Luke Devenish - Nest of vipers

'Have you been kept here many days?'

'I've been kept here several months.'

Aemilius shuddered. 'In this horrible black room?'

'On and off. I sometimes like to spend time in here when it pleases me.'

'But why?'

'To meet new people.'

Aemilius didn't think he could stand any more of this bewildering conversation. 'You're patrician too — I know it by your voice. Tell me who you are. It isn't fair that I gave you my name but you didn't give yours.'

Little Boots told him and Aemilius caught his breath sharply. 'The Emperor's grandson?'

Little Boots just shrugged in the dark.

Aemilius clutched at his hands. 'Help me — protect me. You've got power here,' he pleaded. 'I don't want to die on this island. I want to live. Please, Little Boots!'

Little Boots was moved by this appeal. 'Grandfather?' he called.

From far across the deceptively large room, Tiberius answered out of the blackness. 'Yes, Grandson?'

Aemilius nearly screamed with the fright.

'I like this boy. I'd like him to be my friend. Can I keep him, Grandfather?'

'But my decreasing minnows…'

'Just send for more. There are always more. Please, Grandfather?'

In the long pause Aemilius heard the beads of his own sweat strike the floor, dripping from the ends of his hair.

'As you wish,' said Tiberius. He began to snore.

Little Boots gave Aemilius a happy squeeze. 'Now we can have some fun,' he whispered.

Later, when they had left the strange, black hall and exhausted themselves playing the games that Little Boots wished to play, Aemilius was taken to the place where Little Boots had made a bed for himself. It was in a room where few of the other minnows ever went, a forgotten attic. It was comfortable and quiet, which was important sometimes, Little Boots assured his new friend, considering how noisy the Emperor's island so often became.

Aemilius quite liked the room and asked if he could live in it too. Little Boots assented, glad of his company. But when Aemilius, seeking sleep, placed his head upon the first cushion that came to hand, Little Boots snatched it away from him and gave him another.

'Is something wrong with that cushion?' Aemilius asked.

Little Boots placed it carefully aside. 'It was given to me by my great-grandmother, Livia,' he said. On the fabric was a single embroidered Latin word: sedeo — 'I sit'.

'Is she the one who encouraged you to come here?'

'Yes.'

Again, this aged relative took on an aura of maliciousness to Aemilius. 'She wanted no one else to sit on the cushion but you?'

Little Boots nodded. 'I think so. She told me a little poem as she gave it to me.'

'What sort of poem?'

' When tiny shoes a cushion brings, the cuckoo's king rewarded.'

'What does that mean?'

'Who knows?' said Little Boots. 'But my great-grandmother promised me that a time will come when the poem means everything in the world.'

The three girls peered from the corridor into their grandmother Antonia's room, where the matron sat upright in her chair, facing the light of the window, her little desk in front of her. Her ebony pen made slow, considered progress across a papyrus sheet. It was so quiet in this part of the house that they could hear the scratching sound the pen made.

'She is writing again,' said Julilla, the youngest of the sisters.

'Ssh,' said Drusilla, the middle one.

'Why? She can't hear us.'

'We don't know that.'

'Yes, we do. Our grandmother hears nothing anymore. She never leaves this room,' said Julilla.

'It is true,' said Nilla.

The girls continued to watch Antonia in silence.

'What does she write all the time?' asked Julilla.

'Letters,' said Drusilla.

'Who to?'

Drusilla cast a look at her older sister, Nilla.

'She writes to the Emperor,' Nilla said.

Julilla said nothing for a moment. Then she added, quietly, 'Does she ask about our mother?'

'She does,' said Nilla. 'She asks about our mother and about many other things. She asks the Emperor what his intentions are. She asks whether he still loves his family. She asks if he remembers our blood grandfather, her husband, who was the Emperor's younger brother. He died when his leg was crushed by a horse. He was a hero. Our grandmother asks the Emperor if the past means anything to him. She asks him if he knows how wretched life in Rome is now.'

They watched in silence again.

'Does he receive these letters?' Julilla asked.

None of them knew.

After a time Nilla gave a deep sigh and led her sisters away from the door. Burrus stood from where he had been kneeling by the wall, sharpening the blade of his sword.

'Our grandmother's intentions are good but her energies are ineffective,' said Nilla to her sisters, looking at Burrus as she spoke.

He agreed without saying anything.

'These letters do not work. We need another means to take our family's concerns to the Emperor.'

Burrus had been giving the matter thought. The younger girls peeled away to their own quiet corners of their grandmother's house while Nilla and her slave sat in sunshine in the garden. They made a plan and liked it, considering it from all angles to see where it might fail. They agreed it could fail in many places — it was steeped in risk — but how much worse would it be to do nothing?

'Flamma would agree with us,' Burrus.

'As would my mother.'

They lay in the soft, green grass for a time, kissing and holding hands. Then, when hunger made them rise again, they were shocked to find the Augusta, Livia, in the garden with them. But my domina was unperturbed. She merely nodded at them from where she sat beneath a bare fig tree, enjoying the thin winter sun.

For a brief moment Nilla gave thought to approaching her, bowing and kissing her hands. She considered asking her great-grandmother's opinions on everything she and Burrus had just discussed. She felt as if she could trust her great-grandmother, this beautiful, seemingly ageless woman, who had slept for so long that Nilla had forgotten she existed. Then she remembered her mother's bile. Agrippina believed Livia had been connected to Nilla's father's death, along with the Emperor, too. And although Nilla had loyally echoed her mother's conviction, a voice inside her had never let her wholly believe it. It was Nilla's secret belief that another person had been responsible for Germanicus's murder.

But all these thoughts lasted only an instant before they left Nilla's head. Livia closed her eyes in the pale yellow sun and appeared to doze. Nilla threaded her fingers in Burrus's hand again and kissed his lips.

'She does not mind how close we are,' said Burrus, who had been relieved to see Livia's reaction.

Nilla considered this. 'Perhaps it's because she knows how it is when the one you love most is enslaved.'

The Nones of February

AD 27

Four weeks later: seeking a scapegoat for the recent calamities, the people of Rome declare the Emperor's departure to Capri an evil omen

The sisters sat as close together as the tiny boat allowed, their teeth chattering in the chilly night air. Nilla squatted in the middle, with Drusilla and Julilla huddled on each side of her, their arms wrapped around her waist. They presented resolute, determined faces to the world and hid their terror behind their eyes. But Burrus could see it, rowing them across the three placid miles of sea from the Surrentum promontory to the landing on harbourless Capri. He felt terror too, and perhaps would have succumbed to it had the sisters not been present. But for their sake — for Nilla's most of all — he kept it down.

'What will happen to us?' asked Julilla again.

No one replied.

'What will happen?'

'Ssh,' Nilla whispered.

'Why can't you just tell me? Why do we have to go to this place at all?'