Nest of Vipers (39 page)

She waited. Ahenobarbus moved forward and her heart leaped to her throat. Would he take her now in the way that the phallus would have? But his violence had gone. He sat at the edge of the bed. Yet Nilla saw with apprehension that he was becoming aroused. She grasped at the hope that by continuing to speak to him, the inevitable might be delayed. 'It must be such a cruel thing to suffer, silence. Yet you must have found the means to communicate with the world. How do you do it, husband?'

He reached forward and touched her thigh beneath the linen.

'Do you write your words down so that others might read what you want?'

His hand journeyed towards her belly and Nilla's eyes darted about the room to see if a wax tablet sat anywhere. 'Is that your method, husband? To write it all in wax?'

His penis rose from the corner of her vision, but she would not let her eyes leave his. And she knew how badly they must be betraying her fear.

'Why don't you write it for me, husband? Tell me how you feel about our union. Tell me how I might be a good wife to you.'

Ahenobarbus's hand brushed the nipple of her breast and she blushed to realise it had hardened. Was this desire she felt? How could it be?

Ahenobarbus stood up, his erect penis before her face for a moment until his back was turned to her and she realised he was leaving the room. Gratitude overwhelmed her. He had listened to what she said. He was going to find a wax tablet. 'I will wait here for you,' she whispered after him, and then felt foolish. What else would she do?

Somewhere in the rooms below Nilla heard a water clock chime that the hour of
Concubia
had come. It was very late. Then, after what had seemed like minutes, she heard the hour of
Intempesta
signalled and she realised she had fallen asleep. The oil lamp was out. Ahenobarbus had not returned. The doors to the connubial room remained ajar from when he had left her. Nilla crept from the bed and stood at the threshold, peering into the blackness of the corridor.

'Husband? Are you there?'

'It's just as well you spat the phallus from your sex,
domina
.'

Nilla stifled a scream. The aged maid sat huddled on a pallet near the door.

'It is just as well, for the deity would have choked in your hole once he'd sniffed what had been there before him.'

Nilla went white. 'How dare you use such words!'

'You disgust this house,' said the maid. 'And you'll disgust all Rome when the truth gets out.'

Nilla reeled. 'I am a virgin bride.'

'If that's true, then you've sewn up your hole to become one.'

Enraged, Nilla drew back her hand to strike but the old woman snatched at her wrist, twisting it. 'Slave-fucker,' she hissed. 'You and your little slave. He polluted you for the master – polluted you for this house. The torments of the fallen Aemilii are made unending with this marriage. You are a punishment for us!'

Nilla pulled her arm free. 'Burrus is dead,' she sobbed. 'Drowned!' She could have died herself for even mentioning his precious name to this gorgon. 'I never slept with him. Our love for each other was chaste,' she tried to add.

The old woman's spittle struck her cheek. Blinded by grief, Nilla lurched away, fleeing down the corridor towards the stairs to the floor below. She didn't see the descent until too late and her foot slipped in the darkness, throwing her forward to strike her head against the ancient stone. She rolled and fell the full length of the steps, just as Aemilia of the Aemilii had done years before. Nilla came to rest on the cold stone floor at the bottom, slumped like a broken doll.

Sounds of enjoyment awoke her. A man's pleasure, perhaps, or a woman's sensual moans; it was difficult to be sure. The sounds drifted to her ears from somewhere deep in the house as she slowly climbed to consciousness again. Nilla tried to move her limbs. Nothing was broken, only grazed and bruised. Her head throbbed from where it had struck the edge of the stair. She managed to stand.

From the gloom of the cobwebbed atrium, Nilla could see that the curtains dividing that space from the
tablinum
had been pulled aside. The private study for the master of the house was a shambles, long neglected and thick with dust. Her hand pressed to her bleeding temple, Nilla stood at the room's edge and looked through to the peristyle garden beyond. Years before, the girl Domitia had picked winter flowers for her condemned mother there. The flowers were long dead too.

