Nest of Vipers Read online

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters

  The new prophecies of Cybele

  PROLOGUE Portunalia August, AD 65

  THE PARTNER IN MY LABOURS Mercuralia May, AD 20

  Veiovia May, AD 20

  The Nones of June AD 20

  The Ides of June AD 20

  Summania June, AD 20

  The Kalends of July AD 20

  Ludi Plebeii November, AD 20

  Matronalia March, AD 21

  The Kalends of April AD 21

  MY SOLACE IN THIS TIME OF WOES Ludi Romani September, AD 21

  The Day of Ill Omens October, AD 21

  Saturnalia December, AD 21

  The Kalends of March AD 22

  The Nones of March AD 22

  The Nones of April AD 22

  The Nones of March AD 23

  The Kalends of April AD 23

  Lemuria May, AD 23

  The Ides of April AD 24

  Vestalia June, AD 24

  The Nones of January AD 25

  Agonalia January, AD 26

  Carmentalia January, AD 26

  The Kalends of February AD 26

  The Nones of February AD 26

  Septimontium September, AD 26

  Ludi Romani September, AD 26

  IS IT WRONG YOU ARE NOT QUEEN? The Kalends of October AD 26

  Equirria October, AD 26

  Sacramentum January, AD 27

  The Nones of February AD 27

  The Ides of February AD 27

  Agonalia March, AD 28

  The Ides of January AD 29

  The Kalends of April AD 30

  Megalesia April, AD 30

  Equirria October, AD 31

  Armilustrium October, AD 31

  The eleventh day before the Kalends of November AD 31

  The Kalends of November AD 31

  THE CHILD WILL RULE The Nones of November AD 31

  Veiovis May, AD 33

  The Kalends of June AD 35

  Terminalia February, AD 37

  Matronalia March, AD 37

  Extract: Empress of Rome III: Stealth of Vixens Epigraphs

  Quinquatria March, AD 59

  Acknowledgements

  Luke Devenish is a novelist, screenwriter, playwright and lecturer. He has written for some of Australia’s best-loved television dramas, including Neighbours, Home and Away, Something in the Air and SeaChange. His plays have been staged by Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre, the Adelaide Festival, the Sydney Festival and the National Institute for Dramatic Arts. Luke teaches writing at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Monash University. A passionate gardener, he lives with his partner and pets in the Goldfields region of central Victoria.

  Visit his website: www.lukedevenish.com.

  NEST of

  VIPERS

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Empress of Rome: Nest of Vipers

  ePub ISBN 9781864715897

  Kindle ISBN 9781864716870

  A Bantam book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Bantam in 2010

  Copyright © Luke Devenish 2010

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at

  www.randomhouse.com.au/offices.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Devenish, Luke, 1966–

  Nest of vipers/Luke Devenish

  ISBN 978 1 86325 623 0 (pbk)

  Devenish, Luke, 1966– Empress of Rome bk 2

  A823.4

  Cover photographs by Image Source/Getty Images (front) and Shutterstock (back)

  Cover design by Natalie Winter

  Internal design and typesetting by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Printed in Australia by Griffin Press, on Accredited ISO AS/NZS 14001:2004

  Environmental Management System printer

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To Oliver, Mikaela and Alice, who all enjoy books,

  if not yet this one.

  Uncle Luke looks forward to the day when your

  discovery of the ancient Romans sends your

  eyebrows swiftly skyward.

  Cast of Characters

  THE HOUSE OF LIVIA

  IPHICLES Narrator, slave and god

  LIVIA His beloved domina, lost in an endless sleep

  MARTINA Shape-shifting sorceress

  PLANCINA Mutilated murderess

  THE HOUSE OF TIBERIUS

  TIBERIUS The prophesied first king, addicted to the Eastern flower

  SEJANUS His Praetorian Prefect and obsessive, loving ‘son’

