Nest of Vipers (2 page)

Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus
Germanicus engages in a new series of
reprisals against those he distrusts

The tar-soaked wick smoked for a moment, hovering above the brazier before it sizzled and spat and burst into flames. The choir on the terrace erupted into a hymn to Vulcan – the great god of fire – and we palace slaves, arranged along the walls and floors and terrace edges, muttered our rehearsed prayers. The expressions of the guests who watched on from the banqueting hall ran from excitement to disgust to jaded indifference, but the eyes of the condemned who were staked to the poles in the garden widened at the lighting of this instrument of their doom. The wretches gave out looks of such dread that the sycophants among the dinner guests applauded the sight. Other guests took their cue, the squeamish among them feeling ill at what was next for the condemned, even though they clapped and cheered for its commencement.

Our master heard nothing but approval in this noise, as he only ever did now. The thought of public opposition and loathing was more than he could bear. He basked in what he told himself was unconditional and undying love. He laughed at the cheers, sang along with the hymn and waved the long birch rod from which the tar-wick burned. Then he leaped from his dais with a howl, misjudging the distance and landing in the flowers. The dinner guests increased their clamour, as if our master were making a comedy for them – as if he weren't mad and obese and intoxicated at all.

The Christians writhed at their poles, staked in rows. Their imminent suffering was to be prolonged – they all knew it. Their deaths were meant for my master's entertainment. He had disliked past executions when the fun had been marred by the condemned bursting into thanks to their god, so these Christians were gagged. They would blaze in silence.

Musicians blasted on tubas and my master ran up the nearest garden path, the tar-wick held high in the air. 'Which one first?' he screamed over his shoulder to his friends. 'Which will be the first to burn?'

A tumult of hollering and pointing and throwing of food scraps came as each guest tried to outdo the others in identifying the inaugural performer.

'This one?' Our master poked his flaming birch at a staked Christian. 'Or this one? Or what about this pretty one? Look how pretty she is!'

The sycophants united in this choice and our master gazed up at the bound girl, roped high to her stake, her bare feet and legs coated in tar. 'What you are about to feel will bring pleasure to so many.'

He touched the tar-wick to her feet, holding it there and staring into her eyes as her agony commenced. The girl ignited with an intensity that knocked our master from his feet. The dinner guests shrieked with laughter and our master sprang up again, burping and hiccuping and then guffawing at his own antics, before falling into an abrupt silence that every guest and slave and singer and musician echoed in an instant.

Our master stared, mesmerised by the Christian girl as she burned like a sun – her rags, her hair, her flesh ablaze. The glow of her filled the evening garden like a sunset.

'Can you hear your Christ?' he whispered to her. 'Can you hear him now? What does he say to you? That you were wrong to have faith in him? That he is not a god at all?'

A voice was heard from beyond the garden walls, high and pure above the crackle of the flames.

'
Parricide!
'

Our master jerked from his trance as something was hurled over the wall, landing near his feet. It was a shoe, rough and wooden. A female guest screamed as she recognised it for the symbol that it was.

'
Parricide!
'

Another voice rang out, strong and deep. '
Where has your mother gone?
'

A second object was flung into the garden, landing in the plants. It was the pair to the shoe.

'
You've killed her, king!
'

'
Parricide!'

Watching from my slave's position by the wall, I knew what would come next.

'Stop them –' the female guest who had screamed started to say. The third and final garment from the parricide's wardrobe was thrown into the banquet: a stinking, bloody wolf's skin.

'
Now you've got something to wear when we condemn you, parricide!
'

Fear flushed my master's face, and the woman now vomited oysters. The very worst of the invited sycophants stood up slowly on his couch, smiling widely and cynically at our tormented master, before placing his hands around his mouth and shouting, 'Hail, Caesar!'

There was shocked silence. Then the cry was taken up by all – guests, slaves, singers and musicians. The shouts of the accusers outside were drowned.

