'My brother is cruel. He knows I love him, yet he sifts through my love seeking out imperfections which might displease him. Only yesterday he wondered aloud if he should have me tortured so he could measure exactly the extent of my devotion. When he places his hands round my throat, just as you did, he wonders at its slimness, and compares it to a swan's, then informs me it would take only a single word from him to have it severed by an axe.'
Rufus stayed silent. He understood that he had no need to speak. She was talking to him in the way Claudius talked to Bersheba. Using him as a reflector for her thoughts, so that she could consider them from a different perspective. To her, he was little more than a beast to be used for any purpose she thought fit.
'It can be a great burden to be an Emperor's favourite. Would it be an honour to die at the hands of a living god? Would it mean I, Drusilla, would be divine, a goddess in my own right? Or is death just death? An end.'
She looked puzzled for a moment, and he knew this was a subject which perplexed her. But then it was as if a lamp lit behind her eyes.
'My brother's fame will be immortal, and Drusilla's name will be coupled with his. His greatness already outshines the combined light of Divine Julius, Augustus and Tiberius. His reign will last for fifty years and his deeds will be remembered for a thousand. Already people talk of him as a god, and soon he will take his place with the greatest of the gods. Should Gaius, saviour of Rome, bow before Jupiter? No!' Her eyes narrowed, and now an unsettling new persona revealed itself. 'But first he must destroy his enemies. Even now, when his people believe he leads his army to take Rome's bounty to the barbarians of Britannia, he marches to the Rhine to deal with the traitor Gaetulicus and his legions. This creature wishes to supplant him with my own husband, whose throat I will cut with this very hand. Gaius has so many enemies, even among those he would call his friends.
'They don't think I know,' she confided. 'But I see them sneering behind his back and plotting in their whispering nests. Cassius Chaerea, with his little girl's voice — a man, so-called, who will lie with woman, man or beast. Calpurnius, who still blames him for stealing away his wife, as if such a thing mattered. He cannot even trust his own blood. Uncle Claudius, who is a better actor than any on the stage, and that Greek who is never far from his shoulder spread their poison among the Senate and the guard. I have told him to kill them all, but he is too weak. Oh, Chaerea and Calpurnius will have their reckoning, but not Claudius, who is the greatest danger of all. Gaius will spare him because he is family.
'My brother is weak, but I would be strong. I would wipe them from the face of the earth in a single day that Rome would remember for a lifetime. Their screams for mercy would be heard the length of the Empire and none would dare follow them in their betrayal.
'My sisters plot too, and my brother's wife, but against me, not him. They know I have his favour and as long as I do they will never rise. Livilla is harmless enough; she can be married off to a husband who will beat her regularly and painfully. And Milonia is but an annoyance. But Agrippina is different. We must watch Agrippina. Agrippina is a witch, and witches are dangerous. She can do more harm with her potions and poultices even than Uncle Claudius. Gaius has not been the same since she cured him of the head sickness. Cured? Poisoned, I say, or drugged to bend him to her will. We will deal with Agrippina in good time.'
As she talked, Drusilla's hand absently stroked Rufus's upper thigh. Now it stroked something else and she purred.
'Yes, puppy dog. We don't have much time and there is a service you can do your mistress before she sends you back to your kennel.'
She lay back and motioned him to her. Drusilla was hungry and practised, but Rufus was young and he was strong; more confident now, with wiles of his own. He had the arrogance of youth and he would not be bested. Their sweating contest of wills seemed to last an age, with each having periods of domination, but eventually it was she who cried out in defeat. A single scream that sent a spear of molten iron through his heart.
'Gaiiuuus!'
XX
It did not take long to discover that her confidence in their secret was misplaced.
Narcissus appeared at the doors of the barn a few days after the night-time excursion as Rufus trimmed Bersheba's feet, a process the huge animal seemed to find thoroughly satisfying.
Rufus had his back to Bersheba, with her left hind leg bent upwards between both of his so that he could work at the horny growth on the sole of her foot with a sharp knife. As he pared away, she shuffled slightly and gave quiet snorts of pleasure.
'I find it amazing that one can get quite that close to something so large, and so obviously dangerous,' Narcissus said after watching the operation for a few moments.
Rufus grunted and wrestled to slice off a particularly tough piece of hardened skin before replying. 'Bersheba may be big, but she is not dangerous — are you, girl?' he said, reaching behind him to pat a wrinkled hindquarter.
'Not at the moment, perhaps. But I have seen the beasts in battle and they can be very fearsome, even if they are facing the other way. You must remember, Rufus,' he added with exaggerated significance, 'you have a powerful weapon in your control.'
Rufus was surprised to hear Narcissus claim he had been in a fight. The Greek gave the impression of being… not soft, but unworldly.
'No.' Narcissus laughed, reading his mind. 'I was not a military man. I was accompanying my former master — not Senator Claudius — on a diplomatic mission when the natives objected particularly violently to something. Taxes, probably. They didn't bargain for the squadron of war elephants the local potentate used against them.'
Rufus had cared for Bersheba for so long that he never thought of her as dangerous, not in a warlike sort of way. Clumsy, perhaps. An animal of her size could crush a man accidentally and barely notice it. And when she was in one of her moods…
'What were they like? Were they different from Bersheba? Bigger?'
'No, just the same sort of lumbering beast. Although I think they may have had smaller ears, and more of a humped back. They were armoured here,' he said, indicating the front of her head, 'and on their flanks. They were controlled by little brown men who sat on their shoulders, and they carried a… a sort of basket, with a bowman in it.'
'I could see why they might be good against cavalry,' Rufus said, considering the matter. 'Any horse that comes anywhere near Bersheba gets nervous as soon as it smells her. I suppose it would take a lot to stop her?'
'Yes it does. I saw one elephant stuck so full of arrows it looked very like a large hedgehog.' Rufus grimaced at the description, but Narcissus affected not to notice. 'It was very angry and very effective for a time, and then it seemed to lose its mind.'
'What happened to it?'
'It turned on its own people and charged directly towards the potentate and my diplomat. The little man on its shoulders took a large spike and hammered it straight into the back of its neck with a mallet. It went down like a fallen tree. Stone dead.'
They looked at Bersheba in silence for a moment, considering the unlikelihood of such an animal being brought down with a single blow.
'I know, it doesn't seem possible. But I saw it with my own eyes. Now, have you anything for me? A little gossip perhaps? I understand you have been keeping interesting company.'
Rufus froze.
Narcissus smiled reassuringly. 'Oh, don't worry, your secret is safe with me. But the Palatine is a dangerous place, and nowhere is more dangerous than the quarter you entered three nights ago. The person who inhabits that room is beautiful in the way a sea snake is beautiful. It dances sinuously in the current and its colours enchant, but treat it with disrespect and you will be dead before you can blink an eye. Now, what do you have for me?'
Rufus hesitated. 'Gaetulicus.'
'Ah, our poetic governor of Upper Germany. What does she say of him?'
Rufus told how the British invasion was to be a deception, while the true target was the popular governor
