Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  Julia tiptoed back into the connubial room. Marcellus was sleeping on his side, his back to where she stood at the door. She shut it carefully behind her and slid into the bed with him. He made a low moan from somewhere deep in his chest as she curled against him. He was awake for her.

  ‘I’m ready,’ she whispered. ‘I want you inside me.’

  Marcellus said nothing.

  She laid her palm on his strong, lean arm, feeling the tightly balled muscle there. His skin was hot and sticky to the touch. She rolled him onto his back so that she could press her lips to his.

  Marcellus was barely conscious, his hands clawing at his guts, his eyeballs rolled so far inside his head they were crimson.

  When Julia ran naked and screaming through the house I slipped through the servants’ door and took away the wine that Lollia had left for the newlyweds. Marcellus’s eyes met mine for an instant as the fire behind them expired. My guilt was the last thing he saw.

  The only relief my conscience knew in that dawn was that the antidote I had smeared on the Mutinus phallus hadn’t even been needed. His widow was too young for wine.

  With the smoke from the funeral pyre filling the house like a pestilence, Octavian thrashed on his library floor while my domina looked on in pale anguish. He glanced up at her once and her eyes glittered moist, but she made no sobs as he did. Nor did she say a word.

  Peppered with the soot and ash, lying around the First Citizen were the shreds of the speech he had laboured on: the announcement of Marcellus as his chosen successor.

  Lemuria

  May, 23 BC

  Two years later: the declaration of the

  Second Settlement and the granting of

  Tribunician powers to First Citizen Caesar

  Augustus, enabling him to veto any or all

  actions of the Senate

  Once I had believed myself immune to guilt. But with the passing of time – and the accumulation of corpses – I had found that this was no longer so. Every year following Tiberius Nero’s death, I took the opportunity to placate the wandering dead. With Marcellus’s murder added to my conscience, I sought to placate his wandering shade as well.

  Lemuria – the festival of the dead – was the annual lifting of the lapis manalis, the stone covering the large pit on the Palatine that was the gateway to the land of the dead. For the Feast of the Lemures, held five days before the Ides of May, the dead return through the pit to walk among the living again. I’m sure that I was not alone in Rome in wishing that the pit would remain closed always. My guilt became an even heavier burden to carry through Lemuria and I feared ghostly encounters during every waking hour. To ward off the spirits of those two good men, I filled my mouth with black beans and spat them out, one by one, onto the street outside the gate at Oxheads. When my mouth was empty again I said the words of exorcism: ‘With these you and I are redeemed.’

  I was thus engaged when a veiled patrician woman appeared at sunset, alone and unaccompanied by servants. The Praetorian on watch command was among the First Citizen’s longest-serving men, and because his memory stretched back so much further than his colleagues’, the woman’s gentle voice seemed vaguely familiar to him.

  ‘Who are you, Lady?’

  She lowered her veil to show him and he tried to place her face, but failed. Yet I was struck dumb by recognition. The Lady realised it and looked past the Praetorian and into my eyes. It was as if, like me, she had hardly aged. But I knew she wasn’t divine.

  In a habit no slave can ever break, I sank to one knee. ‘I never wanted to believe what was said of you, Lady,’ I said. ‘I knew in my heart you were cruelly treated.’

  If my domina had heard me say those treasonous words to Scribonia, she would have nailed me to a cross. But I felt the dead all around me and suffered badly with it.

  ‘Please stand,’ Scribonia whispered. ‘I hold no ill-will about it now, and nor should you. Rome has prospered since my time.’

  ‘You’re very gracious,’ I said. ‘Why have you come back, Lady?’

  Her look betrayed the deep well of pain she held not for herself, but another.

  I understood.

  At great risk to us both I ushered her into Oxheads. It was a sign of my high position in the household that the Praetorians didn’t stop me. I carefully guided Scribonia through the hidden slaves’ passages and back stairs. When we neared the suite of rooms that was our destination, we found a heavy-set young man of twenty curled on a slave’s pallet by the door. He was lost in the sleep of exhaustion.

