The naked men of the inner ring fell and scrambled for their tunicae, none daring to scream, none daring to risk identifying themselves in the darkness. Octavian severed the head from the man who had sunk as low as sodomy. The man at his daughter’s sex he slashed at the hamstrings, and when the cur fell, he lanced him. The man at Julia’s mouth tried to pull himself away but her jaw locked tight. He wept and tugged as Octavian wiped off his sword. When she bit off his penis Octavian let him run. He would be found again, Octavian well knew, as would every other man who had dared to partake in the defilement.
Equirria
October, 2 BC
One month later: First Citizen Caesar
Augustus consecrates the Temple of
Mars Ultor – Mars the Avenger – in the
Forum Augustus
In the weeks following her rescue, Julia repeatedly asked to see her father again. Tended by Livia she was told she was too unwell, that she must recover first, and then she could see her father and thank him. In the meantime she was not to fret. Livia assured Julia that Octavian understood everything. But when Julia asked to see her children she received the same reply.
‘But what do they understand? What have they been told?’
Livia paused. ‘That you were afflicted in your mind. That you were possessed.’
Julia couldn’t bear to think of them knowing any more than that.
‘You mustn’t worry yourself,’ Livia said soothingly. ‘There’s no more for them to know. And it’s true, after all, isn’t it, Julia? You were possessed.’
Julia could only answer that this was so. ‘I was cursed,’ she whispered. ‘Or I had a spell placed on me. I wasn’t myself. I couldn’t control what I did – ‘
Livia hushed her. ‘It’s over now. Think about getting well.’
But as her stepmother went to slip from the room, Julia snatched at the hem of her stola. ‘I have a suspicion of who might’ve done this to me.’
Livia said nothing, her face set in a look of mild puzzlement.
‘The hunchbacked girl … I think it was her, and maybe Iphicles too. I can’t be certain.’
Livia was grave. ‘But why?’
Julia had no answer.
Livia patted her hand. ‘It seems very strange, but perhaps you’re right. Think upon it some more. If the reason why they might have done this terrible thing to you comes, call for me at once.’
‘I will,’ said Julia. ‘Can I see the children soon?’
Livia left with the question hanging.
Julia did as she was asked. She willed herself well again, and as the weeks went by her health improved. The itch at her sex vanished, and with it the yearnings that had overwhelmed her. A crushing weight had lifted but she was unable to find a basis for her suspicions about Martina and me. The events of the day when Julia had tried to reach the Temple of Juno were very hazy to her now. She could not be sure if we had really abandoned her in the streets, or whether she had taken herself there in illness.
She asked for news of Rome from her new maid. The girl was awkward and Julia pressed her. ‘What is it, Io – has something bad happened?’
‘I don’t know, Lady,’ said the girl. ‘We are not allowed to leave here.’
‘Leave where? What do you mean?’
‘We can’t leave the house. There are guards at the door. Food is brought here from Oxheads. We’re forbidden to go anywhere.’
Julia was perturbed. ‘Is there plague outside?’
This idea had not occurred to Io, but now that she considered it she was relieved. It was plausible. ‘Perhaps my Lady had plague?’ she suggested. ‘Maybe that’s why you were ill?’
Julia considered this as a new explanation for her suffering. The gods invented many strange diseases. She gave up thinking on Martina – or even wondering where the hunchback now was. Plancina, she presumed, must have found her and taken her back again. The slaves were no longer important. Julia would leave the house when fully recovered and speak at last to her father.
That was her only plan.
A letter was slipped under Julia’s door before dawn. She awoke and found it. The handwriting was her father’s. When she opened and read it, she was unable to rise from her bed again for some minutes.
Jullus is dead. He killed himself in preference to facing the punishment due to traitors. He had conspired to avenge his brother Antyllus, who he claimed was murdered by the First Citizen’s hand. He tricked and abused you. The First Citizen understands.
