Nest of vipers eor-2

by Luke Devenish

  Burrus reddened and complained. 'That's our business, Nilla — a great gladiator doesn't want to know about that.'

  Nilla just laughed. But when she looked to see what Flamma thought, his eyes were trained on the horizon again, squinting into the sun. 'Walk faster,' he said. But he had sandals on his feet and the children did not.

  Nilla stepped on a grass thorn. 'Ow!' She tried to pull it out with her free hand. 'It's stuck in my toe.' She waited for Flamma to release her other hand so that she could sit down and pull the thorn out, but he held it tightly. 'The thorn,' Nilla said.

  Burrus suddenly saw why Flamma stared at the horizon. 'Run!'

  But Flamma held their hands in his fists, even when they kicked him and pulled at him and sank their teeth into his flesh. They were less than blowflies to him, less than gnats, but he felt ashamed. He hated himself for so easily betraying children.

  Flamma only let them go when the men with the nets had arrived.

  The nuptials were performed as a confarreatio — the patrician wedding rite — which caused quiet affront to some because the bride was not, in fact, patrician. But this was not to be acknowledged out loud, and a sacred tradition as old as Rome itself was crushed underfoot. But at the wedding banquet, once the rites were done, one guest gave expression to the city's feelings, and in doing so brought the union undone.

  It started with a few sprinkles of water. In honour of Mercury, wedding guests reached from their couches to dip their fingers into their water bowls and then let the contents dribble onto their foreheads. It was a joke — Mercury was only acknowledged by merchants on this, the Ides of May, not by patricians. But the barb behind the jest was not apparent to those who picked up on the idea, mimicking the guest who had started it.

  Nero and Drusus, the teenage grandsons of the Emperor, were the first to follow the lead, sprinkling themselves liberally with water. Then their sisters Drusilla and tiny Julilla did so, seated in chairs at the base of the boys' dining couch. Their cousin Tiberia took it up next, plunging her whole hand into a water bowl and letting it dribble on her face as she laughed. Her mother, Livilla, tried to stop her, but Tiberia was enjoying herself too much to listen. The bride and her patrician groom were next, Aelia and Hector, still babies too, despite the wedding that had been thrust upon them. Other guests around the Imperial children followed, and soon water was sprinkling everywhere, making the marble floors slippery.

  Alone among the children, my dominus, Little Boots, remained stony-faced, his hands in his food, his face creasing with the concentration of stripping flesh from a bone. He looked up at me where I stood by his side in faithful attendance, and I nodded at the wisdom of his foresight in not participating with his brothers and sisters and cousins. Little Boots cast a glance at Tiberius. The Emperor sat in a throne with the wedding guests arranged around him. His mind was elsewhere. He could hear the laughter, but he wasn't taking it in. His eyes were on the open windows and the clear spring sky. Little Boots looked back at me again with a smirk and I gave him a shrug, before our gaze went to the Praetorian Prefect, Sejanus, who sat frozen with his blind wife, Apicata, at the parents' couches.

  Sejanus may as well have been as sightless as his wife at this moment. The Prefect was blind to every guest in the room but one: the guest who had first dipped his fingers in the water, in mockery of Sejanus because he was not a patrician.

  Sejanus was equal to Castor in every aspect but one: he did not have the Emperor's blood in his veins. The power, the wealth, the love, trust and loyalty that were Sejanus's by merit from the very first day he had entered Tiberius's life were worthless without this. Castor alone was the Emperor's son, with the blood of the Claudii inside him. Lacking it, Sejanus was only the 'son'. From blood came the heir.

  'I think the god is honoured enough now, don't you?' Castor called out to him. And then, by way of explaining what he had started, he added, 'I couldn't risk offending Mercury for you on this happy day, could I, Sejanus? I remembered just in time what you like to do for Mercuralia.'

  There was a gasp to Sejanus's left. Castor's crippled cousin Claudius had got his meaning, his hand only inches from his own water bowl, and he paled at the naked insult.

  Castor guffawed.

  Mortified, and with his wits already half-pickled in wine, Claudius did the first thing he could think to distract the room's attention. He plucked an early-season grape from a tray of fruit and tossed it high in the air.

