Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves Read online

  She considered what her emotional response was – and couldn’t find one. ‘No. Your absence serves the higher purpose.’

  Marcus Livius smiled at his treasure of a girl, knowing that no further explanations were necessary.

  ‘What will happen when Caesar is dead?’ Livia asked.

  ‘Rome will rejoice. This is an honourable act. The tyrant will be gone.’

  ‘Will there be men who’ll avenge him?’

  ‘He has only women in his family – and Octavian, his weak-limbed nephew who is too far away from the city now. He’s no threat.’

  ‘What about Antony?’

  Marcus Livius was surprised she knew this name, but really he shouldn’t have been. She knew everything else.

  ‘When you think I’m just sitting here in my room weaving, Father, in fact I am listening to conversations,’ Livia informed him. ‘I need to know all there is to know about Rome so that I can be of help to my husband one day.’

  I saw that flash of mockery again, and not for the first time I was amazed that Marcus Livius continued to be so blind to it.

  He picked her hand from her lap and kissed it. ‘Young Tiberius Nero will be very glad of this, I’m sure.’

  Fool slave that I was, I nodded vigorously in assent.

  ‘So, what about Antony?’ Livia asked once more.

  ‘We bear him no ill will,’ Marcus Livius explained. ‘This is only about Caesar. His great friend Antony will find us open to negotiation.’

  Livia let this idea sit with her for a moment, contemplating how such negotiations might progress. And then she saw the considerable holes in it. Worried now, she looked searchingly in her father’s eyes until he faltered and looked away.

  ‘We’ll be in danger, then,’ she said matter-of-factly.

  He couldn’t lie. ‘No act of greatness comes without danger, Livia.’

  Truly her father’s daughter, Livia allowed herself then to accept the presence of fear on her wedding day. ‘Stab Caesar in the guts when you do it, Father, and when you twist the blade hard think of me.’

  I gasped that such words could come from Livia’s beautiful mouth. But Marcus Livius only chuckled appraisingly, his coal-black eyes glinting in the rays of dawn. The water clock in the peristyle outside the room signalled the start of the day’s first hour.

  Livia turned her gaze back to me, pleased that she had shocked her humble slave saviour. Fearful now, I had the good sense to return to the tapestry wall and cast down my eyes. Marcus Livius had long left the room before I dared to look up again. Livia was still gazing at me, open in her mockery now and aiming it wholly at me.

  ‘Do you believe the Great Mother’s prophecies to be true, Iphicles?’

  I was chilled that she could ever doubt my faith. ‘Of course I do, domina – I heard them with my own ears. I believe every word,’ I replied.

  Livia laughed. ‘Well, I don’t.’

  My shock increased tenfold and the six frightened and confused tonsores tried to concentrate only on Livia’s hair. To her they weren’t even there. She was focused completely on me.

  ‘Domina,’ I whispered, ‘they were the Great Mother’s words …’

  ‘All shit,’ said Livia.

  I nearly fell back against the wall.

  ‘Well, maybe not all shit,’ she went on. ‘One or two had some potential – the ones where I give birth to the kings. But not the other rubbish.’

  I was stunned by such blasphemy.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Livia asked, enjoying the look on my face. ‘Have I shocked you, Iphicles?’

  ‘Yes, domina,’ I confessed.

  ‘Then your attitude toward such things is ridiculously old-fashioned,’ said Livia. ‘But what else should I expect from a slave? Gods are not to be feared and cringed at. They’re to be respected, certainly, but only for the purposes of self-preservation. We shouldn’t love the gods – that sort of mindless devotion would embarrass them – and we should never take everything they say for granted. We’re not simple-minded fools and the gods know that.’

  I could only stare dumbly at her, the sacrilegious words beyond my comprehension.

  Livia leaned forward in her chair as if to share an intimacy with me, and the hapless tonsores followed her head with their hands again. ‘Whatever Tiberius Nero means in the scheme of things, he is not the sire of the four kings, no matter what my father might say about it,’ said Livia. ‘How can he possibly be?’

  I felt a stab of pain for my unwitting young master. What sort of marriage would this be for him if this was how his beautiful bride felt?

