‘Everything will be arranged,’ said Tiberius. ‘We have been looking forward to it. Sometimes the days get dull. We need novelty and lightness of heart to inspire us, and this will be perfect. Tomorrow I will write a letter to your mother, informing her of it all. What a thing to bring everyone together. And he’s really very keen. We’ve been discussing it at great length, you know.’
Nilla couldn’t lift her head. The soil felt comforting beneath her cheek and she wondered if she was not on Capri at all but at home in her bed. ‘Who is he, Grandfather?’
‘Have I not made things clear to you, Nilla?’
‘No, Grandfather.’
‘He is the one who will kiss you forever.’
Burrus’s name parted her lips but she would not whisper it. From her bed upon the soil she saw the form of a man rise from the flowers. He was unclothed, just like the Emperor and his beasts. He came before her, studying her silently, before crouching to stroke her hair where she lay. His hands were gentle.
‘Who is he, Grandfather?’
Tiberius stared at the stars, unblinking.
The stroking man had red pubic hair. It glowed like a forest fire.
‘Please, Grandfather. Who is he?’
The Emperor’s eyes were like small white stones. ‘Ahenobarbus of the Aemilii,’ he said. ‘He is your groom, Nilla.’
The Ides of February
AD 27
One week later: seeking to disarm
criticism of his absence from Rome,
Emperor Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus
distributes compensation money to victims
of the calamities at Fidenae and the
Caelian Hill
The fishermen at Surrentum saw the corpse that had washed up in the night. Knowing it was just another drowned sailor, they paid little heed as they prepared for the dawn’s catch. Then one man made the observation that the corpse was well dressed â the dead sailor’s tunica was sewn from good quality linen, dyed sky-blue. How many sailors were dressed like that? Then another man remarked that perhaps it was not a sailor at all, but a hapless passenger washed overboard. Perhaps the passenger still had his purse?
The three fishermen went to give the corpse closer attention but were disappointed. The corpse wore a slave’s collar. This was not a passenger at all, but some rich man’s lost property. Two of the three men returned to preparing their boat, but the third fisherman lingered, staring at the corpse. The dead lad was handsome and all too young. It was a sad waste of life, slave or not. The fisherman stooped to scrape the weed from the face and saw a seal that hung from the iron collar. It stirred something in his memory. Before his retirement he had spent long years cooking dinners for the legions.
‘That seal is from the House of Germanicus.’
He called out to his colleagues that he knew where the dead slave came from, but when he turned to look at the lad again the situation was changed. The slave’s eyes were open. The boy was alive.
The fishermen stood in a circle, debating what to do while the waves continued to lap at Burrus’s limbs. He could not move them. He could not sit up. He could only stare. When the children of the traitors had thrown him from the Capri cliff, they had expected him to drown. But they did not know him. Burrus had been lost to the waves before. He could swim like Neptune himself.
The fishermen decided. They would take the slave fishing with them. Better that than leave him here for some other bastard to find. They would see if he revived enough to tell them how he came to be washed up on the promontory when he belonged to so great a house. If they were satisfied with his answers, they would endeavour to return him to Rome. No doubt there was a reward waiting there. But if they were dissatisfied with his answers, then he would become the fishermen’s slave and no more would be said about his origins.
When they picked up Burrus to lug him onto the boat, a word left his lips. ‘Nilla …’
They did not know what he meant and asked him to repeat it. He was unable.
The fishermen pondered the word. Was it a place, perhaps? The name of a villa by the sea? Or was it a person? His mother, maybe? All lads were known to bawl for their mamas when near to death.
The youngest of the fishermen had another view. Nilla was the name of some girl, he said. She was why the slave was half-drowned. His heart was broken by her and he had tried to end it all. The other men liked this theory, and when they put it to Burrus he did not have the strength to do anything more than look at them. Sentimental, like all ex-soldiers, the fishermen decided this story would do for Burrus until a better one sufficed. It cast him in a light they rather liked.
