Nest of Vipers

by Luke Devenish

  The gladiator looked Burrus up and down. ‘And how old are you now, lad?’

  ‘Fourteen.’ Like Nilla, he met the professional killer’s gaze levelly.

  ‘A man, then,’ said Flamma. ‘Very well. This is turning into quite a school.’

  Agrippina gave a hacking cough and a new trickle of blood ran from her lips, but she nodded at the gladiator’s words.

  ‘But only one of you will kill me,’ Flamma said. This was not a question or even a request, but a statement of fact. ‘And that is you, Lady, and no other.’

  ‘That is our agreement,’ said Agrippina.

  ‘And it will be my honour,’ said Flamma. ‘Your husband was the greatest man in Rome – he should have been Emperor.’

  I kept my eyes hard on the ground, frightened of what he might see in them if I dared to look up.

  ‘My training you in sword-craft is vengeance for his death, and when you kill me you will be ready to take your own vengeance.’

  Agrippina opened her eyes and there was profound gratitude in her face. ‘Your sacrifice will be remembered by Rome, I promise you,’ she whispered, ‘and you will live like a king in this house while we learn from you.’

  He picked up the sword from where it had fallen from Agrippina’s hand and tossed it high in the air. ‘Who’s next for their lesson?’

  Burrus leaped forward and caught the sword. Then he turned and presented it to Nilla, bowing his head. She took it from him, weighing it in her hand and curling her tiny fingers around the hilt.

  Flamma smiled. ‘You are your mother’s daughter, child.’

  ‘And vengeance burns in me just as strong,’ Nilla said.

  It was never the corpulent Senator Silius’s first choice to avail himself of public lavatories, but when nature’s call made evacuation imperative he was glad the facilities were there. His bladder was not what it was, he was sorry to admit; it needed emptying far more often than it once had, even though he tried to counter things by drinking less. Silius’s bowels demanded hourly easing as well, so all in all he knew it was either the civic latrines that received him when he was caught short away from home – or the banks of the Tiber with the beggars. The latrines, he knew, were marginally less unsavoury.

  He halted his retinue in its noisy progress from the Senate. ‘My apologies, friends,’ Silius said, waving his large and expressive hands at the latrine enclosure at the edge of the Forum. ‘You know the drill by now, I’m sure.’

  His slaves and clients cracked good-natured jokes as he descended the steps. ‘Send someone ahead to tell my lovely wife I have been delayed,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘No need to tell Sosia the reason – she’ll guess it herself.’

  The assembled men laughed and one of the slaves was detached to take the message. At the bottom of the steps Silius stuck his head inside the entrance, trying not to look apprehensive. He had campaigned for seven long years in Germany, after all, and had endured far less hygienic conditions than this. But still, as a general, he had always been granted privacy. The nature of the public latrines was just that – inescapably public. The usual arrangement was a dozen or so raised openings in a row where there was nothing else to look at but one’s fellow defecators, male and female. There was no room for modesty.

  The attendant lavatory slave bowed – an ugly boy with deformed ears.

  Silius realised with relief that there was no one else inside. ‘What good fortune,’ he declared to the boy.

  The ugly lad smirked. ‘Got the throne room all to yourself, domine.’

  Silius ruffled the boy’s hair and strode past him to select a suitable squatting hole. At least they were clean. The boy had been at work with his brush. Silius made his selection and hoisted himself onto the platform, pulling his toga folds above his hips and untying his loin cloth. Placing his feet in the rests, he closed his eyes and sighed with contentment as relief began to come. When he opened his eyes again, he found the cauliflower-eared boy standing unexpectedly close.

  ‘Are you Gaius Silius?’

  Silius hesitated in replying until dignity won out, despite the circumstances, and he confirmed that he was.

  The boy was impressed. ‘You’re the great general, then?’

  Silius nodded.

  ‘You beat that bastard Sacrovir.’

  Silius shrugged.

  ‘I saw your triumph.’

  ‘Good for you, lad.’ He would have got up to leave if his bowels weren’t informing him to hold fast for a second act.

