Nest of Vipers Read online

  ‘Veiovis …’

  She knew there was a conversation taking place that was hushed and urgent, somewhere to her right.

  ‘Veiovis …’

  Apicata shifted on her stone bench while she waited for the doors to the banquet hall to open. She hoped the slaves were running late; she didn’t want to go inside until she had determined who this woman was, who was so engaged in this halting, laboured discussion. It was a conversation that would see the woman thrown from the Tarpeian Rock if other people learned of it.

  ‘So long asleep …’

  Apicata sensed the presence of a child nearby and took her ears away from the conversation for a moment. ‘Hello, little flower,’ she said. ‘We’ve met before but I’m very bad with names.’

  The child was startled at being spoken to. ‘I’m Lepida,’ she whispered.

  ‘Lepida, of course you are, and how pretty you look today.’

  The child was pleased by the compliment and yet confused by it. This mysterious woman wasn’t even looking at her.

  Apicata beckoned Lepida to move closer. ‘Do you remember who I am?’

  Lepida knew she had never met this woman before, yet she had the presence of mind to offer an answer. ‘You are the mother of the bride.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Apicata. ‘My daughter is marrying into the family of the Emperor. That is why we’re all here.’

  Lepida didn’t need this to be explained to her. ‘I love weddings. You must be very happy.’

  Apicata nodded. ‘I am also the wife of Praetorian Prefect Sejanus. My husband has a very special job. He exposes traitors for the Emperor.’

  Without understanding why, the child felt fear.

  ‘You mustn’t tremble,’ Apicata said. ‘You are an innocent child. You know nothing of such things.’

  Lepida was silent, staring into the eyes of this woman who seemed to see her and yet did not.

  ‘Do you notice, over there,’ Apicata whispered, ‘just a little distance away in that quiet corner of the garden, there is a woman talking to a very strange man. Do you see them?’

  Lepida saw.

  ‘Who is the lady?’

  Lepida bit her lip.

  ‘Who is the lady?’

  The child said nothing.

  Apicata placed her fingers on Lepida’s bare arm. Despite the warmth of the spring sun, her fingers were cold. ‘Who is the lady, child? You know her, don’t you?’

  ‘She is Aemilia, my mother …’ The girl pulled her arm away. ‘She isn’t a traitor. She has done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Of course she hasn’t,’ said Apicata. ‘I am merely asking, that’s all. I recognised her but couldn’t place her.’

  ‘You want people to think you can see them, but you can’t. You can’t see anything.’ Lepida ran away from Apicata’s reach.

  ‘It’s true, child,’ Apicata whispered after her, amused. ‘But I can hear like the wolves themselves.’

  She turned her head to the hushed conversation again, to the treasonous, reckless words between the child’s noble mother, Aemilia of the Aemilii, and Thrasyllus, the last soothsayer in Rome. The old and broken man was barely lucid, slumped in the dirt while the embarrassed guests ignored him as they would an epileptic. Apicata couldn’t imagine why the Emperor Tiberius had permitted his seer to attend the wedding – if he was even aware he had. Perhaps the old man had wandered in, having escaped from wherever it was that Tiberius kept him locked away? No one but Apicata knew who the soothsayer actually was, but clearly Aemilia had chanced an accurate guess.

  Although the noble mother was making it seem to those who might be watching her that she wasn’t talking to this soiled, unpleasant man, to Apicata, who could only listen, it was obvious what Aemilia was doing. The noble woman sought answers about the future – answers about her children, about her house. The words the soothsayer was saying meant nothing to Apicata, but it hardly mattered. In daring to ask at all, Aemilia had placed the point of Apicata’s sword neatly at her own ribs. Apicata would bide her time before letting the woman know of it.

  The Praetorian Prefect’s blind wife believed no one else witnessed this scene, but she was wrong. I, Iphicles, the lowly slave, saw it too, from where I was shepherding my young dominus, Little Boots, towards the banquet. The soothsayer spoke as if from a thousand miles away: ‘The third is hooked by a harpy’s look; the rarest of all birds …’

  His words meant nothing to me either, but I took note of them all the same.

  The doors to the banquet hall opened and the dining slaves announced the commencement of the wedding feast. Apicata arose and waited for someone to guide her in. As she stood there, smiling pleasantly, she wished she could reassure the girl Lepida that whatever she might fear, her mother would not be exposed as a traitor. It would be a needless waste. Apicata had already gathered several intriguing truths about the noble Aemilia, just as she had about so many highborn women in Rome. This new transgression now made the matron among the most useful people there were.

  Apicata had no use for Aemilia just yet, but would in time. Her only disappointment was that she would never see the look on the patrician woman’s face when the nature of this use was revealed to her.

  When the moment came, Apicata would have to imagine it. Blindness had taught her that imagined moments were far often more delightful than reality anyway.

  Nilla and Burrus froze with the rabbit bones still in their mouths. In the glare of the dawn they saw that the man’s teeth were white – he was smiling at them. He tucked his sword inside his belt and raised his hand in a wave. Only then did the children remember their nakedness, but they had nothing to cover themselves with. The man came nearer, as huge as a mountain, with shoulders as wide as a giant’s. His hair was gold, just like Nilla’s, and his brown, freckled skin was laced with dozens of scars. He squatted on the sand beside them.

  ‘Are you a gladiator?’ Burrus asked him.

  The man laughed. ‘How did you guess that, boy?’

  Burrus pointed at the scars.

  ‘My fighting days are behind me now,’ he sighed. ‘I’ve got too old.’

  ‘How old are you?’ Nilla asked.

  ‘Thirty years. I’m the oldest gladiator there is, I think.’

  ‘You must have won many fights,’ Burrus marvelled.

  ‘I did.’ He held out his hand. ‘My name is Flamma.’

  Burrus accepted the handshake as a newly made freedman, not a slave. ‘I am Burrus. And this is the Lady – ‘

  But Nilla stopped him from telling the gladiator her full patrician name. ‘I’m just Nilla,’ she said. ‘We’re looking for water.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Flamma. ‘I can show you where to find some then. There’s a stream mouth just beyond the point.’

  Burrus grinned at Nilla. ‘See? We were right to head east.’

  She agreed. ‘Would you like some rabbit?’ she asked Flamma.

  The gladiator’s eyes were at the horizon.

  ‘Would you?’

  He flicked his eyes to her. ‘You’re very kind.’ Nilla handed him one of the charred rabbit kittens and he stuffed it in his mouth. ‘Let’s eat on the way to the stream,’ he suggested, chewing.

  Burrus and Nilla looked surreptitiously at one another. ‘Are you our friend, Flamma?’ Nilla asked.

  Something caught in his throat, but he swallowed it along with the rabbit. ‘I’d be honoured to be your friend,’ he said. He stood, towering above them. ‘Come on. I’ll show you where there’s good water to drink.’

  The children rose, and when Flamma held out his huge hands to them it seemed only natural and right, as his new friends, to fall in on either side of him and place their own hands in his.

  ‘Do you get lonely out here?’ Flamma asked them.

  They’d never even thought of it. ‘We have each other,’ said Nilla. Then, giggling, she added, ‘We’re in love.’

  Burrus reddened and complained. ‘That’s our business, Nilla – a great gladiator do
esn’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.’