The point of the spear pricked Livia’s scalp, drawing a tiny drop of blood. She bit her lip but made no noise as I drew the sacred weapon sharply across her crown, marking her scalp in halves. Two of the six tonsores slaves took her sectioned hair in their fingers. I drew the spear point again, from Livia’s left temple to the right, and the same two tonsores released part of the tresses to let two others take the front sections of Livia’s hair into their fingers. Then I marked her scalp a third time, across the rear of her crown, behind the left ear to her right. This sectioned hair was taken by the final two tonsores.

   Livia was dignified in the few sacred preparations for her wedding day she’d been permitted. Although many other rites were not being observed due to the haste, at least her bridal head was now divided according to tradition, and the six tonsores began the laboured process of constructing the bridal hairstyle.

   My own small role completed, I attempted to stand back unassumingly, but Livia was not content to treat me as invisible. The look she cast me was blank, the mask of a pliant bride; but behind her eyes I saw her dull anger. Under the preparations of confarreatio – the patrician wedding ceremony – the bride’s hair should have been parted by a matron close to her family. But none had been sought or even informed of the marriage. At Marcus Livius’s request, I – the timely slave who had pulled his daughter from the cave – performed the ritual. But Livia felt shamed by me, and more shamed still at being wed in such speed and secret. I should have apologised or made amends in some way, but in truth my sense of self-importance had shot to dangerous levels for a young slave. This would certainly come back to punish me.

   Aside from the spear, few other confarreatio traditions were being bothered with. The spear itself had been procured without thought, and no effort had even been made to find the blood of a gladiator to dip it in for good luck. But Livia stuck to her secret knowledge that she was pivotal in a conspiracy that would atone for the low-rent nature of her nuptials. So did I, although I had no idea then what the conspiracy was.

   There was a scuffle among the tonsores and Livia looked away from me to see her father appear at the door of her sleeping room. It was just before the first hour, close to dawn in Rome. Outside the shuttered window the Anna Perenna worshipers were leaving their homes to make their way to the ancient crone deity’s shrine on the via flaminia – the old Priests’ Road. It would be a happy day for them and some were singing popular theatre songs already. Once their sacrifices to the crop protecting goddess were made they would spend the rest of the day getting steadily drunk on the banks of the Tiber. For once I didn’t envy them. I was very happy here.

   ‘You look beautiful,’ said Marcus Livius to his daughter, after a moment of listening to the worshippers. Livia smiled but said nothing.

   Marcus Livius clapped his hands together and two of his young slave boys appeared giggling behind him, carrying an object wrapped in silk. It was shallow and rectangular, a foot and a half wide by two feet long.

   ‘I have a gift for you,’ he said.

   The boys brought it closer. I should have taken the opportunity to press myself into the tapestry on the far wall and tried to stay invisible, but I stepped nearer to see.

   ‘What is it?’ Livia asked her father, very aware of me.

   ‘Something you might like. Untie the string,’ Marcus Livius instructed the boys.

   Smiles threatening to split their faces, they placed the gift on the ground and tried to tackle the knot. After a short while it defeated their stumpy fingers and they tried to pull the string over the object’s corners instead.

   Marcus Livius bent down and cuffed them both until they stopped smiling. He picked the present up and placed it carefully in Livia’s lap. She studied the string for a moment and then dug her hard little nails into the central knot. She creased her brow, causing the tonsores to pause with their fingers in her hair before the string finally loosened and she pulled it away.

   ‘Take off the silk,’ said Marcus Livius.

   I peered closely as Livia did so. It was an artwork: a painting on thin planks of board, fastened together to make a rectangular surface and framed with ornate carvings. It was very fine and very old, Greek in style. The subject was a mother and her adolescent son. Their faces were extraordinarily lifelike, their expressions complex and mysterious behind their surface serenity – just like Livia’s.

   ‘It’s lovely,’ she said automatically. ‘Thank you, Father.’

   ‘Look at it closely,’ said Marcus Livius.

   She did as he said. The son was seated in a humble chair, while the mother stood behind him beneath a bower of roses. The youth was at the peak of his beauty, dressed in a long embroidered tunica that was exquisitely rendered by the painter’s brush. The fabric covered the son’s limbs, yet allowed the form of them to be imagined; it clung to him like a woman’s stola. The mother wore the simpler kind of robe favoured by wealthy Greek women, the drape and fold of the garment expertly suggested by the artist. She was tall and impressive, the boy somewhat smaller in stature. Her look towards the viewer was maternal, loving and something else besides: proprietorial. She was affectionately possessive. The son’s face held no hint of a boy’s natural opposition to a strong-willed mother; he was calmly accepting and happy with it.

