Pio moved a few grapes around his plate with his finger. His expression was unnerving: grim, determined, his lips pressed together, holding back whatever was bottled up inside. The only one who spoke was Livia, and we answered her with as few syllables as possible. Everyone ate hastily, happy to return to their chores. Malchus and I were the last to rise. As I stood, I became aware of a rushing in my ears. My heart knocked against my chest like a deranged woodpecker. Suddenly I felt as if I could drink the Middle Sea. I grabbed the pitcher of lora, sloshing it into my cup and consuming it with graceless haste. I went to pour another, but my fingers had gone numb. Malchus stared at me open-mouthed and said I’d better have a lie-down. I told him that was an excellent suggestion and stumbled off to my room, wondering how my voice had managed to emanate from some distant place outside my body, tinny and remote.
Nestor lay on his back, his arms folded behind his head. “What are you doing here? You’ll get the lash,” he said hopefully. “I’ll tell, see if I won’t.” I ignored him and collapsed onto my own bed. Breathing was no longer an activity my body did without my participation: if I didn’t consciously inhale and exhale, I felt as if I’d stop altogether. The paralysis was moving up my arm. Nestor kept up a steady, nattering invective. I ignored him until it dawned on me that his babbling brook of complaints sounded like no language I had ever heard. I turned my head to look at him: he stared back at me with unmoving lips. Be afraid, I told myself, but I did not have the energy. Call for help, I chided, but weariness lay on my chest like a stone. It was so much easier to simply lie still and look at the ceiling. The ceiling. It had come alive: fawns and nymphs cavorted and contorted in a slippery, slithering dance of copulation that was repulsively riveting. I supposed I’d been poisoned, but unless someone found me, there was no way I could summon help on my own.
Someone did find me. Pio was in the room, which was irritatingly vexing because, I am ashamed to admit, his bulk was blocking my view of the ceiling. He sat on my pallet, making room for himself by shoving me against the wall with a swing of his hips. I moved my head one way, then the other, seeking a better view of what lay beyond the mass of him. I beg not to be faulted, for my faculties were functioning well short of normal. That mortal danger had just made itself comfortable on my bed did not occur to me. Nestor, it became obvious, was also ignorant of Pio’s intent.
“What are you doing?” he asked in a language I understood. I think it was Greek.
“Hush, sweet man. We go soon. I make justice first.”
Now here is where the tale becomes a trifle cloudy. I remember the feel of Pio’s calloused hands, one pressing down on my chest, the other covering my nose and mouth. Struggling against him was useless, quite literally, because I could not feel my appendages, much less use them. I realized now, and not without a little sadness that I was about to die. Twenty-five, and still a virgin. The imminent end of one’s brief stay on this earth will bring clarity to the mind even while poison still works on the body. What a miserable thread the Fates had sewn for me; was I so undeserving of a full and productive life? Or was I just a random accident of happenstance from beginning to end. One thing was certain: if these were indeed my last moments, Pio’s misshapen, straining countenance was the last image I wanted to take with me to Elysium. I closed my eyes, sending two tears down either cheek.
I felt a slight release of pressure against my face. Nestor was cursing and straining against his fetters. Here I need to rely on Sabina’s recounting of what transpired next, together with my own feathery impressions. As had been her wont ever since Livia had been returned to her, she had arrived with a fresh bouquet for my room, hardly expecting to encounter this murderous spectacle. The fresh flowers fell from her hands; screaming Pio’s name she demanded to know what he was doing. Frankly, I should have thought that was obvious. Pio returned to his work, ignoring her next assault: pounding on his back and head with her fists. This he found as annoying as a gentle Aprilis mist, so she leapt upon his back, pulling at the arm attached to the hand affixed to my face.
My mind stretched thin, a taut, plucked string whose vibrations created a tone both pure and celestial. I was beginning to lose consciousness.
Pio’s right arm swung backward, knocking Sabina onto the floor against Nestor’s pallet. He strained to reach for her hair, grabbed a handful and pulled with all his might, and thus awoke an infuriated, incandescent healer. The tigress now reached behind her and clawed at Nestor’s arm till it bled. He cried out, released his grip and before he could scramble backwards found her straddling his chest, a scalpel pressing against his throat.
“Release him, Pio,” she screamed, “or I swear by the Seven Sisters I will cut so deep the arc of his blood will reach your thigh.”
Pio laughed, but he also took his hand away. The string snapped; the music fled; and rather curiously I found myself longing for the sound. I gasped, my lungs pumping like bellows, and without any conscious effort on my part. The effect of the drug was already fading.
“You not kill Nestor,” Pio said. He was right — Sabina would not kill an innocent man. I wanted to remind her that Nestor was not innocent. Perhaps another time.
A look of terrible realization came over her: Pio was going to kill her if he could. Something inside him had been squeezed until it had ruptured like a burst appendix; the only antidote for this poison was for the atriensis to free Nestor or die in the attempt. She dug into the bag slung over her shoulder and withdrew a second scalpel, moved a safe distance from Nestor and prepared to grapple with her own dubious fate. His plan might have hatched successfully, she knew, but its one fatal flaw, discovery, had just smashed its fragile shell, thanks to her. Now there was only one hope for Pio and Nestor — leave no witnesses.
Pio had come to same conclusion and went for the most immediate threat. Sabina screamed for help, expecting none, for this time of day none but the four of us would be found in the servants’ wing. There was little room to maneuver. She could not wait for him to strike first; if he caught her she was doomed. She leapt across the short space between them — desperation, fear and finally, a vision of Livia flooding her muscles with godlike strength. It burst from her body in a warrior’s cry and continued even when she realized she was going to survive. Pio caught her shoulder in his left hand and inched his thumb toward her throat. Before he could crush her windpipe, she struck with both scalpels. With the right, she stabbed up into the tendons of the wrist that held her, sawing till she felt something give. At the same time her left hand swept across his neck, severing the vein that bulged just beneath the surface. There was irony in the choice of her attack, but there was much more blood.
Pio stood up straight, as if listening to the sound of a more urgent call. Inside him, a clock began its inexorable count backward to zero, every diminishing moment market by a surge of escaping of blood. Suddenly it was as if Sabina and I were no longer in the room. He shoved her aside; with his good hand, he ripped the chain from the wall. He picked Nestor up in his arms and said, “Push hand here. Hard.” Not waiting for Nestor’s horrified muscles to awake from their paralysis, he took his lover’s hand and pressed it to his wound. Blood bubbled between the little Greek’s fingers and poured down Pio’s side. Nestor was crying.
Sabina followed them, but it was impossible for me to rise. Pio carried Nestor through the house, out into the front gardens, gathering the rest of the astonished household as if he had walked through a spider web and everyone else was a captured fly attached by sticky ropes, unable to do ought but be dragged along. Betto and Malchus raced to him with swords drawn, but as they neared it became obvious their skills would not needed. With each step down the gentle slope between house and gate, Pio’s pace faltered. Blood trailed from his neck and wrist, painting erratic crimson lines on the white gravel. Nestor used both hands to staunch the flow but Pio’s neck was slippery and his jolting steps made the task impossible. Nestor begged for Pio to set him down, but the man from Hispania had his heart set on the iron gates. In the end that heart would betray him; with each ragged beat it pumped more of his life out onto the perfect landscape.