Nest of Vipers

by Luke Devenish

  Alone in the entrance hall to Castor’s house, Lygdus let the tears spill down his cheeks where no one could see him. He covered his mouth with his hands as the sobs of anguish came, torn raw from his heart. ‘I’m so sorry for it, domine,’ he stammered into his fingers. ‘I’m so sorry for it …’

  He tried to make a fresh map in his mind to guide his future. But now he could see that only one road was his. For all these months he had forced himself to believe that his lowly slave’s existence would be devoted to murder and crimes, and that by living in this way he would become elevated. He had forced himself to hold on to the faith that his humble life – and the life of Rome – would be made the better for what he would do. But now he knew this would not be so, and could never be. He had failed.

  Lygdus knew in his heart he would fail from the moment I had told him of Cybele and the prophecies and my sacrifice. He had ignored his doubts but the truth was inescapable now. He was shattered by what he had done. He was overwhelmed by his actions and not transported to some higher plain at all. He was sickened with the foulest remorse.

  Lygdus had murdered his dominus, taken another man’s life. He had lied, betrayed and killed, and the road he had travelled to achieve these things would now be his forever.

  He would kill and kill again, just as I, his mentor, killed as easily as I breathed. He would kill without pleasure or love or belief. He would kill to survive. He would kill or be killed. And with each new death his stench would grow. He was a murderer now – a vile assassin.

  He would never be free and he would never be clean, even if he became a god for it.

  When Apicata’s maids let themselves out of the kitchens, they stood very still, straining to hear any sounds that might suggest that their master remained in the house. He had ordered them from the corridor where they slept when the strange dog had appeared, scratching at the front door. They knew it held a message under its collar, but none saw what it was because Sejanus ordered them from his sight.

  Among themselves, the maids agreed they’d been sent away because Sejanus didn’t want them seeing things they might report to their mistress. He kept secrets from her, they well knew. But she kept secrets from him too, which they felt evened the score.

  When they at last returned to their pallets, they were shocked to find their mistress curled up on one, asleep. They consulted in whispers.

  ‘Should we wake her?’

  ‘It would be terrible.’

  ‘But she’s in a slave’s bed when she’s a mistress.’

  ‘Let her sleep. Perhaps she’ll wake up of her own accord.’

  Apicata was left where she was and the other slaves spread themselves among the remaining pallets as best they could. One of the maids, a girl called Calliope, found herself with nothing to sleep on. Upset, she crept into her mistress’s sleeping room, hoping there might be a rug she could arrange on the floor. She saw the strange little oblong box where it lay upon the bed. Without giving it any thought, she picked it up.

  The box was smooth in her hand and it rattled. In the dim light of the moon Calliope saw there was a little spot on the box where she could pry the lid with her fingernail. She did so and the lid popped off. Three little objects fell out. She stared at them for a full second before she saw with horror what they were. The tiny torso of a wax doll was detached from its head. The head itself was befouled, as if pulled from a sewer, and the eyes were absent. The doll was Apicata. It was a work of witchcraft.

  Calliope nearly shrieked, but she managed to stop herself, fearful of alerting the other maids. She knew that she would somehow be blamed for this, and maybe even accused of planting the witchcraft in the first place. The third item from the box was a scrap of rag on which something had been written. Unable to read, she stared blankly at the tiny letters. She shoved the three horrid things back in the box and reattached the lid. It was not a box at all, she now knew, but a tiny coffin.

  Calliope kicked it under the bed and made a prayer to the household gods that she be nowhere nearby when the evil thing was found again.

  The nail that held Livilla’s curse to the base of the temple’s god lost its hold in the stone and fell away, dropping the lead tablet to the floor.

  The curse landed with its words facing downwards and only its blank side visible to the god who towered above. Not that it mattered. The deity of deception had already read the plea for his assistance that was scratched into the other side.

  It had amused him, Livilla’s request. And now Veiovis was enjoying himself greatly as he honoured the unique nature of her curse.

