‘My guests are probably missing me,’ she muttered. ‘Again, my apologies.’
She should have been more careful in stepping around him, but in her haste she misjudged the distance between them and somehow her hand grazed his.
She jumped to the side, startled. It was as if she had just passed her hand through a blaze. She could still feel it burning as she rushed back through the door without even bothering to close it behind her.
She was halfway down the entryway hall when she heard the man call back to her.
‘Do not despair,’ he said. ‘All will be well.’
She pretended not to hear, but the words echoed in her mind, fortifying her, and she could not get the vision of his earthy green eyes to leave her memory.
‘Where have you been?’ Magnus demanded as she stepped back into the triclinium. ‘We need more wine.’
‘There is no more wine.’ She did not recognise her own voice: there was no apology in it. ‘We have plenty of posca, however,’ she added, reaching for a pitcher of the bitter, vinegary drink. Magnus scowled.
‘No wine?’ someone whispered and she noticed several sets of rolling eyes. There was a smattering of tsks from nameless lips.
‘I fear we must take our leave,’ Gaeta blurted, adding, ‘on account of the rain.’
‘We must also depart,’ Numeria piped up, ‘before the Appian is plugged with mud.’
‘And the frogs!’ shrieked Lollia. ‘They will turn the streets into a theatre of corpses!’
Thus the banquet ended even before the first hour of night—a mark of shame if ever there was one.
* * *
Now, many hours later, the shame of Vita’s failed banquet seemed small in comparison to the humiliation represented by the loincloth in her hands. It seemed that Vita’s husband had taken his latest lover inside their very home.
Still, she felt no closer to determining when the tryst had occurred, or who the woman was, though she did remember watching Magnus’s eyes assess Lollia from behind as she departed with her husband and their towering bodyguard across the rain-washed plaza.
It had been right before the moment when Magnus had turned to Vita and slapped her hard. ‘Useless woman,’ he had said, then he, too, had strode off into the grey glow of dusk.
‘Useless woman,’ Vita muttered now, touching one of the loincloth’s golden beads. It was not the first time Magnus had called her that, nor would it be the last.
In truth, she had never questioned the epithet. Magnus was the paterfamilias of their household, after all, and he knew best. If he said she was useless, then she was—it was something she had always accepted.
Now she wondered if the label was truly warranted. It was true that her hostess skills were not the best in Rome. Nor was she a good cook, or a clever conversationalist, or even close to young or pretty any more, but was she really useless?
She could sew, after all, and quite well. She earned enough sesterces from the sale of her fine capes that she was able to keep their household stocked with oil and wine. She covered the costs of their other expenses as well, including the services of the fuller and baker, and even the annual demands of the tax collector. The proceeds from her sewing supported their lives in many different ways, so why did Magnus call her useless?
She lifted the loincloth to her nose and breathed in the scent of the cloth. Lavender, perhaps mixed with a bit of myrrh: it was the smell of a useful woman.
‘I want a divorce,’ she spouted. She looked up, vaguely expecting a thunderbolt to strike—or a hand against her cheek.
Instead, she caught the alabaster gaze of her venerable great-grandfather. Her father had gifted her the bust on her wedding day and, though she rarely visited it, now she gave it a soldier’s salute.
‘Permission to speak, Commander.’
‘Permission granted,’ said her illustrious ancestor. ‘State your subject.’
‘My husband, Commander,’ said Vita.
‘What is the matter?’
‘He has been faithless to me throughout our marriage. He does not see the contributions I make to our household. He finds me loathsome and is often compelled to deliver me blows. He calls me useless.’
‘I see,’ returned the hollow-eyed centurion, who had once served in the army of Julius Caesar.
‘I wish to divorce him,’ she said, ‘with your permission.’
‘I have no argument,’ replied the visage. ‘Where will you go?’
Vita had no idea.
In Rome, the vast majority of marriages were sine manu unions. The wife went to live with her husband, but remained beneath the control of her father throughout the marriage, making divorce easy and common. To leave her husband, a woman simply packed up her dowry and returned to her father’s home to await her next pairing.
But Vita’s father had insisted on a cum manu contract with Magnus, transferring his authority over Vita, along with her dowry and all her possessions, to Magnus himself.
‘If you divorce Magnus, you will become homeless,’ remarked the centurion.
‘I am aware, Commander.’
Too aware. It was part of the reason she had stayed with Magnus all these years. When her father had given her away to Magnus for good, he had supplied Vita with an unusually generous dowry: the very home in which they lived. It was the reason Magnus had agreed to marry her at all, though she had not known it at the time. She had mistakenly believed he had married her out of fondness.
‘I will find somewhere to live,’ she repeated, as if simply saying her desire aloud could somehow make it come true. ‘I will do that first, then I will divorce him.’
‘A sensible plan, but are you certain?’ asked the bust. ‘The Rubicon River, once crossed...’
Vita nodded, aware that she would likely spend the rest of her life living in squalor, struggling to survive on her own. It was a reality that had kept her tethered to a man who did not want her for too long, but not any more. There were some things in life more important than comfort—dignity, for example.
