Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves

by Luke Devenish

  Burrus knew the beggar would stab him the moment he found him – but better a slave should die than Germanicus. Too frightened to realise that this thicket of legs would end, a final, savage kick from someone sent Burrus spinning onto the road stones.

  He was right in the Triumph’s path.

  The breath had been beaten from his chest; he couldn’t cry out, he couldn’t move; the chariot’s heavy wheels bore down upon him. He would be crushed. Able to do nothing but look up at the blinding light, Burrus saw the astonished face of Nilla staring down at him.

  ‘It’s Burrus! He’s following us!’ But her father and brothers didn’t hear.

  Tears filled the slave-boy’s eyes as he readied for failure and death. ‘Your great father …’ he tried to mouth to Nilla. ‘I am sorry.’

  Suddenly hands were around his ankles and he was yanked from the stones, his head only inches from the wheels.

  The beggar had him.

  Burrus thrashed and screamed, flinging his fists wildly while the world span around him like a top. The ground became the sky, his tunica fell to his head and his privates were exposed to the wind. He was hanging upside-down, ready to be gutted like a hare.

  The giant who had saved him laughed heartily. ‘Watch yourself, little one – you nearly got skittled back there.’

  Burrus’s bare arse was slapped and he was set on his feet again, staring and dazed. This was not the killer. ‘The beggar …’ Burrus stammered. ‘Where’s the beggar?’

  ‘All around you!’ joked the giant. ‘Germanicus has passed, and the only reason we’re not in the tavern now is because Tiberius promised free bread.’

  ‘But he’s got a knife – the beggar’s got a knife.’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ said the giant. ‘I’ve got one too – it’s a beauty. You should get yourself one, lad, there’s all sorts of bastards on these streets. Now go and find your dad. There’s a good boy.’

  At the first honorary column, an enormous pole of black granite, the white stallions and their grooms took a turn to the left, taking the chariot on a different path from the rest of the Triumph.

  Germanicus’s salute was now only for Tiberius, motionless on the Senate House steps, which came into view, cleaned of spectators. The First Citizen was a piercing white under the massive bronze doors; he was whiter than the horses or the ivory or anything else near him, so exquisitely bleached was his toga.

  Arranged around Tiberius were the most senior of senators, including the legendary flatterer, Junius; the famed Stoic, Piso; and others too aged or too important to march in the Triumph with their colleagues.

  At Tiberius’s right, my domina was posed in emerald-green, wearing unseen shoes with platforms so towering she was equal to her son’s height. These were the reason for her absence on the Oxheads balcony – and mine too. Walking was impossible and I had carried her to her place. At Tiberius’s left stood the handsome man thought too young and inexperienced by some to have been handed the Prefecture of the Praetorians. Sejanus’s face was calm, serene, yet his eyes were hard.

  Before there was anything precise to be heard, Sejanus spoke in Tiberius’s ear. ‘Listen to what they shout, Caesar.’

  On cue, with Germanicus and his children approaching the Senate House, a new cry swelled up from the crowd. ‘Em-per-or! Em-per-or!’

  Tiberius was instantly pleased that some of the adulation was for him, especially as he was paying three hundred sestertii to every citizen in largesse. He basked in the cry, enjoying the word.

  ‘Em-per-or! Em-per-or!’

  Tiberius turned his gaze from the chariot to the crowd closest the steps. He wanted to see their love, but their faces were aimed with mindless idolatry at Germanicus. No-one seemed to look to Tiberius.

  ‘Em-per-or! Em-per-or!’

  Paranoia bit him sharply.

  Hyacinthus sprang from the rabble nearest the bottom step, barefoot, putrid in his rags, and sprinting for the massive Senate House doors. In her clear view from Oxheads high above, Agrippina froze, and behind her Livilla screamed, shrill and clear.

  For a single second it seemed that the masses went quiet.

  Tiberius saw the dagger glinting in the sun too late – not so my domina, who shrieked without sound, staggering back in her high shoes. Hyacinthus reached the top step and drove his blade deep into Tiberius’s too-white toga, striking nothing, it seemed to him, before pulling it out and lunging again. The act was too fast for anyone to think upon it, but somehow not a single Praetorian had managed to move quicker than the assassin. But now, jolted into action, they ascended the steps as if their lives depended upon it.

