But Germanicus saw the truth. ‘Thank you, my friend.’
He entered the tent with an awkward bundle under his arm, longing for the baths even more than his bed. But he wouldn’t seek them out until he’d seen his wife and showed her what he carried. Overwhelmed by the return, Burrus rushed forward to cling to his master’s boots, while I waited docilely in the corner.
Germanicus looked fondly at the slave-boy, thinking of his own growing sons. Sometimes he even saw their faces in Burrus’s own, and remarked upon it. There was something about the green of Burrus’s eyes. I suggested that the boy might like to help his master by taking the boots off. Burrus readily did so while Germanicus’s mind fretted over what he must do.
Nymphomidia appeared at the curtain to the sleeping chamber, her fine face flushed, her hands and arms raw from scrubbing birth blood. ‘I thank the gods for your safe return, domine.’ She cast her eyes down, her voice careful to lack tone. ‘Food is prepared and water for your bath is heating.’
‘I’ll greet your mistress – is she awake?’
‘She’s refusing to sleep, asking for you.’
‘Good.’
Burrus freed the second boot and Germanicus walked barefoot across the lion hides, still with his bundle. Nymphomidia kept the curtain aside, closing it after him so that Burrus couldn’t see. I followed, of course.
Inside, Germanicus’s eyes adjusted to the single lamplight in the fur-filled gloom. On her couch, under linen and skins, Agrippina’s beauty seemed unfaded by her ordeal, at least to him. He wasn’t to know that she’d kept the light dim for this purpose.
She held out her hand and he took it, kissing the palm. Her eyes flicked to the items wrapped in his cloak as he placed them on the floor.
‘Why aren’t you sleeping?’ he asked her gently. He saw the birthing chair in the corner, clean and dry. ‘Nymphomidia and Iphicles are half-dead with serving you.’
‘They never rest and neither can I. Tell me what happened in the forest.’
He couldn’t pretty it. ‘I wanted to push the frontier to the Elbe. The men were capable, their hearts were strong and they were fuelled by vengeance. Varus’s disgrace was driving us.’
‘And driving us at home.’
He kissed her hand. ‘We pushed further, meeting no resistance of course, meeting no-one. The lands were empty of barbarians, just forests and more forests and trees, until we reached Teutoberg.’
‘And what was there?’
‘The lost eagles,’ he said simply.
Germanicus lifted the cloak from the items he had brought into the chamber. There were three bronze eagles in relief, each with their ‘Senate and People of Rome’ legend. The respective Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth legions’ standards were green and corroded from neglect.
Agrippina held back from touching them but her eyes burned at beholding the eagles returned to Roman hands. ‘I saw them from the bridge,’ she whispered. ‘You were holding them so high. If Augustus were alive he would kiss your feet for bringing them back to Rome.’
This moved him. ‘We found them at a clearing in the forest, the very place of Varus’s loss, if you can believe it. They were there for all to enjoy, arranged as perches in the fowl-house of some arthritic chief.’
I shut my eyes at the shameful vision.
‘There were tribes there?’ Agrippina asked.
‘There were women, old men and babies. Oh, and there were goats. Our men put the lot to the sword.’
‘At least their bloodlust could be satisfied,’ she said.
‘It was a comedy,’ said Germanicus, ‘a prologue. But the next act was not intended for our entertainment.’
She waited. He covered the eagles with his cloak again.
‘I was enraged,’ he said after a moment. ‘Some foes, these Germans, I told the men. Where are the hordes of Arminius to kill us with fear alone? It’s a mockery. We’ve come all this way and they’ve fled? The men begged me to progress and I shouted them on. They wanted to carry the recovered eagles alongside our own. They wanted to seek out and trap the scared little Teutoberg mice.’ He paused. ‘The trap was for us, of course, Roman mice.’
Agrippina kept her eyes closed, resting against the furs. She held fast to his hand.
‘We marched on our rage,’ Germanicus continued, ‘singing of vengeance and calling the gods to witness our victory. But as we reached the densest part of the forest, Arminius’s real hordes emerged. The old men and the babies had been slaves left to fool us.’