As the men began to sail from the shore, Burrus vowed in his heart that the first thing he would do when he was able would be to assure them he would never ‘end it all’ while his Nilla lived. She gave him the will for life, not death, no matter what the Fates decreed for him. While she walked on this earth, so would he. Only when Nilla was gone would he kill himself. It would be his privilege to join her in death.
Agonalia
March, AD 28
Thirteen months later: Titius Sabinus,
friend of the widow Agrippina, is arrested
for treasonous remarks made in the
privacy of his own tablinum. The ceiling is
found to conceal a paid informant
Claudius had intended to refuse all wine, wanting to keep his head clear for the day’s events, but as the hours wore on and the faces of the young people took on looks that spoke of miseries unexpressed, he felt the stirrings of suspicion that these nuptials were not a joyous thing at all. The doubt made him take his first wine. He missed his cousin Castor at these family occasions, given that no one else ever sank so low as to talk to him. Claudius drank his wine in a rush before asking for another. He downed that just as quickly and believed he felt a little better.
Claudius hoped the wine might grant him heightened powers of observation. Sometimes it did. He looked at the young people closely while they completed the confarreatio rituals. Nilla, his niece, had no expression at all as the lambskin was laid across her knees. Even with her eyes half-hidden under the saffron veil, Claudius could see that her face was a mask. This was strange for a bride on her wedding day. If it wasn’t elation being shown to the guests, then tears were just as acceptable. But the girl let nothing through, and Claudius feared it was because her hopes for happiness were less than nil.
Claudius studied the groom. Ahenobarbus of the Aemilii was handsome enough, despite his curly red hair, and was likely little older than twenty-three. Yet, this gave him a good ten years on his bride. Ahenobarbus seemed absent. It was strange that he hadn’t yet spoken a word. His eyes looked out the open temple doors and towards the rooftops beyond, and he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together as if to make a click. Claudius wondered how the wedding night would play out and then chastised himself when he found the thought arousing. It was wrong to think of his niece being roughly deflowered.
Claudius turned his eyes to the other young couple being married at Tiberius’s decree. Nilla’s brother Drusus was not as adept as his sister in hiding his inner heart. He looked bewildered and almost frightened, as if the news of his nuptials had been broken to him only that morning. With some unease, it occurred to Claudius that perhaps this was so. The double wedding had been a surprise to the guests, who had only been told they would be witness to the union of Nilla and Ahenobarbus. Perhaps the tight-fisted Tiberius had decided at the last minute to get more for his money? Claudius peered at Drusus’s bride. She was not a girl he recognised. The priest had named her as Domitia, also of the Aemilii, and with the ignominy of her late mother’s conviction for witchcraft still casting a pall over the clan, Claudius suspected that Domitia had spent many years hidden from view. This would account for why nobody knew her.
Claudius accepted a third wine just as the couples began to eat the sacred spelt loaves. He tried to remember what he knew about the disgraced Aemilii and recalled tha
t there were two more children, another daughter and a son. He saw the son among the guests at once, reclining on a couch next to Little Boots. The boys were friends. Claudius looked around for someone who might fit the appearance of the other Aemilii daughter but could find no one. He vaguely recalled that she had been married off several years ago.
‘Are you drunk, Grandson?’
Livia’s tone cut through the temple air, causing the priest to falter. Claudius spun around to find Livia watching him from her couch. I was in meek attendance at her side.
‘I thought so,’ said Livia.
Claudius hurried over to her couch as the ceremony resumed, hoping to quieten her. ‘It is only my first wine,’ he claimed.
‘Liar. It’s your third.’
Claudius blushed scarlet and Livia laughed at him, placing a cold, dry hand upon his arm. ‘I’m only teasing you. It’s a wedding â why shouldn’t you enjoy yourself?’
The fact that he had drunk three cups of wine in rapid succession made Claudius reply before he had thought about it. ‘Nobody else is enjoying it.’
There was a silence. Claudius blushed even darker and began to stammer in his efforts to excuse himself. ‘I â I am sorry â’
‘Don’t be.’
For the first time in his life, Claudius looked into his grandmother’s eyes and saw only good humour there. Then he glanced at me and was confused by my stark look of fear.
