To Be Wolves, page 2
“Aegroto dum anima est, spes est.” Tiberius tossed some salted flour into the flame. Where there is life, there is hope.
“What a stupid thing to say.”
“Mother, he may yet live.”
“He must live. Agrippa was named second in his will.”
“Even if he lives, he will never name me his heir.”
“He must and he will,” said Livia. “There is no other way. If Agrippa becomes emperor, we will be exiled. He hates us both.” Another heavy exhalation. “Agrippa may yet have use for Drusus if he ever sees fit to bring him home from Germania, but we’ll be carted off with the worn linens to Pandateria. Just you and me, Tiberius, on a tiny island without even wine to numb the displeasure of each other’s company—”
“Mother, stop.” Tiberius wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “Will you tell him about his sister?”
“No. Make sure the slaves know to keep their big mouths shut for a change too. He wouldn’t survive the shock of it.”
A rustle of bedsheets made them both turn around. Octavian had one hand in the air, his finger pointed as if he were about to command a legion. “Wife,” he sputtered.
Livia moved to his bed and sat on the edge. “Husband, be still.” She took his hand and rested it at his side, fighting the urge to wipe his cold sweat off her hands. That would look bad in front of the Vestals.
Octavian gestured weakly to Tuccia and she approached his bedside.
“Yes, Caesar?”
“Has Priestess Pomponia left Tivoli yet?”
“Yes, she will arrive in Rome today.”
“Do not allow her to visit me. The Vestalis Maxima cannot fall ill.”
“There has been no trace of the disease in Tivoli, Caesar. Pomponia’s physician says it is because the region is less populated and the water supply is uncorrupted. She is strong and shall remain so.” Octavian opened his mouth to say something, but a sputter of mucus caught in his throat. “Rest now,” said Tuccia. She touched his chest gently. “The goddess keeps you.”
Once the priestess had stepped away from the bed, Livia reached into a glass bowl of cool water on a nearby table and wrung out the cloth inside. She wiped away the thick fluid that ran out the corner of Octavian’s mouth.
He blinked up at her. The emperor of Rome, too weak to wipe his own chin.
“I hope to live, wife,” he said.
“Hope is powerful medicine, Octavian,” she replied. “Sometimes it is all the gods leave us.”
Octavian managed a weak smile. “Tell me the story of Pandora. It comforts me.”
Livia smiled back. On the outside. Inside, she felt a swell of annoyance. She was the empress of Rome, not a coddling nurse. Octavian usually had his daughter, Julia, tell him a story, but he had forbidden her to visit him after his sickness had taken a more serious turn. Strange he had not shown such caution for his wife.
“Pandora was the first woman,” Livia began as matronly as she could. “She was created out of clay by the Greek god Zeus as both a gift and a punishment to man, to be his companion and to make him at once a better and a worse being. When Zeus put Pandora in the world, he gave her a closed jar and this one command: “Do not remove the lid.”
“But she did . . .” whispered Octavian.
“Of course she did. What kind of tedious woman would she be if she did not? Pandora found a lovely stream to sit beside, and when no one was looking, not even Zeus, she slowly took the lid off the jar.
“To her horror, out flew every misery the gods had fashioned for us—death, pain, cruelty, sorrow, worry, fear, and disease. Pandora knew none of these things by name, for they had not existed in the garden of life before. Yet as each one flew out, she felt it for the first time, like a blade in her heart. She tried desperately to catch these evils and put them back in the jar, but it was not to be. Full of despair, she replaced the lid as quickly as she could, but it was no use. The world was afflicted.”
Octavian closed his eyes. A tear rolled down his cheek.
“But Pandora was as keen and quick as she was curious, and she had been able to trap one thing in the jar. One thing that humans could always hold on to—”
“Hope,” said Octavian.
“Yes, husband,” Livia replied. “And that is why wherever there is life, there is hope.”
