John Roberts - The King Of Sacrifices

"That's what it looks like," Agrippa affirmed.

"I suspect that Tubero was a man who liked these private games. He allowed fantasy to become reality. In any case, having drunk himself silly and then inflamed his senses with the dubious pleasures of self-flagellation, he performed the final rite. He probably intended merely to mime the actions. After all, the lack of an audience would deprive the ritual of half the fun. But he was not in a steady state of mind and he went too far. The expression on his face when he realized what he was holding must have been worth seeing. This was not a conventional orgy of Cybele, so no one was there to stanch the blood and he perished."

"Disgusting!" Octavius shouted. "And to implicate my family!" The widow was already bawling and begging for mercy. Nobody paid any attention.

"Actually," I said, "it was rather clever. Julia had conveniently placed herself on the scene, and everyone knows what a stickler you are for the purity of Roman family life. The woman did not want it to come out that her husband, the new-minted patrician, was an idiotic loon. She figured that, by implicating Julia, she would trick you into covering up the whole squalid mess."

"To suspect me of such perfidy! I’ll search the law tables until I find a charge under which she can be executed!" The woman blubbered even more vociferously.

"That would mean a court trial," Livia pointed out. "You don't want your name associated with such a squalid mess. There was no murder and trying to put one over on you doesn't really constitute treason. You are pontifex maximus. Charge her with some sort of sacrilege-desecration of a corpse or something. Exile her to one of those dreadful little islands we keep for the ones we can't condemn to death."

"If you say so, my dear," Octavius grumbled. "It's better than the treacherous bitch deserves."

"You've never seen those islands," I told him.

We left the house amid much wailing, the formidable escort all around us. Octavius placed a hand on my shoulder. "I can't tell you how grateful I am, Decius Caecilius. You really must accept a promotion to the patricianship."

Another hand came to rest on my other shoulder. "Decius," Livia purred, "we truly need a new Rex Sacrorum.''

I closed my eyes wearily. "I don't suppose you have another of those islands handy?"

These things happened in the year 734 of the city of Rome, during the unconstitutional dictatorship of Caius Octavius, surnamed Augustus.