Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  Vipsania fled through the streets, certain they were chasing her. Shrieking inside her head, she ran into unnamed alleys and paths until she found herself lost – yet she was surrounded by staring people. The gorge from the trauma rose in her throat, and although she tried to swallow it she couldn’t stop herself spewing at the base of a street shrine. She saw that she had defiled the local crossroad Lares. She begged the little gods for forgiveness, and in the process she lost the iron grip of her emotions that was hers as a noblewoman of Rome. She was in pieces.

  When Vipsania awoke she was in her own bed. She had no concept of how she had got there. She called for her son’s wet nurse but received no answer. She was too weak to investigate, but eventually a slave came in with a bowl of light broth. Vipsania was grateful for the food, and when she’d eaten hungrily she asked where her little Castor was.

  ‘He has been sent to the dominus.’

  Vipsania would not let herself fall apart again, but this blow was the worst. She had been divorced without explanation and her son had been taken from her. More servants came to attend her but she recognised none of their faces. When she pressed them, she was told that they had all been sent to her as gifts by the First Citizen.

  Vipsania found her strength again by throwing every last one of these gifts into the street.

  Seven months into her new widowhood, Julia was delivered of a third son, a boy she named Agrippa Postumus after his late father. The birthing chair was not even scrubbed clean before an announcement was made to Rome that she would remarry. Her new betrothed was Octavian’s stepson, Tiberius. In a staged exchange intended to provide indelible words for Rome, Tiberius embraced his mother in a tearful show of affection upon the steps of the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter. Livia learned that he had just sacrificed a calf to the all-powerful god.

  ‘I’ve thanked Lord Jupiter,’ he told her in the voice he used upon his troops, ‘for the beneficence of being delivered from an undistinguished father in order to be raised by the First Citizen as his own. I’ve thanked Lord Jupiter for the many opportunities the First Citizen has given me in order to win glory for Rome in her wars. In addition, I’ve thanked Lord Jupiter for the honour of marrying the First Citizen’s daughter in order to receive the privilege of providing protection to the First Citizen’s grandsons.’

  Livia fell on a cushion that I placed discreetly at her knee and kissed her son’s feet. ‘And I will thank Lord Jupiter for this honour given to a child of my blood.’

  While mother and son’s public conversation was widely reported, their private discourses in the weeks before to the betrothal were unknown. False conjecture was raised that perhaps Tiberius had thrown himself upon Livia’s wise counsel, having reached the depths of misery. For the past eight years he’d been married to Agrippa’s beautiful daughter and Rome had believed this union to be among the happiest in the Julian house. Tiberius and his wife were famous for their public displays of affection. But calumnies began to be heard that Vipsania alone had been happy, blind to her husband’s growing hatred. The birth of their child several years previously – a boy known by his endearing pet name of Castor – had only deepened Vipsania’s delusion, it was falsely claimed.

  In the weeks that followed, Vipsania slept little, pondering the doom that had befallen her. The husband she loved more than life itself had been claimed by her own former stepmother. Vipsania made trips to many temples, in every one praying so loudly for vengeance that her fellow devotees slipped away in embarrassment – or better still for Vipsania – stark horror. She wanted Rome to know: the Revered Lady Julia was a monster.

  Hour after hour in her ransacked house Vipsania raked over the past for signs of Julia’s real nature. Her stepmother was only a year or so older; she had been a friend to Vipsania, not a parent; and Julia had always treated her with kindness. Yet the more Vipsania thought upon Julia’s treachery, the more unable she was to see how and when her husband’s new wife had schemed for it. Vipsania could not recall a moment when the look on Julia’s face, the tone to her laughter, the unconscious gestures of her hands and body had suggested she was planning such destruction.

  And then the truth dawned upon Vipsania and she saw at last that her trust and love for Julia had not been misplaced at all. Her former stepmother had schemed at nothing. With this now a certainty in her heart, Vipsania’s anger turned to pity. She wept for the fate that awaited Julia, and for the grief that would visit the poor woman again.

