XL
Aemilia changed. She would never speak of what happened that night, or in the ones that inevitably followed. The carefree girl was gone, replaced by a hard-edged young woman with a painfully sharp tongue. She was still beautiful, but it was a different beauty; colder. Occasionally Rufus would see her in the park with the Emperor's daughter and try to catch her eye. Where once she would have smiled and called out, she ignored him as if he didn't exist. He cared too much for it not to hurt, but knew better than to force his company on her.
A few weeks later — at the end of the three-day festival of the Compitalia — when he thought the wound might have begun to heal, he asked Cupido if he had spoken to her. The gladiator's face turned bleak. 'I have no sister,' he said.
Whether it was the weather, which was making its heartless jump from autumn's end to full winter, or something in the air, Rufus came down with an indefinable sickness. It never quite laid him low, but it was always there, a cold, clammy ball deep in his stomach, which made him lethargic and miserable. He struggled to cope with tasks that, a week earlier, were quite routine, and found himself sighing for no reason. Livia noted the change in him, and, being a woman, soon worked out the cause. At first she was angry, but then anger turned to a sort of disconnected, pragmatic acceptance. Aemilia was not her rival. Rufus was still her man. Until either of those situations changed she had more important things to concern her.
Rufus was talking quietly to her as they lay on the straw pallet late one evening, ready to give her the latest piece in one of Narcissus's puzzles, when she told him her time was near.
She had tried to prepare him, and he had believed himself prepared, but he found the change hurtling towards him as terrifying as a mountain avalanche. He hid away in his work with Bersheba as Livia gathered the necessities required for the birth. When she spoke of the baby as a living being, it was as if she talked a language he could not understand. He did not think he could ever be a father.
He tried to change the subject, to pass on Narcissus's instructions, but she placed a child's finger tenderly over his mouth.
'Enough of that. We have other things to concern us. Now, you will know when the baby is coming when my waters break — from here.' She took his hand and placed it deep between her legs beneath the overhang of her belly. 'Don't grimace like that.' She laughed. 'It is what happens to every woman.'
She was still giving him instructions — how to contact Galla, the palace slave who had advised her through her pregnancy — when he drifted off to sleep. Smiling, she shook her head and kissed him on the lips. He was still such a boy, really.
The screams took time to penetrate his sleeping mind. He never discovered whether the meeting had been prearranged or whether Chaerea had somehow managed to circumvent Bersheba's vigilance. But when he stumbled, blinking, past the grey bulk of the elephant and into the night, the Praetorian commander was visible fifty yards away in the moonlight, kicking purposefully at a screaming white bundle that squirmed at his feet. Livia.
Rufus launched himself in a hate-blinded charge as Chaerea completed his assault with one final, carefully aimed boot into Livia's exposed belly, and turned from his victim. He had covered less than ten paces when Rufus caught him in a flying tackle around the shoulders. But Chaerea, the legionary veteran, was not going to be taken so easily. It was laughable. Had he become so old that this beardless slave believed he could surprise him?
He pivoted his body so the younger man's momentum sent him flying over his shoulder to land with a sickening thud six feet away. Rufus was stunned and winded, but even if he hadn't been, Chaerea would have been on him before he could move. He felt the razor edge of a curved dagger across his throat.
'I should kill you now, elephant boy, you and your midget whore, but somehow you have acquired friends I can't afford to annoy at the moment,' he grunted, filling Rufus's nostrils with the stink of his breath. 'You think you can sink old Cassius with a few whispers and a piece of junk, eh? You think you're clever? Well, at least I can give you something to remember me by.'
Rufus's mind filled with a white light and a lance of pain scored his forehead before his vision vanished behind a sea of red. For a second he thought Chaerea had blinded him.
The Praetorian laughed and his weight shifted, allowing Rufus to breathe. Rufus explored his face to discover how much damage had been done. His tentative fingers found a thin, four-inch slash.
'You'll live. Not that I care. Tell the gladiator he's not in my class. Tell him he has until the ninth day before the Kalends of February to strike the blow or his sister will die. She's safe for the moment, but she won't be for long. If he doesn't do what I ask I'll kill her, slowly, and enjoy it. If he tries to get to her, I'll roast him alive over an open fire and make her watch while my men have her. And I want a meeting with the old cripple.'
Rufus felt a calloused hand grip his chin and raise his face, while another wiped away the blood that had masked his eyes.
'Did you hear me? A meeting.'
Rufus nodded.
'Ruuuufuuuuss.' The shriek was filled with a naked terror that chilled his heart.
Chaerea laughed again. 'Looks like you're going to need a midwife.'
Rufus pushed himself to his feet and stumbled to where Livia lay on the grass, writhing in agony.
'Galla,' he said.
But Livia gasped: 'No. No time. Help me. Such pain.'
Another scream froze him where he stood, helpless, lost, searching for aid he knew would not come.
Think.
Livia's dress, now stained with grass and blood, rode up above her thighs, exposing her splayed legs. The tiny crevice that had given him such joy was now distended and opening further before his eyes, a blue-veined dome forcing its way from deep within her body. This was impossible. It could not happen. She was too small.
Livia moaned and her breath came in short desperate explosions. Her eyes bulged as she shook her head from side to side.
He must do something.
He knelt between her legs and frantically tore a piece of cloth from his tunic and wiped hopelessly between her thighs. She screamed again. And again. He stopped the wiping as a mucus-covered head slipped from the opening.
'Please,' she begged.
He manoeuvred in front of her tortured body and tried to take the head between his hands, but it was too slippery.
With all his being he wanted to run. Anywhere. But he could not leave her. He tried again, with just as little success. If he could only get a purchase on the head, he might be able to pull it with enough force to help her move it.
But that might kill the child. His child.
It took an hour.
In the end, nature and his Livia provided the force. First the baby's shoulders, then the waist and finally its legs squirmed through the narrow gap of her pelvis and on to the grass between her legs. And with it came the blood. More blood than Rufus had ever seen. Even in the arena.
Of course, he tried. He pushed the torn cloth from his tunic deep inside her, ripped another, and another, until he stood naked. But the blood kept coming.
Throughout it all, he spoke to her; an unending litany of love and hope and lies. She could no longer reply. But the reproach in her eyes told him she knew she was dying, and that it was his fault, but that she forgave him.
Her golden skin turned first grey, then marble white. Her breathing grew gradually shallower, until, with one last exhalation, she was gone.
He wanted to scream his hatred to the world. He wanted it to know how worthless it was. He wanted revenge. But he could only stand over her, brain refusing to acknowledge his loss, even though she lay lifeless before him.
The baby cried; a long annoyed wail that cut the morning silence like a knife.
It was a boy. A tiny, ugly, wizened thing with a shock of dark hair and a penis the size of his little finger from
