Chapter XXII
70 BCE — Fall, Baiae Year of the consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus
“I don’t hate him, sweet,” Crassus said. “It isn’t hatred to wish he had tripped and fallen beneath one of his Hispanic war-wagons. That’s not hatred, is it, Alexander?”
“It isn’t undying love, dominus.” I stood against one of the portico’s scalloped columns which was half-draped in waxy ivy. The sun was turning the leaves green-gold.
“What use are you to me if you won’t agree with me?” Crassus said.
“None whatsoever,” I replied. “I shall have myself thrashed directly after you’ve supped.”
“Hush! Both of you! I’m trying to enjoy the sunset,” Tertulla said.
Crassus, now forty-five, leaned on the outer wall of the portico wrapped in a large Egyptian towel dyed in patterns of apricot and lemon. Perspiration glistened on the golden hairs of his tanned arms. Tertulla stood behind him, reaching up to massage his exposed shoulders. After his successful but arduous campaign against the rebellious slave Spartacus that ended the year before, his features had taken on the hard, weathered look that only combat can press through the flesh and into the soul of a man. “ Columba,” he whispered, reaching behind to pull her curves more tightly against his back. “My dove.”
After a languorous interlude that sent my eyes to the horizon to count the colors of the darkening sky, Crassus broke their embrace to lean far out over the balustrade, turning his eyes toward Bauli, just two miles to the south. “I can’t see it,” he said. Pompeius’ villa was hidden by the intervening hillside. “It’s smaller, isn’t it?”
Tertulla slapped his rump. “Miniscule. Like his balls.”
“And much farther down the slope,” I added.
Tertulla laughed. “All right, Alexander, from now on if there is any massaging to be done, be it to hubris or parts more accessible,” she said, continuing to press her fingers over her husband’s oiled shoulders, “then I shall see to its administration.” As she worked, evoking another grunt of pleasure, her own towel gradually came undone. She slid her left hand under his arm, slipped it through the opening in his wrap and brought it down across his chest, letting it come to rest where the fine hairs of his lower abdomen started to thicken. She pulled him back against herself, pressing with her hand while pushing her hips forward, rising up and down on her toes.
“You are a marvelously perverse woman,” he said, twisting around to nuzzle her cheek. “Isn’t she marvelously perverse, Alexander?”
“As a Thracian gymnast, dominus.”
“I hear they’re the best,” Tertulla said.
“I have no personal experience, domina.”
“Then let us attempt something, husband, so that should you ever have the opportunity, you may compare.” She gripped Crassus in such a way that his answer was more throaty gasp than agreement.
“Who claims I have not?” he managed.
“Have not what?” Tertulla asked.
“Had the opportunity to compare.”
“Isn’t he comical?” domina asked of me, expecting no reply.
The sweat from the calidarium was rapidly evaporating from their limbs in the soft evening breeze. Throughout the estate, many of my staff were lighting oil lamps and any remaining praefurnia not already heating the baths from below. I preferred to manage the household in a more hands-on fashion, but Crassus almost always kept me by his side. No matter what he was doing.
The night promised to be chilly. Crassus sighed. “I wish,” he said, addressing Tertulla, “you’d have talked me out of begging that aggravating little pebble to propose me for consul. Thank the gods the year is almost over.” Crassus waggled his empty cup. I snapped my fingers and a wine bearer hurried forward bearing a large blue, blown-glass amphora. As his cup and then Tertulla’s was refilled, Crassus said, “Unfortunately, I wager he’ll hold that little favor over my head till I’m as bald as Caesar. Wait a moment, Tranio,” he said, as the servant replaced the stopper and was about to withdraw. Crassus lifted the delicate chain which hung over the neck of the amphora and inspected the writing on the hammered silver label. It was a local red, and to indicate the vintage, the names of that year’s consuls were inscribed. Crassus’ lip curled at the sight of his name next to that of Pompeius. “’Don’t think much of this new wine,” he said, waving Tranio back to his station.
Tertulla let her hand drift still lower, but it was clear that her husband was as yet preoccupied with thoughts of his rival and co-consul, Pompeius. She rested her cheek against his back, curling his pubic hairs in her fingers. “You didn’t beg,” she said. “You asked, and he acceded, because he was afraid of what might happen if he didn’t. He wants your legions by his side, not opposing him.”
“That’s a wife talking, albeit one who would have made as fine a senator as any patrician.” He reached back and laid his hand on her thigh. “When the clarion call of war sounds, love, my legions fight always for Rome, never for Crassus. Rome is all we have, all we are.”
The sun had surrendered to dusk, and shadows now slipped down the eastern slope of the hill where their Baiaen villa sprawled. Across the little bay, the light was still frantically painting the town of Puteoli in impossible shades of pink and orange. The sea was deepening to blue-black, glinting here and there as a crest rose to wink impertinently one last time at the setting sun. In the distance, a thin rope of rosy smoke drifted straight up from the summit of Vesuvius until Zephyr, lying in wait for just such a plaything, bent it sharply and blew it to the darkening east. Two servants entered and lit the portico lamps.
“Rome is a child, Marcus.” Listening to his wife, Crassus admired the splendid exit Helios was making over the bay this evening, but Tertulla’s eyes were closed. “The plebs’ gaze will follow any bright object till the next one steals their attention. It’s true,” she said, squeezing him tightly, “for this brief moment they are dazzled by the man they call victor of the Hispanic wars, but I never knew anyone who followed anything but their nose when their stomach was growling. Pompeius may claim the hearts of the people for a day, but you rule their bellies and their minds. He is a distraction. You are their true champion.”
Crassus turned to face Tertulla, his smile brimming like the cup of wine he now tipped to her lips. As he watched the graceful curve of her neck tilt while she drank, he said, “The Rome I serve is no child. She stands here before me, elegant, precious. You are the foundation upon which all my work stands. Without you in my life, it would all crumble into a meaningless heap.”
Tertulla handed the cup back to Crassus with a look upon her face so sublime that it hurt my eyes to behold it. Once, a girl had blessed me with that same expression, but no more. Crassus leaned in to gently clean the thin line of purple from Tertulla’s upper lip with a kiss. Then he emptied what remained of the wine in one exuberant swallow and tossed the cup to Tranio. Husband and wife kissed, and for a moment, the only sounds were the sputter of the torch flames and the song of the year’s last, brave nightingale. Their embrace ended; their impassioned gaze lingered. Suddenly, Crassus began to laugh.
“It was an inspiration, wasn’t it? Pompeius may have pranced into the city with a triumph for supposedly subduing Hispania, but never in ten lifetimes could he ever match such a display as our sacrifice to Hercules.”