Luke Devenish - Nest of vipers

'But I have ordered it,' said Tiberius in bewilderment. 'Here is my seal.'

'I know nothing of it,' Macro repeated. His face, he hoped, showed enough affront on the Emperor's behalf that Tiberius would see him as an ally. He gave just the right length to a pause. 'But Prefect Sejanus will recall the details, I am sure, Caesar.'

'Yes.' Tiberius studied the Imperial ring on his hand. 'Find your superior for me, Tribune. Tell him I am confused by this matter and wish for his help in clarifying it.'

Macro's face creased.

'Well?'

'Prefect Sejanus is no longer on Capri. He has returned to Rome.'

Tiberius stared at Macro in confusion. 'Not here?' Then he remembered himself; it would not do for the Tribune to see that he had not known of this. 'Of course, of course. That will be all.'

Macro bowed and departed, pleased at how the scene had played out.

Alone, Tiberius gulped from his goblet, his tired eyes finding focus again. A flock of migrating birds took his attention, high up in the sky. He squinted to look at them. They were geese.

'No!' he hissed at them. 'No!' He pulled his eyes from the sky and turned his back on the birds to drink from his draught, blocking them out.

But the insistent honks drew him to look up again. The birds were tiny against the horizon.

'Go away!' Tiberius cried out. 'Don't come back! What else are your warnings to me but falsehoods? Lies!'

I had grown so used to spending my hours in Livia's suite with my face pressed hard against the floor that I no longer registered the discomfort of it. The prone position, intended to humiliate me, had become my natural stance. I took to it willingly, throwing myself to the tiles whenever my domina entered and letting out cries to suggest I was suffering, even though I was not. She was pleased by these displays, no longer needing to waste her words in commanding me to adopt poses of supplication.

I became creative in my methods of debasing myself before her. Unhappily, I was forced to reject excrement as a pillow, unless I was out in the open air where the stink would not offend. Instead, I choose fragments of glass, sharp rocks or little tacks to lay my body upon, pressing my bare limbs and cheeks against the torment they provided. I always ensured my domina observed my mattress of choice before I prostrated myself, so that she might increase my debasement by walking upon me or laying weights upon my back.

My enslavement to Livia was more complete than it had ever been through our long lives together. I had foregone every aspect of the humanity I had acquired in her eyes. I was no longer a living thing. My every accomplishment and privilege had been removed from me. Dogs enjoyed greater status now. I was of lesser consequence than a toad or a gnat.

As I spent the hours unmoving upon the floor of my domina 's sleeping room with my myriad wounds beginning to scab, I congratulated myself on the unforeseen consequences of all I had done. I had taken actions that were repellent in a slave, after all. I had thought for myself, instead of bowing to others' thoughts. I had forgotten my place and now was receiving my just reward. I had not foreseen it, which in itself was evidence that correction was required. And now that the consequences were upon me, they were truly exquisite. I, who had never wanted anything for myself other than enslavement, had attained the true zenith of my state.

Part of my torment, as Livia intended, was that I should witness her resumption of her affair with Sejanus. With my violations of her body now a distant memory, my domina wanted the pleasures that her lover enjoyed to be the sharpest thorn in my side. Forbidden to look and allowed only to hear, I wept like a child when Sejanus's cries of ecstasy reached their loudest, a cruel reminder of all I had lost. But this was what my domina demanded and so I imprinted his moans in my mind, coming to know their pattern. The gentle sighs, then the boyish panting; the building groans and the rush of joy. It was like the carefully erected structure of a poem or a hymn: reverent and tender to begin with, becoming urgent for the middle parts before the triumph of the end. I would ease in and out of consciousness, my domina 's lovemaking with Sejanus like a too familiar song, played always by the same musicians with only the slightest variations each time.

But one day, with this torture in my ears and my mind drifting like the tide, I heard a departure from the song. I had not been upright when Sejanus had entered the room and so had not seen him, only heard. I was prone still from the night before, and my domina had quashed the stink of my newest sores by dripping scented oil where I lay. Yet she did not order me gone.

When I had heard Sejanus arrive, I had allowed myself to snooze. But the Prefect's cries, when they came, woke me not because of their passion or volume, but their tone. There was a new delight behind them — a childlike thrill. Sejanus was like a lover experiencing euphoria for the first time. He shouted with all the glee of discovery, as if my domina was a novelty to him, a precious treasure he had long desired. Then I saw why.

Wanting the wounds on my face to be equal on each cheek, I made the one movement I allowed myself when prone. I lifted the left side of my face and turned my head so my right cheek could press against the tacks. In doing so my eyes opened involuntarily, barely a crack, and I glimpsed Sejanus's clothes upon the floor. His helmet seemed odd: the plume had been altered in some way. It was not the decoration I recognised as a Prefect's. Had the rank signifiers been changed, I wondered, in the face of centuries of tradition? Or, even more extraordinarily, had Sejanus been demoted? His was not the helmet of a Prefect on the floor but of a Tribune.

Then I guessed the answer. It was not Sejanus seeking his pleasures upon my domina at all, but his subordinate, Macro, for whom the joy was new. Livia had a fresh instrument in her schemes.

Despite being lower than a worm, I could never cease admiring her for keeping me so constantly surprised.

Little Boots and Aemilius stared in fascination at the cup. 'Pick it up,' said Little Boots.

'You pick it up,' said Aemilius.

Little Boots hated to appear a coward in the face of a dare. He let his fingers stroke the jewels on the side of the vessel for a moment before clutching the thing by the stem and raising it.

His little sister Julilla gasped. 'You'll be caught.'

This spurred him further. He posed with the thing, mimicking Tiberius's gestures. 'He's asleep — how will he know?'

'No one but Grandfather touches that cup.'

'So why did he leave it here where we could find it?'

'Perhaps he's not well today?' Drusilla suggested, electrified, watching on with her younger sister.

'When is he well any day?' quipped Little Boots.

This prompted the others to laugh before they clapped hands to their mouths, lest they be heard.

'Smell it,' said Little Boots, thrusting the cup towards Aemilius's nose.

'No!' Aemilius recoiled.

'Weakling,' said Little Boots. He held his own nose to the cup. The dregs of a thick brown liquid sat in the bottom. Whatever it was, it did not smell unpleasant. It smelled sweet, if anything, like wine brewed from honey.

'What is it?' asked Julilla, wide-eyed. 'Is it poison?'

'Why would Tiberius drink poison?' said Drusilla.

'To fortify himself against his enemies?'

'That's hell of a lot of fortifying he does then,' said Aemilius, smirking at Little Boots. 'He does it all day and all night.'

'Perhaps it's an antidote?'

Julilla's theory was dismissed by the older children, who already had their own suspicions about what the strange liquid might be.

'Drink it,' said Little Boots to Aemilius.

'No fear,' said Aemilius. 'I'm not touching anything the old man's been drooling in.'