  ‘You’re the one man in Rome that old Tiberius won’t dare charge with treason,’ said the boy, laughing. ‘Must be nice to feel safe.’

  Silius was taken aback with astonishment but the boy just kept laughing. ‘What an extraordinary thing to say,’ said Silius, a politician first and a general second. ‘Those charged with treason deserve their fate – it is no laughing matter. Give me a sponge.’

  The boy tapped his nose, as if well aware of a joke behind Silius’s words, and went to the bucket of wiping implements, fossicking for a clean one. ‘No offence meant, domine,’ he said. ‘All I mean is that you’re in the best place of all because old Tiberius needs you.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Silius, waiting for the sponge.

  ‘Of course he does – you kept your German army loyal when others fell into mutiny, didn’t you?’ The ugly lad was remarkably well informed about political and military affairs.

  ‘Give me the sponge,’ said Silius, holding out his hand.

  The boy held on to it. ‘But you did, domine – you kept them loyal. Even Germanicus couldn’t have done that.’

  Silius looked around the room. They were definitely alone – just himself and an ugly boy of no worth or consequence. What did it matter if he humoured such a slave? ‘If the German revolt had spread to my brigades, Tiberius would never have kept his throne, it’s true,’ said Silius.

  The boy’s eyebrows raised in awe. ‘Really, domine?’

  ‘It would have tipped the balance – too many against him. But I kept my lot loyal and he kept his crown. So you’re right, boy,’ Silius winked. ‘Tiberius really does owe me one.’

  The deformed slave giggled and gave him the sponge on its stick. As Silius applied it to his backside, the slave watched him with eagle eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Silius, now wishing the boy would leave him. ‘I’ll give you a tip in a moment.’

  But the boy didn’t budge, his eyes glued to the senator.

  Suddenly Silius leaped into the air with a shriek. A crackle of flames shot from the latrine hole and he looked down into the sewer with shock. A toy papyrus boat of the type made for children sailed the flowing water below him, laden with blazing leaves.

  The ugly lavatory boy stuck his head in the hole and screamed into the sewer. ‘Duro, you cocksucker! I’m going to call the vigiles on you!’

  He pulled his head out again as Silius rubbed his hindquarters in bewilderment. ‘I’m sorry, domine,’ the boy said. ‘It’s that bastard Duro who minds the lavatories further up the cloaca maxima. He thinks it’s a great laugh to send his practical jokes downstream to scare off my best customers.’

  Silius threw a handful of brass coins at the boy and hurried up the steps.

  In the indignity of having the hair singed from his buttocks, Silius lost all recollection of what he’d said to the boy. But afterwards, as more customers came and went, some tipping and others not, the slave with the misshapen ears enjoyed one of the happiest afternoons he had known. What he clutched in his heart was far better than any handful of dupondii he might have collected from a day’s arse-wiping.

  Silius thought he had thrown him brass but really he had given him gold.

  The cream-coloured heifer behaved with perfect docility. The rope around its neck was slack; the beast didn’t need to be pulled, moving forward of its own accord, clueless to its fate and with its belly swollen with calf. All the good omens were piling up before the heifer and its unborn ha
d even been offered to the gods. The small group of assembled pontifices cast pleased little nods at each other across the dim hall of the curia regia.

  At eighteen, and the youngest of the dozen priests by some years, Nero signalled what he hoped would be read as his own pleasure at the heifer’s docile progress, raising his eyebrows at anyone who looked back at him. One of the older priests went to frown, before catching himself and remembering who Nero was, and then attempted to turn the glare into a sort of spasm. Nero came close to laughing, but when his eyes darted to the victimarius who held the heifer’s rope, he was startled by the new look the man returned. The victimarius smiled back at him boldly, with none of the unquestioning respect that Nero expected from lesser-ranking men. The man had a knowing smirk that constituted a challenge. Nero was thrown but couldn’t pull his eyes away. The man could see through him.

  Nero had felt a growing panic in the presence of this victimarius from the moment he had joined the college. His grandfather, Tiberius, as pontifex maximus, had introduced Nero with great solemnity to all those who conducted the sacrifices. But when Nero made his first greeting handshake with this man, a bolt of lightning travelled up his arm. The victimarius had done nothing outwardly provocative but Nero sensed something unsettling to him. With every sacred handshake they had shared since, the lightning bolt had intensified. This man excited him.

