Nest of vipers eor-2

by Luke Devenish

  'A temptation for some,' said Livilla, nodding affectionately at him and, perhaps, Lygdus half-sensed, a little sadly. He thought for a moment that he'd given her confirmation of something she hadn't even asked.

  'Have I done something wrong?' he asked, trembling.

  'If what must happen today does not happen, then I'm quite sure you will do wrong in time,' Livilla said. 'But with today will come a transformation — and through that, release. You will never be at risk of doing wrong again.'

  'I won't need to be beaten?'

  Livilla shook her head, and the strand of dark hair fell from her pins once more. She was so beautiful to him; so dark and alluring. 'You won't be punished in any way,' she said. 'You will be perfect — our perfect slave.'

  'That's what I want to be,' he said, staring into her nightblack Claudian eyes — the eyes that she shared with her grandmother Livia. 'That's all I could ever want, domina,' he whispered.

  Livilla clicked her fingers and two male slaves seized Lygdus from either side. He struggled but Livilla's tone was soothing again. 'No one's going to hurt you, Lygdus. In your transformation you'll feel no pain at all.'

  She clicked her fingers a second time and the slaves forced him to the ground. He tried to crouch on his knees but they kicked his legs out from under him so that he lay flat upon his back on the cold earth. The ground was spongy and moist. He looked up and saw the cobwebs and dust that clung to the rafters, and he wondered how many other lambs had shared this view. That was what she had called him — her little lamb.

  'Say a prayer…' His domina 's voice floated to Lygdus from somewhere far away.

  'To which god?' he whispered.

  He heard her footsteps echo on the paving stones outside as she left the pen and made her way towards the garden and the house beyond. He tried to raise his head to glimpse her retreating form. ' Domina.. To which god, domina?'

  The grinning steward's face was like a death mask. 'Cybele,' Pelops smirked. 'She'll have a place in her heart for you, son.'

  Two more slaves came forward and took Lygdus's ankles, forcing his legs apart. A sudden fear coursed through him as he tried to struggle.

  'Keeping still ensures that nothing goes that needn't,' Pelops said. One of the slaves reached up and snatched at Lygdus's loincloth, pulling it away and exposing him. He was erect; they all saw it — the effect of his domina whispering in his ear. 'Keep still,' Pelops ordered.

  Lygdus now saw what Pelops had kept hidden within his hands. It was a razor. He went to scream but a hand clapped hard across his mouth.

  'Don't want the domina hearing this — it upsets her,' said Pelops, unwinding a piece of string.

  Lygdus shrieked into the hands that silenced him. The steward went between his legs and wound the string around his scrotum until his testes glowed purple. Pelops flicked the razor and Lygdus felt a pain that was worse than any he had known. Two crimson streams of blood shot across the earth. All hands released him.

  'My blood!' Lygdus cried. The flow didn't stop, pooling where he lay, soaking into the soil. 'My blood will drain away…'

  'It knows when to stop,' said Pelops. The other slaves filed out of the pen.

  'What if it doesn't?' Lygdus sobbed.

  Pelops shrugged. 'Then you won't be the first.' He joined the slaves outside and Lygdus was left alone.

  What were his domina 's words? Lygdus tried to remember what she had said that had so filled his heart. But they were forgotten now, lost in his pain. All Lygdus could hear was Pelops's voice, like another kiss on the soft flesh beneath his ear: 'You won't be the first.' But this was a lie. Surely no other slave had suffered like this in the name of 'transformation'? Surely no other slave had been sent on this path to 'release'?

  He was the first, the very first. He was the only slave to suffer such a fate in Rome.

  But he was wrong, of course, naive as he was. There was certainly another. Soon, very soon, we would meet.

  The two lost children clambered and leaped and slid among the rocks, hurting themselves in their efforts to impress one another and to seem immune to all that fate had dealt them. They never cried — it was a point of honour. They were cousins in blood, descendants of the Divine Augustus, who would not have cried either, no matter how badly his skinned knees and stubbed toes hurt him. They awoke before dawn and went straight to the most bountiful of their hunting grounds, plucking crustaceans from the little pools, finding pretty shells and time-smoothed stones and tiny jewel-coloured fish.

