Nest of Vipers (26 page)

'Am I one-eyed?' she asked her friends as they climbed into her litter.

Sosia and Claudia cast quick looks at each other.

'You are certainly driven,' said Claudia, tactfully.

Agrippina nodded. 'As was my Germanicus.' Yet she wondered if this was what had been meant.

Little Boots swam with sleek, practised strokes to the edge of the chilled
frigidarium
pool and hung to the marble edge for a moment, looking over his shoulder to be sure it was really happening. When he knew with certainty that it was, he hoisted himself to the side and stood dripping in the cool, fresh air. A horrified bath slave, no older than Little Boots's twelve years, stood gaping at the wall of the bath hall. He was the only other occupant who hadn't fled.

'Linen,' said Little Boots, aware of the slave without looking at him.

The slave stayed frozen.

'Bring me linen.' He turned to face the boy, showing eyes shot red with blood.

The slave trembled and started to weep.

'If you don't bring linen to dry me right now –'

The boy sprang forward, snatching at a pile of bath linens and knocking most of them into a puddle of water. He slipped as he ran to Little Boots, gashing his knee, but he righted himself in his terror and threw the length of fabric he carried at Little Boot's back.

'Dry me . . .'

The slave sobbed with fear.

'Don't make me tell you again. You are a bath slave. I am a prince. You are nothing. I am all.'

The wretched boy patted at Little Boots's thin arms and shoulders. Little Boots walked around the perimeter of the pool, forcing the slave to stumble after him until Little Boots halted at the place that gave the best view. He stared with fascination into the depths of the cloudy water while the bath slave shut his eyes.

'The others ran, but you stayed,' Little Boots whispered to him. 'Do you admire me for what I do? Are you impressed by it?'

The boy was too terrified to do anything but nod.

'Good. Then you are the sort of slave I'll be wanting at Oxheads one day. An unshakable slave with courage and fortitude . . .' His voice faded away. He was mesmerised by the water.

Feeling sick to his guts, the bath slave sensed a flash of movement and turned to see me entering the
frigidarium
room. The look he gave me was a hopeless, desperate appeal and I noiselessly took the towel from him, pressing my hands to Little Boots's back.

'
Domine
. . . where is the eunuch Lygdus?'

Little Boots lurched in fright and tore himself from my touch.

'Where has he gone,
domine
?'

'You made me do it! It's all your fault, Iphicles!' He sprinted naked across the room, rushing for the door before I could stop him.

'
Domine
!'

The bath slave threw himself into the freezing pool, gasping at the shock of it, before plunging beneath the surface. I saw then whom he meant to save. Lygdus lay still at the bottom. With a shout of horror I threw myself into the water and, together with the slave, heaved and strained to bring Lygdus to the surface. We dragged his bulk to the long row of steps and fell there, coughing and weeping, as Lygdus's lifeless body lay inert, half in and half out of the chilly pool. I beat my fists on his chest, ordering him to live, until good sense gripped me and I remembered what I had done when I had once found Plancina in a lifeless state. I placed my mouth upon Lygdus's slack lips, pinching closed his nose and forcing the air from my lungs into his. His chest rose and fell and I suppressed my panic, willing myself and the bath slave to remain calm while I fought to win back the life.

At last the air rushed into Lygdus's lungs on its own and he belched a torrent of cloudy water. Weeping with relief, I clung to him. 'It was all a mistake,' I told him. 'The boy is excitable, irrational at times, but he has a good heart and he will learn to love you, Lygdus, just wait and see. He will learn to love you just like he loves me.'

I found the courage to look into Lygdus's eyes and found no trace of anger or accusation there. He just looked at me, seemingly without emotion at all.

'Please believe me,' I begged him. 'Tell me you believe that it was all a mistake, just a silly boy's play. Tell me that you know it to be true?'

Lygdus nodded once, and that was all. Overjoyed, I told myself that he had done so with the utmost conviction, with a rigid faith in the word of Cybele that was almost, truly
almost
, as iron-hard as my own.

