something obscene, for all its glamour. Although she hadn't said so at the original betrothal announcement, Apicata had felt little pride in the prospect of joining her family with Rome's rulers. She despised them. Yet that didn't preclude her from wanting to be them. And in order to be them, Apicata felt it necessary to study them.
When Sejanus's devotion to Tiberius had required his family to leave their own house and reside inside Oxheads, the Imperial residence, Apicata had enjoyed wandering the palace corridors at night. Her own ease in darkness gave her an advantage she didn't have in the daylight. She was rarely observed, and when she was, she was merely ignored.
With her daughter sobbing in the wet nurse's bosom, Apicata felt her way along the walls of the palace corridors until she reached the suite of my comatose domina, Livia Drusilla. Livia's state of perpetual sleep was now so well known inside Oxheads — if not yet outside in Rome — that she no longer had guards. Livia's son, the Emperor Tiberius, couldn't conceive of anyone wishing to harm his mother — she was already near dead. Blind Apicata slipped into my domina 's sleeping chamber quite easily.
Once inside, she listened to the air being drawn into Livia's lungs — a movement so slight you could rest a feather on her lips. Apicata placed her hands on my domina 's form, caressing her flesh. Livia was soft and warm. She laid her fingers on Livia's head and pulled the hairs at her temple, feeling the skin stretching from the skull. This was a girlish torture intended to make any victim wince. But when no reaction came, Apicata fumbled for the skin at my domina 's throat, taking a handful of it in her sharp-nailed fingers and crushing it like a square of silk. If she'd had her sight she would have seen the bruise this caused. But still there was no reaction from the sleeper, nor would there have been if Apicata had taken a knife to my domina 's wrists and hacked off her hands. Livia was now upon this earth in body only. In spirit she was elsewhere, sent there in secret by me, who loved her most.
'So long asleep…' Apicata whispered.
'She fascinates you, doesn't she?' I said from the door.
Apicata stood upright. She hadn't heard me enter — a rare lapse for her.
'Don't be frightened,' I said, approaching. 'I am only a slave.'
But Apicata wasn't frightened. She studied me intensely, as if her eyes still saw light. 'I know who you are,' she said. 'You're Livia's creature — the one who doesn't age.'
I was flattered, being then over seventy years old. Most people at Oxheads believed me to be no more than forty at that time.
'Livia was ageless too,' said Apicata, 'but the skin at her throat is like a soft leather bag. Has age caught up with her, creature?'
'It has,' I confirmed, but I didn't tell her that the years would melt away again if I allowed my domina to wake up. 'What fascinates you so much about her, Lady?'
'It's repulsion, not fascination.' Apicata made to leave but I prevented her. She gasped at my daring to touch her.
'I've seen you in here before,' I said. 'Of course it's fascination. I've observed you stroking my domina and smelling her flesh. I even saw you place your hand between her thighs.'
Apicata drew breath, saying nothing.
'I told you not to be frightened, and I meant it,' I said. 'I am fascinated too — by you, Lady.'
I could tell that Sejanus's blind wife was considering whether to scream for a guard, but I knew she wouldn't.
'How did this happen, then?' she said to me at last. 'This strange state she exists in. She's neither dead nor alive, but she's breathing. How did it happen to her?'
The answer was simple. I had achieved the thing I had longed for since I had gazed upon my domina for the very first time, six decades before — I had entered Livia's sex and taken her forcefully. But with my useless eunuch's prick I'd had to employ a phallus, and the poison I smeared on the thing had reduced Livia to this state. But I told Apicata nothing of that. Nor did I tell her why I had done it, which was somewhat more complicated. 'It is a mystery,' was all I said.
Of course, this was not enough for Apicata. 'Is someone scheming against her?' she asked. 'Is this some plot, creature?'
I shrugged, then remembering she couldn't see I repeated that I was only a slave — how should I know? 'Rome is full of so many intrigues, Lady.'
Apicata again made to leave, and this time I stood aside, although I suspected she had more to say. I was right. 'My husband used to pleasure your domina, did you know that, creature?'
'I did know,' I told her, although I had only learned of it at the very end of their illicit liaison. 'She took joy in his attentions — she praised the girth of him,' I added, conjecturing. I wanted to see what game Apicata was playing with me.
But she merely nodded. 'He pleasured her with my encouragement. The Augusta Livia was lonely — a sad state for such a great lady. I saw it as a civic service to make her feel loved again.'
I wanted to laugh. Livia had intended to kill Sejanus during their final encounter, and Apicata certainly hadn't been privy to that. But my own plans had diverged from Livia's by then and I couldn't allow her to do it. I needed Sejanus alive, so Livia took the poison in his place.
'Sejanus was very shocked when this happened to her,' said Apicata. 'It upset him.'
'My domina will wake again one day,' I lied, 'and perhaps when she does she will find things changed — and changed in a way that pleases her. And perhaps she will remember her pleasures again, too, and the friends who think fondly of her still.'
Apicata said nothing for a moment and I feared I'd been too oblique. I wanted her to think of us as allies, not enemies.
'It is nice to have friends,' she said at last, then she felt her way to the door and left me.
I stared after Apicata for a few moments, letting my eyes lose focus while I gathered my thoughts. Then a figure crept into my peripheral vision, startling me. It was my young master, Little Boots.
'You should be in bed, domine,' I admonished him.
'But the blind woman creeps around the halls and wakes me up,' he said.
'How could she wake you up when you're supposed to be sleeping inside your mother's house?'
'I still heard her.'
Lies, of course. Little Boots had stolen out of bed purely to see me, using the slaves' tunnels that linked the Imperial family's various houses. I indulged him and patted a chair for him to sit upon. Little Boots did so, pulling his knees up to his chin, while I set about preparing my domina for the night.
'So, did you hear my talk with the Prefect's wife?' I asked as I rubbed a salve on the bruise Apicata had left at my domina 's throat.
He had heard every word, the monkey. 'The choking has upset Sejanus,' he said, matter-of-factly. If Little Boots had shed any tears for his hapless cousin Hector, he was over them now. 'What do you think Sejanus will do? It must have wrecked his plans.'
I answered that it must have wrecked them badly, even though neither of us knew what Sejanus's plans were. All we knew for certain was that Sejanus had so far caused the death of Little Boots's father, Germanicus, who was the Emperor's nephew and adopted son. This secret murder, which had so devastated Little Boots's mother, older brothers and younger sisters, had left Little Boots himself far from grieved. He had loved his father, but he loved the idea of his father being dead even more. It was because of the prophecies, about which I shall speak more in time.
'It is my guess,' I pondered, 'that because Sejanus has seen that your father's murder will never be traced back to him, he'll only grow bolder in his wickedness.'
'Yes,' said Little Boots, nodding — very sagely for his eight years.
'And with his hopes ruined to marry his daughter into your family, he'll have anger and humiliation in his heart.'
'That's good then, isn't it?' said Little Boots, his eyes shining at the thought.
'Well, yes,' I had to agree. 'Good for what you and I must achieve with even greater secrecy than Sejanus, domine,' I added.
He dismissed my caution. 'I want to be the second prophesied king right now, Iphicles. I'm sick of waiting. There are things I want to do to Rome.'
'You're too young right now. You don't know enough yet.'