  The Kalends of April

  AD 23

  Two weeks later: Emperor Tiberius Julius

  Caesar Augustus delivers the funeral

  eulogy for his son

  The weeping of the boys somewhere outside his room woke Flamma. The dreadful, wracking sobs brought him back to miseries he hadn’t felt since his earliest days at the Ludi. The sound jarred Flamma from his slow, steady path towards death.

  His eyes opened and saw the startled reaction on the face of the slave-boy Burrus, watching over him in the bed while applying fresh spiderweb and vinegar to his wound. Flamma tried to speak but his throat only croaked like a toad’s.

  ‘Ssh,’ said Burrus. He wiped a cloth dipped in water across Flamma’s brow.

  The gladiator waited, letting the phlegm and blood drip down his gullet before trying again. ‘I hear boys weeping …’

  A tear slipped from Burrus’s eye and he rubbed it away with the cloth. ‘It is the domina’s sons – Nero and Drusus.’

  ‘Why do they cry?’

  ‘Because of what has befallen us.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Castor is dead – their adoptive father.’

  Delirium took Flamma again and it was another day before he found his way back to the surface. When he did, he saw that the grey bird was there. ‘How did Castor die?’ he asked it, as if the conversation hadn’t ended.

  But the bird had no answer, and instead posed its most pressing question. ‘Why did you do it?’

  The effort of trying to answer made Flamma lose his fight to stay conscious. When he woke again, it seemed like only seconds later, but the light had changed and Burrus had returned, dressed in different clothes.

  ‘The boys have stopped crying,’ Flamma remarked.

  ‘They have gone to the funeral with my domina and her daughters.’

  Flamma let this sink in. ‘Castor was a good man.’

  Burrus nodded.

  ‘What killed him?’

  Burrus lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘They say it was a river fever, but my domina, she says –’ But he stopped himself, knowing it was unwise to say more.

  ‘Death’s bird is trying to escort me,’ Flamma told the boy after another while.

  Burrus just looked confused and poured some broth into Flamma’s mouth. The gladiator coughed it up, but when Burrus tried again Flamma found he could swallow. It was good. He gulped a few mouthfuls.

  ‘Death’s bird has been talking to me, Burrus …’

  ‘Talking?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Perhaps it was Fury?’

  ‘Are the Furies hounding me to hell?’

  ‘Fury is Claudius’s pet bird – he found it in Misenum. She can talk.’

  Burrus wiped Flamma’s brow and gave him some more broth. Flamma closed his eyes, and when he opened them again the boy had gone and the room they had placed him in was bathed in a rich, rosy light.

  Agrippina was there. With her golden hair that so mirrored his own.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ Agrippina asked him.

  ‘It was my time to die,’ said Flamma.

  ‘It was not. And neither is it now. You won a great victory.’

  ‘I am old and spent.’

  ‘You are younger than I am.’

  ‘It was my time to die then and it is my time to die now. I don’t want to live in
this life anymore.’

  ‘Are you disgraced? Are you guilty of a crime?’

  ‘I am a gladiator,’ Flamma said, as though that answered everything.

  Agrippina frowned. ‘So you did it to insult me. And to insult my dead husband, when you told me you revered him. You lied.’

  Flamma wept a little and she coolly dabbed at his tears with a square of linen until he stopped again. ‘You plunged that blade into your chest but it didn’t kill you,’ said Agrippina. There was an unmistakable note of respect to her tone.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Flamma, ‘but I’m still in this deathbed.’

  ‘You are recovering slowly – the physicians have assured me of it.’

  ‘Just let me die.’

  ‘I will not. You are my property. And since the Ludi you have been worth a great deal of money to me. I’d be a fool to let you die.’

  Flamma shut his eyes tight in frustration, and when he opened them again the rosy glow had left the room and the darkness had returned. The girl Nilla was there, lighting an oil lamp.

  ‘I’m ashamed that I tricked you,’ he told her.

  ‘I’ve forgiven you for that,’ said Nilla.

  He wept again but she didn’t dab at his tears as her mother had.

  When he’d stopped, she asked, ‘Why did you do it?’

  Flamma found that he didn’t know anymore. ‘Your father was a great man,’ he whispered to her.

