Nest of Vipers (22 page)

'Serpents are sacred to Asclepius. If we take my grandmother to the temple of the god of medicine, she will be cured.'

I felt sick to my guts and tried to catch the eye of Lygdus. But the eunuch wouldn't look at me at all. His eyes were on his master. Castor laid his hand upon the eunuch's fleshy shoulder and then removed it again. There was an atmosphere of profound reverence between them. Castor's affection for my apprentice was unmistakable.

One month later: Praetorian Prefect
Lucius Aelius Sejanus prevents a fire at
the Theatre of Pompey from spreading
to nearby temples and is rewarded by
the Emperor with a statue of his likeness
erected in the theatre's ruins

In Flamma's slow journey towards death he encountered a strange bird. Its plumage was a dull, metallic grey like a pigeon's, but the bird itself was larger in size, and with three blood-red feathers in its tail. Its pus-yellow eyes didn't blink as it stared at him.

'Are you from Hades?' Flamma asked the creature. 'Are you my escort to the place of the dead?'

'Why did you do it?' the creature questioned him in return.

Only a bird from Hades could have the power of speech, Flamma marvelled. After so many months of hovering near the edge of the precipice, at last his end was close. He tried to find the right response for the creature but felt himself already drifting towards oblivion.

'Those beasts are obscene!' I gasped. '
Domine
, you cannot allow this!'

'Ssh,' Castor hissed at me.

'But,
domine
, snakes are bad enough –'

'You heard the god's words.'

'I heard the priests' words.'

Castor glared hard at me. 'It would be disappointing for my grandmother should I grow to dislike you now, Iphicles, after so many years as your friend.'

I shuddered at the warning in the words. 'Yes,
domine
,' I nodded, but my anxiety was devouring me.

The priests of Asclepius finished the final examination of my apparently sleeping
domina
. She lay wrapped in a shroud on the damp temple floor. The head priest nodded to Castor.

'It is as you first thought?' Castor asked him.

The head priest nodded again. 'The god's serpent may have brought you here, Lord, but the sacred serpents of this temple cannot help the Augusta. She is beyond their reach.'

Castor's mouth tightened. 'Very well. If there is no other option.'

'There is not.'

Behind them another priest secured six whining dogs that pulled tight against their leashes.

'This is wrong,
domine
,' I wailed. 'It defiles her.'

'Out!' said Castor, turning on me.

'
Domine
?'

'Out, Iphicles. Now! We'll collect you again when my grandmother's treatment is over.'

'How can such a thing be called treatment –' I began, but Castor's glare silenced me. 'Please don't make me leave,' I begged.

'Then allow your
domina
to receive the god's attentions in silence.'

I whimpered, my guts tying into knots, but I said nothing more. I was in terror not at how Asclepius's treatment might harm my
domina
, but at the far more alarming prospect of its proving successful. The god of medicine was unpredictable. What if the strange snake really had been a sign of his interest in Livia's recovery? While I certainly doubted that the Divine Augustus had had anything to do with the serpent's portent, the nature of the medicine god's ways were unknown to me. Once, as a disrespectful youth, I had spat a ball of phlegm on the god's temple threshold when I believed him ill-disposed towards my then master, Tiberius Nero. I had been wrong in that belief. Asclepius had held no feelings towards Tiberius Nero at all, ill-disposed or otherwise. But what god would remain indifferent to the spitballs of a slave?

The six temple hounds pulled against the tethers, their claws scraping against the floor. I hid my eyes, but couldn't stand not knowing and uncovered them again.

'Release them,' said the head priest.

The dogs' master dropped the leashes and the dogs leaped forward in a single motion, flying at my
domina
where she lay still upon the floor. I wanted to scream but Castor's eyes were on me.

'Go well,
domina
,' was all I could mutter, but the sentiment was false. I wanted her to sleep forever and never wake up.

The first of the temple hounds detected an odour to Livia's sex and pressed its snout between her legs, inhaling what she hid beneath the shroud. A second dog followed and then a third, before all six dogs were snuffling and licking, baring their teeth to pull the shroud from my
domina
's most private parts.

With relief I saw Castor flush and look ill at what the dogs were doing. 'What is this?' he shot at the head priest. But the old man just shook his head gravely and held up a hand, reassuring Castor that nothing was out of place. The dogs had Livia's shroud in pieces now and her private parts were exposed. Their six snouts had spread her legs apart, nuzzling her obscenely. I hoped Castor would vomit.

'She is the Augusta!' he appealed to the head priest. 'Pull the dogs off her, for pity's sake!'

The head priest was immovable. 'They have found the location of her illness, Lord. If it is distressing for you, then look away, but I cannot stop the god's beasts now. They are curing her. They are making her whole.'