  The crustaceans were edible, delicious even — they had established this very soon after they had been washed ashore — and when Burrus showed Nilla how to strike a spark from the dry, brittle grass that dotted the dunes, and how to feed the spark with driftwood until the smoke became a blaze, they had the means to eat the crabs and anything else they caught. It became another point of honour for Nilla never to let the fire go out. She woke in the night and tended it, before snuggling against the sleeping Burrus's warm, brown back. When Burrus thought there might be oysters and clams beneath the waves, Nilla joined him in practising at holding her breath. When each felt they could hold it far longer than they had ever thought possible, they flung themselves into the waves, clutching stones for weight, and succeeded in dislodging molluscs from the sea bed.

  The children's outer clothes turned to rags, falling from their bodies and lying discarded in the sand. When Burrus lost his loincloth in a dive, he didn't care; his Lady Nilla would have to accustom herself to his nakedness. When he awoke one morning to see that Nilla was naked too, he made no comment on it. They were savages now, he imagined; the niceties of life at Oxheads meant nothing to them, and never would again. He and Nilla were like man and wife. If Burrus felt a growing sexual desire for her, he didn't understand the impulse for what it was; he was still too young, and so was she. To Burrus, it was protectiveness he felt, nothing more. And yet he loved her with all his being.

  They were happy. They hunted for food for hours on end, and when they caught it they ate it. With bellies full, they sat in the shallows, talking, laughing and inventing tales of heroism in which they were the players. When night came, they slept near the fire. At first they kept a distance between themselves — they were mistress and slave, after all — but when the nights grew colder necessity forced Burrus to hug his Lady tightly to him to stop the chattering of her teeth. She complained at first but he insisted. He would not let her suffer. Soon hugging each other was an unconscious thing, as unplanned as thinking or breathing.

  Nilla gave Burrus his freedom. She did so spontaneously; he hadn't hinted that it was his heart's greatest desire. She didn't know the manumission ceremony and nor did he, but they had heard that a statement needed to be repeated three times, so Nilla said, 'I set you free, I set you free, I set you free.'

  They were equal now. Nilla shyly told him that she had fallen in love with him. It had happened, she said, on their arduous swim, but in her heart she knew it was before. They had been on board a ship that was taking them to her parents in Antioch. But when Burrus had been beaten by Nilla's two bullying brothers, he had thrown himself into the sea, and Nilla had followed him, without a thought of doing otherwise. To have done such a thing for one as lowly as a slave meant she must have loved him truly and not thought of him as lowly at all. Then Burrus had saved her. She had copied his swimming strokes and he had kept her from the waves. Now Nilla loved him as her mother loved her father, she told him.

  But Burrus told Nilla she was only a girl — that she was too young for love. Nilla sulked at that, but later Burrus confessed to his Lady that of course he loved her too. He had loved her since she was born and he would love her until he died. They kissed. It was funny and not unpleasant, but they didn't kiss again. Each sensed that this was something for which they weren't quite ready.

  'Will we ever be found?' Nilla wondered.

  Burrus said yes, but his heart told him no. They had seen no ships, no men and no smoke, except for that from their fire. This
shore was a lost place, forgotten or unknown.

  'Are we still within the Empire?'

  Burrus thought it likely that they weren't.

  Days became weeks and then something more, something no longer measured with time. Their skin turned pink and then red and then brown. Nilla's long, fair hair went gold in the sun — a halo of fire in the breeze. Burrus's thick, dark locks went lighter too, growing in curls that fell across his eyes. Their bodies became hard; they were strong now, agile. The last of their softness was swept away.

  Their only problem was water.

  When it rained, they tried to drink as much as they could, running around with their mouths wide open, catching the raindrops in their cupped hands. Sometimes water gathered in puddles in the land behind the dunes, but it quickly drained away and days went by before it rained again. There were cacti in the dunes. Burrus was the first to try one and he badly pricked his tongue. But the taste was sweet and water dripped from the flesh. With care, this sustained them for a time, but Burrus knew it wasn't enough.

  'We need to find the mouth of a stream,' he said, 'some place where water comes down from the hills.'

