everything much more vividly and each breath is precious because it might be among the last you take.' The words were directed at Rufus, but Lucius's eyes never left the solid blue dome above them.
'Have you fought in many battles then?' Rufus didn't try to hide his scepticism. Lucius had the kind of face that would always look boyish. It was impossible to imagine him in combat.
'You mean have I always been a princess's lapdog? Then the answer is no. I have locked shields with my brothers and felt the power of the barbarian horde as they broke upon them. I have tasted barbarian blood on my lips, heard the screams of the dying and smelled the shit from bowels ripped by a blade.' He shrugged as if it was of no consequence, but Rufus heard the pride in his voice. 'But that was a long time ago in another place, in another life. I enjoyed campaigning. All you had to do was follow orders and look heroic even when your guts felt like ice.' He laughed and picked himself up, dusting the grass from his back. 'Perhaps it is not so different here after all. My orders now are to take you to a certain lady.'
Rufus followed him along the covered walkway connecting the Emperor's palace to that of his predecessor, Tiberius, but soon they turned north and into a small enclosed garden near the Palatine library. Broad-canopied trees of a type Rufus didn't recognize threw wide circles of shade on the manicured grass, where a peacock, its brilliant rainbow-fan tail thrown proudly wide, shrieked its displeasure, and a herd of tiny deer grazed peacefully. Life-sized statues lined the paths, their stony gaze still focused on some epoch-making event a hundred years before. They were perfect, these toga-clad patricians; each face an individual, each marble cloak styled slightly differently from the others. Rufus quailed beneath their stern gaze, and wondered why he was here. What could she want from him she had not already taken?
She was waiting for him by a fountain in the centre of the garden. Lucius waved him forward and walked off to stand out of earshot beneath one of the trees.
Drusilla was cloaked and hooded, and stood with her back towards him. She seemed smaller than he remembered, somehow diminished. But perhaps that was a trick of the early-morning light.
'Walk with me.' The words were the merest whisper. She set off slowly towards the far end of the garden where he could see the redtiled roof of the temple of Apollo rising above the trees. He kept pace just by her left shoulder.
'Do you fear me, puppy dog?' The words sent a shiver through him. Her voice was stronger, but he had to lean forward because it was muffled by the thick cloak which still hid her face from him. 'You should fear me. A single word from me would bring a dozen guards to cut you down and they would not stop to question why.'
She walked a little further before she spoke again. 'But the real question is, puppy dog, whether I should fear you. When I had you brought to me you were just another handsome morsel to be tasted. A tender piece of flesh to be enjoyed then discarded. How could it be otherwise? You are a slave and I am destined to be a goddess. You should be nothing to me.' She shook her head under the hood. 'Yet, since our meeting, my mind has been filled with your face and your body and your touch. I have pined for the sound of your voice and the feel of your hard flesh under my hands. At first, I believed it was weakness on my part, and I fought it, but in the fighting I have become weaker still. Then I understood. You had bewitched me. And now,' she swept the hood back from her face and turned towards him, making him step away in fear, 'I must decide whether to accept my bewitchment or to break the spell by having you killed.'
Rufus heard the words and understood their significance, but what she said was overwhelmed by the horror confronting him.
It was as if her beauty had been sucked from her like the moisture from an overwintered apple. The skin of her face was deeply wrinkled and the colour and texture of parchment, blotched with patches of darker, more lifeless flesh. Her yellowing eyes were sunk deep in their sockets. It was the face of death.
She laughed at his confusion, and he gasped at the ruin that was her mouth. The lips he had kissed were covered with weeping ulcerous boils and she had lost several teeth, while others dangled loose in her gums. And she was bald, or almost so. Only tufts of the silky auburn mane remained, standing out like sparse stalks missed by a careless harvester.
'Am I not beautiful?' she rasped, echoing the question that had greeted him in the room with the discus thrower. 'Am I not the treasure you always desired?' Then, more harshly still, 'Is this your gift to Drusilla, slave? Did you betray me?'