* * *
As she stepped out of the house and into the fresh air of the peristyle that surrounded the open courtyard of Caesar’s home, Livia pushed as much air out of her lungs as she could and then inhaled deeply, repeating the process, out and in, until she felt light-headed. It was no use. She couldn’t get the stench of Octavian’s illness out of her nose.
He had fallen sick suddenly three days earlier. He had been at his desk signing a document, when all at once, he had doubled over in pain and rushed off to the toilet. Such dramatics were nothing new to Livia. Her husband had developed an increasingly weak constitution. This time was much worse than usual, though, and it soon became apparent that the devastating disease that was sweeping through Rome was also sweeping through the emperor’s royal guts.
Within hours Octavia was also bedridden, overcome by fever and dysentery. Despite being in better physical health than her brother, she had deteriorated just as quickly and had fallen into an unresponsive state earlier that day.
Although Livia had often resented the close bond Octavia shared with her brother, she couldn’t help but feel what she suspected was a trace of true sadness. The contagion was a merciless one, and Octavia, who had always been kind to Livia, and even Tiberius, had suffered horribly. Octavian would reel at the loss. If he lived long enough to learn of it.
His physician, Musa, was offering none of his usual lofty reassurances and was silent with worry. Livia wondered whether his concern was only for his own fate—at best he’d be banished to some miserable northern outpost if Caesar died—or whether he was truly concerned for the emperor’s well-being.
Then again, she wondered the same thing about herself. She honestly didn’t know whether the fear she felt was only for her own life or for her husband’s.
Livia passed by a large water fountain, at the center of which stood a tall marble statue of Triton blowing a conch shell, his arms raised to hold the heavy shell and his lower body morphing into a muscular fish tail. As if in obeyance to the god’s trumpeting command, the water around one side of the fountain rose and flowed like rough waves on the sea. Livia indulged in a long look at Triton’s strong chest and muscled arms, feeling her spirits lift. I must commission that sculptor again, she thought.
Moving further into the courtyard, she surveyed the house slaves who had been gathered there and who now stood silently in single file before a crimson colonnade. Their heads were bowed in both deference and dread.
It was one thing when their master summoned them like this. It was another thing entirely when their mistress did.
The chief house slave, Despina, greeted Livia. “Domina, all is as you have asked.”
“If all were as I have asked, Caesar wouldn’t be begging Apollo for breath in his bedchamber, Despina.” Livia strolled nonchalantly before the row of slaves and servants, letting her eyes inspect each one in turn until she came to a leaning rest against one of the garden’s large rainwater cisterns. The coolness felt good against her bare arm. Even for July, the heat was exhausting.
“Last month,” she began, “on the kalends, I stood in this very spot and addressed all of you. Do you remember what I said?” she asked in a tone that discouraged answering. “I said that an epidemic was ravaging Rome. I said that any person—man, woman, or child—who brought contagion into this house and exposed Caesar to the affliction would suffer worse than he.”
As if on cue, two soldiers emerged from the back of the colonnade. One struggled to hold a long pole, its other end affixed to the neck of a squat but strong wild dog, snapping and growling and contorting itself in an effort to break free. The other carried a large heavy sack, at the bottom of which some unseen creature twisted and turned on itself. A snake. A big one. Both soldiers nodded to Livia and then stood beside her on the grass.
As the reality of what was about to happen struck the slaves, a few pathetic whimpers emerged from the row, and several put their hands over their faces as if to shield themselves from the inevitable. Poena cullei. The penalty of the sack.
“As you know, the sack is the penalty for patricide. But Caesar is Pater Patriae. He is the father of our country and the father to all. He is your father.” Livia pushed herself off the cistern and strolled casually to face one of the slaves—a young, pretty girl with waist-long black hair and even blacker eyes. “You are the little cunnus who infected Caesar, are you not?”
