Lucilla
had tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep. In the blackness of her chamber, which had
once belonged to her mother, she saw her breath rise above her in the icy air.
This palace was a fortress – not a suitable home for anyone.
Least of all herself, her loyal
servants and her precious, innocent son; especially now, as they all wrestled
with such grief as now possessed them. Far away, soldiers fought for the Empire
in Germania, in freezing snow and terrible danger.
Such old places as the Imperial Palace are full of
woeful memories, of restless and wretched ghosts. As an unmarried princess,
slumbering in these rooms with her nurse resting in a pallet at the foot of her
bed, Lucilla had been subject to night terrors. These waking nightmares, when
she chanced to lift her heavy lids and see numerous macabre shadows rising up
the high walls, had made her childhood a painful, lonely drudgery.
Through it all, she had taught
herself never to cry. Princesses, her mother had admonished, never cry.
Always be strong, my dear.
Instead she had closed her eyes, and
slept as best she could. For so many years she had swallowed her miseries, by
day and by night, never telling anyone how much she longed to be free. To be
free from the seclusion of the palace, from the restrictions and requirements
of her royal childhood, from the terrors. To be free to tell someone when she
felt down. To cry sometimes.
Commodus, her brother and only
occasional playmate, was several years younger than she, and their father's
only living son. He was isolated, like her, but for very different reasons. To
the Imperial family he was a prize to be guarded at all costs – and guarded he
was. Even the number of women assigned to care for him was limited. His contact
with the outside world was virtually non-existent.
Against all odds, he had survived
infancy. Unlike Titus, his luckless twin brother, who had died suddenly when
the children were four. Despite his own sickliness, Commodus was strong.
Possibly too much so. The Roman Empire rejoiced that her future was assured, at
least for the time being. To his parents and the politicians all around him, he
was purely an asset.
To his sister, on the other hand, he was a gem. Never in her life had she been more enamoured of anything than that little dark-haired bundle she had carried into his naming ceremony, herself so small she had to be carried by two senators.
She hadn't cared that, as a mere
girl, she was almost totally shunned from the moment Commodus's birth had been
announced. Love conquered any irrational resentment she may have felt for her
beloved little brother. She lived to be invited into his nursery on those rare
occasions, to see him toddle on unsteady legs into her open arms, his face cut
in half with a toothy grin.
It had made both of their lives just
bearable.
Together they had grown, in the same
desolate palace, she a royal pawn and he the royal treasure. From across
crowded rooms, they smiled at one another. As she hardened against the
realities of the world, however, she watched as he shrank from it, and she
ached with terrible, ominous fear for reasons she could hardly fathom, so
blinded was she by her devotion to him.
Often they would sit together, side
by side, and just hold each other's hands, glad for that moment of pure, tender
contact and acknowledgement of one another's love, before they were separated
again to carry on with their respective lives. And how dissimilar those lives
were – how far apart brother and sister gradually drifted.
As pressure increased on his young shoulders,
Commodus's pale skin became paler, making his darkly boyish beauty even more
apparent. His body, however, strengthened as his resolution to reach some goal
unknown to her grew. Their mutual love was ever straining as the years passed
slowly by.
The
memories, the hurtful and the priceless, were equally vivid and piercing.
For Lucilla, the advent of adulthood was sped up as
her marriage came onto the horizon. Annia Lucilla, daughter of Marcus Aurelius,
was a most desirable bride. Rigorous training at the hands of her mother and
attendants, in the many arts of ladyship and wifedom, had not been in vain. The
feeling was intoxicating to her; as sweet as it was terrifying. She would share
her bed at night; have someone with whom to air her feelings. Finally, she
would not be alone.
"Do your duty," her mother told her
repeatedly. Duty. What was a woman's duty? Thinking of Commodus, as she did
every day, she thought of how his duty was designated as his purely by fate, as
was hers. And yet how so much more responsibility was destined to rest on his
youthful shoulders.
