Nest of Vipers Read online

Claudius came to consciousness to find the Fury perched on a chair back, looking disdainfully at him where he lay on the floor. The panicky servants tried to force more watered wine into his hands.

  ‘The rarest of birds …’ he stammered.

  ‘She is very rare,’ agreed the nomenclator. ‘Rarer than a jewel.’

  ‘The admiral brought her back from Egypt,’ the steward added. ‘He said the Pharaoh breeds them.’

  Claudius realised that this Fury was not much larger than a raven.

  ‘He says she’s a parrot, but she’s not a very pretty one.’

  ‘What she lacks in looks she has gained in brains.’

  ‘H – how …?’ Claudius stuttered.

  The servants stared at each other in exasperation, brought to their wits’ end by his unfathomable behaviour. ‘You told us you knew of her. You keep calling her “rare”!’

  ‘That’s why we let you in here, domine!’

  Claudius fell into stammering again and slopped the wine.

  The steward and the nomenclator stood up in disgust. ‘It’s because she can talk, domine, just like a man!’

  Watered wine ran down Claudius’s neck. ‘That’s … that’s impossible.’

  The servants folded their arms in scorn and cocked their heads at the Fury. ‘What do you say to that, then, bird?’

  The ghost-grey parrot span on the chair back, presenting her behind to Claudius. She lifted her tail and expelled a shower of thick, milky excrement at him, before spinning around to stare again defiantly.

  ‘Veiovis!’ the Fury shrieked.

  The wet nurse brought in the baby girl to lie next to her sleeping mother. The newborn stirred and the wet nurse hushed the child. The young mother woke; aged barely seventeen, she was little more than a child herself.

  ‘Has he seen her?’ Lepida whispered.

  ‘Shush, now – you should rest,’ the wet nurse soothed.

  ‘Has my husband seen her?’

  The wet nurse nodded.

  ‘Did he name her Messalina?’

  The wet nurse didn’t like to say that she herself had given the baby this name since the father had shown so little interest. ‘It is a very pretty sound upon the tongue,’ she said, pleased that Lepida seemed to have hoped for this very name for the girl herself.

  Lepida smiled and sank into her cushions, snuggling the tiny baby to her. It was as if unexpressed anxieties washed from the young mother’s face. A serenity took her, and the wet nurse was heartened to see it. All mothers should be at peace when safely delivered of a longed-for child, she believed.

  She smoothed Lepida’s brow. ‘The next one will be a boy, just you wait and see. Then your husband will call you his queen.’

  Lepida seemed far away. ‘I will not be a queen,’ she whispered. ‘It is not my fate.’

  The wet nurse wanted to assure the girl that she didn’t mean this literally, but when Lepida appeared to fall asleep, the other woman tiptoed from the birth room to take her place upon the pallet outside the door.

  Alone with her child, Lepida’s eyes were closed, but she was not yet with Somnus, treading lightly in the netherworld between wakefulness and dreams.

  ‘Do you see her, Mother?’ she whispered into the night air. ‘Do you see her here with me?’ In Lepida’s mind, the gentle spirit of her dead mother, Aemilia, was strong inside the room. ‘She has joined us at last.’ Lepida kissed her baby’s silken head. ‘Her destiny begins, and the destiny of the Aemilii with her. You can sleep in peace now, Mother. All is in place for the rarest of birds …’

  Castor awoke in the night and sensed an animal in his room. It was not Livilla’s pup – she kept the beast so perfumed that its presence was unmistakable. This beast had a smell of its own, one he couldn’t place. It was neither fetid nor stale. It was not unpleasant.

  Castor lay still in his bed for a moment, trying to identify what the animal was and why it might have brought itself to his sleeping room. It made no noise upon the floor. The sound of its breathing was indiscernible. Castor felt no fear of being harmed by it. He slowly sat upright and swung his feet to the floor. The smooth, cool scales that he immediately felt beneath his soles told him what his visitor was: a serpent, lying in wait for him. He identified the smell – desert sands and hot winds.

  The snake didn’t wiggle beneath his feet or arch backwards to bite him. It stayed as still as a stone – and yet it was very much alive, because Castor could feel the minute expansion of its lungs taking in air. Carefully, he lifted his feet again, giving his eyes time to adjust to the darkness. The serpent writhed free and slid noiselessly along the floor. It paused once, turning its head to look directly at him.

