Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  Apicata was taken aback. ‘What a wonderful thing,’ she said, ‘and after so many barren years since the birth of Tiberia. Your husband must have given up hope of ever getting a son.’

  Livilla remained silent, but Apicata knew she was sneering. The buried stink of her grew, as if Livilla’s heartbeat was racing. The smell was sour in Apicata’s nostrils. ‘How many months have passed?’ she asked.

  ‘Nearly eight,’ said Livilla.

  Apicata failed to stop the look of shock that took her.

  ‘I’m quite advanced,’ said Livilla, with pleasure in her voice at Apicata’s expression. ‘The augur promises me that the skies indicate a boy.’

  It was Apicata’s turn for silence. If Livilla was so visibly with child, then why had no one told her of it before now? Why had her own husband, Sejanus, not bothered to report it?

  ‘Do you wish to feel my son?’ Livilla whispered into Apicata’s darkness. Before Apicata could decline, Livilla snatched at her hand and placed it on her full, taut belly. ‘The augur is right, isn’t he? You can tell I’m carrying a boy.’

  Apicata smelled the fecund stink of sex. Livilla was moist in her loins – an obscenity in a woman carrying child. The foul, rank odour of Livilla squeezed Apicata by the throat. She murmured the words of a curse in her mind. This child would never see adulthood and its father would fall, taking the bitch Livilla with him, she vowed. Apicata used this inner malice as a shield, a source of quiet strength. ‘I believe you are right,’ she said at last. ‘It is the feel of a boy. I wish an easy birth for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Livilla.

  Apicata removed her hand, nodded and smiled, then made to continue her passage down the corridor. Livilla said nothing more. After several steps Apicata sensed that Livilla hadn’t moved from where they had stood together – she could hear no movement in the opposite direction. Apicata continued a little further before she stopped again. She could hear nothing at all of Livilla behind her. Apicata slowly turned around. She knew that Livilla must still be standing there – and she knew that Livilla would be looking right at her.

  ‘You think you’re untouchable?’ Apicata whispered low under her breath.

  ‘I don’t think it – I know it,’ Livilla said.

  Apicata gasped at the patrician woman’s blind arrogance. Then she laughed. ‘Only my husband, Sejanus, is untouchable,’ she whispered, ‘because only my husband strives to rid Rome of traitors. Only my husband has dedicated his life to this task in his undying love for the Emperor. And only my husband can say that the hands of vile ambition can never, ever bring him down.’ She waited for any sound at all to come from Livilla’s direction.

  ‘I don’t doubt your words,’ Livilla said.

  Apicata remained where she was for what seemed like an eternity. Then, when Livilla’s retreating footsteps told her the conversation was done, Apicata used her nose to return to the place where Livilla had stood. She dropped and held her face an inch from the floor. The juice of Livilla’s sex had run down her legs, falling to the floor like raindrops.

  ‘She is a slut,’ Apicata whispered to herself, ‘the lowest and filthiest of sluts. She’s on heat like a she-wolf while she carries an innocent in her belly.’

  Apicata stayed where she was for some minutes, crouched low and inhaling, willing her hatred to empower her.

  Livilla felt in darkness for the crack in the wall and found it – then gently pushed forward. At once the sounds and scents of the Emperor’s night-time garden caressed her as the hidden door invited her outside. The air was warm and tinged with honey, but she was not there to admire the flowers. The garden was her thoroughfare, the secret path she took to her secret devotions. Livilla intended worshipping her god tonight.

  She felt the thrill of anticipation and the longing for pleasure. Her god would need his comforts, she told herself. His spirits had been brought very low, and she, his most loyal acolyte, would be assiduous in her ministrations. The libations she would make would heal her god, replenish and inspire.

  Livilla entered the little grotto that lay behind the secret door, throwing a backward glance into the corridor as she went to pull the door closed behind her. She thought she heard a footfall and listened. But there was nothing. The scented breeze lured her into the garden.

