them over in his head for the thousandth time. 'I sit… I sit… I sit.'
'What are you doing?' said Aemilius.
Little Boots picked up the cushion and moved across the lawns towards the terrace where Tiberius sat on the stone bench with Antonia.
Aemilius felt inexplicably alarmed. 'Wait. Little Boots — '
Tiberius was startled to turn and see the young man standing behind him with the cushion held out. Little Boots smiled the smile of the perfect grandson. 'That stone bench looks hard, Grandfather.'
'Yes,' said Tiberius.
'I thought you might like my cushion to sit on — it's very comfortable.'
There was a brief moment where the Emperor held the young man's gaze. Then Tiberius accepted the gift. 'Thank you, Grandson,' he said, slipping the cushion beneath himself. He and Antonia continued to sit, now hand in hand.
Little Boots returned to Aemilius and sat on the bare grass.
'You gave it to him?'
Little Boots nodded.
'So what, then? You understand what it's all about now?'
Little Boots despaired. 'I don't know why I gave it to him, Aemilius. Macro walked past us and the idea just came in to my head.'
'Now you've lost the stupid thing,' Aemilius admonished him. 'And don't think you'll ever get it back.'
'I thought it would reveal something to me,' said Little Boots in frustration, 'but it failed. I know nothing of what my great-grandmother meant by her accursed gift and I never will.'
Terminalia
February, AD 37
Twenty months later: a fire devastates the Aventine Hill and adjacent parts of the Circus Maximus
Antonia prayed fervently at the makeshift shrine. 'Restore his health, Asclepius, I beg you. Keep him from death. Keep him from death.'
Drusilla and Julilla went through the motions, repeating their grandmother's words to please her. 'Restore his health, Asclepius. Keep him from death. Keep him from death.'
Antonia turned to them. 'He ignores us. The god of medicine gives us nothing, girls.' She began to cry.
'No, no,' said Drusilla, shuffling awkwardly on her knees towards her. She signalled Julilla to find a handkerchief. 'We cannot read the god's mind, Grandmother. Asclepius will listen to our prayers. Have faith.'
'He won't. He ignores us,' said Antonia, bitterly. Julilla passed her a grubby rag. 'And it is the Emperor's own fault. His years of depravity have led him to this. Asclepius knows it's deserved.'
The sisters looked at each other. 'Perhaps if we sacrifice again?' Julilla suggested, uncomfortable with her grandmother's tears.
Drusilla seized on this. 'Yes, another bull, a pure white one. We'll get the ship to bring it from Rome.'
Antonia looked up sharply. 'No one in Rome must know of the Emperor's illness.'
'But isn't it right they should know?' said Drusilla. 'Perhaps this is why the god doesn't hear? Not enough prayers are being said for our grandfather.'
Antonia was adamant. 'No one. The secret stays here.'
The sisters made to leave the shrine room. 'I shall get another piglet from the pens, then,' Drusilla said. 'We can sacrifice that to Asclepius. It cannot hurt.'
Antonia waved them away, returning to her prayers.
Outside, Drusilla gave her own thoughts on why Rome was forbidden to know. 'Everyone hates him,' she whispered. 'Our grandmother fears people would pray for his death, not his recovery.'
Julilla had a wicked look in her eye. 'That's what I've been praying for!'
'Julilla!' said Drusilla, mortified. Then she took on a look to match her sister's. 'Me too.' Giggling, they went off in search of a piglet, intending to take their time about it. But Drusilla couldn't help a vague apprehension as she went. If their grandfather died, she wondered, wouldn't the Eastern flower die with him? How would she obtain it by other means?
Inside the shrine room Antonia abandoned formal prayers to appeal personally to the god. 'I saved Rome from the threat of those who coveted the throne, Asclepius,' she whispered, 'and now it is threatened again. Please, god, save Tiberius for Rome. He has not named his heir. We will descend into civil war and anarchy again, just as Augustus always said we would without a succession in place.'
The scented oil lamps burned around the god's image. 'I feel so helpless and alone,' Antonia wept. 'Send me a friend to guide me in what to do — send someone whose wisdom in these matters is far greater than my own.'
She heard footsteps at the door and presumed the sisters had returned. She tried to pull herself together. 'The pig cannot help us, girls. I am sorry,' she said. 'Take the poor thing back to the pens.'
'Asclepius is such a fickle god,' said Livia from the door, 'but over the years I've found he has a soft spot for me.'
Antonia's tears vanished in her astonishment. 'Oh, my dear friend!' She rushed to embrace her. 'My prayers have been answered.'
'It was well time I made a visit to Capri,' said Livia.
Antonia's eyes opened over Livia's shoulder and settled briefly on me.
'But what are you praying for?' asked Livia. 'Has something happened?'
'Oh, Livia, my friend, the most terrible thing,' said Antonia, the tears returning again.
As though she were innocent in the extreme, Livia settled down to be informed of Tiberius's grave ill health, giving a masterful performance of a mother's breaking heart.
Shivering in his bed, Tiberius relived the only moment from his long life that Postverta, that capricious goddess of the past, would grant him. No other memories were permitted. It was this, the goddess told him, and this moment alone.
All around him were flames. The long dry grasses, the olive trees, the Grecian villa — all were on fire, and Tiberius, his mother and his father fled in an ox-drawn carruca from the blaze. Cinders from the villa's roof landed on the loaded carriage and it burned too, becoming a roaring siege tower. Baby Tiberius screamed in his mother's arms.
'Throw me little Tiberius!' the slave-girl Hebe shouted from the ground. 'I can save him!'
Seeing no other rescue, his mother pitched him from the carruca high into the smoke. Hebe snatched him from the sky just as his mother threw herself from the carriage.
'Tiberius Nero!' his mother cried blindly, desperately scanning the inferno for his father. There was no sign. She ran through the blaze, the little slave-girl beside her and Tiberius clutched tight in her arms. They reached a little brook and she saw that his flesh was steaming. His mother plunged him into the water. 'This is not how you end, my son,' she vowed. 'I won't let it be like this.'
The baby Tiberius gasped with shock, springing from his death sleep. His mother sang with relief. He looked into her eyes and saw an extraordinary sight. She was smiling at him with love while her hair was alive with flames.
The past became the present. Tiberius opened his eyes to see an identical image: Livia smiling above him, her hair ablaze like the sun.
'You saved me, Mother,' he whispered.
'I did,' said Livia. 'And now you must save Rome.'
'Save Rome? Is it in peril?'
Livia nodded, slipping a pen into his hand. 'Rome needs you, my son.'
'How?' Tiberius rasped. 'What must I do?'
My domina guided his wrist towards a sheet of papyrus. 'You must name your successor.'
The words the papyrus contained were a blur to Tiberius. 'Castor?' he asked. 'Has my son come back to me again?'
Livia shook her head.
