Nest of vipers eor-2

by Luke Devenish

  I sensed the violent buckling of the earth again but managed to stay upright. 'I feel… better,' I lied, closing my eyes against the movement in an effort to keep from being ill. When I opened them again, I saw the pallor that had suddenly flooded Lena's face. 'It's all right,' I said. 'I won't vomit on you.'

  'The ground — ' said Lena. Around her, the girls began to scream.

  'What's wrong now?' I said.

  'The ground,' said Lena again, pointing at the fissure that had opened in the earth and was now streaking towards the villa like a lightning bolt from Jove. 'Look at the ground!'

  My domina endured it.

  The long, slow barge up the Tiber she endured, all the way unable to swat the flies and mosquitoes that bit at her face as she sat unattended in her throne, forgotten by the eunuch in his happiness at being free of me. She endured the maddening itch, unable to lift her hands to scratch or signal for her great-grandson Nero to notice her and respond.

  The indignity of her arrival at Fidenae she endured when the litter-bearers showed a lack of care in lifting her throne from the barge, letting her jerk and jolt and suffer her diadem falling across her eyes, all the while unable to steady herself, unable to right herself in any way.

  The sight of the amphitheatre she endured, wholly made of wood and left unpainted in the haste to have the thing upright in time for the games. She endured its raw, unfinished ugliness and the nasty stink of its sap. She endured the stale, unhealthy air — the amphitheatre stood in an ill-drained swamp. She endured her head being struck upon a crossbeam when her throne was carried up the narrow stairs. She endured the cries of dismay when people saw the blood the blow had drawn. She endured the eunuch's clumsy hands as he smeared the blood from her brow with the hem of her very own stola.

  Her sodomite great-grandson she endured, while he looked genuinely surprised, then delighted and then moved by the cries of the sixty thousand spectators crammed into every tier of the amphitheatre, its structure groaning with the weight of them. She endured the shame of even having such a great-grandson, aware but quite unable to denounce him for his trysts with buggers. She endured the eunuch's starry-eyed staring at Nero, as idolatrous as all the rest, as Nero slowly raised the handkerchief to begin the games.

  My domina was able to endure it all. She had already endured a lifetime's worth of suffering, and this was nothing compared to what had come before. She endured it because she knew there was an end in sight. She could feel it. She could smell it in the air before any of the cheering sixty thousand, none of whom stayed still long enough to feel the ground move beneath them. She endured the laughter of the fools in the Imperial box as they pointed at the rippling earth in the centre of the arena and marvelled at what they thought was the latest stagecraft. She watched as those same fools saw the tiers around them start to buckle and bend and then fall inwards, all the while thinking it was part of the entertainment.

  At last, when the crowd's screams had turned from joy to terror, my domina felt the relief of needing to endure no longer. Her throne pitched forward and she fell with it, smiling, laughing, her eyes closed in pleasure as she plunged through this thing that was an amphitheatre no longer, but only a sea of splinters.

  Our fingers shredded raw, we slaves and whores worked side by side, weeping as we clawed at the rocks and bricks and building rubble, screaming out the names of those who were trapped somewhere within. As each one was found — sometimes alive, but more often not — the joy grew greater inside my heart, although I continued to weep as the others did. The further in we went, the worse the injuries of the victims became — severed limbs and shattered skulls — and the greater the number of dead among them.

  The Cave's collapse had crushed the villa utterly, flattening every pretty room and trapping all those who cavorted inside. My premonition had saved me from the cataclysm; more than that, it had warned me that the thing I had wanted for so long had now been placed in my grasp. The Emperor was dead. The throne belonged to Little Boots.

  True to form, Tiberius had taken his lusts to the farthest corner of the cavern, sheltered from the eyes of all who had not been bought and paid for. He was ashamed of what he did and hid it from everyone except those whose task was to be subjected to him. None saw what he indulged in, none knew of his true obscenity, and now his filthy secrets were crushed along with his bones. It was fitting. But the excitement was too great in me and I found myself laughing at the thought of the broken corpse we'd soon be exposing. I hoped we'd find him taken at the moment of his greatest depravity. I tore at the debris, giggling with glee, smearing tears from my eyes, and the slaves and the whores looked at me like I had become unhinged. It seemed pointless to tell them otherwise.

