Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  The shock of it made Antyllus stumble backwards against the wall.

  His fear brought new terror from the slaves. ‘We’re lost, young master!’

  ‘Octavian is coming here to kill us!

  ‘Tell us what to do, young master – tell us how to save ourselves!’

  Antyllus struggled to find his voice and looked beseechingly at Telegonus, but the tutor was pale and shaking, looking at the boy for direction too. Antyllus stroked and straightened his rough linen tunica, trying to calm himself. ‘Listen – listen to me. You were right to seek my guidance – I’m your dominus now. Please listen to me.’

  There was a loaded silence and Antyllus searched for courage, seeing in his heart the eight-year-old girl he believed he loved. And behind Julia he saw her father. ‘We must trust in Octavian’s mercy,’ he said.

  Telegonus tried to speak, but the pupil hushed him with a look. ‘The war between these two great men has been as honourable as it has been bloody,’ Antyllus went on. ‘At no time has either side acted without believing they fought only for Rome. Indeed, the motive behind Octavian’s every action has been to avenge his uncle’s death and to keep his great decrees in force.’

  Telegonus gaped in surprise at the boy’s understanding.

  ‘Protecting Caesar’s laws was my own father’s motive once too,’ Antyllus added. ‘But the war is over now, and my great father has lost his fight fairly and justly. But for the gods’ sakes, we must all see sense – for Octavian to now destroy the Antonii in vengeance does not serve Rome. There is no reason for it. His own sister bore a child to my father. You should all be thankful that the gods have allowed you to serve my father while you could. But now we will serve a new master. Please continue your usual business – when Octavian’s men come we will greet them as family.’

  ‘And you will be treated as such,’ said a strong voice behind them.

  All turned to see that a tall, striking man in a general’s uniform had entered the villa through the open front door. He stood, regarding them for a moment before striding toward the group of slaves. They parted like stalks of wheat, leaving Antyllus alone to respond.

  ‘Hail, Octavian,’ said the youth. He tried but failed to crush his terrible fear.

  As the conversation reached its conclusion, Octavian hoped he had made Antyllus feel reassured. ‘I have such great respect for the Antonii,’ he said, summarising his thoughts. ‘Your ancestry is noble – your family’s position in Rome is assured.’

  The proposition Octavian had made to Antyllus was so unexpected that, coming on top of the shock of his father’s death, the youth was unable to find an emotional response to any of it. ‘Yet we will join the Julian House?’ he asked, seeking clarification.

  ‘Still as Antonii, of course,’ Octavian explained. ‘This will not be a formal adoption – that would be inappropriate. But I would like to assume a father’s role to you, and to your brother and sister. You’ll all live with Octavia again – and return to Rome. But I’ll be the head of your household.’

  Antyllus was silent as he processed all that this meant.

  Octavian filled the space with further reassurance. ‘I can see no reason why your betrothal to my daughter shouldn’t continue either.’

  A tear sprang to the boy’s eye and he wiped it away.

  ‘You’ve suffered the worst news a man can. It’s natural to grieve for your father,’ said Octavian, misinterpreting the boy’s emotion.

  ‘Yes, I suppose that is right.’

  Octavian placed a fatherly arm around the boy’s wide shoulders. ‘Why don’t I bring your brother and sister down to comfort you? You can tell them of our plans and prepare them for the return to Rome.’

  Antyllus abruptly stood up. ‘I’ll go,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring them down to you, sir.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Antyllus walked purposefully away, but as he left Octavian looking after him, he reached for the hand of Telegonus, who was seated alone by the wall. The Athenian nodded, mute, but Antyllus was ascending the stairs before any words of encouragement came to the tutor’s lips.

  ‘You’re acting wisely, young master,’ he whispered. But the encouragement Antyllus found in these words was for a very different course of action than Telegonus imagined.

  Waiting, Octavian took in the shabby surrounds of the villa the Antonii had obtained for themselves in Egypt. He thought of the similar villa so often described to him by Livia from her own days of flight. ‘Housing standards are very different in the East,’ he remarked casually to the tutor.