  ‘Why are you here?’ Castor asked. Even if the serpent had answered him, Castor would have remained unafraid, because he knew already that this was no earthly animal. It was a portent. The snake continued towards the door and into the corridor outside, lingering near the sleeping form of Lygdus on his slave’s pallet. Castor gently shook the eunuch awake.

  ‘What is it, domine?’

  Castor pointed into the shadows. Lygdus gave a little cry of fear but Castor placed his hand across his mouth. ‘Ssh. I don’t want anyone else to know.’

  Lygdus’s eyes were wide, but he nodded. The serpent held him in its nightblack gaze in a way that almost seemed to mock him.

  ‘Come with me as I follow it,’ Castor said.

  Lygdus paled. ‘Follow it, domine?’

  ‘You are valued by me,’ said Castor. ‘I want you to see it too and be my witness to whatever it may reveal.’

  In the darkness Lygdus blushed with unexpected emotion. Castor was already advancing down the corridor and Lygdus began to follow. He did not know why, but somehow he sensed that the serpent was here not only for the master, but for the slave as well.

  The low sounds of voices stirred me from my own slumber. In the darkness of my domina’s room I listened from where I lay at the foot of Livia’s great bed. There were two men approaching – I could hear the padding of their bare feet upon the floor tiles. I recognised the tread of one. ‘Lygdus?’ I muttered. ‘Is that you?’

  Something cold brushed against my face where I lay. I gave a shout of fright and leaped up. My bare feet made contact with dry, scaly flesh. ‘A snake!’

  I ran to throw open the window shutters to let in the light of the moon. When I turned back to the room, in my terror I saw the ghostly faces of Castor and Lygdus staring at the floor.

  ‘Domine,’ I gasped. ‘I felt a serpent!’

  Lygdus gave me a beseeching, fearful look and Castor pointed at the carved leg of Livia’s bed. The small, thin form of an infant viper was entwined around the carving. ‘There it is – kill it!’ I said. But none of us moved.

  The viper slowly wound itself up the bed leg until it reached the edge of my domina’s woollen mattress. Then it disappeared beneath the linen.

  ‘It will bite her!’ I cried. Neither Lygdus nor Castor made any move, so I ripped the linen from Livia’s sleeping form, shaking it in horror. Nothing emerged. Gripped by fear, I beat the mattress around my domina’s body, hoping to drive the snake out of hiding. But when nothing came, I was forced to feel beneath her torso and limbs for any sign of the serpent.

  There was nothing there. The viper had vanished. Livia remained in deepest sleep.

  I saw the look in Castor’s eyes again – an expression echoed by Lygdus. ‘It was a message,’ Castor said. ‘A message from the gods, I think.’

  I was bewildered. ‘From the gods, domine?’

  Castor stayed silent for some time, pondering. ‘From one god, I believe. The Divine Augustus.’

  This left me utterly incredulous, but I struggled hard to hide it.

  ‘He watches over my grandmother from Olympus. He loved her so very much, you know. Well, of course you know, Iphicles.’

  I said nothing, knowing far more than Castor could ever be privy to.

  ‘He sent the serpent to me and I fo
llowed it all the way here, to my grandmother’s bed. It is obvious what he meant to tell me.’

  I went very still. ‘Yes, domine?’

  ‘Serpents are sacred to Asclepius. If we take my grandmother to the temple of the god of medicine, she will be cured.’

  I felt sick to my guts and tried to catch the eye of Lygdus. But the eunuch wouldn’t look at me at all. His eyes were on his master. Castor laid his hand upon the eunuch’s fleshy shoulder and then removed it again. There was an atmosphere of profound reverence between them. Castor’s affection for my apprentice was unmistakable.

  The Nones of April

  AD 22

  One month later: Praetorian Prefect

  Lucius Aelius Sejanus prevents a fire at

  the Theatre of Pompey from spreading

  to nearby temples and is rewarded by

  the Emperor with a statue of his likeness

  erected in the theatre’s ruins

  In Flamma’s slow journey towards death he encountered a strange bird. Its plumage was a dull, metallic grey like a pigeon’s, but the bird itself was larger in size, and with three blood-red feathers in its tail. Its pus-yellow eyes didn’t blink as it stared at him.