When Julia found the strength she stumbled to the bolted front door and slapped her palms against it, trying to speak with the guards Io had told her were there. They finally answered her without opening the door, respectful and pleasant.
‘What is it, Lady?’
‘Why am I locked in here?’
‘For your own safety, Lady. We have our orders.’
‘What am I being kept safe from? Is there a plague outside – or a conspiracy?’
‘We have our orders, Lady.’
Julia’s heart raced with anxiety. ‘Did my father deliver this letter? Is it from him?’ There was silence outside. ‘It was placed under my door,’ said Julia. ‘It’s in his handwriting. Did he come here?’
There was another pause, then, ‘We have our orders to guard you, Lady. We know nothing about any letters.’
As Julia turned from the door, trying to make sense of this, she spied another sheet of papyrus, face-down on the tiled atrium floor. She knew it hadn’t been there only seconds earlier. Frightened now, she stooped to turn it over.
The letter you wrote about your absent husband has caused outrage and consternation. He has written a cringing response, begging for forgiveness. But no-one is fooled. Tiberius is a monster and he will be punished. The First Citizen thanks you. As do your sons.
Julia reeled. ‘But I never sent that letter,’ she called out. ‘It was a mistake – I wasn’t well. I didn’t mean it in seriousness!’
Io hesitantly emerged from the gloomy hall that led to the kitchens. ‘Are you all right, Lady?’
She showed the letters to the girl. ‘Where did these come from? How did they get in here?’
Io was scared and confused. ‘I don’t know. Maybe the wind blew them in?’
‘It’s impossible – and they’re in my father’s hand. Is he inside the house and he hasn’t told me?’
‘No, Lady,’ said Io. ‘We’re alone.’
‘What about all the other slaves?’
The girl seemed a simpleton, cringing in distress. ‘They were gone when I woke up. There’s no-one else anywhere.’
Julia spent all that day waiting for further information that might confirm or disprove the shocking news – and explain the absence of the slaves. It seemed to her so incredible, but as she replayed old events in her mind the terrible possibility that it was Jullus who had somehow bewitched her took shape. What had his intentions been? Did he mean to sexually enslave her? Did he mean to sire a child on her? She longed for someone to voice her fears to, but Io was incapable of conversing beyond orders.
As Julia drifted into sleep at sunset, she saw a tiny movement on the floor. Another letter slid into her room. Julia leapt from her bed and flung the door open but the hall outside was deserted. She clutched the letter in her hand – it had the same handwriting.
‘Father? Father, are you there? Why don’t you speak to me directly?’ Her voice echoed in the dark. Not even Io answered to comfort her. Julia opened the new message.
Rome is rife with vile conspiracy. You are not safe. Tomorrow you will be smuggled away. Trust in those who will guide you. They will lead you to sanctuary – and to your children. When you return to Rome it will be as Winged Victory.
The First Citizen loves you.
Julia placed all the hope and faith in her heart upon the letter. She lurched from sleep feeling as if seconds had passed, but the pale, grey light of the autumn dawn told her otherwise. The shutters to her terrace were open and the awning was raised,
although all had been closed at sunset. She went to call for the young slave but stopped herself, knowing already that Io was gone like the others. She was in the hands of forces she couldn’t see, but she would trust them as her father’s letter had instructed.
Julia rose from bed and dressed herself simply, ignoring jewels and cosmetics and letting her hair hang loose. She rejected woollen shoes in favour of sandals. The air had a little warmth to it. She sat still on a chair for some minutes when finished, waiting to see what would come. She listened to the dawn birds, beautiful in their calls, and breathed the scents from her garden. The house was silent.
Finally Julia stepped into the hall. There were no more letters. Folding those she had already received into her palm, she gave no thought to taking anything else with her. Wherever she was going, her needs would be met, she was certain. She made her way towards the atrium and felt only the smallest start of surprise when she saw the flood of light from the street.
