Nest of Vipers (16 page)

'Perhaps it's time the secret lovers came out into the open?' I whispered to Lygdus.

'They'll never do that. It would ruin them both.'

'Perhaps we can do something so that there will be no scandal? Perhaps we can make them see that they have a hope of being happy one day?'

'Will we kill someone to do it?'

The eight litter-bearers entered the room and took their positions under the poles that ran along each side of my
domina
's throne. I saw the glint of what I thought were tears in her eyes. Tears of what, I wondered. Horror? Misery? Or, perhaps – dared I allow myself to hope it – even excitement? I knew she had heard every word we'd spoken. The bearers lifted her and I saw her eyes no more. I turned back to Lygdus.

'Yes, we will,' I whispered. 'We will kill someone very soon. And not long after that, we will kill again. And then again.'

Lygdus laughed with delight and we took our places in our
domina
's wake, trailing among the other household slaves who streamed from all corners of Oxheads as Livia's throne was borne along the great halls. We crossed the front threshold and left the grand house, stepping into the golden light of day. Livia looked resplendent as Flora. The eunuch basked in her reflected glory as the mob in the street began to shout and cheer the sight of their Augusta. Lygdus preened as though the cries were meant for him. I indulged him in this folly of youth. In my state of advanced years the love of the mob meant very little. Too often I had seen it turn.

'
Why
do you kill them?' he whispered to me once we had begun our progress down the Palatine. 'Is it for vengeance?'

I could have lied and claimed this to be true. Looking back on it now, I see how much less painful it would have been if I had. But in my happy realisation that I had found in Lygdus not only a kindred spirit and an ally, but also that very rarest of things in Rome, a friend, I chanced the greatest risk I had taken in my life.

'I do it all for Cybele,' I said.

He blinked at me in confusion. 'For the Great Mother?'

I nodded, my eyes shining with joy. Then I told him everything about the prophecies and divinity, and how Cybele gave her greatest gifts to her eunuchs. We had reached the Forum by the time I was done, and hundreds of people trailed behind and around us, screaming my
domina
's name. Lygdus was bewildered by what I had told him, the glories of the procession forgotten. His heart burned with new hope and possibility.

I pointed to the head of the procession, where Castor walked like a prince, his baby son in his arms and his three fine nephews by his side. 'See,' I said, 'see up there? There he is – our second prophesied king.'

Lygdus struggled to comprehend it all. 'My
dominus
Castor?'

'No, not him . . .'

'Then the second king is Nero . . .?' he said in wonder.

I shook my head, still smiling, and showed him who it really was that Cybele had ordained.

'Little Boots?'

I closed my eyes, nodding. 'And what a king he will be.' I was enraptured. But when I opened them again, my spirits soaring to the skies, I saw the look of utter confusion that remained upon the eunuch's face. I guessed why he was so puzzled – Little Boots was still a boy, after all.

'The Great Mother is unknowable,' I said. 'We cannot understand all that she commands. All we know is this: everything she does, she does for Rome.'

Lygdus nodded slowly, and for the remainder of the procession, for the full duration of our long, magnificent path, he repeated all that I had told him, whispering it under his breath, telling himself to believe.

Dazzled by the possibilities that his once bleak future now held, Lygdus wanted nothing more than to find the comfort that was mine in holding so much deep certainty in my heart. He wanted to achieve the blissful ignorance that I nursed in the blindness of such faith.

I would not discover it for many years, but Lygdus tried and failed, and tried and failed, and tried that much harder again that day to achieve these things that were mine. And when the tiny, nagging doubts flared up in his heart, biting, gnawing and grinding against his conscience, Lygdus beat them back, enraged that comfort and ignorance were denied to him. He
would
achieve all that I had achieved, Lygdus told himself violently.

As all the gods were his witnesses, he
would
achieve what was mine.