  APICATA Sejanus’s blind, devoted wife

  MACRO Praetorian Tribune, second to Sejanus

  THRASYLLUS Soothsayer for the words of Cybele

  THE HOUSE OF CASTOR

  CASTOR Tiberius’s blood son and heir; bitter rival to Sejanus

  LIVILLA Castor’s sly and secretive wife

  TIBERIA Their young daughter

  GEMELLUS Their infant son

  LYGDUS Livilla’s eunuch foot slave

  THE HOUSE OF AGRIPPINA

  AGRIPPINA Grieving widow of the murdered Germanicus

  NERO Her first son, whose heart hides secret desires for men

  DRUSUS Her second son, whose heart hides transvestite perversions

  LITTLE BOOTS Her third son, a brat, the prophesied second king

  NILLA Her first daughter, lost at sea

  DRUSILLA Her second daughter, favourite of Little Boots

  JULILLA Her third daughter, neglected and overlooked

  BURRUS Nilla’s courageous boy-slave, lost at sea

  FLAMMA Golden-haired gladiator

  CLAUDIA Agrippina’s loyal cousin

  SOSIA Agrippina’s loyal friend

  SILIUS Celebrated General and Senator, husband of Sosia

  THE HOUSE OF ANTONIA

  CLAUDIUS Crippled brother of murdered Germanicus

  ANTONIA Revered mother of Livilla, Claudius and murdered Germanicus

  THE HOUSE OF THE AEMILII

  AEMILIA Patrician matron and witch

  LEPIDA Her eldest daughter, marked by Fate

  AHENOBARBUS Her eldest son, Lepida’s twin, red-haired and mute

  DOMITIA Her second daughter

  AEMILIUS Her second son, friend of Little Boots

  MESSALINA Lepida’s beautiful child

  ALBUCILLA Ahenobarbus’s lover
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  OTHERS

  LENA Brothel madam

  ACTE Beautiful scribe for Iphicles’s words

  The new prophecies of Cybele

  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 vengeance 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.

  PROLOGUE

  Portunalia

  August, AD 65

  Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus

  Germanicus engages in a new series of

  reprisals against those he distrusts

  The tar-soaked wick smoked for a moment, hovering above the brazier before it sizzled and spat and burst into flames. The choir on the terrace erupted into a hymn to Vulcan – the great god of fire – and we palace slaves, arranged along the walls and floors and terrace edges, muttered our rehearsed prayers. The expressions of the guests who watched on from the banqueting hall ran from excitement to disgust to jaded indifference, but the eyes of the condemned who were staked to the poles in the garden widened at the lighting of this instrument of their doom. The wretches gave out looks of such dread that the sycophants among the dinner guests applauded the sight. Other guests took their cue, the squeamish among them feeling ill at what was next for the condemned, even though they clapped and cheered for its commencement.

  Our master heard nothing but approval in this noise, as he only ever did now. The thought of public opposition and loathing was more than he could bear. He basked in what he told himself was unconditional and undying love. He laughed at the cheers, sang along with the hymn and waved the long birch rod from which the tar-wick burned. Then he leaped from his dais with a howl, misjudging the distance and landing in the flowers. The dinner guests increased their clamour, as if our master were making a comedy for them – as if he weren’t mad and obese and intoxicated at all.

  The Christians writhed at their poles, staked in rows. Their imminent suffering was to be prolonged – they all knew it. Their deaths were meant for my master’s entertainment. He had disliked past executions when the fun had been marred by the condemned bursting into thanks to their god, so these Christians were gagged. They would blaze in silence.

  Musicians blasted on tubas and my master ran up the nearest garden path, the tar-wick held high in the air. ‘Which one first?’ he screamed over his shoulder to his friends. ‘Which will be the first to burn?’

  A tumult of hollering and pointing and throwing of food scraps came as each guest tried to outdo the others in identifying the inaugural performer.

  ‘This one?’ Our master poked his flaming birch at a staked Christian. ‘Or this one? Or what about this pretty one? Look how pretty she is!’

  The sycophants united in this choice and our master gazed up at the bound girl, roped high to her stake, her bare feet and legs coated in tar. ‘What you are about to feel will bring pleasure to so many.’

  He touched the tar-wick to her feet, holding it there and staring into her eyes as her agony commenced. The girl ignited with an intensity that knocked our master from his feet. The dinner guests shrieked with laughter and our master sprang up again, burping and hiccuping and then guffawing at his own antics, before falling into an abrupt silence that every guest and slave and singer and musician echoed in an instant.

  Our master stared, mesmerised by the Christian girl as she burned like a sun – her rags, her hair, her flesh ablaze. The glow of her filled the evening garden like a sunset.

  ‘Can you hear your Christ?’ he whispered to her. ‘Can you hear him now? What does he say to you? That you were wrong to have faith in him? That he is not a god at all?’

  A voice was heard from beyond the garden walls, high and pure above the crackle of the flames.

  ‘Parricide!’

  Our master jerked from his trance as something was hurled over the wall, landing near his feet. It was a shoe, rough and wooden. A female guest screamed as she recognised it for the symbol that it was.

  ‘Parricide!’

  Another voice rang out, strong and deep. ‘Where has your mother gone?’