  Speechless again in his nerves, Telegonus could only nod once more. Octavian pursued no further conversation.

  After several minutes Antyllus had not returned. Octavian stood. ‘The younger children are frightened of me, I suspect,’ he said to the tutor again. ‘The boy is having trouble persuading them – I’ll find them myself.’ He walked past Telegonus and began ascending the stairs.

  The nervous tutor found his voice again. ‘He’s very mature for his age,’ he called. Octavian said nothing, but raised his hand to imply agreement.

  Upstairs there was no movement. With the slaves already herded into the gardens, the second floor seemed empty. Octavian peered into bedrooms and other empty chambers for which no purpose had been assigned when the family moved in. There was apparently no-one there.

  He pushed open the door to Antyllus’s study. The youth was on his knees, his back to Octavian, lolling forward with his forehead resting on the floor. He was praying. Octavian was respectful and stepped back discreetly. Antyllus made no acknowledgement of him.

  After a moment Octavian spoke from the hall. ‘Tell me where your siblings are, Antyllus. You can join us below when you’re finished with the gods.’

  The youth said nothing.

  Octavian peered into the room again. A thin trickle of blood ran along the floor between the upturned soles of the young man’s sandals. He was not praying. Octavian leapt inside and pulled Antyllus from the pose he was slumped in. The hilt of a sword protruded from the base of his ribs and the force of being righted made the weapon slip from the wound and fall to the floor.

  Antyllus opened his eyes and saw horror in Octavian’s face. In his dying seconds he misread the older man’s feelings entirely. ‘This is not because of Julia, sir – I love her.’

  Octavian clutched Antyllus to him in shock – and turned to see the two younger siblings watching the death from the doorway.

  In their memories of this moment that they carried in their hearts ever afterwards, eight-year-old Antonia believed that her half-brother had died a brave and noble death by his own hand, just as their father had. But her fifteen-year-old half-brother Jullus held a very different view. He believed the sword had been shoved into their brother’s guts by Octavian. To Jullus, Octavian was Antyllus’s murderer.

  *

  The action of the comedy took an unpalatable turn. Livia became aware of eyes turning in her direction from the patrician women’s seats in the theatre around her.

  ‘They are gauging your reaction,’ Lollia whispered to her from the seat behind.

  My domina had found herself drifting in and out of a doze since the mime had begun, and now she’d lost track of the plot.

  ‘It’s turned rather bold,’ Lollia explained. ‘The wife has got herself pregnant again.’

  Livia rubbed her own tight belly absentmindedly, trying to reconnect with the action. More heads turned to look at her then quickly looked back to the stage again. My domina was still lost. ‘What’s so bold about it?’ she asked.

  Crouched on the steps with the other patrician women’s slaves, I had worked it out, of course, but dared not make a comment. Lollia, too, said no more.

  On stage, the comedy husband leapt about in garish red robes, gleefully anticipating an heir to his pathetic little house. The raven-haired wife, blissful in her newly announced pregnancy, then refused to copulate with him, citing tiredness. The husband made a comical show of acceptin
g this rebuff as perfectly understandable in the circumstances, but his inflating phallus made a liar of him.

  Livia knew that such a bawdy development would normally be received with loud guffaws by the audience. But the laughter was restrained. Again people cast quick glances at her. At last she understood why.

  She abruptly stood and Lollia did the same in the seat behind her. I immediately held a parasol above my domina’s head, jostling for space with Lollia’s effeminate nomenclator slave, who had been freed from the front door for the day and wielded a parasol of his own. The thirteen-year-old Plancina made a noise of surprise, but her mother, Lollia, silenced her.

  ‘We will retire, I think,’ Livia said loudly enough for the patrician women around her to hear. ‘It’s still early enough in the afternoon to enjoy a stroll in the gardens.’

  ‘But I was enjoying it,’ Plancina complained.

  Lollia was poised to strike her daughter, but Livia turned to the unappealing girl. ‘The theatre has freedom to poke fun at well-known people,’ she said, again so others could hear. ‘But well-known people have the freedom to leave when the theatre fails to entertain them.’