She held the loincloth above the lamp as if illuminating a sacred text. Two small initials came into view. They were as white as the fabric itself: L.F.
Lollia Flamma—Magnus’s latest lover.
Mystery solved. Vita scolded herself for not seeing it sooner. The young, raven-haired socialite was the highest ranking of Vita’s female guests that night and also the most beautiful.
She remembered how Magnus had watched Lollia depart that evening. He had departed himself immediately afterwards, had probably followed Lollia all the way to her home. The two had then sneaked back to Aventine Hill together and made love in Magnus’s tablinium while Vita slept.
Ha, ha, ha!
Vita waded towards the centre of the atrium and glanced up to observe the sky.
Holy Minerva, it was beautiful. Most nights, the smoke of a million cooking fires clogged the air of Rome, but tonight the smoke seemed to have been swept away by the rain, revealing a swathe of glittering stars.
They seemed endless and full of possibility—like freedom itself.
She was going to divorce Magnus. Perhaps not today, but soon.
She had held out for years, telling herself that she did not need his affection. It was enough to live in a fine home in a respectable neighbourhood with high-ranking acquaintances and a husband whose profession was admired.
Still, what did any of it mean if she did not have her own dignity? She turned the loincloth over and over in her hands. Four walls, a bed mat, a secure place to keep her sewing—it was all she needed.
Finally, she had decided. She would find herself a place to land, then she would fly from Magnus’s life and never look back.
‘Do not despair,’ she whispered to herself. ‘All will be well.’
She closed her eyes and in the place of stars she saw a man’s gr
een eyes. They were staring into her soul, reassuring her.
A sound split the silence. A tiny peep echoed from somewhere near, followed by a high-pitched giggle. Vita froze.
There it was again—another peep—though this time it was deeper and throatier and much closer to a moan. Perhaps the drunken cook had begun snoring again.
‘Oh, Magnus,’ a soft voice cooed.
Perhaps it was not the drunken cook.
‘Shush, woman,’ whispered Magnus. His voice emanated from the triclinium where the banquet had taken place. ‘You will wake my wife.’
Vita held her breath. He was there in the triclinium lounging area with Lollia, not five paces away, in flagrante delicto!
Vita glanced about, wondering where she could conceal herself. If she waded out of the atrium into one of its surrounding rooms, the lovers would be sure to notice the sound of her squeaking sandals on the tiles. If she stayed put, they would soon pass by the atrium and see her there.
She had to hide, but where? She stepped on to the edge of the cistern and gazed down into its dark floodwaters. ‘Come, we must get you home,’ she heard Magnus say.
There seemed only one place to go. Vita took a deep breath, then slid downwards into her home’s flooded rain well.
She held her breath as water surrounded her and mud enveloped her to the thighs. She could hear the sound of footfalls and whispering voices above her. They seemed to be moving away from her. They were leaving, thank the gods. She had done the right thing.
Still, she hated herself in that moment. She was helpless, a coward. Even in this small unused corner of her home was the record of her failure—so much sediment that Vita could barely move.
She reminded herself that it was not all her fault. Magnus had ignored the cistern as well, never once offering to help her clean it. Thus the sediment had accumulated: the collected detritus of a marriage gone bad.
Her breath was running out. The movement above her had ceased and so had the whispers. The two lovers had finally departed, or so she hoped, for she could no longer hold her breath. She pushed herself to the surface, gripping the side of the cistern and drawing in air as she opened her eyes.
There they were—her husband and his lover—standing at the edge of the flooded area, staring down at her.
Magnus opened his mouth to speak, then burst into laughter. ‘Vita? Have you gone mad?’
Vita lifted herself up out of the cistern and stared down at her mud-drenched skirt. She wondered briefly if the answer to his question was yes.
‘You are a thing of the swamp!’ He laughed and nudged Lollia, who laughed softly, then cast her guilty eyes to the floor.
‘Is that all you have to say, Husband?’ asked Vita. Her heart was pounding.
‘What more is there to say?’ He turned to Lollia. ‘Apologies, my darling. As you can see, my wife has lost her wits. Come, let us flee this madhouse.’
Her husband took his lover’s hand and moved to leave.
‘I divorce you, Magnus,’ Vita muttered.
Her husband turned. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I divorce you, Gaius Magnus Furius—for your cruel heart and selfish ways. I divorce you for betraying me all these years. I divorce you, as Jupiter is my witness. We are divorced!’
She glanced down at Magnus’s fist, fully expecting it to land on her cheek.
Instead her husband only grinned. ‘Gods, Vita, what took you so long?’
Chapter Two
That night, Ven tossed and turned atop his bed mat, unable to find his rest. The heat of August was always difficult to endure, but this night it was as if the air itself were boiling. It was producing a kind of fever inside his mind, making him think of unimportant things. The vigile’s wife, for example.
Each time he closed his eyes she was standing before him, staring up at him with those inscrutable eyes. What colour were they—brown or green? And why was it so important to know? She was just another spoiled Roman woman, after all. She had crashed into him that afternoon in a flurry of self-absorption and then barraged him with complaints, just as Roman women always did.