It was too much for Castor and he left the room. I stayed for only a moment more, my eyes boring into my
domina
's closed lids. She knew I was there and her right eye opened just a crack.

'This isn't going to work,' I hissed at her. 'Give it up,
domina
– this isn't going to succeed.'

Livia winked at me. Each of us had our secret plans; the Fates would decide whose came first to bud.

Feeling weak with disgust and tiredness, Castor listened to the head priest's directives from a stone bench in the temple's portico. My heart anxious, I pulled off Castor's street shoes to let his foot abscess air. It annoyed him that it never seemed to improve, but he'd grown accustomed to its constant ache.

'So I must bring my grandmother back here again?'

The head priest confirmed it. 'Asclepius insists, Lord.'

Castor grimaced but gave a nod. 'How often must it be done?'

'That is for the god to say,' said the head priest, 'but he has chosen her for his attention. Few are so favoured, Lord. Certainly the Augusta must return here twice a month until further signs of improvement are seen. You say she has been awake and watchful, and yet she shows no sign of this today. I believe you have brought her to Asclepius just in time – she was beginning her descent to death. But with the attentions of the dogs, perhaps this will now be reversed.'

'Only perhaps?' said Castor. He wanted certainty that this divine defilement of his grandmother would see her made well.

'There are no absolutes with Asclepius,' said the head priest.

'Very well,' said Castor. 'My grandmother will return here twice a month.' He closed his eyes, leaning back on the bench against the temple wall for a moment, his bare legs stretched before him. 'The god's serpent was sent to me. I have faith we will see improvement.'

He waited, expecting the head priest to agree, but the old man said nothing. Then he felt a tickling at his foot. He opened his eyes and saw that one of the temple dogs had its snout pressed against the unhealed abscess.

'Get off,' said Castor, pulling his foot away.

The dog backed off but tried to return again.

'Off!' said Castor.

I slipped the street shoes onto his feet again.

'You have a sore,' said the head priest.

'It mends on its own accord,' said Castor. 'It doesn't require the god's attentions.'

'As you wish.'

Castor stood and walked away, refusing to allow himself to limp. I followed behind. Restraining the dog, the head priest stared hard at our retreating backs. For very differing reasons, neither of us turned around.

Eleven months later: Praetorian Prefect
Lucius Aelius Sejanus concentrates all
nine cohorts of the Praetorian Guard into
a single camp at the Viminalis Gate

The dream that came to the master was so vivid that he cried out in his sleep. His slaves were made fearful by the noise but none dared wake him. Their master slept so little as it was; any slumber, however dream-filled, was better than insomnia. Still, they consulted among themselves and decided to record what their master spoke, in order to show it to him at dawn. These dreams were portents, they sensed – messages from the gods for their master. But none of the slaves had been granted the gift of literacy. They couldn't write. Then they remembered the slave who could.

They sent for me.

When I arrived, their master's state was unchanged – he was speaking aloud, as if engaged in a conversation with spirits. I was hesitant to enter. This was not a household in which I held authority. I was wary of this master – and wary of the mistress, too. But the slaves assured me that their mistress slept soundly at the other end of the house – she would never know of my presence. And just to make sure, someone had already been sent to wait outside her door to warn me if she stirred.

I accepted my task and sat down to interpret and record what the master spoke aloud in his strange, wakeful sleep.

In the dream he spoke to his father. The words he used were the most loving a son could employ, words that any father would weep with joy to hear. But the dream father who received them barely heard the words at all. They made no impact. They were acknowledged only cursorily.

This made the son increase the intensity of his devotion. He reached inside his chest and found his own beating heart. He scooped it out with his hands and placed it on a tablet, laying it at his father's feet. Then he found an urn inside his chest, where his heart had been. He opened it and saw that it contained all his hopes in life – his bright future, his keen ambition, his pride. He scooped the urn out of himself and placed it at his father's feet, next to his beating heart.

Then the son dug inside again to see what else he could find to offer. He found his own children there, two of them – a boy and a girl. The girl had known misery. He gave her to his father in the hope that he'd cure her. Then he gave his precious son too. But the father remained indifferent.

In despair the master fled from his father's sight. Weeping overtook him, both in his dream and in his sleeping chamber, where I recorded everything among the fearful slaves. He fell to wrenching sobs that saw him curl up like a foetus in his bed. But still he didn't wake. Then abruptly he stopped. In his dream he had glanced over his shoulder to his father in the distance. The old man was no longer alone – the master's brother had joined him – a rival for their father's love. But now the father was laughing, his face softened with affection and joy. He was kissing the rival brother's hand.

