Hektor stepped forward, extending one hand to grasp Philo’s shoulder as the old man cringed backwards, trapped by the befouled wall behind him. When the boy’s delicate hand mercifully stopped short and drew back, Philo noticed its fingernails were painted.
Philo paled, feeling his heart squirming fearfully in his chest. “I am an acquaintance of the Lord Chamberlain and indeed, as you say, I am enjoying his hospitality, as is well known.”
“Ah, but how do I know that you are not a spy who has ingratiated himself by some subterfuge into the Lord Chamberlain’s household?”
“I have known John for years. He was…”
“Never mind.” Hektor waved his dainty hand in a gesture of dismissal. “I shall allow you to live. Count yourself fortunate that I am in a merciful mood today.” A scowl marred the boy’s beautiful face. “You seem harmless enough. You may go now.”
Philo departed hastily. As he left the forum at as quick a pace as he could manage, he berated himself for the irrational fear he had felt of the absurdly painted creature, yet it was a fear he could not shake off. He glanced back once more before going around a corner and leaving the forum blessedly out of sight. From that distance, from the back, as Hektor craned his neck to see over the crowd, he looked like any other boy.
“Yes, Lucretia, I remember it was always your favorite game as a child. You loved to hide for me to find you,” Nonna recalled, a smile blossoming along the well-worn lines of her face.
The elderly woman was in full flood of happy reminiscences. Chattering like a magpie, she only paused now and then to spoon up boiled wheat from her dented silver bowl, a gift from her former owners upon her manumission and retirement.
Lucretia was perched nearby on a low chair finely inlaid with rosewood. It had been another parting gift from her parents to her former nursemaid. Nonna seemed unchanged, she thought, or was this strange effect of time leaving no traces of its inexorable passing merely an illusion? To a child, all adults look elderly. Yet now that Lucretia was a woman, Nonna, although more stooped and slower in her movements, looked scarcely a day older. The only real difference was that her hair had thinned to little more than a gray nimbus.
The young woman nervously patted at her own glossy black hair, such a contrast to her milk white skin as more than one poetic suitor had remarked.
“I always hid under the kitchen table, didn’t I?” she recalled.
Nonna nodded, smiling. “Yes, and I had such a bad memory even then that that was always the last place I looked. And of course with being rather hard of hearing, naturally I could never hear you giggling, not even when I came in to ask the cook if he had seen you.”
Lucretia smiled wordlessly, enjoying Nonna’s little fictions, happy to listen to the old woman’s soothing flow of words, as sweet as the honey with which Nonna had cured the tickle in her throat whenever she had a cough.
The narrow, sunwashed room in which they were conversing was on the top floor of a sturdy house on a side street leading from the Forum Constantine. The room served as Nonna’s bedroom, kitchen and general living space. Despite its cramped dimensions, it was pleasing to her, particularly as it was part of a building of solid masonry construction rather than one of the dilapidated wooden tenements in which the city’s truly impoverished congregated.
The large unshuttered window by which Lucretia sat admitted street sounds floating up from four stories below, a running stream of noise that diminished only slightly with each setting of the sun. There were always people out and about after darkness fell, although not necessarily to do good works.
A hoarse shout caught Lucretia’s attention and she shifted quickly in her chair to scan the scene below. No, that wasn’t Balbinus’ voice. It had probably emanated from the ne’er-do-wells conversing loudly as they lounged like dusty tomcats in a patch of sunlight at the house front.
“But hide and seek is a child’s game,” remarked Nonna. “It is not a game for a proper young woman. I’m glad you are here rather than walking on dusty roads or at that shrine you say you visited. Did they sing hymns?”
“Not while I was there,” Lucretia said. “But speaking of hymns, I recall that whenever we were going home after attending a church service, if I started to sing them in the street, you always admonished me very severely.”
Nonna sniffed. “Girls who sing in the streets grow up to be prostitutes, selling themselves in dark corners. Everyone knows that.”
“I would never prostitute myself,” Lucretia said firmly. “Besides, Michael will stop all singing in the streets.”
Nonna took another spoonful from her bowl. “You were always my favorite, Lucretia, of all the children I have looked after. I had high hopes for you, my dear. I still do. You are so beautiful, so intelligent, and yet I confess there have been times when I feared you were about to make a terrible mistake. Anatolius, for example. A handsome young man and pleasant enough, but really not at all a suitable match for you.”
“Anatolius is the son of a senator,” Lucretia pointed out.
“But Balbinus is himself a senator and a man of substance. Not a landless boy like Anatolius.”
“But a woman should marry for love, don’t you think?”
“Oh, my dear,” Nonna gave a nervous laugh and her weather-beaten face reddened. “Love? Well, there is poetry and then again there is life.”
“I will not be bought and sold,” Lucretia said quietly.
She was bitterly disappointed. She had expected Nonna to take her part, just as she always had, or at least in Lucretia’s memory. It had been some years now since her nursemaid had been granted freedom and a small pension and given this tiny apartment. Lucretia had visited her many times in the intervening interval. But not lately, not since Balbinus had turned out the attendant who accompanied her around the city. He had done it out of spite, she was certain.
Nonna sighed. “Lucretia,” she began gently, “you will understand that I am saying this only for your own good. And that is just how I would begin when you were a child and you were going to hear something you’d consider unpleasant, yes, yes, I can see you thinking it now.”
Lucretia smiled sadly. “You are going to tell me that I must go back to my husband, who is doubtless pacing the floor wondering where I am and worrying about my safety.”
Nonna nodded. “Yes. I could not refuse you shelter in my humble home but it has been long enough now. You must be aware that rumors will be circulating. This will not reflect well upon you or your husband, or for that matter on your own family.”
“I do not want to cause difficulties, Nonna. I will seek some other place to go.”
Nonna clucked scoldingly. “What do you know of fending for yourself, child? The city is a dangerous place and grows more so every day. You are fortunate indeed to have a man like Balbinus to take care of you.”
“And I thought you would understand!”
“You have not been married very long, Lucretia. You seemed happy enough. What demons have been whispering in your ear? Or does your husband mistreat you? I have a strong suspicion that my little lamb is not telling Nonna the entire story.”
Lucretia shook her head. She realized she could not bring herself to speak of it, tell Nonna that the senator’s ring burned her finger as if the circlet was fresh from the goldsmith. She could not accept her duty as other women did. Hadn’t she tried, for more than two years? Even after she had realized that it was an agony that would never end.
Then she had heard Michael’s preaching and something in the man’s words, something she could not identify, called insistently to her.
“Well, if you are indeed concealing something from me,” Nonna was saying, “still, you are from a noble family and therefore need no instruction on these matters. Would it not be possible to overcome the difficulty? Perhaps Balbinus could talk to your father about it?” She paused, considering how best to phrase what she had to say. “If you will permit an old woman who in her humble way loves you to speak plainly, whatever marital problems you are experiencing, Balbinus does love you and he must be very worried. It surprises me that he has not already been here looking for you.”