  When told of her betrothal to the man she regarded as her brother, Julia had voiced no objections. In her heart she dwelled upon Vipsania’s imagined reaction but she tried to remind herself that Agrippa had also had a wife whom he hastily divorced. Marcella had found herself a new husband in Jullus, so perhaps Vipsania would do the same.

  Tiberius had not grown to become a handsome man, but he was tall and broad-shouldered, and refined in his bearing – he held himself as a prince – all of which were qualities Julia told herself she could love. Indeed, in the days before she had married Marcellus, Julia’s eye had even roamed to Tiberius across the dinner couches, appraising his lean form. She had also secretly observed him at practice manoeuvres on the Field of Mars. She had thought him glamorous. Julia had seen in Tiberius what Vipsania might first have fallen in love with. She made a sacrifice at the Temple of Venus in the hope that these qualities would now come to ensnare her own heart just as utterly. She wanted to love Tiberius with such a passion that she could drive out her memories of having loved two husbands before him.

  Upon returning from her visit to the goddess, Julia learned that Vipsania had sacrificed there only the day before. Tiberius’s divorced wife had made a shocking scene before the deity, declaring Julia a witch and a Fury to the open-mouthed priestesses. Then she had killed and bled a lamb, begging Venus to grant the very opposite of any desire that Julia herself might express.

  Frightened, Julia wrote a long letter to Vipsania trying to explain her position. Gaius and Lucius needed Tiberius’s protection should the First Citizen die before they reached manhood – surely Vipsania understood that? She was about to hand the letter to a slave to deliver when Livia came into Julia’s room guiding a small boy. I followed behind them.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Livia. ‘You remember the Lady Julia, don’t you, Castor?’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother. She’s my aunt.’

  ‘Was your aunt,’ corrected Livia. ‘Soon she’ll be your mother.’

  Castor was confused. ‘What about my own mother?’

  ‘She isn’t very well. I believe she’s going to the countryside. Anyway, she’s not important to you now. Why don’t you kiss the Lady Julia?’

  Julia held out her arms encouragingly but the little boy saw a flash of doubt behind her eyes that mirrored his own. ‘Can’t I see my mother again?’ he asked.

  Livia smiled briefly at Julia and sidestepped a direct answer to the little boy. ‘I must ask you not to cry about this,’ she said to him. ‘It’s very unmanly and not what a Roman should do. You must accept the First Citizen’s decisions and be glad that you’re also gaining three brothers and a sister. Won’t that be nice? Your father is such a strong man that he’ll now be protector to all of you.’

  Castor said nothing.

  When Livia had taken the boy away to meet his new tutor Julia retrieved her letter to Vipsania. She destroyed it in water, knowing that any explanation, however sincere, could never possibly be welcome.

  On the wedding night Julia found herself conducted to a near-identical connubial room to the one that had appalled Marcellus and herself nearly fifteen years earlier. The decorations were slightly different, but the enthusiasm of the nuptial slaves was unchanged. Multiple pairs of hands sought to undress them and this time Julia made no objections. Tiberius was stripped too, and when each of their last garments was removed the slaves pointed out ‘features of interest’ to the spouses as part of the bawdy ritual.

  ‘See here, Lord,’ said one, stroking the air around Julia’s
breasts. ‘Very fine udders – you could water an army with these.’

  Julia rolled her eyes good-naturedly, but Tiberius’s expression was blank.

  ‘And see here, my Lady,’ said another, fanning the air around Tiberius’s loins. ‘The heat from this thing could start a fire! You’d be advised to spit on it for a while.’

  The slaves giggled and Julia freely joined in, the more so just to see an end of it.

  Tiberius had no need to raise his voice to make his disgust clear. ‘Get out, you little cunts,’ he said.

  The slaves froze and Julia laughed in the sudden, terrible silence, thinking he would make a comic performance of chasing them or similar. Any pantomime was acceptable on these occasions. But he said nothing more and the air grew arctic.

  ‘You heard my husband,’ said Julia at last. ‘Please leave us.’

  The slaves fled in a body, pulling the servants’ door sharply behind them.

