Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  At once it was designated the most prominent item for the large, whitewashed boards that were posted daily in the Forum, and several boards were immediately painted over to be laid out again.

  I hung around to watch as the notarii began to transcribe it in the tall narrow lettering used by signwriters; lettering I couldn’t read myself. I observed the notarii in silence for a while, and they worked in silence too, lit by oil lamps in the fading light of dusk. They must have seen a strange look on my face because one of them turned to ask me if he had misspelled a word. I answered in honesty that I didn’t know; I couldn’t read it. Like so many of the lowly in Rome, I relied on the praeco for the Acta’s titbits. I expected derision from the notarii at this admission but there was none.

  ‘I can only read and write because my old dominus taught me,’ the man told me with sympathy. ‘It was the greatest gift he could have given me – as good as gaining freedom, almost.’

  I nodded, only dimly conceiving how either thing might be called a gift.

  ‘The written word is a world of its own,’ he went on, attempting to explain it. ‘It opens the mind, it sets it free. It lets you live in another world that’s better than your own – a hundred thousand times better.’

  I thought I grasped his meaning. ‘A world like Olympus, then? A gods’ world?’

  The notarius nodded, liking the image. ‘Just like that. It’s where reading and writing can take you if you let it, friend.’

  On my return walk from the Forum, re-ascending the Palatine, I thought about this in the light of an earlier exchange I had had that evening with Livia. Tormented by the new obstacle now placed in the path of her hopes for her sons, Livia had discovered a basket of puppies in the slave quarters. Enraged by the filth of them she had ordered the creatures drowned, and when the broken-hearted slaves had taken too long in the unpleasant task, Livia carried it out herself, forcing each mewling pup into a tub of water.

  As she did this, she had told me that she no longer wanted me as her slave.

  Once I would have been devastated, but not so now. We were bound together by my sacrifice; I had emasculated myself for her as Attis had. I knew she could never be rid of me so, I’d waited for my domina to explain herself as she drowned the last pup.

  ‘You’ll be among the wedding presents,’ she’d said at last, wiping her wet hands on my tunica. ‘You’ll be one of my gifts to Julia. She’s always liked you.’

  Julia had indeed always treated me with tenderness, and I had responded in kind.

  ‘But you know what is expected of you as my wedding present, don’t you, Iphicles?’

  ‘Yes, domina,’ I’d said grimly. How could I not? On my return walk from the Acta Diurna I thought of Livia’s dreadful expectations of me; and I thought, too, of the notarius’s promise of literacy’s ‘better world’.

  I wondered then whether perhaps there could be something else in all this once my duty was done, something good that was wholly for me.

  Agonalia

  January, 13 BC

  Nine years later: the Senate votes to

  appoint First Citizen Caesar Augustus

  as Imperator for a further five years.

  He accepts

  There was just enough room in the litter for three. Julia was still able to recline at full length, suckling little Agrippina at her breast, and in the corner with my knees drawn up to my chin, I was able to avoid the long walk too. I was grateful, knowing I would have struggled to cover such a large distance on foot with the less-favoured slaves. But I was happy, too, that Julia was putting me to work to test my new skills.

  I scratched at the surface of the wax tablet.

  ‘How much have we filled so far?’ Julia asked me.

  ‘About a third of it, Lady. But I have another blank tablet to fill too.’

  ‘Good. This is passing the time. Read me what I’ve said so far.’

  I swallowed, hoping I’d made no humiliating mistakes.

  Dear cousin Antonia,

  Thank you for your humorous accounts of my sons’ activities in Rome. I miss them so much here, being so very far away from them, but I certainly don’t miss their naughtiness. Gaius has always been the instigator of bad behaviour in the past, so if this is still true in your experience, Cousin, then you must instruct his tutor to beat him exceptionally hard.

  ‘Well done, Iphicles,’ said Julia, smiling.

  ‘But there’s more.’

  ‘I know – I’m just impressed with how well you read it.’

  I blushed, proud of myself. ‘You taught me, Lady. Before my domina sent me to join your household I knew nothing.’

