The Roman Lady's Illicit Affair

by Greta Gilbert

  The memory struck him as comical. She was like a stout little dagger staring up at a towering spear, vying for attention.

  And her eyes—so luminous against her rain-washed skin.

  More warmth. This time it was spreading through his limbs, surely the return of that cursed fever. He did not appreciate its heat. It reminded him too much of desire, a dangerous emotion for a slave. Her eyes were not any more luminous than any other eyes, or so he told himself, and there was nothing funny or special or endearing about her either. She was just another spoiled Roman woman after all. She meant nothing.

  Besides, he would probably never see her again.

  And thank the gods for that.

  * * *

  Vita was awake before the dawn, beset by happiness. It had sneaked up on her in the night, a beggar demanding coin. She found her pockets were full.

  She tried to remember the last time she had felt so light-hearted. It occurred to her that it had been the very day she had met her husband—her ex-husband—Magnus.

  She remembered the meeting vividly, though it had been over ten years ago now. She had been sitting inside her mother’s weaving room, unable to concentrate on the threads.

  ‘Are you Vita?’ he had asked her, stepping into the doorway. She had not replied, had not even looked up, for she had been in no mood to speak. Though it had been many months since her mother’s death, Vita had remained frozen inside her grief.

  ‘I am here for an audience with the Senator,’ Magnus had explained. ‘Where might I find him?’

  ‘In the tablinium, of course,’ Vita had muttered.

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘My mother?’ Vita had gazed at the row of threads, feeling the heat of tears on her cheeks.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Magnus had said. ‘I refer to the woman of the house—your father’s wife. It is just that... I have a gift.’ He had produced a bouquet from behind his back.

  ‘Lavender flowers?’

  ‘You stare at them so keenly. Do you favour them?’

  ‘No, it is just...lavender was my mother’s favourite flower.’ Finally, she had looked up at him. Standing before her had been the handsomest man she had ever seen.

  ‘And your father’s wife—where might I find her?’ he had asked.

  ‘Lounging in the triclinium.’

  ‘Ah, gratitude,’ he had said, then, incredibly, he had held the flowers out to Vita. ‘Please, take them.’

  ‘Are they not for my father’s wife?’

  ‘My gift to your father and his wife is something else.’ He had flashed her a dazzling grin. ‘The flowers are for you.’

  Vita had been confused. ‘Excuse me, but who are you?’

  ‘I am Magnus,’ he had pronounced, ‘your new husband.’

  They had wed just five days later inside her father’s tablinium. Discretion had been essential, for Vita’s father was a senator of Rome and Vita was not a legitimate child. Vita had only thanked the gods that her father had chosen Magnus for her mate. He was strong, handsome, witty, refined. Vita found it hard to believe that such a dashing young man would take such an interest in a plain woman such as she.

  She had never been so hopeful than on the day their hands were joined and, when they arrived outside the house with which her father had endowed her, she was overwhelmed with emotion. ‘I can hardly believe you chose me,’ she had told him. ‘I cannot wait to make a home together.’

  ‘A home? This is a palace,’ Magnus had remarked. ‘I can hardly believe it is mine.’

  ‘Ours,’ Vita had corrected.

  She should have known then that he did not care for her. He had married her for the house, nothing more. It gave him exactly what his humble beginnings had not supplied him: a place to entertain, a symbol of his status, a family history he could feign. It was everything he needed to forge his own road to success.

  Vita had merely been a bump in that road.

  What a fool she had been! But no longer. Now, after ten years of misery, she had finally divorced Magnus. He was never going to love her—she had known that for years—but now she realised he was never going to respect her either.

  Life was short and she wanted more.

  The sun touched her cheeks and seemed to set them aflame. She was divorced! Joy pounded inside her heart.

  She squinted against the bright sunlight. This was how the sun greeted her every morning, for her bedchamber was located on the eastern side of the house. Magnus had wanted it that way, for it caused Vita to wake before him each day. Thus she could prepare his breakfast and empty his chamber pot and ready his clothes for the day—all before he woke.

  Vita had little desire to do much readying of anything today, however. She was a divorced woman after all. Divorced!

  Though perhaps she should have waited to announce her decision. ‘You have five days,’ he had told her the night before and she had been shocked.

  ‘I thought it was sixty,’ she had replied.

  ‘Five,’ he had had said through clenched teeth.

