Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves Read online

  ‘Which god is this?’

  The buzzing of the unseen flies was oppressive.

  ‘It is Attis,’ I said. The name drew no recognition from Livia. ‘She is a woman, yet not a woman,’ I went on, ‘and not a man either. Attis is Cybele’s son – and her lover. But the Great Mother has a strange way of bestowing her favours upon her chosen one. She demanded a sacrifice from him.’

  Livia realised that the buzzing flies were massed on a porphyry offering bowl that had been placed at the base of the Attis statue. Tiberius broke from her grasp and ran forward to look.

  ‘Don’t touch it,’ I called out.

  Tiberius had stuck his little hands in the bowl’s contents before Livia grabbed him again, smacking his wrist until he dropped what he held. The flies rose and swarmed angrily around our heads.

  She was disgusted. ‘It looks a like a boiled egg,’ she said. ‘There’re lots of them – and other stinking stuff too. The maggots have been crawling all over them.’

  My hand went protectively to my loins. ‘They are not eggs, domina. They are testicles.’

  Livia was fascinated. ‘I pity the poor rams,’ she said. ‘She must be very cruel, Cybele, to ask for gifts like these in her temple.’

  ‘She is crueller than you know,’ I said. ‘They are testicles of men. Cybele demands her worshipers cut off their own balls in order to love her – which is what she demanded of Attis.’

  Astonished, Livia stared at the spilled bowl of sacrifice for what seemed like many minutes. Slowly the flies settled again. Livia’s initial disgust passed, replaced by another reaction. I could see it for what it was as I studied her.

  Livia was aroused by what she saw. Her hand moved unconsciously to her cleft and slipped within the folds of her garments to begin stroking herself. The hacked-off organs transfixed her. When she flicked her eyes to the statue again, the face of Attis seemed to melt and reform in front of her, becoming another face entirely – a face she recognised and had seen today; a face known by all of Rome.

  ‘Two houses joined,’ she said in a small, light voice.

  ‘Domina?’

  ‘Two houses joined. The Claudii and the Julii.’ She snapped out of her trance. ‘What does the Great Mother demand of her women worshippers?’ she asked me.

  I didn’t know. I was still transfixed myself – not by the grisly offerings but by my domina. ‘It can’t be as bad as what she demands from her men …’ I muttered.

  *

  When we left the temple again the cowled acolyte emerged from behind the great statue of the goddess. He allowed his hood to fall to his shoulders and when he smiled, it was a woman’s smile that played upon his full, red lips.

  ‘I thank you, Holy Mother Cybele,’ the hermaphrodite whispered.

  A little boy of six ran out after him from the hidden anteroom behind the statue. He clutched a live swallow in his hands, its heart beating like a drum against his cupped fingers. ‘Look,’ he said proudly. ‘I caught it in my hands, Mama. All I did was sit still and wait, just like you told me to.’

  The hermaphrodite crouched to the boy and kissed him maternally. ‘You are clever, Thrasyllus.’ Then he led the boy’s eyes to where we were descending the temple steps and disappearing from view.

  ‘Oh,’ said Thrasyllus, with a recognition of having seen Livia before. ‘It is that one.’

  ‘I told the girl we would meet again and, look, the Great Mother has made it so,’ said the hermaphrodite.

  Thrasyllus closed his little eyes, squeezing the captive swallow tighter.

  ‘Let’s kill the bird now,’ said the hermaphrodite, ‘and see what the future holds.’

  The effeminate nomenclator slave rushed forward from his front door position to complete his function within the overstaffed household. ‘Livia Drusilla of the Claudii has arrived!’ he bellowed into the house.

  There was a shout of pleasure from somewhere in the direction of the dining room, followed by the noise of slippered feet approaching.

  ‘My friend, my lifelong friend,’ Livia cried out upon hearing the sounds. I remained respectfully behind her, eyeing off the limpwristed nomenclator, who stared back at me dumbly. Livia stepped through the narrow hall, crossed the inner threshold and stood upon the word SALVE – ‘be well’ – that was laid in mosaic upon the atrium floor. Suddenly emotional, she burst into tears and clutched Lollia to her cheek when her friend and hostess reached her. The same age, they had been like sisters in their girlhood when Marcus Livius had adopted Lollia from her father with a view to marrying her when she came of age. Mysteriously, the marriage had never occurred, and Lollia instead lived with my domina until both girls married other men at thirteen.