  ‘No. The man who will sire my four kings is another man, a man I haven’t even met yet,’ she declared.

  I felt like crying, I was so devastated by all she had casually pronounced. ‘Then why are you marrying my dominus?’ I couldn’t stop myself from asking her. ‘Isn’t that nothing more than cruelty?’

  The word brought her up short. I had gone too far and I tensed where I stood, expecting to be whipped. To call a domina cruel to her face is a crime. But after a short silence the slow smile returned to Livia’s lips.

  ‘You think your life is worthless because you’re only a slave,’ she stated. ‘But your life is worth a hundred times more than the life of a patrician woman. I will marry Tiberius Nero because I have absolutely no choice in the matter, prophecy or not. My father has decided it.’

  Of course I knew this; I was a fool for speaking so thoughtlessly. ‘I’m sorry, domina.’

  ‘Are you? You’d reach a fine price at the slave market, but when I’m sold for a dowry it’s like I’m a ticket in a lottery. Will I pay off with a son and heir for my husband? Or will I die in childbirth like so many other wives have? No matter if I do, another woman will always be found: another womb and another ticket. But clever and resourceful slaves like you, Iphicles? Well, they’re something far harder to come by. Congratulate yourself. You’re luckier than me.’

  She only looked at me once more that dawn before she left the room to proceed to her wedding. As she departed, fully dressed and prepared, she passed where I still stood at the tapestry wall.

  She whispered softly in my ear. ‘Sometimes I enjoy being cruel because it’s the only pleasure left to me.’

  The shouts of the boys from the street outside fell through the impluvium, the hole that let in sunlight and rainwater through the atrium roof. The sound of them travelled through every room of my young master’s house until it reached us where we stood around the bed in the connubial chamber. It was distracting. As I removed Tiberius Nero’s wedding garments I knew that he was already nervous about all that lay ahead of him, and the jeers of the street ruffians were not helping any.

  ‘What are they doing out there?’ he demanded.

  ‘Playing harpastum,’ I answered – the rough and boisterous game where a large leather ball stuffed with feathers is thrown high in the air to be caught and thrown again by any number of players in a never-ending expenditure of energy. It was normally played outside the butchers’ shops in the Forum Romanum, but today the boys had taken it to the winding streets of the Palatine.

  ‘Make them stop,’ he ordered me.

  I faltered in lifting his tunica over his head.

  ‘Make them stop playing and go away. Tell them.’

  ‘Yes, domine,’ I said, although I knew it was a doomed mission. I ceased undressing him and walked obediently from the room.

  ‘Wait.’

  I did so.

  ‘Do it later – I need you now.’ Poor Tiberius Nero’s taut nerves would not allow him to be abandoned, even for a moment.

  On the other side of the conjugal bed, Livia’s wet nurse Hecuba removed the saffron coloured wedding gown from Livia in a single motion, while keeping her carefully arranged hairstyle unaffected. Livia stood in her undergarments without shame, a band of linen across her young breasts, short linen pants at her hips and thighs like the kind that soldiers wore.

  His own tunica removed, Tiberius Ner
o was wearing only his loincloth. I began to unwind it but he smacked away my hands.

  ‘Leave it.’

  ‘You must be unclothed, domine.’

  ‘Leave it,’ he said.

  I knew why he wanted to remain in this way, but – ever loyal to him – I made no comment. In the street outside, the boys were growing more raucous and we heard their heavy ball crash with a thud on the roof tiles before rolling down to the street again.

  ‘They will break something,’ said Tiberius Nero.

  Hecuba removed the band from Livia’s bust, exposing breasts that were appealingly full and round for her thirteen years. ‘We could summon the urban cohorts,’ Livia suggested. Hecuba pulled the pants from Livia’s slender hips, exposing the down on her opening. I carefully kept my eyes upon my young master, though it cost me much.

  ‘Domine,’ I hinted.

  ‘I know what is expected of me,’ he hissed.

  I bowed and backed away.

  Outside, the harpastum players’ ball crashed onto the roof tiles again, with greater force this time, and the rowdy youths cheered. Then they groaned as the ball fell back to the street once more.

  ‘Are they trying to throw that thing into our atrium?’ Tiberius Nero demanded.