‘Iphicles was making the same observation,’ said Livia. ‘Well, he would have made it if he were allowed to speak freely, but he is not, I’m afraid. But I could tell it’s what he was thinking.’
Claudius knew there was something going on between us from which he was excluded. ‘Yes, Grandmother?’
‘No one’s enjoying themselves at all, are they? You’d think it was a funeral, not a wedding. It’s such a shame Agrippina is too unwell to be among us. I’m sure she’d be voicing her thoughts loud and clear. It’s like we’re all pretending we approve.’
It took Claudius a second or two to digest what she was saying to him. ‘Are we pretending, Grandmother?’
‘Well, I’m certainly not, but it seems I’m the only one.’ She looked pointedly to me as she continued. ‘My great-grandson Drusus’s marriage to this girl from such a disgraced family is a sublime match. I congratulate my son the Emperor for arranging it. I also commend him for neglecting to attend. He refuses to leave his island now, did you know?’
Claudius was smiling in his bewilderment.
Livia kept her eyes on me. ‘My great-granddaughter Nilla’s marriage to the girl’s brother is also something to thank the gods for. Apparently, he has next to no career prospects. He looks half-witted. Do you think he really is, or is it just the way the light strikes his dreadful hair?’
A parrot’s squawk pulled Claudius from his stare. ‘My bird. Excuse me, Grandmother,’ he said hurriedly, glad of a reason to leave. ‘I’m sure the two unions will work out well for all concerned.’
‘Oh, I have absolutely no doubt of it,’ said Livia, her eyes still trained on me.
Claudius hurried to the rear of the hall, where his parrot, Fury, flashed its red eyes and beat its wings. A woman and her little girl stared at the bird in fascination. ‘Please,’ he called out to them, ‘do not provoke her â she has been known to give nasty bites.’
‘Is it true this bird talks?’ asked the mother.
‘She hasn’t spoken in years,’ said Claudius, placing himself in front of the bird protectively. ‘Sometimes I doubt she ever did. I think I must have imagined it.’ He was keen for them to return to wherever it was they had come from.
‘Maybe she’ll speak if we ask her nicely?’ said the little girl.
‘I doubt it,’ said Claudius. He went to guide the child away, but when she turned her face to him fully he gave a little gasp and dropped his hand. ‘What a beautiful child,’ he marvelled, unable to stop himself. Then he blushed scarlet again. ‘Forgive me,’ he said to the mother.
‘My daughter is very beautiful,’ the mother said, smiling warmly at him. ‘People say it all the time. Yet she’s only six. What effect will she have on men at sixteen, I wonder?’
Claudius felt a sense of peace descend as he considered this, gazing at the girl. ‘She will be extraordinary,’ he offered. He looked to the mother again. ‘Do we know each other, madam?’
‘I don’t think so. But we are guests at the wedding. It is my brother and my sister who are being married.’
‘It is my nephew and my niece,’ said Claudius.
‘Before my widowhood I was Lepida of the Mesalii. Now I am Lepida of the Aemilii again.’
She was the missing ‘other sister’. Enchanted, Claudius told her who he was.
Lepida and her daughter bowed
‘And who are you?’ the beaming Claudius asked the angelic six-year-old.
Fury cocked her head to one side and squawked. ‘Messalina,’ she answered on the child’s behalf, uttering her first words in years.
Echoing her daughter’s delighted cries of amazement, Lepida remembered the words of her long-dead mother. ‘Always look for the path. Veiovis will offer it, but it is up to you to see what he offers and recognise it for what it is …’
I believed I had an ally in Claudius. He had never treated me harshly and was always thankful when I performed some passing task for his benefit at Oxheads. I stole up to him just as he ushered Lepida and her daughter to their chairs.
‘Domine,’ I hissed.
Claudius barely saw me.
‘Domine!’
‘What is it, Iphicles?’
‘Help me,’ I said. Across the room, Livia snoozed in her dining couch.
Claudius looked awkward. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘What are the reasons for it?’ I hissed. ‘These two inauspicious marriages. They don’t make sense. Not one guest here believes in these unions. Only my domina does. Why does she believe? What is behind them? What is the plan?’
