by Lisa Henry
Senna didn’t feel like slavery. Senna felt more like salvation.
Death was triumph, if they dragged Nero with them.
Aenor stepped over a sleeping boy and made for the corner. He settled himself on the rough cement floor, lying on his side with his head resting on the crook of his elbow. He closed his eyes and ignored his growling stomach.
When feet shuffled close to his head, Aenor assumed it was Sticchus. The boy often curled up beside him, and they whispered about faraway lands in their stilted Latin while the others slept. Aenor shifted to make room for him, and then realized that Sticchus never smelled of lavender. He opened his eyes to find Hyacinthus standing over him.
“I saw you,” Hyacinthus said, his pretty face twisted with glee. “I saw you suck Novius Senna’s cock!”
Aenor sat up, met Hyacinthus’s gaze, and shrugged. He’d done worse. So had Hyacinthus.
“I heard him call you Aenor.” Hyacinthus raised his eyebrows. “That’s not your name, Canis.”
Aenor looked around. Several other slaves were watching their exchange with interest. He recognized two as musicians. He didn’t know the others, but guessed none of them would bother to intervene in a fight between a catamite and a dog.
“He is Novius Senna,” Aenor said. “He call me what he wants.”
Hyacinthus sneered. “I saw you. I heard you!”
Impossible. Aenor tried not to flinch. “Said nothing.”
“You said plenty, Canis. Almost as much as Novius Senna!” Hyacinthus stepped back. He made sure everyone was watching.
“For a game,” Aenor said. “Like the bear. I am Vercingetorix.” He stumbled over the unfamiliar Latinized name. One of the watching slaves said something in a low tone. The others laughed.
Hyacinthus bridled, unwilling to lose his audience.
“I heard you,” Hyacinthus exclaimed. “I heard you say you wanted to kill the emperor!”
The watching slaves froze.
Aenor’s blood ran cold. “Not true.”
An eruption of voices, frightened, accusatory.
“No!” Aenor pressed back against the wall. “Not true. Please, not true!”
Too late.
Hyacinthus crowed with laughter, dancing back out of Aenor’s range even though Aenor was too stunned to make a move against him.
“Not true,” he repeated, looking at the others for support, for something. None of them would meet his gaze. “Not true . . .”
He slumped against the wall as one of the musicians ran outside, shouting for the Praetorians.
“A game,” he repeated dully. “Hyacinthus, a game. I am Vercingetorix.” His voice cracked.
Hyacinthus laughed, the sound shrill in the sudden silence. He looked around at the others, and frowned when he saw that none of them were laughing.
“What? He’s just a dog!” Hyacinthus scowled. “I’m not lying! It’s the truth. I heard them!”
There was no point in running. Even if the slaves blocking the door let him through, there was nowhere to go. Aenor sank down onto his haunches. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to breathe.
“I’m not lying!” Hyacinthus exclaimed.
Aenor buried his face in his hands.
“They’ll torture you,” the remaining musician said.
I know. Bile rose in his throat, burning.
“I didn’t do anything!” Hyacinthus wailed.
What? The blood drained from Aenor’s face. He looked up sharply.
“You’re a slave giving testimony,” the musician told Hyacinthus. “It’s the law.”
Hyacinthus burst into tears.
Aenor buried his face again.
Tuisto.
He wished he were already dead. He wished the First Spear had killed him back on the banks of the Rinez. He wished he’d never come to this place. He should have been making eyes at plain girls to sell them bangles for their fat wrists, not trapped in a nightmare here in Rome. Not a slave about to be tortured.
He wished he hadn’t believed it when Senna had said they’d die together, because he was alone now.
Tuisto, Tuisto, please.
That familiar stomping march of Roman soldiers: greaves rattling, metal jangling, leather creaking, and hobnailed soles ringing.
Aenor swallowed a whimper as the ringing stopped. He looked up to see soldiers crowding the doorway.
