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Back Enemies at Home Save as PDF
Chapters (66)
  1. Also by Lindsey Davis
  2. ENEMIES AT HOME
  3. Lindsey Davis
  4. Copyright
  5. Map
  6. THE CAST
  7. ROME, the Esquiline Hill:June AD89
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  66. 59

This was the penalty for owning no slaves. What an irony.

Nobody knew that I was here. Nobody would miss me. I had caught a catastrophic, virulent infection. Alone and unable to move, even to summon help, there was no hope. I was glad in one way. Lying in this soiled room, soiled myself and disgusted, I would hate anyone I knew to see me. There was absolutely nothing that I could do about it. I would end up as one of the inhabitants of this sour building who died unnoticed, only to be found weeks later, reeking, putrefactious or mummified.

I lay there all evening and overnight. Throughout that time, I kept being ill. I reached the most dangerous condition; I knew my internal organs were so wrenched with disease they were bleeding.

At times I could hear muffled noises from the Mythembals, but the door to my room was deliberately heavy. They never came in here. That was our bargain; I arranged for her to live almost rent-free; in return, this room at the end of the corridor stayed shut, was mine, was never even acknowledged as existing. We were on pleasant terms if we happened to meet but she spoke little Latin, even though she had been in Rome for years, and I had no Punic. Mythembal was hypothetical; he may have died or gone back overseas. I never saw her entertain other men, but from time to time she would produce another baby, each one different from its siblings.

Either she had not missed her chamberpot or she thought thieves had walked in and stolen it.

I was growing worse. It would not be long now. I had passed through raging fever and violent shivering chills. Racked with spasms and dehydrated, my whole inside was one great ache. I drifted in and out of consciousness, simply waiting for the end.

After a long period of relative quiet, that I took to be night time, I sensed a new day starting. I knew I could not last another. This would be the day when I would die.

Time passed.

More time passed.

There were intermittent sounds sometimes. I thought I heard a man’s voice in the Mythembal apartment. I even dreamed I heard heavy footsteps, in a hurry, someone upstairs in my own rooms. An intruder? Once I would have gone up there with a weapon; now I could not and did not even care.

I was slipping away. Although I was a fighter, there was no more I could do here.

And then I heard the door to this room being thrust open.

I let out a sob of intense relief. Of all those it could have been, this was Tiberius. As I looked up at him, somehow his arrival was no surprise.

‘Help me.’

The grey-eyed man was already crouching down to me. Oddly, what he said was, ‘It’s all right. I am here now.’

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