Nest of Vipers (34 page)

One week later: the murderer of Lucius
Calpurnius Piso escapes his captors while
being taken to torture, dashing his head on
a rock to kill himself

I felt the stirrings of the subterranean beast again when I was little prepared for it.

My favourite brothel in Rome was Circe's Enchantments, an establishment I had taken to visiting twice a week, using as many
sestertii
as I could save from tips and pilfering. My capacity for sexual acts was somewhat limited, obviously, but I had found the means of pleasuring myself by way of pleasur ing others, and this I engaged in with vigour. Circe's was a comparatively clean establishment, with a team of passably pretty girls and catamites in hired alcoves built into the side of the Theatre of Marcellus. On festival days these alcoves were awash with high-spirited customers at the end of each performance. But on ordinary days Circe's dropped its prices and ran all the 'she-wolves' from the brothel's other premises at the base of a Suburan apartment block.

The good-natured madam was an old whore called Lena – as madams were invariably called in Rome – and she made a name for herself by providing services for those of us whose needs were 'unconventional'. It should not have been a surprise to me, really, when my life at Circe's and my life at Oxheads collided. I was not the only Oxheads slave to enjoy the establishment. But I was surprised when the collision came and, what's more, I was made decidedly uncomfortable by it.

Tiberius's uncharacteristic tour of the countryside around Rome took him to some delightful locales. We journeyed through towns and bucolic hamlets that he hadn't visited in decades, if ever. On each new road we travelled crowds lined the way, cheering Tiberius and casting flowers. His habit of tossing coins certainly added to their enthusiasm, but they would have cheered him anyway for the sheer novelty of having the Emperor among them. The traitor hunts hadn't extended to rural Italy, and so the people had no reason to think ill of Tiberius – or Sejanus, for that matter.

With his goblet in one hand and his coins in the other Tiberius made an endearing sight for those who saw him smiling down upon them from his throne. He reminded some wags in the crowd of the doddering old uncle from an Oscan farce, being carried off to his wedding to a blushing teenage bride. But in the pretty hills, when Tiberius halted his procession in order to climb down and walk, I was shocked to see that the joke was actually near the truth. Tiberius was sexually aroused. His purple robes couldn't hide the erection he had achieved beneath their folds. Plenty among the crowd saw it too and hooted their approval. Quite without shame, Tiberius strode about like a cockerel, still tossing his coins, while Sejanus smiled indulgently from his horse.

But something in the crowd made Tiberius stop abruptly. His good mood vanished, as did his erection. He rushed back to his throne.

'Caesar?' said Sejanus.

Tiberius would not answer, or even look at him.

'What is it, Caesar?'

Tiberius signalled the men who carried his throne to make haste.

From where I stood among the retinue of household slaves, I craned my neck to see what Tiberius might have been upset by in the crowd. But there was nothing strange. Just a sea of happy faces, some clutching flowers, others babies, and even, here and there, domestic pets. One woman held a puppy in her hands for Tiberius's blessing. Another held a piglet. And one, right at the very back of the crowd, held up a honking goose. Frustrated, I decided that the Emperor was as unknowable as ever.

When we reached our destination for the day, I realised why Tiberius had been engorged – at least until his mood had changed. It was from anticipation. Circe's Enchantments, while running plenty of whores to keep the rabble happy, also provided rarer gems, girls and boys of breathtaking beauty, who were kept in reserve for the best clients. No client was better than Tiberius; for many years, he'd had his pick of them. And so, to provide the Emperor with some holiday amusement, Circe's had set up temporary shop in a unique country villa known as the Cave. This house was built into a cliff-face, and its celebrated banquet room, a magnificent cavern, gave the villa its name.

My reaction upon entering this establishment was not apprehension at finding myself in a vast hole in the ground; instead, I was mortified by Lena telling all and sundry that she had remembered to pack the girl who most enjoyed being pleasured by me. The other slaves found this riotous, and I blushed furiously.

Tiberius made his way quickly through the Cave's warren of rooms, and so determined was his progress that Sejanus lost sight of him. Looking faintly perturbed, the Praetorian Prefect went in pursuit of the Emperor, while we slaves were left to amuse ourselves as we liked. Lena made it clear that none of us were getting free rides. Behind patchwork curtains expectant whores waited, and Lena read out the day's 'specials', which were pinned to each curtain.

Just as I was steeling myself to duck off with my favourite, I heard the deep, guttural groan of the subterranean beast. I froze, looking about wildly. Lena was holding out her hand for payment for services soon-to-be rendered when the echoing tremor, far below in the ground, tossed me off balance. I fell face-first onto her little table by the door, and my fistful of coins flew high into the air, raining on our heads. Several coins rang dull and hollow as they hit, revealing that they'd been clipped. As if that wasn't enough to leave Lena speechless for a moment, another tremor threw me to my feet again.

'He's having a fit!' Lena screamed in the direction of the cubicles.

'No!' I started to explain. 'It's not that –'

Lena tried to pull me out of the room. 'No fits in here – it'll kill us.'

'I'm not fitting,' I said, dragging myself from her grip. But I knew something was very wrong – or was about to be. I rode out the next tremor that boiled beneath the ground just as the brothel's boy returned breathless and panting from the fountain. He had a full pail of water in his hand.

'Throw that on Polyxena,' Lena told him.

The boy raised the wooden pail to toss the water over one of the patchwork curtains when a fourth tremor pitched me backwards and into his splash. I fell hard, striking my head on the floor.

I must have lost consciousness because I found myself outside in the villa's grounds. Lena was bending over me, clucking sympathetically. 'Sorry, love,' she said. 'I can't have that sort of thing inside – it brings too much trouble on us.'

I tried to sit up but my head was throbbing violently. 'You dragged me out?' I asked, dazed and angry.

'What if you'd died? You're an Oxheads slave – people would start yelling murder.'

'They would not! I'm nobody.'

She just looked at me as though the blow to my head had reduced me to a state of childishness, and I saw that some of the brothel's girls were crowded around me too. 'I gave you my money,' I said. 'I want what I paid for.'

'Some of those coins were hollow,' said Lena.

'Then I want what I paid for with the coins that weren't. Help me up,' I pleaded.

Lena and the girls hauled me to my feet. 'How do you feel, love?'

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.