  Already at Tiberius’s side, Sejanus’s first reactive stroke pierced hard into Hyacinthus’s sternum, snapping his head up in the shock of it and spraying blood in the air. The once-great gladiator met and recognised the Prefect’s eye, surprised and embarrassed then to realise the truth. What a dupe I am, Hyacinthus thought to himself in his final second of life; he had always been so easily fooled.

  The second stroke cleft his head from his neck in a movement so fast that Livia lost her balance, crashing hard on me where I stood behind her. The severed head flew down the steps in a scarlet trail, past the Praetorians, rolling across the flagstones and stopping, where it looked sightlessly back at Tiberius before being hoofed by Germanicus’s horses.

  It was all done before the children had realised, but now that they could see the headless corpse sprawled on the marble and the shock in the First Citizen’s face, they felt fear.

  Their father spoke to them clearly, his salute undisturbed. ‘Do not react. Do not acknowledge what has just occurred. Smile back at the crowd. They’ll think it’s entertainment.’

  The children did this.

  Burrus fought his way to the front of the crowd and stared in shock at the scene. He’d been wrong about the beggar’s purpose – and his horror turned into relief. His dominus was too loved by Rome to be the target for killers.

  At the steps, Tiberius tucked his hand inside his toga and pushed the linen outwards, away from his wound, so that no blood could be seen upon his brilliant whiteness. His other hand he raised to Germanicus in return salute – the climactic action of the Triumph, as the script demanded. The horses halted, the severed head vanished from view and Livia was quickly righted by me again.

  Germanicus and Tiberius held their poses for what seemed an unnatural length of time as the crowd assessed what had just occurred and what was occurring now.

  At last Germanicus spoke, his voice rich and deep: ‘Hail, Caesar!’

  Rome erupted once more.

  Sleep was impossible for Nero and Drusus.

  The success of the spectacle, the love from the crowd, and the unprecedented climax on the steps had combined to make them unwilling to stay in their beds. At Nymphomidia’s request their mother took leave from the Triumphal banquet to scold them into sleep.

  But Agrippina was doing little scolding. If they wanted to practise swordplay well into Concubia then she would let them tonight. The day’s success had been theirs too; they had made her proud. But swordplay soon ceased and the boys lay on their couches when she spoke of adult matters. They had acted as men – they could hear such things.

  Agrippina told them of Triumphs from the past – those known from the history books, and others held in recent memory. She spoke of the victories that led to them, and of the enemies that fell. She spoke of Nola burned, Carthage destroyed and Corinth levelled to the ground. She spoke of the Battle of Actium and Antony’s defeat; the Divine Augustus’s greatest moment of destiny fulfilled.

  The brothers listened still and enrapt; Nero’s face was like an open hand, receiving, accepting, wanting more. His pleasure in the history was so obvious that his mother addressed much of it to him and he drank it in. Drusus’s thirst for the words was no less intense but his naturally secretive expression had the effect of making others overlook him in their words. Drusus had such a look that people didn’t trust him, even when th
ey loved him, as Agrippina did.

  At the door to the boys’ suite, away from Nymphomidia’s snoring, Little Boots and Nilla listened too. They crouched in the shadows, knowing that if it was discovered that they couldn’t sleep either, they’d be roped to their cots.

  Nilla understood only a little but she knew what she heard was important. Little Boots understood far more; more than Nero and Drusus, or at least he would have had Nilla think so. They made themselves as small as they could to observe their brothers’ intimacy with their mother. They were jealous, but a word of complaint would have seen them back in their own suite with a lick of the rod.

  But they had not made themselves small enough – a whisper from behind made both of them nearly yell.

  ‘Why aren’t you in bed – have you wet the linens?’ Antonia had spied them on the way back to the banquet from her private latrine.

  ‘We haven’t wet the bed,’ Nilla objected, scared their mother might hear. She guessed that Grandmother Antonia might remain complicit if they said the right things. ‘I got up to use the latrine. I piddled in the hole by myself.’

