Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  Agrippa did indeed read a particularly long missive at the baths one afternoon. ‘Jullus and Marcella are not harmonious,’ he said to Julia.

  ‘Where does he say that?’ She badly wanted to think of Agrippa’s discarded wife as being happy.

  ‘It’s in what he doesn’t say.’

  ‘Oh. Well, that’s very sad.’ But she didn’t believe it. She would hold on to her hope that the marriage was happy until Jullus himself said otherwise.

  ‘Your cousin is very fond of you, isn’t he?’ Agrippa asked. There was neither jealousy nor disappointment in his tone.

  ‘He kept a vigil outside my room when Marcellus died. At least, that’s what I was told. When I found the strength to eat again, his was the first face I saw upon leaving my bed. I told him I’d found the will the live. He cried and kissed my cheek.’

  ‘When Antony killed himself I voted to kill Jullus, and his siblings too.’

  Julia wasn’t especially shocked, only relieved that Agrippa’s vote hadn’t swayed Octavian. ‘They were only babies. They grew up to feel no hatred for the Julian house. They’re our family.’

  Agrippa said no more for a while. But when he was preparing to lay down for an afternoon nap he said, ‘He’s in love with you.’

  Julia was so surprised she had no immediate response. When she had finally thought of one, Agrippa was already asleep. When she thought about it some more, she was glad she hadn’t said what had come to her mind. Agrippa was a fearsome man to enemies and it was possible that he was hiding a secret envy of Julia’s devoted relative. She thought long about Jullus until sleep took her, too.

  He did certainly love her. She vowed to take utmost care to neither break nor inflame his heart.

  Selfless, as her father had raised her to be, Julia continued to think not of her own suffering but Agrippa’s. More than once I overheard her begging him to continue enjoying her as a husband should. But he wouldn’t do it while her sex was robbed of sensation. Wanting only to share in her pain, Agrippa made a vow of abstinence before the goddess Minerva. Agrippa would not partake of sexual pleasure until Julia walked again. And then he would couple only with his wife.

  But the inevitable happened and Agrippa’s thin mask of denial slipped. The anger and despair that had been boiling within him returned. Julia had been taken for a mid-afternoon bath, and despite this now being a regular occurrence, the Ilium men who were also bathing at this hour started a low rumble of catcalls. Agrippa’s punitive fine had planted the seeds of hatred, and now the couple found themselves being hissed at to go back to Rome.

  Blood rushed to Agrippa’s face and he snatched up a sword, daring them all to say the same thing to him away from the safety of the waters. No-one dared, of course, but when his back was turned the catcalls resumed. Julia knew that this could turn into a blood-letting, so she ordered me to carry her from the building. With the help of two others I struggled to move her quickly, while Agrippa’s fury at the men combusted. He ordered his own slaves to smash the bath furniture.

  The place was soon in uproar and Julia’s women panicked. Just as they were rushing to descend a stretch of steps, one of them slipped on spilled oil and they all fell down like skittles. To the horror of every eye, my own footing also slipped and Julia was thrown from my hold.

  A terrible cry rose in Agrippa’s throat as he saw the unthinkable happening before him. Julia tumbled and rolled the full length of the steps without making a single sound. Knowing that every bone in her body must be smashed, Agrippa rushed to where she lay and held her in his arms, cursing and sobbing. ‘What have I done to you …?’

  Julia’s eyes were still open. ‘You’ve done nothing.’ Her voice was just a faint breath in his ear. ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘No – my neglect has caused everything to happen to you,’ Agrippa sobbed. ‘The Fates have cut the string of your life. I’ll burn this place in revenge.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Julia whispered. ‘I’m no-one of consequence to do that for.’

  Agrippa looked old and powerless, and Julia’s heart broke for him. Unthinkingly, she got to her feet and held out her hand for him to right himself. Agrippa’s tears ran dry. She was standing unaided. Julia realised this at the same moment she understood that, by the will of the Fates, the fall had reversed her injury.

  Delirious with joy, Agrippa cancelled Ilium’s fine and commenced upon designing a refurbishment of the baths – at the city’s expense, of course. The fathers were only grateful to be beneficiaries of Rome’s love again.

