But on the third day a retainer called, and said that Amator was prepared to meet her.
And so that afternoon she and Brica walked across the city. Regina stepped out boldly, but Brica walked with eyes downcast and a fine cloth mask over her face.
It was a long and difficult trek. The streets were so crowded they could barely pass. The lower sections of the apartment blocks were given over to shops, taverns, and warehouses, and from stalls set up in the street itself everything from clothing to wine to cooked meats was on sale. Then there were the street entertainers — jugglers, snake charmers, acrobats. In one place a barber stoically shaved the jowls of a large, prosperous-looking gentleman; he held a spiderweb soaked in vinegar to stanch the bleeding from the frequent cuts he made. All this enterprise made the ways even narrower, and they were crowded with carriages, carts, baggage animals, sedan chairs borne by slaves, horseback riders. The road surface was filthy, littered with garbage and sewage. In the larger streets open trenches bore away the sewage toward deep-buried conduits, ultimately feeding the patient Tiber. And meanwhile dirty children ran around the wheels of the passing carriages, and dogs sniffed at the debris that piled up in any convenient corner.
But people pressed cheerfully through the crush, babbling away in their fluent, rapid Latin — although there was a surprising peppering of other tongues. Regina had thought these must be barbarian languages, but she learned that amid this torrent she could hear the tongues of some of the founding peoples of Rome, the Etruscans and the Sabines, relics of days long past.
Amator’s home turned out to be located in a grand complex called Trajan’s Forum.
They entered the complex through a triumphal arch that towered over them, surmounted by an immense bronze sculpture of a six-horse chariot. A central piazza was dominated by a huge gilded statue of the Emperor Trajan himself, mounted on horseback. At one end of the piazza was an immense basilica, a monstrous marble cliff of offices and courts, fronted by tall columns of gray granite. It could surely have swallowed up the basilica of Verulamium whole. And looming beyond the basilica roof Regina could see a statue mounted on a great column — yet another representation of Trajan, who had evidently been a powerful emperor indeed, still peering loftily down at the citizens of the city he had built, centuries after the trivial detail of his death. The whole complex was too huge, out of scale, as if constructed for gods and set here in the middle of this human city.
But the roof of the great basilica showed signs of fire damage, and the marble floor of the piazza was crowded with shabby market stalls. Many of the shoppers wore the bold jewelry, skin cloaks, and brightly patterned tunics and trousers of barbarians, of Germans and Vandals, Huns and Goths. Few of them noticed the carved figures of defeated barbarians who peered down from the tops of the columns that ringed the piazza, images of the ancestors of these confident shoppers, symbols of an arrogant past.
To either side of the piazza were exedrae, huge semicircular courtyards, and Regina led Brica into one of these. They entered a warren of brick-faced concrete built into the terraced slopes of a hill. Regina felt her own nervousness increase. There were offices, shops, and courts here on many levels, all linked by stairs and streets and vaulted corridors. It was bewildering. But again there were signs that this place had seen better days, for there were comparatively few people here, and many boarded-up and even burned- out shops.
Amator seemed to be doing better than the average, though. His home, set in an upper level of the complex, turned out to be a grand apartment fronted by a bakery. The shop was a busy place, and enticing smells issued from its big stone ovens.
A retainer came through the shop and led them into the house behind. The retainer was a boy of sixteen or seventeen, with plump, effeminate features. When he walked ahead of them there was a faint whiff of perfume.
At the heart of the home, a series of rooms crowded around a small tiled atrium, illuminated by a light well cut into the roof above. At the far side of the atrium a narrow passageway led them between larger rooms — an office, and a large, sumptuous-looking dining room — and out to a garden, surrounded on three sides by slender columns, and with a view to the south overlooking the city. The house itself was not large by the standards of Regina’s villa — but then this was Rome, and she understood how much more expensive space was here.
The garden, called a peristylium, despite a small fountain with a statue of some aquatic goddess, was not terribly impressive in itself. But what made it remarkable was that it had been entirely built on the roof of the apartment below. Brica poked at the grass with one sandaled toe, trying to find the concrete base beneath.
Amator met them in the little garden. “Welcome, Regina …” His voice was as deep and rich as she remembered, and she felt a deep and unwelcome flush work through her belly, as if her body kept its own memories. But she was shocked at the sight of him.
A few years older than her, he was now in his middle fifties. His thin frame was swathed in a purple- edged toga, no doubt worn to impress her, she thought. But he had grown gaunt. His face had lost its fullness, and his cheeks and chin showed sharp bones. And his head was now completely bald — in fact, she saw with surprise, his eyebrows were gone, too, though two lines of livid flesh showed where they had been.
His retainer, the perfumed boy, hovered at his elbow, looking uncertain and nervous.
Regina gave Amator her hand, and he buffed his lips against it. “I am glad to see you are prospering,” she said. “But you have changed.”
He pursed his lips, and she saw that his eyes were as black and deep as ever. “You’re talking about my hair? I can tell you’ve only just arrived,” he said dryly. “You sound so provincial! Whole-body depilation is quite the fashion now. Of course you can’t find a barber to do the job well these days. But Sulla here is an expert with his poultices of wax, if a little heavy-handed with the tweezers.”
“And perhaps you enjoy the little pains, do you?”
He arched his head, and a smile tugged at the corners of his small mouth. “You’ve lost none of your sharpness, little chicken.”
The retainer’s reaction to this exchange was complex. He had flushed when Amator referred to him personally, but now he was watching Regina with alarmed calculation.
They are lovers, Regina realized suddenly. And this wretched boy of Amator’s is trying to work out if I am any threat to his position. She eyed the boy without pity. The boy wore a gold bulla around his neck. Like a little pouch, this was a symbol of his free birth, and would normally be worn from infancy to manhood. He looked too old to be wearing such a childish token, and she wondered if Amator preferred to keep his companion young.
If Amator had chosen men over women, something of his old hunger showed in his eyes as he turned his intense gaze on Brica. Regina felt proud as Brica returned his lascivious stare with contempt.
“Your companion is lovely,” said Amator smoothly. “Her paleness gives her an exotic look in these warmer climes—”
“Her name is Brica,” said Regina. “She is my daughter. And yours, Amator.” She heard a gasp from Brica; Regina had not warned her about this. “Although truthfully I cannot be sure if it was you or Athaulf whose restless cock impregnated me that night.”
Amator’s gaze clouded. But he smiled again at Brica, though with more levels of complexity than before. “Wine, Sulla,” he murmured.
The boy now stared with open hostility at Regina and Brica, these relics of his master’s complicated past. But he went to get the wine.