Viper's Nest

by Rachel Ford

  “Gallus?” He searched his mind for a face to match the name. In accompanying her, he’d bumped into half of Stella, and at some point, the faces and names had started to run together.

  “You saw him,” she said. “Two mornings ago, at the Forum. He was the one arguing with Felix.”

  “Oh.” Trygve recalled a tall man about Felix’s age, with thinning white hair and superior manners. He’d come down on the opposite side of Cassia’s old friend, on a relief bill for the farmers in the southern provinces struggling with drought losses.

  “And if you ask Felix, it’s because the industrialists and landowners won’t pay a fair wage. And it’s just gotten worse since the drought in the south has displaced so many laborers.”

  He nodded. “And what do you think, Empress?”

  She sighed. “Faustus sides with Gallus. He says the wages are too high – that between taxes and wages, we risk losing our industry altogether.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “I…I don’t know. Faustus knows the numbers.” She shook her head. “We’ve gone over them before, more than once. The impact increasing pay will have on their bottom line, and what that will do to their ability to expand, and so on. But…but I can’t believe that there’s no solution.”

  “What does Senator Felix say to the emperor’s numbers?” Trygve asked.

  She laughed. “Oh, many things. He thinks they’re bunk. He thinks Faustus is looking out for his own interests.”

  “Aren’t his interests the empire’s?”

  “Of course. But – before we were married – Faustus was a businessman as well. His father…well, I’m sure you’ve heard something of it already. But when I was a child, Flavius – Faustus’ father – put his fortune into keeping the empire solvent.” She smiled softly. “My father was a good man, Trygve – the best of men – but did not always have a good head for figures. He built and saw to the common good and didn’t consider the cost.”

  “I see.”

  “Faustus retains his business interests.”

  Trygve nodded. He didn’t know how, exactly, Faustus spent his days, but he knew they were occupied with some manner of business concerns.

  “So, you see, Faustus is concerned that we do not return to those days. He thinks Felix is a fool. And Felix…well, they have never cared for each other. As, I’m sure, you’ve already ascertained.”

  The Northman smiled. “I had detected something of the kind, yes.”

  “So you see my conundrum. Half the senate believes the poor are only poor because they’re lazy.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Of course not. But the other half believes the only solution is to mandate higher wages and social programs.”

  “And Faustus,” Trygve finished, “believes that will ruin the economy.” He was starting to understand where the holdup was; and as far as he could tell, it was wearing the laurels of emperor.

  “Exactly.” She frowned. “But the truth is, if I had a few more Felixes and few less Galluses in the senate…I think we could work something out. Something that – maybe – even Faustus could live with.”

  “Does – forgive me for asking – Faustus’ opinion carry any legal weight, over yours? You are Emperor Augustus’ daughter, aren’t you?”

  She surveyed him with wide-eyed surprise. “Well, no. But he’s my husband.”

  “I see.”

  “I value his opinion, especially in such matters.”

  “Of course. But you are Empress.”

  The observation seemed to trouble her, for her forehead puckered and she was silent for a minute. “Yes. I am Empress.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Trygve was not the only change in the imperial household. Two weeks after he arrived, a new member of the staff, Aemilia, was hired on. She was older than the rest of the women in the imperial quarters, though not yet old, and a priestess from the central temple. Hers was a role of both spiritual and physical import, to serve as live-in nurse and personal priestess to the Empress.

  She was a soft-spoken woman, whose distrust of foreigners was expressed with some regularity. Trygve, consequently, found that he did not care for her. As the feeling was mutual, Cassia did her best to keep them apart. In general, she was successful. Aemilia’s work kept her either in the empress’ quarters or the chapel; Trygve’s took him everywhere else.

  The routine of living in the palace was easy enough to adjust to for Trygve. He rose early enough to meet Cassia when she left her private chambers. He’d accompany her as she breakfasted, either in her apartment if it was just her and Faustus or a close friend. If a more formal reception was prepared, they would go downstairs.

  He’d accompany her through the day, waiting outside the chapel – or, when the stars were in the right position, being allowed just inside. He was not, as an unbeliever, allowed near the altars or idols.

  Nor, of course, was he allowed inside the baths. When Cassia was bathing, his job was to wait outside, allowing no one but her attendants in.

  Once a week, as the empress had insisted, he took a day off. He did vary the days, choosing those Cassia deemed would be uneventful.

  Perhaps the least appreciated parts of his routine were the visits from Decimus. The emperor’s dresser made it a point to check-in with the Northman at least once a week, and usually more often, to trim and reshape his hair. “That mane of yours grows like weeds,” he’d sigh. Or, “you’d look a lot more presentable, you know, if you’d let me shave that silly growth you call a beard off your face.”

  And his visits always entailed an application of scented oils after trimming, too. One week it would be lavender, the next rose, and so on. It was so bad that once, during his third week on the job, even Cassia noticed. “Is that…lavender?”

  Trygve could feel his face burning with embarrassment. “Yes. I’m afraid Decimus wants to turn me into a woman.”

  She laughed a little. “Oh, not that. How awful for you.”

