She slumped against him, sobbing. He held her tenderly but there was no surprise in Apicius’s eyes and it was as I had guessed—the scroll must have read that Apicata’s children would be sentenced when Sejanus was sentenced. The traitor’s bloodline would not be allowed to continue. My stomach roiled.
The guards pushed Sejanus and the stool forward. He stared at a point above the crowd and across the Forum, not a trace of fear in his face. A hush fell over the crowd as the largest Praetorian pulled out the gag, wrapped a rope around Sejanus’s neck, and pulled the two ends tight, slowly strangling him. Sejanus’s face grew red, then purple, then his eyes began to bulge and his tongue stuck out as though trying to reach air. A guard handed a large metal hook with a very sharp point on its end to the other vigile, who slammed it into Sejanus’s chest with great force, hooking it into him. Blood spurted and the patricians at the top of the stairs scooted backward. The crowd roared its approval.
When Sejanus had ceased thrashing around, the guards unwrapped the rope at his neck and tied it to the hook. A donkey was brought forth from the guards at the top of the stairs. They tied the rope to its saddle and, with a loud yell, the Praetorian slapped the donkey on the ass, causing it to rush forward down the stairs, Sejanus’s body in tow. The noise of the crowd was deafening. The dogs held at the bottom of the stairs were loosed and they rushed to meet the falling body. I recognized them. They were Sejanus’s own dogs, the same dogs with which he had often sentenced men to their deaths.
The body fell off its hook halfway down the stairs. The dogs bit into Sejanus’s flesh and men rushed forward to kick at the body. I felt nothing, only a deep numbness as the blood ran across the marble stairs, so slick that dogs and men alike slipped in the pooling red.
It was done. Sejanus was dead. And yet there was no satisfaction. I watched the body tumble, pieces of flesh separating and flying.
? ? ?
Fifteen-year-old Strabo met the stairs the next afternoon, and thirteen-year-old Capito’s strangulation took place the following day. Junilla was next. Beautiful Junilla, who would never know true love, who would never see the crown of her own newborn’s head, who would never grow into a young woman. First they raped her—it was illegal to condemn virgins—then they strangled her and threw her down the stairs to rest among the remains of her father and brothers.
Apicius forbade Apicata from going to the executions, knowing that they would not let her near her children, nor their broken bodies once they were dead. She railed against him, slamming her fists into his chest, tearing at his clothes and screaming her rage until Sotas and I had to pull her off her father. I resorted to drugging her wine with opium. Apicius instructed Sotas to guard her and not let her out of his sight.
After the execution of her daughter, Apicata sat on a bench in the atrium, quiet, rocking herself back and forth, her eyes staring at the door. She ignored anyone who sat with her or tried to talk to her. For hours she sat like that, until Apicius pulled up a chair to sit in front of her. He said nothing, only took her hands in his and kissed them, then sat with her, face-to-face, holding her hands, for nearly a quarter of an hour. Eventually, she stood, gave her father a long kiss on the top of his head, then retreated to her room, motioning with a jerk of her chin that I should follow.
She had me sit with her while she penned her missive to Tiberius. She said nothing to me, and I had no words of my own to say. I watched her make each letter with the stylus, intricate and careful but with a flourish that made my heart ache. Her note to Caesar was scathing and sad, about how her only comfort in the deaths of her children was that Caesar’s own child, Drusus, had also died at the hands of others—Livilla and her lover, Sejanus. She cursed Caesar, willing him to die in the same way as her sons and daughter, by his very breath being taken from him, forcefully, when he least expected it.
Apicata handed me the note to read, seal, and send to Caesar. She kissed me on both cheeks, held me tightly, and turned away from me, a clear gesture that I should go.
When I had closed the door behind me, I slid to the ground and stared at her door. The world seemed to spin around me. Never could I have imagined that we would find ourselves thus—empty, spiraling into darkness.
? ? ?
We found her the next morning, dead by poison, the tiny pink vial still in her hand. Apicius locked himself in her room and wept over her body, refusing to come out for a night and a day.
When he emerged, his eyes were red but dry. I had waited with Sotas outside in the hall all night. He stared at me for a moment, almost as though he did not know who I was. Finally, he spoke, his voice hard. “Take her from me. I want no funeral. I want never to hear the names of my daughter, my grandchildren, or my wife again. You are to inform my clients and my friends of this request.” He swept past me toward the baths.
We spoke of his family only once more during his life, right before he died.
I moved through all this in a daze. Everything around me was gray and empty. My heart ached for my wife and child, tucked safely away in Herculaneum, away from the horrors we had just been through. For that I was grateful.
? ? ?
When Tiberius received Apicata’s letter, he sentenced Livilla to death. Antonia requested the right to be the one to punish her daughter and, strangely, Caesar agreed. She locked Livilla in a room in her house and starved her to death. I thought back to the day when Livilla was married, and Apicius had gifted her with the pumpkin fritters and she said it would be the last meal she would ever desire to have. I did not give her that kindness.
In the weeks that followed, Tiberius had Macro hunt down those loyal to Sejanus. The wealthy were quick to accuse one another and many more bodies piled high on the stairs.
It had taken twenty-five years for our curse against Sejanus to take effect. That curse turned out to be the biggest regret of my life. How much of the blood was my fault? It is a weight that presses upon my heart to this very day.
CHAPTER 29
If there was one thing all of Rome had come to know in the last three decades, it was that Marcus Gavius Apicius knew how to throw a dinner party. A month after Sejanus fell, the parties began to happen almost every night. Unlike when Aelia died, Apicius did not appear to mourn. To most it seemed he had hardened his heart, or perhaps his joy at Sejanus’s death overshadowed the anguish he felt at the death of his daughter. Many may have assumed he had been ashamed of her connection to Rome’s greatest tyrant and that he approved of her suicide.
I knew different. Apicius was pouring his grief into entertaining all of Rome. I poured my grief into helping him.