  Nilla nodded.

  ‘Was he murdered?’

  Nilla nodded again, sombre.

  ‘Who would do such a crime?’

  Nilla told him what her mother believed – Tiberius.

  He frowned. ‘This must be avenged.’

  Flamma returned to sleep, and as he dreamed he found that he had lost his way along death’s path. The steps he took no longer led him there. When he awoke, it was morning. Agrippina had brought her loom into the doorway of his chamber and was weaving cloth in the glow of the dawn.

  ‘I will make a bargain with you, Lady,’ he called out to her.

  Startled, she turned around on her stool to him, raising a brow.

  ‘An exchange,’ he said. ‘Let me help you gain vengeance. Let me give you skills. Let me strengthen you. Let me show you what should be done, if you must kill.’

  Agrippina stared at him for a moment. She left her loom and crouched beside him at the bed. ‘I accept.’

  He smiled, relieved.

  ‘What can I give you in return, Flamma?’

  He found himself reaching out to hold her hand. It was slender in his broad, brown palm, but her fingers were long and supple like his. There was a well of hidden strength to her hands, he saw. ‘Death,’ he said. ‘Just give me death, Lady.’

  Angry, she threw down his hand as if it burned her.

  Livilla’s conclamatio wails of grief filled the corridors of Oxheads long after the funeral had ended. Sometimes Tiberia’s voice was added to that of her mother’s, and more often the voice of the little boy, Gemellus, joined in too. But mostly it was just Livilla weeping, especially in the hours of darkness. During those long nights her revered mother, Antonia, joined her, a widow herself for many decades. On these occasions Livilla’s grief intensified into hysteria. She gave more grief than we slaves could bear.

  Sejanus ordered me to close the door of my domina’s suite against it, but Tiberius stopped me.

  ‘I need to hear it,’ he murmured, withered and aged at his mother’s bedside. ‘She grieves so much. It comforts me to know that Castor was loved.’

  I made no comment on the sincerity of Livilla’s grief and simply bowed, leaving the door open, before I pressed myself against the wall, trying to become invisible. Indeed, I was invisible to Sejanus and Tiberius – they paid me no heed – but my domina was ever aware of me and I felt the boiling hatred behind her eyes. With Castor’s death the trips to Asclepius’s dogs would cease – I would make sure of it. My plans had come to bud before hers.

  Sejanus returned to mixing a new draught of the Eastern flower. Tiberius watched his actions intently, knowing that the drug would take away his pain. In his hands he held my written record of Castor’s death dream.

  ‘How could he have thought he wasn’t my son?’ he asked from the depths of his despair. I knew this question wasn’t directed at me and so said nothing.

  ‘It was a dream, Caesar,’ Sejanus answered without looking at him. He was carefully measuring the ingredients. ‘Dreams can’t be taken literally. There are other meanings to them.’

  ‘There is no other meaning here,’ Tiberius said. ‘He believed I loved his brother more.’

  Sejanus paused. Then he said, ‘But Germanicus is four years dead. How could Castor still have thought such a thing, Caesar?’ He waited, his face betraying nothing of what he hid in his heart.

  Tiberius looked up from the papyrus, bewildered. ‘So he truly thought I loved Germanicus more?’

  Sejanus made a show of embarrassment, as if he was privy to a confidence he had never shared with his Emperor.

  Tiberius’s tears flowed. ‘No … no. Germanicus was my adopted son – my nephew – but he wasn’t my blood son.’

  Sejanus said nothing, his face a tragic mask.

  ‘Didn’t he understand that? Didn’t he realise the truth?’

  ‘He knew that the Divine Augustus had wanted you to adopt Germanicus,’ Sejanus answered with reluctance. ‘This suggested succession plans.’

  ‘That was my mother’s doing,’ Tiberius spat, glaring viciously at Livia. She met his eye but gave nothing. ‘Augustus was insensible to that decision – Castor knew that.’

  Sejanus’s sad look suggested otherwise. ‘He only knew that neither the Divine Augustus nor the Augusta expressed such wishes about him. Castor knew that Germanicus was the better man – the greater general. He knew that his brother’s gifts as an ambassador made him invaluable to Rome. He knew that his own gifts were only administrative at best.’