Five months later: the rebel forces of
Sacrovir occupy Augustodunum, Gaul,
taking the sons of the Gallic nobility
hostage

We elbowed and kicked against the surging mass of gawpers, trying to force our way through to catch a glimpse of the gladiators' banquet. The size of the crowd was impossible to measure, as was the distance to the raised dining couches on the other side of the Forum that held the leading gladiators of the
Ludi Romani
– the Roman Games. They could have been twenty feet away, or a hundred. The monuments of the Forum seemed to bend and recede beyond the heads of idolatrous fans.

My own head span in the haze and I felt like weeping in frustration. Yet I could think of no other way to achieve our mission, so we had to go on. We had a goal, a vital plan, but we were still too ill-equipped to commence it. The only way we could obtain what we needed was by reaching a vantage point where we could see everyone present at the gladiators' public feast. If we could survey the whole crowd, I reasoned, perhaps I would somewhere see
her
, the woman whose skills were essential for the success of our scheme. In my gut I knew she was present.

'Keep going!' I yelled to Lygdus over my shoulder. 'We can do this!'

Those we kicked and struck were doing the same to us and to everyone else besides. Sexual invitations and lusty cheers were flung at the gorging gladiators, merging with cries of pain and outrage as the crowd thrilled and brawled. We were in a scene from a nightmare, beyond our depth in a putrid pool of scratching, spitting, stamping ghouls. Fist blows rained upon me. Hair was yanked from my head and my eyes were blackened. Two of my teeth had already been loosened by a fuller armed with a club – a man I knew well and usually admired, because he washed my
domina
's linen. But like everyone else, the excitement of the games had made him lose his mind. I was in danger of losing my own.

'Move forward, Lygdus!' I yelled. 'I think I can see the Thracians up ahead!' Indeed, I could just see a glimmer of the Balkan warriors' gilt crowns.

The noise around us was like the pits of Hades as we forged forward. The gladiators stuffed themselves as if reclining on Olympus. Still, the crowd's din was nothing to the noise they would make tomorrow when the same idols would be let loose upon each other for the games. The gladiators would savour hell tomorrow, and the mob's turn would come to sit high above and watch the spectacle of death. But neither Lygdus nor I gave a fig for the games. Like most slaves, we found the idea of fellow men of servitude going to such bloody deaths repellent. And today's traditional 'last feast' we thought equally as vile. We were only among them at all because I clung to such a slim hope.

'I'm dying!' cried Lygdus from somewhere behind me. 'Iphicles!'

I turned and managed to locate him. He was poking the eyes of a youth he was gripping by the throat. 'You're not dying,' I yelled. 'You're showing him who's boss!'

The youth tore himself from Lygdus's hands and managed to lurch away. Lygdus struggled through the seething mass of men and women to reach me.

'Can you see the gladiators?' he shouted above the din.

We strained to see above the heads in front of us and caught a clear view of a table of Thracian fighters, and behind them a group of Celts, all gorging on platters of food.

'How will they fight tomorrow with their bellies so full?' Lygdus wanted to know.

'We need to get on those platforms,' I yelled at him.

'Where the dining couches are? The gladiators will do you in for it!'

'I'll pretend I'm a serving slave.'

'They'll kill you, Iphicles.'

'I have to be able to see the whole crowd,' I insisted. 'We've waited months for the
Ludi Romani
to begin. She loves them too much to resist returning to Rome.'

'I still don't understand. Just who is this "she"?'

'I told you.'

'Not very well,' Lygdus muttered.

I stared at the massive Thracians. Lygdus was right. They would kill me if I dared to mount their platform. 'There are other platforms, further forward,' I shouted, 'with different men – not so fierce.'

Lygdus was doubtful. 'This woman you seek – why do we need her at all?'

'For what she can
give
us. Now follow me.'

'But what about the stuff you've got for Livia? Can't some of that be spared?'

'No, it cannot!' I cried. 'She's a threat enough already. I need every last smear. What we need for our new plan is a very different kind of poison. One that doesn't just incapacitate – we need one that kills.'

Progress became easier once we made it closer to the dining platforms. The gladiators were protected by bodyguards, and the presence of so many armed men – the gladiators included – made the spectators with the clearest view of the feast suppress their violence. The brawls were confined only to the middle and the back.