The room was dark. Torches flickered in sconces on the walls. Shadows grew and shrank over the rough concrete floor. There were iron loops set into the walls and the floor, and an unlit brazier in the corner.
“No, please,” Aenor begged as the soldiers stripped him naked and fixed shackles onto his wrists and feet, then his throat. Cold, heavy chain slithered across his skin as he moved to cover his genitals with his cupped hands.
The legs of the brazier scraped on the floor as one of the soldiers dragged it over. The sound brought Aenor out in gooseflesh. He watched through his hair as a soldier reached for a torch and upended it into the brazier. Coals crackled and embers danced. The soldier plunged a poker into the brazier, stirring the coals. He met Aenor’s gaze.
Aenor stared, transfixed.
The unspoken threat tasted like bile.
Veleda. What now, Veleda? Did you foresee this for me? Do you see me now?
When he was a boy, she’d pulled his hair and pinched him. That’s what cousins did. It was before Veleda had learned the language of the Teutoburg Forest and became its priestess. It was before she saw the Bructeri rise up against Rome in her dreams, and tear at its throat until it bled.
Aenor dropped his gaze to the floor.
“Veleda, remember me,” he whispered in Bructeri.
He didn’t ask Tuisto to protect him. He’d left that god under the greenwood, in the shadowed groves, in the clear, cold waters of the Rinez. Tuisto, born of the earth, hadn’t come to Rome. The Roman gods would have laughed at him. Tuisto didn’t belong here where they made trees out of metal and stone.
“Veleda.” Aenor’s throat was dry as the soldier drew the poker out of the brazier.
He wouldn’t say Senna’s name.
Wouldn’t.
“On your knees,” one of the other soldiers said. He put a hand on Aenor’s shoulder.
Aenor sank under the weight of that hand, of that voice, of his own fear.
“Tell us the truth, and we’ll make it quick,” the soldier said.
Aenor wanted to believe that.
“Yes,” he murmured at the floor. “Placet. I tell you.”
As the man with the poker approached him, Aenor was afraid it was the truth.
He pissed himself before they even touched him.
He didn’t break though.
It hurt like nothing he’d ever experienced. Nothing. Not the first night in the revolving dining room, and not even when Nero dressed as a bear and tore at him. This was worse. This was the fine hairs on his limbs curling and scorching like lamp wicks. This was the smell of his own flesh burning, melted fat sizzling. This was a hot explosion of blood in his mouth because one touch of the poker opened his jaw in a scream, and a second snapped it shut like a trap and Aenor bit through his tongue.
Somehow, though, he was stronger than he thought.
Because of Tigellinus.
Aenor wanted to break, wanted them to leave him in peace to nurse his wounds until they needed him to repeat his testimony for the next man up the line, wanted to repeat the confessions they murmured in his ears. Wanted to.
Couldn’t.
Because of Tigellinus.
Tigellinus had taught him how to bear pain: the short, sharp shocks of it and the long rolling waves that echoed in his bones. Tigellinus, and Nero, and Rome itself. Blows broke over him, and Aenor took them.
“Fuck this,” one of the soldiers said. “I heard Tigellinus is already talking to the Senate. Any day now and we’ll be declaring for Galba.”
“Until he does, shut your mouth and do your fucking job.”
The blows raine
d down.
The part of Aenor’s mind that had retreated from the torture—too much, too sharp, too big—knew that Hyacinthus would break first. He was a pretty, delicate boy who hadn’t known real pain. He would break. He would tell them anything, any lie, any truth, until there was no difference between them. He also knew that it made no difference. If Nero and Tigellinus decided they wanted Senna to die, they didn’t need the testimony of a slave to do it. This was just a formality.
The Praetorians would kill Aenor in the end, but he wouldn’t betray Senna.
He hadn’t even known he’d had any pride left.
All he had to do was repeat the same lie again and again: “Not true. A game. I am Vercingetorix.”
He spat blood every time.
Sooner or later they would stop asking.
Sooner or later he would be dead.
