Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  Outside, one hundred and twenty starving Subura sewer rats sank their teeth into the island’s small food source. As soon as the seagull eggs and fieldmice were consumed they started to hunt for fresh prey.

  Tiberius had the keys. He took the first in his hand and scraped at the rust with his scarred thumbnail. ‘When did this last open the door?’ he asked.

  The dungeon keeper didn’t know. ‘Decades back, First Citizen. Before my time. I’ve never even seen what lives behind it.’

  ‘But something does live?’

  ‘It eats its daily meal, so I guess it does.’

  ‘Does it speak?’

  ‘Not to my mind. But old Augustus forbade us to talk to it anyway. For many years its keeper was Strontius the deafmute. Then Strontius passed on and the old First Citizen just forgot about it, I think, if he’d ever even remembered in the first place. There was talk that he once left it up to the original warden to decide the prisoner’s fate, but the warden wasn’t too keen on making decisions for himself, you see. So he just left things as they were. We keep the prisoner alive because we’ve never been told not to.’

  Feeling claustrophobic in the dungeons, Castor was anxious to hurry things. ‘The feast will be starting, Father. They’ll be bringing the gods out.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Tiberius. ‘They won’t start without me.’

  Castor was shocked. ‘You are not the guest of honour – Jupiter is.’

  Tiberius’s conscience pricked him. ‘All right then.’ He turned to the dungeon keeper. ‘I’ll return another day. I’m intrigued to know everything I can about my stepfather’s prisoners and their history. Perhaps there are undeserving men imprisoned here.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ said the dungeon keeper. ‘They’re all down here for good reason, I think you’ll find, sir.’

  Standing in the shadows, Sejanus placed his hand upon the heavy wooden door, testing it. ‘Open this,’ he said simply.

  Castor bristled. ‘There’s no time. The statues are being carried out on their couches. The feast is starting.’

  ‘Try the key,’ Sejanus said to Tiberius.

  Tiberius certainly liked the feel of the rusty thing in his hands.

  ‘Father, please …’

  Tiberius placed the key in the lock and turned it. For a door that had not been tried in more than thirty years, it unlocked with unexpected ease. The thing inside blinked at them, surrounded by thousands of bird bones. The stink of its filth and dung was suffocating.

  ‘Who are you?’ Tiberius demanded, reeling.

  It had been so long since anyone had asked this that Thrasyllus couldn’t remember. But it didn’t matter anyway. Cybele filled him with appropriate words.

  ‘The second will be he who wears his father’s crown,’ the goddess spoke through him.

  Two sons of Tiberius heard these words and were profoundly changed by them. Each son believed in his heart that Tiberius was father only to him; each son discounted the other son as nothing. The first son was the blood son, Castor. The second son was Sejanus, the son of the cuckoo, he who would never leave Tiberius’s nest.

  Oblivious to the young men’s reactions, Tiberius decided to risk offending the gods by arriving late to their banquet. Neither son objected. Tiberius had more questions for this mysteriously imprisoned haruspex, and both Castor and Sejanus were as fascinated by the answers as their father was.

  The walnuts landed upon Plancina and her bridegroom with such force that she used the matrimonial spindle she carried to protect herself, batting the nuts onto the heads of her wedding guests. The assembled crowd loved it and the pelting only increased in violence, bruising Plancina as she tried to keep smiling.

  ‘That hurts,’ she cried out. ‘You’re hurting me!’

  The mola salsa cake, baked by vestals, rocked dangerously in the hands of the ducking slaves who carried it. Two of the patrician processional boys in their togae praetextae burst into tears, one of them clutching Plancina’s arm for cover. The camilla boy, who was carrying the vase of bridal utensils, dropped his load entirely, the vase only being saved from breakage by the unfortunate guest it landed upon. It was too much for another boy who carried the torch of white thorn. Screaming in anger and fear, he waved the thing in the onlookers’ faces, demanding respect for the bride.

  From the rear of the throng I watched Plancina’s procession chaos with alarm, seeing too many faces among the guests that I didn’t recognise – hangers-on and freeloaders from the Subura mob. They were her bridegroom Piso’s clients, street rabble, passionate in their love for him, but brutal in their jokes at his expense.

