Cleopatra’s Daughter

Livia looked at her husband, who was swimming with Agrippa while guards kept watch on the bank. “Octavian has told me he has not decided. There’s no reason not to make you heir.”

“No reason in the world,” Marcellus returned sarcastically. “Come on, Alexander, I want to swim.”

Marcellus and Alexander entered the stables, and Tiberius glowered at his mother. “Why can’t you just leave it alone?” he shouted.

Livia stood swiftly and delivered a slap to his face.

Tiberius turned red, and when he disappeared into the stables, Octavia warned, “He will come to resent you.”

“How do you know what he will come to do? Are you an augur?”

Julia kept her eyes on the wooden loom in front of her, and I didn’t look up from my sketches, in case Livia turned her wrath on me.

“Get me more loom weights!” Livia shouted at Gallia.

“Don’t move,” Octavia said. “If she wants more weights, she can get them herself. They’re inside.”

Gallia hesitated, caught between obeying Octavia and angering Livia further. She met Livia’s fearsome gaze without blinking, and when it became clear that she wasn’t going to move, Livia stormed from her chair.

Later, when the men returned from their swim, Julia whispered this story to Alexander and Marcellus. We were making our way back to the Forum to observe a trial when she said eagerly, “And then, Gallia simply refused to move!”

Behind us, Gallia walked between Tiberius and Juba, the incident on the portico forgotten. But Marcellus shook his head. “My mother is creating trouble for Gallia. She shouldn’t have done that.”

“Gallia isn’t Livia’s slave,” I said heatedly. “She shouldn’t be anyone’s slave.”

“Well, she belongs to my mother,” Marcellus replied, “and my mother is putting her in danger. No one can afford to make an enemy of Livia.”

“I understand why Octavia did it,” Julia said. “She’s tired of Livia thinking she owns all of Rome.”

“She does,” Marcellus pointed out.

“No, my father does! Livia’s just a whore with a good marriage.”

Alexander snickered, and I covered my mouth to keep myself from laughing.

Julia smiled naughtily at me. “Now let’s find the shortest trial and get this over with.”

But there was only one trial happening in the Forum. A crowd was growing around the podium where a lawyer was addressing the seated judices, who would eventually return a verdict of guilt or innocence.

“I can’t see,” Julia complained. “What’s going on?”

“Two hundred slaves are on trial for the murder of their master, Gaius Fabius,” Juba said.

Julia gasped. “Fabius?” She turned to me. “Don’t you remember him, Selene? He was the man you saw beating those boys at the temple!”

“And all two hundred slaves helped murder him?” I exclaimed.

“When one slave murders his master, all must be punished,” Juba said levelly.

Suddenly, Julia was interested. “Do you think we can get a better view?”

Juba raised his brows. “Certainly.” He took us behind the podium, where rows of slaves were chained together by the neck and we could watch the backs of the lawyers as they addressed both the judices and the crowds.

“Look how young they are,” I whispered to Alexander. Some of the slaves were no more than five or six, and could never have taken part in any killing. I turned to Juba. “Will they really be put to death?”

“Of course. If they are found guilty.”

“How can you be so callous?” I demanded.

“Because it’s not his problem,” Tiberius said. “What is he supposed to do about it?”

The public lawyer for the slaves stopped talking, and was replaced at the podium by the lawyer for the dead Gaius Fabius. “You have heard,” he began in a thundering voice, “pitiful stories of slaves who could not have taken part in the killing. Women, children, old men who are nearly crippled and blind. But what did they see? What did they witness and keep silent about? Make no mistake,” the lawyer said angrily, “watching and participating are no different! We cannot know which among these dregs stood by while Gaius Fabius was strangled in his chamber, then knifed more than a dozen times.” There was a groan from the crowd, and at the front, seated on wooden benches, the judices shook their heads. “We must set an example,” he said at once. “Nearly thirty-five years ago, a similar trial ended in the death of four hundred slaves. That jury understood that a message must be sent. One that discourages any slave from killing his master for fear that everyone will be punished. We must stop this now,” he shouted, “or who will be next? You?” He pointed at an old man on the bench, whose neck was weighed down by heavy gold chains. “You?” he demanded, looking at a second young man in the toga of a judex. “Forget what you heard before this. Certainly, a few slave children will die. But are their lives more important than yours? More important than those of your wives and children?”

He stepped down from the podium, and Julia watched with wide-eyed fascination. “What happens now?” she whispered.

“That’s it,” Tiberius said.

“What? No more arguing?” Marcellus asked.

The crowd began to disperse, and Juba started walking. “No more until tomorrow.”

“But how many days will it go on?” Julia asked.

“As many as it takes.”

She regarded Juba crossly. “But that could be a month. Even two months.”

“It can’t be two months,” Tiberius retorted. “Courts shut down in November and December.”

“So who decides when it’s over?” I asked.

“The judices,” Gallia replied. Until then, she had been silent. Now she added quietly, “Those poor little children.”

The next day, no one complained about going to the Forum. Even my brother and Julia were more interested in the fate of the two hundred slaves than in the races at the Circus Maximus. I could hear the people on the streets talking about Gaius Fabius’s slaves, and there seemed to be outrage, not at his murder, but at the trial. “Fifty-three children,” a woman said in the crowd. “It isn’t right.” Though we had arrived at the same time we had before, word had spread throughout Rome and more than a thousand people swelled around the podium and the judices’ seats.

“Look how angry the people are! The judices have to set them free!” I exclaimed.

“They don’t have to do anything,” Juba replied, leading us to the space behind the podium reserved for honored guests. This time, several senators were already there, watching the lawyers arguing. “The judices will make their decisions based on the principles of justice as they see them, not on the wishes of an angry mob.”

“Then you agree with this?” I exclaimed.

Juba looked at the miserable chain of slaves fettered by heavy iron shackles. Among them was a little brown-haired girl, who smiled when Juba met her gaze. “I agree with justice.”

The lawyer for Gaius Fabius was at the podium, banging his fist against the wood. “Would you like to see the murderer?” he demanded, and the crowds cheered. “Bring him forth!”

The guards stepped forward with a slave who was being held separately, and I whispered to Julia, “Is that one of the boys Fabius was beating at the temple?”

“Who knows? All Gauls look the same.”

I noticed Gallia shaking her head.

Fabius’s lawyer pumped his fist in the air. “This is the slave responsible for the murder, and he doesn’t even deny it!” he cried. “Which of you thinks that a boy of fourteen could have done it on his own? Strangled his master, stabbed his master, then dumped his master’s body into the atrium pool?” There was a general shaking of heads, and the slave looked down at his feet. Like the kitchen boy, he knew he was lost. Then the lawyer inhaled, dramatically. “Who here believes that slaves are blind?” A few members of the crowd laughed, and I felt a familiar twisting in my stomach. “Then no one here believes that a murder could take place without anyone hearing. Without anyone suspecting. Without anyone ever seeing this filius nullius drag his master’s body away from his chamber! There are accomplices,” he promised. “And we must teach them Roman justice!” He strode away from the podium with the air of a man who knows he has won.