Nest of Vipers

Lygdus knew in his heart he would fail from the moment I had told him of Cybele and the prophecies and my sacrifice. He had ignored his doubts but the truth was inescapable now. He was shattered by what he had done. He was overwhelmed by his actions and not transported to some higher plain at all. He was sickened with the foulest remorse.

Lygdus had murdered his dominus, taken another man's life. He had lied, betrayed and killed, and the road he had travelled to achieve these things would now be his forever.

He would kill and kill again, just as I, his mentor, killed as easily as I breathed. He would kill without pleasure or love or belief. He would kill to survive. He would kill or be killed. And with each new death his stench would grow. He was a murderer now — a vile assassin.

He would never be free and he would never be clean, even if he became a god for it.

When Apicata's maids let themselves out of the kitchens, they stood very still, straining to hear any sounds that might suggest that their master remained in the house. He had ordered them from the corridor where they slept when the strange dog had appeared, scratching at the front door. They knew it held a message under its collar, but none saw what it was because Sejanus ordered them from his sight.

Among themselves, the maids agreed they'd been sent away because Sejanus didn't want them seeing things they might report to their mistress. He kept secrets from her, they well knew. But she kept secrets from him too, which they felt evened the score.

When they at last returned to their pallets, they were shocked to find their mistress curled up on one, asleep. They consulted in whispers.

'Should we wake her?'

'It would be terrible.'

'But she's in a slave's bed when she's a mistress.'

'Let her sleep. Perhaps she'll wake up of her own accord.'

Apicata was left where she was and the other slaves spread themselves among the remaining pallets as best they could. One of the maids, a girl called Calliope, found herself with nothing to sleep on. Upset, she crept into her mistress's sleeping room, hoping there might be a rug she could arrange on the floor. She saw the strange little oblong box where it lay upon the bed. Without giving it any thought, she picked it up.

The box was smooth in her hand and it rattled. In the dim light of the moon Calliope saw there was a little spot on the box where she could pry the lid with her fingernail. She did so and the lid popped off. Three little objects fell out. She stared at them for a full second before she saw with horror what they were. The tiny torso of a wax doll was detached from its head. The head itself was befouled, as if pulled from a sewer, and the eyes were absent. The doll was Apicata. It was a work of witchcraft.

Calliope nearly shrieked, but she managed to stop herself, fearful of alerting the other maids. She knew that she would somehow be blamed for this, and maybe even accused of planting the witchcraft in the first place. The third item from the box was a scrap of rag on which something had been written. Unable to read, she stared blankly at the tiny letters. She shoved the three horrid things back in the box and reattached the lid. It was not a box at all, she now knew, but a tiny coffin.

Calliope kicked it under the bed and made a prayer to the household gods that she be nowhere nearby when the evil thing was found again.

The nail that held Livilla's curse to the base of the temple's god lost its hold in the stone and fell away, dropping the lead tablet to the floor.

The curse landed with its words facing downwards and only its blank side visible to the god who towered above. Not that it mattered. The deity of deception had already read the plea for his assistance that was scratched into the other side.

It had amused him, Livilla's request. And now Veiovis was enjoying himself greatly as he honoured the unique nature of her curse.

The Kalends of April

AD 23

Two weeks later: Emperor Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus delivers the funeral eulogy for his son

The weeping of the boys somewhere outside his room woke Flamma. The dreadful, wracking sobs brought him back to miseries he hadn't felt since his earliest days at the Ludi. The sound jarred Flamma from his slow, steady path towards death.

His eyes opened and saw the startled reaction on the face of the slave-boy Burrus, watching over him in the bed while applying fresh spiderweb and vinegar to his wound. Flamma tried to speak but his throat only croaked like a toad's.

'Ssh,' said Burrus. He wiped a cloth dipped in water across Flamma's brow.

The gladiator waited, letting the phlegm and blood drip down his gullet before trying again. 'I hear boys weeping…'

A tear slipped from Burrus's eye and he rubbed it away with the cloth. 'It is the domina 's sons — Nero and Drusus.'

'Why do they cry?'

'Because of what has befallen us.'

'I don't understand.'

'Castor is dead — their adoptive father.'

Delirium took Flamma again and it was another day before he found his way back to the surface. When he did, he saw that the grey bird was there. 'How did Castor die?' he asked it, as if the conversation hadn't ended.

But the bird had no answer, and instead posed its most pressing question. 'Why did you do it?'

The effort of trying to answer made Flamma lose his fight to stay conscious. When he woke again, it seemed like only seconds later, but the light had changed and Burrus had returned, dressed in different clothes.

'The boys have stopped crying,' Flamma remarked.

'They have gone to the funeral with my domina and her daughters.'

Flamma let this sink in. 'Castor was a good man.'

Burrus nodded.

'What killed him?'

Burrus lowered his voice to a whisper. 'They say it was a river fever, but my domina, she says — ' But he stopped himself, knowing it was unwise to say more.

'Death's bird is trying to escort me,' Flamma told the boy after another while.

Burrus just looked confused and poured some broth into Flamma's mouth. The gladiator coughed it up, but when Burrus tried again Flamma found he could swallow. It was good. He gulped a few mouthfuls.

'Death's bird has been talking to me, Burrus…'

'Talking?'

'That's what I said.'

'Perhaps it was Fury?'

'Are the Furies hounding me to hell?'

'Fury is Claudius's pet bird — he found it in Misenum. She can talk.'

Burrus wiped Flamma's brow and gave him some more broth. Flamma closed his eyes, and when he opened them again the boy had gone and the room they had placed him in was bathed in a rich, rosy light.

Agrippina was there. With her golden hair that so mirrored his own.

'Why did you do it?' Agrippina asked him.

'It was my time to die,' said Flamma.

'It was not. And neither is it now. You won a great victory.'

'I am old and spent.'

'You are younger than I am.'

'It was my time to die then and it is my time to die now. I don't want to live in this life anymore.'

'Are you disgraced? Are you guilty of a crime?'

'I am a gladiator,' Flamma said, as though that answered everything.

Agrippina frowned. 'So you did it to insult me. And to insult my dead husband, when you told me you revered him. You lied.'

Flamma wept a little and she coolly dabbed at his tears with a square of linen until he stopped again. 'You plunged that blade into your chest but it didn't kill you,' said Agrippina. There was an unmistakable note of respect to her tone.

'Not yet,' said Flamma, 'but I'm still in this deathbed.'

'You are recovering slowly — the physicians have assured me of it.'

'Just let me die.'

'I will not. You are my property. And since the Ludi you have been worth a great deal of money to me. I'd be a fool to let you die.'