Ahenobarbus lay on a pallet in the soil, his loins thrusting upwards and down. Astride him was a girl no older than Nilla, her small, pointed breasts glistening in the moonlight as she moaned again in pleasure, riding him. It was Albucilla, the drowned minnow that Ahenobarbus had revived on Capri. She plucked the lit stub of a candle and waved the flame before her nipples, letting it lick her like a tongue. Ahenobarbus echoed her moan and Nilla heard the only noise she would ever know from his throat. Whether they knew she was there, she couldn't tell, so focused were they on the gratification of their bodies. They achieved climax together, gasping with it, clutching at each other's mouths, as Albucilla let the candle wax drip upon her skin.

The hand that reached for Nilla's was warm. It enfolded her palm and fingers in a manner that felt comforting and familiar, before her wits returned and she jumped with fear. The hand let go and she span around. At the other side of the atrium the front door of the house was open, admitting a warm breeze from the street. The room curtains stirred but Ahenobarbus and his lover were oblivious, slumbering where they lay.

The aged maid shut the door, stilling the breeze, before shuffling away to the shadows.

'How could this be?' Nilla whispered. 'How is this possible?'

Burrus pressed his lips to hers and the taste of him was salty. He enfolded her in his strong young arms, browned by the sun and the sea. 'You know better than anyone how well I swim, Lady.'

If patrician marriage was what she had been given, then this union with an accursed house came with features all of its own. The wordless husband had a lover, a whore, with whom he cavorted under the roof that sheltered his wife. Accordingly, if the wife should make a gift of her virginity to a slave, how could it be seen as wicked in such a home, where the normal rules of morality did not apply? And if this house came with an aged, wizened maid who in the one breath condemned and then abetted those she served, it was surely just another thing to mark it as special among the thousands of homes in Rome.

Held tight in her beloved's arms as he carried her up the stairs, Nilla vowed never to question what this strange marriage might give her.

She heard the gentle rise and fall of Burrus's chest beside her in the bed and knew that he was sleeping. Careful not to wake him, Nilla slipped from the sheets and lowered herself upon the low marble bowl that stood behind a screen at the end of the room. She prepared to wash herself, as she had once been shown – the means to prevent a pregnancy. But as she placed her fingers in the water, an object caught her eye. A tiny length of lead, jammed in a crack between the floorboards.

The water dripped from her hand and Nilla leaned forward to try to dislodge the thing, not knowing why it compelled her so fully. The lead did not come loose easily; she had to prise it free with her nails. When she finally held it in her hand, it had surprising weight. She saw that it was really a flattened tablet that had been folded once and then again. She used her nails to open it, feeling certain, somehow, that she should see what was inside.

The tablet held a message, scratched into the surface with a pin. But the writing was reversed. Not knowing how or why she sensed what to do so exactly, Nilla held up the tablet before the polished silver surface of a mirror. The message became clear at once.

The course is cooked by a slave-boy's stroke; the fruit is lost with babes.

The words seemed meaningless. She returned to the bed she shared with Burrus and did not use the water bowl again.

Nilla succumbed to her dreams with her hands pressed gently to her belly.

Ten months later: crushed by the weight
of Roman taxes, the Frisian tribe of
Lower Germany hang the officials sent to
collect them

Tiberius recognised his own seal upon the Senatorial docu ment that had come with the afternoon correspondence. His mark was unmistakable – it could only have come from his hand – yet he recalled nothing of the edict it authorised. His memory told him he had never seen this document before, and yet here it was, a distressing directive, stamped with the print of the ring that did not leave his finger. He must have authorised it, but why? What proof had he been given that made it necessary?

He looked around for Sejanus to enlighten him, but the Prefect was nowhere in sight. Only Tribune Macro was in attendance.

'You there,' called Tiberius from his couch on the terrace.

Macro came forward, raising his hand in salute.