  He flushed deeper, and he tried to stammer out an explanation. “I didn’t mean…that is, there’s nothing wrong with a woman being a woman, of course; I only meant…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well…I mean…”

  She arched an eyebrow. “Yes?”

  “That I’m not a woman.”

  “Was that in doubt, then?”

  He was fairly sure his face was a few degrees away from spontaneously combusting at this point. He hadn’t meant it as an insult, of course, but her way of demanding a meaning rather flummoxed him. The truth was, he didn’t have a good meaning, not one he could clearly articulate anyway. It was obvious to him that he’d lost the round. Surrender, he decided, was the better course of action, rather than prosecuting this losing fight further. “I’m sorry, Empress.”

  She smiled quizzically. “It’s fine, Trygve. I’ve heard worse.”

  That, somehow, didn’t make him feel better. And so, as his own kind of self-imposed penance, he complained less and cooperated more when Decimus paid his visits. He endured the lavender oils, tolerated the criticisms, and sometimes even thanked his torturer.

  His efforts were not entirely unnoticed. “Your manners, at least, have improved,” the Stellan told him a few visits later. “Even if your sense of style still suffers.”

  The Northman’s arrival precipitated other changes, as well, although he did not immediately perceive their relation to him. Since hearing Trygve’s story, Cassia had mentioned once or twice their case against Caius, but she and Felix talked mostly in hushed tones whenever the topic came up.

  It came up again, though, in a rather unexpected form. It was the third morning after their conversation about the soup kitchen. Cassia and Faustus were taking breakfast, and the emperor had been opining that his favorite charioteer – someone by the name of Nero – had broken his ribs. “Which means my wager with Otho is lost.” He shook his head. “I bet he’d win the series.”

  Cassia looked up. “You know, Faustus, I have an idea.�
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  “Should we break Marcellus’ ribs?” he offered with a laugh, referring to Otho’s chosen chariot-rider. “So it will be a draw?”

  “What?” For a moment, she seemed confused, and Trygve had the feeling that she had only been half-listening to her husband’s complaints. “Oh, no. I mean a real one.”

  Faustus sat back a little and smiled. “Well, that sounds serious. What about?”

  “About poverty, among the river district laborers. And wages.”

  The emperor groaned. “This again.”

  “The people are desperate, Faustus. You can see it in their eyes. We have to do something.”

  “If they were that desperate,” he returned, “they’d work harder, and expect less for free.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t see them, love. They work themselves ragged. They can barely stand, some of them, when they come in for a bowl of soup. They’re half-starved.”

  “Even if that’s the case, money isn’t the problem, Cass. They get plenty of it. It’s how they manage it. If you spend all your pay on wine and gambling, you go hungry. It’s just that simple.”

  “It’s not, Faustus. I’ve talked with them. The amount of coppers some of the textile producers earn in a month – no one can live off of that. Especially with kids. And that’s the ones who get steady pay. The work the migrants get is irregular. They’re always a meal away from death, it seems.”

  “We can’t fix a drought,” the emperor reminded her superciliously. “It’s unfortunate, and I sympathize of course. If there was rain in the south, they’d have stayed where they belong, and we wouldn’t have these problems. But that, my love, is beyond either of our control.”

  “Yes. But there is something else we can do. I have an idea about adjusting wages.”

  He groaned. “You mean, Senator Felix has an idea.”

  Now, at last, Cassia frowned at him. “No, Faustus. I’ve not mentioned it to Felix yet. I thought I’d run it past you before I said anything to him.”

  “Well,” he snorted, “that would be a first time.”

  Cassia’s frown deepened, and she glanced away from her husband. There was anger, Trygve thought, in her eyes, but something else too. Sadness, perhaps. The Northman felt the first sentiment mirrored in his own heart more than the second. Faustus’ casual disrespect of Cassia rankled. His blindness – deliberate or otherwise – to the pain he caused his wife irritated Trygve. He had wondered, at first, at her careful compartmentalization of her life, of the way in which she kept some of her political decisions secret. Now, he understood. Now, his wonder began to turn in a new direction: he wondered how she could tolerate, much less love, the vain, dismissive fop of a man who called himself her husband.

  Of course, all of this he kept firmly locked away in his own thoughts. He stood in place, pretending not to hear anything; and listening to every word.

  In a minute, Faustus sighed. “Well? What is it?”

  She shook her head. “Never mind.”

  The emperor rolled his eyes. “Come on. You know you’re going to tell me, sooner or later. Let’s get it over with.”

  Cassia turned a reproachful gaze to him. “I won’t bore you, Faustus. I wouldn’t want to distract you from your chariot races.”

  Trygve fought the urge to smile. So she was not entirely blind to her husband’s absurdity, after all.

  Faustus, meanwhile, raised an eyebrow. Then, he laughed. “Well,” he said. “Touché. Come on, Cass. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  She hesitated for a moment, as if considering the futility of sharing her thoughts after such a beginning. But she relented. “You know how Felix wants a twenty-five percent increase to the wage floor?”

  Faustus groaned. “You mean, how he wants to put all industry out of business in our city?”