  ‘You did nothing of the sort.’ Antonia kept her voice to a whisper, however, amused. ‘I would have heard the noise in the pipes. I know a couple of spies when I see them.’

  Nilla was stricken at the exposed flimsiness of her fib.

  Little Boots directed big, blue eyes at Antonia. He was Cupid, and he knew the effect this had on the family’s women. ‘I just want to learn, Grandmother,’ he pleaded, ‘and Mother’s telling Nero and Drusus things that I should hear too if I’m going to be a man.’

  Antonia craned her ear to listen. A snatch of the words ‘Divine Augustus’ told her that Agrippina spoke of family lore. ‘Just a little bit longer then,’ she whispered. She crouched on her haunches to sit with them. Now middle-aged, this ungainly pose would have caused cracked joints in a contemporary, but not Antonia. Now the most redoubtable matron in Rome, she was proud of her enduring suppleness, as she was proud of every other aspect of herself. There was nothing in Antonia’s blameless life that could give her cause for any shame. It was why Rome looked up to her.

  At the boys’ couches, the lamplight dimmed and their mother spoke of ancestors; the webs of connection and adoption. The boys’ maternal great-great-grandfather by adoption, the Divine Julius Caesar, had ended the decades-long squabbles that haemorrhaged the life-blood from the old Republic; he had brought Rome peace. Nero and Drusus knew things about Caesar from their tutors, of course, and took delight in recalling his ignominious end. Their mother moved on to more exalted ground – the boys’ maternal great-grandfather, the Divine Augustus, who saved Rome from civil war following Caesar’s murder, surviving many treacheries before ending the flawed Republic forever. Although he’d been reluctant to embrace the title in public, Augustus was proclaimed Rome’s first Emperor, lifting the Julian House to greatness above all others. Then Agrippina spoke of Agrippa, her own late father, who had been pivotal at Actium and was the Divine Augustus’s right hand man. In peacetime he had also been the architect of Imperial Rome, building roads, aqueducts, theatres and baths.

  Within the door’s shadows, the hidden children enjoyed the tales. Little Boots, at least, knew many of the stories well, just like Nero and Drusus, but he always loved the retelling. Then Agrippina entered dangerous ground.

  She spoke of how all three great and recent ancestors had been given respective Triumphs in their honour by a loving and grateful Rome. But in their love from the people, none had come near to that shown to Germanicus today.

  ‘The Divine Augustus was the greatest man to ever walk in Rome,’ Agrippina told her boys, ‘and Germanicus will be a man even greater again; it is his destiny. It is what he was born for.’

  Antonia glanced quickly up the corridor. Was anyone approaching? Was there anyone near the room to overhear?

  Agrippina took each of her boys’ hands – Nero’s first, looking deep into his believing eyes, then Drusus, who felt a little pang to have been second.

  ‘You, my sons, are destined to be even greater and greater still,’ she told them. ‘Your father will set the mark and you will surpass it. Do you know why?’

  The two boys, scarcely breathing, did not.

  ‘Because you are the great-grandsons of the Divine Augustus, and he is a god. Even your father cannot claim this blood connection; it is stronger than any line of adoption. It is more powerful than your father’s own link.’ She paused for a moment. ‘It is more powerful than the First Citizen’s.’

  Antonia clapped a hand to her mouth. Placing anyone in a comparison more favourable than the Emperor was madness. Telling children that Tiberius was destined for no greatness of his own was insanity. Their eyes huge with the revelation, Nero and Drusus were lost for words.

  Their mother smiled at how overwhelmed they were, her heart full. ‘The Triumph today was as much for you as it was for your father,’ she said. ‘Your greatness was also acknowledged. You saw the proof in the faces of Rome. They love you. Never forget it.’ She whispered close to their bent heads, her words like an oracle’s: ‘You were born to rule Rome.’

  Antonia didn’t hear the final sentence but the wonder in the faces of the brothers told her what had been said. Antonia remembered too late that Little Boots and Nilla were crouching on the floor with her.

  Little Boots had been profoundly affected, but in a different way to Drusus and Nero. ‘Where is my part?’ he asked.

