Nest of Vipers Page 10

  She moved forward, edging into the tomblike hall. A stench gripped her nostrils – like spoiled fruit or rotting flesh. Livilla breathed in deeply, letting the foulness fill her. ‘Your perfume, god … the smell of your power.’ The reek gave her courage. Livilla held her head high, staring hungrily at the statue, her hand at the darkening fabric at her loins. ‘I am here for you, my god. Claim me. Take me. Strike me with the lightning that you hold …’

  A squeal of vermin made her scream. A dozen black rats threw themselves at her slippered feet, nipping at her, sinking their teeth into her toes, tearing at the hem of her ruined stola.

  ‘My god!’

  Livilla spun on her weakened limb to flee, but her knee gave way and she crashed hard to the floor as the vermin flew like crows at her beautiful face and hair.

  Outside the dark temple Lygdus heard his domina’s screams. He lurched awake at the sound, plucked from the vicious fantasies that filled his daydreams. He ran up several of the slick, dank steps and then stopped. His domina screamed again, a bloodcurdling noise that felt as if it stripped the skin from his back. His young brow creased at the memory of all he had so recently suffered at her hands, and he took a single step back. Livilla screamed again and Lygdus took two more steps backwards, reaching the broken flagstones of the temple’s neglected square.

  ‘Save me!’ Livilla screamed from deep inside the temple’s murk.

  The sound of her terror thrilled the young eunuch. It was like the music and laughter from the happy tavern down the hill that he, a lowly slave, was forbidden to know. Her terror was a joy.

  His eyes glittering, Lygdus returned to the place where his domina had told him to wait. ‘Perhaps your god will save you, domina … or perhaps not,’ he whispered into his cupped hands.

  Livilla struck the first rat dead with the hammer she snatched from the bag; the vermin’s skull split like a berry. She wielded the stout, iron head of the implement at the next rat and then the next, splattering their brains on the floor. Vermin flew at her other hand and Livilla struck at them wildly, crushing her palm but killing the beasts, feeling nothing else now in her terror of what had to be done. She heaved herself upright, her leg twisting before her. She bit back the pain of it and lurched towards the statue of the god, her eyes filled with what so many other desperate acolytes had already left for their god before her: curse tablets.

  The last of the rats flew at her slipperless feet, but Livilla felt nothing of them – her determination to reach the statue’s plinth was her one goal. She threw herself forward and grasped hold of the edge of the stone with her fingernails as she fell once more, crashing to her knees. The pain nearly made her lose consciousness, but Livilla summoned all the will that was hers as a Claudian and as a granddaughter of the great Augusta Livia. She plunged her hand into the bag and brought out the flattened square of lead. She didn’t repeat aloud the words that were written on it; she didn’t need to. They were already etched into her heart. She plunged her hand into the bag again and seized a long bronze nail. Then she slapped her leaden curse tablet against Veiovis’s plinth, dislodging others. Gripping the heavy hammer in her fist, she drove the nail into the tablet, striking it again and again, nailing the evil of Aemilia’s new curse to the base of the dark god.

  ‘Read me!’ she screamed at Veiovis. ‘Read my curse and grant it!’

  A sharp slap to his cheek awoke Lygdus.

  ‘Get up.’

  ‘Domina …’

  She slapped him again, harder. ‘I said get up. We’re done here.’

  Lygdus scrambled to his feet, shocked at the sight of his mistress. Livilla was caked in slime and filth, with the blood of rats splattered along her arms. Her long, black mane was wild like a witch’s hair. Her eyes were frightening, rimmed with gore and glittering with malicious triumph from their nightblack depths. Her wounded leg twisted before her.

  ‘What happened to you, domina?’

  Livilla just laughed and Lygdus felt his skin crawl.

  ‘Do you want to redeem yourself, little lamb?’

  Lygdus bit back his anger. His domina now knew that he was innocent of planting the curse tablet under her bed, and yet she treated him as if she didn’t. ‘I’ll do anything to serve you, domina,’ he muttered.

  Livilla made the young eunuch carry her down the slope of the wooded hill to where her litter waited, well away from Veiovis’s surrounds. As he stumbled and slid on the stones, she told him what must happen next in her plan to destroy the blind woman.

