Thus the conundrum persisted, and long nights passed dreaming of a man to hold, this terrible ache for the touch of a hand, the brush of a kiss, the whispers, the glances, the ecstasy. Well, the problem was solved now. Maybe not the way she’d hoped for and certainly not the way she’d expected, but solved it was. And what a thrill! What a change!
Her ears picked up a rustle on the autumn floor and she peered round the trunk of the oak.
‘Hello?’
The blackbird, fully gorged on rowan berries, flew past her and Acte smiled. Fancy a bird making you edgy! She was getting tense, the very thing a bride shouldn’t do. She’d have to snap out of it before she faced the Master, because she intended to stay calm and collected when she told him about her decision. Heaven knows, it wouldn’t be easy!
Sixteen years ago, when she arrived, she’d been terrified of him. Daily his leonine roars threatened to shake the very foundations of the villa and she, little more than a child, had been forced to cope alone. Matidia, just turned forty and no less vapid than she was now, was clueless when it came to handling a situation whereby the Master was still master of everything except his body and Aulus was no help to anyone. He made it clear from the outset that as far as he was concerned, it was a disaster the old man hadn’t been killed by the horse that threw him. His only consolation lay in the hope that his father’s days might be numbered in single figures.
All this Acte had picked up within her first few weeks before she gradually realized the Master’s bellows were born not of temper, but of frustration. This still-handsome and vigorous man had, by one cruel stroke of the gods, been reduced to the level of a turtle locked inside an immobile shell, and she began to recognise that his insults and his rantings were simply rage against himself.
Imperceptibly, the roles began to change until it reached the stage where Acte supervised his diet, his medicine and his rest periods with unprecedented strictness, while spending every waking moment as his companion, his eyes and ears to the outside world. In return Eugenius taught her to read and to write, to discuss philosophy and politics, to appreciate art and music and poetry and literature.
He had, in his way, set her free.
Not, she reflected wryly, that it was all plain sailing. All too often he’d pinch her bottom, tweak her nipples, slide his hand up her skirt, and because she was a slave and therefore unable either to refuse or to retaliate, she found recourse in pretending not to learn the lessons he so painstakingly taught her. Of the two, his sexual frustrations proved less important than his intellectual frustrations, and so Eugenius Collatinus made his choice and the pornographic friezes on his wall became his compromise. Here he could indulge his passion for past appetites, his imagination doing the work his poor manhood could not.
When, later, the groping began again, Acte had frustrations of her own and the next time he cupped his hand round her breast, they both knew her protests were more for propriety than for anything else. Lying alone at night, desperate to feel the pulsations of love inside her, she wondered how it was that this old man, with his crinkled face and papery hands, could bring her to the brink of heaven just by fondling her breasts and kissing her nipples?
Not that it went further than that. She made it clear, when he first tried parting her thighs, that he could touch her only through her tunic, she wouldn’t let him play with her as he wanted. At the time she didn’t quite understand why (it certainly wasn’t from a moral standpoint, there were times she’d have given her right arm for gratification!), but her instinct had guided her well. Had she given in, she’d have had nothing left to bargain with and above all Eugenius Collatinus was a businessman. Negotiation was a currency he understood.
A crackle of twigs on the far side of the rocks interrupted her thoughts. It was probably a snake, sluggish and sleepy, heading back to its hole, but-
‘Hello? Who’s there?’
Not even a leaf rustled in the heat and the stillness, and Acte’s ears strained for sounds.
‘Hello?’
It’s all that talk of ghosts and haunting. And the thought of facing the Master. She sighed. Diomedes would have finished the massage, the Master would be asking for her.
Yes, the Master had done much for her over the years, far more than just teaching her the arts and fine manners, and Acte’s obligations rested lightly on her. Until the Master’s eyesight had began to fail. She never let on, but from time to time slipped into Diomedes’s room to syphon off small quantities of drops without the doctor being any the wiser. Neither was the family. With her help and connivance, Eugenius pretended to read the letters and study the reckonings, and to compensate for his shortcomings he’d make unannounced spot checks, to keep them on their toes.
Then when those other pains began, the pains that doubled him up and which he likened to a red-hot claw tearing out his liver, her loyalty was pushed to its limit. The Master had made her promise not to tell a soul, not even Diomedes-and that was the hardest promise she’d ever had to make. It was Acte who had talked the Master into hiring a proper physician, which was well overdue, but in spite of Diomedes’s skill in massage and so on, the Master still wouldn’t allow him to know about the pains. It wrenched her apart to watch him writhing in agony, knowing she was helpless. But the Master was adamant. He wanted to retain all his faculties, he said. Didn’t want to be drugged to the eyeballs, wanted to be in charge and coherent right to the end.
Which they both knew would not be that far away. The Master would not see the spring.
Acte wiped a tear from her eye. She loved the Master. With all her heart she loved him, and when, this morning, he told her it was time he took care of her, she had no inkling of what he meant.
‘I’m talking about marriage, Acte. You and me.’
The suddenness of it all, the sheer unexpectedness, had taken her breath away. She’d had to sit down.
‘You won’t get much money,’ he said, ‘and the business will pass to my son, but it’ll give you a decent status after I’ve gone. You’ll nab a good husband as my widow.’
‘I–I can’t!’ she had stammered, but he was adamant.
‘I’m not asking, I’m telling you,’ he said. ‘And anyway…he slid his hand up the inside of her thigh and tickled his finger between her legs, ‘I want to do what I can while I can,’ he’d added with a chuckle.
Acte Collatinus! Matidia’s…oh dear, Matidia’s mother-in-law!
Acte Collatinus, virgin no more. Eugenius (she’d have to learn to call him Eugenius now!), he couldn’t make love to her as a proper man could, but he’d promised her all manner of delights. And the end to her virginity was one of them.
The snap of a branch made her spin round. This was no mouse, no reptile. She saw a flutter of leaves as they fell to the ground. Saw a flash of white. Acte felt her mouth go dry. It was true then, the stories. The haunting. A band tightened round her chest. Trembling, she climbed to her feet. A man she could fight. But a ghost? Her throat was gripped in ice. Then…
‘Oh, it’s you!’ she said.
Her knees went weak with relief and she leaned her hand against the broad span of the charcoal-oak to let her legs regain their strength. She felt silly. Ghosts, indeed! When all the time, it was only-