Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  It roused fully at last.

  When the queen returned to lay with Antony’s corpse she placed his massive hand upon her breast again. Her nipple hardened briefly, then softened for the final time. The twin specks of venom on her breast beneath her dead lover’s hand dried brittle and black in the heat.

  I saw the hooded beggar approaching through the maze of tombs before she did. ‘Domina.’

  Livia turned from where she brushed the grime from her father’s hated inscription.

  ‘It comes,’ I said.

  ‘As I thought it would.’

  I knew my role and prepared myself. My hand slipped inside my robe to touch the hilt of the dagger I had hidden there. It was my intention to pull it out and use it if Livia was denied what she sought. And perhaps, if I felt like it, I would simply pull it out and use it anyway. After all, I had already helped bring death to my young master, and that had lifted me to godhood. What gifts would other deaths bring me?

  The cowled one approached, letting the glow of his translucent eyes illuminate me before they focused on Livia. ‘What a fickle girl you’ve become. The last time we spoke you had no time for me.’

  Now nearly twenty-eight years old, my domina was certainly no girl any more – just as I was no boy. And yet we felt no different. Our energies were prodigious – the energies of children. Our faces, for those who cared to look at them, were as they had been a decade ago. We had not aged. We had the appearance of timelessness already. But if the cowled one saw this I do not know.

  Livia was glacial with the hermaphrodite, while I was deceptively impassive. ‘I am the wife of Triumvir Octavian and this is how you dare to address me?’ she said.

  ‘I know you only as “girl”.’

  ‘I should strike you down – kick your face in the dust.’

  ‘But you won’t, will you, girl, because you want me now? You lured me to your father’s tomb in the hope I would help you, perhaps?’

  It was true. I stared at the hermaphrodite’s claw of a hand. It was livid with scars from old burns. His face, too, had ridges of hard, smooth flesh that were more dead than alive.

  ‘I am pregnant at last,’ Livia announced.

  His eyes fell to her belly, where he could see no sign of this claim.

  ‘I’m only recently made certain. The child is still small.’

  ‘It can’t be your husband’s child, so therefore it is of no interest to me – ‘

  ‘It is my husband’s child.’

  ‘Tiberius Nero?’

  Livia ground her teeth together as she clenched her jaw. ‘I want to find the haruspex.’

  The hermaphrodite just looked at her unflinchingly.

  ‘I want to see Thrasyllus.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said without sincerity. ‘He was stolen from me many years ago.’

  ‘Do you believe he is dead?’

  The hermaphrodite just looked at her again.

  ‘I believe he is alive,’ said Livia. ‘I believe whoever stole him did so to capture Rome’s future. I believe this person still uses the boy’s gift to his own ends. I believe you could find that boy if you tried.’

  The cowled one spat at her feet. ‘I have tried. Thrasyllus is dead.’ But he didn’t move from staring at her.

  Livia searched his eyes for the words she believed he wasn’t speaking. From where I stood at her shoulder, the cowled one’s face said nothing at all, but my domina somehow read volumes in his look.

  The corners of her mouth curled into a satisfied little smile. ‘You have him.’

  The hermaphrodite looked startled, and then fought to hide this reaction behind a mask. Livia’s eyes blazed. ‘You found him again. You have the boy in your care. Let me see him.’

  She held her breath for a long time until the cowled one seemed to lose a little battle within himself, imperceptibly sagging, giving in to her. But it was all an act. ‘That won’t be possible,’ he said, straightening again with a smirk.

  ‘I have a right to see him,’ Livia said, ‘to ask him questions myself.’

  ‘You have no rights. You’re a woman.’

  She tore at the cowled one’s cloak. Before he could stop her, she had ripped the cloth from his shoulders. I gaped in repulsion to see what was once again exposed: two swinging, shrunken breasts, as scarred from burns as the rest of him.

  ‘And what are you?’ Livia spat at him. ‘Aren’t you a woman? You suckled him, didn’t you? Did you give birth to him too?’

  The hermaphrodite scrambled to cover himself.