The Praetorians found a woman who spoke his language. That almost broke Aenor when nothing had before. The woman was Cherusci, not Bructeri, but their languages were similar. Their tribes were allied. Aenor’s grandmother had been Cherusci. He heard the echo of her voice in this woman’s and reached out for her without realizing.
“Grandmother?”
“My sweet love,” she said, cradling him. “What have they done to you?”
“A bear attacked me,” he whispered. “It happened in a place I didn’t know. The trees were cold and dead. I couldn’t move.”
The woman wiped his hair back from his forehead and rocked him gently.
Aenor licked his lips and tasted blood. “Have you seen Bana? He hasn’t come home yet. We should go and meet him on the road.”
“Yes, love, we will meet him on the road,” she told him.
“I hope he didn’t cross the river. They say the ferryman takes you underground.”
“They are only just starting on you, my love,” the woman said. “Do you understand me?”
He didn’t. He drifted for a while, blinking up at her. There was a ceiling above her, not a sky. How strange.
“Where is Senna?” he asked.
Suddenly there were men in his line of vision. They spoke Latin.
“What did he say? I heard his name.”
“He asked where he was,” the woman said.
For a moment, Aenor couldn’t understand why his grandmother would tell the Romans what they were talking about. She’d been the one who’d shown them the place where Varro’s legions had been swallowed in the Teutoburg Forest. She hated them as well.
Do you hate him? Senna had asked.
Hate all of you.
Awareness rushed over him.
Pain followed it like the Furies he’d seen painted on the walls of the Golden House, screaming, tearing, and burning.
The woman looking down at him was a stranger.
Good. That was good because he couldn’t lie to his grandmother.
He lifted his bloody hand, unsure of how that had happened, to the neckline of the woman’s tunic. He hooked his fingers over it—the right number still, at least—staining the woman’s pale skin with blood.
“A game,” he whispered in Bructeri. “It was just a game for the emperor. I must be like Vercingetorix, Novius Senna said. I must say that I will kill Caesar. Caesar, not Nero, Caesar. Hyacinthus made a mistake. Ask him. Ask him. Novius Senna is the emperor’s friend.”
The woman translated.
“Friend?” one of the Praetorians scoffed. “Not now.”
“A game,” Aenor whispered. “You believe me? A game?”
“It’s done,” the soldier said. “Tigellinus has already decided.”
“Just a game,” Aenor whispered.
“It doesn’t matter if he’s guilty or not,” the soldier said. “Ask Corbulo. Novius Senna is about to get exactly what he deserves.”
The others laughed.
Aenor’s eyes flickered shut.
“Who the fuck are you?”
It was too late for pleasantries and there was a stranger standing in Senna’s atrium, watching the faint moonlight reflected in the pool of the impluvium. His face was vaguely familiar. Senna knew it from somewhere—the Golden House?—but it was too dark and he was still too fuddled with sleep. He’d been dragged from his bed for this, whatever this was.
“My name is Gavius Salinus,” the man said.
That was no fucking help. Senna glanced at Felix. The slave looked grave.
“What do you want?” Senna asked.
The man sounded almost apologetic. “I have a message for you.”
Senna knew what it was before the man even spoke. A part of him wanted to laugh.
Gavius Salinus, whoever the fuck he was, delivered the message in a breathy rush. “Novius Senna, you no longer have the friendship of the emperor.”
Then he actually flinched.
Amateur.
“I’m afraid it’s worse than that,” Senna said pensively. He exchanged a glance with Felix. “I’ve been fired as well.”
Felix was too upset to laugh.
Senna fixed his gaze on Gavius Salinus. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
The man looked affronted.
Well, Senna thought as he gazed at the moonlight dancing in the impluvium while Felix escorted the man to the front door, if Salinus wanted to win friends, he’d picked the wrong job.
Senna headed back upstairs.
A few moments later, Felix found him there, dressing. He fluttered around with a lamp. “Where are you going, master?”
“To speak to Nero.”
Felix hissed. “But, master, you don’t have to go.”