  She told Lygdus what he must do if he wanted to return to his domina’s heart.

  The Kalends of July

  AD 20

  One week later: Decrius, Commander

  of the Numidian battalion at Pagyda

  River, fights to his death against the

  overwhelming forces of Tacfarinas. His

  fleeing men abandon his corpse

  Apicata emerged into sunshine from the huge bronze door that admitted only the very best people of Rome into the noble house of the Aemilii. She heard it close sharply behind her and she laughed. They despised her, of course, this great patrician clan, but they would have despised her even if she wasn’t blackmailing their matriarch. They would have despised her on principle. She was lowborn, the daughter of a man of wealth but no distinction, while they were only one step removed from deities. It thrilled Apicata to know that these arrogant demigods now bowed to her word and hated her like an illness. She marvelled at the all-consuming loathing felt for her by the trapped Aemilia, and it gave Apicata ecstasies to think that she would never let the Aemilii go. When Apicata was queen, she would formally enslave the Aemilii, she decided, removing their names from the official records of Rome. Then she would turn on the other noble houses, one by one, making slaves of their finest too.

  Apicata moved unimpeded along the narrow, winding street that would take her down the hill to where her maids waited. No one dared accost her or ask what she had hidden inside the earthenware pot that she clutched to her breast. No one would dare do anything to her at all, because there was no one who didn’t know who Apicata was. She was the Praetorian Prefect’s wife. In Rome, she was fear.

  ‘What are you carrying, Lady?’

  Apicata was brought to a halt at the young man’s voice.

  ‘What’s in the pot? Is it magic?’

  She flushed red. ‘How dare you address me?’

  ‘Don’t be like that. What’s inside it? Tell me what it is, blind woman.’

  Apicata tried to shove the stranger from her path, grabbing a fistful of slack flesh as she thrust her right hand at him, clutching the pot tighter with her left.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Get out of my way.’

  He offered no resistance, so she easily slipped past him, increasing her pace down the hill.

  ‘It must be very special,’ the stranger called after her.

  ‘Girls!’ Apicata shouted into the air for her waiting maids. ‘Where are you? Come here to me!’ She had lost count of the number of steps she had taken from the Aemilii door towards the bend in the street where she had ordered her sedan chair to wait for her. The total distance was sixty paces, and she had gone at least half that – or was it something less? She could hear her maids’ voices, but the step count flew out of her head. ‘Come to me,’ she called, panicked. ‘I have lost the number –’

  Apicata reached the bend before she realised it, and the abrupt descent of the street made her lose her footing, pitching her forward. She fell hard on her face, the pot smashing beneath her. She lay there dazed, blood filling her mouth as she heard the sounds of her frightened maids running towards her.

  ‘Domina!’

  ‘Domina, your face!’

  ‘There’s blood!’

  ‘She has hurt herself – let me help you lift her,’ said the voice of the young man who had accosted her. Apicata tried to tell her women that this youth must not be allowed to touch her, but the words, when they came, were garbled
.

  ‘She has struck her head,’ said the young man.

  Apicata felt herself being lifted from the cobbles. ‘No … no, wait …’ The broken pot and its contents were exposed. ‘Don’t … touch it …’ She twisted in the young man’s grip and tried to stretch towards the ground to save what was most precious. Her fingertips brushed a tiny wax hand.

  ‘You’ll drop her!’

  ‘I’ve got her, look,’ said Lygdus. Apicata weighing nothing in his arms, he tossed her into the chair of her sedan. The maids rushed around to dab at her bloodied face and Apicata tried to fight them off, but the pain in her head made her faint.

  When one of the maids went back to where her domina’s pot had smashed, she found nothing there but pieces of broken clay. She thought she remembered there being something more. She looked around for the young eunuch who had been so helpful but he was gone.

  Aemilia closed the great bronze door a second time, shutting the scene in the street from view. It was done.

  ‘Mother?’ said her oldest daughter, Lepida. The girl was fearful.

  Aemilia smoothed the girl’s hair. ‘We must summon your brothers now,’ she said.

  The younger girl Domitia looked grim. ‘Aemilius is with his tutor in the Forum.’