  Julia felt similar gratitude. Agrippa’s love for her became all-protecting, like her father’s love, yet rich with worship at the temple of her body. This was deeply erotic for Julia. Walking again, she was willingly made love to with a vigorous abandon at odds with her husband’s fifty years. He loved her totally – and she loved him as much as she had once loved Marcellus, perhaps more. She was a woman now, not a timid girl. Her ability to love had matured with time, as had her understanding of it.

  On our final day in Ilium, as we readied for the long return journey to Rome, we received our final delivery of mail. There was a missive addressed to me. I felt a tiny chill, deep in my guts. But in my loins I felt the tingling onset of fire.

  It was the measure of Agrippa and Julia’s great trust in me – their devoted Iphicles – that they didn’t ask to read the missive. Julia celebrated the fact that I received mail at all, so proud was she of having taught me to read and write.

  I withdrew the scroll from the canister and unravelled it in private. It was written in a hand I didn’t recognise and was unsigned. It held three portentous words: ‘Prepare yourself, slave.’

  For the first time in many months, my thoughts returned to my domina.

  Quinquatria

  March, 12 BC

  One year later: the Pontifical College

  declares First Citizen Caesar Augustus

  pontifex maximus

  Old friends were in attendance at Agrippa’s seaside villa at Baiae to mark his return to Italy. Among them were Octavian and Livia, of course. It was fresh and breezy weather and the final day of Quinquatria, the sacred festival of Minerva. While Rome enjoyed the goddess’s sport of gladiators hacking themselves to pieces, peaceful Baiae was not much interested.

  Octavian had no genuine fondness for the games either, and didn’t regret missing such spectacles. But he did enjoy the ritual of Tubilustrium, where the trumpets used in Minerva’s rites were cleansed. In his newly additional role of pontifex maximus, Octavian had one of the trumpets brought to Campania along with its attendant Salian priest. At the correct moment, with the leaping priest weighted heavily in his war tunic, breastplate, helmet, cloak, sword and sacred shield, the trumpet was duly purified before the assembled party. If I hadn’t already begun to feel fear in my entrails, I would have struggled to stay awake. But my certainty that this would be a day of pain made me cast slow and watchful glances all around me.

  Octavian provided an astonishing spectacle to welcome home his daughter and son-in-law. With Julia and Agrippa briefly confined to their rooms, Octavian had teams of slaves place items of great weight around the villa’s terraced gardens. When the couple were released they found boulders crushing the prized blooms destined for next month’s Floralia.

  Julia bewailed the ruined festival of flowers until Agrippa looked closer at the boulders. They were carved as the heads of beasts. The surprise turned to wonder when Octavian explained that the boulders were carved by no-one – they were bones, skulls so old they had turned into stone. These skeletons of monsters were Octavian’s gifts to welcome the couple back to Rome. Watching on, my mind went back many years to that day when I heard the sound of dragons beneath my feet in the cave. Those monsters had heralded an earthquake – it was the day I rescued my domina.

  From my position at Julia’s shoulder I looked across to Livia, who watched me secretively. She let her eyes hold mine for the merest moment – it was the first time I had seen her in som
e years. Aged more than forty now, she was no less beautiful than ever. Her face was only slightly lined, her figure had filled out with time, but her eyes had lost nothing of their coal-black intensity. Like I had, she still appeared to have arrested the passing years. In that one look I found something new in Livia’s gaze – she was enjoying her power greatly.

  Amazed by the giant skulls, Agrippa enjoyed a sumptuous meal. I knew my role without ever being told it; my domina’s eyes gave me all the direction I needed.

  First I encouraged Julia to enjoy the fine wine. Then I commended Agrippa for plucking the juiciest crustacean from the platter. I retired from the triclinium before the banquet was over. I used the excuse that I had to retrieve a platter with which to collect the dropped morsels of food that would be burned for the household gods. No-one stopped me. I stumbled from the room, glancing back at my domina; she was in fits of joyous laughter, unaware I had even left her.

  I never returned with the plate. I lay on my humble pallet with a bowl of black beans upon my chest, ready to make amends with the new ghost that would appear in my dreams.