  'Go and rest,' said Lena. 'Sit down — you're in no state for this.'

  'I want to find the Emperor,' I wailed.

  'He'll be found whether you're here or not. You're too old for this. Go and sit.'

  Happy to spare my bleeding hands, I broke away from the throng of clawing survivors and emerged from the ruins into the sunshine again. I felt the warmth on my face — the warmth of a new day. The old day hadn't actually ended yet, but it seemed done with to me. The despised first king was as flat as a papyrus sheet, and his prophesied heir would soon ascend in his place, with his loyal slave Iphicles offering steadying guidance.

  All the doubts and niggling fears I'd had — some planted by Lygdus and others wholly my own handiwork — seemed to vanish in that moment. I had no idea actually how I might 'steady' Little Boots, with his growing rebelliousness and unpredictable temper, yet it seemed a trifling concern, such was my relief. The pleasure of the sun on my skin and the earth under my bare toes filled me with more elation than I could remember in years. I picked up my heels and began to dance. What did it matter who saw me? I didn't care. I would claim it was a grieving dance to anyone who challenged me. I kicked my feet high, I leaped on the spot. I bounced like a harpastum ball tossed by carefree youths. I began to sing. I had no words to offer, only tunes, a collection of snippets from theatre songs that I hummed and la-la-la — ed in my spiralling, giddy delight.

  The cry of many voices from the ruins of the Cave made me spin around. I heard the voice of Lena, bell-like above them all. 'It's the Prefect!' she cried. I remembered Sejanus — they must have found his corpse. In my joy at the Emperor's demise I had flushed Sejanus's whole existence from my mind. All my covert assistance of his deluded plans, my endless labours and stealthy schemes to aid him in the work that was really my own, had been rendered unnecessary. I felt a moment's sadness. Then I hurried back to the rubble so as not to miss the pleasure of seeing his shattered face.

  Lena saw me running towards her. 'There's nothing more to do, Iphicles.'

  'Terrible. Terrible,' I said. 'They've found Sejanus?'

  'Buried in the rubble. Curled on his hands and knees.'

  'Shameful.' I peered through the rows of diggers, trying to catch a glimpse.

  'There's nothing shameful about it — he's a hero.'

  I still couldn't see. 'Curled on his hands and knees? He must have been cowering like a dog to have died in a pose like that.'

  'But he's not dead.'

  I went white. The Fates chose that moment to part the throng of slaves in front of me. Sejanus had been found in the very position he had adopted just as the cavern roof collapsed. He had not been cowering — far from it. As the boulders had begun to fall, he had flung himself across the Emperor, protecting him. Tiberius came to consciousness before my eyes. He looked up to see Sejanus still above him. Both were unscathed.

  'You saved me…' Tiberius whispered.

  Beside them were the ruins of a meal: a honey-glazed roast goose stuffed with dormice. The stones had flattened it, splitting the goose wide open. A dozen little dormice spewed from its behind.

  'My son,' Tiberius breathed.

  The tears Sejanus wept were like those of a lover.

  The Fates were mocking me — and there was a crueller joke t
o come.

  The first to see who it was that was standing among them in shock and incomprehension at the magnitude of what the gods had caused to happen in Fidenae were the town's slaves. Ever watchful, ever expectant, always anticipating blows and curses, the household slaves of Fidenae saw Tiberius first, as the shattered remains of his retinue carried him through town on the road back to Rome from the ruined Cave.

  Every door in the street had been flung open on its pivot, every atrium within had its artworks and treasures and ancestral masks unguarded, exposed. Every slave in Fidenae had rushed from these doors when the earthquake had happened, and they didn't stop rushing as far along the shattered, twisted, buckled street towards the amphitheatre as they dared, before running back hopelessly, wailing, and then trying again. But they stopped in this tumult, one by one, and their eyes like slits in the dust opened fully in childlike amazement. They knew him from his face. They knew him from his coins. They knew the Emperor as they knew their own hands.

