Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  There was utter silence. Even the builders stopped their work, though they had no idea of the magnitude of the discussion in the atrium. The boiling thunderclouds above seemed to have frozen too. In the alcove, Tiberius went to say something but Livia placed her hand on his mouth again. This time he didn’t bite her.

  ‘I encourage you to find that successor from within your own Julian house,’ Agrippa continued again, ‘rather than any other house that seeks to rival it. This will prevent the threat of future wars too.’ He attempted to change his tone to something more solicitous. ‘And Livia has borne two sons already. I can only hope you are engaged in the conception of a third, old friend?’

  Behind the curtain, my domina’s hand fell to her belly, conscious of the twisted, dead organs that the horror at the theatre had left her with.

  Octavian roared with rage. ‘We will never speak of that again! Do you understand me? Never!’

  A bolt of lightning shot through the impluvium and struck the statue of Jupiter where it stood in the pool that caught rainwater. A second bolt spilt the head from the god’s neck, reducing it to fragments. The third and final bolt struck the statue again, just as Octavian leapt forward to steady it as it toppled from its plinth. The force of the blow flung Octavian across the room like a cloth doll, directly at our alcove. In the crash of his landing, the curtain was torn from its rings and Livia was thrown from her chair hard against me standing behind her. Feeling my ribs to be broken, I was comforted at least to know that I had cushioned her fall.

  When Octavian came to consciousness again his eyes focused not on his frightened wife and supporters but on Tiberius and Drusus. In all the chaos, his stepsons had gathered the fragments of Jupiter’s head and were holding them out to Octavian in their hands. They didn’t know what else to do with them.

  In a moment of revelation, my domina realised she knew what to do with the pieces exactly. Jupiter himself had just shown it to her. It was a crystallisation of the real meaning of the haruspex’s words.

  Murdered Tiberius Nero was the sire.

  Two houses joined. The Julii and the Claudii.

  The first will be he who nests for the cuckoo. Tiberius and Drusus were the cuckoo’s eggs, sired by one father but raised by another, just like the birds.

  The blood remains pure. The boys’ Claudian blood would pass down to their sons and their sons’ sons. From these would come the other kings, all descended from Livia’s womb.

  When my domina explained her new interpretation of Thrasyllus’s words to me – nursing my poor cracked ribs – I responded with awe and praise, as was expected. But still I pondered her new meanings in my head.

  It seemed to me that she was half-right, that some of the prophecy had been met as she said. But there were other parts which to my ears seemed an ill fit.

  Tiberius and Drusus were both the first king? How could this be? And didn’t the prophecy’s words imply that this regent nested for the cuckoo, without actually being the bird himself?

  But I was wise to suppress these doubts and never voice them. My determined domina would have been deaf to them anyway.

  THERE IS A

  SHE-WOLF

  IN THE

  SHADOWS,

  KING

  Floralia

  April, 25 BC

  Four years later: the Senate and

  People of Rome award First Citizen

  Caesar Augustus the consulship

  for the ninth time

  Julia held out the length of completed toga as far as she could stretch it under the first rays of sunrise. The purple stripe had been precisely measured, but she enjoyed the little ritual her father liked to subject her to. She pretended she had never held it near a measuring stick before.

  ‘I pray that it will be the right width, Father.’

  ‘It looks very close, but my standards are exact,’ said Octavian.

  ‘Because you are First Citizen,’ said Julia, nodding gravely. But there was a twinkle in her eye.

  I took the measuring stick away and tilted my head to Octavian. ‘Exactly the right measurement, domine.’

  Julia made a delightful show of surprise and relief but her father saw through her. ‘You’re too fond of perfection to have left it to chance, Julia,’ he said with affection. ‘Let’s not pretend otherwise, eh?’

  ‘Oh, Father, as if I wouldn’t have made sure!’ she said, laughing. ‘I’ve made an art of them now – and I can do them in half the time and at twice the quality.’