  Naked and waiting, Livia said nothing.

  ‘They wouldn’t insult us like this if our fathers weren’t away at the senate,’ he blustered.

  Hecuba lost her patience and marched decisively around the bed before Tiberius Nero even knew what was happening. She pulled the loincloth from him with one yank of her beefy arms.

  ‘That’s better,’ she declared. ‘Stop wasting all this time.’

  In the excruciating humiliation that my young master suffered before his hands went to his privates, the reason for his shyness was made very clear to Livia. As was well-known to me, Tiberius Nero was without pubic hair, his penis small and undeveloped. He was years away from reaching physical maturity.

  Feeling my young master’s agony keenly, I expected a torrent of derision for him from his bride, but Livia was unexpectedly kind. ‘Let’s lie here together, Tiberius Nero,’ she said. ‘Our fathers are doing things that are too big for us to understand today.’

  But Tiberius Nero was so ashamed that his teeth started chattering. ‘What things?’

  ‘Caesar …’ she said simply.

  He was completely at sea. Then the harpastum players’ ball hit the roof and a cheer that rivalled anything heard at a public whipping broke out from the youths. We waited for their groan of disappointment as it fell to the street again, but there was silence. Then we heard a cry of alarm from one of the housemaids.

  Tiberius Nero seized on it. ‘It has landed in the atrium pool – they did it deliberately!’ Forgetting his nakedness, he rushed from the connubial room. I went to follow with his tunica so that he wouldn’t be seen in this state by the young female slaves, but something made me pause at the door. I turned back to see naked Livia staring at me intensely.

  ‘Do you think it is done now, slave?’ she purred. She did not hide her nakedness, daring me to feast upon it, but I again forced my eyes to the floor.

  ‘Is what done, domina?’

  ‘Don’t insult me.’

  I felt the blood leaving my head and hands, flooding to my loins, doing all that my poor young master’s privates couldn’t. I knew if I looked at her I would lose control of myself. ‘The senate will have finished for the morning,’ I said. ‘I would think it has been done now, domina, yes.’

  ‘Why isn’t the city celebrating?’

  I didn’t know.

  Tiberius Nero’s terrible scream shook my legs into action.

  But I was pushed aside by Livia herself, who sprinted past me, naked and slender, her bridal hairstyle rigidly in place. She reached the atrium before me.

  Her own terrible cry filled the room that held the family’s shrine and household gods, and ascended through the impluvium to reach the ears of the youths outside. They had been waiting for this and a delighted jeer arose from their ranks – a cry of triumph.

  Livia fell sobbing to her bare knees and Tiberius Nero allowed her to take the harpastum players’ ball from his lap. Except it was not a ball.

  It was the head of Marcus Livius.

  Caesar’s death had been achieved, but Rome had not embraced his killers.

  Livia took many hours to end her tears, and Tiberius Nero and I never once left the atrium while she suffered so greatly in grief. But once her weeping was done we saw that she had somehow transcended the shocking loss to reach a new emotion. Her father’s murder had broken Livia’s heart, sure enough, but her pain was not because she would never see him alive again.

  Livia’s pain came from a very different place now.

  In losing his life Marcus Livius had betrayed her. She had placed her faith in her father but, unforgivably, he had let her down.

  The Nones of April

  40 BC

  Four years later: the defeated Fulvia

  is exiled to Sicyon

  It is hazy to me now how I first gained my knowledge of events in Alexandria. I certainly didn’t know of them at the time they occurred, but as I look back and see them in my mind it is like I witnessed them myself anyway. Perhaps my own status as a god has allowed me simply to ‘know’? It does not matter. I will describe my understanding of how the first such history changing moment in Egypt occurred.

  The great queen was unsure of how to respond when, on the day of her most treasured slave’s departure to Greece, the beloved girl made a humble present to her. It was a transgression of palace protocol, certainly – but the monarch’s dependence upon the beautiful yet blighted slave made her look upon the act with good humour.

  ‘I want for nothing – you don’t need to make gifts to me, Martina,’ said the great queen.

  ‘It will be my last opportunity to do so, highness,’ the girl replied. ‘You must let me do this thing.’

  ‘Your last opportunity? Don’t be foolish. You will be back with me again in no time.’

