he was, while others — slaves, many of them, and freedmen with strong memories — could do nothing but stare. Claudia was compelled to look and she paled with dismay. 'That's not… him, is it?'
I shook my head, blinking back tears of pity for the condemned slave woman. 'No, Lady,' I said. 'The carnifex is too polluted to be here — he's not allowed inside the city. He has sent a man in his image to retrieve her.'
The ass-driver's leather mask would strike terror in anyone, let alone a slave. It was a copy of the mask worn by the real carnifex — the public executioner — who was forbidden to offend the gods by showing his accursed face. The slave woman's cries were terrible.
'Make it swift for her, Cybele,' I whispered in prayer to the Great Mother.
The mangon 's men bundled the woman inside the stinking cart, binding her hands to an iron hook.
Claudia saw what I had already noticed. 'Her clothes are well made — she speaks in Latin. Is she a well-born woman?'
'Slavery can be the fate of even the greatest, Lady,' I said. 'She could be the mother of a chief.'
'Which means she stood against Rome,' said Agrippina, coldly. The widow had returned to us and was keen for this upsetting spectacle to end.
Claudia shuddered, nodding. There was nothing more to add. But as the ass-drawn cart trundled away from the market, I felt the stirring of a tremor at my feet. It was tiny at first, barely there, but I felt it, a movement deep in the ground. At once my memory rushed back sixty years, to when I had felt such a tremor before. It had been in the cave of Cybele, where my domina and I had heard our destinies revealed. The earth bucked again now and I staggered in my shoes. I looked around but I knew the truth already — no one else had felt the tremor. I was alone in my experience. For a moment or two more I tried to appear as if all was right while the fair screeched on around me. But the beast continued to churn below the earth while I appealed in desperate silence to the skies.
'What is wrong with you, Iphicles?' said Agrippina. 'The carnifex 's man is gone.'
I smiled and went to make a joke, but then my eye fell on the statue of my domina. The updated hairstyle, cast in bronze, slipped from the statue's head, striking the skull of the sculptor's assistant. The man fell to the ground as his fellows rushed to him. The heavy bronze hair had snapped in two.
My mouth grew dry. The slave woman, the carnifex, the tremor and the statue — they were a portent, an omen. Together they made a signal meant for me and no one else. But what did they mean?
The mangon clapped his hands, casting winks and smiles, anxious to get the proceedings underway and lift the spirits of the crowd. The stick-wielding assistants forced the disgorged captives to strip off their rags.
'Shall I bid for any of these, Lady?' I asked, hoping I had pulled myself together.
'These men are good for nothing but field work — they'll last two years at best. Health and skills are what I want today — good vernae. Slaves born in captivity — like you.'
'Agrippina!'
A voice behind us made us turn. Castor was approaching with a large retinue of his own. Agrippina's older sons, Nero and Drusus, were among them.
'Good morning, Mother,' Nero called out.
Her face lit up with pleasure as Castor's mass of rowdy followers merged with her own. 'Well, this is nice — some extra company while I shop today,' Agrippina shouted above the noise. She and Castor kissed, and then the boys exchanged embraces with her, before everyone greeted Sosia and Claudia.
Nero looked at the captives for sale. 'I don't think much of these — where will you put them all?'
'I don't want those poor men,' Agrippina said. 'I'm after household slaves to replace the ones I lost. They're just selling off the dross first before they bring out the decent men.'
Castor exchanged a quick look with the two boys. 'You won't need to be too extravagant today,' he said to Agrippina.
Sosia laughed.
'When am I extravagant?' said Agrippina, knowing why Sosia thought it funny. Agrippina was famously frugal. 'All I want to do is restock my house in a fashion that Germanicus would have approved of.'
The deliberate mention of her dead husband made Castor flinch a little; Germanicus had been his adopted brother. Castor shifted on his feet, where his right arch pained him with an abscess that never seemed to heal. 'All the same, Father is encouraging us to show new restraint with household expenses,' Castor said. 'It sets a good example.'
The three women stiffened. If anyone else but Castor had presented Agrippina with one of Tiberius's petty directives, all three would have spat in his face. But Castor was one of the family members of whom Agrippina was fond. She beamed with grace, but gave no assent that the Emperor's word meant anything to her. Instead she turned to me. 'A fan slave, I think, should be added to our shopping list, Iphicles. I feel a need for one of those. And a scissors slave. How can I be expected to cut up my own meat?' She was being provocative for Castor's benefit, but I nodded obediently.
Another look passed between Castor and her boys and Agrippina saw it this time. 'What is it — do you think Tiberius will be shocked?' she asked dryly.
I had noticed a change in the way Nero and Drusus stood next to Castor, no longer as nephews might with their uncle, but with the deference shown to a man with whom they shared a closer bond.
In front of us at the auction block a landowner's overseer purchased the Britons, completing the transaction with the scribes while the mangon took a gulp of wine, dribbling it on his gaudy robes. While the mangon drank, a giant of a man, greater than six feet tall, with long, yellow hair tied back with a wire, came out from the covered area. His thick, bare arms and hands, crossed across his broad chest, were covered in battle scars. He looked like the most fearsome of German warriors.
'Look at that one, Lady,' I whispered.
Agrippina saw him. The warrior's gaze — if that's what he was — found her among the crowd, as if drawn to her by a spell. They held each other in their looks for a moment, Lady and slave, each assessing the other, appraising and measuring their respective strengths.
'Is he for sale, Lady?'
The two continued to fill their eyes with each other before the golden-haired warrior broke the connection.
'A brute like that would be uncontrollable,' said Agrippina.
Castor cleared his throat. 'There has been news this morning, since you mention my father.'
'I didn't mention him,' said Agrippina, turning her back to the giant. 'You brought him up.'
Nero and Drusus smiled indulgently at their mother. They held knowledge she did not.
'I am very fond of these two fine boys of yours,' said Castor. 'You know that, don't you?'
'Of course I do,' said Agrippina, warmly. She turned her head to the auction block again. The first of the domestic slaves were emerging. Sosia and Claudia made little exclamations of pleasure with the appearance of several attractive young boys.
'Aren't they sweet?' said Agrippina. 'Should I purchase myself a little pet, Iphicles?'
I nodded, but my eye was on Castor.
'I will always be a protector to them for as long as Nero and Drusus need it,' Castor went on, 'in memory of their father.'
'I know you will,' said Agrippina. She wasn't looking at him anymore.
Castor glanced at the boys, and they nodded at him encouragingly. 'With Nero about to gain his robes of manhood, and Drusus only a year away from it too, I have asked my father for his permission to have the boys placed in my care.'
Agrippina blanched and spun around. Her retinue of supporters sensed that something had shocked her and strained to listen above the din of the crowd.
Castor went on. 'They have no father now. It seems like a sensible idea.'
' You asked him? You went to Tiberius and gave him this… betrayal of Germanicus on your own accord?'
Castor paled. 'It is not a betrayal, Agrippina.'
The boys looked around us, fearing their mother was gathering unwanted attention.
'What else have you done but betray me with this, Castor? You may as well poison me too.'
'Mother, please,' said Nero. 'No one is talking about anything like that here.'
'Your father was poisoned,' Agrippina turned on him. 'You know that — you were there when he died in my arms — and you know by whose hand it was done.'
