Luke Devenish - Nest of vipers

Sometimes I heard him admonishing Nilla afterwards for the cruelty of her play — something that no other slave would dare do to his mistress without fear of the whip. But Nilla accepted his rebukes respectfully, and this spoke much to the great bond that existed between them. But it only ever altered her behaviour for a few days before she resumed again, and then Burrus would privately admonish her anew.

Whatever had occurred after they had leaped together from the ship, they barely spoke of it. If Nilla had suffered agonies, she never told anyone, not even her mother. What was known and understood was that Nilla had survived the waves thanks to emulating Burrus's strokes. When they had made it to land, they had lived as best they could on an unknown shore, catching crabs and oysters. Then they had been found, but not by men who meant them well. These matters were not discussed within the walls of Oxheads, and they were little mentioned outside them either, for all I knew. Nilla's memorial urn had been removed from its position upon her father's tomb inside the mausoleum of Augustus. Her reappearance in Rome had been officially ascribed to the benevolence of the gods. People accepted it. No one asked questions about the toeless mangon.

But little Julilla found a hole in the story and, through this, realised she had a rod with which to beat her big sister. The novelty of the worm turning was so delicious that Drusilla switched sides, and together the younger girls waged a new battle against the elder.

'Why were you found in a slave market, Nilla?' Julilla asked when the three girls were taking their midday meal.

Drusilla sat up to see what would happen. 'Yes — when will you ever tell us, Nilla?' she echoed. 'What is your answer for being found like that?'

Burrus tensed at the wall, but I only yawned. Lygdus was silent beside me. In the months since Castor's murder he had become somewhat withdrawn but I knew this would pass. I had felt similarly a lifetime ago, when my own first master, Tiberius Nero, had also succumbed to Martina's brews.

'The correct moment to ask was when your sister was found,' I offered to Julilla, 'but time has moved on now and your sister doesn't wish to be reminded of such unpleasantness.'

Nilla calmly continued eating.

Julilla pushed. 'Was it because you were enslaved like Burrus? Were you two slaves together?'

Burrus stepped forward purposefully from the wall. I coughed at him in warning, but it was Nilla who held his eye and he stood still.

'Is what Julilla says right?' Drusilla chimed in. 'Had you become a slave, Nilla?'

'How shameful!' cried Julilla. 'And Iphicles told me you were found in the nude.'

I narrowed my eyes. I had told the child nothing of the kind. Nilla knew the truth — she saw me as her liberator — yet she felt it was time to confront the incongruities of her disappearance. She stood up and gazed with deceptive calm at her sisters.

'It's true,' she said.

Her sisters gasped, as did the various companion slaves at the wall. Burrus made no sound and I merely studied my fingernails.

'But I was falsely enslaved,' said Nilla. 'It was wrong, you see, and that was why I was freed.'

Julilla found this unsatisfactory. 'Did you have an iron collar on?'

Nilla flinched at the memory. 'Against my will.'

'And you were nude?'

'I'd been forced to undress like all the others.'

Julilla made a look to Drusilla that shone with scandal. 'Then you're a slave no better than Burrus or Iphicles. Or fat Lygdus! A slave!'

Nilla clenched her teeth and Lygdus opened his eyes a crack, squatting next to me.

'A filthy slave,' cried Drusilla with glee. 'She's right, you know, Nilla. It's a stink you can't wash out. The stink of a slave!'

Julilla giggled. 'Filthy, filthy, filthy! I'm so ashamed to have you as my big sister!'

Little Boots entered the children's suite without the girls realising it and instantly settled on the correct course of action to take. As Julilla and Drusilla shrieked in helpless mirth, he walked swiftly to his youngest sibling and delivered a sharp slap to her cheek. It left Julilla stunned into silence for a moment, allowing him to deliver two more slaps, harder and louder, before her shrieks became those of pain and shock.

Little Boots turned next to Drusilla. 'You are very dear to me,' he told her, 'but you cannot insult our sister like this.'

Drusilla covered her cheeks in fear.

'Take your hands away,' Little Boots ordered her calmly. 'You must submit to this, Drusilla — you've brought it upon yourself.'

Mortified, she slowly removed her hands and stared at him, trembling. I saw that Lygdus was holding his breath as he now watched.

Little Boots delivered a blow so harsh that it threw Drusilla to the floor.

'Stop sobbing,' he told the two of them.

Drusilla was about to begin, but she bit it back. Julilla ceased at once, too devastated to disobey. As Little Boots went to take his place in his dining seat, he walked past Lygdus and me where we were squatting near the wall. The tip of his hobnailed soldier's boot struck Lygdus in the leg. It was so fast as to only be accidental, but Lygdus gave a cry of outrage before he could help himself.

Little Boots stopped. 'Are you all right, eunuch?'

'Yes, domine,' said Lygdus automatically, looking to the floor.

Little Boots gracefully took his place among his sisters, helping himself to a serve of the midday meal I had leaped up to offer him. After a short pause he began a polite conversation. 'It has been an important morning for our elder brothers,' he told the girls. 'Do you wish to know the news?'

'I do,' said Nilla, smiling at him as if none of the violence against Drusilla and Julilla had taken place.

'I have come from the Senate. I was allowed to listen to the proceedings from an alcove behind a curtain.'

I chortled to myself. Livia had made judicious use of such alcoves herself, once upon a time. Little Boots saw my reaction and the look he gave me had a twinkle to it.

'Our grandfather Tiberius presented Nero and Drusus to all the senators. He called our brothers his "solace in this time of woes". It was very impressive. Then he called upon the senators to be our brothers' mother and father, and to nurture them as the great-grandsons of the Divine Augustus.'

'But they already have a mother,' Drusilla said in a small, broken voice.

'It's a symbol,' said Little Boots. 'What he was asking was that the Senate joins him in protecting them. He fears assassins.'

His sisters were quiet.

'I think it's nonsense, of course,' said Little Boots. 'Who'd want to kill Nero and Drusus? Rome loves our brothers.'

I felt uneasy, reminded once again that Little Boots was still only a boy, prophecies or not. He was treading a dangerous line — in part, I suspected, simply to show off. But I wasn't sure at whom he was aiming it. When I lifted my eyes from the floor for a second, I realised he was staring directly at Lygdus.

'Somebody killed Father,' said Nilla, 'and Father was loved by Rome too.' Nilla had been missing at the time of their father's death, and so her grief for Germanicus was still rawer than that of the other children.

'That was Piso and Plancina,' Little Boots reminded her.

'I don't see why they murdered Father,' said Nilla. 'It doesn't make sense.'

'Jealousy,' said Little Boots. 'Piso was jealous. I was there, remember? I saw it for myself in Athens and Antioch.'

Nilla's eyes held a look of great seriousness. She had given her father's death a great deal of thought. 'I believe that Piso's jealousy is a lie put out by our grandfather to cover a truth that is too distressing for Rome.'

Little Boots paled slightly. 'And what is the truth then?'

The younger girls had forgotten that he'd struck them now. They were held by this conversation.