  The slave-girl said nothing, knowing otherwise in her heart, and she shifted slightly on her knees before the sovereign. Then the first rays of dawn in the throne room shone bright upon the disfigurement that marked this girl as different from other slaves. She felt the heat of Amon-Ra upon the strange excess of flesh she carried and the queen held the piquant smell of it in her nostrils.

  ‘As you wish, then,’ said the queen, exhaling the odour. She lifted the woven-reed basket Martina had given her and felt its weight. It wasn’t heavy but there was an item of some small mass inside. The queen went to raise the lid but the slave stopped her.

  ‘When the time comes, highness.’

  ‘When the time comes?’

  ‘Then must you open your gift. Not before.’

  The queen was bemused. ‘How will I know when that is, Martina?’

  ‘When you have no other path to take but one, highness. Then you’ll be glad of what I have given you.’

  The queen was mystified. ‘Perhaps when you return from Greece I will have reached such a point?’

  ‘I doubt it, highness,’ said Martina. ‘Soon you will have so many paths to choose from you will need the guidance of the gods. And every path will lead to glory.’

  The queen put the basket aside, pleased by these words.

  The beautiful slave bowed, now ready to depart. ‘You will know I have completed the task you have set for me when Rome knows it, highness. When Rome knows, then the world will know.’

  The queen felt a stirring of unease. ‘But you will tell me of it yourself when you return. I want to hear from your own lips how it was done – of how she looked and felt. I want to know of her pain.’

  The slave looked sadly at her adored queen. ‘I am sorry, highness.’

  ‘You’re truly not coming back to me?’

  Martina shook her head.

  ‘But you love me.’

  The slave-girl acknowledged this as true. ‘But yo
u have a new lover now, highness. A great Roman king. You will not miss me. And if you ever feel the need for me again in your life, well, then you will know why I made you this gift.’

  A tear slid from the monarch’s kohl-rimmed eye. Martina mirrored it, releasing a single tear of her own.

  When the disfigured slave had gone the great queen lifted the woven-reed basket once more. The gift inside shifted of its own accord then settled again and was still. The queen placed the basket in her lap and cupped her breast with her hand, spilling it from her gown and gently pinching the nipple between her fingers. Another tear fell. The treasured slave was wrong. The great queen would miss her dearly.

  My young master tentatively reached for Livia’s breast. His hand hovered for a second or two before he took the risk of placing his fingers upon the tightly stretched fabric that covered her nipple. She allowed it, apparently dozing, and he let his fingers play there for several moments, feeling her harden beneath his touch. Then he gently reached for the low neckline of her stola and began to pull it southwards, exposing the soft, pale flesh. She slapped him away before her nipple was revealed.

  ‘Why can’t I?’

  ‘When we’ve found ourselves a bed,’ Livia said sleepily. ‘Then I might let you.’

  ‘What do you call this?’ he said of ox-drawn carruca that carried him and Livia and those of us who were considered the valued household slaves.

  ‘I call it our transport,’ said Livia.

  In the years after Caesar’s murder, my young master and his wife had seen their fortunes rapidly plummet. Along with Marcus Livius, the hapless Claudius Nero and Drusus also lost their lives in the chaos that swept Rome. Then, in the days afterward, Tiberius Nero and Livia were lulled by the offers of forgiveness issued by the Senate to all those related to the Dictator’s killers.

  Tiberius Nero and Livia had bravely begun their married lives without fathers and older brothers. But the tide turned again following Antony’s inflammatory funeral speech and they duly found themselves proscribed.

  There had then followed some ill-fated attempts to gain friendship with those who shared their fathers’ loathing of dead Caesar and his clan. The first attempt, with Brutus, the chief of the killers, had ended with Brutus’s suicide at the Battle of Philippi. The second attempt, with Sextus Pompey, another of Caesar’s lifelong enemies, had ended with their expulsion from his base in Sicily. The third and final attempt, with Antony’s wife Fulvia, who raised an army to defeat Caesar’s weak-limbed nephew, had placed them in permanent exile in Greece along with the defeated Fulvia herself. Greatness in Rome for the Claudii – and fulfilment of the prophecies – was all just a vanished dream.