Eleven months later: the war against
the rebellious Numidian forces of
Tacfarinas ends with his suicide in the
forest of Auzea

Screaming at the top of her lungs, Agrippina threw herself forward, her sword raised high above her head and her eyes blazing with all the hatred and fury she contained in her heart. But Flamma deflected her and she slipped on the tiles, knocking her head at the fountain's edge.

'Lady, please –' I cried.

'I said leave me!' She was bruised and grazed from previous falls and fresh blood trickled from her temple.

'But you're injuring yourself.'

'How does a
man
learn sword-craft?' she shot at me.

Watching, Nilla gave me a cold look for my slave's petty concern and I saw that Burrus mirrored it. Chastened, I took my place next to my fellow slave Nymphomidia at the edge of the peristyle, feeling no less uneasy.

'Once more,' said Flamma.

Agrippina sprang to her feet and rushed at the hulking gladiator, repeating her scream, hatred still firing in her eyes. She got a sword stroke in, and then another, before the gladiator deflected her once more and she crashed hard to the ground. Agrippina lay there, panting and dazed. I wanted only to stop this but the child Nilla's fierce eyes were upon me, forcing me to keep silent.

Flamma waited, watching Agrippina impassively. Slowly, she got to her feet and stood before him once more with an exultant look. The gladiator nodded then.

'Is this what you claimed me for, Lady?'

'What other use have you?'

Flamma guffawed. 'Well, you got two strokes in – your best effort yet.'

She lunged at him without a sound, seizing the advantage of surprise. Her blade slashed his upper arm, and before he could respond she plucked a knife from her waist and nicked his thigh with it. The gladiator caught her under the ribs with his shield, lifting her feet from the ground. For a brief second their eyes connected, both registering amazement, but deep respect too, before Agrippina was thrown to the ground again. The fall left her winded and unable to draw breath. The noise she made was terrible to my ears as she tried to suck the air back into her lungs. I clenched my hands into fists, desperate to aid her somehow, but I knew it was pointless and I was very aware of Nilla's eyes. At last Agrippina's breath returned, but her strength was gone and she remained where she had fallen in the dust. Nilla moved to her and gently stroked her mother's brow, whispering loving words.

I couldn't hold myself back any longer. 'How long will this go on?'

'Until I am dead,' said Flamma. 'That's our agreement, and there's no shame in it from where I'm standing.'

I quaked at the huge man addressing me directly.

'It will finish when the Lady has killed me – isn't that so, Lady?'

Agrippina's eyes remained closed, but she managed to nod her head in the dust. Flamma began to dab at his flesh wounds with a linen rag moistened in water.

'You will teach Nilla the same skills before that happens,' Agrippina spoke from the ground.

The gladiator looked up and met Nilla's gaze. I saw the hesitation in his face. 'She is too young for it.'

'I am nine,' said Nilla, without a trace of fear.

He considered this for a moment and then nodded. 'As you wish,' he replied to Agrippina.

Nymphomidia pushed Burrus forward slightly, so that he caught the gladiator's attention. Long-limbed and ungainly, he was now the tallest in the courtyard apart from Flamma himself. But his build was still slim.

'You will teach another one, too,' said Agrippina from the ground, her eyes still closed. 'You will teach this boy, Burrus.'

The gladiator looked Burrus up and down. 'And how old are you now, lad?'

'Fourteen.' Like Nilla, he met the professional killer's gaze levelly.

'A man, then,' said Flamma. 'Very well. This is turning into quite a school.'

Agrippina gave a hacking cough and a new trickle of blood ran from her lips, but she nodded at the gladiator's words.

'But only one of you will kill me,' Flamma said. This was not a question or even a request, but a statement of fact. 'And that is you, Lady, and no other.'

'That is our agreement,' said Agrippina.

'And it will be my honour,' said Flamma. 'Your husband was the greatest man in Rome – he should have been Emperor.'

I kept my eyes hard on the ground, frightened of what he might see in them if I dared to look up.

'My training you in sword-craft is vengeance for his death, and when you kill me you will be ready to take your own vengeance.'

Agrippina opened her eyes and there was profound gratitude in her face. 'Your sacrifice will be remembered by Rome, I promise you,' she whispered, 'and you will live like a king in this house while we learn from you.'

