looked twice at him in the Forum. Yet Livilla sensed something familiar about this god, as if she had passed him in the Forum — and not once but many times — and yet had never stopped to see him.
Livilla sensed a fluttering at her lips as her breath quickened. A drip of fluid left her sex, running down the soft, inner flesh of her thigh and pooling at the wound of her knee. She felt lust surge in her heart, lust for this deceiving god. She let go of the great doorway and placed her weight upon her weakened leg. The pain seemed less. 'You are a god of healing too, Veiovis,' she whispered. 'I see it in your face.'
She moved forward, edging into the tomb-like hall. A stench gripped her nostrils — like spoiled fruit or rotting flesh. Livilla breathed in deeply, letting the foulness fill her. 'Your perfume, god
… the smell of your power.' The reek gave her courage. Livilla held her head high, staring hungrily at the statue, her hand at the darkening fabric at her loins. 'I am here for you, my god. Claim me. Take me. Strike me with the lightning that you hold…'
A squeal of vermin made her scream. A dozen black rats threw themselves at her slippered feet, nipping at her, sinking their teeth into her toes, tearing at the hem of her ruined stola.
'My god!'
Livilla spun on her weakened limb to flee, but her knee gave way and she crashed hard to the floor as the vermin flew like crows at her beautiful face and hair.
Outside the dark temple Lygdus heard his domina 's screams. He lurched awake at the sound, plucked from the vicious fantasies that filled his daydreams. He ran up several of the slick, dank steps and then stopped. His domina screamed again, a bloodcurdling noise that felt as if it stripped the skin from his back. His young brow creased at the memory of all he had so recently suffered at her hands, and he took a single step back. Livilla screamed again and Lygdus took two more steps backwards, reaching the broken flagstones of the temple's neglected square.
'Save me!' Livilla screamed from deep inside the temple's murk.
The sound of her terror thrilled the young eunuch. It was like the music and laughter from the happy tavern down the hill that he, a lowly slave, was forbidden to know. Her terror was a joy.
His eyes glittering, Lygdus returned to the place where his domina had told him to wait. 'Perhaps your god will save you, domina… or perhaps not,' he whispered into his cupped hands.
Livilla struck the first rat dead with the hammer she snatched from the bag; the vermin's skull split like a berry. She wielded the stout, iron head of the implement at the next rat and then the next, splattering their brains on the floor. Vermin flew at her other hand and Livilla struck at them wildly, crushing her palm but killing the beasts, feeling nothing else now in her terror of what had to be done. She heaved herself upright, her leg twisting before her. She bit back the pain of it and lurched towards the statue of the god, her eyes filled with what so many other desperate acolytes had already left for their god before her: curse tablets.
The last of the rats flew at her slipperless feet, but Livilla felt nothing of them — her determination to reach the statue's plinth was her one goal. She threw herself forward and grasped hold of the edge of the stone with her fingernails as she fell once more, crashing to her knees. The pain nearly made her lose consciousness, but Livilla summoned all the will that was hers as a Claudian and as a granddaughter of the great Augusta Livia. She plunged her hand into the bag and brought out the flattened square of lead. She didn't repeat aloud the words that were written on it; she didn't need to. They were already etched into her heart. She plunged her hand into the bag again and seized a long bronze nail. Then she slapped her leaden curse tablet against Veiovis's plinth, dislodging others. Gripping the heavy hammer in her fist, she drove the nail into the tablet, striking it again and again, nailing the evil of Aemilia's new curse to the base of the dark god.
'Read me!' she screamed at Veiovis. 'Read my curse and grant it!'
A sharp slap to his cheek awoke Lygdus.
'Get up.'
' Domina…'
She slapped him again, harder. 'I said get up. We're done here.'
Lygdus scrambled to his feet, shocked at the sight of his mistress. Livilla was caked in slime and filth, with the blood of rats splattered along her arms. Her long, black mane was wild like a witch's hair. Her eyes were frightening, rimmed with gore and glittering with malicious triumph from their night-black depths. Her wounded leg twisted before her.
'What happened to you, domina?'
Livilla just laughed and Lygdus felt his skin crawl.
'Do you want to redeem yourself, little lamb?'
Lygdus bit back his anger. His domina now knew that he was innocent of planting the curse tablet under her bed, and yet she treated him as if she didn't. 'I'll do anything to serve you, domina,' he muttered.
Livilla made the young eunuch carry her down the slope of the wooded hill to where her litter waited, well away from Veiovis's surrounds. As he stumbled and slid on the stones, she told him what must happen next in her plan to destroy the blind woman.
She told Lygdus what he must do if he wanted to return to his domina 's heart.
The Kalends of July
AD 20
One week later: Decrius, Commander of the Numidian battalion at Pagyda River, fights to his death against the overwhelming forces of Tacfarinas. His fleeing men abandon his corpse
Apicata emerged into sunshine from the huge bronze door that admitted only the very best people of Rome into the noble house of the Aemilii. She heard it close sharply behind her and she laughed. They despised her, of course, this great patrician clan, but they would have despised her even if she wasn't blackmailing their matriarch. They would have despised her on principle. She was lowborn, the daughter of a man of wealth but no distinction, while they were only one step removed from deities. It thrilled Apicata to know that these arrogant demigods now bowed to her word and hated her like an illness. She marvelled at the all-consuming loathing felt for her by the trapped Aemilia, and it gave Apicata ecstasies to think that she would never let the Aemilii go. When Apicata was queen, she would formally enslave the Aemilii, she decided, removing their names from the official records of Rome. Then she would turn on the other noble houses, one by one, making slaves of their finest too.
Apicata moved unimpeded along the narrow, winding street that would take her down the hill to where her maids waited. No one dared accost her or ask what she had hidden inside the earthenware pot that she clutched to her breast. No one would dare do anything to her at all, because there was no one who didn't know who Apicata was. She was the Praetorian Prefect's wife. In Rome, she was fear.
'What are you carrying, Lady?'
Apicata was brought to a halt at the young man's voice.
'What's in the pot? Is it magic?'
She flushed red. 'How dare you address me?'
'Don't be like that. What's inside it? Tell me what it is, blind woman.'
Apicata tried to shove the stranger from her path, grabbing a fistful of slack flesh as she thrust her right hand at him, clutching the pot tighter with her left.
'Ow!'
'Get out of my way.'
He offered no resistance, so she easily slipped past him, increasing her pace down the hill.
'It must be very special,' the stranger called after her.
'Girls!' Apicata shouted into the air for her waiting maids. 'Where are you? Come here to me!' She had lost count of the number of steps she had taken from the Aemilii door towards the bend in the street where she had ordered her sedan chair to wait for her. The total distance was sixty paces, and she had gone at least half that — or was it something less? She could hear her maids' voices, but the step count flew out of her head. 'Come to me,' she called, panicked. 'I have lost the number — '
Apicata reached the bend before she realised it, and the abrupt descent of the street made her lose her footing, pitching her forward. She fell hard on her face, the pot smashing beneath her. She lay there dazed, blood filling her mouth as she heard the sounds of her frightened maids running towards her.
' Domina! '
