Nest of Vipers

by Luke Devenish

  ‘His blood is still warm, Tribune, but his life has expired. He is dead.’

  Macro feigned horror convincingly enough for his unsoph isticated men. ‘This makes no sense. Why would he kill himself before he’d heard what we have to tell him? His liberty had been granted!’

  The Praetorians had no answer.

  ‘The poor lad,’ said Macro, as if it now came to him. ‘I see what it was. He’d become so maddened in his exile that he believed we were here to kill him.’

  The Praetorians nodded, moved. This was likely so, they agreed.

  ‘Lament my fate, boys,’ Macro said. ‘It falls to me to break this tragedy to the Emperor.’

  On his public horse Sejanus rode at walking pace up the graceful slope of the Palatine. The hillside poplars had turned gold in the crisp autumn sun, and the majestic Temple of Apollo slowly came into sight. In excellent spirits Sejanus turned to the cohort behind him. ‘There it is!’

  The Praetorians were all cheers. Sejanus dismounted his horse to ascend the Temple steps with the full body of guards behind him. A brigade of vigiles, the civic police, was posted at the great iron doors.

  ‘Hail, Prefect,’ said the superior officer.

  ‘This is irregular,’ said Sejanus. ‘Why are you vigiles here?’

  The civic officers looked at each other. ‘Nothing irregular about it for us, Prefect,’ said the superior. ‘This is where we’re always posted. It’s the Temple of Apollo. And a great day of honour for you, Prefect, if you’ll accept our congratulations for it.’

  Sejanus disliked vigiles. They were undisciplined street rabble, in his view. ‘You are not required. The Praetorian Guard will do duty here today. Take your men and go.’

  The vigiles didn’t move. ‘If you’ll forgive me, Prefect,’ said the superior, ‘we will not go. This Temple has been our patch since it was built. Augustus himself posted us here. You Praetorians have your little duties and we have ours. This is one of them.’

  Sejanus thrust his face at the other man. ‘Do you even realise what is happening inside here today?’

  ‘Yes, Prefect,’ said the superior. ‘You are receiving the tribunitia potestas from the Senate, which holds an extraordinary session in this Temple on the same day every year. It is a day of honour for us – we’re posted here to guard the Senators – and it is a day of honour for you, Prefect, to be so highly awarded. As I said, allow us to offer our –’

  ‘Stand aside and let me and my men enter the Senate meeting,’ Sejanus demanded.

  The officer stood aside but his men grasped their swords. ‘Please enter with our best wishes and congratulations, Prefect. But your Praetorians may not follow you. This is our turf and they must leave it now.’

  It was only Sejanus’s keen anticipation of the high honour within that stopped him from arresting the man as a traitor, and all the vigiles with him. He turned to his own junior officer. ‘Secure my horse, but take yourselves back to the barracks.’

  There were groans of disappointment but Sejanus raised his hand. ‘I will return in time. Pour some wine for me in readiness.’ The guards grumbled until the junior officer initiated a cheer. Sejanus saluted them off before looking the vigiles’ superior officer hard in the eye. ‘I will remember this,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t doubt it,’ said the officer, once the Temple door had closed securely behind Sejanus.

  Inside, escorted by four vigiles to an anteroom, Sejanus learned that Senate protocol dictated he must wait until called. Sejanus bridled at this, too, but the men were sympathetic. In the bestowing of great honours, they told him, Senators traditionally strived to make the glory reflect upon themselves. Sejanus could well be waiting for some time while his achievements were lauded by the august body. When he was eventually called, Sejanus could be sure that the Senators would have worked themselves up into such a congratulatory frenzy that the applause would bring him near to deafness and the backslapping would likely cripple him. Sejanus laughed at their humour – a rare thing – accepted a cup of wine and sat down in the anteroom alone.

  He could half-hear the proceedings being conducted – dull administrative matters. But when his ears pricked at the first mention of his name, Sejanus found himself struck by nerves. For his entire life his Achilles heel had been the mystery of his birth. That he was Roman was not doubted but his parentage was a mystery. His earliest memories were of the Greek physician he had been apprenticed to from the time he could walk. He knew no birth father. When he was a child, some people had called him slave for this, but he had never been treated as one.

