Nest of Vipers

by Luke Devenish

  I fell into thoughtful silence as Lena looked up at the statue again. ‘Iphicles,’ she said eventually.

  ‘You don’t need to say it, Lena – I know.’

  ‘You know? But what do you know?’

  I pointed up at the god. ‘Veiovis has my face, or I have his, whichever it is. I know, Lena, and I agree with you. The resemblance cannot be a coincidence.’

  Ahenobarbus crouched in the Suburan alley, the sounds of the teeming slums all around him an affront to his ears. The lusts, the laughter of the poor, their mundane talk, the snatches of their arguments – these echoes of ordinary lives were a mockery to him, condemned as he was to live in silence. Every sinew of his being longed for words, for the facility for speech, and every breath in his chest silently cursed the cruelty of gods that would waste such precious gifts upon beasts that held them in no value.

  He touched his torch to the oil-soaked rags. They began to smoke, delicately at first, thin, grey wisps floating to the windows above. Ahenobarbus, who had always loved fire, would punish the beasts for possessing what he was denied.

  Pale and feverish upon their bed, Nilla muttered her eternal questions from dry, cracked lips. ‘How could the Emperor have allowed my mother and brothers to die?’

  Her lover pressed a sponge to her face. ‘I have no answer – I do not know.’

  ‘How could he do it? Sejanus was gone. But the Emperor didn’t save them. He let them starve.’

  ‘Ssh, now, my love. Hush.’

  ‘Why have I heard nothing from Capri? Nothing since my grandmother returned there. What has happened to her? What has happened to my sisters?’

  ‘Please, Nilla – I do not know. You must stop tormenting yourself like this.’

  ‘How can I, when I don’t know what has silenced them? When I don’t know what has happened to them?’

  ‘Please, try to sleep. You’re ill.’

  ‘Why have I been told nothing?’ she cried out. ‘Why am I so worthless?’

  Tears slipped down his cheeks as he held her to keep her still.

  ‘Why am I so ignored, Burrus?’ she sobbed. ‘Why am I so alone?’

  His world had receded to their bed. Like Nilla beside him, he no longer heard the lives lived by others. They were an island, the two of them, cut off from the world, which was why, when the old, roughened hands pulled at his clothes and tried to rouse him he barely sensed it. When the same hands tugged at his hair, he felt nothing. When the voice shouted and wept and cursed at him, it seemed to Burrus as though it came from a distance of miles. It was only when the old servant slapped hard at Nilla’s face that Burrus was pulled from the spell.

  ‘Don’t touch her.’

  ‘The Guards!’ the old woman yelled at him. ‘Wake up, boy – it’s the Guards!’ The words penetrated, but not their meaning.

  ‘The Guards – they’re here!’

  ‘What guards? What do you mean?’

  He rejoined the world to the sound of fists pounding the door below.

  ‘The Praetorian Prefect!’ the old woman shouted at him in terror. ‘He is demanding we open the house in the name of the Emperor!’

  Burrus ran to the corridor as the battering ram reduced the street door to splinters. In the garden the smirking Albucilla thrilled that her rival’s destruction was imminent. Wherever Ahenobarbus was, she only hoped he would return in time to see it.

  The alley fire took quickly, catching hold of the rubbish Ahenobarbus piled to feed its hunger. The flames spread surely upwards, licking at the windowsills of the insulae. A woman looked out of one of the windows and saw the peril. Ahenobarbus’s hair shone as he masturbated before her in the glow. She screamed and pointed at him. Other beasts appeared from neighbouring windows and Ahenobarbus took to his feet. Men leaped from the windows to chase him.

  His heart pounding with excitement and terror, Ahenobarbus lurched from the arches of the Circus Maximus and up the long Steps of Cacus to ascend the Palatine.

  ‘Fire demon!’ his pursuers screamed. ‘His hair is on fire! Look at him – it’s the demon!’

  The sky glowed with the cleansing blaze that consumed the Suburan slums.

  ‘He’s the one who starts every fire in Rome! He wants to kill us all!’

  ‘Fire demon!’

  Ahenobarbus reached the summit, staggering in exhaustion across the flagstone square to the Temple of the Great Mother. He threw himself into the shadows of the great columns as the mob attained the crest behind him.

