Luke Devenish - Nest of vipers

Lygdus's eyes opened in amazement. 'Sejanus asked for my domina Livilla's hand?'

I was cautious, rereading the words.

'They're both so reckless,' Lygdus said. 'And yet even Tiberius can't see what's going on!'

'He can see something,' I said, concerned.

'He can't see anything — he's given the answer. He says Livilla is free to choose Sejanus if she wishes it.'

I looked to my domina. Her eyes had a malicious gleam again. She knew the truth, of course, and so did I, being far more familiar with Tiberius's double-speak than the eunuch was. 'He's given nothing at all — just the hope of an answer. He's delaying Sejanus.'

'But why?'

Livia kept her night-black eyes upon mine. 'I don't know,' I said. 'But something Sejanus has done or said has struck Tiberius differently. Something is wrong…'

Lygdus looked uneasy now. 'What if Sejanus falls?'

'He'll never fall — Tiberius loves him.'

'But what if he does? What if something happens?'

'Nothing will happen. They are too closely bonded.'

'But what if he does?'

I lost patience with him. 'Get on with your work. Go and spy on Nero.'

Lygdus immediately shut down. 'Nero doesn't need spying on today,' he said.

'He needs spying on every day — do you think the domina ever took a day off when she was making plans like ours? Give me something new I can write down and place in the file I'm keeping on him.'

'Nero is blameless today,' Lygdus insisted. I stared at him for a moment and a blush came to his cheeks. But he kept his fat arms crossed on his chest and his lips pursed in determination.

'Lygdus, are you keeping something from me?'

'Of course not.'

'It's been quite a few months since you've given me anything useful about Nero — what has he been up to?'

'Matters of government,' Lygdus said. 'The law courts — that sort of thing. He's been very boring.'

'His private life is not very boring.'

'It is now. He's gone right off that vile victimarius.'

Something wasn't ringing true, but I had never known the devoted eunuch to lie to me. 'Lygdus,' I said, keeping my voice low with inherent warning, 'you will go and attend Nero right now.'

'No, I won't.'

I slapped his face with such a blow that the sound of it rang in the air. Then a high-pitched laugh made the two of us spin around in shock. Livia's night-black eyes blazed like a furnace.

'The domina!' Lygdus clutched his face in shock. 'She laughed!'

I stared at Livia, incredulous. 'No, it was someone else — there is someone else in here.' I began to open doors and pull aside tapestries. 'Who's in here?' I shouted into the empty rooms. 'Who dares to spy on us?'

By the time I accepted the fact that no one else was in the domina 's suite at all, Lygdus had slipped away. Putting his worrying behaviour aside for the time being, I returned to my domina 's bed to find that her tongue was now poking from between her closed lips. It was as though she were mocking me.

'You are not regaining your voice, so don't try to pretend that you are,' I scolded her, trying really to convince myself. 'I've stopped your visits to Asclepius, and that disgusting snake you harboured is dead. If you were getting well again, domina, you aren't any more.' I prised open her jaw and jabbed her tongue back inside her mouth.

I picked up Tiberius's letter again. There was more to it than I had read out aloud — another paragraph. I knew in my gut that Sejanus had made a false step somehow — that he'd done something that made Tiberius's reply to him a carefully veiled warning. Your simplicity of thought and abhorrence of ambition is my greatest treasure, my son, but it leaves you — and leaves your Emperor — open to insinuation from others who are not so pure. You are mistaken, I fear, if you hope that Livilla will have the strength of mind and heart to pass her future years with a Roman knight. How could it be tolerated by those who have seen her brother, her father and her most noble ancestors take the highest patrician offices of state? Already venal and jealous men claim openly that you forget your rank and act beyond it — claims I deny and deplore — and from their dislike of you they also condemn me. I can endure it — but you, my loyal son in all but my blood, should not be expected to. Your Emperor does not expect you to.

I tried to read what was unwritten. These were merely more delaying words; the heart of Tiberius's exception to Sejanus's request was not clear. I read the final passage. While I pass my time in impartial consideration, may I make a new request of you, my son? It is not an onerous call, but is only this: when feminine jealousies occur within my house, I fear for my grandsons' gentle hearts. I ask you to protect them. Nero and Drusus are now grown men, but their hearts are soft, like the hearts of boys, as they still have so much to learn. Little Boots and Gemellus are very much boys still. Feminine jealousies risk all; sons will always honour their mothers. It is my deepest wish that no grandson of mine should ever rival the other, so that when the time comes for me to name one as my heir, I will do so in the knowledge that the others will celebrate him, not defy him.

My pulse began to race as I finally saw the glimmers of Tiberius's secret heart opening before me. Nothing is too great to be undeserved by your tireless goodwill towards me, my son. My period of impartial consideration of your request will end so much the sooner when Agrippina embraces me again as a father. When I look into her eyes and see my affection for her returned, happiness will be shared by all. Unity, not enmity, will then be ours, my son. It truly will.

I placed the soiled papyrus on a table, feeling lightheaded. I needed to sit. When I had gathered my thoughts, I knew without question what Sejanus had done — and I knew what it was that Tiberius most secretly desired. Sejanus, the former physician's apprentice of redoubtable loyalty but doubtful origins, had overstepped himself in his obsession with destroying Agrippina. The Emperor was in love with her.

The only way forward for Sejanus was to smash that love into tiny pieces. His claims of plots and factions and prominent ringleaders scheming in secret for Agrippina's cause had failed to dent the love in Tiberius's heart. Others might be guilty, but Tiberius believed Agrippina to be wholly innocent. And yet it was unlikely, I knew, that Sejanus had not already conceived of another way to deprive Agrippina of her most devoted protector. As I pondered on what this might be, my domina 's tongue slipped from her lips once more, lolling at me. It was naked mockery, but this time I left her tongue hanging, allowing her to look undignified and comical.

'Laugh at me all you like, domina,' I said, smirking into her onyx eyes, 'but I am going to help Sejanus, not hinder him — and there's nothing you can do to stop me.'

The Kalends of February

AD 26

Three weeks later: following the suicide of the warrior Tarsa, the besieged Thracian tribesmen are weakened by dissension

I was not a witness to the following scene and, because of it, my absence proved pivotal for what happened after.

Agrippina was so uncharacteristically calm in the face of what had been told to her that her friend feared Agrippina had misheard her. But when the friend went to repeat herself, the widow shook her head, stopping the friend's words.

'I believe it,' Agrippina said.

The friend fell silent, watching as Agrippina rose from her chair and went to the balcony, standing there with her back to the friend, looking out across Rome. She stayed there a long time, and the friend's inner torment felt like knives in her chest as she waited. But she gave no sign of this when Agrippina reappeared, her face set hard.

'It has come then,' Agrippina said, 'as I knew it would.' The trusted friend nodded while Flamma watched from the door. Agrippina turned to the gladiator. 'And here we are with our lessons not even finished.'