  ‘Are you from Hades?’ Flamma asked the creature. ‘Are you my escort to the place of the dead?’

  ‘Why did you do it?’ the creature questioned him in return.

  Only a bird from Hades could have the power of speech, Flamma marvelled. After so many months of hovering near the edge of the precipice, at last his end was close. He tried to find the right response for the creature but felt himself already drifting towards oblivion.

  ‘Those beasts are obscene!’ I gasped. ‘Domine, you cannot allow this!’

  ‘Ssh,’ Castor hissed at me.

  ‘But, domine, snakes are bad enough –’

  ‘You heard the god’s words.’

  ‘I heard the priests’ words.’

  Castor glared hard at me. ‘It would be disappointing for my grandmother should I grow to dislike you now, Iphicles, after so many years as your friend.’

  I shuddered at the warning in the words. ‘Yes, domine,’ I nodded, but my anxiety was devouring me.

  The priests of Asclepius finished the final examination of my apparently sleeping domina. She lay wrapped in a shroud on the damp temple floor. The head priest nodded to Castor.

  ‘It is as you first thought?’ Castor asked him.

  The head priest nodded again. ‘The god’s serpent may have brought you here, Lord, but the sacred serpents of this temple cannot help the Augusta. She is beyond their reach.’

  Castor’s mouth tightened. ‘Very well. If there is no other option.’

  ‘There is not.’

  Behind them another priest secured six whining dogs that pulled tight against their leashes.

  ‘This is wrong, domine,’ I wailed. ‘It defiles her.’

  ‘Out!’ said Castor, turning on me.

  ‘Domine?’

  ‘Out, Iphicles. Now! We’ll collect you again when my grandmother’s treatment is over.’

  ‘How can such a thing be called treatment –’ I began, but Castor’s glare silenced me. ‘Please don’t make me leave,’ I begged.

  ‘Then allow your domina to receive the god’s attentions in silence.’

  I whimpered, my guts tying into knots, but I said nothing more. I was in terror not at how Asclepius’s treatment might harm my domina, but at the far more alarming prospect of its proving successful. The god of medicine was unpredictable. What if the strange snake really had been a sign of his interest in Livia’s recovery? While I certainly doubted that the Divine Augustus had had anything to do with the serpent’s portent, the nature of the medicine god’s ways were unknown to me. Once, as a disrespectful youth, I had spat a ball of phlegm on the god’s temple threshold when I believed him ill-disposed towards my then master, Tiberius Nero. I had been wrong in that belief. Asclepius had held no feelings towards Tiberius Nero at all, ill-disposed or otherwise. But what god would remain indifferent to the spitballs of a slave?

  The six temple hounds pulled against the tethers, their claws scraping against the floor. I hid my eyes, but couldn’t stand not knowing and uncovered them again.

  ‘Release them,’ said the head priest.

  The dogs’ master dropped the leashes and the dogs leaped forward in a single motion, flying at my domina where she lay still upon the floor. I wanted to scream but Castor’s eyes were on me.

  ‘Go well, domina,’ was all I could mutter, but the sentiment was false. I wanted her to sleep forever and never wake up.

  The first of the temple hounds detected an odour to Livia’s sex and pressed its snout between her legs, inhaling what she hid beneath the shroud. A second dog followed and then a third, before all six dogs were snuffling and licking, baring their teeth to pull the shroud from my domina’s most private parts.

  With relief I saw Castor flush and look ill at what the dogs were doing. ‘What is this?’ he shot at the head priest. But the old man just shook his head gravely and held up a hand, reassuring Castor that nothing was out of place. The dogs had Livia’s shroud in pieces now and her private parts were exposed. Their six snouts had spread her legs apart, nuzzling her obscenely. I hoped Castor would vomit.

  ‘She is the Augusta!’ he appealed to the head priest. ‘Pull the dogs off her, for pity’s sake!’

  The head priest was immovable. ‘They have found the location of her illness, Lord. If it is distressing for you, then look away, but I cannot stop the god’s beasts now. They are curing her. They are making her whole.’