  Plancina was mystified.

  Far below on the stage, the comedy wife flung open a curtain to expose the husband being fellated by a big breasted slave. She wordlessly shrieked and let loose a gush of bloody innards from between her thighs.

  Lollia’s gorge brimmed in her throat. ‘That’s disgusting!’

  Turning to see what had shocked her friend, Livia slipped from the step she was balanced upon before I could catch her. She spun her head around again to look at me, and then beyond me to the shrine that stood at the very back of the theatre, at the top of the long stone stairway. It was a shrine to Venus, and my domina knew in that moment that the homegrown goddess looked with contempt upon her for casting her lot with such a degenerate goddess from the East. Venus could have saved my domina, no doubt, but Livia had done nothing to earn such love and so her fate was sealed.

  She toppled backwards in a twisting motion that saw her crash belly-first onto the sharp edges of the steps. She rolled with gathering momentum, down and down again until she stopped, broken and unconscious at the base of the stage. The gush of bloody innards that shot from between her own thighs was no trick of stagecraft.

  When I inspected the foetus afterwards and burned the broken remains, I vowed never to tell my domina that her longed-for child with Octavian had indeed been a boy. It was another secret I kept.

  Octavian ordered the cell door opened – it was the first time this had been attempted in some years. Surprisingly, once the bolt had been struck repeatedly to dislodge its rust and grime before being sharply pulled free, the door swung open easily on its pivot, exposing the prisoner within. The stink of him was something hellish, his appearance bestial as he blinked like a half-blind rodent in the glow of the oil lamps. Octavian saw that the wretch had aged; he was a young man now, with a matted beard and ample body hair.

  The warden had never even glimpsed the cell’s occupant before this moment, having only fed him through a grate in the wall. He would have been happier never to have seen this poor unfortunate at all, so distressing was the sight of him. ‘What do you want us to do with this man, Triumvir?’

  ‘Hold him up for me. Make him stand.’

  The warden didn’t relish handling the wretch himself, so he passed the order to two of the guards, giving them no choice but to swallow their own revulsion.

  Thrasyllus was roughly hoisted to his feet.

  Octavian stared into the haruspex’s eyes for a long time in the silence, trying to find some kind of motive behind them for all that was done. Had the soothsayer lied? Had he simply been mad? How could there ever be four great kings from Livia’s womb when her womb had been smashed like a jar? Not even one king had been born from the union of the Julian and Claudian houses. The prophecies had all been false.

  Thrasyllus looked back at Octavian without a trace of fear, hearing all this said to him without Octavian needing to voice it. He provided no explanation; his expression was only one of deepest pity for Octavian’s arrogance.

  Octavian spat in his face when he saw this. ‘The tragedy here is your own, haruspex,’ he hissed with suppressed violence. ‘They told me you saw the future more clearly than anyone else, but now we both know you see nothing – and never did. I imprisoned you here needlessly; you’re no threat to Rome.’

  Octavian spat in the face of Thrasyllus again and then a final time, enjoying it. Mucus stuck to the haruspex’s matted beard. Then Octavian left the cell.

  The warden ran after him. ‘What do we do with the prisoner, Triumvir?’

  ‘It’s of no interest to me,’ said Octavian. ‘Feed him to the bears if you want, or strangle him, I don’t care. His welfare doesn’t concern me.’

  The warden feared a trap in this. ‘But such an important prisoner, Triumvir? We’ve followed your orders for his imprisonment for so many years.’

  ‘My orders now cease,’ Octavian barked back. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying to you? I don’t care what his fate is.’

  When the warden returned to the guards he gave no objection when they allowed Thrasyllus to slump to the cell floor. But they were as perturbed as their warden was when he detailed Octavian’s uncharacteristically vague directive. They were men who needed their orders given precisely, not with choices attached.

  After several minutes’ discussion they reached a decision about what to do with Thrasyllus. While they agreed that it was far less entertaining than some of the alternatives, it was by far the easiest.

