Imperatrix: The Empress Who Was Once a Slave by S. P. Somtow

Author:S. P. Somtow [Somtow, S. P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biographical, Coming of Age, Depravity, Fiction, Gay, GLBT, Historical
Amazon: B0C62LB2NM
Publisher: Diplodocus Press
Published: 2023-12-24T00:00:00+00:00

At length, the litter stopped. The curtains were drawn and the crouching slave returned. I stepped out first and helped Himself the Divine Nero down.

“Wine,” he said.

Magically, it seemed, an exquisite kylix of snow-cooled wine was proffered out of the gloomy. Torches were being lit. We were in a garden. Next to the pathway, there was a row of statues. all stately women, decorously clad, their stolas reaching down past their toes. Their faces, discreetly painted, stared down at us like an army of avenging furies.

The pathway we stood on led to a portico, a columned façade, a huge door. The door swung open and first there came women bearing a gilded curule, which they unfolded and set down just behind the top stair. Himself, leaning on me, made his way to the seat of office and sat down.

Then about six women and some attendants emerged, the last a withered crone who nevertheless moved with the energy of a teenaged girl. She spoke to the Emperor in a sharp voice, utterly disregarding his Divine status. She and the others wore the snow-white palla and covered their heads with a purple-bordered white suffibulum.

“A fine mess you’ve made of things, Lucius Domitius!”

“I’m sorry, Great-Aunt,” said the Emperor meekly.

The Senior Vestal must have been some neglected member of a family connected to the Julio-Claudians in some way. Perhaps they’d all had to commit suicide in some earlier purge, with the matron left to rot as the most exalted female in the Empire.

“Very well,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

The Emperor summoned me and I sat at his feet. So I saw all of it. Tigellinus brought in Rubria. She was not restrained in any way, but left to walk by herself, with a quiet dignity.

Then Spider was dragged in. To say she had been tortured does not begin to describe the wreck she had become. I saw, too, that her fingers had been smashed. Her clothing was bloody. Yet when she looked at me, I saw no resentment. She knew there was nothing I could have done, once she had followed me up those steps.

Tigellinus said, “Did you see this woman in the act of sexual congress with a man?”

“Yes,” Spider said.

I whispered in the Emperor’s ear. “Please, Lucius. Give her to me. Her fingers are broken. She can no longer perform her work. What good is to anyone?”

“Oh, you and your delicate heart, Sporus! I was just going to have her crucified, expunge this whole sordid incident from the universe.”

I kissed his hands. He seemed immovable. How could I save the woman I’d unthinkingly condemned to such suffering. “My Lord, my Divinitas, my Love,” I said. “Just give me this little thing and I’ll …” But I could not think of what act I could perform that he could not demand at any time.

I thought back to my training, when I was in the slaves’ holding area in Ostia. All those lists of self-debasements that I had been fortunate to avoid because my master was Petronius.

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