He picked up the sword from where it had fallen from Agrippina's hand and tossed it high in the air. 'Who's next for their lesson?'

Burrus leaped forward and caught the sword. Then he turned and presented it to Nilla, bowing his head. She took it from him, weighing it in her hand and curling her tiny fingers around the hilt.

Flamma smiled. 'You are your mother's daughter, child.'

'And vengeance burns in me just as strong,' Nilla said.

It was never the corpulent Senator Silius's first choice to avail himself of public lavatories, but when nature's call made evacuation imperative he was glad the facilities were there. His bladder was not what it was, he was sorry to admit; it needed emptying far more often than it once had, even though he tried to counter things by drinking less. Silius's bowels demanded hourly easing as well, so all in all he knew it was either the civic latrines that received him when he was caught short away from home – or the banks of the Tiber with the beggars. The latrines, he knew, were marginally less unsavoury.

He halted his retinue in its noisy progress from the Senate. 'My apologies, friends,' Silius said, waving his large and expressive hands at the latrine enclosure at the edge of the Forum. 'You know the drill by now, I'm sure.'

His slaves and clients cracked good-natured jokes as he descended the steps. 'Send someone ahead to tell my lovely wife I have been delayed,' he called over his shoulder. 'No need to tell Sosia the reason – she'll guess it herself.'

The assembled men laughed and one of the slaves was detached to take the message. At the bottom of the steps Silius stuck his head inside the entrance, trying not to look apprehensive. He had campaigned for seven long years in Germany, after all, and had endured far less hygienic conditions than this. But still, as a general, he had always been granted privacy. The nature of the public latrines was just that – inescapably public. The usual arrangement was a dozen or so raised openings in a row where there was nothing else to look at but one's fellow defecators, male and female. There was no room for modesty.

The attendant lavatory slave bowed – an ugly boy with deformed ears.

Silius realised with relief that there was no one else inside. 'What good fortune,' he declared to the boy.

The ugly lad smirked. 'Got the throne room all to yourself,
domine
.'

Silius ruffled the boy's hair and strode past him to select a suitable squatting hole. At least they were clean. The boy had been at work with his brush. Silius made his selection and hoisted himself onto the platform, pulling his toga folds above his hips and untying his loin cloth. Placing his feet in the rests, he closed his eyes and sighed with contentment as relief began to come. When he opened his eyes again, he found the cauliflower-eared boy standing unexpectedly close.

'Are you Gaius Silius?'

Silius hesitated in replying until dignity won out, despite the circumstances, and he confirmed that he was.

The boy was impressed. 'You're the great general, then?'

Silius nodded.

'You beat that bastard Sacrovir.'

Silius shrugged.

'I saw your triumph.'

'Good for you, lad.' He would have got up to leave if his bowels weren't informing him to hold fast for a second act.

'You're the one man in Rome that old Tiberius won't dare charge with treason,' said the boy, laughing. 'Must be nice to feel safe.'

Silius was taken aback with astonishment but the boy just kept laughing. 'What an extraordinary thing to say,' said Silius, a politician first and a general second. 'Those charged with treason deserve their fate – it is no laughing matter. Give me a sponge.'

The boy tapped his nose, as if well aware of a joke behind Silius's words, and went to the bucket of wiping implements, fossicking for a clean one. 'No offence meant,
domine
,' he said. 'All I mean is that you're in the best place of all because old Tiberius
needs
you.'

'Yes, well,' said Silius, waiting for the sponge.

'Of course he does – you kept your German army loyal when others fell into mutiny, didn't you?' The ugly lad was remarkably well informed about political and military affairs.

'Give me the sponge,' said Silius, holding out his hand.

The boy held on to it. 'But you did,
domine
– you kept them loyal. Even Germanicus couldn't have done that.'

Silius looked around the room. They were definitely alone – just himself and an ugly boy of no worth or consequence. What did it matter if he humoured such a slave? 'If the German revolt had spread to my brigades, Tiberius would never have kept his throne, it's true,' said Silius.

The boy's eyebrows raised in awe. 'Really,
domine
?'