‘There are worse things in the world,’ he had told her, aware that he risked a lashing for such insolence. In truth, he had hoped she would just go away.
She had not gone away, however. Instead she had studied him closely and when she had noticed his slave’s tattoo she had instantly repented. ‘You are right, sir,’ she had replied. ‘There are worse things in the world. Much worse things. My apologies.’
The statement had been unexpected. In his twenty years as a slave, no Roman had ever apologised to him, though the real surprise had been in the tone of her voice: there was not a drop of condescension in it. It was as if she were not addressing Ven the slave, but Ven the man. By the gods, she had even called him ‘sir’.
Sir.
It had caused his concentration to momentarily weaken and he had noticed the rain. It had been pouring over them both, soaking them through. He noticed it travelling over the bumps of her red lips and braiding down her lush, full cheeks. It ribboned its way down the locks of her sandy hair and on to her tunic, which had begun to cling tightly to her flesh.
Something inside him had roared to life. For a moment he was not a slave, but a man—a strong, lusty man standing beside a beautiful woman in a late summer storm.
Even now, the strange memory was keeping him awake.
He stood up and began to pace. His master’s tablinium was large—it took six long strides to cross—and was open to both the atrium on one side and the sheltered garden on the other. Still, Ven was grateful for the small measure of privacy it offered.
In exchange for his services as a bodyguard, litter bearer, secretary, law clerk, architectural assistant and escort for his master’s wife, he was allowed to sleep on the floor of his master’s office at night.
Ven reminded himself of his good fortune. He could have been working in a field beneath the blazing sun after all, or slaving in some wretched mine counting the days until his death. Instead, he was educated and healthy and he laboured in the service of a rising man. Many men—slaves, freedmen and citizens alike—had it much worse.
Still, all he could think about was the feel of rain on his skin that evening, and a woman’s brown-green eyes looking into his. Suddenly the tablinium did not seem large enough. He stepped out of it and into the atrium and stared up at the sky.
Holy Taranis, the stars were beautiful—like freedom itself.
He looked away, reminding himself not to fall beneath their spell. Twice he had tried to escape his servitude and twice he had failed. His first attempt had earned him a tattoo: FGV. Fugitivus. It stretched across his forehead like a surrender flag.
His second attempt had earned him scars—a veritable spider’s web across his back. One lash for each mile he had made it out of the city. Ten arguments in favour of the notion that there are some things worse than death.
There was just no escaping Rome. The fool who tried faced an army of half a million free souls, all of whom had an interest in keeping the equally large slave population in check.
If Ven were caught again, he would not be given a third chance. He would be crucified along the Via Appia leading into the city. He would be left upon a cross amid hundreds of other errant slaves to die slow, public deaths.
So much pain. Rome’s men doled it out like grain, in bucketfuls, and thus kept their barbarians bent in submission.
Such was Rome itself, Ven thought. It plunged its fist into the world’s belly and would not be satisfied until all humanity buckled.
Speed and dexterity were not enough to escape such a foe. One also needed a cache of provisions, a potent disguise and a lifetime’s worth of Fortuna’s good favour. One also needed a fire burning inside one’s heart.
Ven stared up at the stars once again, testing himself. He willed away
his sense of awe and the yearning that followed in its wake. Yearning led to desire and desire was the most dangerous kind of fire there was. The stars were not beautiful, or hopeful, or wondrous, or so he told himself. They were just tiny points of light in the dark night sky. They represented nothing.
And he would be a fool to think he could ever outmatch the power of Rome.
There was a soft squeak somewhere near. The front door creaked open and Ven slipped into the shadows, his mind racing. Had a robber managed to get past the night guard? Ven could hardly believe it. The large Scythian guard was one of Lepidus’s few paid servants. The ill-tempered mercenary would not miss the opportunity to apprehend an invader and prove his worth.
Perhaps the sound had come from the guard himself, stepping away from his post? Ven hoped it was the latter. He was in no mood to apprehend an invader on this night.
He held his breath as he followed the sound of footfalls towards the atrium, considering how he might take down an intruder. He held his breath and braced himself as a familiar profile stepped into view. Incredibly, it was Lollia Flamma, his own domina.
He exhaled, sinking deeper into the dark, and watched in puzzlement as the young woman moved down the hall and disappeared behind her bedchamber door. There was only one explanation for such secrecy: Lollia had taken a lover.
What other reason might a beautiful young woman have for sneaking about at night behind the back of her much older husband? Ven imagined that the young woman and her lover had created some diversion for the Scythian, then huddled briefly outside the entryway of Lepidus’s home saying their goodbyes. Stealing time.
An image of the vigile’s wife slipped back into his mind. It was as if the time they had spent together had been stolen, too, though the theft had been accidental. Still, the thought caused a strange warmth to envelop Ven’s chest.
He did not know why she continued to bother him so. They had spent only a few accidental moments together, most of which had been filled with her meaningless chatter. He could picture her standing in front of him now, the rain pouring over her head, her expression aghast. Excuse me! she was saying. She was excessively short to the same degree that he was excessively tall and she’d had to tilt her head back as far as it would go just to see him.
The Roman Lady's Illicit Affair Page 2