'My grandson Nero,' said Tiberius. 'I am fond of him.'

'Yes, Caesar.'

'He is a fine boy. A very promising future. I may make him my heir.'

'Yes, Caesar,' said Macro, his face giving nothing away.

Tiberius pointed at the edict. 'He's been exiled to Pontia. That barren island where his uncle Postumus died.'

Macro's expression stayed the same.

'Why should I wish to be rid of my grandson? It's his mother who is the menace, not he. He is blameless.'

Tiberius tried to keep his eyes focused hard on the Tribune's face, but his vision blurred. He badly needed the Eastern flower but he didn't want the Tribune to witness him drinking it. 'What was his crime?' he went on, struggling to stay alert. 'What did the boy do?'

Macro watched the Emperor's eyelids droop. It was time to give the answer he had prepared for this moment. 'It is news to me that such a popular and promising young man as Nero should have fallen like this, Caesar,' he said, betraying nothing of the truth – which was that he had been the arresting officer. 'It shocks me. I cannot imagine what must have occurred for exile to be ordered.'

'But I have ordered it,' said Tiberius in bewilderment. 'Here is my seal.'

'I know nothing of it,' Macro repeated. His face, he hoped, showed enough affront on the Emperor's behalf that Tiberius would see him as an ally. He gave just the right length to a pause. 'But Prefect Sejanus will recall the details, I am sure, Caesar.'

'Yes.' Tiberius studied the Imperial ring on his hand. 'Find your superior for me, Tribune. Tell him I am confused by this matter and wish for his help in clarifying it.'

Macro's face creased.

'Well?'

'Prefect Sejanus is no longer on Capri. He has returned to Rome.'

Tiberius stared at Macro in confusion. 'Not here?' Then he remembered himself; it would not do for the Tribune to see that he had not known of this. 'Of course, of course. That will be all.'

Macro bowed and departed, pleased at how the scene had played out.

Alone, Tiberius gulped from his goblet, his tired eyes finding focus again. A flock of migrating birds took his attention, high up in the sky. He squinted to look at them. They were geese.

'No!' he hissed at them. 'No!' He pulled his eyes from the sky and turned his back on the birds to drink from his draught, blocking them out.

But the insistent honks drew him to look up again. The birds were tiny against the horizon.

'Go away!' Tiberius cried out. 'Don't come back! What else are your warnings to me but falsehoods? Lies!'

I had grown so used to spending my hours in Livia's suite with my face pressed hard against the floor that I no longer registered the discomfort of it. The prone position, intended to humiliate me, had become my natural stance. I took to it willingly, throwing myself to the tiles whenever my
domina
entered and letting out cries to suggest I was suffering, even though I was not. She was pleased by these displays, no longer needing to waste her words in commanding me to adopt poses of supplication.

I became creative in my methods of debasing myself before her. Unhappily, I was forced to reject excrement as a pillow, unless I was out in the open air where the stink would not offend. Instead, I choose fragments of glass, sharp rocks or little tacks to lay my body upon, pressing my bare limbs and cheeks against the torment they provided. I always ensured my
domina
observed my mattress of choice before I prostrated myself, so that she might increase my debasement by walking upon me or laying weights upon my back.

My enslavement to Livia was more complete than it had ever been through our long lives together. I had foregone every aspect of the humanity I had acquired in her eyes. I was no longer a living thing. My every accomplishment and privilege had been removed from me. Dogs enjoyed greater status now. I was of lesser consequence than a toad or a gnat.

As I spent the hours unmoving upon the floor of my
domina
's sleeping room with my myriad wounds beginning to scab, I congratulated myself on the unforeseen consequences of all I had done. I had taken actions that were repellent in a slave, after all. I had thought for myself, instead of bowing to others' thoughts. I had forgotten my place and now was receiving my just reward. I had not foreseen it, which in itself was evidence that correction was required. And now that the consequences were upon me, they were truly exquisite. I, who had never wanted anything for myself other than enslavement, had attained the true zenith of my state.