  'I'll show you a trick!' he shouted. He turned his face upwards to catch it, shutting his eyes as the grape plummeted, pelting him with a splat. All those around him shrieked with glee at the sheer stupidity of this act, including Sejanus, who was taken by surprise.

  At once the water was forgotten, as guests started scrabbling for grapes of their own. The Emperor's grandsons Nero and Drusus flung the little purple orbs about, trying to catch them in their mouths. Desperate to keep Sejanus laughing, Claudius threw whole handfuls of grapes in the air and stumbled about after them, snapping his jaw like a seal. Sejanus doubled up with laughter. Castor's pinch-faced wife, Livilla, tried to rein in the children from this sport but none would listen to her. Freed from supervision by their own mother's absence from the wedding, Drusilla and Julilla slid wildly about on the marble floor, chasing the cascading grapes and pelting their cousin Tiberia with them, who happily threw them back.

  At their bridal couch the children Hector and Aelia now tried to look as if they were above such revelry, but it was hard. Ten-year-old Aelia looked towards her father, Sejanus, who was slapping his thighs, and was bewildered that her tasteful wedding feast had descended into something so Plautine. Nine-year-old Hector cringed, as his own father, the crippled Claudius, tried for one laugh too many and skidded on the fruit mush, hitting the floor and catching his head on a table edge. His cry of pain brought the biggest cheer yet from the guests, and it was all too much for Hector.

  'I'll show you how it's done,' he announced to the room, looking accusingly at his father. Claudius was an ignoble parent in Hector's eyes; lame and cursed with a stammer, he had never held high office or a post in the legions, or even a diplomatic position. He was a fool, the Imperial family joke, and Hector was ashamed of him.

  When Claudius had told his son of the unexpected betrothal to Aelia, Hector had been delighted, not shocked by the prematurity of it, as his father had expected him to be. To Hector, this union with Sejanus's daughter was a gift from the gods — the one hope he would ever have of being freed of his father's impediments. He didn't care one bit that Aelia was haughty and sarcastic and that they wouldn't be permitted to live with each other until they turned thirteen. All that mattered was that he had gained a new father in the handsome and courageous Sejanus. After all, Hector's grandfather had been the bravest of warriors, killed before his time by a treacherous horse, and it had been Sejanus himself, aged little more than Hector was now, who had walked a thousand miles with Tiberius, accompanying the body to Rome.

  Hector selected a fat grape from a tray and rolled it between his fingers. His cousins and playmates were engaged in the same task all around him, but they plucked and threw their fruit without care or deliberation. Hector alone knew the real trick to this. He'd spent hours in the garden doing this very thing, tossing grapes and berries and nuts to the sky and never failing to catch them in his teeth. He could do the trick in his sleep.

  With a flick of his wrist Hector sent the grape towards the ceiling, and it seemed, to me and Little Boots, who continued to watch without participating, that time and motion slowed as the little ball of skin and juice and pips achieved its zenith in the fug of incense smoke and soot from the oil lamps. Then it began its descent. I knew what would happen next as if I'd always known, but of course I hadn't. I just experienced that flash of certainty, that confirmation of another's fate that comes with being divine.

  Hector caught the grape in his mouth with a plop. Watching sprawled on the floor, Claudius burst into applause. 'Well caught, Hector!'


  It was only when Sejanus mirrored the praise that Hector gave a proud little smile, but it was short-lived. A look of consternation crossed his face and he opened his mouth to say something, but no words came. His hands flew under his chin and his eyes went wide. He coughed — a terrible rasp, like a carpenter's file being dragged across a plank. He fell to his knees.

  His little bride, Aelia, cried out, 'It's caught in his throat!'

  Claudius tried to struggle to his feet but Sejanus reached the boy first, leaping from his dining couch, as Apicata stared after him in blind bewilderment. Hector's eyes were like glass. The grape was lodged in his windpipe.

  'Thump him! Thump him!' Claudius stammered, helpless in the mush.

  Sejanus threw the boy face-down and hooked an arm under his waist, raising Hector's rump in the air as if to violate him. Then he slammed the heel of his palm between Hector's shoulderblades. 'Breathe!' Sejanus shouted at him. 'Breathe!' He banged the boy's back like a drum, clenching his hand into a fist, punching him, pounding him. Hector's head danced and jerked. The spit dribbled from his lips, slick and frothy on the marble. Sejanus willed the boy not to choke; too much depended on him, far too much.

