Luke Devenish - Nest of vipers

Livilla glared as Castor walked out of the dining room. 'What's that supposed to mean?' she called after him. But he had gone. Livilla kissed the slender head of her beloved Laconian. 'I won't miss that fat lump,' she told the pup. 'Good riddance to him. I hope my grandmother gives him hell.'

Leaving the house to spend the morning at the magistrates' courts, Nero found Lygdus waiting in the entrance hall. The eunuch had chosen to take nothing with him, despite Castor telling him he should.

'You're leaving us, I hear?' said Nero.

Lygdus was surprised it warranted any comment. He met the young dominus 's eyes for a moment, before Nero was the first to look away. Lygdus automatically bobbed to the floor and ran a damp piece of sponge across Nero's street shoes, wiping the dust from them. 'Yes, domine,' he mumbled. 'I am being sent to the household of the Augusta.' Nero said nothing else on the matter.

When Lygdus was done, he stood, keeping his eyes downcast and waiting for Nero to walk out to join his retinue. But Nero stayed where he was. When Lygdus dared to meet the young master's eyes again, he was confused by the lack of shame or anger there. Instead there was a look to Nero's face that the eunuch barely knew. Was it affection?

'Thank you,' Nero said, 'for all that… Well, just thank you.'

Lygdus gaped. Then he felt an object placed in his hand. It was a gold aureus coin. He looked at Nero in astonishment but the young man was already joining his retinue in the street outside. When the front door closed, Lygdus stayed staring at the coin for a long time. He had never known what it was to hold such a thing. He turned the weight of it over in his palm, wrapping his fingers around it and uncurling them again to stare at the golden image of the Emperor's profile.

When the time came to make the very short journey to the Augusta's house, Lygdus left the aureus sitting in the bottom of the footbath water. Let the next foot-washing slave find it, Lygdus thought. The House of Castor had mutilated him, and now, just as they decided they should be rid of his embarrassment, they deigned to grace him with compensation. No. Lygdus had his dignity intact, if nothing else. His butchered manhood would not be paid for in gold.

But as he stepped into the daylight, Lygdus felt a pang of regret. The Augusta's household could well be worse than the home he was leaving. He would endure it, of course, no matter how bad it was. That was his lot as a slave. But how sad it would be to look back on his life and know he had rejected the one act of kindness that had not been a mask for cruelty. The young master had rewarded him out of gratitude. It wasn't hush money. Lygdus had been given the coin because he had already held his tongue and would have done so even if he had not been rewarded. Nero recognised nobility in Lygdus, yet Lygdus was only a slave.

Lygdus ducked inside again and retrieved the coin from the footbath.

As he reappeared in the daylight with the wet aureus tucked inside his loincloth, the faintest echo of a whisper touched his ear.

' The one near sea falls by a lie that comes from the gelding's tongue…'

Startled, Lygdus turned to see who had spoken to him.

There was no one there.

The Kalends of April

AD 21

One month later: Julius Sacrovir of the Aedui sows the seeds of rebellion in Gaul

With Livia's 'recovery' the order was given that she should be paraded around Rome like a goddess, as a part of Castor's public retinue. Whenever her grandson traversed the Forum, fronted the courts, witnessed the floggings or attended the Senate, the Augusta was to accompany him, sitting upright in a canopied throne held by eight litter-bearers. This would provide an indelible image for Rome, the city for which spectacle and display was all.

It fell to me — and my new 'apprentice', Lygdus — to coordinate these processions. I tied Livia's neck and torso to the back of the throne, then draped her in concealing robes and placed a diadem on her head. Lygdus made a contribution to these preparations that could only be described as token. It became clear to me that he was lazy and offensive and showed no talent for work. All he did was eat, sleep and complain. Yet still I had to suffer his daily presence along with the nagging certainty that he was Castor's agent. This meant I couldn't slight him, or — which would have been more deserved — strike him in the teeth and push him down the stairs. And the stealth required to employ the phallus under these circumstances was exhausting in the extreme. Lygdus was my millstone.

I carefully watched my domina 's eyes during these preparations, as did Little Boots whenever he was present. If Livia had any objection to being exhibited, we saw no sign of it in her. To the people of Rome who witnessed her passing by in the canopied throne, she seemed regal and worthy of awe. They were glad she was back. Castor's public dignity increased tenfold when people saw that she was with him. The fact that she neither spoke nor moved but only stared fixedly into the middle distance seemed to strike no one as odd. But this was no surprise. In her days as the wife of Augustus she had rarely spoken in public; more often, she'd been seen exactly as she was now.

On one occasion, in glorious spring, when the streets and temples were vivid with flowers, the domina 's processional preparations took longer than usual. In addition to her diadem and robes, I was attempting to hang garlands on her person, Castor's order being that she should remind the people of the goddess Flora. But various slaves had been in and out of the suite since dawn, filling me in on a developing morning of scandal in the Forum. Burrus's mother Nymphomidia stole in, eating pears from a bowl.

'Have you heard about Annia Rufilla?'

This was a notorious widow whose financial improprieties had brought her before the courts. 'She's been convicted of fraud,' I said. 'That's old news, Nymphomidia.'

The slave's lips peeled into a smile. 'You haven't heard then?'

'I've been hearing it all morning.'

'Sounds to me like you've been hearing the old news, Iphicles. Oh well, I won't trouble you,' said Nymphomidia, crunching a pear and making to go.

I saw that listening Livia was keen for the next instalment and decided to allow her this pleasure. 'Tell me, then — what's happened now?'

Nymphomidia had become used to speaking to me as if Livia wasn't even in the room. 'Annia's been screaming in the Forum that Gallus is a cunt. She called him a boy-lover, too, and said he took it up the arse.'

I guffawed and Livia's eyes shone with mirth. 'She can't say that sort of thing in the Forum! Gallus is a senator.'

'And he's also the magistrate who convicted her.'

'Has Gallus found out?'

'She was on the Senate steps. It was hard for him to miss it.'

I laughed again. 'I suppose she's been arrested?'

'Guess again,' said Nymphomidia. 'Gallus sent the lictors out with their rods raised ready to give her one, but they stopped in their tracks when she pulled a surprise out of her palla.'

'A knife? Why would they care if she killed herself?'

'It wasn't a knife — it was a bust of Tiberius.'

I felt a twinge of dread and caught my domina 's eye again. Her look of amusement had turned malicious. 'What did Annia mean by doing that?'

'To have Gallus accused of treason.'

'That doesn't make sense.'

'If the lictors had beaten her, she would have dropped the bust — it would have smashed on the ground. Gallus would have been seen as the one who had caused it.'

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. 'People are being accused of treason for breaking busts of the Emperor now?'

'Where have you been, Iphicles? It's very lucrative for those who make such accusations. They get a share of the traitor's estate.'