   I was utterly held by this double portrait. I glanced at Livia and saw that, now, she was too.

   ‘Why is she standing?’ Livia asked her father after some minutes. ‘She is his mother; shouldn’t she be sitting down while he stands behind her?’

   ‘What makes you think she is his mother?’ asked Marcus Livius.

   ‘She is older.’

   Marcus Livius suggested no alternative possibility for the relationship between these two figures, although it was clear that he imagined one. ‘The painting is by Timanthes, a master Greek. It was painted over four hundred years ago.’

   ‘Thank you, Father.’ Livia truly meant it. ‘It must have cost you so much money.’

   ‘It is priceless,’ said Marcus Livius. And that was all he was prepared to tell her. ‘Never let it leave your possession – it will protect you like an amulet.’

   ‘How can it do that?’

   ‘It is more than you know. One day you will come to understand it. Never let this treasure leave your house unless you can swear that your life will end if you fail to retrieve it. This great artwork belongs to the Claudii. It is has been ours since the Republic began. It will be ours when the Republic ends.’

   It was then that I saw the shape of the hidden sword that he wore beneath his toga. Livia had already seen it.

   ‘It is my wedding day, Father,’ she said.

   ‘And you make me proud.’

   ‘But you wear a sword under your clothes.’

   He straightened himself. ‘Nothing escapes you, does it?’ He held an air of certainty and higher purpose – a purpose that Livia already understood of course.

   ‘When are you going to kill Caesar?’ she asked then.

   The six tonsores faltered for only a second in their hair-twisting before resuming their soundless rhythm again. I was as deeply shocked as they were but forced myself to betray nothing of it.

   ‘At the very moment you marry Tiberius Nero and set the prophecies on their course,’ Marcus Livius replied.

   Livia studied her father carefully. If she had any reaction to this of her own, she did not show it.

   ‘You’re not disappointed that I will miss the ceremony?’ her father asked.

   She considered what her emotional response was – and couldn’t find one. ‘No. Your absence serves the higher purpose.’

   Marcus Livius smiled at his treasure of a girl, knowing that no further explanations were necessary.

   ‘What will happen when Caesar is dead?’ Livia asked.

   ‘Rome will rejoice. This is an honourable act. The tyrant will be gone.’

   ‘Will there be men who’ll avenge him?’

   ‘He has only women in his family – and Octavian, his weak-limbed nephew who is too far away from the city now. He’s no threat.’

   ‘What about Antony?’

   Marcus Livius was surprised she knew this name, but really he shouldn’t have been. She knew everything else.

   ‘When you think I’m just sitting here in my room weaving, Father, in fact I am listening to conversations,’ Livia informed him. ‘I need to know all there is to know about Rome so that I can be of help to my husband one day.’

   I saw that flash of mockery again, and not for the first time I was amazed that Marcus Livius continued to be so blind to it.

   He picked her hand from her lap and kissed it. ‘Young Tiberius Nero will be very glad of this, I’m sure.’

   Fool slave that I was, I nodded vigorously in assent.

   ‘So, what about Antony?’ Livia asked once more.

   ‘We bear him no ill will,’ Marcus Livius explained. ‘This is only about Caesar. His great friend Antony will find us open to negotiation.’

   Livia let this idea sit with her for a moment, contemplating how such negotiations might progress. And then she saw the considerable holes in it. Worried now, she looked searchingly in her father’s eyes until he faltered and looked away.

   ‘We’ll be in danger, then,’ she said matter-of-factly.

   He couldn’t lie. ‘No act of greatness comes without danger, Livia.’

   Truly her father’s daughter, Livia allowed herself then to accept the presence of fear on her wedding day. ‘Stab Caesar in the guts when you do it, Father, and when you twist the blade hard think of me.’

   I gasped that such words could come from Livia’s beautiful mouth. But Marcus Livius only chuckled appraisingly, his coal-black eyes glinting in the rays of dawn. The water clock in the peristyle outside the room signalled the start of the day’s first hour.

   Livia turned her gaze back to me, pleased that she had shocked her humble slave saviour. Fearful now, I had the good sense to return to the tapestry wall and cast down my eyes. Marcus Livius had long left the room before I dared to look up again. Livia was still gazing at me, open in her mockery now and aiming it wholly at me.

   ‘Do you believe the Great Mother’s prophesies to be true, Iphicles?’

   I was chilled that she could ever doubt my faith. ‘Of course I do, domina – I heard them with my own ears. I believe every word,’ I replied.

