#22 of 100: A Secret Chord

Sabina's brother, Emperor Marcellus, has been enchanted by his favorite musician, and let him and his friends run rampant through the Palace. Sabina is determined to put a stop to their activities.

Photo by Jed Owen on Unsplash

An entire honey-roasted boar rested on a platter that four slaves carried aloft and placed in front of the Emperor and his guests. More dishes followed: pheasant, oysters, baked fruit and roasted vegetables from distant lands, as well as jugs of undiluted wine and mead. The slaves had to shuffle the plates around to fit everything on the long mahogany table, and a small side table had to be brought in to accommodate further dishes.

Sabina curls her hands into fists under the table. This was not the Emperor’s doing. Her brother, Emperor Marcellus, had once been far more restrained, requesting only enough food to be cooked as he estimated would be eaten, and abstaining from alcohol outside of festivals and other special occasions. His husband’s death in the Koppan Wars had been the trigger for this peculiar change. That, and his new favourite musician, Nathaniel.

Sabina did not dispute Nathaniel’s skill on the cithara, which was second to none, but it was his sway over the Emperor that concerned her. He had wormed his way into the Palace and was now Marcellus’s most trusted confidante. When he wasn’t strumming the cithara he was whispering jokes in Marcellus’s ear and making him chuckle. At first, Sabina thought it was a blessing, considering the deep depression he had fallen into after his husband, Julius, was killed. Then she thought it a little vulgar that a mere entertainer should be lavished with so much attention. Now she was concerned their relationship was affecting his ability to govern both the empire and his own household.

Nathaniel’s friends drifted in and out of the Palace as they pleased, and six of them had taken over the guest wing and much of the family wing. One evening, she found two of them in her bedroom, trying on her clothes and spilling pipe ash on her antique chaise longue. When she ordered the guards to throw them out, Marcellus intervened, calling her churlish and offering the pair some of her clothes to make up for the guards manhandling them.

Dinner used to be a small affair. Half the week Marcellus would have to entertain foreign dignitaries or senators who needed placating, and the rest of the days it would just be her and Marcellus, often falling so deep into conversation the food would get cold. Now she rarely had the chance to speak privately with him. She knew her brother had been enchanted somehow, but had no way of proving it. She was scared to speak to any magic expert in case the word got out, and the Emperor’s enemies decided to move in for the kill. 

Nathaniel sat at one end of the table with his legs hanging off the armrest of his chair. One of his friends juggled some baked apples, and they all exploded into drunken guffaws when the apples splattered to the floor. The squelching sound was the last straw for Sabina. She vowed that she would get rid of Nathaniel and his friends that night.

She glanced at Marcellus. His mouth was fixed in a dazed smile and his eyes darted to whoever was making the most noise at any given moment. He wasn’t going to interrupt their fun, no matter what they did. A young slave moved from the corner of the room to clean up the mess, and Sabina could see the boy shaking. Nathaniel’s friends had been making constant petty demands on the household staff, and beat them when they did not comply.

A messy plan started to come together in her mind. The musician’s friends were all drinking, and already too inebriated to be aware of much else but their base desires. If she could poison the wine, there could finally be some peace in the palace. She knew a couple of slaves who she could trust to carry it out, the only problem was preventing her brother from drinking it. She needed to entice him away from the table for a moment, without Nathaniel realising anything strange was going on.

She rose from the table. Nathaniel, who had grown increasingly unpleasant with her over the past few weeks, made a come hither motion. Not wanting to cause a scene before she could arrange his demise, she plastered on a smile and walked up to his chair.

“Finished so soon?” He spoke in a sing-song voice, and plucked a couple of strings on the cithara in his lap.

“I just need to relieve myself. I’ll be back. The boar is too exquisite to not have another helping.”

She strolled out of the dining room and towards the kitchen, seeking out Rubio, one of her most trusted slaves. He had only recently been made head chef, but he had been a part of the household since before Marcellus had even been Emperor, starting out as a kitchen boy. She found him by the kitchen door, puffing out circles of smoke into the warm night air.

“Mistress!”

He threw his pipe onto the grass outside as he saw her, and knelt down before her, his nose touching the ground. She realised her appearance must have unnerved him - whenever she needed something from the kitchen she would have another slave fetch it for her, so she would go months without entering the room.

“Rise, Rubio. I just wanted to hear from you how the rat situation is currently.”

“Rats? We haven’t had rats here for weeks, mistress. The poison and traps made them run, run, run.”

“You still have the poison though, correct?” 

As Sabina spoke, another round of laughter could be heard in the distance. Rubio raised his head at the sound, and their eyes met. Understanding passed through them. 

“I do. Yes, I do.”