The front door was wide open. There were no guards.
Julia stepped across the threshold and stood on the paving stones. Her litter was waiting for her with six new bearers. Seeing her emerge, the first of them pulled the curtain aside so she could step in. Julia did so, thanking him, then thanking the other five.
‘Where are we going this morning?’ she asked lightly.
‘To Ostia, Lady,’
Rome’s port. She would be boarding a ship, then. As the bearers lifted the litter into the air and began their progress down the Palatine Hill, Julia heard the clank of legionaries’ swords and cuirasses somewhere behind them. ‘We have soldiers escorting us?’ she called out.
‘Yes, Lady.’
She was comforted.
Julia kept the curtains closed for the full duration of the journey. She heard the shouts and clamour of Rome recede as they crossed the great city and passed beneath its gates. On the open road she listened only for the birds, until at last one bird’s call seemed to drown out all others. Then there were no others at all, just seagulls.
The smell of the seaport was exciting; Julia felt stirred at the thought of travelling again. Then the litter-bearers stopped and she heard the escorting legionaries clang to a halt behind her.
Nothing was said for some moments. ‘Should I leave the litter now?’ she called out hopefully.
A woman’s gentle voice answered. ‘Yes, Julia.’
It was no voice she recognised and yet, somehow, she still did. She stepped outside and found herself looking into a mirror of her own pale features, only older. It was a face filled with love for her.
‘Do I know you?’ Julia asked.
‘No,’ replied the woman.
‘Do you know where I am going?’
‘I do – and I’ll be going with you.’
‘That’s very nice,’ said Julia. ‘Do you have business at our destination?’
‘My only business is you.’ The woman linked her arm in Julia’s and led her protectively towards the trireme that was anchored at the wharf’s edge. ‘I’ll be your companion, you see. We’ll share our new experiences together and get to know each other properly at last.’
‘Who are you?’ Julia wondered.
‘I’m your mother,’ said Scribonia.
And her eyes shone with deep emotion at finally saying this most precious of words.
As Julia sailed away with her mother aboard the trireme she understood what this was: her destruction. And later again, when she sighted her living tomb, she knew at last by whose hand it had all been done.
My domina’s, of course.
Julia knew, too, what would follow, and she was utterly powerless to stop it.
The Nones of September
AD 9
Eleven years later: General Publius
Quinctilius Varus is ambushed in the
Teutoberg Forest, losing the Seventeenth,
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Legions to the
Germanic tribes
The island of Pandataria was a suitable choice. A wind-blasted rock off the coast of Campania, it was less than two miles long. There were no permanent inhabitants apart from the seabirds and fieldmice. Pandataria baked in the heat and dissolved in the storms, and groaned and cursed in its bowels – it was a volcano.
Among a small archipelago known in mythology as the Islands of Circe and the Sirens, it was not only suitable but appropriate. While still imprisoned in her house in Rome, the Revered Lady Julia had been denounced before Rome as a harlot. Jullus had been named as the most disgusting of all her scores of lovers. He had sought to usurp the First Citizen in vengeance for the death of his father, Antony, and brother, Antyllus. Under torture he had named his co-conspirator and envisaged queen: Julia.
Tiberius had apparently written from Rhodes begging for clemency for his wife. Yet the handwriting wasn’t his and the style of prose was uncharacteristic. Regardless, senators lamented his devotion in the face of Julia’s own shocking letter about him to her father. A catalogue of imagined spousal abuse, the letter had begged she be granted a divorce. She wanted to love again – and love a more deserving man. Perhaps there was another who would protect Gaius and Lucius? Julia’s complicity in Jullus’s treachery was obvious.
The Senate debated Julia’s punishment in light of the First Citizen’s immorality edict. That his own daughter would be its first test case told Rome of the primacy of law above men. The Senators rejected execution by a narrow margin and chose exile. They selected Pandataria and wrote to the First Citizen of its place in legend as home of the sorceress Circe. They received no answer, which was Octavian’s acceptance of their wisdom. It was right she be sent to the island of lying whores.