“Domina . . .” The girl’s voice cracked and she stared at her feet, her body now visibly trembling. She had been warned this would happen. Despina and others had told her to avoid being in Caesar’s presence, that being his favorite bed slave was a position that brought more risk than reward, but she didn’t listen. Now it was too late.
“Well, get it over with,” Livia said to the soldiers. “I’m melting in this heat.”
“Yes, Empress,” said the soldier who held the wild dog. He dragged the snarling animal toward the other soldier who had set the sack on the ground. He was fighting to open the mouth of the sack while at the same time preventing the sizable snake inside from slithering out. It was hard work, but after a few minutes, the soldiers managed to shove the dog inside as well.
The sack instantly erupted into a writhing, shrieking horror show as the wild dog and the viper viciously bit and tore at each other inside.
While one soldier labored to hold the sack upright, the other grabbed the slave girl’s wrists and pulled her forward. She dropped to the ground and screamed, kicking up at him in desperation. He responded with a quick blow to her head. It didn’t knock her out—he knew his mistress wouldn’t want that—but it was enough to stun her into submission. He gathered her up in his arms. As he did, her high-belted tunica lifted to reveal her swollen belly.
If anyone present still believed the girl was being punished for infecting Caesar with disease, they now knew the truth. Caesar’s wife was executing his pregnant bed slave and sending a clear message to the remaining female slaves in the process. Either you end your pregnancy or I will do it for you.
With a level of exertion that would have been comedic in any other circumstance, one soldier braced his legs to hold open the sack while the other stuffed the girl headfirst inside, shoving her legs in after her.
The horror show grew louder and more grotesque. Whatever was happening inside the sack was somehow made worse by having to imagine it. The violent intermingling of the bodies within—the thrashing girl, the snapping dog, the coiling snake—and the sinking of teeth into soft flesh. The ear-piercing screams and stomach-churning snarls.
As spots of blood began to soak through the heavy cloth, the soldiers secured the mouth of the sack with a thick rope and then half dragged, half carried it the few steps to the large cistern, doing their best to avoid having their own legs and arms bitten in the process. They lifted the sack and dropped it unceremoniously into the wide water barrel with a loud splash.
The shrieking and biting sounds became muted. The sides of the cistern shook, and it looked for a moment like it might topple over, but the soldiers each pressed a shoulder to it to hold it upright, not seeming to mind the cool water that splashed over them.
It went on like that longer than Livia would have expected. She felt the sun baking the top of her head. “Get back to work,” she said to the row of slaves, and then turned to leave without looking back. She strode through the courtyard and sat on a cushioned chair beside the fountain of Triton.
“Despina, bring me some lemon water and cold meats.”
“Yes, Domina.”
Livia felt shade cover her face as a slave held a canopy above her. Why rush back to Octavian’s bedside? He’s not going anywhere. As she looked up to admire Triton’s chest, an image of her husband’s gangling limbs and blotched, loose skin crossed her mind’s eye. She sighed at the marble god. Vita non aequa est.
Life’s not fair.
Chapter II
Praevalent Illicita
Things forbidden have a secret charm.
—Tacitus
The fresh water from Tivoli was being unloaded from horse-drawn carts and carried by slaves through the posticum into the House of the Vestals when Pomponia and Quintina’s litter arrived at the main portico of the luxury home in the heart of the Roman Forum. The priestesses slipped out of their lectica and headed straight for the ornate wooden doors. This was no time for a ceremonial homecoming. These days, Rome had little stomach for ceremony of any kind.
It had all started months earlier during the rains: first the Tiber had flooded, and then some sickly legions had returned from Germania. The gods only knew what pestilence they brought with them, but within weeks the vile waste that normally ran along the cobblestone streets of Rome had grown even more foul and malodorous. One could smell the acrid sickness as it ran down the streets in brown, weeping rivulets.