  ‘His schooling is done now. It is his day to act as a man. Ask the steward to retrieve him, will you, Domitia?’

  ‘And Ahenobarbus?’

  ‘He’ll be sitting by the kitchen furnace. Send him in here.’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’ Domitia left the hall.

  Lepida was left to stare as her mother retrieved a folded piece of papyrus. ‘You remember what this letter says, don’t you, Lepida?’

  The girl’s eyes filled with tears, but she wouldn’t shame her mother by shedding them. ‘It is your confession, Mother.’

  Aemilia nodded. ‘The day has arrived and now it must be sent.’

  Lepida bit her lip.

  ‘When your brothers are here, you are to go – the four of you together – all the way up the hill to Oxheads, just like we spoke of. Do you remember?’

  ‘Of course, Mother.’

  ‘You will have your brothers with you but be sure to take some amulets. Aemilius will speak to the guards.’

  ‘He’s only seven.’

  ‘He is now a man,’ Aemilia stressed. ‘Tell him to show the guards Ahenobarbus’s red hair. They will be very struck by that. Soldiers think such things lucky.’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘When you are admitted into the presence of the Emperor, you are to give my confession to him. You are to tell him that your heart is broken by doing it, but that you have no choice. Your love for Rome is stronger than your love for a mother who so betrays it.’

  Lepida nodded and a tear broke free of her will, slipping down her nose. Aemilia’s voice caught in her throat and she kneeled, grasping her daughter in her arms, kissing her face and hair. ‘I will soon be gone, but you will not need me.’

  ‘But we will, Mama, we always will,’ Lepida sobbed.

  ‘Not at all. You have your destinies now. Each one of you has been chosen by Veiovis to know power – even poor Ahenobarbus. The Aemilii will be great again – it is the god’s will – and each of you will be given your path. Veiovis has decided it.’

  Lepida wept as if her heart would break.

  ‘Ssh,’ said Aemilia tenderly. ‘Ssh, my little pearl. Your brothers will come to know what it is to stand at the very summit of Rome, and your sister will know it too. But the path that will be given to you, Lepida, is the path that will lead the Aemilii to a power no man before us has known.’

  Lepida fell silent, her cheeks wet with tears.

  ‘Because it will be a woman’s power, my daughter, not a man’s. It is the power of she who is so long asleep … It is the power of the rarest of birds.’

  ‘Pitiable,’ said Livilla, as Lygdus handed her the stolen contents of the jar.

  Lygdus said nothing, oblivious to the significance of the strange objects he had taken from the blind woman’s broken pottery. ‘Am I redeemed now, domina?’ he muttered.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Am I redeemed?’

  Livilla was distracted by her little Laconian puppy dashing into the room. ‘Scylax!’ She swept up the dog in her arms, kissing its snout and ears as it licked her cheeks and beat its tail like a whip. ‘My little lamb,’ Livilla murmured lovingly at the beast. ‘Mama loves her little lamb.’

  When Livilla remembered Lygdus again, he had gone.

  She dismissed him from her thoughts. Putting the pup aside, she picked up Aemilia’s magic in her hands. There were two red wax figures, a man and woman, closely entwined. The man had human hair, black and thick, glued to his head. At the loins of the figure was an oversized wax phallus, thick and curved, piercing the sex of the wax woman.

  ‘Pitiable,’ said Livilla again. The pup Scylax cocked his head to the side, waiting for his mistress to kiss him. But Livilla was focused wholly on the witchcraft. She guessed who the figures were meant to represent – the blind woman and her husband. The wax woman had Apicata’s light brown hair. ‘She fears she’s losing him,’ Livilla smirked.

  Digging her nails into the wax, she prised the two figures apart. The phallus of the man slipped out easily, exposing a yawning cleft in the woman. Livilla carefully placed the Sejanus figure aside and regarded the wax Apicata. She brought the head of it to her mouth, gripping her teeth around it and holding the figure there, enjoying the sensation of Apicata’s hair upon her tongue.