  Tiberius moved among them, and we moved with him too, along the palsied street, the looming catastrophe before us. More people saw him, and yet more still. Masters and mistresses, merchants and legionaries. Those who kissed the lips of their dead loved ones saw him, while they pulled and tore them lifeless from the ruins. Those who fought like wildcats and jackals saw him, brawling over the faces of their still, grey children in the rubble. Even those who had been crushed in the very first moments of the earthquake saw him, their eyes like glass where they lay, seeing nothing and yet seeing all. Those whose suffering was unendurable saw him, as their limbs were hacked free, sawn from their joints by people only wishing to save them. Those who could hear the tormented cries of wives and husbands and parents and lovers saw him without seeing anything more, their loved ones lost and unreachable in the amphitheatre's ruin.

  So many people saw their Emperor: some living, some dead; some mutilated, some whole; some with minds and lives in pieces at their feet; some with courage and nobility that would make their forebears proud. When the amphitheatre of Fidenae — so hastily planned, so cheaply assembled, so inadequately, obscenely ill-designed — when this shoddy place of fun and spectacle and Roman entertainment had been filled beyond capacity by greedy ticket-sellers eager to exploit the stark lack of entertainments in Rome, when this ignoble, shameful, calamitous structure had been struck by the thrashing of the beast that had nearly cost us our own lives back in the Cave, the amphitheatre had fallen inwards on itself.

  Fifty thousand people had been killed.

  As we stood in the middle of the very worst catastrophe that anyone could remember, I saw with even greater shock what further miracle the mocking Fates had shown me. I remembered the portent I had seen so long ago at the slave market: the thrashing of the beast; the broken, bronze hair; the slave in the hands of the carnifex. With her face triumphant, her valour glorious, Livia turned in freeing her great-grandson Nero from the morass. Her youth had returned — her eighty years were no more. She was exquisite, all-conquering. She was a goddess.

  My domina looked to her son Tiberius and smiled at him with an old affection — a mother's love. She looked to Sejanus next, and the smile she gave him spoke of secret things, of a lover's words.

  Then she looked to me.

  'Ah, Iphicles,' Livia said. 'My most loyal of slaves.'

  IS IT WRONG YOU ARE NOT QUEEN?

  The Kalends of October

  AD 26

  One week later: the Senate decrees that no one with capital of less than four hundred thousand sestertii may exhibit a gladiatorial show, and no amphitheatre may be constructed except on ground of proven solidity

  The temple attendants tried to assist my domina into the pit but she waved away their hands.

  'I can get in myself.'

  She stood at the edge and inhaled the rich smell of it. 'So intoxicating,' she murmured. 'It's a scent I can never forget, you know. How wonderful to be back.'

  The temple attendants bowed and Livia raised the hem of her stola and stepped lightly down the steps until she was fully inside. She seated herself upon the little ledge. Already the walls pressed their juice into her clothes. She dabbed at the growing stains with her fingertips, licking them. 'So intoxicating,' she repeated.

  The attendants appeared above with the heavy iron grate, ready to position it over the pit.

  'I don't want that,' said Livia.

  'Augusta?'

  'I don't want it. It's used to stop novitiates from running away — I am not a novitiate, I promise you. I was inducted into the Great Mother's rites many, many years ago.'

  The attendants stood looking at each other.

  'I said remove it.'

  With his eyes closed, slumped against the great alabaster statue of the goddess, the withered husk that was the haruspex Thrasyllus made a gesture with his hand. The attendants saw this and took the grate away. Livia waited inside the hole. After a moment the chief attendant held his face over the side to peer down at her. He was apologetic but felt it was possible the Augusta might have forgotten the other purpose for which the grate was required. She had been so long 'asleep'.

  'It is for the sacrifice to stand on, Augusta,' he reminded her.

  Livia did not need reminding. 'I wish there to be nothing between myself and the beast,' she told him.

  The chief attendant was confused. 'What if the beast falls inside?'

  'Then let it.'