She had not loved Lucius Verus right away. He was a
ragged yet formidable middle-aged warrior with a slow, cautious way of looking
at her. Not what she had expected, but then, she wasn't sure what she'd
expected. Her husband took plenty of getting used to, in many ways. She was
tender; her ripe youth and his jaded, cumbersome ways, like water and oil,
never mixed entirely.
Thankfully, however, little stood in the way of
their becoming friends. Political contract and geographical convenience aside,
it was a good match. But at the same time, Lucilla's hopes of blissful
happiness and true, romantic love, eroded away as did her childish idealism.
By night, as her husband snored beside her – taking
up double the space she did in their matrimonial bed – she thought for hours of
Commodus. They exchanged letters much less frequently than she would have
liked. As the months passed, and the infuriating sparseness of state occasions
made their meetings especially rare, his notes to her became somewhat more
hesitant. Impending childbirth sharpened her emotions, and she wrote him almost
daily, even from her confinement. His replies were terse – nothing remained of
the closeness there had been between them as children.
When she gave birth to Lucius Verus's son and heir,
of the same name in accordance with tradition, Commodus sent her cold
congratulations. Now aged twelve, he was already being meticulously groomed to
succeed their ailing father. Still writing numerous letters, Lucilla attempted,
often fruitlessly, to communicate the full extent of her love and compassion
for him.
"My darling," said her husband, warmth radiating in
his voice and his eyes. "Families are complicated. Especially families like ours.
You must be patient and brave, my love."
She
had Lucius Verus's unconditional, undivided love every day of their life
together, even when he was far away from her, defending the empire whenever
duty called. Until that day, so few years after their marriage, when he was
gone from her forever. She stood, her little boy's pleadings in her ears –
"Where's Father? Mother, where is he?" – clutching his cloak in her hands, the
signifier of his untimely death.
The absence of her brother's love, and the dreadful
pain this caused her, had been so long eased by her husband's undying
affection. Once again, she was lost without Commodus.
A perversely short time later, news came that their
father, another wonderful man whom Lucilla had scarcely laid eyes on during her
married life, was dying. Devastation crowding in on her once more, mixed with
elation that she would soon be with Commodus again, she made the journey back
to the Imperial Palace.
She had feared that she had lost Commodus too. Now
here he was, walking as fast as propriety would allow, towards her carriage to
greet her, looking as happy as if the gods themselves were honouring him with a
visit.
"My dear sister! Please take my hand, come with
me…there, now you must come inside! We have much to discuss!"
A blissful smile spreading across her weary
features, she gave in. Her hand clutched in his, all the anger, hurt and
worries of past years melted away, as does winter snow beneath much-anticipated
spring sunshine.
His
personality seemed divided. His beauty, as he grew, remained unchanged and
irresistible. To everyone. She knew he had lovers; many of them, and the
thought disturbed her. When he was not sweetly courteous, he was lecherous.
Trying to envision the sweet boy child she had rocked to sleep in her own arms
those few unforgettable times was near impossible now, in view of what that
black-haired cherub had become.
His temper was terrifying. One
moment he could be thanking a young male servant for helping him to dress, and
the next, savagely beating the boy with the butt of a dagger for failing to
meet some trifling requirement, until blood ran down the sobbing child's
bruised face.
If the servant was female, however,
the story was quite different.
One morning, Lucilla happened to be
taking breakfast with her brother when she witnessed what she later discovered
to be a frequent scenario for him.
"Will that be all, your highness?"
said a young girl, smiling and shy, obviously very taken by her handsome
employer.
"Not quite," he replied, appraising
her discreetly out of the corner of his eye, a small but unmistakeable smile on
his lips.
Lucilla sat, trying to conceal her
disgust. Though she had never herself witnessed such behaviour in the past, she
knew it was to be expected. Her mother had warned her of men's fickleness, and
of a royal gentleman's right to a mistress. But so many, and so young? Her
brother was a teenager still, and the girls…
Always be strong. Do your duty.