  Julia’s husband was the very last to retire, singing silly songs with his lifelong and generous friend, Octavian.

  After the deepest, most refreshing sleep that Julia could recall, she awoke and stretched. She found Agrippa lying next to her, as cold as his sword. Julia screamed and fell upon the corpse, beating her husband’s chest and begging him to breathe again. But his face was drawn in a rictus: teeth bared, lips pulled back to thin strips of skin. He had died in agony, yet Julia had heard nothing. The physicians concluded he’d had an attack to his heart.

  Octavian was seated on Agrippa’s own dining couch when he heard this news. He dismissed the physicians, then the entire household, and finally his own retinue and family. Only Livia remained. The suppression of despair was too much for him and he spewed and retched over the remains of the meal his friend had eaten the night before. The indulged slaves had not cleaned it away, having been given leave from their duties to enjoy the evening’s celebrations. Livia stroked Octavian’s brow and hummed at him. He glanced up at and saw the moistening to her eyes that was, he now believed, her unique manner of expressing grief. He was comforted, yet Livia said not one word about the death.

  With the sound of Julia beginning the mourning wails of conclamatio behind him, Octavian left the villa just as I placed a cypress sapling close by the door. A newly elected pontifex maximus could not stay in the house of a deceased person, nor could he look at or touch the body. Octavian’s happy carousing with Agrippa over the monsters’ skulls was the last time he ever saw his great friend. He couldn’t even attend his funeral pyre.

  Enjoying her breakfast in the slave quarters, one girl above all others had been kept well away from Octavian – as she had been since the day of her manumission. Famous for his horror of dwarves and other freaks, Octavian would never knowingly have allowed such a strikingly beautiful hunchback as Martina near his person.

  Carmentalia

  January, 11 BC

  Nine months later: Nero Claudius Drusus

  achieves victory over the Sicambri tribe at

  Lupia River, Lower Germany, extending

  Rome’s borders to the Rhine

  Having known the death of a husband once in her life, Julia’s grief the second time flowed aimlessly, crushing her at some moments, at others leaving her with no response at all. She continued her daily tasks, spinning and weaving, as her father had long expected of her. Though she wept at times, Julia’s mind could hold few thoughts. Her heart was empty. Gradually she became like a shell in her loss, a husk of the good woman she had been.

  The new year brought the festival of Carmentalia on the fourth day before the Ides. Veiled and covered women made their way through the sleet-swept streets to Carmenta’s temple at the foot of the Capitoline. I envied them their deity. No friend to men, Carmenta answered secret questions from women about the future and the past. The answers were never shared. I found out later about the secret questions that had also been asked at the Oxheads gate during this time. The guard who told me thought it was a great joke. I did not apprise him of the truth behind it.

  At sunset on the festival’s first day, a veiled woman approached. She raked the faces of the Praetorians for a stirring of recognition from them, but received only stares. When asked what she wanted she couldn’t reply and walked away. She returned again at Carmentalia’s second sunset, repeated the same performance, and then did the same at the third. By the fourth sunset the sight of her had become a joke among the guards – the strange woman was a better keeper of time than a water-clock. But now they wanted an explanation. Fearing as much, the woman hardly dared approach, knowing that she was arousing suspicion. Just as she prepared to slip away once more, she was seized by two guards who had been placed in readiness.

  Scribonia was dragged before the watch command. ‘Who are you, woman?’

  ‘I’m no-one.’ Her patrician accent surprised them.

  ‘You’re highborn?’

  ‘I’m no-one,’ she repeated. ‘Please let me be.’

  ‘Not until you’ve answered my questions. Why do you keep coming here?’

  ‘I … I seek someone.’ How could she tell them that she yearned to see the daughter that was forbidden to her?

  ‘Your fancy man? Got a stud bull you’re chasing, do you, darling?’

  The other men thought this funny but the insolence gave her something she could use. Blushing, she appeared to confirm. ‘I seek a man.’

  ‘I knew it,’ the commander smirked to his subordinates. ‘Which one is he?’

  ‘Each night I come looking for his face – but I never find him.’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  Scribonia kept her eyes lowered. ‘He never told me.’