  ‘My stepmother undervalues you. Finish the letter so far.’

  I continued.

  Lucius is easily led. He should be beaten for that, too, but not quite so forcefully.

  I watched my now twenty-five-year-old mistress as her mind wandered fondly to her growing sons. I felt great affection for Julia. It wasn’t love – that was something I felt only for my domina – but I had a strong stirring of emotion for Livia’s stepdaughter all the same. I was protective of her and jealous of any other slave who rivalled me for position of favourite. And this created much conflict within me when I remembered the real reason I had been ‘given’ to her.

  Julia placed her infant daughter at her other breast as I went on reading out the letter.

  Since my father adopted the boys at the commencement of my husband’s posting to the East, I’ve been worried for the burden this might place upon Livia. She is not as young as she was, and she already labours so hard for Rome. I was relieved, Antonia, to hear that you’ve taken over their daily supervision from her. It’s delightful that they attend official banquets now – and I love the description you gave me of them seated in front of my father’s dining couch. They must’ve been so excited the first time this happened. I’ll send them separate letters to encourage them in the swimming lessons my father gives them in the Tiber – likewise in their handwriting instruction, too. But I was a little mystified as to why my father is taking such pains to get their writing to mirror his own so exactly when he has such an unpleasant scrawl! However, I’m sure he gets pleasure out of it too, so no harm is done.

  Julia studied the darkening clouds outside. The sky was growing thick and heavy.

  I read on.

  As I write this letter I am journeying to Ilium, the city my father founded at the site of ancient Troy. Agrippa is ahead of me and I am hurrying to join him. People have been falling over themselves to offer us accommodation, as usual – as have people in all the other places we’ve visited. As ever, we’ve chosen carefully, fully knowing that one day those same people will appear on our own doorstep in Rome expecting the favour to be returned. Oh, and I have also been safely delivered of a beautiful baby daughter, Agrippina. Her father is yet to even see her, which is why we are trying to hurry. He will love her when he holds her for the first time – as will you, dear Cousin. She is quite the prettiest girl-child I have ever known.

  I stopped. ‘That is your letter so far, Lady.’

  ‘Very good. What else should I tell her about, do you think?’

  A fat, round raindrop the size of a pebble hit the tablet. I shook it off and peered outside at the ink-black sky. ‘There’s a big storm coming.’

  ‘But there isn’t a gale,’ said Julia, ‘so it shouldn’t delay us. We’ll just get wet a little.’ She wrapped her palla around the baby protectively.

  ‘Perhaps tell the Lady Antonia about your statue?’ I suggested.

  ‘It sounds too immodest.’

  ‘It was an honour – she’d like to know.’

  ‘Well, if you think so, Iphicles.’

  More raindrops fell, engorged and heavy, hitting the litter canopy with explosive force. I tightened my own cloak about me as Julia began to dictate again.

  A delightful honour was paid me in Antioch when we left the city for the final time. The city fathers unveiled a statue in my honour. Well, in
Juno’s honour, really – they just put my face on her. Next time you visit Syria be sure to acknowledge the stature of Juno Domiduca in the forum – ‘she who brings the bride into her new home’. The job they did on my features was really very flattering.

  There was neither thunder nor lightning to announce the deluge. The clouds fell to earth and the scattered shower of bloated raindrops became a solid wall of water. I looked up at the bulging litter canopy. ‘It’ll give way, Lady.’ I could barely be heard above the roar.

  ‘A little water won’t hurt us.’

  ‘It’s so heavy.’ I took off my cloak and gave it to Julia. ‘Wrap this around the little one too – rain like this brings a chill with it.’

  ‘Take it back, Iphicles, you’ll catch a chill yourself.’

  ‘Please, Lady.’

  Julia swaddled Agrippina with the cloak and called outside to her litter-bearers. ‘I’m worried for your footing! Should we stop somewhere?’

