‘You make fun of me too?’
‘I’m laughing because I’m alive, not dead, Lady – and who says I meant to kill myself?’
‘What else were you doing? I told you I would have protected you. Nero and Drusus are liars.’
‘And they’re nearly men too and their word would have silenced your squeaks in an eye-blink.’
This elicited more rage from Nilla. ‘You’re my slave most of all. How dare you throw yourself in the waves. You’re my property. You don’t have control of yourself – I do!’
He wouldn’t stop his giggles now, treading water easily. ‘Why did you jump in after me?’
‘Because … because you had to be punished. You’re a bad slave.’ She couldn’t put the truth of it into words, because she barely knew it herself.
‘Who taught you to walk in water?’
And then Nilla felt a sudden fear that she would drown. She had brought death upon herself for a mere slave. But she was mirroring Burrus’s strokes even though she had never swum in sea water in her life.
Burrus saw this and forgot his own fear. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m not drowning today, Lady. Drowning is for cowards.’
‘What makes you so sure you won’t drown …?’
‘Because I have the blood of the Divine in my veins, just like you.’
The utter sacrilege of his statement brought the rage back again. ‘What a lie! What a disgusting lie!’
‘Who says it is?’
‘You don’t have my great-grandfather’s blood in you! You’re a slave.’
‘Maybe I’m only disguised as a slave?’
‘You’re a lying boy, and when I tell Father about it you’ll learn never to lie to me again.’
‘I have the blood of the Divine inside me, pumping away, and there’s nothing you or your father can do about it,’ Burrus declared.
She was wholly appalled – and then tearful. She knew she was lost to her father forever now.
‘I am sorry, Lady, of course I lie,’ said Burrus, watching her carefully.
‘You do.’
She said nothing more and continued mirroring his strokes, using this as a reason to gaze at Burrus. He was strong and confident in the waves. She could not disgrace her family by giving in to weakness in the face of this.
Then she couldn’t help herself. ‘How can you have Augustus’s blood then?’
She had half-believed him. His slave’s ability to live always in the present made him hopeful that he wouldn’t drown today – but deep in his heart he knew that he would. So he decided to tell Nilla what he had vowed he would never tell anyone. ‘The Divine Augustus was my grandfather.’
‘How can you say such lies to me? Only the children of Agrippina are those left alive from Augustus’s line. There aren’t any others.’
‘There is one other. The son of Clemens. Me.’
She tried to place this name, stupefied.
‘My father was sired by Augustus upon his concubine. My father is dead now. Tiberius killed him as a traitor.’
A wave washed over them that was greater than the swell they’d been managing to keep afloat in. Both were plunged under the water – and emerged distressed and spluttering when it passed. But unconscious of his aim, Nilla was determined to expose Burrus as a liar.
‘So your father was a lying slave too?’
‘By Rome’s rules he was a slave, but not by his merit. And he wasn’t a lying one either. He deserved a higher place and he fought to win it.’
‘How could he have hoped to do that?’
‘Don’t you know of your Uncle Postumus?’
She had never heard of such an uncle.
‘Your mother’s brother.’
‘My mother’s brothers were Gaius and Lucius. One died from a fall from a horse. The other …’ She stopped, reminded of the nearness of death.
‘There was also another brother, Postumus. He went mad. Or that’s what they said happened. He was exiled to an island.’
This gave Nilla pause. She knew that island prisons had been the fates of others too.
‘My father, Clemens, was his loyal slave. He wanted to follow his master into exile, but he was forbidden. Instead he served Augustus – but he didn’t even know that Augustus was his father. Then one day Augustus told Clemens, and gave him a secret mission. He was to go to the island and liberate Postumus without anyone knowing. But then Augustus died.’
Nilla was shocked. ‘Is my uncle still on the island?’
‘No,’ said Burrus, pleased that he was holding her attention. ‘Clemens still went on the mission. But when he got to the island he learned that a Praetorian had arrived hours before. This guard had told Postumus that he had been granted his freedom in honour of Tiberius becoming First Citizen. Clemens joined his master for a triumphant journey home. But when the boat had left the island’s shore the Praetorian drew his sword. Postumus had not been recalled by Tiberius at all – he had been sentenced to death.’