His voice caught and I glanced at his face in the lamplight. He could hear the screams in the mist. ‘Not that I’d paused long enough to inquire, of course. Arminius had been studying his diplomacy books. All three tribes are now one, and we were lambs, butchered by our arrogance in forest so thick we couldn’t manoeuvre.’
She opened her eyes to him again and the love he saw within them was a comfort, however small. ‘You ordered a retreat?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t have the opportunity to choose suicide.’
Germanicus stroked her hand, feeling the strength there.
‘Your actions saved my life today,’ he said again, after a time. ‘I wouldn’t have had the will to swim the Rhine.’
The implications of her actions placed next to his were already stark. ‘You behaved with more courage and honour than I ever have, Agrippina. When the stories are told, it is you who’ll emerge with glory – and our son.’
Agrippina tried to lighten this. ‘The men have given him a nickname: “Little Boots”. He wants us to call him that from now on.’
‘The men are calling you divine. You and Little Boots.’
‘They can’t be serious.’
‘It’s what they’re saying. The actions of Gaius and yourself in saving what’s left of my legions were otherworldly. Godlike.’
She felt close to panic and tried to rise from the couch but he stopped her. ‘Why don’t your men have any brains?’
‘Because they’re trained killers and soft-hearted fools. You and Gaius moved them, shamed them. You could never have predicted how they’d view what you did.’
They thought about all the implications of this for some minutes, and I confess that I did too – how would my domina Livia react? I knew she would like it very much, of course.
‘Could word have leaked from the camp?’ Agrippina asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Germanicus. Then, thinking more rationally, he added: ‘It seems unlikely. Not so soon.’
‘Your men are too exhausted to do anything but sleep. And the whores won’t be heading anywhere until they’ve earned their fill from them.’
‘Perhaps we can control it then,’ said Germanicus.
She sat up in the couch, the skins falling to her lap. He saw the padding placed there to staunch the bleeding. There was no point in asking the obvious. The child was gone, stillborn.
‘We must write to Tiberius,’ said Agrippina. ‘We’ll send a rider in an hour, changing horses every hundred miles.’
She looked at me in the lamplight. ‘We’ll send Iphicles.’
I nodded.
‘He’ll reach Rome in a fortnight,’ said Agrippina, smiling at me gratefully.
Germanicus agreed. ‘I’ll tell the First Citizen the truth. Better he hears it from me than reading it on a tavern wall – which he will in time, of course, Mars help us.’
But Agrippina kept her voice very level. ‘You’ll not tell him the truth. Caecina is your second-in-command and he shared the strategic planning,’ she said. ‘His lineage is not a patch upon yours and he’ll never attain the heights that are due you by birth.’
Germanicus released his wife’s hand. ‘Caecina is loyal to all Julians and does not deserve my betrayal.’
‘Caecina can be sacrificed.’
‘Tiberius is my father; I won’t lie to him.’
‘Tiberius is your adoptive father; your father was Drusus, his brother and his better. Tiberius only adopted you because my grandfather
forced him to in his final year – it was his condition for appointing Tiberius his successor. But why did Augustus force him? Why did he pass it as an edict in the Senate? You know why, Germanicus – because Augustus wanted you to succeed Tiberius.’
I kept silent, knowing full well that my domina had played a larger role in this than poor Octavian had.
Germanicus could have struck his wife. ‘Tiberius is still the First Citizen.’
There was a long pause as each made a return to civility. I kept my eyes on the floor.
‘I’ll tell Tiberius every detail of my mistake,’ said Germanicus, after some moments.
She nodded, her expression also acquiescing.
‘And I’ll accept the flaws in my character that led to it. Tiberius must know and understand if he is to rule and I’m to serve him.’
She nodded again. There was another pause. She kept her eyes lowered. ‘You must crush any credence to this “divinity”,’ Agrippina added quietly. ‘It’s an insult to the true divine, my late grandfather.’ She met his eyes again. ‘And it’s already a threat to others that my veins hold Augustus’s blood – and that the children hold it too.’
Germanicus knew this.