  Octavian clapped his hands and a trio of tonsores entered the garden where he was breaking the night’s fast in the first light of new morning. Dividing the First Citizen’s head into thirds, they set about trimming his hair simultaneously. This was something Julia had not seen before and she didn’t know whether to laugh or deride it. Octavian read her thoughts. ‘My new innovation – it saves me time. One man alone takes too long.’

  Julia tried to ignore the already lopsided results. ‘Is there anything else before I begin my day, Father?’

  Octavian indicated no, but just as she bowed and turned to re-enter the house he called out to her. ‘There is one thing, Julia.’

  She returned to his side.

  ‘How old are you now?’ he asked.

  ‘You know how old I am – thirteen.’

  ‘How did you grow up so fast?’

  ‘By eating good, simple food and exercising daily,’ she replied, even though his question had been rhetorical. ‘Is that all now, Father?’

  ‘When you marry, you know there’ll be good reason for it, don’t you, Julia?’

  She was thrown somewhat. ‘Married?’

  ‘When you join with a husband – it’ll be with a good man, I promise you. The marriage will be good for the Julian house too – and good for Rome. Very good for everyone, in fact.’

  Julia was bewildered. ‘Yes, Father. But why talk of this now?’

  ‘Oh, well, I just thought it was something I should say. You’re so grown-up now, you see. And you’re a very beautiful girl too.’

  Julia flushed. She had never received a compliment of this nature before.

  ‘It’s time to start having such thoughts in your mind,’ said Octavian. But when he made no sign of saying any more on the subject, Julia bowed again, regathering the toga under her arms. She walked to edge of the garden and I followed respectfully behind her with the measuring stick. But the conversation had come as too much of a surprise for her and she paused at the steps to the dining room, before turning to face her father again. I retreated discreetly into the shade.

  ‘Does this mean you’ve found a husband for me, Father?’

  The trio of tonsores paused, shears in midair.

  ‘Yes, I have,’ said Octavian as though it was an everyday event. But to Julia this was the most important news she had ever expected to hear in her life – and she had not anticipated being told it so casually while her father was having his hair cut. Even I was somewhat taken aback.

  ‘Do I know him?’ she asked, trying to project maturity.

  ‘Yes, Julia, you do,’ said Octavian, with a smile that made her apprehension vanish. ‘But you’re not to tell anyone yet – can I trust you to keep it secret?’

  Julia made an oath of it.

  When she finally left the peristyle and walked through the dining room again, she was surprised to find my domina sitting quietly behind one of the pillars. Following Julia, I wasn’t surprised at all.

  ‘Stepmother – I didn’t realise you were there.’

  ‘It promises to be a fine spring morning,’ Livia said, betraying nothing.

  There was something about her manner that Julia found vaguely unsettling. But she dismissed it in her excitement. ‘Did you hear my news? Did you hear what Father just told me?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I did,’ my domina said. ‘Aren’t you a lucky girl? You’ll be the envy of Rome.’

  ‘Do you think?’

  ‘Oh yes, I do.’

  Julia made to continue to
wards her room to begin the day’s studies, but something caused her to stop and look back to her stepmother again. Livia had not moved a muscle, but she was now looking expressionlessly at me. ‘Did you know about my betrothal before this morning, Stepmother?’ Julia asked. ‘Before Father told me?’

  Livia turned to answer her with complete honesty. ‘I knew nothing about it at all.’

  Julia attempted shock when she joined her friends on their afternoon river walk. As her assigned custos slave, I followed with a parasol, jostling for space with the other four slaves who already laboured under this task for their own young mistresses. Julia found her friends in the middle of a debate on how her cousin Marcellus might look beneath his stoic’s abolla. Marcellus was very much admired by the well-born girls of Rome.

  ‘Why would anybody want to know what he looks like under that smelly thing?’ Julia asked, sliding into her habitual stance of innocence. ‘He’s just a boy. Worse, he’s just my cousin. And they all look the same.’

  ‘He’s a man,’ came the quick clarification from one of the friends, ‘not a boy. He’s seventeen. He received his toga years ago.’