Part of my torment, as Livia intended, was that I should witness her resumption of her affair with Sejanus. With my violations of her body now a distant memory, my
domina
wanted the pleasures that her lover enjoyed to be the sharpest thorn in my side. Forbidden to look and allowed only to hear, I wept like a child when Sejanus's cries of ecstasy reached their loudest, a cruel reminder of all I had lost. But this was what my
domina
demanded and so I imprinted his moans in my mind, coming to know their pattern. The gentle sighs, then the boyish panting; the building groans and the rush of joy. It was like the carefully erected structure of a poem or a hymn: reverent and tender to begin with, becoming urgent for the middle parts before the triumph of the end. I would ease in and out of consciousness, my
domina
's lovemaking with Sejanus like a too familiar song, played always by the same musicians with only the slightest variations each time.

But one day, with this torture in my ears and my mind drifting like the tide, I heard a departure from the song. I had not been upright when Sejanus had entered the room and so had not seen him, only heard. I was prone still from the night before, and my
domina
had quashed the stink of my newest sores by dripping scented oil where I lay. Yet she did not order me gone.

When I had heard Sejanus arrive, I had allowed myself to snooze. But the Prefect's cries, when they came, woke me not because of their passion or volume, but their tone. There was a new delight behind them – a childlike thrill. Sejanus was like a lover experiencing euphoria for the first time. He shouted with all the glee of discovery, as if my
domina
was a novelty to him, a precious treasure he had long desired. Then I saw why.

Wanting the wounds on my face to be equal on each cheek, I made the one movement I allowed myself when prone. I lifted the left side of my face and turned my head so my right cheek could press against the tacks. In doing so my eyes opened involuntarily, barely a crack, and I glimpsed Sejanus's clothes upon the floor. His helmet seemed odd: the plume had been altered in some way. It was not the decoration I recognised as a Prefect's. Had the rank signifiers been changed, I wondered, in the face of centuries of tradition? Or, even more extraordinarily, had Sejanus been demoted? His was not the helmet of a Prefect on the floor but of a Tribune.

Then I guessed the answer. It was not Sejanus seeking his pleasures upon my
domina
at all, but his subordinate, Macro, for whom the joy was new. Livia had a fresh instrument in her schemes.

Despite being lower than a worm, I could never cease admiring her for keeping me so constantly surprised.

Little Boots and Aemilius stared in fascination at the cup. 'Pick it up,' said Little Boots.

'You pick it up,' said Aemilius.

Little Boots hated to appear a coward in the face of a dare. He let his fingers stroke the jewels on the side of the vessel for a moment before clutching the thing by the stem and raising it.

His little sister Julilla gasped. 'You'll be caught.'

This spurred him further. He posed with the thing, mimicking Tiberius's gestures. 'He's asleep – how will he know?'

'No one but Grandfather touches that cup.'

'So why did he leave it here where we could find it?'

'Perhaps he's not well today?' Drusilla suggested, electrified, watching on with her younger sister.

'When is he well any day?' quipped Little Boots.

This prompted the others to laugh before they clapped hands to their mouths, lest they be heard.

'Smell it,' said Little Boots, thrusting the cup towards Aemilius's nose.

'No!' Aemilius recoiled.

'Weakling,' said Little Boots. He held his own nose to the cup. The dregs of a thick brown liquid sat in the bottom. Whatever it was, it did not smell unpleasant. It smelled sweet, if anything, like wine brewed from honey.

'What is it?' asked Julilla, wide-eyed. 'Is it poison?'

'Why would Tiberius drink poison?' said Drusilla.

'To fortify himself against his enemies?'

'That's hell of a lot of fortifying he does then,' said Aemilius, smirking at Little Boots. 'He does it all day and all night.'

'Perhaps it's an antidote?'

Julilla's theory was dismissed by the older children, who already had their own suspicions about what the strange liquid might be.

