August 31, 23 AD-Caligula's birthday party.
The air was thick with the kind of laughter that only comes when people are trying far too hard.
'Too hard.' Plancina thought. Pretending at grace. Playing at power.
Antonia's villa urbana sprawled across the Palatine with the smug quiet of power—close enough to hear the forum's echoing debates drift up on the wind, but distant enough that no uninvited footsteps ever reached its gates.
Her hortus had been transformed.
Lyres and flutes echoed through the air.
Garlands of roses were draped over every surface, their sharp perfume slicing through the honeyed scent of spilled wine and ripe figs.
Citrus trees in painted pots lined the paths like sentries—their branches heavy with fruit, straining under too much sweetness.
Even the statues—Venus, Minerva, a slightly too-smirking Apollo—seemed to disapprove, their marble gazes cool and aloof, as though the whole affair were far too extravagant for their taste.
It was too much—especially for a child, even one with Julius Caesar's blood beating through his veins.
Plancina drifted in Livia's wake—empress, and mother of Tiberius by blood, Augustus's beloved wife—just close enough to be noticed, not so close as to seem presumptuous.
Since that night when Sejanus had left her cubiculum, Plancina had started planning alone.
She chewed on the silken blankets all night, naked.
The marks of pleasure still burned across her skin—though really, it was just sweat.
Only the bruises on her wrists were real. Sejanus's grip.
Then—like a torch flaring in a dark corridor—an idea.
The empress. 'Yes!'
That day when they found Piso dead in his cell under the palatium—they were going to take her away.
The wife of a falsely accused traitor.
She had prepared her tears, a performance honed to perfection in case Sejanus's assassination of Piso via poison didn't come through.
But Livia had intervened. Saved her from the guards. Antonia's guards.
Since then, Plancina had played on her sympathies—Livia, who was known to have a soft spot for women wronged by men, or at least women who could cry well enough to seem so.
She jumped to her feet. Her heart was beating loudly.
'How drunk with lust is she that she has forgotten a very important person that could be her ally!'
More powerful than Sejanus.
She had immediately sent a message to her father via a slave in the dead of the night, requesting word of the Empress's whereabouts.
The answer came in the morning: Livia was away on retreat, due to return just in time for Antonia's strange little grandson's birthday.
Plancina had timed everything.
She'd gone to the palatium the morning the empress was supposed to arrive, drifting through its corridors like a ghost waiting to be seen.
Hoping for an 'accidental' encounter.
And it worked. Livia had noticed her.
Had invited her—personally—to join the empress's retinue for today's gathering.
Plancina had nearly smiled. It felt like winning a game no one else knew they were playing.
Now she was here.
'What was it that she said? To entertain me? Or is it pity? Pity on the vidua misera? Pfft.' She scoffed inwardly.
After years with Sejanus on her bed, she'd learned to manipulate people on her own.
'Now, all I need is Agrippina's reaction. Just one look—and I win another round.'
She forced her mind to focus.
Every rustle of Livia's silk robes sounded like judgment.
The empress had only just returned from Baiae, bronzed and serene, as if the salt air had rinsed away any remnants of conscience.
Drusus the Younger and Livilla—his brittle little wife—flanked her like marble sentinels: elegant, expressionless.
Their smiles looked painful, like something worn under duress.
Plancina's pulse refused to settle.
'This—this gathering, this golden charade—was my chance.'
She had spent the morning with a precision that bordered on obsession: her stola pressed into flawless folds, the color chosen to echo Livia's imperial purple without daring to match it.
Every polite murmur about the empress's health, every nod at her commentary on the roads, the heat, the endless sea air—they were laid like stones across a ravine, an invitation for Livia to come closer.
"The boy seems... spirited," Plancina said lightly, her voice calm but observant.
She was careful with her phrasing, as though testing Livia's perception.
Livia's head tilted just the barest fraction, her eyes immediately fixed on the cluster of young nobles fawning over the birthday boy—Gaius, though already everyone called him Caligula.
The empress hadn't seen him before; her knowledge of him was a patchwork of distant reports and rumors.
"Hmm. I had heard... Well, the rumors can't really be trusted. He doesn't look... cursed? No, unsettling, was it?" Her words were flat, as though she didn't care to put too much thought into it.
"Yes. A hollow look." Plancina tilted her head slightly. "I saw it in his eyes... but now... something has changed. He looks less like a ghost in a tunic now. More fire."
"Fire?" The empress raised an eyebrow, her tone dismissive, as if it didn't really matter. "He's just another descendant. One more rumor. Does it really matter what he is?"
Plancina's throat tightened, the weight of her own observation sinking in. "Perhaps not, but it could be. He looks different today. The boy may be more than the gossip makes him out to be."
Livia glanced at the boy again, a faint flicker of interest crossing her face. "More fire, perhaps. But... for what?"
"For power. Or destruction. Who can tell?" Plancina's tone darkened. "Spirit without judgment is dangerous."
"Pssssh..." The empress dismissed her with a flick of her hand, her words falling flat, ending the conversation.
Drusus the Younger offered a courtier's smile, while Livilla didn't even pretend to listen.
"Well, just saying... wouldn't hurt anyone to be more careful," Plancina added, her voice a touch brighter as she glanced at Livilla.
Livilla glanced at her then—just for a second. Something unreadable flickered behind her pale eyes. Not warmth, but not dismissal either.
Still. Not being dismissed was its own kind of triumph.