  ‘I thought we would never see each other again,’ Livia murmured. ‘I truly did. I thought I was lost to you forever. I thought I was lost from Rome.’

  Lollia held my domina’s face in her hands and caressed her. ‘We could never be parted – the Fates would forbid it.’

  ‘I’d quite lost faith in them.’

  Lollia lightly touched the simple centre parting and matronly bun in which Livia wore her hair. Then she took in the plain grey stola, considering it artful only in the arrangement of its folds but nothing else. My domina’s continued appearance as a penitent was depressing to more than just me.

  Lollia’s own looks, when unadorned at least, were a poor shadow to Livia’s beauty, but she dressed in high fashion. The gown she wore was of the sheerest fabric, dyed the palest pink, and it wafted behind her in a flowing train. The wardrobe maid that followed her everywhere stretched the train out full-length on the mosaic floor, creating a vision of grace from her mistress. Lollia’s tinted blonde wig tumbled from her crown in cascading rolls that fell all the way down her back to end in a curled point at her waist. She was famously curvaceous, and had become even more so with the weight she’d gained since the birth of her daughter.

  Lollia genuinely didn’t wish it to be so, but she felt superior to Livia, who she thought was deliberately diminishing herself. She pitied her friend for choosing such a path, but she also respected her for it.

  ‘It is all over now,’ Lollia comforted. ‘Your husband is forgiven and you have returned to where you should be. That sad play is done.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it really is,’ Livia said. Of course, she knew that Lollia hated her appearance. ‘I cannot make a show of myself now; you understand that, don’t you?’

  Lollia did. ‘Let’s join our party, shall we? Perhaps you will feel like using my hair tongs once we have achieved your little whim today?’

  Livia was careful. ‘So, the one you spoke of is definitely here?’

  ‘She is,’ Lollia confirmed. ‘When the moment comes I will signal her to you.’

  Livia cast a quick glance in my direction. As far as I knew, the day’s visit to the Lady Lollia’s house was nothing more than a luncheon. I wasn’t aware of an additional ‘whim’. ‘What are your orders, domina?’ I asked.

  Lollia turned a critical gaze upon me. ‘What slave is this?’

  I bowed to her.

  ‘This is Iphicles, my husband’s companion slave from childhood.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lollia.

  I felt Livia grow self-conscious of my unprepossessing appearance. ‘I grew tired of him for a while,’ she explained, ‘so I put him in the kitchens and forgot about him. The furnace scarred his skin.’

  ‘Is this the one who pulled you from the cave?’

  Livia shrugged this off, but I knew she felt guilt from her poor treatment of me.

  ‘That’s a shame about the furnace,’ said Lollia. ‘He could have turned out to be handsome.’

  Livia’s eyes met mine and I dreamed of an unspoken apology that perhaps lay within them.

  ‘Bring him to the dining room with us,’ said Lollia. ‘He matches your appearance, at least – he’s very humble.’

  Livia nodded at me to tag behind as she was led by the hand to her friend’s exquisitely painted triclinium. As we w
ere about to enter, Lollia stopped us again. ‘You haven’t told me why you want to see this girl so badly.’

  Livia was evasive. ‘She has celebrity. I want to see what she’s like in the flesh.’

  ‘So you believe the gossip?’

  Livia answered with a question. ‘Do you believe it?’

  Lollia saw the desperate intensity that lay just behind Livia’s little smile, and it both shocked and excited her. ‘Yes, I think I do. It explains so much about her former mistress’s hold on great men.’

  ‘You mean the queen.’

  ‘I prefer to call her the Egyptian whore,’ said Lollia.

