The slaves who were hurrying down towards their filthy, bloodstained master wouldn’t have expected any less of His Magnificence.
Chapter 31
I looked up at the bathhouse ceiling and counted slowly to twelve. That should give Antonia time to dry the tears she was squeezing out. I looked down again. ‘There is no taxpayer in Zigana called Isidore,’ I repeated, this time with an implacable frown. ‘Your alleged father, Laonicus,’ I went on, ‘left a wife and two sons. The wife is in receipt of a small pension bought from the Treasury by Laonicus before he died. This is still being paid. Both sons continue their father’s practice but concentrate on laying petitions before the Master of the Offices.
‘Almost everything you told me yesterday is a lie. I won’t press you for the full truth all at once. But I’d like at least to know your real name.’
She looked at the waxed tablet where I’d let it fall. Giving up on tears, she smiled shyly. ‘You say almost everything I told you is a lie?’ she asked.
‘Yes!’ I snarled. I stopped and controlled my voice. Eboric couldn’t follow what we were saying but was watching the argument unfold with shy interest. ‘The agent I sent to their lodgings told me your “clients” vacated this morning. Their unpaid rent was settled to the end of the month by someone who didn’t give his name but whose description matches Simon. I should imagine they’re on the road back to Pontus and that you told me the truth about their complaint.
‘Now, what is your real name? You might also tell me something of your real business.’
She sat down on one of the stone benches lining the wall and smiled at me again. Trying not to show exactly how angry I was, I finished towelling off the excess oil from my chest and loins. Pretending to ignore her openly approving look, I dropped the used towel into a basket. On getting back, I’d measured myself just enough opium to settle my nerves from the fright Simon had given me. I should have taken a great deal more.
‘My name really is Antonia,’ she said at last in a voice that no longer tried to be other than aristocratic. The faint tinge of something else had also vanished. ‘And I did spend a while in Trebizond. But please don’t ask anything more. It’s all become such a mess and I need to think about it first.’ She leaned against the damp wall. ‘You are a very beautiful man, Alaric,’ she said suddenly. She stopped herself and sat forward. ‘Look, I can imagine what you’re thinking. But I have nothing to do with Shahin or Simon or whatever happened to you today. I got myself past your eunuchs yesterday on a whim. Among other things, I wanted to see how well I could pass as a man. I then got a little carried away with the success.’ She smiled yet again. ‘You could try thanking me, though,’ she said.
I sat down on a stool opposite her. ‘Thanking you for what?’ I asked with a flattening of my voice. Her answer to this would determine whether I put her into a closed chair and turned my back as she was carried off only she would know where.
‘For slowing you down, of course,’ she said. I relaxed but covered this by picking up a small mirror and looking at my face. ‘Without me, you’d have fallen straight into Simon’s hands. I imagine getting away from Shahin was much easier.’ Before I could break in, the smile went from her face. ‘Where is your wife?’ she suddenly asked.
‘I don’t have one,’ I said. Confused, I looked harder at my face. I’d never seen it alternate like this between pale and red. ‘Both my sons are adopted,’ I explained. ‘Maximin’s father is — er, was — someone who used to be fairly important. You should have guessed, from his age and appearance, that Theodore wasn’t mine.’ I stood up and walked about the room. I was supposed to be asking the questions. Perhaps I should have taken less opium rather than more. I turned back to Antonia. ‘Why were you walking about the garden?’ I asked in a voice that nearly sounded accusing. ‘I did tell you to keep out of sight.’
‘I should keep out of sight?’ she said with what may have been a genuine loss of temper. ‘Have you seen the eyes on one of the disgusting pictures in the rooms you’ve given me? They’re holes that someone can use for looking in. Are you going to tell me I imagined the footsteps I heard behind the wall?’ She dropped her voice. ‘So I shouldn’t go into the garden to get out of this labyrinth of corridors and rooms bigger than a church? The maids you’ve given me don’t know any Greek. Your steward is a drunk who couldn’t take his eyes off me when he found me having a bath. And you tell me I should avoid Theodore. He’s the only normal person I’ve met in this place.’
She stopped again for breath — or to cover a fit of the giggles: the loss of temper hadn’t been genuine. Time for me to pull the conversation back to the course I’d laid down for it. ‘Why did you encourage him to insist on going out tonight?’ I asked. ‘Theodore never goes out unless it’s to church. He’s never shown the slightest interest in secular poetry. I’ll have to accept that you’ve been using me in some stupid game. I suppose latching on to me was a change from your normal — and no doubt vicious — entertainments. But why rope in poor Theodore? I do think less of you for that.’
Sure I’d finally got the upper hand, I stood up and scowled at her, hands behind my back. ‘Now, Antonia,’ I said sternly, ‘I don’t choose to wait till you’ve made up another pack of lies. I want to know who you are. You can begin by telling me who your father is.’
Antonia sat back and laughed softly. She looked at Eboric. ‘What were you doing with that boy when I came in here?’ she asked. Before I could think what to roar at her, Eboric got up from where he’d been sitting against the wall and bowed. It was a graceful, even a charming, gesture. No one could really hold his lack of clothing against him in a bathhouse and Antonia gave him a charming smile in return.
The smile stayed on her face when she turned back to me. ‘Is there any young slave in this place, Alaric, who is actually ugly?’ she asked. ‘Are there any of them, male or female, with whom you haven’t had sex?’
Oh, the outrage of it! She hadn’t been here a day and she was already commenting on my household management. No — never mind the outrage of it: there was the irrelevance.
But, even as I bent down to look her close in the face, I heard a scraping of shoes in the outer room. Antonia stiffened slightly then, keeping her back to the door, was on her feet and looking into a pot of setting depilatory pitch.
‘I was told you were down here, Antony,’ Theodore said with a strained laugh. He came fully through the door and caught sight of me. He bowed briefly before looking away from my naked body. His eyes fixed on an image of Pasiphae having sex with the bull. He pulled them away and found himself staring at something even I’d for a while thought outside the normal range of taste. Served the boy right, I told myself, for having lived here over two years and till now avoiding comforts a civilised man enjoyed every day. I was deciding how to speak with him about the inadequacies of cold washing water as a substitute for the real thing. But he’d turned to Antonia and I could see he was going weak at the knees. I couldn’t see his face. Could I complain if it had gone bright red?
‘We were discussing what clothes Antony should wear tonight,’ I said in a jolly voice too loud for the room. ‘His luggage was taken yesterday by the bandits.’ Theodore turned back to me, this time ignoring the sin of unashamed nakedness. What he would certainly have called a further and graver sin was presently under control. I hoped he wouldn’t ask for any advance on the vague story I’d given about our meeting while in captivity. But that was easily handled. How was I to explain things when, sooner or later, Antony became Antonia? The staff I’d so carefully assembled wouldn’t so much as blink if I turned into a swan and began propositioning the kitchen maids. If one of my guests changed sex between dinner and breakfast, no one would mention it outside the household. I’d need a bloody good explanation, though, for Theodore. Perhaps I should take him aside now and tell him what I’d had no proper reason for keeping from him the night before.