  If only she could have held her tongue, she could have saved herself a good deal of worry. She had heard it was difficult to find a room in Rome and now she had only five days in which to do it.

  Still, she could not let her worry ruin her good cheer. She crossed to her small window and peered out at the neighbourhood—a garden of brick and stucco bathed in dawn’s yellow light.

  The view was lovely, though much was still in shadow, including her doorway itself. As she gazed down into that ill-lit space, her heart filled with a strange delight. Only a few hours before, she had been standing there beside a man who had found her...worth reassuring.

  Perhaps she was making too much of their short interchange. Perhaps the warmth she had felt when his hand grazed hers had been an invention of her own mind—a remedy she had concocted to soothe her weary heart.

  In truth, it had been the darkest moment of her life. She had been standing on the cornice of a cliff whose bottom she could not see. He had reached out his hand to her and somehow held her steady.

  ‘Do not despair,’ he had said. ‘All will be well.’

  It was as if he had loaned her his very spirit in that moment—sent it travelling from his hand to hers. It had rushed up her arm and spread throughout her body, warming the back of her mind, the headwaters of her tears. It had wrapped around her heart like a cloak.

  She tucked the memory away. The moment was gone, as was the man, surely never to return. He had eased her heart, that was all. And that was enough. She would find a place to live. In five days, she would be safe inside a room in some towering insula, with no one to answer to but herself. She would not despair. All would be well.

  She lifted her gaze to the plaza beyond the alley. A troop of men carrying a tall ladder marched past a mother with a babe on her hip. The mother turned away, stepping into a large gathering of pigeons. They rioted into flight and the babe shrieked with delight.

  The city would be beautiful today, as it always was after a rain. The air would be clear, the fountains bursting, the streets washed clean of their grime. It would be the perfect day for a walk.

  A walk: what a lovely idea. How she would enjoy a walk! She could reacquaint herself with Rome’s neighbourhoods and investigate her options for dwellings. Why not go for a walk? She was a divorced woman now, which meant that she no longer answered to Magnus. She could do whatever she liked.

  She could pretend she was a tourist! A Roman citizen born in the provinces, visiting the city for the first time. She could smile and gasp at the sights: the Flavian Amphitheatre, the Circus Maximus, the Roman Forum.

  She could spend all afternoon at the baths, by Jove! She had always wanted to experience the Baths of Trajan—the newest complex in the city—but had never found the time. Magnus had always come first, followed by her sewing.

  T
oday, however, she was in no mood for either. Nor was she in the mood to clear the flood in the atrium, though she knew she would not have Magnus’s aid.

  The kitchen also needed attention. It had gone from messy to disastrous after her efforts with the dumplings. It would all need to be cleaned and set in order soon, lest it be overrun by vermin.

  She turned away from the window and sighed. There would be no wandering today, it seemed, and the hunt for a dwelling would have to wait. There was housework to be done.

  She paused at the entrance to the kitchen and gave the household god his usual helping of grain. ‘Protect all inside this house, goodly Lar,’ she entreated.

  ‘Ow!’ replied a voice.

  Vita strode into the kitchen in pursuit of the sound, then stumbled against a large sack that had apparently been stuffed with bones. ‘Ow!’ the sack repeated. Catching herself against the wall, she peered down at the howling obstacle. ‘Go away!’ it groaned.

  ‘I will not go away,’ replied Vita, ‘for this is my own kitchen!’

  The sack rolled over and sat up, blinking in the morning light. ‘Gods, what is the hour?’ asked the dishevelled cook.

  ‘It is the second hour of the morning,’ said Vita. ‘Why are you still here?’

  The woman scratched at her tangled black locks, then cast a look of longing at the pockets of Vita’s tunic. ‘What? You expect to be paid?’ Vita asked. ‘You drank twenty denariis’ worth of my Falernian wine!’

  The woman’s expression contorted with confusion, then disbelief, then seemed to settle on denial. She opened her mouth and released a pocket of air, then lay back and curled into a ball, as if to resume her slumber.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Vita stalked across the kitchen, dipped a cup into the water bucket, then returned and dumped the water over the woman’s curly head.

  The woman sat up, sputtering ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘What is your name?’

  The woman appeared not to know. ‘It is...ah... Avidia, madam,’ she said, as if realising it herself. ‘Avidia Secunda.’

  ‘Well, get up, Avidia Secunda! This is not the corner tavern!’