  ‘Take me to him,’ Livia hissed. ‘I have to know if the new child I carry is the first of the prophesied.’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask that the last time you were with child?’

  My domina’s lips froze.

  The hermaphrodite laughed in malicious delight. ‘Because you already thought you knew the answer then?’

  Livia said nothing. She didn’t have to; the hermaphrodite had seen the truth in her past behaviour.

  ‘Such contempt you showed the Great Mother in that letter you left for Thrasyllus,’ he mocked her. ‘There was no doubt in you then, was there? Just arrogant certainty that this Octavian was the man to sire your great kings.’

  Livia had no response to give except honesty. ‘I’ve tried for eight years to conceive another child – and now the Great Mother has granted it. But I’m older now. I don’t have many fertile years left. I must know if this child is the first of the four who will rule.’

  ‘Admit it to me, girl. You fear the sire could be another man entirely. If Octavian has only quickened you once in all this time, how will you ever manage to conceive four babies? Time is running out for you.’ He waited to see if she would allow him to glimpse these doubts in her face, and was rewarded.

  The hermaphrodite seemed to soften at the sight of her need, giving her hope. Then he crushed it once more. ‘No.’

  I sprang forward and seized him by the throat, taking him by surprise. I pierced his skin with the knife. Livia hadn’t ordered this. She hadn’t needed to.

  ‘Cut his titties off,’ she said to me. ‘Then cut off his cock. He’ll die as a true woman then.’

  ‘Wait – ‘

  I placed the thin blade beneath the pendulous flesh of his breast. A tiny line of blood appeared.

  ‘I don’t have the boy. I haven’t seen since him I lost him. I don’t know where he is.’

  My domina searched him for a kernel of a lie.

  I crushed his throat tighter in my arm. ‘Please don’t cut me. I don’t have the boy.’

  It was the truth. Livia was pale with dismay. ‘Why let me think you did?’

  ‘Because I have nothing …’

  He was repulsive and I let him slump to the ground. Disappointment overwhelmed my domina and she turned to walk away from his obscenity. But the hermaphrodite had one last roll of the dice.

  ‘Let me feel your belly, girl. I have the powers too.’

  She didn’t bother to turn. ‘You are not Thrasyllus.’

  ‘I suckled him – I absorbed his strength. Let me feel you – I’ll know the truth. I swear I will.’

  Livia considered this for a long minute. Then she turned back to him, fearful that if she let reason or sense get in the way, she would flee this last hope. I stared, equally fascinated and appalled, as the cowled one’s long, scarred fingers began to knead my domina’s abdomen.

  She felt a warmth from them, a glow. It was intoxicating. She closed her eyes and saw images of triumph beneath her lids: cheering springtime crowds, soldiers’ brightly coloured pennants flying in the wind, her own fine features chiselled in marble and placed high in the Forum sun.

  Intensity shot from the cowled one’s hands as he searched deep inside her body. She felt the tiny baby turn and turn once more. A look of rapture passed across her face. She looked down at her belly as if observing herself from the distance of Olympus. The hermaphrodite’s fingers were curled into talons,

  clawing at her entrails.

>   The scream stuck in her throat.

  ‘You carry the first of the four,’ he said. ‘It is the child of prophecy.’

  My domina stared with confusion into his phosphorescent eyes.

  His face betrayed nothing but she saw the flash of hatred deep within his pupils. She leapt back with a cry of pain.

  I seized the cowled one around his neck again. He gave no resistance, chuckling softly.

  Livia was so terrified she could barely get the words out to tell me what had happened. ‘He’s cursed it,’ she managed at last. ‘He’s cursed the child …’

  The hermaphrodite licked his lips and let his wanton, womanly smile give all the confirmation of his crime that was needed.

  ‘Take the left titty first,’ Livia spat through her teeth.

  Divine frenzy overtook me as I hacked the living flesh from him.

  The story of how Antony’s famous children came to join the household of Octavian is one I have always known. But it was not until three decades later that I learned of the differing perceptions that his children had of the event. Antony’s daughter saw only courage. Antony’s son saw only crime.