'I also have to enter her circle.' Plancina decided.
They moved slowly, deliberately, circling the celebration like moons around a planet.
Some nobles and gentes and senators murmured greetings.
Plancina offered the appropriate smiles, hovering within the empress's gravitational pull.
Every shared glance, every low-voiced word felt like another step upward from the ledge she'd lived on since—since Germanicus.
And then she saw her.
Blond hair, almost white now. 'She's gotten old', Plancina thought, with something between surprise and glee.
Agrippina stood slightly apart, as always—back straight, jaw set, eyes cold.
That familiar mask is still fixed in place.
The room blurred. Plancina saw only her.
Her breath caught.
'Would she notice? Would she feel it?'
All that careful proximity. All the slow weaving into Livia's silken world. 'Would it be enough to make her ache? Even a little?'
Plancina let her gaze rest—just long enough. Not a challenge. Not openly. But pointed. Calculated.
She wanted Agrippina to see. To understand.
'Look at me!'
'I'm where you were supposed to be standing.'
She wanted her to hurt.
Then their eyes met.
'Now you're looking. Well? How does it feel?' Plancina thought, her face expectant.
'How will you look at me now?' Her chest rose and fell, shallow, quick. Willing Agrippina to show her ugly face.
'Come on. Rage.' She urged her, silent and desperate.
But to her dismay, Agrippina's brow only creased—barely.
As if she were staring at an insect. Something to brush away.
'I've beaten you in everything. Germanicus. Reputation. And now this—status!'
And that was it?
No flinch. No stumble.
Just a faint twitch—an involuntary wrinkle in the marble.
And yet somehow, it landed like defeat.
That was all?
After everything?
After years of shaping the way people looked at her. After a week of pleasantries with the empress. After decades of suppressed rage—just a flicker of skin above the eye?
The lyre trilled again—too light, too quick, almost mocking. A boy spilled wine across the mosaic. Plancina barely noticed.
She didn't know what she'd expected.
A win, certainly. But something heavier.
Something that would settle into her bones, vindicate every sleepless night, every careful maneuver.
Instead—emptiness.
Hollow. Absurd.
The music swelled again—this time cheerful, too loud, too bright.
Plancina forced a smile, but the grace she prided herself on had slipped—it curved into a grimace.
Unable to be the actress that she was so proud of.
She turned to Livilla, unable to bear the way Agrippina had looked at her.
She tossed out a brittle little remark about a senator's wife who'd clearly had too much wine.
The taste in her mouth was dust. Bitter. Familiar.
The game wasn't over—not by far.
But suddenly, she wasn't so sure how sturdy her bridge of borrowed silks and silent nods truly was.
*************************************
The woman no one saw...
She was pouring wine now.
The same hands that once traced the scars on Sejanus's chest now held a polished krater, steady as stone.
No one looked at her—no one ever did.
Just another servi, another shadow slipping between silk-clad senators and glinting silver trays.
She preferred it that way.
In Antonia's villa, invisibility was currency. And she had grown rich with it.
The afternoon light shimmered against the marble, catching in her hair, but her face remained bland, forgettable.
She had trained it so—mouth always slightly parted in practiced boredom, eyes lowered, never drifting too far.
But inside—inside, she was a taut wire.
She passed behind a low table where Antonia's grandchildren giggled, their faces sticky with honeyed dates. Her eyes softened.
A gentes laughed too loudly. Somewhere near the peristyle, lyres sang again.
Hidden in the fold of her tunica: the poison.
Bitter. Concentrated. Odorless in wine, Sejanus had promised.
She had tucked it in a thin bone vial, slipped deep into the seam of her tunic, where her body curved and no eyes dared linger.
Just a few days ago, when Sejanus had summoned her—not to bed, but to a cold tabernae, heavy with smoke and secrets—he'd told her:
"You'll serve at Antonia's villa. There will be a moment. And when it comes—pour."
No name. No target. He said she'll knew when she see.
She'd known better than to ask questions.
He hadn't needed to say who the poison was for.
She'd recognized the sharp scent of war in his tone. He was playing for something larger now.
And so was she.
From whore to whisper to weapon.
A tray of figs passed before her. She caught Agrippina, the widow, in profile.
Livia, the empress, was too far across the room. And Sejanus? He wouldn't be here.
But someone else was.
Her gaze flicked—barely—back to Livia's company.
Louder than most, posture too lazy for the room's elegance.
Bitter memories has resurfaced.
She marked him immediately.
And for a split second, their eyes met.
Just a flicker.
But it was enough.
He looked at her like he saw her—not the slave, not the shadow, but the woman underneath.
She turned away.
Back to the wine.
Back to the waiting.
*************************************
INDEX:
Baiae- fashionable and luxurious ancient Roman resort
Livia's imperial purple- purple was an extremely expensive and highly symbolic color in ancient Rome—strongly associated with royalty and the imperial family
krater- a large vase in ancient Greece and Rome, used for mixing wine and water.
Speculum Mulierum- The Mirror of Women
FUN FACT!
The ancient Romans sometimes used lead acetate, a sweet-tasting substance, to sweeten their wine! They called it "sugar of lead." While it made the wine taste better (initially), lead is highly toxic, and chronic lead poisoning is believed by some historians to have potentially contributed to various health problems and even the decline of the Roman Empire. So, while the ahem... serving woman was carrying wine, it's interesting (and a bit unsettling) to think about what might have been added to it in Roman times!