Luke Devenish - Nest of vipers

The scurry of vermin when she pushed open the door was unnerving, but Lena had encountered worse in brothels and bravely stepped inside. Having come so far, she was determined to go through with Martina's plan. She reached the plinth gingerly and took the hammer, nail and tablet from the bag. She held the lead in her hands and felt the surprising weight of it.

' May disaster strike my competitors worse than every disaster I've known,' she read. She chortled at the curse and then felt a twinge of fear that perhaps it wasn't brutal enough. Should she have defined the disaster? A ruinous fire? Or an outbreak of plague? She banished the thought. Losing whores beneath the avalanche was a disaster worse than any she could think of. To somehow top it with one greater still was a god's work, beyond mortal imagination. This was what she was here for, after all.

With three swift blows of the hammer, Lena nailed the curse tablet to the plinth, where so many others already hung. She sighed at the sheer number of them. Would the god even notice hers? Looking up at the deity's great statue to beseech him, she was suddenly struck by how familiar the god's face was.

A noise behind her made her start. 'Iphicles!'

'Where did you obtain your veil from, Lena?' I had followed her all the way from the Forum.

She was too shocked to answer me for a moment.

'Your gossamer veil,' I said. 'Where did you get it, Lena?'

She looked at me as if I was mad. 'I found it in the street. Someone must have lost it. It was too nice to throw away, so I took it.'

I fell into thoughtful silence as Lena looked up at the statue again. 'Iphicles,' she said eventually.

'You don't need to say it, Lena — I know.'

'You know? But what do you know?'

I pointed up at the god. 'Veiovis has my face, or I have his, whichever it is. I know, Lena, and I agree with you. The resemblance cannot be a coincidence.'

Ahenobarbus crouched in the Suburan alley, the sounds of the teeming slums all around him an affront to his ears. The lusts, the laughter of the poor, their mundane talk, the snatches of their arguments — these echoes of ordinary lives were a mockery to him, condemned as he was to live in silence. Every sinew of his being longed for words, for the facility for speech, and every breath in his chest silently cursed the cruelty of gods that would waste such precious gifts upon beasts that held them in no value.

He touched his torch to the oil-soaked rags. They began to smoke, delicately at first, thin, grey wisps floating to the windows above. Ahenobarbus, who had always loved fire, would punish the beasts for possessing what he was denied.

Pale and feverish upon their bed, Nilla muttered her eternal questions from dry, cracked lips. 'How could the Emperor have allowed my mother and brothers to die?'

Her lover pressed a sponge to her face. 'I have no answer — I do not know.'

'How could he do it? Sejanus was gone. But the Emperor didn't save them. He let them starve.'

'Ssh, now, my love. Hush.'

'Why have I heard nothing from Capri? Nothing since my grandmother returned there. What has happened to her? What has happened to my sisters?'

'Please, Nilla — I do not know. You must stop tormenting yourself like this.'

'How can I, when I don't know what has silenced them? When I don't know what has happened to them?'

'Please, try to sleep. You're ill.'

'Why have I been told nothing?' she cried out. 'Why am I so worthless?'

Tears slipped down his cheeks as he held her to keep her still.

'Why am I so ignored, Burrus?' she sobbed. 'Why am I so alone?'

His world had receded to their bed. Like Nilla beside him, he no longer heard the lives lived by others. They were an island, the two of them, cut off from the world, which was why, when the old, roughened hands pulled at his clothes and tried to rouse him he barely sensed it. When the same hands tugged at his hair, he felt nothing. When the voice shouted and wept and cursed at him, it seemed to Burrus as though it came from a distance of miles. It was only when the old servant slapped hard at Nilla's face that Burrus was pulled from the spell.

'Don't touch her.'

'The Guards!' the old woman yelled at him. 'Wake up, boy — it's the Guards!' The words penetrated, but not their meaning.

'The Guards — they're here!'

'What guards? What do you mean?'

He rejoined the world to the sound of fists pounding the door below.

'The Praetorian Prefect!' the old woman shouted at him in terror. 'He is demanding we open the house in the name of the Emperor!'

Burrus ran to the corridor as the battering ram reduced the street door to splinters. In the garden the smirking Albucilla thrilled that her rival's destruction was imminent. Wherever Ahenobarbus was, she only hoped he would return in time to see it.

The alley fire took quickly, catching hold of the rubbish Ahenobarbus piled to feed its hunger. The flames spread surely upwards, licking at the windowsills of the insulae. A woman looked out of one of the windows and saw the peril. Ahenobarbus's hair shone as he masturbated before her in the glow. She screamed and pointed at him. Other beasts appeared from neighbouring windows and Ahenobarbus took to his feet. Men leaped from the windows to chase him.

His heart pounding with excitement and terror, Ahenobarbus lurched from the arches of the Circus Maximus and up the long Steps of Cacus to ascend the Palatine.

'Fire demon!' his pursuers screamed. 'His hair is on fire! Look at him — it's the demon!'

The sky glowed with the cleansing blaze that consumed the Suburan slums.

'He's the one who starts every fire in Rome! He wants to kill us all!'

'Fire demon!'

Ahenobarbus reached the summit, staggering in exhaustion across the flagstone square to the Temple of the Great Mother. He threw himself into the shadows of the great columns as the mob attained the crest behind him.

'Find the demon with the burning hair!'

They fanned out through the maze of the Palatine's streets, screaming to the gods for his head. Ahenobarbus laughed to himself, as he was safe.

He stole his way in silence among the Concubia shadows, but when he came to the House of the Aemilii, his shock and rage at what he saw made him want to seek out the aged slave for a beating. She had carelessly left the street door open to thieves.

But when Ahenobarbus crept to the threshold, he saw the truth: the door had been smashed from its pivots. His terror returned; the mob had identified him and taken revenge. Shaking with fear, yet perversely aroused by it, Ahenobarbus moved inside his ancestral home. The atrium was dark. There were all the signs of brutal entry, yet it had not been sacked. The wax mask of his father was in place, as was the shrine to the household gods.

Ahenobarbus's eyes found his wife and her slave lover in the dark, huddled on the stairs like children. He was confounded. Was this forced entry the work of the mob at all? He signalled to the pair, but when they didn't seem to hear, he struck at the face of his wife's slave.

Burrus looked up, dazed. 'Macro came with his men, domine.'

Ahenobarbus didn't understand.

'The Praetorians. I took up position on the stairs to defend,' Burrus said, 'but they had no interest in me — or in Nilla.'

Ahenobarbus again struck the slave, but this time in bewilderment. Burrus didn't flinch. 'It was Albucilla, domine. They came for her. She was charged with immorality and taken away in chains.'

The Kalends of June

AD 35

Twenty-five months later: a phoenix is sighted on the Nile, occasioning heated discussion among Egyptians regarding its significance

The Aemilii sisters sat huddled before the furnace in the kitchens, shivering despite the summer heat.

'Condemned to exile,' Domitia sobbed. 'No shoes, no money, just pushed out the gates and told to leave Rome. It's such a terrible fate.'