   Livia laughed. ‘Well, I don’t.’

   My shock increased tenfold and the six frightened and confused tonsores tried to concentrate only on Livia’s hair. To her they weren’t even there. She was focused completely on me.

   ‘Domina,’ I whispered, ‘they were the Great Mother’s words...’

   ‘All shit,’ said Livia.

   I nearly fell back against the wall.

   ‘Well, maybe not all shit,’ she went on. ‘One or two had some potential – the ones where I give birth to the kings. But not the other rubbish.’

   I was robbed for words by such blasphemy.

   ‘What’s the matter?’ Livia asked, enjoying the look on my face. ‘Have I shocked you, Iphicles?’

   ‘Yes, domina,’ I confessed.

   ‘Then your attitude toward such things is ridiculously old-fashioned,’ said Livia.  ‘But what else should I expect from a slave? Gods are not to be feared and cringed at. They’re to be respected, certainly, but only for the purposes of self-preservation. We shouldn’t love the gods – that sort of mindless devotion would embarrass them – and we should never take everything they say for granted. We’re not simpleminded fools and the gods know that.’

   I could only stare dumbly at her, the sacrilegious words beyond my comprehension. Livia leaned forward in her chair as if to share an intimacy with me, and the hapless tonsores followed her head with their hands. ‘Whatever Tiberius Nero means in the scheme of things, he is not the sire of the four kings, no matter what my father might say about it,’ said Livia. ‘How can he possibly be?’

   I felt a stab of pain for my unwitting young master. What sort of marriage would this be for him if this was how his beautiful bride felt?

   ‘No. The man who will sire my four kings is another man, a man I haven’t even met yet,’ she declared.

   I felt like crying, I was so devastated by all she had casually pronounced. ‘Then why are you marrying my dominus?’ I couldn’t stop myself from asking her. ‘Isn’t that nothing more than cruelty?’

   The word brought her up short. I had gone too far and I tensed where I stood, expecting to be whipped. To call a domina cruel to her face is a crime. But after a short silence the slow smile returned to Livia’s lips.

   ‘You think your life is worthless because you’re only a slave,’ she stated. ‘But your life is worth a hundred times more than the life of a patrician woman. I will marry Tiberius Nero because I have absolutely no choice in the matter, prophesy or not. My father has decided it.’

   Of course I knew this; I was a fool for speaking so thoughtlessly. ‘I’m sorry, domina.’

   ‘Are you? You’d reach a fine price at the slave market, but when I’m sold for a dowry it’s like I’m a ticket in a lottery. Will I pay off with a son and heir for my husband? Or will I die in childbirth like so many other wives have? No matter if I do, another woman will always be found: another womb and another ticket. But clever and resourceful slaves like you, Iphicles? Well, they’re something far harder to come by. Congratulate yourself. You’re luckier than me.’

   She only looked at me once more that dawn before she left the room to proceed to her wedding. As she departed, fully dressed and prepared, she passed where I still stood at the tapestry wall.

   She whispered softly in my ear. ‘Sometimes I enjoy being cruel because it’s the only pleasure left to me.’

*      *      *

   The shouts of the boys from the street outside fell through the impluvium, the hole that let in sunlight and rainwater through the atrium roof. The sound of them travelled through every room of my young master’s house until it reached us where we stood around the bed in the connubial chamber. It was distracting. As I removed Tiberius Nero’s wedding garments I knew that he was already nervous about all that lay ahead of him, and the jeers of the street ruffians were not helping any.

   ‘What are they doing out there?’ he demanded.

   ‘Playing harpastum,’ I answered – the rough and boisterous game where a large leather ball stuffed with feathers is thrown high in the air to be caught and thrown again by any number of players in a never-ending expenditure of energy. It was normally played outside the butchers’ shops in the Forum Romanum, but today the boys had taken it to the winding streets of the Palatine.

   ‘Make them stop,’ he ordered me.

   I faltered in lifting his tunica over his head.

   ‘Make them stop playing and go away. Tell them.’

   ‘Yes, domine,’ I said, although I knew it was a doomed mission. I ceased undressing him and walked obediently from the room.

   ‘Wait.’

   I did so.

   ‘Do it later – I need you now.’ Poor Tiberius Nero’s taut nerves would not allow him to be abandoned, even for a moment.

   On the other side of the conjugal bed, Livia’s wet nurse Hecuba removed the saffron coloured wedding gown from Livia in a single motion, while keeping her carefully arranged hairstyle unaffected.  Livia stood in her undergarments without shame, a band of linen across her young breasts, short linen pants at her hips and thighs like the kind that soldiers wore.