  Julia waited, naked and awkward, unsure whether Tiberius was truly displeased about something. After a brief, heavy moment he stalked to the door and flung it open again.

  The shock of being exposed on the other side of the door was so great to me that I evacuated my bowel. Tiberius had caught me doing Livia’s work; she wanted conformation that her son and stepdaughter were coupling. Tiberius looked at the stinking mess on the tiles and then looked in my eyes, his face still holding no expression. As if drawn by strings, I bobbed to the floor, prostrating myself, and then placed my face in the excrement.

  Tiberius quietly closed the door on me.

  Julia was utterly bewildered but attempted a show of levity. ‘This is not how I imagined our marriage would begin,’ she joked.

  ‘No?’ wondered Tiberius coldly. ‘Well, I can promise you this is how it will end.’

  Octavian was awoken from his wedding feast stupor at the hour of Gallicinium, the second watch after midnight. While he had drunk nothing but ewe’s milk and water at the banquet, he had eaten a whole roast piglet. His abdomen was distended beyond any extreme it had previously reached. The vast effort of digestion robbed the blood from his brain and he had fallen asleep on his dining couch. When his steward, Palamedes, gently awoke him some time later he was still on the couch but his surroundings had changed. Not for the first time, the couch had been carried to Octavian’s sleeping room with him on it.

  Palamedes had been given orders to find his master the minute the expected news arrived. Octavian had expressly said that if it came while he was asleep then he was to be woken. But to Palamedes’s mind the news had so little significance. While it was good news for the replenishment of household servant numbers, it had no relevance to Rome, or to the First Citizen’s family life. Palamedes put Octavian’s interest in the matter down to his famous sentimentality. Oxheads’ master wept often, taken easily by emotion.

  Octavian gave a low whine as the steward shook him awake. His eyes were still closed but his mind was alert enough to receive whatever Palamedes would tell him.

  ‘It has come, domine,’ the servant whispered in his ear, ‘the news you wished to know. Hebe has delivered the baby.’

  Octavian rose slowly upright, and as his feet touched the marble the steward slipped woollen shoes upon them. When his master stood, Palamedes wrapped a cloak around his torso and smoothed and patted his hair.

  Octavian asked if the baby was healthy.

  ‘It is, domine, very well. Good lungs there.’ Then he added, as an afterthought, ‘But Hebe has died. The birth split her open. She bled too much.’

  A shadow passed over the First Citizen’s features and Palamedes waited for his master’s tears. No-one else at Oxheads cried for deaths; grief was never expected because the First Citizen would always weep enough for all the household. Yet Octavian did not break down, saddened as he was. He asked to be taken to the child.

  When he entered the room of the wet nurse, she bowed and placed the baby upon the marble floor. It was a boy, long-limbed and large – a fine child. Octavian scooped the baby into his arms and stared at the features of its face. The chin was Octavian’s own, as was the high brow and the end of the nose. He privately wondered if Palamedes saw the resemblance too. But the servant made no comment, unaware that resemblance should even be sought.

  ‘He is a fine child, domine, a welcome new slave.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ added the wet nurse happily. ‘An excellent baby. A boy this big will be a slave of great asset when he’s grown.’

  Octavian kissed his baby son’s forehead and held his lips to the silken skin for several seconds. Then he let the wet nurse take the baby back.

  He wanted to know if Hebe had named the baby before she died.

  Palamedes was surprised. ‘She did, domine. But why is that important?’

  Octavian said only that he was fond of Hebe and would acknowledge her gift to the household by honouring her choice for the name.

  ‘Clemens,’ the steward told him. It meant merciful – a thing that every slave hoped for in a master. Octavian saw the hidden message from his now-dead lover. Of course he would be merciful to his own.

  The First Citizen gave orders that, once weaned, the baby was to be given to one of his grandsons as a companion, not as a servant for labour or household chores. Postumus would be a good choice as recipient. Then he returned to bed, leaving his only blood son behind.