'No, mistress,' Rufus pleaded, hoping it was true, but remembering his words to Narcissus. Was this some sorcery of the Greek's? What was it he had said? 'I don't think Drusilla will harm anyone again.' Was there a terrible certainty there he had missed? His mind raced. He understood he was fighting for his life and he groped desperately for the words that would save him.
He found himself babbling, a near-incoherent jumble of inanity which, for some reason, appeared to please her.
'You gave me your love and I was grateful for it. For a few short hours you placed me among the gods and I was blinded by the glories I discovered there. When it was past, you left me in a shadow world where the darkness comes from within. I waited in vain for your call. I thought I had failed you in some way and that knowledge made my life worthless. I would give anything for this not to be. Kill me if you must, but know you have bewitched me as much as you say I have bewitched you.'
He dropped to his knees, not daring to look into her face. He knew he risked everything by offering her his life, but something in the memory of the time they spent together made him believe she wanted it to be so. He didn't see the single tear that ran down her ravaged cheek.
'You were the last of my lovers, Rufus of the elephant. Some would say you were the last of a vast legion, but believe me when I tell you it is not so. Drusilla was discerning in her choice of puppy dogs, at least give her that. And you did please her.' There was an infinite sadness in her words and the way she spoke them. She was talking of herself in the past tense, as if she were already dead, and even in his fear for his own life, Rufus could not help being moved. 'But Drusilla must ask herself if that is enough to save you? Would it not be fitting if you were to join her on her funeral pyre, in the manner of some terrible Babylonian queen in the texts of Herodotus, taking her most coveted possessions with her into the next world? I will think on that.'
Rufus felt the touch of her chilled fingers, and he rose awkwardly to find the sunken eyes piercing him.
'Would you burn for your Drusilla? A final fiery coupling before we join the gods in their endless dance?' She laughed, like dry twigs crackling underfoot on a forest floor, and drew his face to hers until their lips touched and he felt her tongue enter his mouth and tasted the vileness of her affliction. Despite himself he recoiled from her, giving her the answer she sought. 'No? I thought not. For you are but a slave and will always be a slave while Drusilla will be a goddess. Her brother does not understand the true nature of her sickness, but she has made him promise it.'
The strength seemed to drain away from her and she swayed drunkenly. Instinctively, he placed a hand on her arm to steady her and felt brittle bone beneath the thick cloth of the cloak, but she shrugged him off, staring at him as if surprised he was still there.
'Not the slave then, but who? The soldier? Surely his method would be more violent, less subtle. The spy? The very opposite. Milonia would not have the courage. Livilla does not have the hate. Agrippina has the skills, but she would not risk her brother's wrath. Uncle Claudius…'
Rufus listened to the rambling litany of names and backed away to where Lucius waited in the shade.
'You survived then?' the young soldier greeted him. 'I'm pleased.'
Rufus stared at him, puzzled.
'No, truly, I am pleased. All she had to do was raise her hand and I was to cut your throat, with this.' He pulled a curved dagger from his belt. 'I took it from a Parthian warrior, but I've never used it. When you were on your knees I thought she was about to give the signal.'
Rufus flinched at the sight of the knife. 'But why? I have done nothing. I am no danger to Drusilla or anyone else.'
Lucius shrugged. 'She believes she has been poisoned. Her physician told her she has a sickness, a cancer, but she would not listen to him. When the old fool insisted he was correct, she had him sent to her brother's executioners. She said she would know when she looked in your eyes if you had betrayed her. That was when I would strike. But you must have convinced her otherwise, because you are still here. As I say, I'm glad. It is too nice a morning to spoil by killing someone you hardly know. Here, take it.' He held out the short dagger and pressed it into Rufus's hand. 'I have no more need of it. You might find it useful some day.'
He turned to leave, but Rufus hesitated, his eyes drawn back to the slight figure in the shadows at the end of