  ‘Make them stop,’ Plancina begged Piso, batting projectiles away with the spindle.

  ‘Friends, friends,’ Piso implored the well-wishers. The rabble desisted at last when the walnuts ran out.

  Anxious to recover her dignity, Plancina waved at the throng before exchanging her spindle for a bowl of wolf’s fat, which she began applying to the door posts outside Piso’s home. A jagged black stone, flung from the crowd, knocked the bowl from her hands, splashing fat all over her wedding gown. Plancina shrieked with fury.

  A guffaw from somewhere close to where I stood revealed the culprit. It was Martina, very much alive despite reports sent to Julia of the contrary.

  The years of our mutual devotion to Livia had cooled our mutual animosity, too – perhaps more so on my part. Now I treated Martina more like an acquaintance than a rival. She had another jagged stone in her hand. ‘Don’t throw that one as well,’ I rebuked her. ‘You’ll take her eye out.’

  ‘A fine idea, slave,’ she said, raising her hand to pitch again. ‘Now you’ve given me something to aim for.’

  I scuffled with her, slapping her hand until she dropped the thing. ‘What’s the matter with you, Martina? Are you jealous?’

  Martina scowled, refusing to reply, and I realised that she was indeed jealous of Plancina, though I couldn’t imagine why. ‘It’s a poor union,’ I told her, ‘and Plancina’s past childbearing age. What’s the point of it?’

  ‘He’s patrician, isn’t he? And a consular senator. I don’t see anything poor about it.’

  ‘But she’s the ugliest woman in Rome. The domina must have bribed him to do this for her – or blackmailed him.’

  Martina just continued scowling. ‘Either way, it’s still a gift for Plancina, isn’t it? A nice reward.’

  I couldn’t be bothered with this conversation and prepared to leave. At the threshold to Piso’s house, the chosen pronubi men were limbering up in readiness to carry Plancina across. Martina stopped me from going, making an effort to be friendlier. ‘Anyway, what’s news?’ she asked.

  I could only laugh at her. ‘I’ve been rewarded too,’ I said, knowing this would please her even less. ‘I’ve been given to Julia’s daughter, Agrippina.’

  I leaned closer, my eye straying to her abhorrence. ‘The domina is placing her hopes upon her grandson Germanicus, Agrippina’s husband,’ I whispered. ‘She believes he will one day become the second king – he’s far more capable than Castor. It’s why she forced Tiberius to adopt Germanicus. She thinks Germanicus’s sons will likely become the third and fourth kings, too.’

  Martina dismissed all this as uninteresting. ‘Good luck to them then. Is that all the news you have for me?’

  Her complete dismissal of these developments angered me, considering how closely she and I had worked together to help Tiberius ascend the throne. ‘You’d do well to hide your jealousy of Plancina’s good fortune,’ I said with a threat to my tone. ‘If word gets back to the domina of your ill grace, she’ll be very displeased.’

  Martina just shrugged, which was a gesture of some theatricality, given the mountain on her back.

  ‘Be grateful,’ I told her. ‘You had your own reward long before the rest of us got anything.’

  ‘What reward did I ever get?’

  ‘Your freedom, witch.’

  At the threshold, the four pronubi had Plancina’s haunches
in their hands, ready to hoist her across the doorstep. Piso beamed and the Subura mob cheered. Just as the chore was being done, another jagged stone shot from the throng, striking Plancina’s knee. Her foot jerked sideways, kicking the doorway. The mob gasped at this dreadful ill omen and fell silent. The only sound to be heard was Martina’s chortle. She’d found another stone inside her stola.

  As she strode away I demanded to know what her intentions were. Did she plan to go on tormenting Plancina?

  ‘I plan to go on ignoring Plancina,’ she turned her head to hiss at me over her abhorrence. ‘And Livia, too. Especially Livia. You call me ungrateful? She’s the ingrate. And one day she’ll regret it.’

  I was disgusted. ‘Good riddance,’ I called after her. Then I joined the crowd that was spilling into Piso’s home.