“Of course I do,” Senna told him, fastening his belt. “I have to know. I’m very tired, Felix, of not knowing who is the betrayer and who is the betrayed. I won’t die not knowing.”
“You needn’t die at all, master! You can go to Hispania and declare for Galba.”
“I can’t. I’m Nero’s creature. I’m the man who delivered the message that killed Corbulo. Do you think Galba will have me?”
“Then go to Greece,” Felix said, and for a moment, Senna was almost swayed.
Greece. Titus and Junia.
Then Senna remembered the last time he’d been in Greece. Cenchreae. That cheap, awful wine shop. That was when he’d set his feet on this path. That was when he’d really plunged into the Rubicon after all.
“No.” Senna embraced Felix. “When Junia and Titus return to Rome, I know you will welcome them back into this house.”
Felix let go of him with a strangled sob. “Master, please! You should flee while you can. Whatever you’re going there for, it’s not worth it!”
Senna flashed a rueful smile. “Axios, Felix. This time I think it might be true. This one might be worthy.”
Something was happening. The city knew it.
The wind that blew in from the river picked up dust and rubbish from the streets and threw it around. But apart from the wind, it was quiet. Senna passed locked doors and closed shutters. He saw no soldiers in the street, not even the Vigiles. It was dangerous, probably. Rome at night was dangerous at the best of times. Who was it who’d said that any man leaving his house at night to meet with a friend should write his will first? It wasn’t much of an exaggeration.
Senna kept to the shadows, moving quickly.
He didn’t take his litter. There was no need to involve his household slaves in whatever was going to happen, and no need to advertise his wealth if the city really was teetering on the edge of chaos. A lone man might get robbed and stabbed, but a man in a litter was likely to get torn apart by a mob. Senna could move faster on foot.
Where the fuck were the Praetorians? The Urban Cohort? Where the fuck was anybody?
If there was unrest, Senna didn’t see it. There were no crowds setting fires in the Subura, or clashing with the Urban Cohort in the Forum. The city was quiet, dark, but it was awake. Watchful.
Senna clutched his gladius under his cloak. They were illegal to carry in the city and he wouldn’t be foolish enough
to try to get it anywhere near Nero. He would get rid of it before he reached Nero’s private palace on the Quirinal Hill.
Senna had no doubt that he wouldn’t be walking back.
At first he thought the cold dread in the pit of his stomach was for himself, but he realized it wasn’t. It was for Aenor.
Senna kept one hand under his cloak as he moved, his fingers curled around the old familiar grip of his gladius. He’d faced the Parthian Empire with this gladius. The sword was standard military issue, nothing fancy. Senna had kept the blade sharp though. Always.
The blood roared in his skull, and suddenly he remembered his grandfather. His feet sinking in the sand, the taste of salt on his lips, and the old man showing him how to hold a shell up to his ear.
Listen, Lucius. Do you hear the ocean?
When he was five he could: the ebb and flow, the back and forth, the turn of the tide. He could hear it again now. The whole city could.
From the crest of the Quirinal Hill, he saw Rome laid out below, stretching all the way down toward the valley of the Forum. The roofs of the city gleamed pale silver in the moonlight.
The sting of betrayal caught him again and sucked the breath out of his lungs.
Not Aenor, Senna thought, please. He thought he would like to carry what faith he had left with him across the Styx.
Because if Aenor had betrayed him, then this was the most stupid thing he’d ever done in his life.
There were no guards at the entrance to Nero’s private palace.
Senna kept his gladius with him.
He walked inside.
At some point, the Praetorians left him.
Aenor didn’t know how long it had been. The Cherusci woman had gone too. Aenor slept for a while, shivering on the floor, and was woken by the sounds of whimpering. At first he thought it was himself, but after a while he wasn’t sure. In the end, he held his breath until his lungs hurt, and he could still hear it. So there was someone else nearby. Not in his line of sight, though, maybe not even in this room, and he couldn’t move.