'It would have tipped the balance – too many against him. But I kept my lot loyal and he kept his crown. So you're right, boy,' Silius winked. 'Tiberius really does owe me one.'

The deformed slave giggled and gave him the sponge on its stick. As Silius applied it to his backside, the slave watched him with eagle eyes.

'Don't worry,' said Silius, now wishing the boy would leave him. 'I'll give you a tip in a moment.'

But the boy didn't budge, his eyes glued to the senator.

Suddenly Silius leaped into the air with a shriek. A crackle of flames shot from the latrine hole and he looked down into the sewer with shock. A toy papyrus boat of the type made for children sailed the flowing water below him, laden with blazing leaves.

The ugly lavatory boy stuck his head in the hole and screamed into the sewer. 'Duro, you cocksucker! I'm going to call the
vigiles
on you!'

He pulled his head out again as Silius rubbed his hindquarters in bewilderment. 'I'm sorry,
domine
,' the boy said. 'It's that bastard Duro who minds the lavatories further up the
cloaca maxima
. He thinks it's a great laugh to send his practical jokes downstream to scare off my best customers.'

Silius threw a handful of brass coins at the boy and hurried up the steps.

In the indignity of having the hair singed from his buttocks, Silius lost all recollection of what he'd said to the boy. But afterwards, as more customers came and went, some tipping and others not, the slave with the misshapen ears enjoyed one of the happiest afternoons he had known. What he clutched in his heart was far better than any handful of
dupondii
he might have collected from a day's arse-wiping.

Silius thought he had thrown him brass but really he had given him gold.

The cream-coloured heifer behaved with perfect docility. The rope around its neck was slack; the beast didn't need to be pulled, moving forward of its own accord, clueless to its fate and with its belly swollen with calf. All the good omens were piling up before the heifer and its unborn had even been offered to the gods. The small group of assembled
pontifices
cast pleased little nods at each other across the dim hall of the
curia regia
.

At eighteen, and the youngest of the dozen priests by some years, Nero signalled what he hoped would be read as his own pleasure at the heifer's docile progress, raising his eyebrows at anyone who looked back at him. One of the older priests went to frown, before catching himself and remembering who Nero was, and then attempted to turn the glare into a sort of spasm. Nero came close to laughing, but when his eyes darted to the
victimarius
who held the heifer's rope, he was startled by the new look the man returned. The
victimarius
smiled back at him boldly, with none of the unquestioning respect that Nero expected from lesser-ranking men. The man had a knowing smirk that constituted a challenge. Nero was thrown but couldn't pull his eyes away. The man could see through him.

Nero had felt a growing panic in the presence of this
victimarius
from the moment he had joined the college. His grandfather, Tiberius, as
pontifex maximus
, had introduced Nero with great solemnity to all those who conducted the sacrifices. But when Nero made his first greeting handshake with this man, a bolt of lightning travelled up his arm. The
victimarius
had done nothing outwardly provocative but Nero sensed something unsettling to him. With every sacred handshake they had shared since, the lightning bolt had intensified. This man excited him.

Nero stared across the dim hall of the
curia
and the
victimarius
's smile widened. In a gesture so fast it could have been overlooked by anyone else, the man reached to his genitals and gripped them under his
tunica
, before bringing his hand to where it could be seen again, all the while grinning. Nero felt his pulse surge at the sight. The
augur
began sprinkling roasted barley grains on the heifer's head and the
victimarius
hung back, letting his eye leave Nero. Then he stepped down from the altar as the aged
popa
took his place – the man whose job it was to stun the beast with a hammer. The
victimarius
disappeared into one of the dark anterooms, without a single glance behind him.

Waiting in the shadows was Lygdus.

Nero was aware of how sacrilegious it was to develop an erection during a meeting of the pontifical college, but it was useless trying to will it away. Crossing his legs in his curule chair only added to the pressure, and he cursed the
victimarius
for giving him the look he had – the look that had inflamed him. Nero knew for sure now that the man wanted him, having already suspected it for months, and Nero also knew that he would be unable to ignore it any longer. He feared he had sprung free from the confines of his loincloth; only the linen of his striped priest's
toga
was keeping him from exposing himself – and his secret.