  ‘Find the demon with the burning hair!’

  They fanned out through the maze of the Palatine’s streets, screaming to the gods for his head. Ahenobarbus laughed to himself, as he was safe.

  He stole his way in silence among the Concubia shadows, but when he came to the House of the Aemilii, his shock and rage at what he saw made him want to seek out the aged slave for a beating. She had carelessly left the street door open to thieves.

  But when Ahenobarbus crept to the threshold, he saw the truth: the door had been smashed from its pivots. His terror returned; the mob had identified him and taken revenge. Shaking with fear, yet perversely aroused by it, Ahenobarbus moved inside his ancestral home. The atrium was dark. There were all the signs of brutal entry, yet it had not been sacked. The wax mask of his father was in place, as was the shrine to the household gods.

  Ahenobarbus’s eyes found his wife and her slave lover in the dark, huddled on the stairs like children. He was confounded. Was this forced entry the work of the mob at all? He signalled to the pair, but when they didn’t seem to hear, he struck at the face of his wife’s slave.

  Burrus looked up, dazed. ‘Macro came with his men, domine.’

  Ahenobarbus didn’t understand.

  ‘The Praetorians. I took up position on the stairs to defend,’ Burrus said, ‘but they had no interest in me – or in Nilla.’

  Ahenobarbus again struck the slave, but this time in bewilderment. Burrus didn’t flinch. ‘It was Albucilla, domine. They came for her. She was charged with immorality and taken away in chains.’

  The Kalends of June

  AD 35

  Twenty-five months later: a phoenix is

  sighted on the Nile, occasioning heated

  discussion among Egyptians regarding its

  significance

  The Aemilii sisters sat huddled before the furnace in the kitchens, shivering despite the summer heat.

  ‘Condemned to exile,’ Domitia sobbed. ‘No shoes, no money, just pushed out the gates and told to leave Rome. It’s such a terrible fate.’

  ‘It’s so cruel,’ Lepida nodded, wiping her eyes. ‘And after being so long imprisoned.’

  ‘For “immorality”.’ Domitia shook her head with dismay. ‘What a travesty when the Emperor’s own immorality offends every god.’

  ‘Ssh, Domitia,’ the elder sister warned, fearful of who might be listening.

  ‘Nilla never leaves that room,’ Domitia scoffed, ‘and even if she did she’d hear nothing of what we say. She’s lost her mind. She’s gone mad, locked away up there with that brute of a slave. It’s Albucilla who should have been our poor brother’s bride, not that horrid Claudian.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Lepida. ‘If Albucilla and Ahenobarbus had been allowed to marry, none of this would have happened – none of it. But still,’ she added in dismay, ‘I believed there was something of mother’s promise in it – that it would see the blessing of Veiovis. I truly believed it.’

  Their brother in their thoughts again, the women returned to weeping.

  ‘What will become of him?’ cried Domitia. ‘Albucilla loved him so, she truly did. She knew how to talk to him. She understood everything he tried to say. How will he ever find another woman like Albucilla?’

  ‘He’s been condemned to loneliness by this,’ Lepida sobbed. ‘It’s just as bad as being exiled.’

  They sobbed in pity for several moments more, then were startled by footsteps at the door.

  ‘I h
ave my uncle, Mama.’ Lepida’s little daughter, Messalina, led the grieving Ahenobarbus into the kitchen.

  ‘Messalina, you’re a good girl,’ said Lepida, drying her eyes and getting up to kiss her child.

  ‘He needs to eat,’ said Messalina. ‘I made him come.’

  ‘What a thoughtful girl you are,’ said Domitia, patting her sister’s child. The women ushered Ahenobarbus to a place by the furnace, stoking the flames for him.

  ‘He always liked it here as a boy,’ Lepida whispered to her daughter. ‘It comforted him when he was sad at not being able to speak. You did well to think of it.’

  Messalina beamed and accepted the honeyed bread her mother passed her before a plate was given to Ahenobarbus. He took the food without eating it.

  ‘Why have no charges been laid against my uncle?’ Messalina asked, her mouth full of bread.