  A second object was flung into the garden, landing in the plants. It was the pair to the shoe.

  ‘You’ve killed her, king!’

  ‘Parricide!’

  Watching from my slave’s position by the wall, I knew what would come next.

  ‘Stop them –’ the female guest who had screamed started to say. The third and final garment from the parricide’s wardrobe was thrown into the banquet: a stinking, bloody wolf’s skin.

  ‘Now you’ve got something to wear when we condemn you, parricide!’

  Fear flushed my master’s face, and the woman now vomited oysters. The very worst of the invited sycophants stood up slowly on his couch, smiling widely and cynically at our tormented master, before placing his hands around his mouth and shouting, ‘Hail, Caesar!’

  There was shocked silence. Then the cry was taken up by all – guests, slaves, singers and musicians. The shouts of the accusers outside were drowned.

  Our master’s good humour returned; he smiled and nodded and gave a moment’s thought to picking up his lyre. Then he caught my eye where I stood by the wall, and the look I gave was enough to make him forget the thought. He accepted some honeyed wine given to him by the beautiful, smiling Acte and flung his tar-wick aside, instructing the guards to light the rest of the condemned at once.

  The dining slaves took this as their cue to offer trays of Trojan pig to the guests. Acte cast me a weary glance and I nodded, tilting my head towards the garden. She nodded back.

  We made our leave to sit at a bench, well away from the party and the fires. We felt sympathy for the Christians – how could we not? Their suffering was undeserved. Rome had been destroyed by another’s hands – they were innocent of it – but scapegoats were needed and the Christ cult’s refusal to recognise all gods but its own offended too many deities. All the same, I was glad the condemned wore gags – and glad, too, that our garden bench was sufficiently upwind.

  We had commenced the final days – we knew it now. There was very little time left to us; only the faintest echoes of long-ago prophecies remained, and soon they too would be silent and then forgotten. And so would we.

  Acte and I settled in the warm evening air to return to our great labour. She had a small stack of fresh wax tablets already at hand.

  ‘Do you think,’ I asked, feeling the twinge of an old wound in my back, ‘that what we’re about to record will be confusing to someone who might choose to start reading the history here and not at an earlier point?’

  Acte gave this consideration. ‘We will help them, then,’ she said. ‘It is only fair. Why should they read of the earlier crimes and intrigues if they find greater enticement in the horrors ahead? Let us explain the most important past moments. The prophecies about the four great kings of Rome, for example – we should detail those.’

  My mind wandered as I remembered the strange words of the goddess who had utte
red them.

  Acte wrote them down, speaking them aloud as she did so. She had not been born when they had first been uttered, yet she still knew them by heart. ‘From the two, four will come, four who will rule …’

  I closed my eyes, remembering.

  ‘The first will be he who nests for the cuckoo …’

  ‘Yes …’ I whispered.

  ‘That was the Emperor Tiberius. And the cuckoo’s egg that he nested was his “son”, Sejanus, who was not his son at all.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  Acte continued writing. ‘The second will be he who wears his father’s crown …’

  I nodded again.

  ‘That was the brat, Little Boots,’ said Acte, ‘not yet king in the history so far, but destined to be so in what we write of tonight.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Iphicles?’ She could always tell when I was withholding something. ‘Little Boots was the prophesied second king, was he not?’

  ‘We’ll get to all that in time,’ I said.

  ‘Sometimes I think you like to keep things mysterious just for my entertainment.’

  I didn’t deny it.

  ‘The third will be he whose heart has no eyes. The fourth will be he who poisons the breast …’ She completed writing the two remaining lines of the prophecy. ‘These last two kings have not yet been revealed in our history so far.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  She waited for me to say something else, but I didn’t. ‘Will they be revealed?’ she asked.

  I echoed a phrase I had dictated when I first began our task: ‘My intention is to entertain you,’ I quoted, ‘and once that is achieved, I will seek to enlighten you. I know of no other way to approach this history. You are my master and there is no alternate path for me but that which leads to your pleasure.’

  Acte just rolled her eyes. ‘Have it your way then. Shall we start?’

  I heard the joints in my old arms crack as I stretched them in front of me. I felt tired and weary, more so than I ever had. Yet I felt invigorated by my great task, too. I nodded at my beautiful scribe. ‘I am well over a hundred years old,’ I began. ‘My hair is gone, my skin is flaked, and the bones of my limbs are as fragile as glass. Most people think I am sixty – in itself a venerable age – but, in truth, I am the oldest slave in the empire.’

  Acte wrote my words smoothly and fast – she now had a practised hand.