  The lead bearer called back above the noise: ‘We’ll continue, domina. There’s no shelter in this valley.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  I peered through the sodden curtain as the rain fell in huge cupfuls, pelting the dry soil that surrounded us. ‘It’s been too long since rain has fallen here.’

  ‘The soil will be glad of it then.’

  ‘The soil is baked into rock – it can’t soak up the water.’

  Julia looked outside again. The rainfall was too fast and heavy to be absorbed, forming torrents at the hoofs of the horses and oxen. The wheels of the carts behind us slipped in the current. The soldiers and slaves travelling on foot began to lose their hold.

  ‘I’m worried,’ Julia shouted to her lead litter-bearer again. ‘We must stop somewhere – people will injure themselves.’

  A soldier was swept away as she said it, shouting to his fellows, who in turn lost their footing and were swept after him in the rush of rising water.

  ‘Help those men – help them!’ Julia cried out.

  A chest washed from a bullock cart and struck the litter leader hard in ribs. Julia reached her hand out to steady him but the air was already knocked from his lungs. His shoulder crushed, he sank into the water and was lost to the sight of the other five bearers.

  ‘Find him – ‘ Julia tried to order them. ‘Find your leader – ‘

  But two slaves now held a heavier load on one side and the litter tilted and jerked as they fought to keep it and themselves from destruction.

  ‘Oh Great Mother – please protect us,’ I prayed aloud.

  ‘Keep your head, Iphicles. We’ll find safe ground.’

  The road was a charging river. A log from somewhere far behind us came rushing down the channel. When I saw it my throat would make no sound.

  The log smashed into the litter and all five bearers were knocked beneath the torrent. Julia and her baby were thrown in with them while I clung to the litter frame as it was tossed and broken in the flood.

  Julia and the child were swallowed by the water. I abandoned the litter and threw myself after them. Thinking only of holding onto her child, Julia was unable to use her arms to right herself. The current twisted her over and under until she no longer knew which way the surface was. She looked below her and thought she saw light. She swam towards it although her instincts were telling her she was heading for the bottom. She was wrong to ignore them. I saw her drowning beneath me and pulled her to the surface by her hair.

  Julia broke free of the waves, clinging to my arms for support and taking desperate gulps of air. She held the tiny girl above us and was suddenly shocked at how little she weighed. Then we realised that all she held was my cloak.

  In the horror Julia experienced, she thought of the courage Livia had shown when struck with the wrath of the gods in the forest fire. She remembered the story of how Livia had fought to save Tiberius, even when her own hair was in flames. Julia plunged into the waters like a fish, screaming for her baby when her head reappeared at the surface for breath.

  I followed her, already believing Agrippina to be dead and wanting only to keep Julia alive. But her desperate hands stretched through the torrent and suddenly touched flesh. Julia gripped fast and plucked the infant Agrippina to the air. She turned and looked for me to help her but I was lost in the current.

  A floating cart appeared and Julia pitched Agrippina by the ankle so that the little girl struck the flat tray, safely inside. She bawled as though her lungs would tear and Julia was glad that her baby was still alive enough to feel it. With her remaining will she clung to the cart’s wheel, crushed and grazed by all the passing debris.

  Julia never let go, singing songs of victory to the child.

  The rain stopped falling in an hour and the water receded another two hours after that. The floating cart moored itself upon an outcrop of rocks, leaving Julia bruised and raw.

  When Agrippa found his wife and baby a full day later, she was in delirium from exposure. He had already found me and one or two other surviving slaves. But our welfare was unimportant next to that of his missing wife. Her thoughts were only for her husband’s first sight of their new daughter.

  ‘Is she still alive? Tell me she’s alive,’ Julia pleaded. ‘I don’t know what’s real any more.’

  ‘Hush,’ said Agrippa as he stroked his wife’s face.

  The child was unharmed, still suckling at her breast. Julia passed the baby to him and Agrippa gently kissed the little girl.

  ‘She is the reflection of you, Julia, in strength and spirit – a pearl.’

