THE PARTNER IN MY LABOURS
Mercuralia
May, AD 20
Forty-five years earlier: the Senate and
People of Rome award Praetorian Prefect Aelius Sejanus the insignia of the Praetor
The young slave was bewildered by what had been said to him, so Livilla repeated it. 'We adore you, Lygdus, we truly do. You're a pet to us, boy.'
He clung to these words from the corner of the animal pen where he had tried to hide. 'Your pet, domina?'
'My little lamb,' she said. 'That's what I'm telling you. You're our most special of slaves.' She leaned forward and whispered into his ear so that none of the other servants would hear. 'You're the one I love most.'
Pleasure flushed Lygdus's young face. Never before had something so kind been said to him. It was like she had seen inside his heart. He had never known the woman who had borne him. His mistress was the only mother he had. And to think that she loved him… 'I love you too, domina,' he replied.
'Good slave,' Livilla said, standing up again with a smile. She adjusted a long strand of ebony hair from where it had come loose from her pins. She smoothed her day gown with her palms. All would be right now.
Lygdus righted himself, getting up from the corner where he had flung himself when they had tried to break the news.
'Do you know what is expected of you now?' Livilla asked him.
In truth, he did not. He looked to the faces of the other watching slaves in the pen around him. They all looked away, not meeting his eye, except for the Greek steward, Pelops, who grinned openly at him, concealing something in his hands. 'Yes, domina,' Lygdus lied, holding her cherished words against the soft flesh beneath his ear where she'd whispered them.
'Just devotion,' she said, 'what you've always given us — and friendship and truthfulness.'
'Yes, domina.'
'You're thirteen years old — nearly a man. And my daughter is approaching her womanhood. She's very pretty, isn't she, Lygdus?'
'Very,' he said automatically.
'A temptation for some,' said Livilla, nodding affectionately at him and, perhaps, Lygdus half-sensed, a little sadly. He thought for a moment that he'd given her confirmation of something she hadn't even asked.
'Have I done something wrong?' he asked, trembling.
'If what must happen today does not happen, then I'm quite sure you will do wrong in time,' Livilla said. 'But with today will come a transformation — and through that, release. You will never be at risk of doing wrong again.'
'I won't need to be beaten?'
Livilla shook her head, and the strand of dark hair fell from her pins once more. She was so beautiful to him; so dark and alluring. 'You won't be punished in any way,' she said. 'You will be perfect — our perfect slave.'
'That's what I want to be,' he said, staring into her nightblack Claudian eyes — the eyes that she shared with her grandmother Livia. 'That's all I could ever want, domina,' he whispered.
Livilla clicked her fingers and two male slaves seized Lygdus from either side. He struggled but Livilla's tone was soothing again. 'No one's going to hurt you, Lygdus. In your transformation you'll feel no pain at all.'
She clicked her fingers a second time and the slaves forced him to the ground. He tried to crouch on his knees but they kicked his legs out from under him so that he lay flat upon his back on the cold earth. The ground was spongy and moist. He looked up and saw the cobwebs and dust that clung to the rafters, and he wondered how many other lambs had shared this view. That was what she had called him — her little lamb.
'Say a prayer…' His domina 's voice floated to Lygdus from somewhere far away.
'To which god?' he whispered.
He heard her footsteps echo on the paving stones outside as she left the pen and made her way towards the garden and the house beyond. He tried to raise his head to glimpse her retreating form. ' Domina.. To which god, domina?'
The grinning steward's face was like a death mask. 'Cybele,' Pelops smirked. 'She'll have a place in her heart for you, son.'
Two more slaves came forward and took Lygdus's ankles, forcing his legs apart. A sudden fear coursed through him as he tried to struggle.
'Keeping still ensures that nothing goes that needn't,' Pelops said. One of the slaves reached up and snatched at Lygdus's loincloth, pulling it away and exposing him. He was erect; they all saw it — the effect of his domina whispering in his ear. 'Keep still,' Pelops ordered.
Lygdus now saw what Pelops had kept hidden within his hands. It was a razor. He went to scream but a hand clapped hard across his mouth.
'Don't want the domina hearing this — it upsets her,' said Pelops, unwinding a piece of string.
Lygdus shrieked into the hands that silenced him. The steward went between his legs and wound the string around his scrotum until his testes glowed purple. Pelops flicked the razor and Lygdus felt a pain that was worse than any he had known. Two crimson streams of blood shot across the earth. All hands released him.
'My blood!' Lygdus cried. The flow didn't stop, pooling where he lay, soaking into the soil. 'My blood will drain away…'
'It knows when to stop,' said Pelops. The other slaves filed out of the pen.
'What if it doesn't?' Lygdus sobbed.
Pelops shrugged. 'Then you won't be the first.' He joined the slaves outside and Lygdus was left alone.
What were his domina 's words? Lygdus tried to remember what she had said that had so filled his heart. But they were forgotten now, lost in his pain. All Lygdus could hear was Pelops's voice, like another kiss on the soft flesh beneath his ear: 'You won't be the first.' But this was a lie. Surely no other slave had suffered like this in the name of 'transformation'? Surely no other slave had been sent on this path to 'release'?
He was the first, the very first. He was the only slave to suffer such a fate in Rome.
But he was wrong, of course, naive as he was. There was certainly another. Soon, very soon, we would meet.
The two lost children clambered and leaped and slid among the rocks, hurting themselves in their efforts to impress one another and to seem immune to all that fate had dealt them. They never cried — it was a point of honour. They were cousins in blood, descendants of the Divine Augustus, who would not have cried either, no matter how badly his skinned knees and stubbed toes hurt him. They awoke before dawn and went straight to the most bountiful of their hunting grounds, plucking crustaceans from the little pools, finding pretty shells and time-smoothed stones and tiny jewel-coloured fish.
The crustaceans were edible, delicious even — they had established this very soon after they had been washed ashore — and when Burrus showed Nilla how to strike a spark from the dry, brittle grass that dotted the dunes, and how to feed the spark with driftwood until the smoke became a blaze, they had the means to eat the crabs and anything else they caught. It became another point of honour for Nilla never to let the fire go out. She woke in the night and tended it, before snuggling against the sleeping Burrus's warm, brown back. When Burrus thought there might be oysters and clams beneath the waves, Nilla joined him in practising at holding her breath. When each felt they could hold it far longer than they had ever thought possible, they flung themselves into the waves, clutching stones for weight, and succeeded in dislodging molluscs from the sea bed.
The children's outer clothes turned to rags, falling from their bodies and lying discarded in the sand. When Burrus lost his loincloth in a dive, he didn't care; his Lady Nilla would have to accustom herself to his nakedness. When he awoke one morning to see that Nilla was naked too, he made no comment on it. They were savages now, he imagined; the niceties of life at Oxheads meant nothing to them, and never would again. He and Nilla were like man and wife. If Burrus felt a growing sexual desire for her, he didn't understand the impulse for what it was; he was still too young, and so was she. To Burrus, it was protectiveness he felt, nothing more. And yet he loved her with all his being.