  When Sejanus was twelve, the physician’s downfall had caused him to be thrust before Tiberius. He had seen then what his life could be. The grieving general and future Emperor had a need for him, a need that Sejanus could ensure did not go away. It never had. Tiberius’s need had led his loyal ‘son’ to the very cusp of true greatness. Everything Sejanus had strived for – all he deserved – was so close.

  Yet with the august body of highborn men now lauding his name, Sejanus felt the familiar twinge of doubt. When he stepped out to receive his honour, would the congratulations be real? Or would he look behind the Senators’ eyes and see them calling him slave in their hearts?

  Sejanus removed a little vial from beneath his cuirass and loosened its stopper, sipping the contents. The effects of the Eastern flower were instant. He took another sip, letting the wave of pleasure wash over him, before downing the rest. His nerves vanished, and with them his doubt. He felt invincible once again. His imminent tribunitia potestas felt truly earned.

  A pleasant buzzing filled Sejanus’s ears, as though the anteroom had grown into a garden and bees now flitted among the flowers. The Senators’ words floated in the air like specks of pollen, some reaching him, some not. He heard a letter from Tiberius being read out by the leader of the house. Sejanus stood. The Emperor’s words reached him, but not their meaning.

  ‘… my former friend … murderous plotting … family of Germanicus …’

  The great temple fell into silence. Sejanus guessed his cue. He stepped from the anteroom and into the midst of the Senators, saluting and smiling.

  Emboldened by the lack of Praetorians, the highborn men surged forward to order the vigiles to arrest him.

  The ugly lavatory slave shook with terror. He covered his ears, which, although deformed, still heard the shrieks of violence clearly. The screams in the Forum dulled, replaced by a worse sound: the voice of the long-dead Senator.

  ‘If the German revolt had spread to my brigades, Tiberius would never have kept his throne …’

  He heard his own response – ‘Really, domine?’ – and remembered the malicious intent he had hidden.

  ‘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, Tiberius really does owe me one …’

  ‘It’s not fair!’ the ugly slave cried out. ‘It’s not fair! I hardly got anything for it. Just a few silver coins. That doesn’t make me one of them!’

  He tried to shut his eyes to squeeze the voice from his head, but it intensified his guilt. He ripped his hands from his ears, only to hear the Forum screams louder than before. Every person who had profited from accusations of treason was being dragged across the flagstones to their deaths. Men or women, it made no difference; freeborn or slave. Children would see no mercy either. Hundreds of Sejanus’s clients had already been beheaded, and they were the lucky ones, having been caught and dispatched by the vigiles in the very first wave of reprisals.

  But those who had hidden or fled were less fortunate, having to face the rage of the mob, which now flung them into fires or ran them through with spears before their heads were lopped off. A list of any and all persons remembered by victims of Sejanus as having prospered from accusations of treason was being compiled. Years of court records were being raked for every trial witness. How long, the ugly little lavatory slave wept to himself, would it be
before they got to his name and read his lowly occupation?

  He flew down the flight of steps into the toilet room, slamming the iron gate behind him while fumbling for the key. He tried to stretch through the bars and lock the gate behind him, but the key would only turn from the outside, the need never having been foreseen to lock it from within. He couldn’t reach. The key slipped from his sweat-dripping fingers, clattering on the steps. ‘No!’ He had to throw open the gate again to retrieve it.

  How long until they remembered him? How long until his name joined the list? ‘Hurry!’ he screamed at himself. ‘Hurry!’ He had the key at the lock once more but still it would not turn. He nearly pissed in his fear. Then he thought of another way to save himself. If they found the building locked, they would guess he was cowering inside anyway. But if he left the gate wide open, just as it always was, the mob would find the lavatory empty. They would never guess where a skinny slave could hide.