Burrus’s version of the story was greatly embroidered of course, and quite inaccurate, having been gleaned from his mother’s mutterings while she slept, but Nilla was so held that she stayed afloat without even thinking of it.
‘Although the Praetorian was armed, it was two men against one and neither Postumus nor my father was willing to give up their lives to such a fithy dog. So they flung themselves at the guard before he could fell them, and together they fought him.’
Nilla was incredulous. ‘But he had a sword?’
‘My father was a big man, very strong,’ said Burrus, ‘as I will be one day too. He and Postumus were like brothers in their size and looks. They were a match for the pig Praetorian.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Success. But tragedy. The guard was slashing and stabbing and the two men ducked and leapt from his blade. Then Postumus kicked the guard in his gut and the stupid oaf dropped his sword. My father snatched it up and with one thrust he cut off the Praetorian’s head and kicked it into the sea.’
This was another shock for Nilla. ‘A slave killing a free man! He should have been killed for that himself.’
‘He was a slave by Rome’s rules, but not by birth,’ Burrus reminded her.
She couldn’t agree with this, but still had to know. ‘What was the tragedy?’
‘My father turned around from dispatching the guard – and saw that one of the pig’s sword-strokes had wounded Postumus. In the heat of the fight he hadn’t noticed. Postumus died in my father’s arms as a brother, not a master.’
‘That’s so sad,’ said Nilla. But she didn’t wholly mean it.
Burrus made no comment.
‘What happened then?’
She hadn’t seen it yet but Burrus had. In the distance was a shoreline. If they held their strength and kept their heads they could make it there.
‘I will tell you another day,’ he said.
‘What? Why? Tell me now.’
‘No.’
Nilla was furious and Burrus just made fun of her. ‘Out here in the sea we’re two cousins together,’ he said, ‘neither mistress nor slave.’
‘You’re not my cousin!’
‘What else am I then? I’ve got the blood of the Divine.’
Another large wave crashed upon their heads and Nilla vanished from view. Burrus broke to the surface. ‘Lady …’
She didn’t reappear in the wake and Burrus dived under the brine. He held the air as long as he could, blind and useless, but couldn’t find a trace of her. He resurfaced to fill his lungs and then ducked beneath the water again, thrashing his arms and legs in the hope he might find her by touch.
He resurfaced to find her gasping for breath like he was. ‘Lady!’
She had seen the shoreline but her fear had returned. ‘We’ll never make it that far.’
‘Yes, we will.’
‘We’ll drown.’
‘You’ll drown maybe, but not me. I’ve got the blood of the Divine.’
‘So hav
e I!’
‘How can you have it, shaking like a chicken and saying you’ll drown? No descendent of Augustus would be acting like you.’
‘How dare you call me a chicken!’ Nilla screamed.
The shore was closer than when he’d first sighted it, Burrus was certain. ‘Chicken. Chicken.’
‘I’ll have you flogged, Burrus. Then flayed.’
He made a show of forging ahead towards the horizon. ‘Sorry, but that’s what I’ll be doing to you for your cowardice.’
This enraged her most of all and she tried to slap him as she pursued him – which made him laugh so much that he swallowed a big mouthful. His coughing and spluttering made Nilla laugh in turn. ‘Look what you made me do,’ he said. ‘Do you want me to drown?’
‘Yes – for all your outrages to me.’
‘Drown me, then, but you’ll have to catch me first.’
The pain I felt was as great as the pain I had known at my sacrifice. But that agony when I hacked off my maleness brought me back to my domina’s love – and gave me the path to divinity, too. The pain of being stabbed in the back by a short-bladed knife, which Plancina then viciously twisted, was an agony for which there was no hope of transcendence. Or so I believed.
I was gagged, bound and imprisoned in a tiny room. There was no light, no air, and my life blood pooled on the cold, stone floor beneath me. My immortality ebbed away, and with it my perpetual youth. I was old and dying.
Then Little Boots told me otherwise.
The boy was with me, dressing my wounds, giving me water. I tried to stand but could not. ‘I have to go,’ I told him. ‘They’re going to murder someone.’