  It was only later that I pondered on Martina’s new hatred for my domina. Certainly Livia was the most powerful woman in the world; none could touch her. But perhaps she should have rewarded Martina as lavishly as she continued to reward Plancina. After all, could it ever be wise to make a sorceress your enemy?

  The screams of the slaves in the rooms below reached a new pitch. Julia could hear the cook’s horror and the clatter of his pots on the tiles. She knew then that the rats had gained entrance. Locked in her room upstairs, she willed herself not to think of it. But she picked up her pace, her pen scraping the scroll. It was all still in memory, the truth of it after so many years, and it was wondrous to her how easily the words came.

  … her poison, her black poison, no meal was safe, no cup of wine …

  … your golden brothers murdered in their prime, never realising, never seeing death come …

  … the lies told against me, she made my father believe them, she poisoned his heart …

  A smell like rotting seaweed came under the door, then the clamour of furniture being shoved over. Bronze spades clanged fast and hard, and Julia knew that the rats were numerous now. But she suppressed her revulsion. Clinging to her righteousness as she wrote, she felt the powerful hate that brought back the energy of her youth. Julia’s eyes shone again and lost their suffering. They glowed as they had when she’d been lovely.

  Household objects smashed right outside her room as the slaves sought refuge up the stairs, their fists pounding the door.

  ‘My Lady, for pity’s sake!’

  ‘There’s too many of them!’

  ‘They got in through the latrines!’

  She was furious at being disturbed, but wouldn’t look. ‘Fight – crush the filth! Use the latrine tools or the kitchen spoons – I don’t care! Just hold them off for me …’

  The door splintered at its top hinge and the slaves’ shrieks turned from fear to pain. The stink grew so much stronger in the air with the vermin’s hunger cries.

  ‘Lady – ‘

  The rats were eating them.

  Julia willed herself to remain seated, keeping her dignity and upholding the name she’d been given. It took all her will, but she continued lettering.

  … never follow my steps, daughter; instead, follow hers and learn from her evil, study how she thinks …

  The door splintered more and the thin, bloody arm of the cook forced a way through the gap, fingers severed.

  Julia took up the pen, scroll and little canister that was to be the vessel. With a lack of haste in defiance of what was happening, she left the room to stand on her terrace. She heard the waves below. She dipped her pen in the ink and scratched the last words.

  My love for you has not wavered these long years, Agrippina. My trust in you has kept me sane. Now, as before and forever: I am a Julian; I am Augustus’s blood; I am Roman. And I am your loving mother.

  Julia

  The door snapped into shards, crashing from its hinges, throwing the bloodied cook and fisherwoman to the floor. Their agony became noiseless as the squealing rats engulfed them. There were scores, insane with deprivation.

  Julia sealed the scroll in the canister as the first line of vermin reached the terrace, detecting her. She leant out over the ledge, holding the canister above the waves. The rats ran at her sandals and her tattered linen gown. More rats flooded into the light, their bodies red from the blood of the slaves. It was a torrent of filth, drenching her, spilling over the ledge, absorbing her into their mass.

  She was old, she was disgraced; as an end this was fitting. Julia released the canister to the air and water, and let go her will to endure.

  THE SECOND

  WILL BE HE

  WHO WEARS

  HIS FATHER’S

  CROWN

  Epulum Jovis

  November, AD 15

  One year later: Germanicus Julius Caesar

  begins his offensive against the Chatti,

  Lower Germany

  My knowledge of the great Germanicus came from some of those who served with him. My knowledge of his inner fears came from the powers of a slave’s observation. He was a pane of glass to me.

  The sword of the chosen soldier rose in readiness and all awaited the word: one thousand men of the twentieth legion and the fifty-six wretched souls from the ‘fearsome’ tribe of Arminius. The air was still and deadened. Not a sound emerged from the thick forest that surrounded them. The soldier chosen to deliver Rome’s wrath tensed his arm for the order. But his general paused.

  ‘Germanicus?’ canvassed the second-in-command. ‘This killing will prompt the truth from one of those who witnessed it.’

  ‘Allow me to try a little theatre first, Caecina.’

  The second-in-command hid his annoyance.

  Germanicus dismounted his horse, stretched his long, brown arms, then pulled a cloak around his shoulders, shivering. As if by accident, his eye caught the old German chieftain strung across the felled tree trunk.