  Then the grape spat free.

  'Thank the gods! Thank the gods!' cried Claudius. Unable to find traction for his feet, Hector's crippled father slid across the floor like an engorged serpent, embracing Hector where he lay, kissing the cheek that was still too young for razors or pimples. 'It's all right now,' Claudius whispered to him. 'You're all right now, no harm done. Sejanus saved you.'

  He raised the boy up and Hector's head lolled at an obscene angle, swinging like a lead weight on the end of a string. His neck had snapped.

  Claudius's frenzied sobbing at last brought the Emperor from his daze. The draught of an Eastern flower he consumed in secret shrouded Tiberius's mind like a mist. But it parted just enough to let him take in the scene.

  'Is the boy an acrobat?' he asked Sejanus, puzzled, and noting the strange contortion to Hector's body.

  When her efforts at comforting her shattered daughter Aelia made no impact, blind Apicata abandoned the sobbing girl to a wet nurse. There was nothing to be done and, truth be told, Apicata was not devastated by the calamity. She regarded the crippled Claudius in a poor light. Indeed, she viewed the entire Imperial house as something obscene, for all its glamour. Although she hadn't said so at the original betrothal announcement, Apicata had felt little pride in the prospect of joining her family with Rome's rulers. She despised them. Yet that didn't preclude her from wanting to be them. And in order to be them, Apicata felt it necessary to study them.

  When Sejanus's devotion to Tiberius had required his family to leave their own house and reside inside Oxheads, the Imperial residence, Apicata had enjoyed wandering the palace corridors at night. Her own ease in darkness gave her an advantage she didn't have in the daylight. She was rarely observed, and when she was, she was merely ignored.

  With her daughter sobbing in the wet nurse's bosom, Apicata felt her way along the walls of the palace corridors until she reached the suite of my comatose domina, Livia Drusilla. Livia's state of perpetual sleep was now so well known inside Oxheads — if not yet outside in Rome — that she no longer had guards. Livia's son, the Emperor Tiberius, couldn't conceive of anyone wishing to harm his mother — she was already near dead. Blind Apicata slipped into my domina 's sleeping chamber quite easily.

  Once inside, she listened to the air being drawn into Livia's lungs — a movement so slight you could rest a feather on her lips. Apicata placed her hands on my domina 's form, caressing her flesh. Livia was soft and warm. She laid her fingers on Livia's head and pulled the hairs at her temple, feeling the skin stretching from the skull. This was a girlish torture intended to make any victim wince. But when no reaction came, Apicata fumbled for the skin at my domina 's throat, taking a handful of it in her sharp-nailed fingers and crushing it like a square of silk. If she'd had her sight she would have seen the bruise this caused. But still there was no reaction from the sleeper, nor would there have been if Apicata had taken a knife to my domina 's wrists and hacked off her hands. Livia was now upon this earth in body only. In spirit she was elsewhere, sent there in secret by me, who loved her most.

  'So long asleep…' Apicata whispered.

  'She fascinates you, doesn't she?' I said from the door.

  Apicata stood upright. She hadn't heard me enter — a rare lapse for her.

  'Don't be frightened,' I said, approaching. 'I am only a slave.'

  But Apicata wasn't frightened. She studied me intensely, as if her eyes still saw light. 'I know who you are,' she said. 'You're Livia's creature — the one who doesn't age.'

  I was flattered, being then over seventy years old. Most people at Oxheads believed me to be no more than forty at that time.

  'Livia was ageless too,' said Apicata, 'but the skin at her throat is like a soft leather bag. Has age caught up with her, creature?'

  'It has,' I confirmed, but I didn't tell her that the years would melt away again if I allowed my domina to wake up. 'What fascinates you so much about her, Lady?'

  'It's repulsion, not fascination.' Apicata made to leave but I prevented her. She gasped at my daring to touch her.

  'I've seen you in here before,' I said. 'Of course it's fascination. I've observed you stroking my domina and smelling her flesh. I even saw you place your hand between her thighs.'