  This was the child that he could never acknowledge to Rome, or to his wife, or to his own heart. Should the truth ever be known, the boy would fall to a jealous hand, Octavian well knew.

  Too many men had died around Octavian and he blamed the gods for it.

  THE FIRST

  WILL BE HE

  WHO NESTS

  FOR THE

  CUCKOO

  Vestalia

  June, 10 BC

  Eighteen months later: Nero Claudius

  Drusus dedicates an altar to First Citizen

  Caesar Augustus at Lugdunum, Gaul

  Julia threw herself into her physical marriage with determination. She knew that Tiberius harboured a deep and secret anger, though she couldn’t determine it. He didn’t seem to aim it at her specifically, and yet – with his expressionless face, his emotionless reactions, his single-word responses to her conversation – he may as well have.

  But Tiberius did not shirk their marriage bed. Their sexual acts played out for hours. Having benefited from Agrippa’s experience, Julia had become a confident lover, focused wholly on her husband’s pleasure. In this she never failed, coaxing Tiberius to ecstasies. Afterwards, he would fall instantly asleep, sweaty and spent, and on occasions when their games lasted well into darkness, he would spend the night in Julia’s arms. But at dawn he would never look at her or give her a greeting for the new day. And he would never seek morning pleasure from her either, something that Agrippa had always claimed as his right.

  One cloud-covered evening at Intempesta, the watch before midnight, I escorted Livia to see a man she had lately heard about in whispers. His abode was outside the city walls, high on the Caelian Hill in the remains of a temple so old that its god was forgotten. The man lived in filth among rubbish and vermin, but when she heard him speak Livia believed that he had the true sight; that despite his abjection, he had a channel to the gods.

  When Livia asked him her most pressing question he snatched an egg from a chicken’s nest and told her to hatch it in her palms. If she needed use of her hands for other things she was to pass the egg to the hands of her maids to keep warm, but only for the duration of the task. Once finished, Livia must take the egg back immediately. It was never to touch the ground or any other surface save the flesh of a woman, and the longer it spent in contact with Livia herself, the stronger the likelihood was of her quest being met – her quest for a boy-child born of the Julian and Claudian houses; the quest for another of her kings.

  My domina did exactly as she was told, carefully cradling the egg in her litter all the way down the Caelian, through its gate in the Servian Wall and along the S
caurian Road towards the Palatine. Her concentration was so great that she tripped on a stepping stone crossing the tiny distance between her litter and the gate to the Oxheads’ garden. The egg flew high in the air and she shrieked without sound at her hopes being so instantly dashed. But the goddess Luna was sympathetic. The clouds parted in the moment of the egg’s flight and the moon found a perfect, glowing reflection of itself in the soothsayer’s shelled vessel. Livia caught the egg again.

  For the next fortnight she passed it to no-one. Her chambermaids were given no explanation but were instructed to do every task that Livia’s hands would normally perform. For two weeks she stayed in her suite. She shouted out to Octavian through the door that she was disfigured by a skin complaint; she was not to be glimpsed until her beauty returned. He was full of consoling words but took the opportunity to spend a few days of solitude, playing in his sailboat on the Campanian coast.

  Meanwhile, the maids spoonfed my domina, holding wine cups to her lips and dabbing her carefully with linen when she was finished. They already counted dressing and undressing her among their duties, so those tasks were not strange to them, but Livia’s insistence upon clutching the egg throughout was. Not one maid dared comment, of course, even when their duties extended to sponging Livia’s anus after defecation.

  The greatest challenge came at the commencement of Vestalia. With the city’s highborn women expected to walk barefoot to the Temple of Vesta to ask for the goddess’s blessing, my domina could not abscond. Despite the summer heat she wore a heavy woollen palla that covered her arms and hands, and kept them hidden for the length of the sacrifices. When the purification of the temple began Livia narrowly avoided exposure when a broom was offered to her by a vestal. As the other similarly honoured women began to amass the temple’s dirt so that it could be stored away from thieves, my domina made a brief show of handling the broom beneath her cloak. Then she made an additional show of fainting and was helped to leave.