  ‘Cold out,’ Germanicus said to him. ‘Hard going for us Italians, you know, these northern winters. Bitter. And it’s not even December yet. Still, I suppose you’re well used to it. How old are you, uncle? Fifty? Sixty?’

  The old German said nothing, staring at him in fear.

  ‘No answer? Perhaps you’re so old you’ve lost count.’

  Germanicus removed his knife from a scabbard and slit the man’s tunic from hem to neckline in a manner that was almost apologetic. The old man’s back was exposed, raw and bony in the chill. Germanicus tucked his knife away and set his mouth close to the old man’s ear so that he could whisper.

  ‘My soldiers have already posed a certain question to you – and to you alone – because you speak Latin. My soldiers are uncouth men, rough in their methods, and it seems to me you may have been frightened unduly. Let me reassure you: tell us what it is that we must know and the fate of your tribe will not be miserable. We would much prefer to enslave than kill – and for many of these people the slave’s life will not be unpleasant. Germans are attractive to Roman eyes and receive a nice price. The women and boys will be prized.’

  Still the old man had no words, but his eyes never left the Roman general.

  ‘Tell me where the eagles are. Tell me where they are and this will be the last unpleasantness you ever know.’

  The old man’s tongue cracked his lips apart. ‘They flew into the forest.’

  Germanicus gave no acknowledgement of the words, walking swiftly to the massed group of villagers that cringed before him. But his face was pensive, not fearsome, and some of the children who could see this expression felt their fear pass. Germanicus sensed this and allowed them a half-smile, before he grabbed an old woman from the first row by the wrist.

  His pleasant countenance remained as he turned to the bound old man. ‘I’ll ask you the question a second time,’ he said kindly, tightening his grip on the woman’s wrist. ‘If you give me the same answer again, I’ll draw my sword and ask the question for a final time. If you give me the same answer after that, your wife will be taken from you. Is that clear?’

  It was very clear.

  ‘Where are the eagles?’

/>   The old man wept and shut his eyes. Then he begged something in his native tongue.

  ‘Latin, if you please,’ said Germanicus politely.

  ‘They flew into the – ‘

  Germanicus drew his sword and thrust it into the old woman’s heart and out again before she or her husband saw that death was upon her. She crumpled and fell without a cry. Germanicus strolled back to the bound old man and slashed the same sword down the length of his spine, splitting the skin to the bone. The old German screamed and writhed and the general was in his ear once more. ‘Unlike German pigs, Romans are unpredictable.’

  ‘They flew into the forest … they flew into the forest!’ the old man shrieked.

  The realisation dawned. ‘That’s the only Latin you know, isn’t it?’

  Filling his lungs deep with the rich scent of the pines, Germanicus allowed his thoughts to re-form as the second-in-command joined him again.

  ‘Your orders?’

  ‘Kill them all,’ he said, resignedly.

  Germanicus wandered among the huts and vegetable yards and marvelled at the sheer squalor of the village. He went to the top of a little rise and looked over to discover there were more dwellings than he had realised when the rounding up of villagers had begun. For so many hovels there were pathetically few wretches to live in them, he observed. The squalor had likely brought plague with it.

  Germanicus felt a stir of curiosity to know what a hovel was like inside. He approached the largest – presumably the home of the old man bound to the log – and he pushed aside a curtain of oxhide. A chicken flapped its wings and flew in his face. Germanicus batted it away, only to set off a wave of panic among two dozen other birds, all of which leapt from their roosts and tried to flee. Germanicus realised there was more to his insult about the tribe living like animals than he’d given credence to. What he’d thought was a chieftain’s hut was a fowl coop. But he stopped as he went to exit again. A shaft of thin winter sunlight pierced the room and illuminated the chicken perches.

  He had seen them before.

  Bound to the log with his spine exposed and his eyes forced open to watch the slaughter, the old German kept repeating his one sentence of Latin until his head was pulled back so violently that his neck snapped. Caecina wiped his hands on the old man’s tunic and then regretted it when the rag made his palms greasier. He didn’t see Germanicus return until the general planted the chicken perch shafts in the mud behind him.