The Imperial trireme made weekly deliveries on the mornings of the day of Mercury. In tempest or calm, the boat never failed to appear at the wooden berth. In the first eleven years of Julia’s imprisonment, just six trireme deliveries stood out in her memory from the hundreds of others. This was because of the significance of what was brought to Pandataria on each occasion – or taken away.
The inaugural delivery brought Julia herself, of course, accompanied by her mother. With them were two slaves, a cook and a fisherwoman; two large chests of clothes and linens; a week’s worth of fresh meat and fruit; and a book of Senatorial instructions.
From this official scroll Julia had learned that no person was permitted to land on the island unless they had been vetted by the Senate. Visitors were required to submit their intentions first, then undergo exhaustive questioning. If successful, physical characteristics would be recorded, including moles, scars and deformities. Julia herself was not to request any visitors that were not specifically listed with the Senate. At the commencement of her exile this list held no names.
Another instruction concerned luxury. With her home now the island’s sole villa, all items of unnecessary comfort were prohibited. The inaugural delivery was also the inaugural removal. As Julia and her mother alighted on the island’s rock, soft-seated chairs, sheep’s fleece mattresses, curtains, mats and mirrors were taken away and stored in the trireme’s hold.
The second memorable delivery, only a week later, brought the single item of news that she was permitted by the Senate to hear: Julia was prohibited in her father’s will from being allowed into his mausoleum after death. In addition to this permitted news she received something unofficial, written in a hand that was not her father’s, or any other writer’s that she recognised. The slave Martina had been found hanging by the neck from a bough, it said. Her body had been there for some weeks and was so bloated that her face could not be recognised. Only her abhorrence had identified her.
A delivery four years afterwards broke a drought of Senatorial silence. Julia was informed that her second son, Lucius, had fallen ill and died on his way to Spain to commence his prefecture. He was nineteen. Julia didn’t weep. She had by now expected such a tragedy, and was glad only that her second son had been granted four extra years of good life.
Two years later,
Mercury’s day of delivery brought news of another loss. Her eldest son, Gaius, had died in Lycia of his wounds from a minor skirmish. He was twenty-four and left a childless widow in Livilla, the late Drusus’s daughter. Livilla would now marry Castor. Julia lit a fire for her son and made libations to him with Scribonia.
A further nine months later, an announcement told that her youngest son, Agrippa Postumus, had fallen into unspecified disgrace. His crime was not detailed but his punishment was: he was exiled to the island of Planasia. He was twenty.
The delivery made two months later again was insignificant, but not the boat’s departure. The trireme took with it the body of Scribonia, who had quietly died of old age. Her final words had been of love and gratitude to Julia, the daughter she had never forgotten.
The Ides of August
AD 14
Five years later: the Senate votes to
extend the imperium of First Citizen
Caesar Augustus by a further
ten years
One morning of Mercury, as the warmth of the summer sun ripened the grapes on Julia’s vines, a handwritten letter was unloaded. It was in her father’s hand. She left it unopened in the sun and let the winds take it. Julia remembered the letters she had found in her old house in Rome. They had been forged, she now knew, and had not been written by her father at all. If this was the start of a new torment, then Julia would provide no satisfaction to her enemy. But her fisherwoman found the letter among the rocks, curled and open in the heat. Because Julia had been teaching her to read, the slave digested the words for practice. Then she flew with it to her mistress’s side. That they were truly the First Citizen’s words seemed undeniable.
I have betrayed you and your sons. I have been blind. I now know the truth about everything. But I am moving carefully so as to spring my trap. Our enemy has grown powerful but will topple soon. I will liberate Postumus and then, when he is safely in my boat, I will come to liberate you. Wait in hope for me. You will be avenged.
Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves Page 35
