AD 23
Two weeks later: Emperor Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus delivers the funeral eulogy for his son
The weeping of the boys somewhere outside his room woke Flamma. The dreadful, wracking sobs brought him back to miseries he hadn't felt since his earliest days at the Ludi. The sound jarred Flamma from his slow, steady path towards death.
His eyes opened and saw the startled reaction on the face of the slave-boy Burrus, watching over him in the bed while applying fresh spiderweb and vinegar to his wound. Flamma tried to speak but his throat only croaked like a toad's.
'Ssh,' said Burrus. He wiped a cloth dipped in water across Flamma's brow.
The gladiator waited, letting the phlegm and blood drip down his gullet before trying again. 'I hear boys weeping…'
A tear slipped from Burrus's eye and he rubbed it away with the cloth. 'It is the domina 's sons — Nero and Drusus.'
'Why do they cry?'
'Because of what has befallen us.'
'I don't understand.'
'Castor is dead — their adoptive father.'
Delirium took Flamma again and it was another day before he found his way back to the surface. When he did, he saw that the grey bird was there. 'How did Castor die?' he asked it, as if the conversation hadn't ended.
But the bird had no answer, and instead posed its most pressing question. 'Why did you do it?'
The effort of trying to answer made Flamma lose his fight to stay conscious. When he woke again, it seemed like only seconds later, but the light had changed and Burrus had returned, dressed in different clothes.
'The boys have stopped crying,' Flamma remarked.
'They have gone to the funeral with my domina and her daughters.'
Flamma let this sink in. 'Castor was a good man.'
Burrus nodded.
'What killed him?'
Burrus lowered his voice to a whisper. 'They say it was a river fever, but my domina, she says — ' But he stopped himself, knowing it was unwise to say more.
'Death's bird is trying to escort me,' Flamma told the boy after another while.
Burrus just looked confused and poured some broth into Flamma's mouth. The gladiator coughed it up, but when Burrus tried again Flamma found he could swallow. It was good. He gulped a few mouthfuls.
'Death's bird has been talking to me, Burrus…'
'Talking?'
'That's what I said.'
'Perhaps it was Fury?'
'Are the Furies hounding me to hell?'
'Fury is Claudius's pet bird — he found it in Misenum. She can talk.'
Burrus wiped Flamma's brow and gave him some more broth. Flamma closed his eyes, and when he opened them again the boy had gone and the room they had placed him in was bathed in a rich, rosy light.
Agrippina was there. With her golden hair that so mirrored his own.
'Why did you do it?' Agrippina asked him.
'It was my time to die,' said Flamma.
'It was not. And neither is it now. You won a great victory.'
'I am old and spent.'
'You are younger than I am.'
'It was my time to die then and it is my time to die now. I don't want to live in this life anymore.'
'Are you disgraced? Are you guilty of a crime?'
'I am a gladiator,' Flamma said, as though that answered everything.
Agrippina frowned. 'So you did it to insult me. And to insult my dead husband, when you told me you revered him. You lied.'
Flamma wept a little and she coolly dabbed at his tears with a square of linen until he stopped again. 'You plunged that blade into your chest but it didn't kill you,' said Agrippina. There was an unmistakable note of respect to her tone.
'Not yet,' said Flamma, 'but I'm still in this deathbed.'
'You are recovering slowly — the physicians have assured me of it.'
'Just let me die.'
'I will not. You are my property. And since the Ludi you have been worth a great deal of money to me. I'd be a fool to let you die.'
Flamma shut his eyes tight in frustration, and when he opened them again the rosy glow had left the room and the darkness had returned. The girl Nilla was there, lighting an oil lamp.
'I'm ashamed that I tricked you,' he told her.
'I've forgiven you for that,' said Nilla.
He wept again but she didn't dab at his tears as her mother had.
When he'd stopped, she asked, 'Why did you do it?'
Flamma found that he didn't know anymore. 'Your father was a great man,' he whispered to her.
Nilla nodded.
'Was he murdered?'
Nilla nodded again, sombre.
'Who would do such a crime?'
Nilla told him what her mother believed — Tiberius.
He frowned. 'This must be avenged.'
Flamma returned to sleep, and as he dreamed he found that he had lost his way along death's path. The steps he took no longer led him there. When he awoke, it was morning. Agrippina had brought her loom into the doorway of his chamber and was weaving cloth in the glow of the dawn.
'I will make a bargain with you, Lady,' he called out to her.
Startled, she turned around on her stool to him, raising a brow.
'An exchange,' he said. 'Let me help you gain vengeance. Let me give you skills. Let me strengthen you. Let me show you what should be done, if you must kill.'
Agrippina stared at him for a moment. She left her loom and crouched beside him at the bed. 'I accept.'
He smiled, relieved.
'What can I give you in return, Flamma?'
He found himself reaching out to hold her hand. It was slender in his broad, brown palm, but her fingers were long and supple like his. There was a well of hidden strength to her hands, he saw. 'Death,' he said. 'Just give me death, Lady.'
Angry, she threw down his hand as if it burned her.
Livilla's conclamatio wails of grief filled the corridors of Oxheads long after the funeral had ended. Sometimes Tiberia's voice was added to that of her mother's, and more often the voice of the little boy, Gemellus, joined in too. But mostly it was just Livilla weeping, especially in the hours of darkness. During those long nights her revered mother, Antonia, joined her, a widow herself for many decades. On these occasions Livilla's grief intensified into hysteria. She gave more grief than we slaves could bear.
Sejanus ordered me to close the door of my domina 's suite against it, but Tiberius stopped me.
'I need to hear it,' he murmured, withered and aged at his mother's bedside. 'She grieves so much. It comforts me to know that Castor was loved.'
I made no comment on the sincerity of Livilla's grief and simply bowed, leaving the door open, before I pressed myself against the wall, trying to become invisible. Indeed, I was invisible to Sejanus and Tiberius — they paid me no heed — but my domina was ever aware of me and I felt the boiling hatred behind her eyes. With