The disease had first appeared, as diseases typically did, in the poor, gang-ridden Roman district of the Subura, a lower-class neighborhood both socially and topographically. The waste from upper elevations and upper-class neighborhoods ran downhill to collect and stagnate in its streets and clogged sewers. It was yet another reason wealthier and more resourceful Romans lived on the higher hills of the city, even building a wall between the Subura and the rest of Rome. Out of sight was out of mind.
Yet the Subura had its place in Rome, and it also had a voice in the Senate, even if it wasn’t always listened to. Throughout the winter and spring months, the Senate had been besieged with angry demands from Subura residents—Roman shoemakers to Jewish shopkeepers alike—to do something about the worsening epidemic, but no action had been taken.
As the spring months had drawn to a close and the heat had arrived, things started to hit a little closer to home for the upper classes. The kept prostitute of one Senator Gaius Junius Silanus had fallen sick and died. A week later, the senator himself barely recovered. Yet it was the week after that when things really started to change. Silanus’s wife unexpectedly succumbed to the scourge that had been passed to her secondhand by her husband’s whore.
When news of that particular insult reached the garden parties and frescoed triclinia of Rome’s rich matrons, the outraged wives of senators issued their own collective decree to their husbands—no more visits to the whorehouses of the Subura until the disease was under control.
The Senate immediately ordered the placement of more freshwater fountains in the district and the building of several new bathhouses. Sanitation crews had the unpleasant task of cleaning the streets, unclogging the sewers, and clearing the dead from crowded insulae and back alleys.
But it was too little too late. Just as the disease had flowed downhill to the Subura, it now spread uphill on the bottoms of sandals and the surfaces of cart wheels to reach the Quirinal, Capitoline, and Palatine Hills, spreading even to the home of Caesar Augustus himself.
The sights, sounds, and smells of the sickness had been evident to Pomponia from miles outside the Servian Wall, and things only got worse once she and Quintina had passed through the gates of Rome itself. Gone were the fresh, dewy breezes of her villa in green-treed and sedentary Tivoli, replaced by the dirty hustle and the dry, oppressive heat of the busy Roman Forum.
Even so, as Pomponia took a few quick steps over the cobblestone of the Via Sacra—it had been scrubbed to a hygienic shine by temple slaves—to step through the doors of the House of the Vestals, she knew she’d returned to her true home. Gone were Medousa, Fabiana, and the little white dog Perseus. Gone was Quintus. Yet all their ashes had been put to rest here among the marble of Rome. Even the green fields of Tivoli could not compete with that.
As she and Quintina moved through the vestibule to enter the atrium, Pomponia heard familiar voices approaching. Tuccia and Lucretia, her sister Vestals. They smiled and held out their arms to her.
“Pomponia, welcome home,” said Tuccia. She embraced the chief Vestal and Quintina in turn, and then stood back to let Lucretia do the same.
Pomponia studied Tuccia. The last several months had taken their toll on the normally carefree and eternally youthful priestess. Her skin was still fair and smooth, her amber eyes still bright, but she looked tired. “I’m sorry you have been burdened so,” said Pomponia. “It’s not been fair. I should have come back sooner.”
“Nonsense,” said Tuccia. “You have accomplished more from Tivoli than I have here in Rome. Anyway, Caesar was adamant that you remain in Tivoli, away from the contagion.”
“Now that his life hangs in the balance, he seems to have changed his policy,” replied Pomponia.
“He thinks your presence in Rome will save him.” Tuccia grinned, and Pomponia saw a reassuring flash of her usual spiritedness. “He thinks you dine with Vesta herself and that you will ask the goddess to spare his life while you share a pudding.”
“If only it were so, Tuccia.” As they began to walk deeper into the house, Pomponia eyed Tuccia more seriously. “Tell me, has he changed his will?”
“No. Agrippa remains his heir.”
Pomponia nodded, content for the moment. “Then if the Fates have decided he is to die, let us pray it happens before Livia’s hand is felt. We may have a worse contagion to deal with if her son becomes emperor.”
* * *