  With Antyllus so broad and sturdy for his seventeen years, his Athenian tutor habitually prepared for opposition to lessons. By the tutor’s expectation, such a young man should prefer to spend his hours upon the Field of Mars – had he still lived in Rome, of course – riding horses and excelling at gymnastics. But the youth was preternaturally advanced in his self-discipline and had never rebelled against anything. Even the Antonii’s rushed departure from Italy had failed to stem the boy’s thirst for learning.

  But the new morning saw the first glimmer of an objection emerge. Antyllus strayed from reading Livy and turned the conversation towards Julia. Because the youth and his siblings – and indeed the entire Antonian household – lived in a state of ignorance about their father and master’s current whereabouts, the tutor was happy to let the boy ramble. It allowed them both a brief distraction from worry.

  Antony’s first-born son by Fulvia, Antyllus had uncovered what he called ‘solid proof’ that his missing father’s fortunes were not on the wane and that Octavian still loved them all.

  ‘I’m still betrothed to her, Telegonus, isn’t that true?’

  ‘Well, yes, young master, yes.’

  ‘There you are – there’s the proof.’

  The tutor didn’t follow the logic.

  ‘Telegonus, use your head. I will marry Julia – contracts were made. And even though my father and Octavian are in the middle of a new misunderstanding, the betrothal has not been withdrawn, has it? So I’m still to marry her.’

  Telegonus found that he couldn’t deny this.

  Shouts and curses floated through their upstairs study window from the vegetable gardens below, and the tutor closed the shutters to it. The Egyptian horticultural slaves were unacceptably coarse to any decent ear.

  ‘Good,’ said the eager youth, continuing. ‘So that means that things between my father and Octavian can’t be half as bad as people say they are. The Triumvirs might be fighting again – but they’re also still friends.’

  Telegonus couldn’t bring himself to soil this steadfast optimism. ‘Tell me again what you know of her,’ Antyllus asked. ‘You know as much as I do.’

  ‘I’ve forgotten it all. Remind me again.’

  Telegonus rolled up his newly published volume of Livy’s early histories and prepared to indulge the boy. There was little harm in Antyllus believing himself to have deep feelings for this girl he had barely met – it only boded well for the future nuptials. ‘She is raised by the Revered Lady Livia,’ he began.

  ‘Forbidden to know her birth mother?’

  ‘Yes, because Scribonia is a shrew who lives far from Rome. There was even a play at the theatre about her poor character. Very low and crude it was – people marvelled that Octavian never put a stop to it.’

  ‘Perhaps he wrote it?’

  This startling idea suddenly seemed like a good explanation. But Antyllus had suggested it in sensible innocence.

  ‘I’m sure Octavian would never have had the time,’ said Telegonus tactfully.

  ‘The Lady Livia loves Julia as her own child?’

  ‘That’s what they say – and Julia loves her deeply in return.’

  Antyllus found this comforting. ‘Octavian is a strict father, isn’t he? Stricter than my own?’

  ‘He’s the loving head of the Julii, but he lives according to the Ways of the Fathers,’ said Telegonus. ‘These are the principles held by the Fathers who founded Rome, of course.’ He tapped his copy of Livy affectionately. The book was full of such men.

  ‘My stepmother says he’s old-fashioned,’ said Antyllus.

  ‘It’s wrong to keep calling Octavia your stepmother,’ Telegonus censured him. ‘Your father divorced her over two years ago.’

  ‘I miss her. And anyway, she still called Octavian old-fashioned,’ said Antyllus, scratching under his tunic collar.

  ‘Well, yes, perhaps he is,’ the tutor agreed. ‘Or at least, he’s become that way in recent years. But you could also say that he’s very modern – he’s setting a new example. Octavian wants to bring Rome back to austerity and modesty – virtues he believes we have lost. He believes Rome will better herself by embracing such virtues again, and he’s made the Julii an embodiment of those principles – as a model for Rome.’