  The commander clucked in pity. ‘Poor little flower. He’s probably long gone. Well, don’t fret. My name’s Paconius and I’ll be happy to give you whatever lover-boy gave you, only bigger.’ With a cheer from his men, the commander pulled at Scribonia’s veil before she could stop him. They saw her face.

  None recognised her but all were shocked by her age. They had thought she was a girl. Their pity was real now. ‘I’m sorry, madam,’ the commander said. ‘Without a name we can’t help you to find the man. Be on your way.’

  Her heart breaking for her daughter’s pain, which she could neither soothe nor acknowledge, Scribonia felt paralysed. Then the guards’ attention was focused elsewhere.

  ‘Halt. Who are you, sir?’

  A patrician man had approached, accompanied by a huddled retinue of clients and slaves. ‘Jullus Antony.’

  Scribonia knew the face and voice again. In the years since she had seen him in his sleeping vigil, Jullus had grown ever more like his late father.

  ‘I’m here to respect the bereaved Lady Julia,’ he told the guards.

  ‘Pass, sir,’ said the commander.

  Scribonia seized at this straw she’d been thrown. ‘Don’t you recognise me, sir?’

  Jullus had not even noticed her. She was a wraith at his sleeve. ‘I’m sorry, madam – ‘

  ‘You must know me, sir. After all we’ve shared.’

  The corners of the guards’ mouths turned in unison – they’d found the old girl’s stud bull!

  But Jullus was blank. ‘You’re highborn, madam? Yet, I really don’t think we have met.’

  Scribonia tried to convey a great need with her eyes. ‘You’re discreet, sir, as you must be. I only ask that you let me talk briefly with you in private.’

  Jullus saw the delighted look to the commander’s face and felt he was being mocked.

  ‘I beg you,’ Scribonia whispered. ‘I love her too, you see.’

  Jullus was cold. ‘I’m sorry, madam. You mistake me for someone lowly. I’m one of the few men in Rome who does not keep a mistress.’

  With no avenue left, Scribonia fled into the dusk.

  I knew the cause of the Lady Vipsania
’s removal from the Julian house before the poor woman herself did, and certainly before Rome. Then I had the more grotesque details confirmed to me days afterwards by a surprising number of shocked eyewitnesses. When Vipsania, the most graceful of young women in Rome at the time, returned from visiting the tomb of her father, Agrippa, she realised items were missing from her home on the Pincian Hill. Among them were the contents of her husband Tiberius’s library.

  ‘Menoeseus!’ she cried, reeling at the sacked rooms. ‘We’ve been taken by thieves.’

  Her terrified steward emerged from where he’d hidden in a linen chest.

  ‘Praetorians,’ he stammered. ‘They kicked their way inside with a list of things to be taken. I had no option.’

  When she opened the door to the bed chamber, Vipsania didn’t doubt the slave. Her maid had been so violated by one of the guards that she had died on the floor from blood loss.

  ‘Where is your dominus, Menoeseus? It’s his things that have been stolen.’

  ‘He’s been at Oxheads since sunrise, Lady.’

  Vipsania felt the first turn of Fortune’s wheel against her then. She went straight to Oxheads, accompanied by her steward, in a polite attempt to discern her husband’s intent. She was prevented from entering.

  ‘Your face is unknown,’ said the commander on watch – the same man who had rebuffed Scribonia.

  ‘But I’m the Lady Vipsania. You’ve seen me before.’

  ‘Never.’

  She had to bite back a cry. ‘I’ve a right to be admitted. You know whose wife I am and your insolence to me won’t go unpunished.’

  The terrified Menoeseus tried to tell her that these guards were the same men who had robbed them.

  ‘You’re not his wife any longer – you’ve been divorced,’ said the watch commander.

  This second shock hit Vipsania like the blow of an axe. ‘He’d never do that to me!’

  Without even looking at his target, the Praetorian commander slid his sword into Menoeseus’s chest. As he withdrew it again, with his eyes fixed upon Vipsania, the hapless steward grasped at the blade with his hands, the tendons snapping like sail ropes. The watch commander’s breath was sour when he gripped Vipsania hard between her thighs. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘I’ve already fucked your maid’s guts onto the carpet – you want to join her in the slops?’