  Scribonia stared at him and felt a fresh stir of memory herself. ‘I know his face.’

  I gave him only a passing glance. ‘He’s a slave.’

  ‘He wears a stoic’s clothes. He’s highborn. I know his face.’

  I looked again in the gloom and realised who it was. ‘It’s Jullus, son of the dead Antony,’ I whispered.

  She was taken back years. ‘He’s the image of his father. Why is he lying here like this?’

  I shrugged, unsure and a little perturbed. ‘A vigil, I think. You must go inside now, Lady.’

  The door to another room suddenly opened and the aged wet nurse Hecuba emerged. At the startling sight of the visitor the old woman was washed with a long-buried guilt of her own. ‘It can’t be – ‘

  ‘Don’t alarm yourself,’ Scribonia muttered. ‘I’m no-one of importance.’

  ‘But I know you – I know you,’ Hecuba said. Then she pulled a blanket over her head, stammering of Lemuria ghosts, and fell huddled into a chair.

  Scribonia and I stared at each other. The sleeping Jullus registered nothing.

  ‘Perhaps I won’t need to kill her as a witness,’ I whispered, ‘if she doubts her own eyes.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Scribonia. ‘I wouldn’t like to have lives lost on my account.’

  Peering into the darkened chamber, she had her second ever glimpse of her daughter. Julia was gaunt and hollow-cheeked, naked on the linen, her flesh grey like an invalid’s. Scribonia pressed a small hard stone into my palm. It was an emerald. I refused the jewel and gave it back.

  ‘Go inside. You won’t have long, but I’ll keep guard for you.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She let the stone fall to the floor so I had no choice but to retrieve it.

  Next to Julia’s bed her mother found a bowl of broth, still warm but untouched. She laid her hand on Julia’s brow, knowing that her daughter was lost in a dream. In this dream Julia and her husband sat at a fountain watching miniature versions of themselves at play. The tiny newlyweds ate a meal proffered by the wife and, watching on, life-sized Julia was unable to prevent it.

  Scribonia knew this dream well; she had experienced it too. Once deciphered, it had become the means by which Scribonia understood what had befallen her daughter. It was why she had known to come.

  In the dream, the life-sized Julia turned from watching her miniature self to see that her life-sized husband had vanished. Then the miniature Marcellus dissolved into rot and decay.

  Scribonia cradled her daughter’s head and tried to feed her a spoonful of soup.

  ‘No – it’s bad,’ Julia mumbled.

  Scribonia’s tears mixed with her daughter’s, just as they had for that brief moment on the birthing chair before Julia had been snatched away. ‘You must eat. You’ll die.’

  ‘I want to die. I want to join him.’

  ‘You mustn’t say that,’ Scribonia soothed her. ‘Life is too precious. We dishonour those who are taken from us by wasting what is granted in their wake. You’ve been given the air your husband no longer breathes. Please live for him.’

  Wracking sobs of misery shook Julia and she clutched this unknown woman as if she would break her. Then the out pouring passed. In the time that followed, Julia was like an infant again, and the sixteen years of separation vanished. Scribonia uncovered her breast and Julia suckled like a baby.

  In the light of the dawn the young widow awoke feeling as if a dark cloud had moved beyond t
he horizon. She had the will to leave her bed.

  The first person she saw was Jullus.

  ‘I’m ready to live again,’ she told him. ‘For Marcellus’s sake.’

  He kissed her hands and wrists, crying tears of relief. ‘I knew you would. There are too many people here who love you.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Are you one of them?’

  ‘As your cousin – only as your cousin,’ Jullus said quickly.

  In her fragile state Julia believed him. Having no memory of the night apart from the dream itself, she continued to believe that she had never met her mother. As far as Julia knew, the Lady Scribonia was a maligned exile who lived far away from Rome.