'He is no son to you, Father,' the master called out in his sleep. 'I am your son – it is me.'

But the father was deaf and the master couldn't be heard. The brother heard him perfectly, however, and turned to sneer at him, as he always had from the very first day they had met. The brother dismissed the master, pronouncing him inferior, ill-born and weak. 'You're just a slave,' the brother taunted him.

The master was consumed with rage. 'I'll kill you for this!' he called out. 'I'll kill you for it!'

In the room some of the listening slaves gasped with shock to hear their sleeping master shouting this from his bed. But others looked grimly at each other, knowing better what this dream was about. 'What else can he do?' one of them muttered. 'He does in his dream what he should do in life.'

But in the dream the master's courage failed him. He called out for his wife.

In the sleeping room the slaves jumped with fear and ran about to ensure the doors were closed. When they were sure their mistress couldn't hear, they crouched at the walls to observe what would happen next. The master's wife came to him in his dream and his sobbing resumed. The brother was right to call him weak and inferior; the sobbing was shameful. But the most loyal of the slaves in the sleeping room begged in whispers to the others that they remember this was only a dream, not life. The others nodded, echoing his words. Their master was a man they admired. After the Emperor, he was the highest man in Rome. The Empire would be his one day.

The dream wife comforted the master, nursing him like a boy. She dried his tears with her veil and told him that his father's love would soon be his, but only if he honoured his threat. He must kill his brother. There was no other way. Then he would be rid of him forever. Then his father would give him back his heart and his hopes and his children. Then he would win back his future.

The master vowed that murder would be his tool; it would serve him as his slaves. It would empower him. It would make him a king.

The dream wife offered him some wine. He took it from her, brushing his fingers against her hand as he did so. She laughed and tossed her hair free of its ribbons. The long, dark tresses tumbled to her bare shoulders. He drank deeply from the cup and whispered his desire that she release her breasts for him. She did so, gently lifting them from where they rested, letting the sun kiss her milky skin. The master moaned with pleasure as he saw them. He drank deeply from the wine again, and then cupped his wife's breasts in his hands, cradling the full, round weight of them. He lightly gripped her nipples between his fingertips, and then pressed his mouth to them, suckling.

He pulled his lips away only to drink the last of the wine as his dream wife slipped out of her garments, letting the silk slip slowly down her thighs to the ground. She asked him to enter her and he rose in his dream to comply. Listening inside the sleeping room, the youngest slave couldn't hide his own arousal. The oldest slave struck him in the loins with a spoon. As he prepared to mount his dream wife, the master sat upright in his bed, still asleep, his eyes still closed. His brow was slick with sweat; the fabric of his
tunica
was dark with moisture at his chest and armpits. A slave crept forward to mop his master's head, but I shot my arm out to stop him. Nothing must wake the master, I knew. The true meaning of the dream was nearly here – the message from the gods.

In the dream the master's loins went slack and cold. He could not rise; his wife's nakedness enflamed his heart but nothing else. His legs and arms went cold – his torso, too – and then his hands. In the sleeping room the master's teeth began to clash together as he continued to speak the vivid scene in his mind. The slaves looked at each other in increased alarm.

'We must wake him now – look at him,' one of them whispered at me.

But I willed them to silence, for suddenly the dream's truth was speaking to me and me alone. The message from the gods was for Iphicles, not the master. They spoke to me as one of them – their equal. They saw my nascent divinity, earned in sacrifice, and they welcomed me. They promised me the joys that would come once I had served the great prophecy to its very end – once I had crowned the fourth king. And with this promise came their assistance. They would aid me in my plans. And I realised they were aiding me at that very moment.

The master lurched forward in his bed and then threw himself back against the pillows. 'I cannot enter you. I cannot have you,' he shouted to his dream wife.

And in his dream she began to fade away, her breasts still bare, her cleft moist and waiting for him. But he was unable. He was unworthy. He was not a man.

The master screamed with terror and all the slaves shook where they crouched at the walls. They began to weep, but still none woke him. The master screamed again – a dreadful howl – then tore his
tunica
from his throat. The fabric ripped, revealing his chest livid with sores.

'Look at him! Look at him!' cried the youngest slave.

The others slapped the boy hard, but nothing would wake the master now, I knew. No noise could bring him back. Froth bubbled from his lips, first white and then pink, as blood began to rise in his throat. The scarlet phlegm spewed through his lips.

The slaves were in terror. 'Master!' they screamed. 'Master, please wake up!'

