Paul Doherty - Domina

‘What’s happening?’

‘Sejanus has fallen,’ I replied. ‘He’s been arrested. Macro, I suspect, will become Prefect of the Praetorian Guard. Tiberius has begun the attack.’

Agrippina put her hands together, closed her eyes and smiled. She lowered her head and glanced at a group of serving girls in the far corner of the room.

‘Do you hear that?’ she yelled. ‘Sejanus has fallen. It’s prison for him and all his followers.’ She walked forward. ‘Now’s your opportunity to confess! Which of you are his spies?’

The girls huddled together. Agrippina advanced threateningly. ‘Come on, now’s your chance to confess. If I find out later, it will be the strangler’s noose.’

Three girls stepped forward.

‘I thought as much.’ Agrippina pointed towards the door. ‘Get out!’

The maids fled. The upset and chaos had reached the gallery outside, and there were shouts of despair, the sound of doors being kicked open and closed. I looked out through the window: already people were fleeing the Palatine with bundles on their backs. The reign of terror had begun. Agrippina walked back, eyes glittering. She caught at my arm and made me sit on the couch beside her.

‘Are you safe, Domina?’

‘For the time being, yes.’ She smiled coldly. ‘Sejanus hated my family so we can hardly be regarded as his friends. And how is our August Emperor?’

‘Rotting,’ I replied. ‘Though his brain is still sharp and his reach is long.’

Agrippina played a tattoo on her knee with her fingers.

‘He will die soon enough. And what of my sweet brother Gaius?’

‘A dog,’ I replied. ‘The Emperor’s faithful shadow.’

Agrippina breathed in noisily. ‘So, he still plays the part?’ she murmured.

‘Domina, your brother is insane. Anyone who stays in Capri for long. .!’

‘He can be managed, he will be managed,’ she replied.

‘Well, what’s this?’ A man, his hair and beard the colour of copper, lurched through the door. He was dressed in a tunic and toga which were purple stained, and, despite the early hour, he carried a deep-bowled cup. One of his sandals was loose and it slapped on the floor as he staggered across to Agrippina. He stopped to paw at one of the serving girl’s breasts.

‘Domitius,’ Agrippina cooed, her voice and smile full of false sweetness. ‘Domitius, you’ve been partying again, haven’t you?’

She went across to him. He glared over her shoulder at me.

‘Who’s that?’ he slurred. ‘He’s too ugly to be a lover. And what’s happening outside? There are soldiers everywhere with drawn swords and there’s a corpse in the yard. Someone stabbed him in the back.’

‘Sejanus has fallen.’

Agrippina ordered me with her eyes to leave the couch, as she steered her drunken husband towards it. ‘You are too tired,’ she soothed, ‘for all this excitement.’

She loosened the cup from his hand, put it on the floor and persuaded him to lie down on the couch. For a while she stared contemptuously down at his drunken face.

‘Drunken sot!’ she declared. ‘He’ll sleep for hours and wake with a headache.’ She came over and grasped my hand. ‘Parmenon, the blood-letting has begun. You must keep a still tongue in your head, and say nothing about Capri, the Emperor or my brother Gaius. And you must keep your distance from Macro!’

‘Is he your lover?’ I blurted out.

‘I have no lovers, Parmenon. Only men I have to deal with.’

‘And me?’

‘Why, Parmenon, you are my right hand. We are one.’ She glanced towards the door. ‘Go and see what happens to Sejanus and report back to me. Remember what I have said!’

She pushed me out of the room. In the corridor she held me back.

‘You have done well, Parmenon.’ Her voice was excited. ‘You and I are locked together like spokes in a wheel: don’t you understand that?’

A scream echoed up the stairs. One of the soldiers was helping himself to a slave girl.

‘You left me vulnerable,’ I accused.

‘Don’t moan!’ Agrippina’s face turned ugly. ‘Remember the arena. You wanted to enter, so now you must fight or you die. Do what you have to!’ Her face softened. She waggled her fingers, like a little girl saying goodbye, and went back into the room.

The Palatine was now in uproar. Macro, using the Emperor’s warrant, had ringed the entire hill with troops from the Urban Cohort. These had already caught some of Sejanus’s followers who were being led off to the city prisons with bound hands and bloody faces. A few members of Sejanus’s personal bodyguard had attempted resistance, only to die in an untidy, bloody heap in a corner of the square. Macro’s men recognised me and I was let through. I raced up the steps leading to the great enclosure of the Temple of Apollo, where there were more corpses and ever-widening pools of blood. Severed heads already decorated the spikes which fringed the Stairs of Sighs.

In the colonnades I glimpsed the bodies of more victims, strung up from iron torch-holders and left to swing softly in the morning breeze. I reached the temple doors where Macro stood surrounded by his officers.

‘You have been to see Agrippina, haven’t you?’ Macro sneered. ‘Clever and quick as a rat, eh? You should. .’

His words were drowned by a roar from inside the temple. Sejanus, a parody of what he had been, was dragged out, his face bloody, his clothes torn. As he was pushed towards Macro, I saw that his mouth was nothing but a bloody mess: the clicking tongue had been silenced for ever. Macro stared, head to one side, as if he couldn’t really believe what he was seeing.

‘Well, well, Sejanus,’ he sighed. ‘Life is like a game of dice.’

Sejanus’s eyes turned to me with a flicker of recognition. I hardly recognised his bruised and battered face. The hair had been torn from his head, oozing cuts sliced his arms and shoulders, there were even teeth marks where his enemies had bitten him. He opened his mouth in a hideous moan.

‘What’s that?’ Macro asked, leaning forward. ‘You want to see the Emperor? Rome can no longer tolerate such treason.’ His voice rose. ‘Bring him with me!’

Macro gestured at me to follow, in what was supposed to be a triumphant procession across the Palatine to Sejanus’s palace. Macro swaggered in front surrounded by his guards, their shields up and swords drawn. Sejanus, now bound by ropes, was led like a reluctant horse, as the assembled mob hurled abuse at him. Men, women and children pushed and shoved at him, pelting him with rotten food and other missiles, spitting and cursing at the Emperor’s fallen favourite. Our journey became a trail of blood, until even Macro tired of the fun. The guards drove the mob off as we entered the colonnades. We crossed a garden, went down some steps and I found myself in the same torture chamber I’d visited when I had first met Sejanus. The guards were left in the corridor. Macro’s officers, myself included, watched as the prisoner was made to squat on a stool. The executioners stepped forward, their faces covered by ghastly animal masks. A noose was placed round Sejanus’s throat, and a small, steel rod was slipped through the knot, which the executioner slowly turned. I glanced away, as terrible groans and gasps came from the dying man. One of Macro’s men joked about eyes popping out. Sejanus’s feet beat the floor to the jeers and laughter of the onlookers. Once it was over, hooks were fastened to the corpse and it was dragged out along the passageway, through the city and thrown down the Steps of Mourning. The mob were encouraged to tear and pluck at it, so viciously that the executioner had difficulty in finding a piece of flesh big enough to place the hooks in to drag Sejanus’s corpse down to the Tiber.