  ‘Did he?’ Julia made a show of not recalling this but wasn’t quite so convincing. Around her, four sets of female eyes narrowed at the oddness of this.

  ‘He’s so terribly handsome,’ said one of the girls. ‘There’re portraits of him for sale in the Forum.’

  This was news to Julia. ‘Really?’

  ‘As if he would have sat for any of them. When would he have had the time?’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Are the portraits a good resemblance?’ Julia couldn’t help herself from asking.

  Suspicion intensified. The girl that Julia considered to be her dearest friend among the four took charge. ‘Such a fine lineage Marcellus has – though it’s very complicated. How is he related to you again, Julia?’

  She trod carefully. ‘He’s the son of my aunt Octavia, the First Citizen’s sister. Marcellus was born in her first marriage, before she divorced that husband and married Antony and had another child with him.’

  ‘Dead Antony?’

  ‘Well, he is now, yes.’

  But the genealogy was a pretext. All were watching Julia closely.

  ‘Well, anyway, who wouldn’t want to see Marcellus unclothed?’ the boldest of the four friends posed. ‘He’s so good-looking in the parts of him that we can already see – just imagine what his hidden parts must be like?’

  There were sighs of agreement at this, and although she tried to train her mind away from it, Julia could so very clearly imagine those hidden parts of her cousin that she feared it was written on her features – and indeed it was. She caught my eye and instantly flushed with exposure.

  ‘I don’t know what the fuss is,’ she said airily to her friends, ‘I saw him at gymnastics on the Field of Mars and I didn’t need a cup of water or a stupid slave to fan me afterwards.’

  This was seized upon at once. ‘You lucky thing! What did he look like?’

  She answered with the first silly word that came to her, unthinkingly guileless. ‘He was delicious.’

  ‘Julia!’

  She flushed an even deeper shade of scarlet, hopelessly revealed, and the four friends surrounded her in astonishment,

  batting us custos slaves and our parasols away.

  ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Are you in love with him?’

  ‘Julia – I’ve never seen you make that face before!’

  ‘I can’t help it!’ Julia wailed. ‘Oh, I’m burdened with such a secret and it’s so unfair that I can’t share it – it’s the sort of news that’s supposed to be shared.’

  The four friends looked at each other in open envy and then directed more piercing looks at us rejected slaves. We retreated further, parasols limp.

  ‘Does it concern Marcellus?’ the boldest friend whispered.

  Julia was stricken, biting her lip. She gave a barely perceptible nod. The girls erupted. ‘I told you nothing – I didn’t say a word!’ Julia cried.

  Her dearest friend hastily reassured. ‘Indeed you didn’t. You told us nothing at all. Your conscience is clear. But it’s a terrible thing to be crushed by a secret. We’ll help you share it, still without you telling us anything at all. Then you’ll be free of the burden but won’t feel guilty. Is that a good idea?’

  Julia caved in entirely. ‘I’m to marry him.’

  The four friends squealed so loudly their respective wet nurses looked up in unison from where they gossiped in the shade of the trees. They traded raised eyebrows with us dismissed parasol-bearers.

  ‘Oh Julia, Julia – you’re so lucky!’

  She was hugged and kissed all round, then hugged again. Two of the girls took a hand of Julia’s each and the four escorted her to a place on the embankment.

  ‘So then,’ said the boldest friend, making herself comfortable in the shade, ‘the marriage night …’

  Julia’s joy gave way to unease.

  ‘Are you frightened of it? I would be.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Julia. She was terrified.

  ‘Do you know what to expect? Has someone had the “conversation” with you?’

  ‘I don’t need a “conversation”,’ said Julia, finding safety in indignation. ‘I know exactly what to expect – who doesn’t?’

  They waited for her to illuminate them.

  ‘Well, really,’ Julia huffed, ‘don’t be so childish. On the marriage night the bride must be penetrated.’

  The girls shrieked with mirth and Julia wanted a chasm to open up and swallow them all.

  ‘Aren’t there books on the matter?’ asked the bold friend. ‘Something to guide Julia when she’s penetrated?’