  Then she clenched her teeth together and bit the head from the neck, swallowing it. She gagged as the wax ball slid down her throat. Placing her hands at her belly Livilla felt the churn as her stomach greeted her enemy’s head. In a few days the hairy wax ball would reappear again, having passed through Livilla’s body. Livilla would order a slave to scoop it from the lavatory and, following Aemilia’s instructions to the letter, she would enact the final outrage of Apicata’s demise.

  Ludi Plebeii

  November, AD 20

  Four months later: the patrician matron

  Aemilia of the Aemilii is found guilty of

  witchcraft, poisoning and consulting with

  astrologers regarding the Imperial house

  I flinched a little when the mangon’s six scribes felt the swords plunge deep and hard between their ribs. Some of them had looks of incredulity upon their faces, while the others showed a sad resignation that their lot as slaves had come to this. I met the eyes of one with a look I hoped held sorrow and compassion as the steel buried in his chest. Agrippina’s loyal men showed no compunction at all in stabbing these literate, valuable men, withdrawing their blades and wiping them on the fallen slaves’ tunicae. But I felt it was excessive. They had done no wrong; their master was the criminal. With the scribes gurgling in death upon the floor and adding to the blood shed by the other auction assistants, Agrippina’s men looked to their patroness for her next directive.

  ‘Onwards,’ she said. ‘He is hiding in this stinking hole somewhere.’

  The dozen men surged through the tawdry rooms and dank, dark cells of the mangon’s compound, calling out his name as children would in a hide-and-seek game.

  Left in their wake with the scribes’ corpses, I imagined I heard a muffled sob. ‘Listen …’

  Nilla and Burrus, waiting with me, hadn’t heard.

  ‘Listen … there!’ I ran my hands along the rough, wooden wall of the compound’s atrium.

  ‘What is it, Iphicles?’ said Burrus.

  ‘There’s a hidden room behind this wall. I heard the bastard crying. Help me find the door, Burrus.’

  ‘Like the door to the Emperor’s garden?’

  I had forgotten that he knew Oxheads’ architectural surprises as well as I did. ‘Press gently. We’ll find it if we’re smart.’

  Burrus and Nilla joined me in running their hands along the wall, and I saw the way they stood next to each other – closer and
more intimate than a mistress and slave should be.

  ‘Move away,’ I hissed at Burrus. ‘You look unseemly standing that close, boy.’

  Burrus stayed as he was.

  ‘Move!’

  ‘We have a secret,’ Nilla whispered to me, feeling along the wall surface with her palms.

  I guessed now what it might be and I didn’t like it. ‘Don’t tell me anything I don’t need to hear, Lady. Just help me find the man who enslaved you, if you’re not bothered by the way Burrus stands next to you so disrespectfully.’

  ‘The mangon thought he enslaved me but he never did,’ said Nilla, smiling. ‘And I never did anything he told me to, either.’

  ‘Then he must have beaten you for being disobedient – and for that he deserves what’s coming to him.’

  ‘Burrus took all my beatings for me,’ said Nilla. She was humble in revealing this, and it was clear how very much she loved and respected the boy.

  ‘Burrus is very brave –’ I began to say.

  ‘Burrus is free,’ said Nilla. ‘That’s our secret. I freed him when we were living on the shore together. That’s why he was not enslaved by this man either. We were both free when the mangon took us – so the enslavement was illegal.’

  I shook my head at this childish logic and moved to another part of the shabby atrium wall, sure that a door was hidden there somewhere. I listened again for the sob but there was nothing. All I could hear was Agrippina’s men deep inside the slave complex, looting the mangon’s coin chests as they searched for him. ‘You are too young to perform manumission,’ I told Nilla, ‘and Burrus is too young to be freed. Only your mother can perform something like that in this household – or your uncle Castor.’

  Burrus said nothing, concentrating on the task. I waited for Nilla to tell me I was wrong, but she said nothing either. I saw the sly looks they passed between themselves. ‘Burrus is not free,’ I reiterated. ‘Drop these silly notions at once, Lady – it’s not fair to him.’

  ‘I know what I know,’ said Burrus quietly.

  ‘You know nothing, boy!’

  ‘Mother has given me Burrus,’ said Nilla. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘Which only proves he’s a slave – you can’t “give” a freedman, Lady.’