Our master's good humour returned; he smiled and nodded and gave a moment's thought to picking up his lyre. Then he caught my eye where I stood by the wall, and the look I gave was enough to make him forget the thought. He accepted some honeyed wine given to him by the beautiful, smiling Acte and flung his tar-wick aside, instructing the guards to light the rest of the condemned at once.

The dining slaves took this as their cue to offer trays of Trojan pig to the guests. Acte cast me a weary glance and I nodded, tilting my head towards the garden. She nodded back.

We made our leave to sit at a bench, well away from the party and the fires. We felt sympathy for the Christians – how could we not? Their suffering was undeserved. Rome had been destroyed by another's hands – they were innocent of it – but scapegoats were needed and the Christ cult's refusal to recognise all gods but its own offended too many deities. All the same, I was glad the condemned wore gags – and glad, too, that our garden bench was sufficiently upwind.

We had commenced the final days – we knew it now. There was very little time left to us; only the faintest echoes of long-ago prophecies remained, and soon they too would be silent and then forgotten. And so would we.

Acte and I settled in the warm evening air to return to our great labour. She had a small stack of fresh wax tablets already at hand.

'Do you think,' I asked, feeling the twinge of an old wound in my back, 'that what we're about to record will be confusing to someone who might choose to start reading the history
here
and not at an earlier point?'

Acte gave this consideration. 'We will help them, then,' she said. 'It is only fair. Why should they read of the earlier crimes and intrigues if they find greater enticement in the horrors ahead? Let us explain the most important past moments. The prophecies about the four great kings of Rome, for example – we should detail those.'

My mind wandered as I remembered the strange words of the goddess who had uttered them.

Acte wrote them down, speaking them aloud as she did so. She had not been born when they had first been uttered, yet she still knew them by heart. '
From the two, four will come, four who will rule
. . .'

I closed my eyes, remembering.

'
The first will be he who nests for the cuckoo . . .
'

'Yes . . .' I whispered.

'That was the Emperor Tiberius. And the cuckoo's egg that he nested was his "son", Sejanus, who was not his son at all.'

'Quite so.'

Acte continued writing. '
The second will be he who wears his father's crown
. . .'

I nodded again.

'That was the brat, Little Boots,' said Acte, 'not yet king in the history so far, but destined to be so in what we write of tonight.'

I said nothing.

'Iphicles?' She could always tell when I was withholding something. 'Little Boots
was
the prophesied second king, was he not?'

'We'll get to all that in time,' I said.

'Sometimes I think you like to keep things mysterious just for my entertainment.'

I didn't deny it.

'
The third will be he whose heart has no eyes. The fourth will be he who poisons the breast
. . .' She completed writing the two remaining lines of the prophecy. 'These last two kings have not yet been revealed in our history so far.'

'Quite so.'

She waited for me to say something else, but I didn't. '
Will
they be revealed?' she asked.

I echoed a phrase I had dictated when I first began our task: 'My intention is to entertain you,' I quoted, 'and once that is achieved, I will seek to enlighten you. I know of no other way to approach this history. You are my master and there is no alternate path for me but that which leads to your pleasure.'

Acte just rolled her eyes. 'Have it your way then. Shall we start?'

I heard the joints in my old arms crack as I stretched them in front of me. I felt tired and weary, more so than I ever had. Yet I felt invigorated by my great task, too. I nodded at my beautiful scribe. '
I am well over a hundred years old
,' I began. '
My hair is gone, my skin is flaked, and the bones of my limbs are as fragile as glass. Most people think I am sixty – in itself a venerable age – but, in truth, I am the oldest slave in the empire
.'

Acte wrote my words smoothly and fast – she now had a practised hand.

'
Yet it doesn't do to advertise
,' I continued. '
I am actually a god, you see – a god in mortal form. It was once my belief that I was the god Attis made mortal, the son and lover of the Great Mother, Cybele, goddess of the East. But this changed. The events I am about to detail exposed that I am not Attis at all, but another god. In time I shall reveal my true self to you
.'

'Good,' said Acte, looking up. 'A suitable beginning.'

'Only suitable?'

'It won't hurt to edit it a little later,' she replied. 'Keep going, Iphicles.'