  ‘Not decent ones,’ said another. ‘Just pornography.’

  ‘I don’t require an instruction book,’ Julia declared, yet she longed for exactly that, ‘at least in those matters …’ She paused and the friends saw that she was indeed very unsure about the many expectations. ‘But a book specific to marriage-night conduct would be useful. I mean, I’m sure marriage nights must be quite particular, and very different from everyday coupling.’

  Her friends knew she was privately anxious, but none wanted to risk giving away their own profound ignorance. ‘You should discuss what is expected with your mother,’ said the most sensitive of the four. ‘I believe that’s the right conduct in itself.’

  ‘I’ve never met my mother,’ said Julia.

  ‘Your stepmother, I mean – the Revered Lady Livia. You’re a Lady yourself, after all. The expectations might be far higher for you Julii than the rest of us.’

  ‘Yes. You might be right.’ But Julia had no intention of having such an embarrassing conversation unless Livia herself initiated it. And this in itself was unlikely.

  The friend who had spoken least found voice in the brief silence. ‘Hippolyta, my wet nurse, told me what to expect,’ she said. ‘You’re quite right, Julia, marriage nights are very different from day-to-day couplings.’

  Julia leapt on this. ‘How? What are the features?’

  ‘Well, they’re horrible brutal attacks. Violent. Marriage nights are suffered by the bride across hours and hours – endured only as a Roman woman must.’

  Julia paled – as did the other friends. ‘But what sort of attacks?’

  The purveyor of wisdom whispered into her hand so that Hippolyta herself would not discern it from where she sat with the other wet nurses. ‘A bride might be taken in any hole her body can provide: the cunny, the mouth, even the bung.’

  Julia felt weak.

  ‘And the man’s seed is more precious than gold,’ the friend went on. ‘If a single drop hits the floor then the bride must select an implement from a choice of six with which to be beaten.’

  Everyone went very quiet, summoning pictures of this in their minds. Then, after several minutes’ contemplation, Julia led the change to another conversation.

  But her mind stayed fixed on
Marcellus and his precious seed. Perhaps if she loved him enough she could survive such violence with a man her father had promised would be so very good for Rome. She felt the rapid beating of her heart and knew that she truly loved her betrothed already.

  Still assigned as Julia’s custos slave, I sat a discreet distance away with Marcellus’s tutor while the young betrothed couple sat at the edge of the fountain in the Oxheads peristyle and had a funny conversation about the frogs. At least, Julia thought it was funny; Marcellus stayed very straight-faced. She had never meant to discuss the croaking amphibians with anyone, let alone the man she would marry. But the conversation seemed to arise out of nothing, and when she found herself at the crest of it she felt surprisingly animated.

  Julia was really rather fond of Oxheads’ frogs. Marcellus ostensibly practised his oratory – and Julia took the part of the enraptured audience, Rome. They steered towards the amphibians’ private lives in a manner that Julia found deliriously provocative. But she only began to understand Marcellus’s real meaning when his sideways look twisted the uninhibited nature of the frogs’ lives into personal significance.

  ‘There’s the best frog in the pool, Julia – he thinks himself pretty fine, doesn’t he?’ He was not even pointing at the frog he was describing and Julia scanned the pool to determine which one he meant. ‘He thinks himself a prize catch,’ Marcellus went on, ‘though he’s barely out of tadpole school. Look how he puffs out his chest. The gods must find him very comical.’

  ‘Which one do you mean?’ Julia asked, somewhat lost.

  Marcellus’s eyes were sapphire-blue. It was strange, Julia thought to herself, that she had never really noticed how beautiful they were before.

  ‘The one all the pretty little lady frogs burp in answer to, thinking he’s calling to them,’ Marcellus said of the unseen frog. ‘But if only they knew that he calls to one frog alone – the one he desires; the one he would kiss on his lilypad, and stroke her hair, and tell her that he loves her like a goddess and will worship her always.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘The one he will send to the stars and back when he couples with her.’