  ‘Does my father disagree? Is this at the heart of what they fight about, do you think?’

  Telegonus considered it wise to spare the boy the complex nature of the triumvirs’ disagreements. ‘I think there’s more to it than that,’ he said evasively.

  They heard the heavy front door of their villa creak open, slam shut with a bang and then immediately creak open again. There was the sound of running feet along the upstairs terrace on the other side of their study door. Though both were intrigued, tutor and pupil dismissed these sounds without comment as a minor domestic crisis among the lowly Egyptians.

  ‘Your betrothed, the Revered Lady Julia, has every hour of her day apportioned for the assignment of tasks,’ Telegonus launched on a new theme. ‘She is intelligent and well-read, despite being very young. When she has completed her day’s studies she joins her stepmother in weaving clothes for Octavian.’

  This noteworthy fact was something that Antyllus had heard before but he never tired of examining it. ‘He never buys his clothes from a merchant, does he?’

  ‘He buys nothing. The wool comes from his farms in the country, and the women of his household weave it into garments for him. And he’s very particular. His tunicae are not allowed to be tight-fitting or full-figured, only somewhere in between – and the purple stripes on his toga are carefully measured, neither narrow nor wide.’

  Antyllus made scratches with his pen on a tablet. ‘These are facts I need to remember when he becomes my father-in-law,’ he said, writing them down with due seriousness.

  Telegonus suppressed his amusement. ‘In that case, you might wish to add that the Revered Lady Julia is forbidden to do anything that would shame her father in even the tiniest way – and they say she never does. Her spoken words are monitored by her wet nurse, too. She’s beaten if she says anything that couldn’t be written in Octavian’s own diary to be read by future Romans.’

  Antyllus was impressed by this new detail. ‘Is she beaten often?’

  Telegonus made a show of pondering. ‘Given her exemplary behaviour in all other things, I would guess that the mere threat of a beating would be enough to guide her.’

  Antyllus put his hands to his heart, imagining his feelings for this girl to be spilling like water from a pipe. ‘Do you think it would be acceptable to write her a love letter?’

  The sound of something large and fragile smashing onto the tiled floor of the atrium reached them, then slaves’ cries of dismay. Telegonus and Antyllus cast a brief look of concern at each other before again coming to the decision that investigation would be too demea
ning. They would leave it to the steward.

  ‘What do you think?’ Antyllus went on. ‘Could I write her a letter?’

  Telegonus thought it inappropriate, but didn’t want to dampen the boy’s ardour. He tapped the scrawl Antyllus had made on the tablet. ‘Most of all, above all other things, you must make note that Julia wants only to please her father – and she does so. She excels at every task she is given by him and is constantly praised. The Forum statue of Juventas bears her likeness – in her father’s eyes she is the goddess of youth. He also calls her his most precious jewel.’

  Antyllus read the answer within his tutor’s words as a ‘no’ to his quest. ‘I will take note, Telegonus,’ he said sombrely.

  The study door burst open with force and a group of household slaves stumbled and fell inside, highly distressed.

  Telegonus stood up, furious. ‘What is this? How dare you disturb Antyllus!’

  The slaves ignored him, looking only at the boy. ‘Tell us what to do, young master – we need your guidance!’ the steward implored.

  ‘Get out!’ Telegonus screamed at them.

  But Antyllus placed a hand on his tutor. ‘Has something happened?’ he asked the slaves. The distressed men and women looked at each other, none wanting to be the one who broke the news. They all looked to the steward, a youth some two years younger than his master, who had only been promoted when the old steward accompanied Antony to battle.

  The slave failed to keep the shock from his voice. ‘We’ve heard word from people in the town. The dominus’s forces were beaten in a sea battle some months ago. All were lost.’

  ‘Was my father drowned at sea?’

  ‘No, no, however – ‘

  ‘My father has suffered defeats before. You read too much into this gossip.’

  ‘The master has killed himself in the city.’

  Antyllus’s mouth went dry.

  ‘The queen too. Both are dead. Their bodies were shown to the mob in Alexandria.’