  Nilla agreed, looking up and down the rocky beach. 'Which way should we go to find one?'

  Burrus wanted her to think that he knew. 'East,' he said, confidently. 'Towards the morning sun.'

  They took nothing with them. Their rags were long lost and when they were hungry they looked for cacti and crabs. The walk was hard, though the weather was consistent. The days were warm but the nights brought a chill. One night they lost control of the fire they'd started and a blaze swept through the scrub. Burrus and Nilla clapped and cheered at the thrill of destruction. When they awoke again in the dawn, they saw what the fire had left them. A litter of rabbit kittens, caught in the scrub blaze, was waiting as a cooked breakfast. Burrus made a prayer to Vulcan. As they gnawed upon the carcasses, they sensed movement in the bushes behind them.

  It was a man holding a sword.

  Although the sun was bright and warm upon her face, Apicata could see nothing of it. Her eyes were open and aimed at the smiling wedding guests, who nodded and bobbed to her in the gardens all around, but she could not see the expressions upon their faces. An unknown illness had claimed her vision, although her appearance betrayed little sign of it. To the world she still seemed sighted, at least until she was spoken to directly, when her unfocused gaze betrayed her. But the malady had not been wholly cruel. It had left a gift in place of what was stolen. Apicata's ears heard more than the keenest of the palace dogs.

  ' Veiovis…'

  She knew there was a conversation taking place that was hushed and urgent, somewhere to her right.

  ' Veiovis…'

  Apicata shifted on her stone bench while she waited for the doors to the banquet hall to open. She hoped the slaves were running late; she didn't want to go inside until she had determined who this woman was, who was so engaged in this halting, laboured discussion. It was a conversation that would see the woman thrown from the Tarpeian Rock if other people learned of it.

  ' So long asleep…'

  Apicata sensed the presence of a child nearby and took her ears away from the conversation for a moment. 'Hello, little flower,' she said. 'We've met before but I'm very bad with names.'

  The child was startled at being spoken to. 'I'm Lepida,' she whispered.

  'Lepida, of course you are, and how pretty you look today.'

  The child was pleased by the compliment and yet confused by it. This mysterious woman wasn't even looking at her.

  Apicata beckoned Lepida to move closer. 'Do you remember who I am?'

  Lepida knew she had never met this woman before, yet she had the presence of mind to offer an answer. 'You are the mother of the bride.'

  'Yes, I am,' said Apicata. 'My daughter is marrying into the family of the Emperor. That is why we're all here.'

  Lepida didn't need this to be explained to her. 'I love weddings. You must be very happy.'

  Apicata nodded. 'I am also the wife of Praetorian Prefect Sejanus. My husband has a very special job. He exposes traitors for the Emperor.'

  Without understanding why, the child felt fear.

  'You mustn't tremble,' Apicata said. 'You are an innocent child. You know nothing of such things.'

  Lepida was silent, staring into the eyes of this woman who seemed to see her and yet did not.

  'Do you notice, over there,' Apicata whispered, 'just a little distance away in that quiet corner of the garden, there is a woman talking to a very strange man. Do you see them?'

  Lepida saw.

  'Who is the lady?'

  Lepida bit her lip.

  'Who is the lady?'

  The child said nothing.

  Apicata placed her fingers on Lepida's bare arm. Despite the warmth of the spring sun, her fingers were cold. 'Who is the lady, child? You know her, don't you?'

  'She is Aemilia, my mother…' The girl pulled her arm away. 'She isn't a traitor. She has done nothing wrong.'

  'Of course she hasn't,' said Apicata. 'I am merely asking, that's all. I recognised her but couldn't place her.'

  'You want people to think you can see them, but you can't. You can't see anything.' Lepida ran away from Apicata's reach.

  'It's true, child,' Apicata whispered after her, amused. 'But I can hear like the wolves themselves.'