  Apicata drew breath, saying nothing.

  'I told you not to be frightened, and I meant it,' I said. 'I am fascinated too — by you, Lady.'

  I could tell that Sejanus's blind wife was considering whether to scream for a guard, but I knew she wouldn't.

  'How did this happen, then?' she said to me at last. 'This strange state she exists in. She's neither dead nor alive, but she's breathing. How did it happen to her?'

  The answer was simple. I had achieved the thing I had longed for since I had gazed upon my domina for the very first time, six decades before — I had entered Livia's sex and taken her forcefully. But with my useless eunuch's prick I'd had to employ a phallus, and the poison I smeared on the thing had reduced Livia to this state. But I told Apicata nothing of that. Nor did I tell her why I had done it, which was somewhat more complicated. 'It is a mystery,' was all I said.

  Of course, this was not enough for Apicata. 'Is someone scheming against her?' she asked. 'Is this some plot, creature?'

  I shrugged, then remembering she couldn't see I repeated that I was only a slave — how should I know? 'Rome is full of so many intrigues, Lady.'

  Apicata again made to leave, and this time I stood aside, although I suspected she had more to say. I was right. 'My husband used to pleasure your domina, did you know that, creature?'

  'I did know,' I told her, although I had only learned of it at the very end of their illicit liaison. 'She took joy in his attentions — she praised the girth of him,' I added, conjecturing. I wanted to see what game Apicata was playing with me.

  But she merely nodded. 'He pleasured her with my encouragement. The Augusta Livia was lonely — a sad state for such a great lady. I saw it as a civic service to make her feel loved again.'

  I wanted to laugh. Livia had intended to kill Sejanus during their final encounter, and Apicata certainly hadn't been privy to that. But my own plans had diverged from Livia's by then and I couldn't allow her to do it. I needed Sejanus alive, so Livia took the poison in his place.

  'Sejanus was very shocked when this happened to her,' said Apicata. 'It upset him.'

  'My domina will wake again one day,' I lied, 'and perhaps when she does she will find things changed — and changed in a way that pleases her. And perhaps she will remember her pleasures again, too, and the friends who think fondly of her still.'

  Apicata said nothing for a moment and I feared I'd been too oblique. I wanted her to think of us as allies, not enemies.

  'It is nice to have friends,' she said at last, then she felt her way to the door and left me.r />
  I stared after Apicata for a few moments, letting my eyes lose focus while I gathered my thoughts. Then a figure crept into my peripheral vision, startling me. It was my young master, Little Boots.

  'You should be in bed, domine,' I admonished him.

  'But the blind woman creeps around the halls and wakes me up,' he said.

  'How could she wake you up when you're supposed to be sleeping inside your mother's house?'

  'I still heard her.'

  Lies, of course. Little Boots had stolen out of bed purely to see me, using the slaves' tunnels that linked the Imperial family's various houses. I indulged him and patted a chair for him to sit upon. Little Boots did so, pulling his knees up to his chin, while I set about preparing my domina for the night.

  'So, did you hear my talk with the Prefect's wife?' I asked as I rubbed a salve on the bruise Apicata had left at my domina 's throat.

  He had heard every word, the monkey. 'The choking has upset Sejanus,' he said, matter-of-factly. If Little Boots had shed any tears for his hapless cousin Hector, he was over them now. 'What do you think Sejanus will do? It must have wrecked his plans.'

  I answered that it must have wrecked them badly, even though neither of us knew what Sejanus's plans were. All we knew for certain was that Sejanus had so far caused the death of Little Boots's father, Germanicus, who was the Emperor's nephew and adopted son. This secret murder, which had so devastated Little Boots's mother, older brothers and younger sisters, had left Little Boots himself far from grieved. He had loved his father, but he loved the idea of his father being dead even more. It was because of the prophecies, about which I shall speak more in time.

  'It is my guess,' I pondered, 'that because Sejanus has seen that your father's murder will never be traced back to him, he'll only grow bolder in his wickedness.'

  'Yes,' said Little Boots, nodding — very sagely for his eight years.

  'And with his hopes ruined to marry his daughter into your family, he'll have anger and humiliation in his heart.'