Sejanus may as well have been as sightless as his wife at this moment. The Prefect was blind to every guest in the room but one: the guest who had first dipped his fingers in the water, in mockery of Sejanus because he was not a patrician.
Sejanus was equal to Castor in every aspect but one: he did not have the Emperor's blood in his veins. The power, the wealth, the love, trust and loyalty that were Sejanus's by merit from the very first day he had entered Tiberius's life were worthless without this. Castor alone was the Emperor's son, with the blood of the Claudii inside him. Lacking it, Sejanus was only the 'son'. From blood came the heir.
'I think the god is honoured enough now, don't you?' Castor called out to him. And then, by way of explaining what he had started, he added, 'I couldn't risk offending Mercury for you on this happy day, could I, Sejanus? I remembered just in time what you like to do for Mercuralia.'
There was a gasp to Sejanus's left. Castor's crippled cousin Claudius had got his meaning, his hand only inches from his own water bowl, and he paled at the naked insult.
Castor guffawed.
Mortified, and with his wits already half-pickled in wine, Claudius did the first thing he could think to distract the room's attention. He plucked an early-season grape from a tray of fruit and tossed it high in the air.
'I'll show you a trick!' he shouted. He turned his face upwards to catch it, shutting his eyes as the grape plummeted, pelting him with a splat. All those around him shrieked with glee at the sheer stupidity of this act, including Sejanus, who was taken by surprise.
At once the water was forgotten, as guests started scrabbling for grapes of their own. The Emperor's grandsons Nero and Drusus flung the little purple orbs about, trying to catch them in their mouths. Desperate to keep Sejanus laughing, Claudius threw whole handfuls of grapes in the air and stumbled about after them, snapping his jaw like a seal. Sejanus doubled up with laughter. Castor's pinch-faced wife, Livilla, tried to rein in the children from this sport but none would listen to her. Freed from supervision by their own mother's absence from the wedding, Drusilla and Julilla slid wildly about on the marble floor, chasing the cascading grapes and pelting their cousin Tiberia with them, who happily threw them back.
At their bridal couch the children Hector and Aelia now tried to look as if they were above such revelry, but it was hard. Ten-year-old Aelia looked towards her father, Sejanus, who was slapping his thighs, and was bewildered that her tasteful wedding feast had descended into something so Plautine. Nine-year-old Hector cringed, as his own father, the crippled Claudius, tried for one laugh too many and skidded on the fruit mush, hitting the floor and catching his head on a table edge. His cry of pain brought the biggest cheer yet from the guests, and it was all too much for Hector.
'I'll show you how it's done,' he announced to the room, looking accusingly at his father. Claudius was an ignoble parent in Hector's eyes; lame and cursed with a stammer, he had never held high office or a post in the legions, or even a diplomatic position. He was a fool, the Imperial family joke, and Hector was ashamed of him.
When Claudius had told his son of the unexpected betrothal to Aelia, Hector had been delighted, not shocked by the prematurity of it, as his father had expected him to be. To Hector, this union with Sejanus's daughter was a gift from the gods — the one hope he would ever have of being freed of his father's impediments. He didn't care one bit that Aelia was haughty and sarcastic and that they wouldn't be permitted to live with each other until they turned thirteen. All that mattered was that he had gained a new father in the handsome and courageous Sejanus. After all, Hector's grandfather had been the bravest of warriors, killed before his time by a treacherous horse, and it had been Sejanus himself, aged little more than Hector was now, who had walked a thousand miles with Tiberius, accompanying the body to Rome.
Hector selected a fat grape from a tray and rolled it between his fingers. His cousins and playmates were engaged in the same task all around him, but they plucked and threw their fruit without care or deliberation. Hector alone knew the real trick to this. He'd spent hours in the garden doing this very thing, tossing grapes and berries and nuts to the sky and never failing to catch them in his teeth. He could do the trick in his sleep.
With a flick of his wrist Hector sent the grape towards the ceiling, and it seemed, to me and Little Boots, who continued to watch without participating, that time and motion slowed as the little ball of skin and juice and pips achieved its zenith in the fug of incense smoke and soot from the oil lamps. Then it began its descent. I knew what would happen next as if I'd always known, but of course I hadn't. I just experienced that flash of certainty, that confirmation of another's fate that comes with being divine.
Hector caught the grape in his mouth with a plop. Watching sprawled on the floor, Claudius burst into applause. 'Well caught, Hector!'
It was only when Sejanus mirrored the praise that Hector gave a proud little smile, but it was short-lived. A look of consternation crossed his face and he opened his mouth to say something, but no words came. His hands flew under his chin and his eyes went wide. He coughed — a terrible rasp, like a carpenter's file being dragged across a plank. He fell to his knees.
His little bride, Aelia, cried out, 'It's caught in his throat!'
Claudius tried to struggle to his feet but Sejanus reached the boy first, leaping from his dining couch, as Apicata stared after him in blind bewilderment. Hector's eyes were like glass. The grape was lodged in his windpipe.
'Thump him! Thump him!' Claudius stammered, helpless in the mush.
Sejanus threw the boy face-down and hooked an arm under his waist, raising Hector's rump in the air as if to violate him. Then he slammed the heel of his palm between Hector's shoulderblades. 'Breathe!' Sejanus shouted at him. 'Breathe!' He banged the boy's back like a drum, clenching his hand into a fist, punching him, pounding him. Hector's head danced and jerked. The spit dribbled from his lips, slick and frothy on the marble. Sejanus willed the boy not to choke; too much depended on him, far too much.
Then the grape spat free.
'Thank the gods! Thank the gods!' cried Claudius. Unable to find traction for his feet, Hector's crippled father slid across the floor like an engorged serpent, embracing Hector where he lay, kissing the cheek that was still too young for razors or pimples. 'It's all right now,' Claudius whispered to him. 'You're all right now, no harm done. Sejanus saved you.'
He raised the boy up and Hector's head lolled at an obscene angle, swinging like a lead weight on the end of a string. His neck had snapped.
Claudius's frenzied sobbing at last brought the Emperor from his daze. The draught of an Eastern flower he consumed in secret shrouded Tiberius's mind like a mist. But it parted just enough to let him take in the scene.
'Is the boy an acrobat?' he asked Sejanus, puzzled, and noting the strange contortion to Hector's body.
When her efforts at comforting her shattered daughter Aelia made no impact, blind Apicata abandoned the sobbing girl to a wet nurse. There was nothing to be done and, truth be told, Apicata was not devastated by the calamity. She regarded the crippled Claudius in a poor light. Indeed, she viewed the entire Imperial house as 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.