out his name as children would in a hide-and-seek game.
Left in their wake with the scribes' corpses, I imagined I heard a muffled sob. 'Listen…'
Nilla and Burrus, waiting with me, hadn't heard.
'Listen… there!' I ran my hands along the rough, wooden wall of the compound's atrium.
'What is it, Iphicles?' said Burrus.
'There's a hidden room behind this wall. I heard the bastard crying. Help me find the door, Burrus.'
'Like the door to the Emperor's garden?'
I had forgotten that he knew Oxheads' architectural surprises as well as I did. 'Press gently. We'll find it if we're smart.'
Burrus and Nilla joined me in running their hands along the wall, and I saw the way they stood next to each other — closer and more intimate than a mistress and slave should be.
'Move away,' I hissed at Burrus. 'You look unseemly standing that close, boy.'
Burrus stayed as he was.
'Move!'
'We have a secret,' Nilla whispered to me, feeling along the wall surface with her palms.
I guessed now what it might be and I didn't like it. 'Don't tell me anything I don't need to hear, Lady. Just help me find the man who enslaved you, if you're not bothered by the way Burrus stands next to you so disrespectfully.'
'The mangon thought he enslaved me but he never did,' said Nilla, smiling. 'And I never did anything he told me to, either.'
'Then he must have beaten you for being disobedient — and for that he deserves what's coming to him.'
'Burrus took all my beatings for me,' said Nilla. She was humble in revealing this, and it was clear how very much she loved and respected the boy.
'Burrus is very brave — ' I began to say.
'Burrus is free,' said Nilla. 'That's our secret. I freed him when we were living on the shore together. That's why he was not enslaved by this man either. We were both free when the mangon took us — so the enslavement was illegal.'
I shook my head at this childish logic and moved to another part of the shabby atrium wall, sure that a door was hidden there somewhere. I listened again for the sob but there was nothing. All I could hear was Agrippina's men deep inside the slave complex, looting the mangon 's coin chests as they searched for him. 'You are too young to perform manumission,' I told Nilla, 'and Burrus is too young to be freed. Only your mother can perform something like that in this household — or your uncle Castor.'
Burrus said nothing, concentrating on the task. I waited for Nilla to tell me I was wrong, but she said nothing either. I saw the sly looks they passed between themselves. 'Burrus is not free,' I reiterated. 'Drop these silly notions at once, Lady — it's not fair to him.'
'I know what I know,' said Burrus quietly.
'You know nothing, boy!'
'Mother has given me Burrus,' said Nilla. 'Did you know that?'
'Which only proves he's a slave — you can't 'give' a freedman, Lady.'
Nilla just shrugged. 'If Burrus is mine, then it means I can treat him as I like. So I choose not to treat him as a slave.'
I scoffed. 'What are you then, Burrus?'
'I am Nilla's friend,' he said. And for a moment I felt an emotion catch in my throat at his simple, innocent dignity. In his love for Nilla he was just like me in my lifetime of love for my domina. But in Burrus's passionate desire to be free he was nothing like me at all. This dream of his was something I had never had and could never hope to understand.
I felt the wall beneath my fingers give way minutely as I pressed against it. When I leaned away, the section clicked softly into alignment once more.
'In here, Lady!' I called to Agrippina. 'The man is in here.'
All three of us heard the muffled sobs again and knew I was right.
Agrippina and her dozen men returned from where they had been pillaging the mangon 's goods, and I stood aside with Nilla and Burrus as the hidden door was battered in with axes. It soon fell into pieces, revealing a windowless anteroom where the bejewelled mangon cowered and wept on a bed. The giant German warrior we had seen at the slave auction stood impassively by the anteroom wall. I caught Nilla creasing her brow at the sight of him.
Agrippina saw him too and remembered. 'Kill the barbarian first,' she said.
Two of her loyal men threw themselves into the room with their swords raised but didn't get two feet closer before the warrior disarmed them with his bare hands. The men were left winded in dismay. The warrior produced a sword of his own and tossed it onto the floor, along with those taken from the men. His eyes flicked to Nilla and there was kindness in them before he turned to Agrippina. 'Kill me, then,' he said, in clear, unaccented Latin. 'But not in the room of this pig. I would rather die in the street where I can breathe the air and see the moon. I know why you're here. Your vengeance is well deserved, in my view.'
Agrippina stared at him in astonishment — as did the mangon. 'Defend me!' the mangon ordered. But the giant man just crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for whatever would happen next. The two disarmed men sprang forward again and pinned the mangon to the bed by his shoulders, followed by another two, who held his legs. Then the remaining men filled the room to restrain the golden-haired warrior. He made no struggle. All waited for Agrippina's word.
It took her a long moment to pull her eyes from the warrior's features. He was battle-worn and coarse, and yet he had a powerful beauty. He had been an Adonis in his youth, it was clear, but maturity had toughened him, turning his body into an instrument of death. She pulled her gaze away. 'See, Nilla,' she whispered, wanting her daughter to feast upon the scene of the mangon 's humiliation. 'This will be justice done.'
Nilla was pale, but she held steady in the face of all the violence she had seen so far. Burrus stood resolute by her side. 'Yes, Mother. Justice.'
Agrippina cast a determined look to me but I glanced at the floor. Her unstable thirst for vengeance had led her back to the slave market, but I knew it would give her no release, no matter how brutal her retributions. Agrippina's hatred of the mangon was nothing compared with the depth of her loathing for Tiberius. All this made me extremely uncomfortable, given the extent to which I myself was responsible for Agrippina's grief. But she was ignorant of that, of course, and I was determined she would remain that way. I had prophecy on my side and I drew comfort from the certainty it gave me while I played my games, hiding my true feelings from the world like any accomplished slave — or god.
One of the men handed Agrippina a short, thick, legionary's sword and she felt the weight of it, surprised by its lightness. The mangon 's eyes widened and he scrabbled on his back in the bed like an upended beetle. The men pinned him down harder.
'You enslaved my daughter — how can I not make you suffer?' she said.
'But I didn't know who she was — ' 'No excuse.'
'How could I have known? She never told me!'
'Such a beautiful patrician girl? A great-granddaughter of the Divine Augustus? You knew.'
'I didn't know anything!'
Agrippina wielded the sword inexpertly, dragging the tip along the mangon 's tunic and splitting the fabric that stretched across his fat, round gut. A red line streaked his flesh. 'Please,' he screamed, 'I'll do anything!'
She flicked the sword at his foot and was startled by how easily it took off a toe. The nub of flesh and bone bounced across the floor as the mangon howled with pain.
Nilla kept her eyes on the scene although it disgusted her. The golden-haired warrior showed no reaction. But when Nilla met his eyes again, he smiled at her. There was apology in his face, but also acceptance of whatever Fate would bring.
Suddenly Nilla turned to her mother. 'Please do not kill Flamma.'
'Who?'
'This barbarian. His name is Flamma.'
Agrippina flicked the sword at another toe.