  Her shoes in her hand, she tripped lightly along the path, which led to a gate opening onto the street. Her god’s attendants were already waiting patiently as Livilla’s thighs rubbed together, slick and pungent. She had been suffering in an unbearable state of arousal all day, all through the wedding and the calamity that followed. Her senses had been addled by it. She had spoken like an automaton to Claudius and Sejanus of her sorrow at what had happened, but her emotion had been false. All she could think about was her god and the pleasures she would gift to him. She brushed her sex with her fingers, as if by accident. Her bead was hard and full.

  The attendants nodded a greeting to Livilla while they held the heavy gate open just enough for her to glide through to the litter. She thought she heard another footfall and a shiver shot along her spine. She threw a glance behind her but the only noise to be heard was from the velvet wings of a bat.

  ‘There is no one there, Lady,’ one of the attendants whispered, knowing what she feared.

  She smiled at him, thankful, but she had a recollection of a moment like this before, when she had passed through the same gate and looked over her shoulder to see the face of her little daughter, Tiberia, staring back. The girl had vanished like a ghost on that occasion and Livilla had later wondered what she had really seen. Had it been her own guilt?

  She dismissed all notions of shame and remorse from her mind. Why should there be guilt in worshipping a god?

  ‘Hurry, Lady,’ the slave whispered.

  Livilla stepped forward and the gate clicked closed behind her. The garden was gone. She reclined upon the litter cushions and felt the hard, swollen bead in her sex again as the curtains were drawn around her, protecting her from Rome. Still she sensed the eyes that remained hidden behind the wall – eyes that knew her and knew her secrets. Knew what she really was.

  She had been seen – of course she had – by eyes that would say nothing of what they saw for now. They were not her daughter’s eyes, nor the sightless orbs of Apicata. These were the eyes of another. Eyes that loved her like a child. Eyes that loathed her like coming death.

  When the castrated slave Lygdus returned to the great house, he clutched his domina’s secret to his heart, with no inkling of how he might use it. He had seen her slip from her bedroom and had not intended to trail her as far as the Emperor’s garden. But when she failed to notice him and he followed further, Lygdus became intoxicated by the tiny amount of power this gave him. She did not know he was there. She did not know he knew. He had stealth.

  But the castrated boy failed to see the other set of eyes that watched from the banks of flowers. So absorbed was Lygdus in his little victory over his mistress that he missed the soothsayer. The aged Thrasyllus still sat where he had been since the wedding, half-hidden by leaves and shadows.

  The old man found his mouth filling up with words just as the slave slipped away. The soothsayer wanted to call out and stop him – some of the words concerned Lygdus, after all. But he let him go. Lygdus was not the goddess’s intended recipient. The words the Great Mother, Cybele, gave Thrasyllus to impart were meant for another: she who was so long asleep. Thrasyllus closed his eyes and let the words come.

  The son with blood, by water’s done, the truth is never seen.

  The third is hooked by a harpy’s look – the rarest of all birds.

  The course is cooked by a slave-boy’s stroke; the fruit is lost with babes.

  The matron’s words alone are heard, the addled heart is ringed.

  The one near sea falls by a lie that comes from the gelding’s tongue.

  The doctor’s lad will take the stairs, from darkness comes the wronged,

  No eyes, no hands and ven
geance done, but worthless is the prize.

  One would-be queen knows hunger’s pangs when Cerberus conducts her.

  One brother’s crime sees him dine at leisure of his bed.

  One would-be queen is one-eyed too until the truth gives comforts.

  When tiny shoes a cushion brings, the cuckoo’s king rewarded.

  Your work is done, it’s time to leave – the sword is yours to pass.

  Your mother lives within this queen: she who rules beyond you.

  The end, the end, your mother says – to deception now depend.

  So long asleep, now sleep once more, your Attis is Veiovis.

  *

  When Sejanus came to their bed, Apicata had already arranged herself upon the linen, lying on her chest with her arms resting beside her, two cushions placed beneath her loins so that her rump was raised and displayed for him. She said nothing, knowing how deep his despair at the destruction of their plans had been, and she intended saying nothing when he took her – her silence aroused him most. Afterwards, she would begin to soothe him with words, coaxing him back to confidence and hope.

  But Sejanus made no move to enter her, and Apicata realised that sodomy would not please him tonight. Leaving the bed, she sank to her knees in front of him, pressing her lips to his thighs. The smell of him was sour – he had not washed – but there was nothing about this man that could repulse her. She took him in her mouth, tasting his dirt and sweat, but his sex wouldn’t grow. He lifted her away. Apicata sat next to him at the edge of the bed, and was heartened that when she placed her hand in his he did not let go.