  Julia wept a little. ‘Every day I thank my father for his foresight in choosing you as my husband,’ she told Agrippa. ‘It was such a wise choice. I love you so much.’

  But when Agrippa tried to help Julia to her feet he saw what the flash flood had cost her. Her legs wouldn’t support her weight. She was crippled.

  Agrippa blamed Ilium for the calamity. The city was fined a hundred thousand drachmae by Rome, which was financially crippling – a symbolic mirror of Julia’s injury. No-one among Ilium’s fathers was brave enough to appeal.

  Once sufficiently recovered from the elements to take food and drink again, Julia was still unable to move her legs. Though no bones had been broken and she wasn’t in pain, the physicians believed her state to be permanent.

  Agrippa was incandescent. ‘I reject your prognosis. There’s no physical sign of her crippling – I insist you make her walk.’

  ‘The injury is unseen, Lord.’ The physicians were ready to flee if Agrippa grew violent. ‘We believe it’s inside her skull.’

  ‘She walks with her legs, not her head!’

  ‘The impulse to walk is stored in the brain. The brain was damaged – and the impulse too.’

  Agrippa struck the elder Greek hard in the eye and I moved swiftly to stop the younger physician from bolting as Agrippa laid into him with a vicious kick to the bowel.

  ‘This is quackery.’ He kicked the wretch again. ‘Tell my wife of all the others made lame through accident that Providence has allowed to walk. There are hundreds of such cases.’

  But the hapless doctors could not recall any such examples – certainly not in Ilium. Faced with this, Agrippa claimed to know of many such cases among battle-scarred soldiers.

  Listening, Julia knew that he was inventing tales for her sake, and unable to bear hurting him, she pretended to take hope. ‘If my head is damaged it’ll heal with rest,’ she suggested to him, ‘just like any other part of the body.’ She turned to the doctors. ‘You must recall many stories of the curative effects of rest, gentlemen?’

  The physicians knew a lifeline when they were thrown one and reported several such instances in their experience – but none where the patient had been crippled. Agrippa’s need for hope was so consuming that he forgot his fury and made them define ‘rest’ in clearer terms. Picking themselves up from the dust, they enthused over the healing qualities of warm water.

  Agrippa took Julia to the newly built Ilium baths every day
. Caring nothing for the strict conventions of male/female segregation Agrippa bathed openly with his wife, attended by a large retinue of slaves of both sexes, myself among them of course. Ilium ladies were shocked when Agrippa’s party descended upon them during the women’s hours of the mornings. Similarly, Ilium men were outraged by Agrippa tenderly carrying his naked wife into their waters in the mid-afternoons.

  Ferried from one pool to another, floating for long periods on her back and side in water of varying temperatures, Julia’s lower limbs were stroked and pulled and bent at the joints by women hired for this purpose. At Agrippa’s command they manipulated her legs as if she still had a will that could move them herself. Throughout it all, Julia made a sustained show of hope, which in turn sustained her husband in continuing a process that he believed would cure her. But there was no improvement.

  The weeks turned into months and Julia’s legs began to waste away. The news had by now reached Rome and letters began to appear from distressed citizens. Some begged Julia to try even stranger cures. Others informed her they were praying to the gods to rob them of their own legs so that Julia might walk in return. Others still, somewhat less heart-warmingly, asked Julia to remember them in her will.

  Among the family the most frequent correspondent was Jullus, son of the dead Antony. Often claiming to be writing on behalf of his sister, Antonia – who was far too occupied with a newborn son to write herself – Jullus wanted only to cheer Julia with frivolities, expressing his repeated confidence that Agrippa would be taking care of her every other need.

  He sent her gossip from the homes of the First Citizen and her other relatives. He told of her boys, Gaius and Lucius, who had been informed of their mother’s accident and held firm in their belief that she would soon recover. He told of Tiberius and Drusus winning victories for Rome in Germany. But he spoke little of himself or his marriage to Marcella, sister to the late Marcellus and the very woman Agrippa had divorced to marry Julia. He knew Agrippa was afforded the respect of reading these letters.