  ‘Child!’ Lepida cried.

  ‘Well, it is very strange. For Albucilla to have been immoral, didn’t she need my uncle to be immoral with?’

  ‘Messalina, you wicked girl!’ her mother admonished her. ‘Give me back that honeyed bread – you shan’t be eating a crumb while you say such things.’

  ‘Mama!’

  ‘Give it.’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Messalina wailed, clutching the bread in her fist.

  Lepida went to slap it from her but Ahenobarbus suddenly stood. He moved to where Messalina cowered and stooped to the girl, hugging her to his chest. There were tears in his eyes as he looked back to his sisters.

  ‘My uncle isn’t upset with me,’ said Messalina, quietly.

  Lepida accepted this.

  ‘It is right to ask what she asks, Lepida,’ said the younger sister. ‘Albucilla has been charged and condemned but our brother has escaped it. If they wanted to destroy him, they would have. Instead he is ignored.’ She looked to Ahenobarbus. ‘I believe it is all intended as a message to you, brother, just like my forced union with Drusus was, and your own with Nilla.’

  Ahenobarbus released Messalina from the hug. He nodded in agreement.

  ‘A message of what?’ said Lepida.

  Domitia pondered it. ‘It’s a warning.’

  ‘This makes no sense.’

  ‘It makes perfect sense.’ Domitia believed she now understood everything. ‘Ahenobarbus is a threat. Nilla has the blood of Augustus in her veins. If our brother were an ambitious man, he could use his marriage to Nilla to attract a following around him, an entourage. He could even fight for the throne in Nilla’s name.’

  ‘But our brother would never risk such things. He’s a modest man!’

  Domitia agreed. ‘And they know it, the Claudians. But Albucilla’s ruin was a warning to our brother that they will destroy him if he chooses to forget his modesty.’

  Lepida looked to their brother and saw that he, too, believed this theory to be true. ‘Yet more reason to hate that little bitch,’ she said.

  While her mother and aunt were focused on her mute uncle, Messalina slipped away from the kitchens, munching her bread. She padded up the corridor that took her back to the grand old house’s atrium. She stood for while, contemplating its gloomy corners, glad she was only a visitor and not a resident. The house spooked her. After a time, she peeked in the entrance hall.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  Messalina jumped. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am only a slave.’

  I had to cover a smile as the child at once grew imperious. ‘What do you want here, slave?’

  ‘Nothing from you,’ I replied. ‘I am here to see the mistress of the house.’

  The girl curled her lip. ‘You mean horrid Nilla?’

  I tut-tutted. ‘What a disrespectful child.’

  ‘She brings misfortune on my family. I think she’s a witch.’

  ‘If you ever met an actual witch, you’d know at once that the Lady Nilla is not one.’

  Messalina glared at me. ‘Do you know who I am, slave?’

  ‘Of course I do. You are the rarest of birds.’

  The girl was taken aback. ‘How – how do you know about that name?’

  ‘I know about many things,’ I replied enigmatically, enjoying how much I was maddening her. ‘Have they told you what it means?’

  ‘Of course they have.’

  She was lying, which pleased me. She knew the phrase but little else. ‘So, they’ve told you nothing of Fate?’

  The child narrowed her eyes. ‘They told me I must be very nice to Claudius,’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He’s so horrible and crippled,’ Messalina said. ‘He smells, too, and he drools.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘They also told me –’ But she stopped herself. ‘You’re a slave. I’m not telling you anything.’

  ‘They’ve told you you’ll marry Claudius one day, haven’t they?’

  Her eyes went wide at me knowing such things. ‘Well, I never will! I want a handsome husband!’

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ I said. She could only stare in complete confusion now. ‘Why don’t you come upstairs to visit the Lady Nilla with me?’

  Despite herself, Messalina allowed me to take her hand.

  Weakened by her endless despair, Nilla was still roused by my statement, if only for a moment. ‘That’s cruel, Iphicles. How can you come here to say Albucilla’s fall was due to me?’

  I shook my head sorrowfully, very aware of Burrus glaring at me from his place by her side.

  ‘You know I have done nothing to her. I am innocent.’