Do not cry..
Commodus rose, following the servant
girl from the room. Before he did, however, he smiled and bowed to his sister.
She smiled back politely, nausea rising in the pit of her stomach. Rumours
abounded that he did not even wait for permission to lie with some women.
Should they refuse his advances, he took them by force.
And yet, Lucilla could not bear to
be far away from him. The much more pleasant times were their nightly
conversations, one of the few remnants of their childhood together. These were
the peaceful times, the pure ones. They talked for hours, about everything and
nothing, she occasionally plucking up dubious courage to allow him to hold her
hands.
"I love you, Lucilla. I hope you
know that."
Her eyes had filled with tears
almost before the words could register. Her heart and soul filled with love for
him in a way she hadn't experienced in years. Suddenly unable to resist holding
him, she pulled her dearest brother's body to hers and buried her face in his
sweet hair, the only way she knew to express the magnitude of what she felt.
"I love you too! Oh, so much…promise
we will never leave each other again?"
"I promise," he replied, a sincere
smile quite apparent in his voice.
This was the purpose of their
wretched lives: to be there for one another, no matter what each other's
faults. It had to be. She could not help loving him so much.
Until one night, not so long ago. When all her
hunches, all the things she found so discomfiting and so distressing about his
presence, took on a frightening and repulsive new edge.
In the very bedroom she now
occupied, she had been trying to sleep, the walls that had blighted her
girlhood dreams beginning to work their dark magic once again. She groaned,
before hearing the heavy door of her chamber opening. Her heart leapt with joy.
It could only be Commodus.
Resisting the urge to embrace him
again, she nevertheless greeted him warmly, touching his cheek with her hand.
But there was something different in his eyes tonight, something dark, which
disturbed her. It didn't fit with the overall fondness of his expression.
"I know how lonely you are, Lucilla.
You've told me enough times. You're there for me anytime I need you…now it is
my turn to be here for you. Oh, look, you've been weeping…"
She flinched, despite herself, as he
wiped her damp cheeks gently. He then laid his hands on her bare arms, his grip
letting her know she did not have a choice but to listen to him.
"Commodus, you need not visit me
here at night…"
"Yes, but where else can we be
alone?" His use of the word 'alone' made her skin crawl. Her brother could not
be this bad a man. It was not possible. She had lost everyone…her sweetheart
Maximus, long since disappeared…her husband…soon her father.
If Commodus were really this evil,
she would lose him. Even as he stared at her, his gaze turning more intense, more
lustful, in her mind's eye she saw that little boy she had grown up with,
dying. He was gone to her now, and yet still here…only a different creature. A
monster.
"Commodus, you must leave now." The
harshness in her own voice, and the disappointment and reluctant acceptance in
his eyes (green like pools full of poison, not mint leaves as she had once
fancied) completed finally the breaking of her heart, after so many years of
damage to it.
That was the crushing of any hope
she had ever had.
Soon,
Lucilla ruminated sadly; the wars in Germania will be over. My father will die.
Commodus will be emperor. My life will be over; if truly I ever possessed one.
The shadows above her bed loomed,
causing her to close her tear-filled eyes tightly. But I love you, Commodus. I
may never be able to look you in the eye again, but I love you. Please let me
live the rest of my life, however long that may be, in peace. Please do not
harm my child.
Pure uncertainty was her last
sentiment before she fell asleep. But the gods had one last surprise for her.
Vivid dreams soon came to her, haunted by the face
of one more man, one of the many who had dominated her life thus far, and
always would. His was a gentler, softer face; more so than any she had ever
known. She remembered him from her youth, from their brief involvement, before
she had been called forth to marry.
A familiar and yet remote emotion
began to take hold of her once again. In her insensibility, she allowed it to
fill her completely, as if rays of hot sunshine were penetrating her entire
being. Unbeknownst to her, she and this very special man would soon be together
again.
Maximus…