I learned of her departure three days into my recuperation. They had kept me drugged with opium-laced wine to keep me still and on my stomach. When I came to my senses, I found lady Tertulla by my side with Baltus’ replacement standing close by, a florid and overheated physician who annoyed me by rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, keeping his less than immaculate fingers interlaced over his belly.
“Domina,” I croaked. Crassus’ wife, then thirty-eight, was almost as lovely a first vision upon waking as Livia would have been. Her dark curls were laced with periwinkles, the same color as her peplos, which was o’er-draped by a white palla of such fine material it appeared as if she sat in a cloud. She smelled of verbena.
Tertulla took my hand and said, “My fine, brave fool. Is there much pain?”
“Where is Livia, domina?
“I am so sorry this happened.” Romans tend to crush conversation with the wide wheels of their own thoughts. “You know my husband had no choice in this matter?”
“I am thankful for his lenience.”
“You acted exactly as I would have done, Alexander, and more bravely, too. Would that I had been there in your stead.” She laid a gentle hand on my blanketed shoulder. “The repercussions,” she said, glancing down the length of my back, “would have been contained. Caesar is a disgrace. Politics makes his presence necessary, but I will do all I can to keep him from our home in the future. Of course we can never admit it publicly, but dominus and I will always be in your debt for protecting one of our familia.”
“It was very good of you to be here upon my waking, my lady, but I should very much like to speak with Livia.”
“She sat by you, in this very chair, day and night.”
“Might you summon her, my lady?”
“She’s gone,” the fat doctor interrupted.
“Gaius Flavius!” Tertulla snapped.
“Gone? What do you mean, gone? Gone where?”
“You need to rest,” they both said at the same time. Flavius wiped his brow with a hairless forearm.
I forced myself to a sitting position, buds of perspiration blooming almost as rapidly upon me as they grew upon the good doctor. Tertulla said, “Dominus asked to see you when you were well, but don’t tax yourself now. He will explain everything to you.”
I asked forgiveness from my lady as I stood, sat down, then stood again, wincing as my wounds complained from far too many places. I steadied myself against the scrollwork of the couch’s arm, breathing through my nose, lips pursed, refusing to take my eyes off domina. At last she relented and told me he was in the tablinum, nodding for Flavius to assist me. I shuffled through the house and as Tertulla had promised, found Marcus Licinius Crassus in his study. “You let her go!” I cried. “To Memphis!”
My owner looked up from his work.
“In Egypt!” I said.
Dominus asked Gaius Flavius in a voice which incontestable power had made soothing, almost seductive whenever he addressed those over whom that dominance was wielded, “Should he be up?” The doctor, standing nervously at my side, supporting me gingerly, glanced at the dressings on my back and shrugged, a gesture which would have him seeking new employment as soon as I was well enough to tend to the matter. I gripped the back of a chair for support and told Gaius Flavius to see to his other patients.
“You sent her to Egypt,” I repeated when the healer had retreated to wherever it was he went to practice being inconspicuous.
“Calm yourself, Alexander. In fact, it was Livia who begged me to let her go.”
“And you agreed to this?”
Crassus rose from behind his worktable and bade me walk with him in the peristyle. “Do you remember that first day when you were brought before general Sulla as a gift for me? It must be 25 years or more. You burned as hot as the eternal flame in the Temple of Delphic Apollo.”
“Yes. As I recall, Sulla extinguished that flame and sacked the temple about the same time his soldiers seized me in Athens.”
“He may have done, but that is irrelevant to my point, which is that you were in a frenzied state that only an arrow could subdue.”
“Lucky for us someone had one handy. Can you stop her? I am begging you to bring her back.”
“Hush. Look at you now. Time has softened your resolve to murder every Roman citizen in his bed. One might even say that after all this time, you are content.”
“I live only to serve.”
“If only that were true.” Crassus sighed. “But then, a gladius would be worthless with a dull and blunted edge.”
“It may not be too late, dominus.”
“You are the penultimate proof, my old friend.” My look was blank, peppered by twitches of frustration. “To test my intellect,” he explained, “I understand that those who surround me must also test my patience. But once again you have steered me from my intended harbor.”
“Your point is clear, dominus. Give her time, give her time. I have given her twenty years! We fell in love, barely more than children, but then her mother murdered Tessa. When I proved it so, the light in Livia’s eyes turned to ash. For years, we toiled beneath your roof as strangers; I kept my distance, but my heart, once given, could not find its way home. I followed your advice. I waited. Waited, while she formed a contubernium with that sculptor; waited as she buried him a year later. She was twenty-five. Afterwards, the years were kind to me; Livia did as you predicted, her regard softened and we became friends once more. But it was not until now that I dared hope she felt something more. And she is gone.” I sagged, unable to bear the weight of Roman will that pressed in upon me.
Crassus held my shoulders as gently as he could. “She will return, my friend. I promised her that if she studied hard and proved herself able, she could assume her mother’s duties in the clinic.”
“Why did she go?” I whispered. “Why now?”
“Perhaps the answer lies in here, my lovesick atriensis. Go, read it in private, then return to me before the fourth hour. The senate is still spluttering about Catiline’s surviving supporters, and I promised the conscript fathers I would appear by lunchtime to hear more of Cicero’s pathetic attempt to ingratiate himself with the senate after his exile. I’d sooner bite the head off an uncooked mouse, but there it is.”
Crassus handed me the letter; I tripped three times in my gangly haste to find the privacy of my rooms.
To Alexander, House of M. Licinius Crassus
Rome, Quintilis
I have much to say to you and hardly know where to begin. First and above all others: do not expect my gratitude for your foolhardiness. Why would you risk everything for me? Someone with the right to stop Caesar probably would have come along, and if not, who are we to resist? What if he had asked dominus for permission and it had been granted? Would you have tried to save me then? Whether he raped me or let me go-these things are both of a kind, the same side of the same coin. We are nothing. You less than I, had your intervention gotten you killed. I do not want you to be my hero.
It is late and I am tired. I would feed what I have written to the brazier and start again had I more time and parchment. You are brave and kind, Alexandros. You are also a fool, but maybe I have been one as well. I know you expect no words of gratitude, but you shall have them anyway. I could not bring myself to wake you, and they will not hold the ship. I must leave for Ostia before dawn. Thank you for rescuing me.
I think that maybe I can say what I am about to say, even after all this time, because I am leaving and must write my feelings down rather than speak them to your face. You see, I am a coward as well as a fool, and will not risk the lash of your remonstrations. After Sabina was sent away I could not approach you, first from anger, then from sorrow, and finally from shame. The more time that passed, the easier it was to let it go. To let us go.