'I'm going to the temple,' Lena yelled behind her to the whores.
'Which one, Lena?'
'None of your business.' She patted the contents of the little bag she carried and fired a parting shot. 'Wash all your damned holes in salty water while I'm gone, and try to stay away from the wine.'
'Screw you.'
She moved well away from the shopfront, not wanting the girls to hear the destination she gave to the litter-bearers. When she had said it, the bearers weren't bothered, merely naming their price. Lena felt deflated. 'Did you hear me?'
'Like a bell,' said the leader.
Dignified, she climbed into the litter.
A new friend she had made in recent weeks had assured Lena that this temple offered exactly what she needed. But with the bearers' lack of surprise, Lena hoped she had not been lied to. Yet, considering again the arts that this friend, Martina, seemed to know, Lena felt sure the visit would prove profitable.
She arranged herself comfortably in the transport for the trip across the city. A gust of wind blew the curtains aside just as the litter reached the Forum; Lena clung to her veil, not wanting anyone outside to recognise her. She didn't fear they'd guess her purpose, only that they'd laugh and point at her. Who was she, after all, a rotten old whore, to go around Rome in a litter? People would call her Cleopatra if they knew, or worse, the Augusta Livia.
Flicking the curtains closed, Lena caught a glimpse of someone she knew would never laugh at her. She waved without thinking. Startled in the midst of an errand, I waved back. But my jaw had dropped. Lena drew the curtains shut then, but it occurred to her that I may not have recognised her at all. She was wearing a veil.
It was gloomy beneath the trees as Lena paid the bearers and waited until they had gone, nervous of being observed. When she was quite sure she was alone, she took a long, uneasy look up the slimy, crooked steps and told herself she had no other option but to go inside. Skill and endeavour had failed her. She needed the help of the god to rebuild herself now.
The scurry of vermin when she pushed open the door was unnerving, but Lena had encountered worse in brothels and bravely stepped inside. Having come so far, she was determined to go through with Martina's plan. She reached the plinth gingerly and took the hammer, nail and tablet from the bag. She held the lead in her hands and felt the surprising weight of it.
' May disaster strike my competitors worse than every disaster I've known,' she read. She chortled at the curse and then felt a twinge of fear that perhaps it wasn't brutal enough. Should she have defined the disaster? A ruinous fire? Or an outbreak of plague? She banished the thought. Losing whores beneath the avalanche was a disaster worse than any she could think of. To somehow top it with one greater still was a god's work, beyond mortal imagination. This was what she was here for, after all.
With three swift blows of the hammer, Lena nailed the curse tablet to the plinth, where so many others already hung. She sighed at the sheer number of them. Would the god even notice hers? Looking up at the deity's great statue to beseech him, she was suddenly struck by how familiar the god's face was.
A noise behind her made her start. 'Iphicles!'
'Where did you obtain your veil from, Lena?' I had followed her all the way from the Forum.
She was too shocked to answer me for a moment.
'Your gossamer veil,' I said. 'Where did you get it, Lena?'
She looked at me as if I was mad. 'I found it in the street. Someone must have lost it. It was too nice to throw away, so I took it.'
I fell into thoughtful silence as Lena looked up at the statue again. 'Iphicles,' she said eventually.
'You don't need to say it, Lena — I know.'
'You know? But what do you know?'
I pointed up at the god. 'Veiovis has my face, or I have his, whichever it is. I know, Lena, and I agree with you. The resemblance cannot be a coincidence.'
Ahenobarbus crouched in the Suburan alley, the sounds of the teeming slums all around him an affront to his ears. The lusts, the laughter of the poor, their mundane talk, the snatches of their arguments — these echoes of ordinary lives were a mockery to him, condemned as he was to live in silence. Every sinew of his being longed for words, for the facility for speech, and every breath in his chest silently cursed the cruelty of gods that would waste such precious gifts upon beasts that held them in no value.
He touched his torch to the oil-soaked rags. They began to smoke, delicately at first, thin, grey wisps floating to the windows above. Ahenobarbus, who had always loved fire, would punish the beasts for possessing what he was denied.
Pale and feverish upon their bed, Nilla muttered her eternal questions from dry, cracked lips. 'How could the Emperor have allowed my mother and brothers to die?'
Her lover pressed a sponge to her face. 'I have no answer — I do not know.'
'How could he do it? Sejanus was gone. But the Emperor didn't save them. He let them starve.'
'Ssh, now, my love. Hush.'
'Why have I heard nothing from Capri? Nothing since my grandmother returned there. What has happened to her? What has happened to my sisters?'
'Please, Nilla — I do not know. You must stop tormenting yourself like this.'
'How can I, when I don't know what has silenced them? When I don't know what has happened to them?'
'Please, try to sleep. You're ill.'
'Why have I been told nothing?' she cried out. 'Why am I so worthless?'
Tears slipped down his cheeks as he held her to keep her still.
'Why am I so ignored, Burrus?' she sobbed. 'Why am I so alone?'
His world had receded to their bed. Like Nilla beside him, he no longer heard the lives lived by others. They were an island, the two of them, cut off from the world, which was why, when the old, roughened hands pulled at his clothes and tried to rouse him he barely sensed it. When the same hands tugged at his hair, he felt nothing. When the voice shouted and wept and cursed at him, it seemed to Burrus as though it came from a distance of miles. It was only when the old servant slapped hard at Nilla's face that Burrus was pulled from the spell.
'Don't touch her.'
'The Guards!' the old woman yelled at him. 'Wake up, boy — it's the Guards!' The words penetrated, but not their meaning.
'The Guards — they're here!'
'What guards? What do you mean?'
He rejoined the world to the sound of fists pounding the door below.
'The Praetorian Prefect!' the old woman shouted at him in terror. 'He is demanding we open the house in the name of the Emperor!'
Burrus ran to the corridor as the battering ram reduced the street door to splinters. In the garden the smirking Albucilla thrilled that her rival's destruction was imminent. Wherever Ahenobarbus was, she only hoped he would return in time to see it.
The alley fire took quickly, catching hold of the rubbish Ahenobarbus piled to feed its hunger. The flames spread surely upwards, licking at the windowsills of the insulae. A woman looked out of one of the windows and saw the peril. Ahenobarbus's hair shone as he masturbated before her in the glow. She screamed and pointed at him. Other beasts appeared from neighbouring windows and Ahenobarbus took to his feet. Men leaped from the windows to chase him.
His heart pounding with excitement and terror, Ahenobarbus lurched from the arches of the Circus Maximus and up the long Steps of Cacus to ascend the Palatine.
'Fire demon!' his pursuers screamed. 'His hair is on fire! Look at him — it's the demon!'
The sky glowed with the cleansing blaze that consumed the Suburan slums.