‘To claim divinity on top of it, well …’ She let her words fade. Neither needed to speak of what could befall them. ‘Here is my suggestion: tell the First Citizen that the Lady Agrippina disgraced herself. Tell him that she paraded before the men while issuing commands, as would shame any woman, let alone a highborn one.’
‘You would sell your reputation for me?’
‘What does it matter? Tell the First Citizen that the Lady Agrippina was maddened by anxiety and in the throes of her labour. But you can add that her wits returned when she was reunited with her husband and safely delivered of a child.’
Germanicus’s face dropped and she smiled to see his reaction.
‘The labour was very cruel but the child was born well and bawling hard,’ she said.
‘Oh, my wife …’ But Germanicus saw then how much it had spent her.
As her slave, of course I already knew that she’d lost far too much birth blood and was still bleeding. Her ashy pallor was now clear in the lamplight meant to disguise it. It was only the sight of Germanicus that was keeping her conscious at all.
Listening, Nymphomidia twitched the curtain of the chamber, cradling a tiny form. It was a girl. She laid the child at Germanicus’s bare feet, the first touch of Mother Earth, and a father’s moment to embrace or reject. Tears rushed to Germanicus’s eyes as the emotion claimed him. Shame and anger and fear from the forest came in a sob that wrenched him forward. He fell to his knees, hands shielding himself from the horrors. Neither his wife nor his slaves said anything. Then the weight lifted.
Germanicus’s heart was released and the joy of the new life enfolded him. He turned to the child and his acceptance and love were immediate. He stooped to cradle her; this girl, the first after three fine sons, would not be exposed. She was Augustus’s blood. She would be a pearl to the Julian house.
‘What will you call her?’ Agrippina whispered.
No poet could describe how much he loved his wife. ‘I’ll call her Agrippina,’ he said, ‘to honour her mother.’
She was pleased.
‘Agrippina the Younger,’ ventured Nymphomidia, so pleased with the name herself that she dared speak out of turn.
‘Which makes her Agrippinilla,’ said Germanicus.
It was a pretty name to all our ears. From the safety of strong arms, the child looked up at her father, perhaps seeing him, perhaps not. She made no cry.
‘You’ll always be Nilla in your father’s heart,’ Germanicus whispered to her.
Brumalia
November, AD 15
Two weeks later: the province of Achaea is
given over to the personal control of First
Citizen Tiberius Caesar Augustus
The naked prisoner stumbled in his step as the path neared the cliff edge. There was only bare rock beneath his feet, and the two escorting Praetorian Guards gave him a hoist high under his armpits. He would be upright for the pronouncement, as was fitting. It was bitterly cold.
The sentencing praetor stepped forward, ready. ‘Agrippa Postumus,’ he pronounced, not taking his eyes from the scroll, ‘the Senate and People of Rome have found you guilty of obscene conspiracy.’
The prisoner neither saw nor heard.
‘You placed yourself as a figurehead for sedition – a crime. You sought to destabilise the Rule of the First Citizen Tiberius – a crime.’ The praetor savoured the worst of it: ‘And you conspired against Rome.’
The two Praetorians lifted the man again so that his feet left the rock. Two more guards took his ankles. The first two Praetorians transferred their grip from the prisoner’s armpits to his hands – a practised procedure – and he hung between them like a four-cornered net.
‘Agrippa Postumus, you have been condemned to be flung from the Rock of Tarpeia,’ declared the praetor, ‘just like all other traitors before you. Do you wish to address the gods?’
The man addressed no-one. The tongue had been pulled from his throat and he couldn’t have replied had he wanted to. The black pits where his eyes had been saw nothing of the city view. In his mind he was safe and warm in a far island home, not here. He was surrounded by brothers who loved him. He was a boy again.
The praetor closed the scroll and took a quick glance at the Praetorians – all four stared resolutely ahead. The praetor pulled an iron collar from his toga, opened it, and then hooked it around the condemned man’s neck before clamping it closed again with a pin.
