Let Sejanus likewise break and decay,
and perish all his seed and property!
Oh gods, curse Sejanus! Hear our plea!
Together we commit Sejanus to the gods, to the di Manes of the gens Aelia, to Hecate, Nemesis, Averna, Mercury.”
The air seemed to hum when we finished the last word. One of our lanterns flickered and sputtered out.
I folded the lead sheet three times. Again I pricked each of our fingers and smeared the blood. I hammered the final nail into the center of the lead tablet.
“With this nail I bind and curse Sejanus. May any harm he brings down upon the Gavia family return to him tenfold.”
I bent the nail against the tablet with the hammer and bound the tablet and poppet together with the bronze wire. My hands shook as I spun the wire round and round. When I was done, I worked the wire and the poppet full of nails into the lead tin. I pushed the lid down on the tin and handed it to Sotas. “Now we bury that damned thing and let the Aelii ancestors help the gods take care of Sejanus.”
In the sparse light of the remaining lanterns we made our way down the steps to the outside of the tomb. At the foot of the door we dug a deep hole, dropped the poppet in, and covered it back up.
We stood back and stared at the smooth dirt where the hole had been. Passia wrapped an arm around Aelia to comfort her. Suddenly, the wind picked up and a strong gust blew out one of the remaining lanterns, leaving the other to flicker almost out before sparking back to life.
“I think the di Manes have spoken,” Aelia murmured.
My heart hammered like a mallet pounding meat. While I wanted the help of the gods, I wasn’t sure I was comfortable being in their presence.
A pack of dogs barked in the distance. The sign of Hecate! I took Passia’s shaking hand. “Let’s get out of here.”
The five of us ran away from the mausoleums, not looking back until we reached the gates of Rome.
CHAPTER 12
“I still don’t think it’s a good idea,” Aelia said as we disembarked from the litter in front of Tiberius’s vast villa on the other side of the Palatine Hill from our own domus. “Everyone knows Thrasius is your coquus. It doesn’t make any sense that you would bring him along with us today.”
The night before, Tiberius’s son, Drusus, had married his paternal cousin, Livilla, who also happened to be Tiberius’s niece and Livia’s granddaughter. It was a twisted sort of arrangement, confusing to all of Rome. The marriage was meant to keep an heir in the family, but many talked of how it smacked of the same arrangements that the old kings of Italy once had. Apicius and Aelia had been invited to the wedding party, and despite Aelia’s concerns, he insisted on bringing me. They had been arguing all morning about my presence at the event. I too had tried to convince Dominus of the folly of bringing me along, especially when both Livia and Octavius would be in attendance. It was like flaunting his defiance in front of them. Despite our protests, Apicius would not be swayed.
A slave greeted us at the door, checked our names off the tablet he held, and led us forward.
“I myself don’t understand why he brought me,” I whispered to Sotas as we entered the wide courtyard. I kept step with him and with Helene as we followed behind our masters. Sejanus had been sent to war not long after that night on the Appian Way, a sign that we hoped meant our curse was working. But I suspected that Sejanus’s absence did not mean that all of Apicius’s enemies had been swept away.
“He’s nervous going places without you,” Sotas observed.
“I’m more of a steward than a cook these days,” I muttered.
“You are his good luck charm. He thinks it will be auspicious for you to be present if he speaks with Caesar,” Helene whispered.
“Ridiculous.”
Apicius glanced back at us with a withering stare. I doubted he could hear our words but he hated it when his slaves whispered around him. Chastised, we followed Apicius and Aelia through the villa in silence.
I stared at the back of Apicius’s head. At thirty-three, he had just started to show the signs of baldness, mostly hidden by his thick hair. An errant piece had fallen, exposing a slice of pale skin. He scolded Aelia, a sign that he was nervous. All the way to Tiberius’s palace he’d talked about how desperately he wanted to make Caesar’s acquaintance, but he didn’t know how he could without Livia being present. Despite the passing of nearly four years, none of us believed she would have forgotten Apicius’s refusal to sell me. Bringing me was dangerous. In the time that had passed since that day I realized that the danger lay not in Apicius’s rivalry with Octavius, but in that of Livia still wanting to exact revenge against Fannia for sleeping with her ex-husband. Apicius was caught in the hazardous middle.
The slave left us with dozens of other guests in a vast central garden decorated with a multitude of brightly painted statues, pots spilling with flowers, and fountains spluttering in small ponds stocked with fish. The walls were decorated with frescoes filled with such detail that the people and animals appeared almost alive. The doors were under the surveillance of tall, stern Praetorian guards, Caesar’s personal army. More than a hundred patricians and their wives milled about. Tall boys stood throughout the garden, fanning the hot June air above the visitors with their long-poled Egyptian-style fans. The guests wore a thin wreath of laurel and ivy about their necks or upon their heads and the smell of flowers permeated the midsummer air. The drinking portion of the wedding reception wouldn’t commence until after the traditional speeches by the patron throwing the party—in this case, Caesar Augustus and his newly appointed heir, Tiberius. Sotas and I stood a pace behind our masters and watched the party unfold.
“Tragic how Gaius died, don’t you think?” Fannia said, joining us.
Apicius jumped at the sound of her voice. Aelia leaned toward Fannia in response.
“Tragic! And so far from home! I feel terrible for poor Livilla, being forced to marry Drusus. It’s not even been a year since her husband died!” she murmured behind a cupped hand.
Gaius Caesar was one of Caesar’s two now dead heirs, and had been married to Livilla. He had died under what some said were strange circumstances in a military campaign in faraway Lycia.
“And so soon after his brother Lucius died from that odd sickness! Don’t you find it curious that both of Caesar’s heirs are no longer? The poor girl. In some ways it’s probably good for Livilla that they took so long to recover Gaius’s body from Lycia or she would have had to remarry even sooner.” Fannia shook her head. Today her hair was blond, braided, and piled high around a small but elaborate gold and jewel-encrusted headdress.