Posted by IronRing on January 02, 2005 at 18:38:28:
Here's an historical piece. I've kept the embroidery to a minimum. IR
The old man had a few misgivings about adopting the son of
his new wife, Agrippina. Agrippina was, after all, the daughter
of Germanicus, but she had received both guile and ambition from
the breast of her mother, Agrippina the Elder. She employed her
guile and ambition to marry the old man, who was also her uncle.
The old man also had misgivings about marrying his only daughter
to his newly-adopted son.
The old man was Tiberius Claudius Nero Drusus Germanicus; and the
lad was Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus
Germanicus. History would remember the old man as Claudius -- it
would remember the lad as Nero.
The decision to adopt him was a faulty one, clouded no doubt by
wine and failing health. But his daughter Octavia, fruit of the
union with the ill-starred Messalina, was so filled with beauty
and grace that he reasoned nothing evil could befall her, not
even here, surrounded by the Julio-Claudians.
He was wrong. He should have known better; after all, hadn't his
freedmen contrived the execution of Messalina and tricked him
into signing the warrant?
Agrippina would go on to murder the old man, but not before he
had given his thirteen-year-old child away to the
sixteen-year-old Drusus Nero. When he died, Claudius was 58; and
his adopted son Nero was seventeen. Just five years later, the
clever lad would murder his own mother Agrippina, and then his
wife Octavia. In both cases, it was Poppaea who would propel the
outrage.
Poppaea Sabina caught the fancy of Nero when her husband Marcus
Salvius Otho, an inept creature who later became emperor
himself, however briefly, was stupid enough to boast to Nero of
his wife's beauty.
She rapidly sank her hooks into the shallow and debauched young
emperor when he was barely into his twenties. Poppaea was
well-born and well-off, and Tacitus claimed that she had
everything - "except honesty." Drusus Nero quickly arranged for
Poppaea's husband to be sent off to Lusitania, on the Iberian
Peninsula.
The company of Poppaea only served to heighten Nero's thirst for
perversion and outrage, and no one dared challenge his license.
Those who did were usually forced to commit suicide. For her
part, Nero's mother Agrippina fought to defend Octavia from the
mounting lewdness of Poppaea and her son - and she paid for the
attempt with her life.
Throughout this ugly period, Octavia bore her husband's lewd
adventures and the outrages to her fidelity with dignity. She
had preserved both her modesty and her chastity amid the cesspool
of Nero's debauches. But even this heroic posture merited her
only Poppaea's hatred and jealousy. Three years after Nero
surrendered to the intrigues of his new mate and ordered the
murder of his own mother, he divorced Octavia and sent her into
exile upon Pandateria, a naked volcanic rock some seventy miles
out on the Tyrrhenian Sea, a miserable speck, deserted by man and
Nature alike, a jagged object that served merely as a washing up
for dead fish and neap tides.
Perhaps even more than they had been outraged by the murder of
the conniving Agrippina, the Roman mob was outraged by the
divorce of the beautiful and popular Octavia. Riots ensued. But
Poppaea was not to be put off. Even the divorce was not enough
for her. It was never clear whether it was Octavia's great
beauty -- her mother was Messalina and her grandmother was
Antonia Minor -- or her chastity and stoic mien that inflamed
Poppaea's murderous jealousy. Suffused with hatred, Poppaea
persuaded Nero to sign the death warrant; then she sent for
Tigellinus, Nero's ruthless Roman prefect.
"I want two men to see to her."
Tigellinus did not need to ask who Poppaea was referring to.
The prefect found men apt for the job. One of them was Agostas,
Tigellinus' own cousin. The other was Marcus Sattulius, a friend
of Anicetus, the man who had stabbed Nero's mother to death, and
who had provided the false testimony against Octavia necessary
for Nero's divorce.
"What would you have, lady?" they inquired.
"Her head," was the laconic reply, to which was added, with
venom, "Cut her into pieces!"
"And if she complains?" they said, goading the dangerous Poppaea,
who had already worked herself into a fury.
"Let her choke upon your sword!"
Poppaea was already beside herself, and seeing them still
standing there, she screamed "Ite !!" - "Go !!"
The ship was an imperial vessel, but it was not a bireme - there
were no rowers. Oars made noise, and these two wanted to take
Octavia and her household by surprise. The men who sailed out
into the darkness before dawn understood what sort of passengers
they had, and went about their duties as quietly as possible.
