On the day before the ceremony, Amator came to visit her, at the Order’s house.
He walked into her small office and prowled around its shelves and cupboards, fingering the heaps of scrolls and wax tablets. His face was caked with cosmetics, with white powder on his cheeks and black lining to emphasise his eyes. Despite these expensive efforts he looked his age, or older, and, she knew now, he was plagued by ulcers and gout, the sicknesses of an indulgent old man. Today he seemed oddly nervous.
“I see you have found yourself some gainful employment,” he said. “How long have you been here — two years? You have been busy. Busy, busy, busy.”
She spread her hands over her scrolls and tablets, her seals with the Order’s kissing-fish symbol. “I deal in information. That is how things work, Amator. Businesses, cities, empires. You should know that.”
“I had no idea you had developed such talents.”
“There is much you don’t know about me.”
“Perhaps I should have hired you, rather than Brica.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so, Amator. My ambitions have nothing to do with you.”
He faced her. “You’re cool now that you don’t need my money anymore, aren’t you? And are these records of your Order’s work?”
“Yes. But there is some history of the Order here — reaching back to the days of Vesta, in fact. I like to maintain such things. And—” She hesitated.
“Yes?”
“There is something of myself as well.” She had begun to write out a kind of biography, the story of her own complicated life and the great events that had shaped it. “I want my granddaughters to know where I came from — how they got here. You have a starring role, Amator.”
He laughed. “You should make it into a play. Your petty self-justification and trivial complaints would be a great favorite in the Theater of Nero.” He turned around, arms spread, almost elegantly, like a dancer. “But none of this scraping and scribbling will do you a grain of good when the barbarians come. All they will want is your money. That and the bodies of your beautiful nieces.”
“I have prepared for that contingency.”
“You are a foolish and complacent old woman. The Vandals will slit your throat.”
“We’ll see.”
He gazed at her, curious, clearly trying to be dismissive, not quite succeeding.
From her first days here she had, in fact, been preparing for the eventuality of breakdown. She had, after all, lived through it all before. Her life had been devoted to finding a safe haven for herself and her family. Rome itself, with its mighty walls and monuments of marble and eight hundred years of arrogant domination, would surely be more shelter than poor Verulamium had been. But still she had prepared what she thought of as a bolt-hole.
For all his bragging, she saw that Amator was not nearly so well prepared. Good, she thought; the more vulnerable he was the better, for she was not done with him yet. Toward that end, in fact, she had made sure to invite him to the wedding of her daughter and the other celebrations. The more he was close to her, the more opportunity she would have to deal with him.
“The ceremonies are not until tomorrow. Why are you here, Amator? Are you so sorry to lose a worker from your bread shop?”
“Brica is a flat, dull girl. She has looks, but none of your spark, little chicken.” But his fencing was unconvincing. “I am more concerned about Sulla.”
“Ah. Honesty at last. Your pretty boy.”
Amator said tensely, “I was not aware until this morning that he is to attend your ceremonies. I had not intended to bring him.”
“We gave him his own invitation.”
“Yes,” he said. “And I know why. Venus. ”
The boy, whose true inclinations evidently did not match Amator’s own, had become besotted with Venus, granddaughter of Helena, and he had been invited to the girl’s coming-of-age ceremony.
“I have no problem with that. The boy has a good heart.”
Amator jabbed a finger at Regina. “I know you engineered this, you witch. You made sure they met, and encouraged their relationship thereafter. And I know why.”
She smiled. “To hurt you? Amator, how could you think such a thing?”
“Your revenge is petty, Regina.” But his face, under its mask of cosmetics, was contorted.
“Sulla is just your bed warmer,” she said. “And evidently a reluctant one at that.”
“Oh, perhaps it started like that. But now …” He paced. “Can you understand, Regina? Have you ever loved?”
“I understand that you are a foolish and selfish old man,” she said coldly. “Your heart has been kept beating, and your cock hardened, by the soft body of this boy. But now he is growing away from you. And when he is gone, you will have nothing left.”
“My life is not complete,” he said, sighing. “Of course I have a daughter — Brica — but she is not mine and never can be. I understand that; I accept it. And I have no son … I have named Sulla as my sole legatee. Do you see? The boy is no longer a servant, but my lover, my heir. He is the best part of me. And now, yes, now I fear I am losing him.”
She shrugged, careful not to show any reaction to this news about his legacy. “I don’t know why you’re bringing this to me.”
He hung his head. “Whether or not you have brought this cow-eyed niece of yours between us deliberately, I ask you to give him back to me. There — I submit myself to you. You have beaten me, Regina. Are you happy?”
She made no reply.
When he had gone, she summoned Amator’s boy, Sulla, to her office.
Regina told him carefully that Amator was jealous and angry. That after tomorrow’s feast Sulla would not be allowed near Venus again. That Amator had been lying about his intentions regarding his legacy. That he saw the boy as useful for one thing only, his supple body, and that in future he planned not just to use Sulla himself but also to hire him out to some of his friends, for the sport of it. That Sulla would not be released from this servitude until he was too old to be attractive, or his body too damaged to be useful.
She told Sulla all this briskly, and turned away to her work, as if uncaring of his reaction.
Regina had quickly become central to the working of the Order. The skills she had acquired as an administrator for Artorius for all those years were essential here.
After she had met her mother at the Flavian Amphitheater, she and Brica had moved without regret out of their cramped apartment over the restaurant and into this grand house. Situated in an outer suburb beyond the ancient Aurelian Wall, it was a large complex of buildings in the traditional style, centered on an atrium and peristylium.
But it was obvious that the estate had seen better days. It had once been the home of a senatorial family that, having backed the wrong candidate in one of Rome’s many fratricidal contests over the imperial purple, had fallen on hard times and had been forced to sell up. The water supply from the aqueduct system had failed and the bathhouse had been closed down. With many roofs leaking, and the paving in the atrium and peristylium cracked and weed-ridden, some of the other buildings had been abandoned, too.
The Order itself hadn’t been much healthier than the estate. The numbers in the little community had been dwindling for some time, and when Regina arrived they were down to twenty-five. Those who remained were crammed into the surviving buildings, where they slept on bunks, stacked up like amphorae on shelves.