***
Timotheus sat in his chamber-the mean, shabby little chamber they had given him for his quarters-and eyed the pair of tablets, bound with cord and sealed, that she had placed in his hands, smiling (when had she ever done that before?) and asking, oh so prettily, if he wouldn’t mind delivering it to a certain town house. Messenger boy! It had come to this. Bad enough he had to live on their scraps, but to be sent on a slave’s errand! What should he do with the thing? He would not stoop to opening and reading it himself. He was a gentleman, after all. But just possibly his patron Diocles would find it interesting. Wasn’t it for precisely this that he had been put here?
***
The 4th day before the Kalends of December
“Ah, darling Agathon, don’t stop! I’m dying!” Thais straddled him, brushing his face with her breasts as he thrust into her.
The rays of the setting sun pouring through his bedroom window gave the girl’s skin a golden sheen, struck red highlights in her tangled hair. She was his favorite hetaera and this was the climax of a long, lazy afternoon of drinking, dicing, and love-making.
Abruptly shattered by sounds of scuffling in the entrance hall below them.
The voice of Baucis, “Matrona, no, I’ve orders not to-please, matrona, you can’t-” and another voice demanding to be let in. A voice he knew too well. Gods! Agathon heaved the girl off him, sending her sprawling on the floor. “Quick! Get your clothes on.” He pushed her through a curtain into a side chamber. He struggled into his tunic, smoothed the bedclothes as best he could. And when Calpurnia burst through the door he was sitting in his chair with a scroll in his lap to cover his still swollen organ, forcing himself to breathe slowly.
With one motion she flung off her hooded cloak, ran to him and threw herself at his feet. He recoiled. Could this be the same woman he had once imagined he loved? It had been six weeks or more since he had seen her at the Roman procurator’s funeral, and the change in her was astonishing: her face a dead white, the chin and cheekbones sharp where there had once been soft flesh, and the eyes-the eyes, big and haunted, looking out at him from dark hollows.
Her voice thick with tears, “I waited two days for your answer. I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Answer to what?”
“Please don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying. Here now, get up, don’t do that.” She wrapped her arms around his knees like a suppliant before the statue of a god. “Look, you can’t come here. Your husband-”
“He’s gone! He’ll be gone for weeks. Now is our chance! Tell me you love me. I know you do, you must. You were only frightened, I understand.”
“Calpurnia, it’s over.”
“You don’t mean that! Let me be your Callirhoe again, let me love you.” She rucked up his tunic, uncovering him, put her head between his legs. In spite of himself, he swelled again. And sweet little Thais, hidden from them by only the thin fabric of a curtain, was momentarily forgotten. He drew her up and carried her to the bed, still warm from that other body…
When they had finished making love, she lay dreamily with her head on his chest and only then began to take in her surroundings. On the bedside table a tray of half-eaten pastries and two goblets. She sat bolt upright, looking around wildly. “Who’s here?”
“What? No one. One of my chums dropped by, left hours ago.”
Slowly, she lay down again. “I want to stay here all day and all night,” she murmured.
Did he hear a stirring behind the curtain? “Don’t be silly, ’Purnia, they’ll be missing you soon. You have to go now.”
“Say you love me again.”
“I love you, I do. Now you have to go.”
“I’ll come again tomorrow.”
“I’m leaving for the country tomorrow. My parents are complaining they haven’t seen me in months. I’ll be away for a week or more.” This was, in fact, the truth, though if it hadn’t been he would have said it anyway.
“Oh, too long!” she cried. “I have an idea.” She took his face between her hands, her lips parted eagerly. “We’ll spend a day in the country, where you took me once before. You can get away, can’t you? We’ll have a whole day to ourselves. We’ll be nymphs and satyrs in the woods. You are a satyr, my beautiful young satyr!”
Anything to be rid of her. And why not? It would be preferable to a day spent listening to a lecture from his father about the planting of winter wheat and why couldn’t he take an interest in things like his brothers. And she did excite him even though she knew none of the tricks of a hetaera. “Yes, yes, all right. Make it two days from now. Take the road that follows the river up toward the Reclining Woman. You remember? At the waterfall follow the track that goes off to the left about five stades. I’ll mark the path for you with a cloth tied to a tree branch. It’s a steep climb but you can do it. And come alone, Calpurnia. You won’t be afraid?”
“I’m not afraid of anything. Only that you won’t love me.”
“Now go, please.”
As the door closed on Calpurnia, Thais rushed out from her hiding place. “So that’s your Roman whore?” she screamed. “You poor man, I could hardly keep from laughing, listening to the two of you go at it.” She picked up a goblet and flung it at him. “You called her Calpurnia. I’m not stupid, I know who that is. Wouldn’t the governor just love to know-”
He hit her in the face with a blow that sent her staggering against the wall. He hit her again and she went down. “You say anything about her and I’ll kill you!” He dragged her to the door and threw her down the stairs.
Chapter Thirty-nine
The 6th day before the Kalends of December
Suetonius had promised himself that he would have no more to do with Sophronia, a woman too wily and amoral even for his jaded tastes. But her note had been urgent. And so he found himself again in her private office in the Elysium together with a weeping girl who would have been pretty but for a broken nose and swollen jaw.
“I don’t like it when people beat my girls,” Sophronia said. “This one is terrified, but I got the story out of her-all but the man’s name. You won’t like what you hear. What you do about it is up to you. I promise you she will tell no one else, nor will I.”
“At what price, madam?”
“That was uncalled for, my dear.” She looked at him reproachfully.
Minutes later, he was making his way back toward the palace, his features grim, his head in a whirl. He had devoted years of his life to chronicling, with sardonic wit, the moral lapses of the great and powerful. He had believed himself unshockable. He was wrong.
At the door to Pliny’s office, temporarily his own, he was met by a sentry who reported that Didymus’ wife and son were waiting on him. “They beg to have a visit with the prisoner, sir. They’ve brought him a change of clothing, some personal things.”