Octavia had been exiled to Pandateria, and had spent but a few
brief days after her arrival, beginning to set up her modest
house, suffering her shame and humiliation with stoic grace.
This day dawned soft and pink and promised a mild morning during
which she hoped to inspect the garden and to decide what could be
grown there to furnish her needs and those of her few servants.
It was a sharp cry that awoke her again as she drowsed in her
bath. She heard Palleatea's voice raised in alarm, the sounds of
a scuffle, then a rending, mortal scream of pain, then silence.
She covered herself with a towel and ran out of the laconicum,
still dripping with sweat from the steam bath, only to confront
the two of them as they entered her living quarters.
As astute as she was noble, this daughter of Messalina, who had
herself been beheaded by her husband, saw the naked swords of the
two men, one already blooded, and knew that the worst had come.
Still she hoped that she could turn aside their purpose.
"Have you not heard? I am divorced from my husband. I am no
threat to him or to his wife Poppaea."
Their purpose was not slowed by this argument. Sattulius stood
still for a moment, regarding the young woman easily, his sword
dripping blood onto the the mable floor. Octavia
was just twenty-two, her long dark hair cascading about her,
her damp towel barely concealing her graceful young form.
Her delicate Patrician features reflected fear, but also courage,
and a tinge of cunning.
Like their master, the two murderers had wallowed in drunkenness
and debauchery.
In contrast, Octavia had lived a life of moderation, temperance, and
exercise. On open ground she could have outpaced them. But this
place was not the Campus Marius. And there was no open ground
on the naked rock of Pandateria.
Agostas came toward her, sword raised. "I am here for your life,
lady."
"No!" she shrieked. "Spare me, I beg you. I can give you
anything you want!"
But Agostas moved closer. She turned to run, but he was quicker.
He lunged out with the sword, but missed. Sattulius ran forward,
trying to intercept her as she darted about in the atreum.
He succeeded only in coming up with a handful of her towel, which
he tore savagely from the young woman, leaving her naked and
dripping with sweat and terror.
A disorganized encounter followed. She stopped and turned,
stunned and terrified, her full white breasts jiggling and
bobbing, confused by the danger from two fronts. Sattulius
thrust his bloody sword forward, attempting the skewer the prize,
and Agostas sliced through the air, hoping to strike her as she
tried to evade them. Octavia, now sensing an opening, darted
between the two men, seizing on the opportunity for escape. She
ran screaming, her long fair legs carrying
her into the bed chamber, but Sattulius, younger and
quicker than his counterpart, rapidly covered the distance behind
her; he swung his hand out with a sudden thrust, and caught the
girl's hair.
She kicked and tore viciously at him and he finally let go, but
not before Agostas caught up to her. He spun her about
and punched her chest, ramming his fist between her full, gorgeous
breasts, and knocking her back onto the bed. As she fell, he cuffed
her slim leg, spreading her fair thighs wide. For a split second, her
open thighs were a clear field, and his reflexes were too quick
for her to evade him. He rammed the sword between her soft, creamy
thighs, driving it deep into her curly cleft.
Her piercing scream tore apart the morning air, and she clawed at her
groin, falling backward, her head snapping back. Sattulius now
aimed his bloody sword at her right breast and skewered her deeply,
driving the
point well into her ribs. The blade cut a deep, crimson rent in
her full white breast, and blood welled and flowed around the
blade. She shrieked aloud, struggling and flailing, her legs
kicking out wildly at the men. As she screamed, bloody foam
surged upward from her wounded lung, decorating her lips.
Agostas pressed on; he drew a dagger and slashed
at one wildly swinging arm. He sliced an artery and a stream
of blood issued up, decorating with crimson anything in the wide
sweep of her soft white arm.
Agostas pulled the sword from her vagina and paused for a moment,
deciding where to strike next. Sattulius wrestled with the girl,
beating off her flailing limbs, trying to work the blade into her
breast.
The two men were clumsy thugs; it would be difficult to describe
them as more than amateur killers.
As the girl's blood spattered the bed clothes, they became slick, and
Octavia was losing her position, sliding about, desperately
trying to fend off the two men. The men as well were having more
difficulty holding her to finish her off, and they were becoming
drowsed as warm scented vapors from her bath drifted in billows
into the chamber. Sattulius grimaced and pulled his blade back
and thrust again, this time into her belly. She grabbed the
blade with sticky, bloody hands screaming obscenities at him and
struggling to force it out. Agostas clambered up onto the bed and
hacked at her left breast with his dagger, but she screamed
at his butchery and raked his arm with her long nails.