He hissed in the prisoner’s ear. ‘Remember what this thing is? You’ll die in front of Rome as “Postumus”, you piece of filth, because that’s who you have Rome believing you are. But the First Citizen knows the truth of you and thanks you for doing him a favour: your foul impersonation made your master seem an even bigger traitor than he was. If he hadn’t already been put to the sword in secret, Rome now thinks that he should have been.’
The prisoner’s head hung loose between his taut arms.
‘But if you were being killed for who you really are,’ the praetor went on, ‘you’d have been stabbed in a ditch and fed to the boars without a single word spoken by those who despise you. So enjoy this impersonation of your master in death, Clemens. Rome mistakes you for a Julian prince, but you and I know what you were born as – a filthy dog of a slave.’
Clemens had no tongue to answer but his lips formed unheard words. ‘You are wrong. I have the blood of Augustus. And so does my son.’
The praetor signalled and from far below a horn blared. The guards leant so that the force of their weight stretched the slave’s limbs. Slowly they swung him back, then forwards, then back again, building momentum. Another guard marked the swings on a drum. On the twentieth swing they released him in one motion.
Clemens flew forward into the wind, his body straight, before he spun in descent, turning over and over until he struck the sharp rocks below.
The praetor was steadied by the guards as he peered over the edge. He was satisfied. The rocks had split the traitor’s head like a pig melon.
The Imperial party paused for a moment to observe the execution on the far Capitoline Hill. But from our vantage point on the Palatine, we couldn’t see the impact. First among my domina’s numerous attending women, Plancina gave a particularly pointed look in my direction. I nodded at her resignedly. She would have use for my services later, though I didn’t much relish it.
Tiberius didn’t bother turning to look at the execution at all. The slave’s conspiracy had been laughable in his eyes. Instead he read the communiqué before him without expression, without movement. To those, like me, who observed the First Citizen in such moments, it seemed that he read without breathing as well. Only the construction slaves labouring on Oxheads’ new ‘Tiberian Wing’ provided sound. Now middle-aged, balding and pasty-faced, Tiberius was at pains to pr
ove he was not a king. Like his stepfather before him, he was Rome’s First Citizen – yet ‘Emperor’ was a new title he tolerated. In public he observed every kind of propriety. In private his habits were now completely unknown.
The wind struck up and howled through the reception room. No-one said anything. No-one looked at the pretty garden beyond one set of pillars, or the splashing fountain beyond another.
My domina dropped her ball of wool. ‘Dear, dear,’ she said without conviction. The wool rolled down the steps and halted at a bed of winter bulbs. She looked to where I waited patiently for Tiberius to respond, having only just handed him the missive. I knew my place in her scheme of things and went to retrieve the ball. I was still her slave.
‘Shocking reports of Brumalia resurging again,’ she said to no-one in particular. Plancina tut-tutted obligingly. ‘Such decadence,’ said Livia. ‘A filthy festival stamped out centuries ago. Yet still people seek to revive the Bacchic rites. It’ll lead to the end of Rome.’
Tiberius looked up at her from the communiqué, and his eyes were followed by those of all present. Livia feigned a misapprehension we were all here to receive family gossip.
‘Oh, is that a letter you’ve received from Germanicus?’ she asked. ‘How I miss my grandson.’
Tiberius made no response to his mother and returned to the scroll. I retrieved the wool.
‘But what does he say?’ she asked him.
‘He says: “Kindly remind the revered Augusta of the undying devotion of her grandson”,’ replied Tiberius, lying and not looking up.
‘How sweet,’ said Livia, making a fine show of purring. ‘And does he mention the disgrace at Teutoberg?’
Tiberius’s intake of breath startled them all except his mother. Her ability to know everything before he did again caught him off-guard. He cast a chilling glance at me, regaining his composure with difficulty while Livia laughed like a six-year-old. I still knew to whom I owed the most loyalty, of course, and had told her everything already. Those who were not in the know around us calculated what a ‘disgrace at Teutoberg’ could mean in light of Varus’s horrors.
Livia was in a mood for reminiscence, I saw as I handed her wool back to her. ‘Germanicus was the Divine Augustus’s choice for the German command, as you well know,’ she said. ‘A fine choice, I always thought; a very wise choice.’
Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves Page 39