The sounds of running feet echoed from the street outside. Somewhere beyond them, hobnailed boots could be heard ascending the Palatine. The Praetorians had been dispatched from the Viminal Gate.
Agrippina kissed her oldest daughter tenderly. 'Take them, Burrus. Now. Slip out through the sewers.'
The slave-boy nodded and then turned to look soberly into the eyes of his mentor.
'You have a killer's skill now, boy,' Flamma told him. 'Use what I have taught you well.'
Burrus saw the fatherly love Flamma had for him and knelt and kissed the gladiator's great hands. 'I will never forget it,' he said. Then he swept up the girls and was gone.
Emerging with Burrus from the sewers to flee along the back lanes, the sisters' need was so desperate that they did not see the first daubed message on the walls. But when they passed a second, with its paint still running down the stucco, they realised that what little still remained of their childhood was over. They were women now. In a world that was cruel with men. The Emperor cannot be blamed for taking stern action against those who accuse him of poison.
On Tiberius's orders, Sejanus had sent out the graffiti slaves before he had even summoned the guards.
Inside the house the widow and her gladiator heard the last of her supporters fall by a Praetorian's sword. Then the ram was taken up and applied with vigour against her door. It would not hold long. The guards were singing.
Germanicus's sword in her hand, Agrippina pressed her lips to the wax mask of her murdered husband and held them there, remembering the touch of his flesh on her flesh, his breath like the breeze in her hair. She released herself and let go of her grief. She was done. Agrippina turned to Flamma and kissed him fully.
'I love you,' she said.
'I know it, Lady. I love you, too.'
Each held their sword as they embraced.
'I will find you in the afterlife,' said Agrippina.
'I will search for you. We will be reunited.'
'Yes, we will.'
They gripped their swords tightly as the front door broke from its pivots.
'Goodbye, Lady.'
'Goodbye, Flamma.'
Agrippina thrust her blade into his chest just as Flamma pierced her ribs. He had trained her too well. Her action split his heart in two before his arm had fully spent itself. His thrust was lost, dissipated by death. Flamma's sword sliced her flesh but did not kill her.
The widow lived.
The Nones of February
AD 26
One week later: the Thracian mountain tribesmen who did not surrender to Gaius Poppaeus Sabinus succumb to the Balkan winter
Sejanus dragged her arms above her head and roped them to the post. Then he tore the linen gown from her back, exposing the soft, pale flesh. The wound at her ribs pulled open again as she fought against the inevitable. Blood dripped to the floor.
'Beg forgiveness,' said Tiberius.
'Never,' said Agrippina.
Sejanus cracked the whip at her spine and a left a long scarlet ribbon on her skin.
'Beg it,' said Tiberius.
'You're a cunt,' said Agrippina.
Sejanus whipped her until his arm ached. The knots in the lash held tiny hooks that tore the skin and then took the muscle from her back. Her bones gleamed white beneath the gore.
Tiberius sobbed to see her beauty spoiled and raised his hand. Sejanus waited. The Emperor crept forward and placed his lips at Agrippina's ear. 'How could you have thought it?' he said, weeping softly. 'How could you have thought I would poison you?'
'I was wrong,' said Agrippina. Her mouth dribbled blood. 'There was no poison in the food at all — it was in the air. The words were poisoned.'
'My words?'
She shook her head. 'Sejanus. He'll kill you with his words once he's killed all the rest.'
Tiberius snatched the whip from Sejanus's hand and took to her in a frenzy. Ignoring her back, he attacked her belly, lashing at her wound, her breasts and her face. He dislodged her left eye, and the shock of seeing it slip from the socket to hang loose upon her cheek made him drop the whip. Those geese, those noisy geese that had once saved Rome from the Gauls — he could hear them. They were loud and insistent in warning.
'Make them stop,' said Tiberius, his hands to his ears.
'Make what stop, Caesar?' said Sejanus.
'The birds. Make them stop!' He staggered from the room.
Sejanus regarded Agrippina for a moment. Then he cut her down from the post. Left alone, Agrippina heard a tiny voice whisper in her ear — a voice she had already heard once before.
' One would-be queen is one-eyed too until the truth gives comforts…'
'The one-eyed queen.' She began to laugh.
If Agrippina now knew the truth, she was thankful for it — but it was yet to give her comfort.
The sight of relatives weeping over traitors dead on the Gemonian Stairs was so commonplace in Rome that the two women who moved slowly from corpse to corpse aroused no interest at all in those who could see their progress from the Forum below. The grim stairs had become such a place of fear in Rome that people avoided looking up at them anyway, in terror of tempting the Fates.
The two hooded women picked their way carefully around the limbs and heads that had been torn loose by the dogs, and only halted when they came across corpses still intact. If anyone had watched their actions long enough, they would have seen the women crouch over the executed traitors, seemingly muttering prayers. The way the two women never remained at any one corpse for very long before moving on to the next one might have struck an observer as unusual, or then again it might not have: many in Rome had lost more than one friend or family member to Sejanus.
But the truth was that the two women went about their business unobserved, and so were able to hack off rotting hands and male genitals from some two dozen executed traitors, filling the sack they carried to capacity by the time they reached the summit of the Arx.
Plancina had been unable to wield the knife, of course, owing to her lack of hands, but Apicata proved adept at the task, despite her lack of eyes. Standing in the chill February wind on the Arx, Apicata ran her hands along the seat of the empty garrotting chair. Two tears fell from her useless eyes. Plancina saw them and hooked her handless arm through Apicata's, leading her away.
'Such a terrible way to end,' Apicata whispered. 'It's so shameful, so obscene.'
'We don't know how he'll end yet,' said Plancina. 'It could be even worse for him, for all we know. Tiberius might let loose the beasts.'
This only made Apicata weep again.
Plancina comforted her, but wanted her new friend to keep focused on their goal. 'You cannot allow yourself to pity him, Apicata, nor can you allow yourself to forgive him.'
Apicata nodded, and dabbed at her nose with her stola hem. 'But can I allow myself to love him still? Nothing I do can ever stop that.'
Plancina accepted this. Whether Apicata still loved Sejanus or not was immaterial. They now had the ingredients that would see him broken in the sand.
'The druid is not there, Prefect,' said Macro, emerging into the alley from the Subura hovel. He tried to shield his eyes from the sun as he looked up at Sejanus astride his horse.
'Where is he, then?' Sejanus demanded.
'The woman doesn't know.'
'What woman?'