  Nero stared across the dim hall of the curia and the victimarius’s smile widened. In a gesture so fast it could have been overlooked by anyone else, the man reached to his genitals and gripped them under his tunica, before bringing his hand to where it could be seen again, all the while grinning. Nero felt his pulse surge at the sight. The augur began sprinkling roasted barley grains on the heifer’s head and the victimarius hung back, letting his eye leave Nero. Then he stepped down from the altar as the aged popa took his place – the man whose job it was to stun the beast with a hammer. The victimarius disappeared into one of the dark anterooms, without a single glance behind him.

  Waiting in the shadows was Lygdus.

  Nero was aware of how sacrilegious it was to develop an erection during a meeting of the pontifical college, but it was useless trying to will it away. Crossing his legs in his curule chair only added to the pressure, and he cursed the victimarius for giving him the look he had – the look that had inflamed him. Nero knew for sure now that the man wanted him, having already suspected it for months, and Nero also knew that he would be unable to ignore it any longer. He feared he had sprung free from the confines of his loincloth; only the linen of his striped priest’s toga was keeping him from exposing himself – and his secret.

  The assembled priests began to chant as the old popa swung the first hammer blow to the base of the heifer’s head. The beast fell forward on its knees and remained there stunned, its fat, pink tongue lolling through its lips. Another good omen was acknowledged by the assembled men – the popa had achieved his task with a single blow. The stern cultrarius stepped forward to exchange places with the popa, and Nero took advantage of every eye being fixed upon the man’s knife as it plunged into the heifer’s throat. He rose from his chair and slipped behind the circle of priests.

  From the shadows Lygdus watched him go.

  If Nero hadn’t found the smiling victimarius waiting for him in the anteroom, just as he hoped he would, he would have returned to his chair, frustrated certainly, but present for the officiating priest’s libations as the dying heifer’s blood was collected in bowls. But Nero missed the vows for wellbeing that were asked of the gods, and in doing so he missed something of great importance. Prayers asking for Nero and Drusus’s wellbeing were offered before prayers asking for the wellbeing of Tiberius. It was a mistake. Lygdus heard it and stopped in surprise for a moment. Then he stole towards the anteroom and glimpsed inside. The victimarius was posed as Lygdus himself had once been posed – on his knees and his hands before Nero.

  Nero turned with fright when he saw movement at the door. Lygdus lowered his eyes. ‘My young dominus is safe,’ he whispered. ‘No one will see. No one will know.’

  The pleasure was too great for Nero, the excitement in the victimarius’s eyes. He could not leave. He could only smile at Lygdus, who glanced up to receive the young dominus’s gratitude, briefly basking in it before stealing away.

  In the shadows of the great hall Lygdus found me.

  ‘Is he engaged in a shameful act?’ I asked eagerly.

  Lygdus gave a small nod, looking away from me.

  I began making notes on a wax tablet I carried.

  ‘Not yet,’ Lygdus whispered.

  ‘Not yet what?’

  ‘We shouldn’t spread rumours yet – it is far too soon. Don’t you think so, Iphicles?’

  I was surprised. ‘No time like now.’

  ‘I think we should keep it to ourselves. Gather more information. It will serve us better in time.’

  I was not used to hearing opinions from others regarding my great tasks, and the novelty of it made me grant what he’d said a certain wisdom. ‘Good idea. But did you hear the prayers?’

  He looked grim.

  ‘The officiating priest must be mad to make a cock-up like that. Still, it’s been said now and there’s no withdrawing it. Run to Sejanus before anyone else beats you to it,’ I said. ‘He should hear what was said and you should be the one to tell him – it will give him reason to trust you. Run – I will watch over the sodomites.’

  Lygdus made the appearance of leaving me there, but stopped and turned round. ‘We should let others tell him, Iphicles. If the information comes from us, it will place too much of his attention in our direction. He will begin to expect us to tell him things, and that wouldn’t be good, would it?’