  The six other women guests lay in positions of repose across three long dining couches arranged around a low table. All six women slipped in their composure for just a second too long upon seeing Livia enter. Their dismay betrayed, they were slow in recovering from it. Lollia had known they would react like this, as had Livia, but the childhood companions knew it was pointless to do anything other than acknowledge Livia’s disgrace – not if she was to have any hope of regaining the position she had lost.

  ‘Look who has joined us,’ Lollia said brightly.

  Livia saw the spot that had been left for her on the least important dining couch. A very fat woman in a wig of red hair occupied the position of honour next to Lollia.

  Livia settled into her allotted place obediently. ‘So much has changed while I’ve been away,’ she ventured to the room. ‘Women are taking over the men’s dining couches now. Have we finally been freed from our hard-backed chairs?’

  When no-one responsed, Lollia gave a little laugh. ‘I’m a widow now, darling. There are no men around to order us off them. The dining couches are all ours to sprawl on as we like – and we like to very much.’

  A couple of the other women laughed and Livia waited for conversation to come her way. But after a minute or two in which none of the women addressed her, Lollia gave her friend another opening: ‘Livia, I must ask – what has happened to all your husband’s properties? Were they confiscated? Will you be given them back again?’

  Watching from the wall, I felt my domina bake with inner shame, but told myself that she could survive it; better to have everything out in the open and discussed at once, so that she needn’t address it again.

  ‘They confiscated everything. Our house, all the tenements Tiberius Nero owns, plus the farms and the villa near Vesuvius. All were gone.’

  ‘Very harsh,’ Lollia clucked. ‘I’ve never met your husband, of course, but please convey my deep sympathy.’

  ‘But they’ve all been returned now,’ Livia said. ‘Nothing has been held back from us. Octavian has been so generous in this amnesty.’

  The other women took their cue from Lollia to approve of this politically astute comment.

  ‘But the state of our house when it was returned to us …’ Livia whispered darkly. ‘There were soldiers living in it …’

  The women rippled with disgusted visions of such violation.

  The conversation continued, and Livia gave more sordid details of her life in Greece among the exiled proscribed.

  ‘How are you filling your days now?’

  Livia swivelled to answer the guest to her left, who wore a deep green stola and had a large sty blighting one eye. ‘My husband is attempting to forge new friendships,’ she said, smiling steadily at the woman’s good eye. ‘He doesn’t know it, but he has granted me the gift of time – I am resuming neglected friendships in all the free hours I have.’

  The women all thought the unwitting Tiberius Nero amusing, and even I smiled good-naturedly from where I stood silent at the wall.

  ‘Thank Juno everything has changed back again in Rome,’ said another woman, who was substantially older than the others. She was seated directly across the low table from Livia. ‘Peace at last. We can get on with making babies and eating cakes like we used to.’

  ‘But it’s such a brittle peace,’ said the fat, red-wigged woman who sprawled in the guest of honour’s place. Her thighs threatened to burst through the seams of her gown. ‘It’s too uneasy – it’s unconvincing. I don’t believe it will last.’

  ‘Don’t say such a thing, Aurelia!’ Lollia exclaimed. ‘We must hold on to the hope that our men will keep their tempers and work nicely together. Who knows? If things go well we might get the Republic back properly. No need for dictators or Triumvirates or any of it. I’d like that, for one.’

  Kitchen slaves moved around and behind them, bringing new plates of food and taking others away. A tiny child crept along the floor with a plate, picking up all the dropped morsels and crumbs which would later be burned in a sacrifice to the household gods. A salad of rue and lettuce appeared, along with a hare and leek pie. A tray of empty oyster shells was replaced by a large tray of cold roast peacock. The women cooed with delight at such flagrant luxury.

  ‘It’s not so licentious,’ Lollia glowed with pleasure. ‘It is merely the remains of my cena from last evening.’

  ‘But peacock, Lollia?’ crowed the older woman. ‘Octavian has banned people from eating it.’

  Lollia made a show of looking guilty, which caused all her friends to squeal with mirth. ‘But I just love it so!’ she declared. ‘Octavian will understand. I simply can’t live without it.’

  Livia laughed and smiled with the others but kept her eyes fixed on the hovering slaves. Some were servants from Lollia’s household that she remembered, strapping young lads bought from gladiator schools; others were from the households of the guests. ‘I so value invitations,’ she told the room with humility as the laughter ebbed.