  After a time he said, ‘They don’t deserve my father’s love.’

  ‘Who don’t?’

  ‘His family. Any of them. They don’t love him back. They pretend to love him, but it’s false.’

  ‘Only your love is true, husband.’

  ‘It breaks my heart for him.’ He wept a little then and Apicata knew simple joy when he placed his head at her breast while the tears flowed. She stroked his hair, placing her lips in the curls. He had a hero’s hair, her husband – the hair of Hercules.

  When he stopped, she said, ‘You will think of a new plan, Sejanus, and I will help you in it.’

  He lay back on the cushions.

  ‘My ears are always open. I hear the things no one else can hear.’

  He closed his eyes and his breathing grew fainter. Apicata placed her mouth to his thighs and took him again, for her own contentment if not for his. She lost herself in the motion. Her mind was freed from her body, from the shackle of her blindness, as it always was in this pleasure. She remembered what she’d heard in the garden before the banquet hall doors had opened – the conversation between the soothsayer and the noble matron. Apicata played it over in her mind until inspiration came.

  Then she said, ‘I have a plan of my own, husband. Would you like to hear it?’

  But Sejanus was asleep.

  ‘No matter,’ she whispered. ‘I will enact it on my own account and then delight you with what occurs.’

  She nestled into his loins and allowed sleep to claim her too.

  Acknowledgements

  Iowe a great debt to Lyn Tranter and Wenona Byrne at Australian Literary Management, who, together, responded with huge positivity to the very early draft of Den of Wolves I sent them, cold and unsolicited, back in 2005. They swore they would find me the perfect publisher, and they did.

  The hardworking people at Random House Australia have been perfect in every way. My gratitude to and affection for commissioning editor Larissa Edwards is immense; she is a wellspring of encouragement, good humour and gossip – and she loves a sordid tale as much as I do. Likewise, Julian Welch is an inspiring editor, and I especially thank him for his judicious eye, his love of the ancient Romans and his considerable indulgence towards my excesses.

  I must also thank my great friend Chris Dent, who insisted on reading every draft of Den of Wolves that I would allow him to, and whose feedback was unerringly useful.

  Finally, I would like to acknowledge my debt to the works of Tacitus and Suetonius; they are the inspiration for this novel, the first in a series set in early Imperial Rome. There is, for me, as much joy to be had in all that those two ancient historians choose not to illuminate about the Julio-Claudian era as there is in all that they did. Their works are full of compelling personalities, shattering politics and incomprehensible catastrophes. They are also full of gaps. The tantalising unsaids – amongst so much rich detail – intrigue and inspire me most of all. Accordingly, it was from the realms of the overlooked and the under-explained in the works of these great Roman writers that I found the springboard to write this fictional history. Some of the characters and events in Den of Wolves are real; others are entirely invented, of course. I have marked each chapter with a very brief précis of what was essentially the leading news story of the time. These are placed for historical context only – readers do not need to be familiar with them in order to enjoy the novel. I wrote Den of Wolves as the story of what may (or may not) have been playing out behind the great moments of Roman history – and behind the great Roman men.

  Some classics scholars have criticised the ancient historians for characterising the women of Julio-Claudian Rome poorly. It has been said that some women were all too succinctly dismissed as monsters. If this is so, then there may well have been good reason for it – anything from inherent Roman sexism to the whims of new dynastic masters. Or Tacitus and Suetonius may simply have been telling the truth. With so many Roman men acting with extraordinary monstrosity to achieve their own ends, I would like to think that the similar actions of their women can be seen, at the very least, as learned behaviour. And while modern scholars make convincing cases that these women have been falsely maligned, it is hard to read such arguments without disappointment. When repainted as innocents, these women are considerably less compelling. The storyteller in me much prefers them as compelling, which is why I have chosen to adhere to an unfashionable view. But I also feel quite sympathetic towards the Julio-Claudian women. If they were monsters, then it seems to me that they only did what they had to do in order to survive and prosper.

  Luke Devenish