  He stumbled into the room and saw the very seat the long-dead Senator had taken. It had the widest of all the openings, and the one best suited to a man of broad stance. It was the best hole to slip through. The ugly slave mounted the foot rests and slipped his legs into the gap, ready to drop to the sewer. But shooting flames suddenly burned the hair from his legs. He shouted with pain. A little papyrus boat was in the water below him, loaded with burning leaves. The slave dropped, crushing the burning vessel in the water beneath him.

  ‘You fucking cunt, Duro!’ he screamed into the blackness of the cloaca maxima. ‘It’s the last time you do it to me, hear? The last fucking time!’

  ‘You’re right about that.’

  The lavatory slave span around. Duro, the slave from the lavatory at the Forum’s opposite end, was holding a knife.

  ‘It’s the last of anything for you, cocksucker.’

  The ugly slave’s corpse spilled into the Tiber along with the rest of the filth from the cloaca maxima. There it joined the scores of other dead – masters and slaves, magistrates and criminals, gladiators and mangons, prostitutes and praetors – all those in Rome who had, in any way, however miniscule, profited from Sejanus’s reign.

  Fearful of the screams from the streets, but forbidden to look out to determine what was causing them, Tiberia stood timidly at the door to her grandmother’s room. Antonia, supervising the packing of her possessions, didn’t see the girl.

  ‘Grandmother?’

  Antonia acknowledged her but didn’t stop. ‘So much to do, child. And time so precious.’

  ‘Grandmother, please –’

  Antonia saw the confusion in Livilla’s daughter’s face and came over at once, thinking she knew what troubled her. ‘We have talked of this, Tiberia,’ she said, kissing her granddaughter, ‘and I know how it pains you, but the Emperor needs me.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Tiberia tried to say.

  ‘I can only stay in Rome for as long as it takes me to pack up my household. Then I must return to Capri permanently. My guidance is needed. The Emperor’s hand is so burdened.’

  ‘Yes, Grandmother, I understand everything, and I think it is so noble what you are doing for Rome.’

  Antonia glowed. ‘Thank you, child.’

  ‘That is not why I’m here. Two women have come to the house to see you.’

  ‘I have visitors?’

  ‘They have come alone through the streets, at great risk to themselves, with all this … disorder going on.’

  ‘They are unescorted?’ Antonia was wary. ‘They sound like lowborn women. Tell the steward to send them away.’

  ‘One has a patrician’s voice, and the other is well-spoken too. They are not rabble.’

  ‘Then what are their names?’

  ‘They would not say.’

  ‘Then what makes them think I will see them? Who on earth are these women?’

  Tiberia wished she could rub the unsettling image of the visitors from her mind. ‘The patrician woman, she has no hands, Grandmother,’ she whispered. ‘And the other … well, she cannot see.’

  Something stirred Antonia’s recognition. ‘Did they say what they want?’

  ‘They claim they have something of urgent importance to tell you.’

  From the street below came the sound of renewed screaming. Another name on the list had been found by the mob. ‘Send them to me,’ said Antonia, blocking out the noise.

  When the packing slaves had been dismissed and Plancina and Apicata had been admitted to Antonia’s presence, the two visitors bowed.

  Antonia couldn’t take her eyes from the scarred stumps of Plancina’s wrists.

  ‘You remember me, Antonia?’

  ‘Of course.’ She gathered her dignity, forcing herself to look Plancina in the eye. ‘Your late husband was tried for murdering Germanicus, my son.’

  ‘He was blackmailed to murder him,’ said Plancina, sidestepping the truth that it was she who had been coerced into the crime. ‘Blackmailed by Sejanus and then forced into suicide.’

  Antonia said nothing, but the events of recent weeks had disposed her to believe this.

  ‘And here is Apicata,’ Plancina said, pushing forward the sightless woman within whose arm she had threaded her own. ‘She is Sejanus’s discarded wife.’

  ‘I know who she is,’ Antonia said.

  ‘Then did you know your daughter Livilla is Sejanus’s secret lover?’

  Antonia flushed with shame. ‘I have learned of it.’

  Outside the door, where she eavesdropped without being seen, Tiberia threw a hand to her lips, her shocked eyes wide.