  Rolling on her thighs, fat Aurelia regarded her coolly. ‘They’re being thrown about like rose petals these days. Seems to me pretty much anyone can get herself invited to something. Standards have slipped in Rome.’

  There was a crushing moment’s pause.

  Lollia flicked her eyes at Livia, then flicked her gaze back to this guest of honour who had spoken so insultingly. Livia understood – as I did too. Aurelia was the one with the slave Livia had come to see.

  Livia nodded to Aurelia, agreeing with her and, for all appearances, unaware that the ‘slipping of standards’ referred to her. In the seconds following, Aurelia clicked her fingers to have her hands washed and her personal attendant arrived with a little bowl in readiness.

  Lollia met my domina’s eyes again and held them there. This was the slave.

  *

  I held back a respectable distance but still followed my domina when she slipped away from the dining room. Livia intercepted the slave-girl in the passage that led to the kitchens. Martina was both beautiful and obscene. In looks she was exotic, Eastern in flavour, though indeterminate in source. Her black hair was as full and lustrous as Livia’s own. Her fine face, too, mirrored Livia’s delicate feline countenance.

  But Martina’s most compelling feature was one that my domina was grateful not to share. This ‘abhorrence’, revealed in the clear truth of sunlight, marked her in the eyes of all for the path the gods had chosen for her. And neither Livia nor I realised it then, but we had met this slave-girl before, although her appearance previously had been very different.

  ‘Syrian, Parthian, Greek and Latin,’ Martina replied in response when Livia made an unexpected enquiry about her linguistic skills. ‘My mistress likes me to translate letters from her foreign business officials.’

  Livia congratulated Martina on her clever tongue.

  ‘Please let me pass now.’ She held a pile of plates in her hands, but Livia prayed there was a fifth tongue inside the girl’s head and dug for it.

  ‘I speak Egyptian too.’ Martina’s smile curled at her lips as her gaze narrowed, assessing this drably dressed inquisitor.

  Livia knew she was getting somewhere now. ‘And where have you served, girl?’ she asked, mirroring Martina’s smile.

  ‘All over. Here and there.’

  ‘Don’t play games with me. Where have you served precisely?’

&
nbsp; Martina suddenly turned her back to let us stare at her ‘abhorrence’ openly.

  ‘Do not play games with me,’ she said. ‘I’ve served many mistresses but not one of them had the power of choice – I chose them.’

  Livia should have struck the slave for using such a tone but restrained herself, focusing only on her goal. ‘A prize as fair as yourself, Martina – of course you could choose any mistress of your pleasing. A great queen even.’ In the silence that followed, she waited.

  Martina turned to face her again. ‘You know something of my history already,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know it, but I hope it,’ Livia replied. ‘Tell me if it’s true then, Martina – did you serve Cleopatra?’

  There was another pause as the slave-girl wrestled with discretion, but the desire to impress my domina won out. ‘When their pricks were as big as gourds at of the sight of her, it was me that she thanked, Lady, not her cunt.’

  Livia didn’t bother making a show of disapproval at such a crude choice of words. The effort required in hiding her exhilaration took up all her will. ‘What will it take for you to choose me as your next mistress?’ she asked.

  The slave girl didn’t hesitate. ‘Everything you have.’

  We returned home and Livia immediately took her Timanthes from the otherwise bare wall of her atrium. This artwork – the only valuable she had left – her father had told her never to sell, because no dealer had convinced him of its ultimate value. They either inflated or underpriced it; not one dealer concurred with another. Such a treasure could not reach a price, Marcus Livius had said.

  But it could certainly be traded.

  She kissed the painted image of the mother, in acknowledgement of the father who had given it to her. Then she wrapped the treasure carefully in silk.

  ‘Are you putting the painting away for a while, domina?’ I asked, appearing behind her.

  She turned to look at me. The answer she gave did not answer my question. ‘You showed great courage when you ran into the fire to save this, Iphicles. I was wrong to have sent you to the kitchens.’