Luke Devenish - Nest of vipers

Among themselves, the maids agreed they'd been sent away because Sejanus didn't want them seeing things they might report to their mistress. He kept secrets from her, they well knew. But she kept secrets from him too, which they felt evened the score.

When they at last returned to their pallets, they were shocked to find their mistress curled up on one, asleep. They consulted in whispers.

'Should we wake her?'

'It would be terrible.'

'But she's in a slave's bed when she's a mistress.'

'Let her sleep. Perhaps she'll wake up of her own accord.'

Apicata was left where she was and the other slaves spread themselves among the remaining pallets as best they could. One of the maids, a girl called Calliope, found herself with nothing to sleep on. Upset, she crept into her mistress's sleeping room, hoping there might be a rug she could arrange on the floor. She saw the strange little oblong box where it lay upon the bed. Without giving it any thought, she picked it up.

The box was smooth in her hand and it rattled. In the dim light of the moon Calliope saw there was a little spot on the box where she could pry the lid with her fingernail. She did so and the lid popped off. Three little objects fell out. She stared at them for a full second before she saw with horror what they were. The tiny torso of a wax doll was detached from its head. The head itself was befouled, as if pulled from a sewer, and the eyes were absent. The doll was Apicata. It was a work of witchcraft.

Calliope nearly shrieked, but she managed to stop herself, fearful of alerting the other maids. She knew that she would somehow be blamed for this, and maybe even accused of planting the witchcraft in the first place. The third item from the box was a scrap of rag on which something had been written. Unable to read, she stared blankly at the tiny letters. She shoved the three horrid things back in the box and reattached the lid. It was not a box at all, she now knew, but a tiny coffin.

Calliope kicked it under the bed and made a prayer to the household gods that she be nowhere nearby when the evil thing was found again.

The nail that held Livilla's curse to the base of the temple's god lost its hold in the stone and fell away, dropping the lead tablet to the floor.

The curse landed with its words facing downwards and only its blank side visible to the god who towered above. Not that it mattered. The deity of deception had already read the plea for his assistance that was scratched into the other side.

It had amused him, Livilla's request. And now Veiovis was enjoying himself greatly as he honoured the unique nature of her curse.

The Kalends of April

AD 23

Two weeks later: Emperor Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus delivers the funeral eulogy for his son

The weeping of the boys somewhere outside his room woke Flamma. The dreadful, wracking sobs brought him back to miseries he hadn't felt since his earliest days at the Ludi. The sound jarred Flamma from his slow, steady path towards death.

His eyes opened and saw the startled reaction on the face of the slave-boy Burrus, watching over him in the bed while applying fresh spiderweb and vinegar to his wound. Flamma tried to speak but his throat only croaked like a toad's.

'Ssh,' said Burrus. He wiped a cloth dipped in water across Flamma's brow.

The gladiator waited, letting the phlegm and blood drip down his gullet before trying again. 'I hear boys weeping…'

A tear slipped from Burrus's eye and he rubbed it away with the cloth. 'It is the domina 's sons — Nero and Drusus.'

'Why do they cry?'

'Because of what has befallen us.'

'I don't understand.'

'Castor is dead — their adoptive father.'

Delirium took Flamma again and it was another day before he found his way back to the surface. When he did, he saw that the grey bird was there. 'How did Castor die?' he asked it, as if the conversation hadn't ended.

But the bird had no answer, and instead posed its most pressing question. 'Why did you do it?'

The effort of trying to answer made Flamma lose his fight to stay conscious. When he woke again, it seemed like only seconds later, but the light had changed and Burrus had returned, dressed in different clothes.

'The boys have stopped crying,' Flamma remarked.

'They have gone to the funeral with my domina and her daughters.'

Flamma let this sink in. 'Castor was a good man.'

Burrus nodded.

'What killed him?'

Burrus lowered his voice to a whisper. 'They say it was a river fever, but my domina, she says — ' But he stopped himself, knowing it was unwise to say more.

'Death's bird is trying to escort me,' Flamma told the boy after another while.

Burrus just looked confused and poured some broth into Flamma's mouth. The gladiator coughed it up, but when Burrus tried again Flamma found he could swallow. It was good. He gulped a few mouthfuls.

'Death's bird has been talking to me, Burrus…'

'Talking?'

'That's what I said.'

'Perhaps it was Fury?'

'Are the Furies hounding me to hell?'

'Fury is Claudius's pet bird — he found it in Misenum. She can talk.'

Burrus wiped Flamma's brow and gave him some more broth. Flamma closed his eyes, and when he opened them again the boy had gone and the room they had placed him in was bathed in a rich, rosy light.

Agrippina was there. With her golden hair that so mirrored his own.

'Why did you do it?' Agrippina asked him.

'It was my time to die,' said Flamma.

'It was not. And neither is it now. You won a great victory.'

'I am old and spent.'

'You are younger than I am.'

'It was my time to die then and it is my time to die now. I don't want to live in this life anymore.'

'Are you disgraced? Are you guilty of a crime?'

'I am a gladiator,' Flamma said, as though that answered everything.

Agrippina frowned. 'So you did it to insult me. And to insult my dead husband, when you told me you revered him. You lied.'

Flamma wept a little and she coolly dabbed at his tears with a square of linen until he stopped again. 'You plunged that blade into your chest but it didn't kill you,' said Agrippina. There was an unmistakable note of respect to her tone.

'Not yet,' said Flamma, 'but I'm still in this deathbed.'

'You are recovering slowly — the physicians have assured me of it.'

'Just let me die.'

'I will not. You are my property. And since the Ludi you have been worth a great deal of money to me. I'd be a fool to let you die.'

Flamma shut his eyes tight in frustration, and when he opened them again the rosy glow had left the room and the darkness had returned. The girl Nilla was there, lighting an oil lamp.

'I'm ashamed that I tricked you,' he told her.

'I've forgiven you for that,' said Nilla.

He wept again but she didn't dab at his tears as her mother had.

When he'd stopped, she asked, 'Why did you do it?'

Flamma found that he didn't know anymore. 'Your father was a great man,' he whispered to her.

Nilla nodded.

'Was he murdered?'

Nilla nodded again, sombre.

'Who would do such a crime?'

Nilla told him what her mother believed — Tiberius.

He frowned. 'This must be avenged.'

Flamma returned to sleep, and as he dreamed he found that he had lost his way along death's path. The steps he took no longer led him there. When he awoke, it was morning. Agrippina had brought her loom into the doorway of his chamber and was weaving cloth in the glow of the dawn.

'I will make a bargain with you, Lady,' he called out to her.

Startled, she turned around on her stool to him, raising a brow.

'An exchange,' he said. 'Let me help you gain vengeance. Let me give you skills. Let me strengthen you. Let me show you what should be done, if you must kill.'