   His own tunica removed, Tiberius Nero was wearing only his loincloth. I began to unwind it but he smacked away my hands.

   ‘Leave it.’

   ‘You must be unclothed, domine.’

   ‘Leave it,’ he said.

   I knew why he wanted to remain in this way, but – ever loyal to him – I made no comment. In the street outside, the boys were growing more raucous and we heard their heavy ball crash with a thud on the roof tiles before rolling down to the street again.

   ‘They will break something,’ said Tiberius Nero.

   Hecuba removed the band from Livia’s bust, exposing breasts that were appealingly full and round for her thirteen years. ‘We could summon the urban cohorts,’ Livia suggested. Hecuba pulled the pants from Livia’s slender hips, exposing the down on her opening. I carefully kept my eyes upon my young master, though it cost me much.

   ‘Domine,’ I hinted.

   ‘I know what is expected of me,’ he hissed.

   I bowed and backed away.

   Outside, the harpastum players’ ball crashed onto the roof tiles again, with greater force this time, and the rowdy youths cheered. Then they groaned as the ball fell back to the street once more.

   ‘Are they trying to throw that thing into our atrium?’ Tiberius Nero demanded.

   Naked and waiting, Livia said nothing.

   ‘They wouldn’t insult us like this if our fathers weren’t away at the senate,’ he blustered.

   Hecuba lost her patience and marched decisively around the bed before Tiberius Nero even knew what was happening. She pulled the loincloth from him with one yank of her beefy arms.

   ‘That’s better,’ she declared. ‘Stop wasting all this time.’

   In the excruciating humiliation that my young master suffered before his hands went to his privates, the reason for his shyness was made very clear to Livia. As was well-known to me, Tiberius Nero was without pubic hair, his penis small and undeveloped. He was years away from reaching physical maturity.

   Feeling my young master’s agony keenly, I expected a torrent of derision for him from his bride, but Livia was unexpectedly kind. ‘Let’s lie here together, Tiberius Nero,’ she said. ‘Our fathers are doing things that are too big for us to understand today.’

   But Tiberius Nero was so ashamed that his teeth started chattering. ‘What things?’

   ‘Caesar...’ she said simply.

   He was completely at sea. Then the harpastum players’ ball hit the roof and a cheer that rivalled anything heard at a public whipping broke out from the youths. We waited for their groan of disappointment as it fell to the street again, but there was silence. Then we heard a cry of alarm from one of the housemaids.

   Tiberius Nero seized on it. ‘It has landed in the atrium pool – they did it deliberately!’ Forgetting his nakedness, he rushed from the connubial room. I went to follow with his tunica so that he wouldn’t be seen in this state by the young female slaves, but something made me pause at the door. I turned back to see naked Livia staring at me intensely.

   ‘Do you think it is done now, slave?’ she purred. She did not hide her nakedness, daring me to feast upon it, but I again forced my eyes to the floor.

   ‘Is what done, domina?’

   ‘Don’t insult me.’

   I felt the blood leaving my head and hands, flooding to my loins, doing all that my poor young master’s privates couldn’t. I knew if I looked at her I would lose control of myself. ‘The senate will have finished for the morning,’ I said. ‘I would think it has been done now, domina, yes.’

   ‘Why isn’t the city celebrating?’

   I didn’t know.

   Tiberius Nero’s terrible scream shook my legs into action.

   But I was pushed aside by Livia herself, who sprinted past me, naked and slender, her bridal hairstyle rigidly in place. She reached the atrium before me.

   Her own terrible cry filled the room that held the family’s shrine and household gods, and ascended through the impluvium to reach the ears of the youths outside. They had been waiting for this and a delighted jeer arose from their ranks – a cry of triumph.

   Livia fell sobbing to her bare knees and Tiberius Nero allowed her to take the harpastum players’ ball from his lap. Except it was not a ball.

   It was the head of Marcus Livius.

   Caesar’s death had been achieved, but Rome had not embraced his killers.

*      *      *

   Livia took many hours to end her tears, and Tiberius Nero and I never once the left the atrium while she suffered so greatly in grief. But once her weeping was done we saw that she had somehow transcended the shocking loss to reach a new emotion. Her father’s murder had broken Livia’s heart, sure enough, but her pain was not because she would never see him alive again.

   Livia’s pain came from a very different place now.

   In losing his life Marcus Livius had betrayed her. She had placed her faith in her father but, unforgivably, he had let her down.