  Cassia ignored the comment. “I was thinking about the figures we talked about.”

  “You might as well forget trying to convince Felix of them. He doesn’t trouble himself with the facts, love. He lets his feelings do his thinking for him.”

  “He thinks it’s a matter of priorities. He’s not entirely wrong, Faustus.” The emperor began to protest, but she hurried on. “How much do Gallus’ patrons spend in his name? And Tiberius’ and all the rest? And for what? For monuments and flyers and parades. To ensure that, when it’s time to cast their votes, the people of the city remember those names. Think of how many hungry bellies that could feed.”

  Her husband surveyed her with unconcealed surprise. “Cassia,” he said, “I can’t believe I’d hear that, from you of all people. You know how important it is to keep up the people’s morale. Especially in times like these. The whole city turns out for those parades. The people love them.”

  “The people would love more if they could feed their children every day. They’d love if they didn’t have to rely on soup kitchens or vying against a dozen other starving people for a loaf of bread tossed out as part of some damned bit of political theater.”

  Faustus shook his head. “I can’t believe this. When they do nothing, our industrialists are berated as greedy. When they do something, they’re maligned for acting out of self-interest. What do you want from them, Cas? They’re doing what they can.”

  “They’re not, though, Faustus. They’re doing what it takes to get senators elected who will legislate the way they want. There are a hundred better ways they could spend that money, if they really wanted to help.”

  “But it’s their money, Cassia, to do with what they like. Just like mine is for us to decide how to spend – not a bunch of bleeding hearts in the Forum. Do you really want to go back to those days? Have you forgotten what happened to Augustus?”

  Her face flushed. “I’m not talking about imperial spending,” she said.

  “No, you’re talking about letting the Senate decide how free men are to spend their own money.”

  “I’m talking about compensating laborers – our people – fairly for their labors. There would be no wealth, without their efforts.”

  “Bollocks. There has always been labor, and there always will be. Without the wisdom and investment of better men, those laborers would live and die in poverty.”

  “They already do, Faustus!” This, for a moment, silenced him, and she continued in a more moderated tone, “I want to raise the wage.” He began to protest, and she interjected quickly, “Not by twenty-five percent. Not yet, anyway. By ten.”

  “Ten? Minerva! You might as well shutter the factories. You think things are bad now? Wait until the jobs we already have dry up. Wait until no one can afford to invest in new factories, in new farms. Wait until the mines can’t hire laborers anymore, to dig out the silver we require.”

  “So we’re always told by men who ride in gilded carriages,” she said dryly. “Yet, for all their wealth, how many new factories do they build? How many new jobs do they create – even these jobs that cannot pay enough to feed a man?” She fixed Faustus with a meaningful stare. “How many new jobs have your mines created, husband?”

  His cheeks went red at that, and his eyes hardened. “Is that Felix’s play, then, Cass? To turn you against me?”

  “Turn me against you? Faustus, I’m your wife. I’m not against you. And this has nothing to do with Felix.”

  “Aren’t you, though? And doesn’t it?”

  “No. I love you, Faustus. But I am empress, too. These are my people.”

  “And aren’t they mine as well?” His voice was rising now. “Or is only the daughter of Augustus allowed to care for the people of Stella? Can the son of Flavius not also love his people? Remember, Cass: the blood of Augustus may run through your veins, but it’s the gold of Flavius that is the beating heart of this city.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The conversation did not improve from that point. It was, Cassia acknowledged, not entirely Faustus’s fault. Flavius’s money – Faustus’s money – was a sore spot to her. It had always been. It was the reason they’d been married. Her fathe
r had needed his father’s money to settle the empire’s debts. And so the children had been paired off. An empire, in exchange for the coin to run it.

  She’d gotten angry at the mention of it. She’d lost her temper. But, then, so had he.

  Maybe, she thought, she shouldn’t have brought up the mines. She’d heard Faustus boasting to one of his friends about saving money on labor costs; she knew that meant – it always meant – reducing workers. It wasn’t a hit below the belt. It was the truth, and a truth Faustus was going to lengths to avoid mentioning. Still, that had made it personal, in a way it didn’t need to be.

  But it wasn’t all her fault, either. Faustus had a way of avoiding the truth, a way of leading her to conclusions that he knew to be false. If she loved him less, she would have called it lying. But he’d only just been restored in her regard, these last months. She could not let herself linger too much on his failings.

  Still, his loose regard for the truth bothered her more than his unwillingness to budge. It didn’t matter what answer she gave to his objections; he’d always have a new one. It didn’t matter if it contradicted a reason he’d given before. He was incalcitrant and seemed willing to say anything to win his point.

  The conversation had ended with Faustus storming off after loosing a barrage of angry words. She had cried when he was gone.

  And then she’d dried her eyes and sent a letter to Felix. Now, she was seated in the senator’s house, a pot of tea and some light snacks laid out for them. Trygve had accompanied her, of course, and was standing to the side. But she called him over. “Will you join us, Trygve? This concerns you too.”

  The Northman took a seat, though his posture gave her the impression that he was not entirely comfortable doing so.