I stared at the blurry ceiling. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
Sabina bent over the table, looking directly down at me and said softly, “She must come to her husband a virgin.”
“Of course,” I said, sniffling loudly, arguing on behalf of the stranger who would take her away from me. “What of her time with Boaz. Wasn’t she…”
“She is intact. I told you he was a better man than most of his kind.”
“This is very hard, Sabina.”
The healer’s tone turned contemplative. “Perhaps it would be better to have her taken away from this place.”
“You must never do that! I will not allow it!” I shouted, rising to my elbows, then quickly deflating back into flaccid decorum. “Apologies. Please, Sabina, let me go to the master. Let me ask him for a peculium. At least grant me this.”
“That is the first thing I did when I learned of your fondness for each other.”
“You did not just discover it from Ludovicus?”
“Subtlety, Alexander, is one of your lesser strengths. You’d have to be blind not to have noticed the way you come apart around my daughter. But Livia, she’s got more craft than a market fair. If they weren’t all whores and poor as Arabs, she’d have made a great actress. She hid her feelings for you from me, and my ears were perked, I can tell you.”
“Why didn’t you come to me when you saw I was falling for her?”
“There was no harm in it as long as it wasn’t serious, and honestly, I had no idea anything would come of it. I should have done, I see that now. I am deeply sorry.”
“I may be ill.” Sabina brought me a bucket; I turned on my side and held it, mouth open, breathing in short gasps.
“Look at how far you’ve come in such a short time,” she said, her hand on my shoulder. “Crassus will grant you many favors; you will be a rich man some day.”
“I could join you.”
She shook her head. “My dear sweet Alexander, you will never leave this place.”
I stared into the dark emptiness of the bucket. “I am undone.”
“Then maybe this is the best advice I can give you: the less you see of her, Alexander, the less pain you will endure. I am finished.” It took me a moment to comprehend her meaning. “Wear these slippers. The soles of your feet sustained little damage. Return to me tomorrow and I will replace the dressings.”
“Have you said all these words to Livia?”
“I have. She is rebellious, but there is reluctant understanding in her eyes.”
I put down the bucket, swung off the table and got my feet into the slippers. If there was anything more to say that would move her, I could not think of it. I shuffled toward the doorway and without looking at her said, “Know that I will speak with Livia again. You had better see to dominus.”
Crassus never said a word about returning the unused silver to the treasury, but then, he didn’t have to, did he? He was also silent about our mad dash into the burning insula. He never spoke of it again. Crawling off to my own bed, I gave instructions to my secretary to disturb me only if dominus or domina called. I slept the dreamless sleep of the dead for five hours.
I awoke to a gift. Gleaming on the edge of my washstand lay the golden fibula from the night before. Its rubies had been cleaned, the entire piece polished. But this was not the gift that shook my heart. Inside the clasp, freshly inscribed in Greek was a single word:
Hero.
Chapter XX
76 BCE — Summer, Rome Year of the consulship of Gnaeus Octavius and Gaius Scribonius Curio
We met by Apollo in the lull between midday meal and supper. Dark clouds churned overhead; distant thunder grew nearer. Surrounding us in partial privacy, the poplars danced a tune called by the wind, but they thrashed out of time. We sat at right angles to each other, holding hands, our backs against adjacent corners of the plinth. Apollo would cry soon, tears streaking his marble face.
“We could run away together,” Livia said.
“We will not.”
“I know.”
“How can something sound so logical to the ears, yet make no sense at all to the heart?”
“Oh, shut up.”
“What have I said?”
“Don’t make this into one of your philosophical puzzles.”
“Apologies.”
We sat quietly for a moment listening to the rising wind.
“We should not have met here,” Livia said, wiping her nose with the kerchief in her free hand.
“Why not?” I asked stupidly.
“I will humor you because you are a man,” she said, sniffling loudly. “If you were a woman you would not have to ask. How can this be my favorite refuge when it has become the place of our parting?”
“It need not be so.”
“Mother says you are my first love, and the first is always the hardest.”
“Only if it ends,” I said, squeezing her hand. To my surprise, she withdrew hers.
“If we agree to end it now,” Livia said, “it will hurt less when we part.”
“Your mother is wrong.”
“She said you would say that.” The first fat drop landed with as soft plop on Livia’s knee.
“And how did she tell you to respond?” My tone escaped sharper than I intended.
“She said she would do nothing to keep us apart, that this was a lesson we would have to learn for ourselves.”
“And?”
“And,” she said, rising to straddle my legs and sit in my lap, “I told her I needed no more schooling.” The kiss that followed was sweet as fruit, sweet as honey, sweet as freedom. I took her face in my hands and looked into the depths of her green eyes. “I do love you so.”
We embraced; she kissed the lobe of my ear and said, “I love you more.” A bolt crackled, the storm suddenly upon us. Thunder fell down heavenly stairs to crash above our heads, Zeus’ invitation for the rain to fall in earnest.
“I used to believe I could reason my way out of any predicament,” I said as we ran for the cover of the colonnades. “I was young and naive. Nevertheless will I think on this day and night. Pray that when freedom calls your name, we will still be together.”
It was near the end of Sextilis, a few days before the Vulcanalia. For all of us who depend upon the uninterrupted supply of grain to this city of insatiable appetites, and for all of that somewhat smaller group who believe that the intervention or at least the apathy of the gods makes a crumb’s bit of difference on the volume and safety of the harvest, this is a very important holiday indeed. The priests would invoke Vulcan Quietus, pleading with him to ward off wildfires, protect the city’s grain, even lull the mighty vents of his slumbering volcanoes to utter stillness.
Here’s a bit of irony for you. The Vulcanalia is celebrated on the 23 ^ rd of the hottest month of the year. Every true Roman must honor Vulcan by beginning the day, not in darkness as is usual, but by candlelight. It pleases the god, apparently, to witness the ignition of more unintended fires on his holiday than on any other. He invariably gets his wish. His altar, the Vulcanal, was in the heart of the forum, just above the Comitium where the senate convened. Wise priests, generations long past, moved the services, which included bonfires as well as sacrifice, to the less flammable Campus Martius, the Field of Mars. There, races are held in the Circus Flaminius, and a hot and sweaty time is had by all.
Last but not least, the god of fire, to exacerbate some ancient Olympian rivalry between Neptune and himself, has developed a monumental craving for fish, and it is on this day that it is sated. Once the bonfires are lit and blazing, the priests ceremoniously hurl countless fish into the flames, imploring Vulcan’s fire to spare the fields, the grain, the city, the people. These holy men rely on cheap perch to appease the god. Crassus had recently acquired two vineyards in Campania and a large millet, corn and wheat farm in Venetia near Cremona. Even a cynic such as he dared not tempt the gods where his investments were concerned, so he had had me order a thousand expensive mackerel for his sacrifice. “Why take chances?” he asked when I questioned the size and quality of the purchase. All I could think about was the stink, and hope that the wind would carry the city’s piety somewhere else.