  Antonia felt a panic, seeing poison taking root in their young minds. ‘Children, you must go back to bed now.’

  Little Boots stood without protest, taking Nilla by the hand.

  ‘Thank you, Grandmother, we will find our own way,’ he said coolly. In that instant Antonia saw that he was no longer Cupid.

  ‘Wait for me,’ she implored them. She didn’t feel supple at all now as she struggled to her feet. ‘Let me tell you something too, children – it’s very important.’

  But they didn’t wait, vanishing in the gloom, with the sound of their little feet running up the hall. They had already heard everything of importance that there was.

  The First Citizen had not yet appeared at the banquet. Dining had been underway since sunset, but the excuse given was that he was receiving a deputation from the nobility of Commagene. This was partly true. The deputation had been granted a long audience with their Emperor, who remained hidden throughout behind a screen. Tiberius conversed with them while secretly receiving treatment in the hands of his physician, Charicles.

  This was a bizarre piece of theatre from the Commagenians’ point of view, but no more bizarre, in their minds, than anything else they’d seen today. Tiberius had heard them gossiping when they were ushered into the apparently empty reception hall. They had pondered on the madman who had run at the First Citizen at the height of the Triumph. Had he been trying to kill Tiberius? The Commagenians had decided not – everyone was far too calm about it.

  Tiberius congratulated himself on his composure, for he knew the truth. The madman had indeed intended to kill him, and had it not been for Sejanus, he would surely have succeeded.

  The assassin’s dagger had pierced Tiberius’s abdomen just below his ribs, not enough to seriously wound him but enough to draw blood – rivers of it. A pool had collected at his feet as he had gone through the motions on the Senate House steps. But his toga had stayed white.

  The mob hadn’t guessed, nor had the subsequent deputation.

  Now Tiberius had been stitched and swathed, Charicles and the Commagenians departed, to be replaced by Thrasyllus, the First Citizen’s astrologer. He was the only soothsayer left in Italy – all others had been banished so that the First Citizen alone could know the future.

  Tiberius had taken quite a shine to the man inexplicably imprisoned for so long by Octavian, but he guarded Thrasyllus jealously from others. Few in Oxheads knew who or what he was; although Livia herself had caught glimpses of the strange bearded man emerging from Tiberius’s ap
artments, she had failed to recognise in him the little boy she had once so keenly sought.

  Yet I, her devoted Iphicles, had not been so blind; but I’d kept my startled recognition of Thrasyllus wholly to myself. My reasons for this, which amounted to far more than wilful secret-keeping, I promise you I will fully detail in time.

  ‘I could’ve done with some warning today,’ Tiberius said to Thrasyllus dryly.

  ‘The gods have denied me insight into today’s horrors,’ Thrasyllus replied. His health was very weak from his years of imprisonment. ‘Either before or after the event, I remain largely in the dark, Caesar.’

  ‘I should have you thrown down the Gemonian Stairs.’ Tiberius was in a mood to offend, given the circumstances. ‘What a poor relationship you have with the gods, Thrasyllus. A deflowered Vestal could gain a better reception from them.’

  ‘You miss my meaning, Caesar. I said I remain largely in the dark – largely, but not entirely.’

  Tiberius perked up. ‘What have you seen?’

  ‘Four bulls were sacrificed at the Temple of Capitoline Jupiter today by the pontifex maximus.’

  ‘I’m aware of that; they were very expensive.’

  ‘The augures said the auspices for Rome were very fine.’

  ‘Yes, fine for Rome, Rome endures; the First Citizen, on the other hand, is lucky to live.’

  ‘I stole a look at the bulls’ entrails before the priests presented them to the fire,’ said Thrasyllus.

  ‘What could you possibly read that the others couldn’t?’

  ‘I didn’t read them for Rome – I read them for Caesar.’

  Tiberius went very still. ‘There’s a difference?’

  ‘As Caesar’s personal haruspex, there most certainly is to me.’

  ‘Speak now …’

  The soothsayer knew what he’d seen was frightening. ‘The madman assassin was a set-up, someone else’s minion.’