  The Anniversary of the Battle of

  Lake Trasimene

  June, 22 BC

  One year later: mobs riot in the streets

  when First Citizen Caesar Augustus

  refuses to accept the Senate’s offer

  of life consulship

  One hundred and ninety-five years before this day, Rome lost forty thousand men to Hannibal’s invading forces at Lake Trasimene. The date became one of the nefasti; every year afterwards, on the sixth day before the Kalends of July, Rome grew awash with ill omens. This year was no exception.

  All the traditional portents had already been reported by the third hour, just as paid rioters were attempting to draw attention from the act of theatre that had been Octavian’s ‘refusal’ of ever-increasing power. They needn’t have bothered. The omens were more than enough distraction for people from his tyranny. There were hysterical reports of tombs bursting open, shades materialising and household gods flying from their shrines. One dash of originality came from a woman on the Aventine Hill who supposedly gave birth to a litter of piglets.

  That my domina paid heed to neither history nor warnings is a sign to me, as I look back upon it now, that she already believed herself indestructible. I knew better, at least as far as my own divinity was concerned, of course. What’s given can always be taken away. We gods are still fallible.

  Eighteen-year-old Tiberius considered the seating options in Octavian’s tablinum, and then, when my domina had made her choice, he sat one chair apart from his mother, placing a space between them. Livia said nothing at this but her look to him spoke many words. Lanky and self-conscious, Tiberius rose again and sat in the chair next to her, sullen.

  ‘Thank you. Now remove that expression from your face,’ she said.

  He did so, forcing himself to go blank, although he felt anything but. He scratched at where his still unaccustomed toga virilis itched.

  ‘And don’t fidget.’

  He stopped. The silence between and around them was deadening. The stink of Tiberius’s unwashed hair reached my nostrils where I stood behind them. He had lately developed an aversion to the baths, a tiny rebellion that my domina didn’t bother wasting energy fighting against. She chose her battles with him carefully.

  Tiberius broke the silence. ‘What if I refuse this?’

  She didn’t dignify that with an answer.

  ‘I’m a man now. I’d be within my rights to refuse it.’

  She placed a cupped hand on his knee.

  ‘I like the girl already picked out for me, Mother. Agrippa’s daughter – she’s the one I want. I don’t want a change.’

  He felt a sharp stab to his flesh beneath my domina’s palm. He whimpered, biting his lip, not daring to pull away. Livia’s tone was maternal as she drove her concealed pin deeper. ‘This will be a better choice, son. You’ll see it in time. I’m sure you’ll get on very well.’

  A tear of pain rolled down his cheek. ‘We hated each other as children.’

  ‘Hate works wonders in bed, you know. You’ll make an heir in no time.’ She withdrew the pin. Tiberius rubbed the wound and a tiny prick of blood came through on his toga.

  ‘It’s a wise man who continues to take counsel from his mother,’ Livia said.

  ‘So, how do you expect me to respond when you tell him of this?’ Tiberius asked bitterly.

  ‘I don’t tell your stepfather, I guide.’

  ‘This is your game, Mother – guide me.’

  ‘Your response will be agreement, Tiberius, nothing more.’

  Tiberius looked at me and I chose to give him a face of sympathy; it wasn’t hard since I felt it, although I agreed with my domina’s plan. He was comforted to know that somebody empathised with him, even if it was only a slave.

  ‘Then agreement is all that I’ll give,’ he said to his mother.

  The guards stiffened with the sound of approaching voices, as guards in the adjoining room swung open the doors. Octavian entered in happy conversation with Agrippa, both looking very pleased. Livia and Tiberius rose from their chairs.

  ‘Ah, Livia,’ said Octavian, moving to kiss her cheek. ‘I’d wondered where you were this morning.’

  ‘With my son,’ she said with affection. ‘He has startled me with a brave confession.’

  Tiberius looked thrown. This was not what he had imagined her opening statement would be.

  Octavian was indulgent. ‘What have you confessed to, Tiberius? Stealing a cake?’

  Tiberius flushed. ‘No, Stepfather.’

  ‘He has confessed to strong feelings of the heart,’ Livia said. ‘He’s in love.’