  Tiberius wept in despair. ‘He was my right hand here in Rome. He was invaluable to me – I am lost without him.’

  Sejanus said nothing and began mixing ingredients again, letting the seed he had planted take root in Tiberius’s heart. He stirred the draught slowly as he waited, but did not offer the relief it would bring yet. He knew that a more important task must be dealt with first.

  The seed bore fruit. An appalling realisation dawned on Tiberius, and for a brief moment’s terror Sejanus feared it was not the one he had strived for.

  ‘Castor caused his brother’s death?’

  Sejanus’s flood of relief almost shook the mask from his eyes. He threw himself at the base of Tiberius’s chair, shedding tears of gratitude to the gods, but in his performance he dressed it as grief. ‘I’ve always feared it, Caesar,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve always suspected it in my heart.’

  ‘You never said it to me.’

  ‘How could I accuse the son you loved?’

  Tiberius sank into the cushions, feeling what little remained of his strength ebbing away. After a time Sejanus’s weeping ceased and there was silence. A goblet was placed in Tiberius’s hand and his fingers curled around the neck. It was the draught.

  With a sip he could take away his pain, just as he had done when his brother Drusus had died. With only a gulp of the Eastern flower’s nectar he would lose all reason for his suffering, just as he had when his wife Vipsania had opened her veins. With little more than a mouthful of the potion he would obliterate all thoughts in his head, except those that cast reflection upon his greatness. But as I watched him, invisible at the wall, I saw that his broken heart spoke to him, halting him, wanting to know how he’d been so blind to his son. How had he missed the vital signs? Tiberius’s heart demanded an explanation: if gentle Castor had envied Germanicus so much that he’d had him poisoned, how and why had Tiberius missed his boy’s murderous intent?

  I saw all this playing in Tiberius’s face, the goblet at his lips not yet sipped. And I saw that Tibe
rius knew the answer to provide. He understood how he’d missed it, how he’d let both his sons slip through his fingers like sand. There was only one answer he could ever give that explained it all: the Eastern flower.

  Sejanus left the room, gently pulling the door closed behind him, despite Tiberius’s orders. Tiberius heard him commanding the Praetorians outside that the Emperor was not to be disturbed while he was grieving with his mother. When we heard Sejanus’s boots echoing down the corridor, Tiberius rose from the couch and tipped the goblet into the bowl I used for my domina’s waste.

  Tiberius had no doubt that Sejanus loved him as a father. But Sejanus was not his son. Tiberius knew that the devoted Prefect would never harm him and that his daily preparation of the draught was only to make his Emperor happy, nothing more. I studied Tiberius as he promised himself that he had finished with the Eastern flower. He would never tell Sejanus; it would upset him, Tiberius knew. I continued to watch as Tiberius hoped aloud that he would find the will to be strong.

  He stuck the tip of his little finger into the excrement bowl and withdrew it, dabbing it on his tongue. The taste was foul. From now until the final breath the mighty gods granted him, he would begin his days in this way, he vowed. He would upend his draughts in shit.

  What finer way was there to ensure he stuck to his resolve?

  Lemuria

  May, AD 23

  One month later: Emperor Tiberius

  Julius Caesar Augustus orders the

  banishment of all musica muta artists

  from Italy, despite widespread appeals for

  clemency

  When together in a pack, the three sisters could be bitches. Often it was Nilla and Drusilla who banded together against the youngest girl, five-year-old Julilla, making her life a hell. Nilla was eight and Drusilla seven, so their younger sister was easily captured, tortured or teased. She was also forever overlooked by her mother and forgotten by the household slaves. Burrus usually observed attentively from the walls with the other companion slaves, and sometimes with Lygdus and me for company. Whether we were there or not made no difference to the girls’ torments. I would never interfere unless the child’s life was imperilled, and because Nilla and Drusilla never quite took things that far I merely blocked my ears every time little Julilla’s screams became too deafening. But Burrus found the games distressing and fought against his natural urge to weigh in.