'Drink it,' said Little Boots to Aemilius.

'No fear,' said Aemilius. 'I'm not touching anything the old man's been drooling in.'

'But it's magic,' said Little Boots. 'You know it is. Don't you want to see the trick?'

'What trick? Turn into something like him? I see that trick every day when he does it, thanks.'

'Weakling,' said Little Boots again, making as if to throw the contents at him.

'Don't you dare!' yelled Aemilius, trying to cover himself.

Drusilla's eyes followed her brother's best friend, secretly liking the way his long, bare limbs moved with such athletic grace in the sun. She knew what the drink did; she had watched her grandfather enough times to guess it. It removed inhibitions. It made a person bolder – and happier. She could see nothing wrong with attaining such things when forced, as she was, to live in constant unhappiness on this island. To be made free of conscience and self-loathing would be the greatest of gifts, she thought. It was no wonder the Emperor so jealously guarded it.

'I'll drink it,' she said.

The boys turned to her in surprise before casting looks at each other.

'Really?' said Little Boots.

Drusilla clicked her fingers for her brother to pass it to her before her courage failed. 'Why not? It's magic, isn't it?'

'Go on then,' said Little Boots, thrusting the thing at her. He doubted she had the nerve.

'What'll you give me if I do?' said Drusilla, gazing into the cup. She raised her eyes and met Aemilius's look.

'Aemilius will give you a kiss,' laughed Little Boots, thinking this would appall her.

It didn't. Aemilius flushed red.

'Don't, Drusilla,' said little Julilla, horrified. 'The Emperor spat in it!'

Drusilla let the liquid touch her lips. It was as sweet as it smelled – like nectar. 'Mmm,' she purred, making a show of her daring for Aemilius's benefit. 'It really is quite nice . . .'

Burrus stood back as the midwives presented the tiny child to Ahenobarbus, placing it at his feet.

'A girl,
domine
,' said the older midwife. 'An ornament to your house. And the mother is resting well.'

The companion midwife cast a glance at the woman standing next to this silent master, staring at the newborn with intensity. It was unorthodox for a husband to have a female friend in attendance with him during his firstborn's birth – let alone one so immodestly dressed. But it was no more unorthodox, perhaps, than a
domina
holding the hand of a male slave throughout her labour.

'She has come into this world with her mother's beautiful fair hair,' said the older midwife, hoping to elicit a response from Ahenobarbus. 'But who knows? Perhaps she'll grow her papa's fiery locks before long?'

Something in these words snapped Ahenobarbus from his stare. He met eyes with Burrus, who looked down to the ground. The slave was not anxious at what Ahenobarbus's response to the baby might be. He already knew that Nilla's husband would pick up the child and acknowledge it. There was an agreement in place between all four of them – he and Nilla, Ahenobarbus and Albucilla – an agreement had been struck when Nilla's monthly flow ceased and she had known she was carrying a child. Albucilla's hand brushed her lover's arm and he cocked his ear to let her whisper in it. Practised in tactfulness, the midwives gave no visible reaction to this provocative display, waiting in silence. Ahenobarbus stooped and picked up the child.

'Ah. There now,' said the older midwife, beaming.

Ahenobarbus and Albucilla raked the child with their eyes.

'The hair,' said Albucilla. 'You say it will turn red?'

'I'm sure it will, yes,' said the midwife, good-naturedly. But she was not sure. Sometimes babies didn't gain the colour of red-haired fathers – a misfortune that had been known to cause wills to be redrawn even when the mother was blameless. But in this case, the midwife already suspected, there was blame on all sides.

Ahenobarbus met eyes with Burrus again, expressionless. Then his lips split to reveal an unsettling grin.

Albucilla was not grinning. 'Fetch its mother,' she said to Burrus.

Burrus frowned. 'She is asleep. She lost blood.'

'Fetch her,' she repeated. 'Bring her down to your master now. He wishes to congratulate her.'