  Octavian was effusive and clapped Agrippa on the back. ‘Delightful news! Your daughter will be all the more smitten when she hears this, Agrippa.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Agrippa politely. ‘Excuse me, old friend; I have a few details to put in place now, following our discussion.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Octavian cheerfully. ‘We’ll meet again later.’

  Agrippa bowed to Livia and was gone. She was relieved to see the back of him. ‘It’s not for Agrippa’s girl that my son expresses love,’ she said.

  Octavian deflated. ‘That’s awkward.’

  My domina made a show of being unable to hide her joy. ‘It needn’t be. When he told me who he was in love with, at first I was disappointed – just as you are now. But then I considered it and it seems to me to have so much potential. That’s why we came to tell you.’

  Octavian maintained his expression of paternal placidity but his eyes assessed his stepson. ‘Who is she?’ he asked Tiberius.

  The young man cleared his throat, attempting to seem dignified. ‘Julia.’

  My domina squealed and clapped her hands. ‘Isn’t it sweet? They’ve always been so close – ever since they were babies. And with the poor girl so fragile still, this will save her, husband, give her something to live for again. It’s a perfect match. What do you think?’

  ‘I agree,’ said Octavian without hesitation.

  Livia clapped her hands again. ‘I knew it! Let’s find Julia now. She’ll be so happy.’

  ‘She’s occupied.’

  ‘Nothing we can’t interrupt her with – this is important.’

  ‘So is the news she’s being told right now.’

  ‘What is she being told?’

  ‘That she’s gaining a new husband.’

  Livia was confused. ‘But how could she know this already?’

  For the first time Tiberius read the auspices before his mother did. He allowed his blank expression to slip away and reveal a sly smile.

  ‘The boy would be a very good match – but not the best one,’ said Octavian. He placed his hand at the small of my domina’s back and led her away to the other side of the tablinum where they looked out at courtyard plants. Tiberius stayed where he was, watching the hushed exchange between them while making little bouncing motions on the balls of his feet.

  The conversation ended abruptly and Octavian left without another word or glance to his stepson. Livia was left staring into the ferns. Tiberius crept up behind her until he stood at only an arm’s length. He felt malicious in his triumph.

  ‘Who is she marrying then, Mother?’

  Livia didn’t flinch. ‘Your stepfather is giving Agrippa Tribunician powe
rs for the next five years. Giving them to him. He’s not even patrician.’

  ‘Who, Mother? Julia’s new husband?’

  ‘Do you know what this means? If something happens to your stepfather then he will take over. Agrippa is now the successor.’

  ‘But what will that do to your plans?’

  She swung round to stare at him and Tiberius held her gaze, a study of innocence. They looked at each other for a long time before Livia collected herself and stole silently from the room.

  On the floor was the pin she had stabbed him with. Tiberius stooped to retrieve the thing. It was short and cruel, with a jewelled head that glittered in the reflected light from the courtyard. He touched the point with his fingertip and it made a little dent in his skin. He pressed harder and the sliver of metal pierced him, drawing blood. He pressed harder still until the point of it passed through his finger and came out the other side, just shy of the nail. He studied how it looked – an image of torture in miniature – then he showed it to me.

  I felt ill.

  Tiberius decided he would leave the pin there for the rest of the morning. His mother would not forgive him for the setback of Julia marrying Agrippa, even though the decision had never been his – or hers – to make. But she would still make him a focus of her fury – and her love. Tiberius knew that building up his tolerance to pain would be useful.

  The announcement was made in the Acta Diurna – the Daily Record. It was a late-breaking item and the newsgathering for tomorrow’s bulletin was largely completed by the notarii slaves who worked on behalf of the magistrates. The rulings of the courts had been compiled, listing all the sentences passed and the acquittals made. The senatorial debates had also been transcribed; the forthcoming chariot races touted; and the day’s will-readings, divorce scandals, love triangles and three-headed chicken births were all duly ready for public consumption. Just as the notarii were carefully wording their heavily censored accounts of Rome’s progress in its wars, I delivered the announcement from Oxheads of Julia’s betrothal to Agrippa.