I narrowed my eyes, but continued all the same. '
I began my journey towards divine self-discovery when I made the greatest sacrifice any man can – freeborn or slave. I cut off my testicles and gave them as offerings to my then mistress, Livia Drusilla, who was herself the goddess Cybele in mortal form. My purpose at that time was only to serve her, and through this service I intended to do all that I could to fulfil my goddess's prophecies. Serve and fulfil I did. And the prophecies grew to be many
.'

'Good,' said Acte again.

'You do not need to tell me "good", Acte.'

'No? Then I won't. I'll simply write.' There was a twinkle in her eye.

I went on. '
Lately I have arrived at the other purpose of my mortal life. More than simply enabling prophecy, my task on this earth is to record it. And yet now that I have commenced upon such a history, I can feel the strength falling away from my body in the tiniest of drops, like beads of perspiration. I am dying, I think. This great task is killing me. But perhaps it is a good death? Surely, when I am done, I will ascend to my reward?
'

Acte pulled me from my reverie. 'One question must be answered before any of this, Iphicles.'

I was annoyed. 'What question is that?'

'If you're not in a mood to take this history seriously then perhaps we should wait until tomorrow to resume it,' said Acte, laying her stylus flat on the tablet.

I narrowed my eyes. 'My mistress?' I said. 'My
domina
? Is that what you're alluding to?'

'Yes, your
domina
,' said Acte. 'Livia Drusilla. At the point where our previous work on the history ended, you had drugged her and kept her in a state of endless sleep.'

I felt somewhat ashamed.

'Do I need to remind you that you violated her in that drugged state, Iphicles, and did so repeatedly?'

I couldn't look at her.

'The same
domina
you say you loved beyond all others?'

'You know my reasons for all that,' I replied.

'Perhaps. But how can you claim you loved her?'

I said nothing.

'No other issue is of greater importance. Did Livia die or did she recover?'

A chill gripped my spine.

'Iphicles?'

'We will get to all that in time. I swear it.'

Acte frowned again at my evasion.

I cleared my throat, hoping she'd pick up the stylus. 'There are three women I wish to bring to the foreground first, you see. They are the women on whom this entire section of my history pivots. I cannot emphasise their significance enough, Acte. In the Rome of their day, while my
domina
was so . . . incapacitated, there were no other women more loved than these three – or more loathed.'

'How could they have been both?' The stylus remained where it lay.

'It was how Rome was, back then. These women polarised the people. And each woman schemed for the same thing.'

'And that thing was?'

'To achieve what my
domina
had achieved. To be the Augusta. To be Empress of Rome.'

Acte took the stylus in her hand again. 'Which woman succeeded?'

I looked to the evening sky. She would have to wait and see.

'Very well. So was one of these women Agrippina, perhaps?'

'She is the first of the three,' I nodded.

'Very good. And the second?'

'Blind Apicata.'

'Excellent. And who is the third?'

'A woman I once overlooked.'

'Who?'

'Livilla.'

Unable to place this woman, Acte read back through some of the tablets again to find reference to her. 'Oh yes,' she replied. 'Here she is.'

'Livilla was Castor's wife,' I said. 'Castor, the son of the Emperor Tiberius. Castor, who was kind yet jealous, and who hated the Praetorian Prefect Sejanus with all his heart.'

'I'd barely noticed her,' said Acte. 'Shall we start with this Livilla, then?'

'Yes. But the slave-boy will be our focus.'

'Which slave-boy?'

'An important one.'

'Has he been in the history before?'

'He hasn't – but now he must enter.'

'Who is he, Iphicles?'

I felt a tear swell in my eye. I brushed it away before it had the chance to roll down my cheek. 'He is my son.'

Acte looked down respectfully at the wax tablet, her hand poised. 'I didn't know.'

I closed my eyes and saw a tiny speck of light within the darkness. 'Clio,' I whispered. 'Muse, is that you?' The speck of light twinkled like a star and the first of the new words began to fall upon my tongue, and as they did, the first drops of perspiration left my body once more. Mortal death edged closer.