Livilla threw the chamber door wide just as Castor opened his eyes and saw her. Then he saw Lygdus, the slave that had been posted to wait by his wife's door, and he saw the flash of unspeakable guilt that filled the eunuch's face. I saw Lygdus, too, and I expected him to throw me a smile of triumph at this heady victory, a grin of joy at this job well done. But he showed me nothing of the kind. Castor's eyes bore into him and the eunuch knew that his master realised how totally he had been betrayed. Castor looked to the uncomprehending Livilla, standing with her mouth wide and her long hair loose upon her shoulders. He tried to warn her – to tell her what a viper Lygdus was, coiled inside their home.

'My wife . . .'

But she didn't understand.

Castor's last breath bubbled from his lungs. The final words he heard were the echo of a whisper in his ear.

'
The son with blood, by water's done, the truth is never seen
. . .'

Suddenly she was aware of his absence. Her husband's space in the bed was warm, the scent of him was strong and reassuring upon the linen – and yet she was alone. His side was empty. Apicata lurched awake and ran her hands beneath the covers to make sure it was true. He was gone. She sat up without making a sound and let her toes rest upon the mat. In her nakedness she felt the cold, but she wouldn't risk the moment's ignorance that would come from putting on garments and distracting her ears.

She strained to determine the noises of her sleeping house. She heard the gentle rise and fall of her daughter's chest as she slumbered in her room across the peristyle. She heard the louder snores of her gangly son. She strained to hear the breathing of the sleeping maids upon their pallets outside her own door and realised there were none. The slaves must be awake – or they had been moved. Then she heard the low murmur of her husband's voice in his study.

Apicata felt for her
tunica
at last and pulled it on. Then she found her woollen
palla
and wrapped it tightly around herself. She felt for her shoes next to the bed but her foot only found one. Perhaps Sejanus had kicked the other in accident as he left? She felt under the bed to see if she could find it and instead connected with something she didn't recognise: a small, oblong box, less than the length of her hand. Her senses told her it was nothing to be alarmed by, and yet it perplexed her by being there. It was smooth to the touch. She shook it and something rattled. It was sealed tightly and her fingers couldn't open it. But the absence of her husband was more pressing, so Apicata left the little box on the bed, intending to prise the thing open when she returned.

Barefoot, she crept to the door and listened. Sejanus's voice grew louder – he was questioning someone. She stole into the open hallway, where the row of chambers ran along one side and the courtyard of the peristyle along the other. There was a chill breeze; an owl hooted as it saw her from where it was perched upon the gutter. There was a good omen in that, Apicata thought, but she couldn't remember what it was. She stole towards the study, but before she had gone more than a few paces Sejanus emerged and saw her in the shadows.

She stopped, caught out. 'Has something happened, husband?'

There was shock in his voice – but excitement too. 'Castor is dead.'

She held her hand out to steady herself against a pillar.

'He died of a fever – he was raging in nightmares.'

'But . . . I could have helped you in this, as I have with all the other things we've planned together. Why didn't you let me know it was coming so soon after Germanicus? Why didn't you share it with me, husband? Couldn't I have made the task easier in some way?'

Sejanus was as ignorant of Lygdus and the poisoned footbaths as his wife was, but Apicata assumed that it was her husband who had somehow brought on Castor's death. He didn't want her to know that he had been thrown by the sudden development. 'I was protecting you,' he said eventually.

There was a tone to his voice that she couldn't identify; it sat oddly in her ear. 'I didn't need protecting with Germanicus.'

'This was different. We . . . we had no agent to do our work for us this time.'

She found his face with her hands. 'You did this alone?'

He avoided answering. 'I have to leave,' he said, taking her hands from his cheeks. Apicata heard the unmistakable noise of a dog's claws clicking on the floor tiles. Although she couldn't see it, she heard and smelled the presence of a large hound emerging from Sejanus's study and brushing its snout against his hand. Apicata recoiled, frightened, but didn't ask where this beast had come from or why it was there.

'I have to leave,' Sejanus said again, moving past her to their sleeping room.

The dog's breath was strong and rank in her nostrils. 'I'll never betray your secrets – your secrets are mine,' she whispered after him.

Sejanus snatched at a cloak and began pulling on his boots. From the corner of his eye he saw the little oblong box that Apicata had left on the bed. It took his curiosity for only a second before he dismissed it.

Apicata was standing where he'd left her when he came out again. 'Congratulations, then,' she whispered as he went to pass her.

For a moment he felt the old emotion that always confused him. He had not felt it for some time – several years, in truth – but it was with him now, as it sometimes was when she became like this: pliant, vulnerable and so full of love for him. Was it love he felt in return, however small? He could never determine it. All he understood was that it
was
an emotion, but it was different from love as he felt it for others. 'What is wrong with you?'

'You've taken another step closer to your great destiny,' said Apicata. 'The destiny that Fortuna chose when she gifted you Julia's letter.'