes. ‘It’s my fate to serve you. It’s the path the Great Mother has marked for me.’

  ‘Perhaps it was once, but not now.’ She pulled her heavy woollen palla tightly about herself. ‘Now go. I’m taking nothing from this place and that includes you.’

  I showed her what I had snatched from the attic and wrapped hastily in silk.

  ‘My Timanthes …?’

  I pleaded silently.

  She dismissed the treasure and her slave together. ‘Throw it in the Tiber.’

  I couldn’t stop myself from weeping, just like Tiberius Nero. ‘Why, domina?’

  She placed her hand on my wiry hair, smoothing it a little and briefly filling me with hope that she was joking. Then she rubbed her palm on her palla, removing the greasy stink of me. ‘Because you failed when I sent you to get the haruspex,’ she said. ‘And if I ever see you again, it’ll be to pelt you with fruit as the beasts eat you.’

  She left me then and walked confidently through the crowds of morning callers that streamed from the homes of our neighbours, her head held high and her gaze focused resolutely forward.

  I was far too broken by these events to witness how the news of my domina’s actions spread through Rome. But I did learn many years later of how it was revealed to the members of Octavian’s household by a small detachment of his soldiers.

  A centurion waited patiently by the entrance to a country villa with his legionaries behind him. All were young recruits, green boys. The assignment was considered good training for them. Having already used the raw lads to force two gates to get as far as the front entrance yard, the centurion was reluctant to batter in the front door of a property belonging to a triumvir. When no answer came from the first knock, he signalled the young legionary next to him to pound the door again.