  I confessed this hadn’t occurred to me. ‘You are right again,’ I said, impressed with his fast-developing aptitude for intrigue.

  He nodded and was silent for a moment while I smiled paternally at him. Then he whispered, ‘Will Nero die for what he does?’

  I could not be certain in such uncertain times. In Augustus’s day such things would have caused little more than a minor scandal, but now … ‘Eventually,’ I replied. ‘As you have suggested, Lygdus, the effect will be accumulative. The safer he feels, the more shameful acts he will certainly go on to commit, and the worse things will be for him in the long run. But you must keep careful watch and then tell everything to me, leaving nothing out.’

  Lygdus nodded again.

  ‘He is a dominus no different from any other,’ I encouraged him. ‘Think upon how much you enjoyed Castor’s death and then imagine how it will be when we achieve Nero’s.’

  Lygdus said nothing.

  ‘Everything we do, we do to build a better Rome, a golden Rome, the city foreseen by the goddess –’

  ‘How much better will it be?’ he interrupted me. There was something odd about his manner, but in my pleasure at his company I dismissed it.

  ‘It is my belief now that the Great Mother intended Tiberius to be the first king only to make the people appreciate the qualities of the second king all the more. For every glaring fault that Tiberius has, and for every cruel injustice that he brings, Little Boots’s rule, when you and I take him to the throne, Lygdus, will be so much more glorious in contrast.’

  ‘Is that what the prophecy actually said?’

  A tiny cry of doubt rang sharply in my heart, making me lose my thoughts for a moment.

  ‘Iphicles?’

  The cry came again, unintelligible and devoid of meaning – except for the sensation of doubt itself. Why was I feeling it?

  What did it mean?

  ‘Is that what the prophecy actually said, Iphicles?’

  I recovered my wits. ‘Thrasyllus said that the second king would wear his father’s crown. Little Boots’s father was Germanicus – a man more loved by Rome than any other. When Little Boots reigns, his father’s glory will become his own – that’s what the words mean.’

 
; ‘Will he make the slaves free?’

  I was thrown. ‘Is that what you want, Lygdus?’

  ‘With all my heart.’

  I was moved to hear this; I, who had never desired anything but to be close to those I served. But I knew that a Rome without slaves would be a Rome left in ruins. We slaves were Rome, and to free us would be to lose us. Mass emancipation would never happen, no matter how golden the king. ‘Your wishes will be answered,’ I lied to him as I would to a child. ‘Keep praying to the Great Mother.’ With time I hoped that Lygdus would appreciate the true joys of slavery and forget his dreams.

  The eunuch nodded, giving the appearance of digesting all I’d said, and I felt a rush of unexpected feeling for him that must have shown in my face.

  ‘What is it, Iphicles?’

  I shook my head, embarrassed. ‘You … you are doing very well at this, Lygdus,’ I whispered. Then I darted into the shadows. I briefly saw his bulk illuminated in the light of a lamp before I reached the door to the street outside and was gone.

  I knew what I felt for him – of course I did – it was pride. But that same pride wouldn’t let me speak of it. I, the slave Iphicles, who had willingly sacrificed my manhood to my domina, sacrificed my hopes of fathering children too. But the Great Mother had rewarded her Attis. Lygdus was my apprentice, yes – my assistant in destiny – but he was more than this. He wasn’t yet seventeen. He was raw, unsophisticated and had so much more to learn. I was his teacher, and it was my duty to be so if destiny was to be achieved. But it was also my joy – the joy a father felt. Cybele had blessed me a thousand times over. She had given me a son in Lygdus.

  But my son, once I had gone, returned to his task of keeping watch over Nero. He discreetly pulled the door closed, keeping his vigil on the other side. He didn’t care if Nero had seen him do it – in a way, he hoped he had. The more Nero came to believe that Lygdus was a very special slave, the more Lygdus had hope that he would one day become one.

  As the eunuch waited, he crouched in the shadows, making a solemn, sacred vow. He muttered an oath to all the gods, a furtive pledge of betrayal that he intended, at all costs, to keep hidden from me.