Little Boots calmed me. ‘I know,’ he said.
I saw then he was a saviour. ‘You can stop them,’ I whispered. ‘For your great-grandmother’s sake – for Livia – you can stop them in their plans.’ In my delirium I became conspiratorial. ‘She’s not ordered it, you see. It’s not within her prophecy.’
‘But it’s within mine,’ said Little Boots.
The shock of this statement passed when I remembered what I had heard from the mouth of Thrasyllus – not from the first time I encountered the haruspex, so long ago in the cave, but many years later, when Little Boots, Burrus and Nilla had been witness to his channel to the gods. Now I knew for certain that Livia had been wrong about the father’s crown and the second king. She’d guessed the wrong father and that had changed everything. But now I saw truly.
‘Will you save him?’ I pleaded to the gentle smile of the boy.
‘No,’ said Little Boots. ‘I’ll only save you …’
If this old bitch was the best available, the cook reckoned the Legate’s steward had lost his touch at the slave market. The crone was bald, midget, highly displeasing to the eye, and she stank.
‘Didn’t someone throw a bucket of water at you before they shoved you onto the auction block?’ the cook asked her.
The crone smiled toothlessly, for all the world an imbecile.
‘Strip her off,’ the cook told his young vulgarius slave, ‘then dunk her in the horse trough. She’s not serving a banquet with that pong on her.’
With obvious reluctance, the young vulgarius did as told, discovering the stench to be far worse once the crone was exposed.
The cook gagged, fanning himself. ‘What a disgusting specimen. Piso deserves his money back.’
The young slave pushed the crone into the trough and threw in a sponge for washing horses.
‘Scrub it all, woman. And if Timon here can still smell the stink of you, you’ll be given to the latrines and not the kitchens. Get me?’ Departing, he said to the young vulgarius, ‘Make sure she does her arse and her cunt. They’ll both be so blocked up she’ll need a broomstick to get the sponge inside.
Staring at the spectacle of the crone’s scrubbing efforts for some minutes, Timon pointed at her sex. ‘Funny how you’re bald as a ball at one end but bushy as a stoat down the other.’
The crone thought it was funny too and cackled heartily. Timon picked up the stables broom and pointed the stick end at her with a smirk. ‘You heard the boss. He wants it cleaner that a newborn bub’s.’
At the jab of the stick the crone let out a shriek that set the horses off in their stalls. It went on without a change of pitch or another drawn breath, like her lungs were the north wind itself.
‘Stop it, woman! Stop it!’
But she didn’t.
Timon couldn’t stand it and fled to the kitchens, tossing the broom aside. ‘Let it stink then, if that’s what you want! You’ll be the one eating shit for supper in the latrines.’
Left alone, Martina stopped her din immediately. Dipping her fingers in the trough water she slipped them inside her vagina, scooped around for a moment, and then retrieved a tiny glass vial. It was still very much intact and not even moist. The success of this poison depended on its temperature never being allowed to cool below a person’s body warmth. Keenly looking forward to whatever role would be given to her as a banquet slave, Martina popped the vial into her mouth and under her tongue.
*
Through Plancina’s drugged eyes, King Aretas of the Nabataeans was not an Eastern monarch at all but a copious streak of ejaculate. A big spurt of foreign seed – she was disgusted. She waited for someone of masculine authority to point out this astonishing insult to Rome, but no male commented. She was astounded they couldn’t see it. Plancina looked to her husband, but he was affronted for another reason – refusing the couch that was being offered to him for the banquet as effeminate. Unmoved in his own couch, Germanicus was focused on the cum king at least, and he was smiling and nodding in approval. Why wasn’t he offended either? Plancina craned her gaze so that Germanicus couldn’t possibly ignore her expression of stark dismay – but she found instead that the upturned corners of his lush, full mouth gave her a surge of lust. Caring nothing for the state occasion now, Plancina arose from her couch with the intention of popping her left breast between Germanicus’s lips. She anticipated how nice it would be to suckle him. But Piso interrupted her chain of thought:
‘You look very odd, my dear. Are you feeling unwell?’