We wove through the tightly packed youths and women who ogled their idols with such unwholesome glee. I heard an offer of marriage made by a widow – and the acceptance of it given by a laughing gladiator, should he survive tomorrow's butchery. Among the gladiators were groups of free men, 'volunteers' who had sold themselves into fighting at the games because of hard times. We saw one of them freeing his own household slaves in a theatrical act of manumission.

'He'll regret that if he wins,' Lygdus proclaimed.

I saw a familiar face weaving through the crowd in front of us and let out a cry of surprise. Lygdus saw who it was. 'It's the
dominus
. . .'

Castor was approaching, flanked by the stoutest men of his retinue.

'We'll be caught!' Lygdus wailed.

'We're doing nothing wrong,' I hissed in his ear. 'Half of this rabble are slaves just like us.'

'Do you
want
him to see us?' Lygdus asked, incredulous.

In truth, I didn't. 'Duck down,' I spat. We dropped like stones as Castor and his friends passed perilously close to where we hid. They were heading for the gladiators' platforms. Crouching in the dust gave the crowd around us license to kick and stamp upon us. We didn't dare cry out. After several minutes of this torment I struggled to my feet again, delivering blows to the worst of the jokers. My body was bruised and aching.

'Can you see him?' Lygdus croaked from the ground.

I was staring Castor directly in the face.

'Iphicles?' said Castor in surprise.

Guilt made me tremble like a kitten.

'You're a follower of the gladiators too, are you?'

'Yes,
domine
,' I stammered, 'when permission is given for me to attend the games.' I prayed to the Great Mother that he wouldn't ask whose permission I had sought today, given I hadn't sought it from anyone.

'Who is attending my grandmother?'

I felt Lygdus quaking at my feet. 'The eunuch,' I lied. 'He is more than capable,
domine
. And he has come to love her too.'

Lygdus buried his face into my sandals in terror that Castor would see him. But the crowd around us was so thick that Castor couldn't see anything below my shoulders. Yet, he sensed that something was being hidden from him. I tried to summon a smile of reassuring innocence as a trickle of urine ran down my leg. A man from his retinue caught his attention.

'They await you on the platform.'

A path had been cleared through the throng for him.

Castor shot me a warning look and then moved on. I gave a sigh of profound relief, and then realised that Lygdus was lapping the pooled urine from between my toes. 'Stop it,' I said, pulling my feet from his grip.

'Is he gone?' Lygdus simpered.

'Yes – get up.'

He heaved his bulk upright as Castor shouted words of enthusiasm to the same gladiator who had been freeing household slaves.

'We've got to move further on,' I said, propelling Lygdus in front of me. 'We'll go where Castor can't see us but where we can see everyone.'

We took a different route through the stinking mass of street scum, attempting to skirt Castor and his men. All around us the beggars, pickpockets, prostitutes and mercenaries yelled in united devotion to men who would be dead before tomorrow's nightfall.

'Don't they see how doomed this all is?' Lygdus shouted above the din. 'Their love is so wasted.'

'They live in hope,' I replied. 'Everyone believes their favourite will survive, beating all the others to fight another day.'

'And when their favourites don't? Aren't they broken by it?'

'No, they simply find a new favourite. No one takes it as seriously as you think, Lygdus.'

Lygdus covered his ears to the hysteria, finding this hard to believe.

We neared another platform, where a group of Greek fighters were making emotional farewells to their friends. 'I hate all this killing!' Lygdus screamed at those around us, without a breath of irony. I didn't remind him that we were here so that we could obtain the very means to kill.

I saw the platform I needed. A wretched group of men, sickly and weak, were slumped on ill-cushioned couches without a canopy to protect them from the sun. These were the condemned men, criminals from the equestrian class to be put to the slaughter in the opening minutes of the games. Badly armed and little trained, their purpose was to provide quick and easy deaths at the hands of the favourites in order to raise the crowd's excitement for blood. If they'd been born of the lowest orders, they would have been fed to the beasts. But as knights it was considered fitting that they be given a chance to save themselves from execution by fighting for it. This was another of Rome's shams. They were as doomed as the guiltiest slaves thrown to the jackals. The faces of these men were stark and haunted by their imminent deaths. The food sat untouched before them. Their mouths and bellies were empty with fear. There was only one bodyguard assigned to these accursed men and his attention was elsewhere.