  She turned her head to the hushed conversation again, to the treasonous, reckless words between the child's noble mother, Aemilia of the Aemilii, and Thrasyllus, the last soothsayer in Rome. The old and broken man was barely lucid, slumped in the dirt while the embarrassed guests ignored him as they would an epileptic. Apicata couldn't imagine why the Emperor Tiberius had permitted his seer to attend the wedding — if he was even aware he had. Perhaps the old man had wandered in, having escaped from wherever it was that Tiberius kept him locked away? No one but Apicata knew who the soothsayer actually was, but clearly Aemilia had chanced an accurate guess.

  Although the noble mother was making it seem to those who might be watching her that she wasn't talking to this soiled, unpleasant man, to Apicata, who could only listen, it was obvious what Aemilia was doing. The noble woman sought answers about the future — answers about her children, about her house. The words the soothsayer was saying meant nothing to Apicata, but it hardly mattered. In daring to ask at all, Aemilia had placed the point of Apicata's sword neatly at her own ribs. Apicata would bide her time before letting the woman know of it.

  The Praetorian Prefect's blind wife believed no one else witnessed this scene, but she was wrong. I, Iphicles, the lowly slave, saw it too, from where I was shepherding my young dominus, Little Boots, towards the banquet. The soothsayer spoke as if from a thousand miles away: ' The third is hooked by a harpy's look; the rarest of all birds …'

  His words meant nothing to me either, but I took note of them all the same.

  The doors to the banquet hall opened and the dining slaves announced the commencement of the wedding feast. Apicata arose and waited for someone to guide her in. As she stood there, smiling pleasantly, she wished she could reassure the girl Lepida that whatever she might fear, her mother would not be exposed as a traitor. It would be a needless waste. Apicata had already gathered several intriguing truths about the noble Aemilia, just as she had about so many highborn women in Rome. This new transgression now made the matron among the most useful people there were.

  Apicata had no use for Aemilia just yet, but would in time. Her only disappointment was that she would never see the look on the patrician woman's face when the nature of this use was revealed to her.

  When the moment came, Apicata would have to imagine it. Blindness had taught her that imagined moments were far often more delightful than reality anyway.

  Nilla and Burrus froze with the rabbit bones still in their mouths. In the glare of the dawn they saw that the man's teeth were white — he was smiling at them. He tucked his sword inside his belt and raised his hand in a wave. Only the
n did the children remember their nakedness, but they had nothing to cover themselves with. The man came nearer, as huge as a mountain, with shoulders as wide as a giant's. His hair was gold, just like Nilla's, and his brown, freckled skin was laced with dozens of scars. He squatted on the sand beside them.

  'Are you a gladiator?' Burrus asked him.

  The man laughed. 'How did you guess that, boy?'

  Burrus pointed at the scars.

  'My fighting days are behind me now,' he sighed. 'I've got too old.'

  'How old are you?' Nilla asked.

  'Thirty years. I'm the oldest gladiator there is, I think.'

  'You must have won many fights,' Burrus marvelled.

  'I did.' He held out his hand. 'My name is Flamma.'

  Burrus accepted the handshake as a newly made freedman, not a slave. 'I am Burrus. And this is the Lady — '

  But Nilla stopped him from telling the gladiator her full patrician name. 'I'm just Nilla,' she said. 'We're looking for water.'

  'Ah,' said Flamma. 'I can show you where to find some then. There's a stream mouth just beyond the point.'

  Burrus grinned at Nilla. 'See? We were right to head east.'

  She agreed. 'Would you like some rabbit?' she asked Flamma.

  The gladiator's eyes were at the horizon.

  'Would you?'

  He flicked his eyes to her. 'You're very kind.' Nilla handed him one of the charred rabbit kittens and he stuffed it in his mouth. 'Let's eat on the way to the stream,' he suggested, chewing.

  Burrus and Nilla looked surreptitiously at one another. 'Are you our friend, Flamma?' Nilla asked.

  Something caught in his throat, but he swallowed it along with the rabbit. 'I'd be honoured to be your friend,' he said. He stood, towering above them. 'Come on. I'll show you where there's good water to drink.'

  The children rose, and when Flamma held out his huge hands to them it seemed only natural and right, as his new friends, to fall in on either side of him and place their own hands in his.

  'Do you get lonely out here?' Flamma asked them.

  They'd never even thought of it. 'We have each other,' said Nilla. Then, giggling, she added, 'We're in love.'