Upon this nightmare scene, the pink and gold of the Mediterranean
morning shone in brightly -- innocent, unaware of the carnage
taking place. Gold light suffused the bed chamber, diffused by
the clouds of vapor from the laconicum, decorated with the blood
that spattered from the doomed girl, rent with her mortal screams
of despair.
Agostas retreated for a moment, now bloodied himself. With a
roar, he grabbed her left ankle and hauled mightily, dragging
the struggling, screaming young woman
off the shallow bed and spilling her halfway onto the floor. The
enraged brigand grasped her raven curls in one hand and tore her
head back, forcing her mouth open - now he was angry enough to
remember Poppaea's words.
He raised his sword, the blade that had raped her vagina, and
with a single, deft, powerful motion, thrust it into the girl's
mouth and deep down her throat.
"Hic unum guste, cara!" - "Taste this one, sweetie!"
Her struggles now reached a new pitch of agony and abandon, still
striking out against them, she fought and clawed, making them pay
for their iniquity. But she was losing ground and strength.
They had sapped much of her energy, but not her will. Still the
beauty struggled, but Sattulius now repeatedly stabbed her
breasts and stomach, slitting her dark nipples, sending rivulets of
blood across her ivory flesh, and opening her bowels.
The dark-haired beauty continued thrashing and struggling, but her
agony and the cold insistent sword point thrust into her body made her
start to lose control. She began to urinate and lose control of her bowels.
Agostas pulled the blade from her mouth,
grasped her hair again, and pulled her up, half sitting, forcing
her against the bed. For a moment he tried to force her bed clothes
into her mouth in an attempt to choke her, but abandoned the
effort. He aimed clumsily at her neck and prepared
to take her head.
Cunning and brutal assassins by trade, they had never been
instructed in the deft, measured skill of decapitation. The
brutal fool alternately hacked and sawed at the girl's shapely white neck,
stroke after clumsy stroke, trying to free her raven tresses from
her bare white shoulders, while Sattulius continued to work his
blade in and out of her guts and her butchered breasts. To this
red slaughter, her gagging, pitiful screams were a continued,
horrific counterpoint.
Octavia's struggles lessened, her defensive motions growing more feeble.
Still Sattulius hacked at her full tits, sometimes driving the sword
into her chest. Blood now welled up out of her mouth, bathing her
butchered breasts with red, and Agostas continued his clumsy efforts to behead
the twenty-two year old beauty.
Finally, the naked girl's head came free, its features
contorted with terror and agony. The headless torso slid on the
fouled, bloody bedclothes and toppled to the floor, still twitching and
jerking spasmodically, blood still spurting from its gaping
wounds. Octavia's young heart continued to beat erratically, even
as her headless corse descended to the floor, lolling and
drooling its last onto the polished marble stones.
From her severed neck and torn belly, the pool of blood and
entrails spread obscenely across the polished stones, seeping
slowly with the slant of the floor, searching blindly for a way
out of the scene of carnage and treachery.
Finally, the pitiful twitching of Octavia's naked, headless body
ceased, and
Agostas held the beauty's head up for a last look -- and then
tossed it tiredly onto the bed. The two men paused, breathless
and panting; they went outside and urinated copiously, as though they had defiled
enough for one day. Then they returned to wipe their swords,
their daggers, and their gruesome burden; the object was wrapped in one of
the few clean sheets and slung over a shoulder, to be carried
back to Poppaea and exhibited for her approval.
. . . but the Roman mob were an untidy lot, given to superstitions
and fears, to jealousies and adulations.
Statues of the beautiful Octavia were covered with flowers and
paraded through Rome, her murder greeted with screaming crowds in
a hysteria of outrage and grief. They took up a collection
to have her remains honored . . . and they exhibited an patience
unusual for the times. They
took pains to discover who had killed their favorite, their pretty
young queen. But they could not yet vent their rage upon Nero or Poppaea.
When Sattulius was discovered floating in the Tiber, the Roman
Pontifex looked for signs of violence, but found none. It was
concluded -- quite rightly -- that he had been poisoned.
There were no uncertainties about the cause of death when Agostas' body
was also fished up out of the river -- his corpse bore the
unmistakable signs of having been bruised, and held down and
pinned in place by many hands and many powerful limbs . . .
and his head was fixed carefully to his shoulders
upon a gladius that had been thrust to its hilt into his mouth.
by The IronRing