Sabina stepped closer to him, keeping her eyes fixed on the door to the hallway, in case Nathaniel or one of his friends suddenly burst through.

“Perhaps you could make up a special jug of wine for our long-standing guests, hm, Rubio?” She whispered. He started picking at the dry skin on his lips, so she added: “I will make sure my brother abstains for the rest of the night, if that is your concern.”

This didn’t seem to soothe him. He stared at the kitchen tiles and shook his head repeatedly.

“I will ensure you are not blamed if our guests have a bad reaction to more wine, Rubio. This would be a great service not just for me, but for the Emperor, for the empire, even. You know my brother hasn’t been himself lately. He will be grateful for your actions tonight.”

“It must be done?” He asked softly.

“It must be done.”

She strolled out of the kitchen and back to the noisy festivities. Wine had been sloshed over the table and was dripping onto a rug her brother had imported from Denico at great expense. One of Nathaniel’s friends gripped the back of a slave girl’s head and thrust her down onto the damp rug, demanding she lick it. Sabina didn’t intervene. She needed them to feel safe. Instead she commanded another slave to remove the existing jugs and cups of wine, so the only one they could drink from was the one Rubio was mixing. Then she moved to her brother’s side, and bent down to whisper in his ear.

“I need to talk to you.”

“What’s that, my darling Sabina?” Nathaniel called out from across the room. He was sat on the table itself now, and strummed the cithara as if he was preparing his fingers to play a proper tune.

“She needs to speak to me,” Marcellus said, his voice matching the dreamy sound of the cithara.

“She needs to speak to you? Well come, let’s hear it, treasure. What do you need to speak to my Marcellus about that you don’t want me to hear?”

A couple of his friends glanced in her direction, but then got distracted by a game of who could spit out a grape the highest. Rubio entered, carrying a large jug of wine that he placed silently on the table. Nathaniel’s friend’s all filled their cups, but Nathaniel himself still had his eyes on Sabina.

“I… It’s a boring political thing. A diplomat from Denico made an odd comment the other day, and I wanted to know what my brother thought.”

Nathaniel filled his own cup with the wine, and Sabina wrenched her eyes away to focus on her brother, scared the musician would see her plan in her eyes.

“Go on. I want to hear it as well.” Nathaniel said.

“One of the senators received a strange bribe - no, brother, I need you to focus now on this.” He had reached for his cup, and Sabina rested her hand on his shoulder. “He said -”

A guest began to choke. His face grew red as he struggled to breathe. Another one fell to the floor and started vomiting up chunks of boar onto the rug. Within a minute they were all on the floor, coughing up blood and lunging towards the slaves or Nathaniel to save them. A slave girl moved towards the nearest one to help him, but Sabina put a hand up to signal no one to move. Nathaniel’s six friends crawled around on the floor, globs of blood now pumping out of their mouths. The only sound now was their retching and their hands pawing at the floor.

Then Nathaniel began playing a tune. After a few notes he stood up and began to prance around his dying friends, the beautiful melody being the last thing they heard.

He had not drunk any of the wine, Sabina realised in horror. He also didn’t seem even slightly perturbed at the state of his friends, and when he caught her eye, he was smiling.

“What a lovely day for a death, six deaths,” he sang. “A lovely day for the unworthy to take their last breaths. With fewer around, I can make some more sound!”

Marcellus was nodding along, as if the tune was the only notable thing in the room.

Sabina yelled out in frustration. The slaves all turned to her, waiting for instructions from her, but she could think of nothing. She had murdered six people, and it had achieved nothing. Her brother wasn’t even aware of their absence, so enthralled by his musician.

It was Rubio who took action. Sabina’s eyes widened as she saw her trusted slave lunge toward Nathaniel with a kitchen knife, stabbing him in the shoulder. Nathaniel fell to his knee, and Rubio raised the knife again, stabbing him in the neck. Blood pumped out of him, mingling with the blood of his friends bearby.

Marcellus leapt to his feet and gasped, clutching his throat. For a second Sabina worried he had sipped some of the wine, but when she saw his expression she knew whatever spell his musician had had over him was over. His face, which had held only mild expressions for months, was now contorted in anguish.

“My love, my love!” he yelled. He pushed Sabina aside and ran to Nathaniel, then cradled his bloodied head in his lap. “Julius, and now you! Why have the gods cursed me?”

Sabina slumped down into the nearest chair. She had thought her brother would be overjoyed when she broke the enchantment Nathaniel had put him under, but now she realised she had only returned him to the grief he had wallowed in before.

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Rushed ending, as always. I think the story needs more room to breathe throughout, more detail, and some wider context to make her actions make more sense.