  ‘Of course I know it,’ I said. ‘But it is not how others see it. Perhaps Macro believes you could be a threat to his own ambitions.’

  ‘Macro’s ambitions? What am I to him?’

  ‘Perhaps Albucilla’s fall has been intended as a message for you. It seems hard to believe it is a message for the Aemilii, who are of no importance to anything.’

  Burrus was appalled. ‘Nilla is innocent of political designs, Iphicles.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘You speak as if Macro expects such designs in her.’

  I shrugged, watching them keenly. ‘Such is the nature of Rome. Women are as much a threat to those in power as men – perhaps even more. Men fight in the open and are defeated in the open. But women scheme in the shadows, their intentions hidden until their net is cast.’

  Burrus kept his eyes hard upon me, and the change in them, when it came, was exactly as I’d hoped it would be. He looked to Nilla with intensity, something I had not seen in him for a long time. ‘With others holding these false expectations,’ he whispered to her, ‘perhaps you would be better to use them to your advantage.’

  Nilla stared, incredulous.

  ‘If they fear you already,’ Burrus explained, ‘perhaps you should rise to those fears. Leave this house behind and find the men who loved your father and mother. Become someone to be genuinely afraid of. What have you got to lose, Nilla?’

  She was horrified. ‘This is what destroyed my mother – this male ambition is obscene in a woman of Rome!’

  ‘Nilla.’

  ‘It’s true, you know it is – you were there to see it.’

  ‘Your mother was hotheaded and reckless, and consumed by grief. It made her blind to her real enemies – and blind to herself.’

  ‘Burrus!’

  ‘You have none of those flaws. None of them.’

  Nilla was enraged. ‘I am consumed by grief! I am ruined by it. I am my mother’s daughter in every way.’

  Burrus looked to the floor. ‘Then you have something she never had the benefit of: you are aware of it.’

  They fell quiet for a time. Then Nilla said quietly, ‘No ambition, in a man or a woman, can ever be achieved without the Praetorian Guard.’

  Burrus flicked his eyes at me. ‘That’s true,’ I whispered.

  ‘But it is not insurmountable,’ said Burrus.

  ‘Please,’ Nilla beseeched him. ‘How could I achieve even my moth
er’s mistakes, let alone her successes? I am weak,’ she cried. ‘I am broken by Fate!’

  I stepped softly forward. ‘You have not been broken by Fate,’ I said. ‘You are merely being tested by it. And as time begins to pass, you will see that you are really a child of destiny, marked for triumph.’

  Nilla just looked at me. Then she burst out laughing. ‘How can this be? I have done nothing to earn this. I have no protectors and no supporters. I am no one.’

  It was true. ‘But when you have fought and defeated the cruellest of your enemies, supporters will flock to you. By then you will have earned your destiny. And you won’t need anyone to protect you, because you will be Empress of Rome.’

  Nilla couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Who is this enemy? Is it my husband?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He will easily be defeated when the time comes. He isn’t worthy of you.’

  ‘So it’s his family, then? They hate me.’

  She was getting closer to the truth. ‘You will face a battle with the other three Aemilii in turn, but none will be worthy of you. They are your inferiors. No, your true enemy is she who will exact the greatest cost from you before you win victory.’

  Nilla slid from the bed with her fists clenched at me. ‘Who is she?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me so that I am warned, Iphicles!’ Anger was flushing pity from her heart.

  I stood aside to let her see through the door behind me. The child Messalina sat staring over the balcony into the garden below. She had heard nothing of the conversation, but she sensed the hush and turned to us, innocently projecting her beautiful smile into every corner of the room.

  I bent to kiss Nilla’s hand. ‘It is time for me to tell you things about your great-grandmother Livia,’ I whispered. ‘It is time for me to tell you the truth.’

  I left the House of the Aemilii and found my domina waiting for me in her litter.

  ‘You told Nilla everything?’ she asked.

  ‘Just as you instructed, domina. She now knows all there is to know.’

  ‘All of it? You told her of all the deaths? You told her that it was my hand that caused them, and you told her why I killed?’

  ‘I did,’ I replied.

  There was a pause as she studied me through her slender eyes. ‘Liar. You left things out. You did not tell her everything.’