Luke Devenish - Nest of vipers

'So I must bring my grandmother back here again?'

The head priest confirmed it. 'Asclepius insists, Lord.'

Castor grimaced but gave a nod. 'How often must it be done?'

'That is for the god to say,' said the head priest, 'but he has chosen her for his attention. Few are so favoured, Lord. Certainly the Augusta must return here twice a month until further signs of improvement are seen. You say she has been awake and watchful, and yet she shows no sign of this today. I believe you have brought her to Asclepius just in time — she was beginning her descent to death. But with the attentions of the dogs, perhaps this will now be reversed.'

'Only perhaps?' said Castor. He wanted certainty that this divine defilement of his grandmother would see her made well.

'There are no absolutes with Asclepius,' said the head priest.

'Very well,' said Castor. 'My grandmother will return here twice a month.' He closed his eyes, leaning back on the bench against the temple wall for a moment, his bare legs stretched before him. 'The god's serpent was sent to me. I have faith we will see improvement.'

He waited, expecting the head priest to agree, but the old man said nothing. Then he felt a tickling at his foot. He opened his eyes and saw that one of the temple dogs had its snout pressed against the unhealed abscess.

'Get off,' said Castor, pulling his foot away.

The dog backed off but tried to return again.

'Off!' said Castor.

I slipped the street shoes onto his feet again.

'You have a sore,' said the head priest.

'It mends on its own accord,' said Castor. 'It doesn't require the god's attentions.'

'As you wish.'

Castor stood and walked away, refusing to allow himself to limp. I followed behind. Restraining the dog, the head priest stared hard at our retreating backs. For very differing reasons, neither of us turned around.

The Nones of March

AD 23

Eleven months later: Praetorian Prefect

Lucius Aelius Sejanus concentrates all nine cohorts of the Praetorian Guard into a single camp at the Viminalis Gate

The dream that came to the master was so vivid that he cried out in his sleep. His slaves were made fearful by the noise but none dared wake him. Their master slept so little as it was; any slumber, however dream-filled, was better than insomnia. Still, they consulted among themselves and decided to record what their master spoke, in order to show it to him at dawn. These dreams were portents, they sensed — messages from the gods for their master. But none of the slaves had been granted the gift of literacy. They couldn't write. Then they remembered the slave who could.

They sent for me.

When I arrived, their master's state was unchanged — he was speaking aloud, as if engaged in a conversation with spirits. I was hesitant to enter. This was not a household in which I held authority. I was wary of this master — and wary of the mistress, too. But the slaves assured me that their mistress slept soundly at the other end of the house — she would never know of my presence. And just to make sure, someone had already been sent to wait outside her door to warn me if she stirred.

I accepted my task and sat down to interpret and record what the master spoke aloud in his strange, wakeful sleep.

In the dream he spoke to his father. The words he used were the most loving a son could employ, words that any father would weep with joy to hear. But the dream father who received them barely heard the words at all. They made no impact. They were acknowledged only cursorily.

This made the son increase the intensity of his devotion. He reached inside his chest and found his own beating heart. He scooped it out with his hands and placed it on a tablet, laying it at his father's feet. Then he found an urn inside his chest, where his heart had been. He opened it and saw that it contained all his hopes in life — his bright future, his keen ambition, his pride. He scooped the urn out of himself and placed it at his father's feet, next to his beating heart.

Then the son dug inside again to see what else he could find to offer. He found his own children there, two of them — a boy and a girl. The girl had known misery. He gave her to his father in the hope that he'd cure her. Then he gave his precious son too. But the father remained indifferent.

In despair the master fled from his father's sight. Weeping overtook him, both in his dream and in his sleeping chamber, where I recorded everything among the fearful slaves. He fell to wrenching sobs that saw him curl up like a foetus in his bed. But still he didn't wake. Then abruptly he stopped. In his dream he had glanced over his shoulder to his father in the distance. The old man was no longer alone — the master's brother had joined him — a rival for their father's love. But now the father was laughing, his face softened with affection and joy. He was kissing the rival brother's hand.

'He is no son to you, Father,' the master called out in his sleep. 'I am your son — it is me.'

But the father was deaf and the master couldn't be heard. The brother heard him perfectly, however, and turned to sneer at him, as he always had from the very first day they had met. The brother dismissed the master, pronouncing him inferior, ill-born and weak. 'You're just a slave,' the brother taunted him.

The master was consumed with rage. 'I'll kill you for this!' he called out. 'I'll kill you for it!'

In the room some of the listening slaves gasped with shock to hear their sleeping master shouting this from his bed. But others looked grimly at each other, knowing better what this dream was about. 'What else can he do?' one of them muttered. 'He does in his dream what he should do in life.'

But in the dream the master's courage failed him. He called out for his wife.

In the sleeping room the slaves jumped with fear and ran about to ensure the doors were closed. When they were sure their mistress couldn't hear, they crouched at the walls to observe what would happen next. The master's wife came to him in his dream and his sobbing resumed. The brother was right to call him weak and inferior; the sobbing was shameful. But the most loyal of the slaves in the sleeping room begged in whispers to the others that they remember this was only a dream, not life. The others nodded, echoing his words. Their master was a man they admired. After the Emperor, he was the highest man in Rome. The Empire would be his one day.

The dream wife comforted the master, nursing him like a boy. She dried his tears with her veil and told him that his father's love would soon be his, but only if he honoured his threat. He must kill his brother. There was no other way. Then he would be rid of him forever. Then his father would give him back his heart and his hopes and his children. Then he would win back his future.

The master vowed that murder would be his tool; it would serve him as his slaves. It would empower him. It would make him a king.

The dream wife offered him some wine. He took it from her, brushing his fingers against her hand as he did so. She laughed and tossed her hair free of its ribbons. The long, dark tresses tumbled to her bare shoulders. He drank deeply from the cup and whispered his desire that she release her breasts for him. She did so, gently lifting them from where they rested, letting the sun kiss her milky skin. The master moaned with pleasure as he saw them. He drank deeply from the wine again, and then cupped his wife's breasts in his hands, cradling the full, round weight of them. He lightly gripped her nipples between his fingertips, and then pressed his mouth to them, suckling.

He pulled his lips away only to drink the last of the wine as his dream wife slipped out of her garments, letting the silk slip slowly down her thighs to the ground. She asked him to enter her and he rose in his dream to comply. Listening inside the sleeping room, the youngest slave couldn't hide his own arousal. The oldest slave struck him in the loins with a spoon. As he prepared to mount his dream wife, the master sat upright in his bed, still asleep, his eyes still closed. His brow was slick with sweat; the fabric of his tunica was dark with moisture at his chest and armpits. A slave crept forward to mop his master's head, but I shot my arm out to stop him. Nothing must wake the master, I knew. The true meaning of the dream was nearly here — the message from the gods.