Sixteen
Bishop Malconi made his summer residence in a place that had once been famous for atrocity, a formerly ruined coastal villa called Jovis, which he’d had refurbished with frescoes, marble statues and handsome mosaic floors. It occupied a high point, Mount Tiberio, on the northeast tip of the island of Capri. Bishop Malconi had first purchased the building because he valued his privacy — the local peasants were too wary of its evil reputation to come anywhere near. Some four centuries earlier, Emperor Tiberius, wearied by the cutthroat politics of Rome, had sought refuge here and, according to some, had come to lead a debauched lifestyle, indulging in every kind of sexual perversion and executing any person he took against in elaborately cruel and inventive ways.
Malconi was unconcerned by this grim history. He had his blue sky, his turquoise sea, and below his bedroom window a picturesque view of rolling valleys, their steep slopes clad with cypress, poplar and cork-oaks through which the occasional glimpse of honey-coloured stone revealed the presence of fallen columns and overgrown arches. The restful isolation he found here was broken only by his exclusively male household, who went about their allotted tasks with quiet and unobtrusive efficiency.
However, it was not unknown for Malconi to receive visitors at Villa Jovis.
It was early in July when a heavy carriage of glossy black enamel, covered all over with rich gilded sculptures of tumbling foliage and fabulous beasts, laboured its way up the winding, dusty track to the villa gate. A team of eight straining horses drew it, for the vehicle was truly immense — a party of several men and women could have found comfort inside. The driver was a virtual colossus, swathed in crimson hessian robes with a cowl pulled low. His head, though hidden from view, was huge and square, and he was as broad as an ox.
The gates at Villa Jovis were occupied by a squad of ten security officials, who had been selected from the ranks of New Rome’s military for their skill and ruthlessness. Even in the basting mid-summer heat, all wore uniform ensemble of sallet, chain-mail and a leather hauberk studded with steel balls, and were armed with broadswords, which they carried in scabbards on their backs, and any other implement they excelled in, be it flail, mace or war-hammer. Ordinarily, no visitor would pass the villa’s wrought-iron gate without enduring a menacing scrutiny from these handpicked guard-dogs, but the sight of the black carriage and its crimson-shrouded driver was enough to bring them scurrying from their posts.
There was a clanking of chains and a creaking of well-oiled steel as the central bolt was withdrawn and padlocks removed. The gate swung open and the carriage was admitted, coming to a halt in a gravelled reception area, where a young groom in a sweat-stained blouse rushed forward to assist with the horses. The crimson-clad driver stepped down — at full height, he was close on eight feet tall — and opened the carriage door. Though a giant and monster in every way, he showed great deference to the passenger who stepped out.
She too was tall — easily the height of a man, but with the perfect proportions of womankind. She was of indeterminate age — anywhere between thirty and fifty — yet there wasn’t so much as a crow’s foot on her flawless, porcelain-white skin. Her hair was black as bramble-wood and, though bound at the rear in a copper coronet, hung to the small of her back in lustrous, liquid tangles. Her beauty was of the patrician class — fierce and proud, but with more than a hint of feline menace. She had full blood-red lips, high sharp cheekbones and eyes of iridescent green, enhanced by deep slashes of purple-grey shadow. She wore a sleeveless shift of flimsy green cloth, belted at the waist by a slim chain, which did little to conceal the statuesque body beneath. Her fingernails were long and sharp and lacquered emerald, her hands encrusted with jewellery of exotic design, the gold stems of which twined up around her arms as high as her shoulders.
She strode across the reception area and up a paved path between rockeries and spiny cacti, the wooden block-heels of her sandals clopping like hooves. As she approached the villa’s heavy ash door, it was opened by a bronzed young man with dark-blond locks over his handsome, boyish face. He was wearing an indecently short toga.
“Duchess?” he said, surprised.
“Is your master at home?” she asked.
“Of course, ma’am. Forgive me, I wasn’t expecting…”
“Stand aside.”
She strode purposely through the entry hall and a connected succession of apartments. In all of them, young male staff busied themselves with household chores, giving her only passing interest. She crossed the atrium, where a small herb garden was open to the elements. A husky, bearded gardener, again wearing only a sleeveless, short-skirted toga which exposed his brawny, sun-browned limbs, was working with a hoe. Beyond the garden, a narrow avenue between clipped hedges led to an open terrace overlooking the Gulf of Naples. It was usually awash with cooling sea-breezes, but at the height of the day, as now, the sun beat mercilessly on it. At one end lay a small bathing-pool, in which another young man, this one naked, stood thigh-deep, scooping out insects with a net. The duchess briefly regarded his exposed appendage, unimpressed, before continuing along the terrace to its far end, where a canopy had been raised, beneath which Bishop Malconi, wearing only a thin shift, reclined on a divan. There was a damp towel over his face, and to one side a stool bore a bowl of figs and clotted cream, and a goblet of iced water. Another young man, wearing a loincloth so flimsy as to be pointless, crouched at the bishop’s feet, tending to them with a brush and a pair of delicate nail-scissors.
The duchess hissed at the servant, who stood, bowed and withdrew. Bishop Malconi made no effort to remove the towel, though he clearly knew she was there.
“The steady, sensual gait of a proud, beautiful and domineering woman,” he said, his voice muffled. “Zalmyra, my dear sister… what a charming surprise.”
“Is it possible you could be unaware of the events in the north?” she wondered coolly.
Malconi removed the towel. Beneath it, his face was flushed and sweaty. “On the contrary, sister. You might even call me their architect.”
“In which case I’m somewhat bewildered.”
He took a fig from the bowl and pushed it into his mouth. “You have your areas of expertise, Zalmyra… which are many and nefarious. I have mine, which are somewhat simpler. You do what you do, while I merely run the affairs of Europe.”
She arched a disdainful eyebrow. “Pray don’t mistake me, brother, for someone who can be lulled by your usual hyperbole.”
“Zalmyra, your entire world is centred on Castello Malconi. It’s a long way from the borders of Brittany. I promise you, there is nothing to worry about.”
“My entire world?” She smiled thinly. “Even were I nothing more than a pleb or slave, that would be quite a significant item to dismiss so easily.”
Malconi dabbed beads of sweat from his forehead. Cicadas chirped incessantly from the bundles of honeysuckle hanging over the terrace railing. Despite the canopy, the heat of the July day was intense, yet noticeably Duchess Zalmyra remained a figure of marble. Her cold, beautiful face was unflustered. Not a trickle of perspiration snaked down her tall, curved body.
“We know what we are doing,” he assured her.
“Is that ‘we’ as in the royal ‘we’?” she wondered. “Or ‘we’ as in you and Emperor Lucius? Knowing you as I do, I sincerely doubt it’s the latter.”
“You know exactly what I mean.”
“Oh, I see. It’s you and that wily old vulture Simplicius.”
“God forgive your arrogance. His Holiness is younger than you are.”
“He’s certainly behaving that way. Only a wet-eared whelp would have allowed this tide of reconquest to run unchecked.”