  It was too much for Castor and he left the room. I stayed for only a moment more, my eyes boring into my domina’s closed lids. She knew I was there and her right eye opened just a crack.

  ‘This isn’t going to work,’ I hissed at her. ‘Give it up, domina – this isn’t going to succeed.’

  Livia winked at me. Each of us had our secret plans; the Fates would decide whose came first to bud.

  Feeling weak with disgust and tiredness, Castor listened to the head priest’s directives from a stone bench in the temple’s portico. My heart anxious, I pulled off Castor’s street shoes to let his foot abscess air. It annoyed him that it never seemed to improve, but he’d grown accustomed to its constant ache.

  ‘So I must bring my grandmother back here again?’

  The head priest confirmed it. ‘Asclepius insists, Lord.’

  Castor grimaced but gave a nod. ‘How often must it be done?’

  ‘That is for the god to say,’ said the head priest, ‘but he has chosen her for his attention. Few are so favoured, Lord. Certainly the Augusta must return here twice a month until further signs of improvement are seen. You say she has been awake and watchful, and yet she shows no sign of this today. I believe you have brought her to Asclepius just in time – she was beginning her descent to death. But with the attentions of the dogs, perhaps this will now be reversed.’

  ‘Only perhaps?’ said Castor. He wanted certainty that this divine defilement of his grandmother would see her made well.

  ‘There are no absolutes with Asclepius,’ said the head priest.

  ‘Very well,’ said Castor. ‘My grandmother will return here twice a month.’ He closed his eyes, leaning back on the bench against the temple wall for a moment, his bare legs stretched before him. ‘The god’s serpent was sent to me. I have faith we will see improvement.’

  He waited, expecting the head priest to agree, but the old man said nothing. Then he felt a tickling at his foot. He opened his eyes and saw that one of the temple dogs had its snout pressed against the unhealed abscess.

  ‘Get off,’ said Castor, pulling his foot away.

  The dog backed off but tried to return again.

  ‘Off!’ said Castor.

  I slipped the street shoes onto his feet again.

  ‘You have a sore,’ said the head priest.

  ‘It mends on its own accord,’ said Castor. ‘
It doesn’t require the god’s attentions.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  Castor stood and walked away, refusing to allow himself to limp. I followed behind. Restraining the dog, the head priest stared hard at our retreating backs. For very differing reasons, neither of us turned around.

  The Nones of March

  AD 23

  Eleven months later: Praetorian Prefect

  Lucius Aelius Sejanus concentrates all

  nine cohorts of the Praetorian Guard into

  a single camp at the Viminalis Gate

  The dream that came to the master was so vivid that he cried out in his sleep. His slaves were made fearful by the noise but none dared wake him. Their master slept so little as it was; any slumber, however dream-filled, was better than insomnia. Still, they consulted among themselves and decided to record what their master spoke, in order to show it to him at dawn. These dreams were portents, they sensed – messages from the gods for their master. But none of the slaves had been granted the gift of literacy. They couldn’t write. Then they remembered the slave who could.

  They sent for me.

  When I arrived, their master’s state was unchanged – he was speaking aloud, as if engaged in a conversation with spirits. I was hesitant to enter. This was not a household in which I held authority. I was wary of this master – and wary of the mistress, too. But the slaves assured me that their mistress slept soundly at the other end of the house – she would never know of my presence. And just to make sure, someone had already been sent to wait outside her door to warn me if she stirred.

  I accepted my task and sat down to interpret and record what the master spoke aloud in his strange, wakeful sleep.

  In the dream he spoke to his father. The words he used were the most loving a son could employ, words that any father would weep with joy to hear. But the dream father who received them barely heard the words at all. They made no impact. They were acknowledged only cursorily.

  This made the son increase the intensity of his devotion. He reached inside his chest and found his own beating heart. He scooped it out with his hands and placed it on a tablet, laying it at his father’s feet. Then he found an urn inside his chest, where his heart had been. He opened it and saw that it contained all his hopes in life – his bright future, his keen ambition, his pride. He scooped the urn out of himself and placed it at his father’s feet, next to his beating heart.