“A triumph you deserved but never received. At least we have the satisfaction of knowing your offering soured his moment of glory.”
“Indeed. A feast for the people laid out on ten thousand tables: it did leach attention from that strutting charlatan, at least for the time it took the plebs to chew and swallow the meal.”
“When will you ever see yourself as others do?” she asked, hugging him. “As I do? You know, it’s three months now, and the slaves tell me it is still the talk of the city.”
“The feast? Merely my thanks for all that Rome has given us.”
“The feast, yes, but also the three months’ supply of corn you lavished on every citizen.”
“The people are our children, and children must be fed. Besides, the cost was a mere trifle.”
She shook her dark curls and smirked, intertwining her fingers in his. “Your sense of proportion is sadly skewed.”
“All right, call it an investment.” He gestured with his chin to take in the villa, its fountains and gardens, and by inference, the literally hundreds of homes, businesses, quarries and mines throughout Italy and beyond which he either owned outright, or controlled through his clients. “I am no fool, dove. Who here is the true master, and who the slave? Our happiness is tied to Rome’s by a Gordian knot not even Alexander the Macedonian could sever. One will endure only as long as the other prospers, and not a heartbeat longer. The Republic has become a frail old man, ruled by the fickle whims of its needy grandchildren. If you doubt me, just ask Alexander.”
“Give your servants more credit than that, dominus.”
“Why should I? Look what happened with Spartacus. If the urban slaves ever rose up with one voice, Rome would cease to exist.”
“Which is why you keep them well fed and well entertained,” Tertulla said.
“I wonder, dove, is it enough? Tell me, are you happy, Alexander?”
“I am lucky to be alive. I am grateful.”
“Answer the question.”
“I am as happy as my condition allows, dominus.”
“There, you see, dove, what a scoundrel he is? I can always count on you, can’t I, Alexander, to deliver a sentence well-honed on both sides.”
“Brrr, let us go in, love,” Tertulla said. “Don’t let Alexander toy with you. He is the luckiest slave in Rome, and he knows it. See how the light and warmth have fled the sky — now they await within. I’m ready for the tepidarium. Bring your intellectual sparring partner with you, if you must, but let us go in.”
Crassus kissed the top of Tertulla’s head, readjusted her towel about her and together they padded back into the house holding hands.
“Oh, Livia. Good,” Tertulla said as they passed through the smaller calidarium and into the large, circular space of the tepidarium. I followed discretely behind, nodding slightly to Livia as I passed, whose straightforward gaze never wavered.
It almost didn’t hurt anymore. In Livia’s eyes, I had become a child of Dis, a spirit of the underworld, a barely visible shade to be shunned. If not shunned, ignored. If not ignored, deterred. It had been thus for the past six years.
The poets sing of love as if it were forged of iron, incorruptible, shining, eternal. Perhaps it is so, perhaps the love of which the ancients sing is a love so strong it endures beyond life itself. Or perhaps the ancients were so focused on their poetry that they had never really experienced loved themselves and had no idea what they were singing about. For us poor mortals, ordinary love is a fragile, delicate wisp of a thing with a very poor life expectancy.
I had not so much fallen out of love with Livia as been pushed. Was there no way I could scale the heights back in to the refuge of her affection?
Chapter XXIII
70 BCE — Fall, Baiae Year of the consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus
Tertulla lay on her side on a couch by the warm water pool, her towel haphazardly draped about her waist. “Someone seems to have emptied our cups, the curs.”
“Alexander,” Crassus said, “would you please summon Tranio to see if there is any more Caecubum?”
“I know where it is, domini,” Livia volunteered. “Alexander, I will go. Keep your place — remain by dominus.” A honey bee usually dies when once it stings. Were Livia a member of the order Hymenoptera, she would be more wasp than bee. Her words could prick over and over again with impunity. If memory serves, it is only the female of the species capable and willing to deliver these little, vexing attacks.
Livia. In the years since I had robbed her of her mother, the whistling, impudent sprite had lost none of the qualities that had drawn me to her when she was little more than a child, although the first of these had diminished to accommodate a burgeoning of the second. Six more years had aroused and affirmed what everyone in the familia already knew, including the girl herself. What was impish and playful at seventeen had matured into stunning and willful at twenty-three.
Some well-worn turns of phrase, worked smooth by years of usage may grow stale and out of favor. Yet the kernel of their truth may yet be fresh; indeed their hoary longevity is proof of their accuracy even though the modern wordsmiths may pass them by as unfashionable. Here is one such as this: the effect Livia had on me, steadfast and unchanging since the day I realized I was in love with her: the sight of her took my breath away. This in spite of my own damnable contribution to her loveliness: a layer of sadness deep in her eyes, dead leaves in a forest pool. But she was nothing if not pragmatic. Her mother was gone, she was a slave in the house of Crassus, and since she could not avoid her fate, even as I had done years ago, she, too, determined to embrace it.
Imagine you are young and in love. Something, anything, it does not matter what, destroys that affection. You weep, you plead, you separate, you never see each other again, you suffer, you heal, you go on. But suppose through circumstance you are forced to see each other almost every day. You work together, share meals together and to fulfill your duties, must often communicate together. Can you picture a more exquisite torture? Try it another way. Think of what you want most in life. Hold it in your mind’s eye. Place it close by, but just out of reach. Is the image there before you? Now, deny yourself the chance of ever having it.
For six years I had tried to learn to see Livia with dispassionate eyes. Hopeless. I don’t think she hated me; but those first looks of enchantment had clouded over with cataracts of repudiation. I lived in a purgatory of my own making.
Tertulla had convinced Crassus, in order to restore the tranquility of the house, he must send Ludovicus to another posting. She suggested that Livia and I also be parted, but he would not hear of it. There was no possibility that I would be sent away, this Tertulla understood. As for Livia, while dominus was a faithful and loving husband, he had an appreciation for beauty in all its forms. Livia, too, must remain within his sight.
I made inquiries to the mine several times a year, and without advising either Crassus or Livia, sent a monthly bribe from my own accounts to the mine manager. As far as I knew Sabina was alive and spared the most brutal travails of that hideous place. But I had no way to know for certain how she fared.
I did not revile myself for the actions that had destroyed the only love that had ever found me, but neither did I give myself any peace about it. Sabina had murdered Tessa, of that there was no doubt. But if I had listened more carefully, been a better friend, recognized the signs of her jealousy, I might have been able to influence that awful outcome.
The day Ludovicus left, I found him at the stables securing his belongings and tools to the horse Crassus had gifted him to speed his journey to the latifundium. The Cremona farm was prospering, and a man who could repair almost anything was always in great demand. He looked fine in his sand colored tunic and maroon cloak. I noticed he wore military style caligae on his feet, leather laces crisscrossing up to his calves.