I pinched Lygdus. 'This will do.'

'Iphicles, don't –'

I stole forward so I could clamber onto the platform. The lone bodyguard saw me.

'Get off!' He drew his sword.

I took a chance on my lie. 'I'm the serving slave,' I claimed.

He creased his brow.

'I have to pick up the fallen food. If I don't, then how will it be burnt in offering to the gods?'

The guard had never seen me before but I kept a look of such pathetic certainty on my face that he gave me the benefit of the doubt. 'It's a waste of time offering food from these bastards,' he said. 'Their throats are cut already.'

One of the wretches broke into sobs.

The guard held out his arm to hoist me up to his level. Lygdus stared up at me in amazement. I winked at him. Then I looked at the faces of the doomed men on the dining couches. Would any of them register that I wasn't their serving slave at all? They seemed to look at me without seeing me. I couldn't risk exposing my lie, however, so I fell to all fours and began crawling around the table and couches, ostensibly picking up scraps. There was nothing to be found – the food hadn't been touched. After several minutes I saw that Lygdus was following my progress carefully. His face was at the platform's side, not far from mine, where I kneeled behind the rear couch.

'Tell me when the guard is distracted again,' I hissed.

Lygdus craned his neck to see where the guard was. 'He's distracted now. He's jumped off the front of the platform.'

I stood upright to see. The guard was in the midst of the crowd, looking out at the people and not back at his doomed charges. Suddenly I saw a face I knew – but it was not the one I was looking for. Golden-haired Flamma sat upright in a chair on a platform he shared with no one else. If a couch had been offered to him for the occasion, he had clearly spurned it, choosing a simple, rough-hewn chair and table at which to eat his meal. He glanced in my direction without registering that we had met each other under less exultant circumstances. No emotion showed in his face. The oldest fighter by far, he was also the calmest. Flamma acknowledged no one in the crowd, and few acknowledged him. He lacked celebrity. He was a nonentity in this throng. That he was also a violent brute, I had no doubt. He could likely dismember a man with his bare hands. Yet I still felt compassion for him, and I muttered a little prayer to Cybele that he might be permitted to win this last time.

'Can you see her anywhere?' Lygdus appealed to me from the ground. 'Can you see the woman we need?'

I dismissed Flamma from my thoughts and peered into the boiling sea of Romans. 'Sorceress Martina,' I whispered into the wind, 'I know you're out there somewhere – you
must
be. I need your magic – I need your poison. Please, just make yourself seen . . .'

Lygdus lacked my patience. He threw a sticky plum pit at me, which bounced hard off my head. 'I've had enough – do you hear me, Iphicles?'

'That's too bad,' I replied, glaring at him. 'There's only one path open to us now and this is it. Since Aemilia of the Aemilii's demise, there's been a distinct lack of reliable poisoners in Rome. So we've got no choice but to keep searching for our unreliable one: Martina.'

He popped another plum between his lips.

'Perhaps you're not suited to this work, Lygdus,' I said. 'Best be on your way, then. See you at Oxheads.'

I turned on my cushion to look down at the stage and Lygdus's fury escalated. I heard him sucking his plum, planning to pelt me with a second pit. He swallowed the pulp and spat the missile into his hand.

'Throw a pit at me again and you'll regret it,' I said, my eyes on the musicians far below.

Lygdus stood up and let fly. I caught the pit in my fingers without even needing to see it. He was astounded. 'How did you . . .?'

I punched him hard in the groin and then remembered that, like me, he didn't have all that much left to harm down there. He went to slap me but I snatched his hand and sank my teeth into it.

'Ow!'

'Sit down and stop acting like a baby,' I said.

He plopped onto his cushion, nursing his hand. 'We've been to every event at the
Ludi
. Days and days of it, and never any sign of this woman.'