  ‘Livilla is his victim, too,’ Antonia pleaded, ‘deceived like a child that she was loved by such a monster. I fear for her life if the truth gets out. People won’t forgive such foolish naivety in a highborn woman.’

  Antonia waited for the price of silence to be named.

  ‘I want justice.’ Apicata spoke her first words. ‘Money has no use to me, Lady.’

  ‘You want justice?’

  ‘And perhaps you’ll want it too, when you learn the extent of Livilla’s depravity in the name of her passion.’

  Antonia was frightened now. ‘What haven’t I been told?’

  ‘Your Livilla had Castor poisoned.’

  Tiberia cried out in shock, then rushed into the room when she heard her grandmother collapse. Cradling Antonia’s head in her hands, Tiberia faced the two visitors as they gave their story of how her mother had conspired to kill her beloved father with poisoned footbath water. Nothing was more damning in hindsight than Castor’s final words. ‘My wife …’ Tiberia had believed they were words of love. Now she knew better. They were an accusation.

  ‘Justice will be done for my mother’s crimes,’ the girl said coldly. ‘I promise it. And I will personally ensure it.’

  The Kalends of November

  AD 31

  Two weeks later: forty-four speeches are

  delivered in the Senate about Livilla’s

  punishment. A few are prompted by

  anxiety, but most by routine servility

  A picata stole away at dawn from the house she and Plancina shared with Martina, neglecting to tell either friend what she intended. She had travelled the Gemonian Stairs so often that she knew every inch of them, providing a pair of hands for Plancina while her friend provided the eyes. Apicata felt less confident alone, as she would be this time, but she would not let this deter her.

  She found the way to the stairs easily enough, picking her path along the familiar streets that led towards the Forum. She might have been delayed if anyone had recognised her, but no one did. Even if someone had, there was no reason to fear it. So notorious was the story of her ill-treatment at her husband’s hands that she was seen by Rome as another of his victims. That she had actively schemed for Germanicus’s death before her fall had not emerged.

  When Apicata reached the base of the Gemonian Stairs, she felt the rotting remains of the traitors near her feet. None were fresh. Some were months old or more. All of th
em she and Plancina had already picked over on earlier occasions. But ingredients were not what she was here for. With her days spent in silence in front of the fire, Apicata’s friends imagined she was losing herself in dreams. They were wrong. She depended so much more upon her remaining senses and lived wholly in wakefulness, her ears sharply trained on the talk of the people passing in the street. This was how she learned she must return to the steps.

  Apicata tilted her nose to the wind. The street talk had been accurate. Amid the rot and decay she smelled something fresh. The Gemonian Stairs had seen one final traitor dragged by the hook. Apicata took to the steps with pace, her hands feeling the stones in front as she made the ascent. The dogs knew her well enough by now not to be threatened and allowed her to pass. She flung bones from her path as she ascended towards the Arx.

  ‘I’m coming for you,’ she whispered. ‘Prepare yourself.’

  Her hand met wetness on the stone. She held her fingers to her nose and sniffed. Fresh blood, still warm. She advanced more slowly, one step, then another. She touched the flesh of a hand and gasped. The hand curled, still alive, gripping her fingers.

  She fell forward, cradling Sejanus in her arms. ‘It is me. I am here for you, my love.’

  His throat had been crushed, but not enough to rob him of breath for his final moments. Sejanus lay where the hook had dragged him; he felt the soft hand in his and heard the words that were said to him.

  ‘Forgive me … Please, forgive me for what I have done to you.’

  The dawning sun was in his eyes when he opened them. It was not Apicata he saw haloed by the rays, but someone else: his lifelong love, whose name they had evoked when they hooked him. His lips mouthed the words, ‘I forgive you for it. I love you.’

  Tears dripped upon his cheeks. Lips pressed themselves to his. He took them humbly.

  ‘They’re the only words I have ever wanted from you.’

  ‘But I give them freely,’ Sejanus whispered, almost surprised that his beloved should think they had never been said before. ‘I have loved no one else but you.’