  The Nones of July

  29 BC

  One year later: the Senate and People of

  Rome declare Octavian Imperator and

  celebrate his victories at Illyricum and

  Actium, and over Egypt

  Seated hidden behind the curtain, Livia fought to keep her hearing focused on the meeting Octavian was conducting in the atrium on the other side. The builders’ clamour at a distant end of the expanding Oxheads made following the discourse difficult. This noise, combined with the rumble of the stormclouds that had gathered in the heavens, meant my domina was missing important points. But at least it drowned out the bored complaints of her oldest son.

  Stooped at her shoulder, struggling to contain his gangly limbs and feet, thirteen-year-old Tiberius crushed me hard against the alcove wall behind him. The fourth occupant of the tiny space was nine-year-old Drusus, who was crouched at his mother’s feet.

  Tiberius could not understand why his mother made them eavesdrop on their stepfather’s briefings.

  ‘To learn,’ she said.

  ‘But everything they say is boring,’

  She pinched his ear then held up a warning hand when he went to cry out. Drusus cowered, fearing similar tortures.

  ‘There is nothing boring about politics,’ Livia whispered, gripping Tiberius tighter. ‘What have you already overheard this morning?’

  Although I was moderately fond of the awkward boy, I was glad to see him experience something similar to my own silent agony squeezed behind him. Poor Tiberius twisted in her grip. ‘Nothing … I can’t remember.’

  She released the pinch but held him anew with a stony look. ‘The men of your stepfather’s faction are going to propose another new title for him in the Senate. What is it?’

  Tiberius struggled to recall but Drusus had been listening. ‘First Citizen.’

  Livia patted the younger boy on his head. ‘Very good. And they wish to propose a new name for him too – what is that?’

  ‘He already has a name,’ whined Tiberius. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘If he is to be known as the First Citizen then he will need a name that better reflects this great dignity,’ said Livia. She pinched his other ear. ‘What is it?’

  Tiberius squirmed in pain again. ‘I can’t remember – I can’t remember.’

  She let go, and when he rubbed his throbbing lobe s
he slapped him on the cheek. ‘Do you remember, Drusus?’ she asked the younger boy.

  Drusus did. ‘It’s Augustus – it means “great and powerful”.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Livia, pleased. ‘Don’t forget it again, Tiberius.’

  A crack of thunder directly above the Palatine shook the whole house.

  ‘Doesn’t the Senate have to debate it first?’ Tiberius asked when the rumble subsided.

  Livia gave him a withering look. ‘Augustus will be your stepfather’s new name.’

  Outside our claustrophobic space, Octavian’s voice rose in strong opposition to something one of the men had raised. My domina strained to hear.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Tiberius prodded her. She clapped a hand over his mouth but Tiberius bit her palm.

  ‘How dare you – ‘

  ‘Shhh, mother, don’t you want to hear?’

  A single word leapt out from all others and Livia grasped the new topic.

  ‘What’s a successor?’ Tiberius whispered, having heard it too.

  She looked at him like he was half-witted but didn’t answer. Tiberius crushed my bare toes under his boots. Beyond the curtain Octavian’s voice rose again, now extremely angry. His supporters made noises of placation and suppliance but the great general Agrippa shouted them all down to nothing. As Octavian’s oldest friend, he would not be frightened into sycophancy.

  ‘The question is already being asked,’ he said when all others had quietened. ‘At least by those who can see beyond their bread bowls.’

  ‘Rome is prosperous again – we’re free of civil wars,’ Octavian responded, ‘and this is due to me. The question smacks of ingratitude!’

  Agrippa chose to overlook his own considerable role in attaining the peace for Rome. ‘The question smacks of foresight, Octavian. A wise choice will see Rome in permanent ascent – but a poor one will see her fortunes plummet.’

  Octavian growled with further objection but Agrippa cut him off. ‘And let’s abandon the republican sham within these walls,’ he said. ‘Rome must maintain a First Citizen if civil wars are to be avoided forever. Under a Republic we’re doomed to them – as Caesar well knew. But under a well-appointed successor to your rule, the peace you’ve fought for will endure.’