' Domina, your face!'
'There's blood!'
'She has hurt herself — let me help you lift her,' said the voice of the young man who had accosted her. Apicata tried to tell her women that this youth must not be allowed to touch her, but the words, when they came, were garbled.
'She has struck her head,' said the young man.
Apicata felt herself being lifted from the cobbles. 'No… no, wait…' The broken pot and its contents were exposed. 'Don't… touch it…' She twisted in the young man's grip and tried to stretch towards the ground to save what was most precious. Her fingertips brushed a tiny wax hand.
'You'll drop her!'
'I've got her, look,' said Lygdus. Apicata weighing nothing in his arms, he tossed her into the chair of her sedan. The maids rushed around to dab at her bloodied face and Apicata tried to fight them off, but the pain in her head made her faint.
When one of the maids went back to where her domina 's pot had smashed, she found nothing there but pieces of broken clay. She thought she remembered there being something more. She looked around for the young eunuch who had been so helpful but he was gone.
Aemilia closed the great bronze door a second time, shutting the scene in the street from view. It was done.
'Mother?' said her oldest daughter, Lepida. The girl was fearful.
Aemilia smoothed the girl's hair. 'We must summon your brothers now,' she said.
The younger girl Domitia looked grim. 'Aemilius is with his tutor in the Forum.'
'His schooling is done now. It is his day to act as a man. Ask the steward to retrieve him, will you, Domitia?'
'And Ahenobarbus?'
'He'll be sitting by the kitchen furnace. Send him in here.'
'Yes, Mother.' Domitia left the hall.
Lepida was left to stare as her mother retrieved a folded piece of papyrus. 'You remember what this letter says, don't you, Lepida?'
The girl's eyes filled with tears, but she wouldn't shame her mother by shedding them. 'It is your confession, Mother.'
Aemilia nodded. 'The day has arrived and now it must be sent.'
Lepida bit her lip.
'When your brothers are here, you are to go — the four of you together — all the way up the hill to Oxheads, just like we spoke of. Do you remember?'
'Of course, Mother.'
'You will have your brothers with you but be sure to take some amulets. Aemilius will speak to the guards.'
'He's only seven.'
'He is now a man,' Aemilia stressed. 'Tell him to show the guards Ahenobarbus's red hair. They will be very struck by that. Soldiers think such things lucky.'
'I understand.'
'When you are admitted into the presence of the Emperor, you are to give my confession to him. You are to tell him that your heart is broken by doing it, but that you have no choice. Your love for Rome is stronger than your love for a mother who so betrays it.'
Lepida nodded and a tear broke free of her will, slipping down her nose. Aemilia's voice caught in her throat and she kneeled, grasping her daughter in her arms, kissing her face and hair. 'I will soon be gone, but you will not need me.'
'But we will, Mama, we always will,' Lepida sobbed.
'Not at all. You have your destinies now. Each one of you has been chosen by Veiovis to know power — even poor Ahenobarbus. The Aemilii will be great again — it is the god's will — and each of you will be given your path. Veiovis has decided it.'
Lepida wept as if her heart would break.
'Ssh,' said Aemilia tenderly. 'Ssh, my little pearl. Your brothers will come to know what it is to stand at the very summit of Rome, and your sister will know it too. But the path that will be given to you, Lepida, is the path that will lead the Aemilii to a power no man before us has known.'
Lepida fell silent, her cheeks wet with tears.
'Because it will be a woman's power, my daughter, not a man's. It is the power of she who is so long asleep… It is the power of the rarest of birds.'
'Pitiable,' said Livilla, as Lygdus handed her the stolen contents of the jar.
Lygdus said nothing, oblivious to the significance of the strange objects he had taken from the blind woman's broken pottery. 'Am I redeemed now, domina?' he muttered.
'Hmm?'
'Am I redeemed?'
Livilla was distracted by her little Laconian puppy dashing into the room. 'Scylax!' She swept up the dog in her arms, kissing its snout and ears as it licked her cheeks and beat its tail like a whip. 'My little lamb,' Livilla murmured lovingly at the beast. 'Mama loves her little lamb.'
When Livilla remembered Lygdus again, he had gone.
She dismissed him from her thoughts. Putting the pup aside, she picked up Aemilia's magic in her hands. There were two red wax figures, a man and woman, closely entwined. The man had human hair, black and thick, glued to his head. At the loins of the figure was an oversized wax phallus, thick and curved, piercing the sex of the wax woman.
'Pitiable,' said Livilla again. The pup Scylax cocked his head to the side, waiting for his mistress to kiss him. But Livilla was focused wholly on the witchcraft. She guessed who the figures were meant to represent — the blind woman and her husband. The wax woman had Apicata's light brown hair. 'She fears she's losing him,' Livilla smirked.
Digging her nails into the wax, she prised the two figures apart. The phallus of the man slipped out easily, exposing a yawning cleft in the woman. Livilla carefully placed the Sejanus figure aside and regarded the wax Apicata. She brought the head of it to her mouth, gripping her teeth around it and holding the figure there, enjoying the sensation of Apicata's hair upon her tongue.
Then she clenched her teeth together and bit the head from the neck, swallowing it. She gagged as the wax ball slid down her throat. Placing her hands at her belly Livilla felt the churn as her stomach greeted her enemy's head. In a few days the hairy wax ball would reappear again, having passed through Livilla's body. Livilla would order a slave to scoop it from the lavatory and, following Aemilia's instructions to the letter, she would enact the final outrage of Apicata's demise.
Ludi Plebeii
November, AD 20
Four months later: the patrician matron Aemilia of the Aemilii is found guilty of witchcraft, poisoning and consulting with astrologers regarding the Imperial house
I flinched a little when the mangon 's six scribes felt the swords plunge deep and hard between their ribs. Some of them had looks of incredulity upon their faces, while the others showed a sad resignation that their lot as slaves had come to this. I met the eyes of one with a look I hoped held sorrow and compassion as the steel buried in his chest. Agrippina's loyal men showed no compunction at all in stabbing these literate, valuable men, withdrawing their blades and wiping them on the fallen slaves' tunicae. But I felt it was excessive. They had done no wrong; their master was the criminal. With the scribes gurgling in death upon the floor and adding to the blood shed by the other auction assistants, Agrippina's men looked to their patroness for her next directive.
'Onwards,' she said. 'He is hiding in this stinking hole somewhere.'
The dozen men surged through the tawdry rooms and dank, dark cells of the mangon 's compound, calling