  This was highly dangerous, but the chief attendant could see no other course. Having removed the grate, his assistants waited with the tethered black bull. The beast was docile and silent. The chief signalled for the proceedings to begin.

  Ringed at the dark periphery of the temple's hall, a group of eunuchs began to strike upon the drums they wore on long strings around their necks. Their rhythm built slowly in pace and noise until they began to sing to it.

  Inside the pit Livia knew the words. The assistants led the huge black bull to the edge while she sang with gusto, reaching inside her gown. Just as the chief attendant raised his knife to strike at the bull's throat, Livia pulled out a blade of her own, sprang to her feet and plunged it deep into the bull's soft flesh before whipping the blade in an arc, slicing the creature's throat open. The chief attendant dropped his own knife in shock. Thick, rich blood gushed onto Livia as she continued to sing, filling her upturned mouth. She lost her footing and slipped in the gore, just as the dying beast fell forward into the hole, landing on top of her. Her face was pressed hard against the wound she had made, the blood gushing from the bull's throat into hers.

  Yet she knew she would not drown. She knew her bones would not be broken. She knew this was how Cybele would re-enter her, empowering her once again for the tasks ahead.

  Livia came to consciousness to find she was lying on the temple floor before the great alabaster statue of Cybele. The eunuchs and the attendants were gone. She was slick with the bull's blood; she had been retrieved from the taurobolium pit with great difficulty. The only way to reach her was by dismembering the bull, and every last drop of the creature's blood had drizzled onto her while they hacked away before she was finally pulled free. This was wholly as Livia had intended.

  Reorientated as to where she was, she at once sat up. The withered haruspex was slumped in his place at the statue's base, but now he held the guts of a pigeon in his fists. There was not another living thing inside the temple with them. Livia and Thrasyllus were entirely alone.

  'Who is the second king?' Livia asked him.

  Thrasyllus told her.

  'Who is the child who will rule?'

  Thrasyllus told her that too, never opening his eyes as he explained the difference. Livia nodded. These were the same answers she had already received in her dreams.

  'Tell me who the goddess lets live and who she lets die,' said Livia. 'Tell me their fates. Tell me the worst of it. Prepare me for what I must do.'

  Thrasyllus spoke with a voice that was not his own. 'The son with blood, by water's done, the t
ruth is never seen. The third is hooked by a harpy's look — the rarest of all birds. The course is cooked by a slave-boy's stroke; the fruit is lost with babes. The matron's words alone are heard, the addled heart is ringed. The one near sea falls by a lie that comes from the gelding's tongue. The doctor's lad will take the stairs, from darkness comes the wronged, No eyes, no hands and vengeance done, but worthless is the prize. One would-be queen knows hunger's pangs when Cerberus conducts her. One brother's crime sees him dine at leisure of his bed. One would-be queen is one-eyed too until the truth gives comforts. When tiny shoes a cushion brings, the cuckoo's king rewarded. Your work is done, it's time to leave — the sword is yours to pass. Your mother lives within this queen: she who rules beyond you. The end, the end, your mother says — to deception now depend. So long asleep, now sleep once more, your Attis is Veiovis.'

  Livia sat still for a long time. She was surprised by very little of what was said and shocked by nothing. At last she rose and made her way towards Thrasyllus. There were tears of gratitude in her eyes.

  'The goddess continues to bless my house,' she whispered. 'Thank you, haruspex.' She stooped to where he was slumped against the statue's whiteness and pressed her lips to his eyes. When they opened, it was Cybele herself he saw smiling before him.

  'Thank you, Great Mother,' he whispered.

  Livia raised her blade and hacked his head from his shoulders with a single slice. The head didn't stop rolling before the flesh had dissolved in front of Livia's eyes. It came to rest at the pit's edge a clean, dry skull. She kicked it inside as she passed, making her way to the door.

  In the clear autumn sunlight upon the temple steps two women rose to greet her. She had been expecting them.

  'My friends,' said Livia. She kissed Martina first and the sorceress shimmered in the light. She carried a basket of food. 'How thoughtful,' said Livia, taking a piece of bread.

  'You look well rested,' said Martina.

  'And so I should be.'