Claudius was appalled that my words reached Lepida’s shocked ears. ‘Iphicles, you speak out of turn.’
I was losing my wits. ‘Help me, domine,’ I pleaded with him. ‘Why does she approve of this? Help me see the truth of what she schemes.’
A scream brought our conversation to an end. Across the hall a high-pitched cry stopped the final words of the double wedding ceremony. The brides and grooms turned to see a dozen Praetorians descending, with Tribune Macro at their head. It was Lygdus who had cried out in terror.
‘It’s lies!’
Macro struck him across the mouth and he fell. Then he turned to the eunuch’s dominus. ‘Nero Julius Caesar Germanicus, by the order of the Emperor Tiberius I place you under arrest.’
Nero stood up from his dining couch and looked the Tribune coolly in the eye. He was noble and unafraid, the very image of his murdered father in his prime. ‘What is the charge?’
‘Gross depravity,’ said Macro without expression.
I went pale and glanced at the wedding couples. Drusus looked ill. Had he received my damning notes on his brother’s proclivities after all? Had Livia made copies before I ate them?
Nero held out his arms for the chains.
‘Domina!’ Lygdus screamed from the floor. ‘See this, domina! Domina!’
But Livia slept on as they led Nero away. Claudius pushed me aside, disturbed and confused by the turn the day had taken. Ever more bewildered, I stumbled back to the sleeping Livia. She was murmuring with a tone that almost seemed smug.
‘Iphicles,’ she whispered from her slumber. ‘Iphicles …’
Trembling, I leaned my ear to her lips. ‘What is it, domina?’
‘The third is hooked by a harpy’s look â the rarest of all birds …’
I recoiled. The words seemed meaningless, yet they held an inestimable importance.
Livia opened her eyes to look at me. ‘A harpy is what the Greeks call a fury, you know.’ Then she closed them again, asleep once more.
> Across the hall Claudius had eyes only for the beautiful child. At last I experienced the first moment of comprehension I had known for a long, long time.
Claudius was the third king.
Nilla threw the ugly thing hard across the room. ‘I will not,’ she said. ‘It is disgusting.’
Expressionless, the aged maid of the Aemilii, once a devoted servant of the condemned Aemilia, retrieved the wooden Mutinus Tutunus phallus and placed it upright on the bed. ‘All women of the Aemilii must give their virginity to the fertility deity, domina,’ the maid said without apology. ‘It is a tradition of many centuries.’
Nilla wouldn’t let herself cry or glance at her silent, naked husband. ‘I said it’s disgusting,’ she repeated. ‘Take it out of my sight, and yourself with it.’
The maid shot a look to her serving companion and suddenly both women had Nilla by the arms. ‘The domina must. My late mistress would have insisted on it. This is her house. This is her room.’
‘Let go of me.’ Nilla struggled against them. ‘Let me go!’
The women dragged her to the side of the bed and pulled the undergarments from her.
‘It ensures the birth of a boy child, domina. Your virginity is the treasure most cherished by the god, and he is generous with his rewards.’
The curved phallus was enormous, dull black and ugly. ‘Don’t make me do this,’ Nilla screamed. ‘Please!’ The tip nudged against her unbroken cleft, seeking to enter her. ‘Oh gods!’ The tears sprang from her eyes. ‘Oh gods!’
Ahenobarbus whipped the thing away just as the servants began to lower her. Shocked, the old maid turned on him. ‘Domine â you cannot interfere here!’
Wielding it like a spear, he thrust the thing in her face. The second maid shrieked. Ahenobarbus thrust again, forcing the phallus into the old woman’s mouth. She choked and spluttered.
Nilla seized the advantage. ‘Get out! Get out!’ she screamed at the two women.
Disgorging the fertility tool, the old maid staggered to the door, her companion pulling her outside. Nilla kicked the doors shut behind them, her hand at her breast to steady her heart as she tried to find her breath. At last she turned to face her husband.
Nest of Vipers Page 35