Quite the opposite, Plancina felt wildly exultant, although she was sweating so much that her soles slid for grip in her sandals.
A slave was by her side. ‘Are you rejecting your couch too, Lady?’
‘Not at all, I wish Germanicus to suck my breasts on it. Bring me honey. And perhaps some cheese.’
That the slave gave no reaction and continued smiling pleasantly made Plancina realise that she hadn’t even voiced those words. She’d said them only in her mind. She made an effort to force her leaden tongue into action when King Aretas suddenly placed her in his eyeline.
‘And the very greatest praise of all does Parthia heap on Rome for her wise choice of Artaxias, son of the late King Polemo of Pontus, as the new King of Armenia,’ he cried. ‘Praise to Rome!’
The room rang with applause that shanked her in the ears like hog skewers. Plancina reeled on her feet, striking her couch, just as Piso was being settled in a chair. He sprang to her aid but, in her eyes, he was not her husband but another streak of ejaculate. Fear and disgust turned her lips to stone, and not one of Piso’s questions made sense, even if she could have answered him.
After an interval that seemed like hours Plancina found herself smiling happily from her couch again, a cup of ewe’s milk in her hand, and the whole room around her in a state of suspense. With surprise she learned that it was nothing to with her. King Aretas was presenting Germanicus with a gaudy golden crown. Germanicus was appreciative and, what’s more, was wearing it. Then Agrippina was given a crown, a fraction smaller, but even gaudier still.
The sight of the already gilded couple now glittering like Persian prostitutes made Plancina grin – until a crown was placed on Piso’s head too. Plancina’s relief was profound. Her husband’s crown was so much more Roman – stylishly simple and plain, far better suited to pa
trician tastes. And then, feeling great joy, Plancina herself was crowned – it was a tiny piece of adornment; a golden headband. She basked in the gaze of the room, nodding and blinking, wishing she could will her breasts free so that more crowns might be hung on them too, each one tasteful and austere, approved by the Ways of the Fathers.
Piso snatched the gold from her head and she heard his words to Aretas, loud and strident, like a rush of cold air down her windpipe. ‘How dare you crown your hosts? Has no-one told you what an insult it is to call a Roman king?’
Piso threw his wife’s crown with his own to the floor and the Parthian entourage flinched as one. With a deep shock that abruptly sobered her, Plancina saw that her husband was actually jealous of the vulgar thing given to Germanicus.
‘That Ambassador Germanicus should be singled out by Parthia with a crown befitting the Ptolemys speaks of insult beyond comprehension,’ Piso railed. ‘Do you really call Germanicus our king, you Parthians? Is he our tyrant? Our monster? Rome must remind Parthia that our people treasure their electoral powers. Romans elect their rulers. Hail the Senate of Rome!’
The diverting pleasures and perversities of Martina’s drugs flushed themselves from Plancina’s mind like sewer water. She was abruptly herself again and the terror of her task was stark and real and now. She saw Little Boots sitting in a chair near his father. He was smiling at Plancina. He was nodding at her.
Germanicus said nothing as Piso expounded to the Parthians on the Ways of the Fathers, and his loathing of soft, un-Roman living. Instead he gazed to the ceiling, with no attention at all on his food-taster, who sampled a tray of mushrooms, wordlessly pronounced them clean and then proffered them to Germanicus to eat. The vulgarly crowned Roman saw nothing of the bald crone’s obsequiousness, her craven bow and her retreating steps.
But Plancina saw it all. And she saw her fate, should accusations be thrown without the shield of all-powerful protectors.
For this final murder she was truly alone. No-one had promised to save her and no-one would.
King Aretas’s troupe of Parthian acrobats climbed, tumbled, climbed again and leapt spectacularly from each other’s shoulders to the point where their bones broke from the strain. They continued at spear-point, their physical destruction irrelevant. Behind the scenes, animal dealers sent sprinting messengers to friends, rivals and even hated enemies in a search for newly caught beasts – anything with claws, horns or teeth – the price was of no concern. The games program was being improvised on the run.
Empress Of Rome 1: Den Of Wolves Page 51