  Avidia struggled to her feet and Vita was reminded of the woman’s formidable height. Her wet black curls hung almost to her shoulders and seemed in great need of a comb. Beneath her tattered tunic, scabs of bed lice peppered her skin.

  ‘Where am I if not the tavern?’ Avidia slurred. She looked thoroughly perplexed. By the gods, she was still drunk!

  ‘You are in the home of the Commanding Vigile of the Regio III District of Rome,’ said Vita. ‘You were hired to cook for a banquet, but you passed out drunk before you could do it.’

  ‘Did I?’

  ‘I laboured sewing capes for many months to purchase the wine you drank.’

  ‘You did?’

  The woman placed her finger on her nose and closed her eyes. ‘Forgive me,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Forgive you? You abandoned me with the dumplings! They were the reason I hired you at all. You said that you made dumplings—’

  ‘—that the gods themselves could pine for,’ muttered Avidia. ‘Dear Minerva.’

  Vita dipped the cup back into the drinking water bucket and handed it to her, and she drank the water down in a single gulp. ‘Forgive me, madam,’ she said.

  Now Vita felt more foolish still. She was speaking with a lice-bitten woman in a ragged tunic who had drunk herself into oblivion. Surely the woman had graver problems than a failed banquet.

  ‘Come, I will see you out,’ Vita said and the women made their way to the exit.

  ‘The wine,’ Avidia said in the doorway, ‘and the dumplings. Everything. I am truly sorry.’

  Vita dug in the pocket of her robe and placed five brass sesterces in the woman’s palm. ‘You are forgiven.’

  The woman stared in disbelief at the handful of coins. ‘May Jupiter bless you, madam.’

  ‘Do not use them to buy wine!’

  Avidia blinked her glassy eyes and shook her head in confusion.

  ‘Have a nice day,’ Vita said.

  ‘And you, too, madam.’ She began to move slowly across the plaza, apparently lost in though. Avidia had not gone five paces when she turned suddenly back to Vita. ‘May I ask you a question, madam?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘When you hired me, you said you were a terrible cook, yes?’

  ‘That is true,’ said Vita.

  ‘Why not purchase a slave to cook for you?’

  It was not the first time Vita had been asked the question. A woman of Vita’s rank was expected to own a slave or two—especially given the size of home she kept.

  Vita selected her words. ‘I shall answer your question with a question of my own,’ she said. ‘In the manner of the sophists.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Avidia gamely.

  ‘Why do you not indenture yourself to someone?’

  ‘Enslave myself for a time? Is that what you are asking?’

  ‘Yes. Or am I wrong to assume you have debts?’

  Avidia sighed. ‘You are not wrong.’

  ‘Then why do you not simply indenture yourself? You would have a roof over your head and food to eat. You could pay your debt over time. You would not have to seek out paid work.’

  ‘But I would be the same as a slave. My life would not be my own.’

  Vita grinned. ‘Freedom is precious, is it not?’

  ‘It is.’

  Vita paused. ‘My mother was a slave.’

  Avidia studied Vita’s face, as if seeing it for the first time. ‘Ah.’

  Avidia’s silence belied her thoughts. She was obviously Roman, her gens as legitimate and ancient any other. Vita’s confession had instantly reversed their roles, making Avidia the higher-ranking woman and conferring upon Vita a particular kind of shame.

  Still, Vita did not regret her confession. She noticed the broken blood vessels meandering down Avidia’s cheeks. She could read years of sadness in the creases around the woman’s mouth and the bags around her eyes seemed accustomed to containing tears.

  There would be no judgement from Avidia—only compassion. ‘I divorced my husband last night,’ Vita added. ‘I have nowhere to go.’

  Avidia grasped Vita’s hand reassuringly. ‘Well, I suppose congratulations are in order,’ she said. Her face lit up with a genuine grin and she ran her hand through her mane of black curls. ‘I would offer you a place to stay, but I am afraid I sleep on the floor of the tavern most nights.’

  Vita gave Avidia a grateful bow. If she could find a large enough place to live, perhaps she could help Avidia off the tavern floor herself. ‘Magnus has given me five days in which to find a place. I just need to find something safe and inexpensive.’

  ‘Safe and inexpensive? Unlikely bedfellows in Rome. The cheapest insulae are in the Subura, but bad men roam that neighbourhood at night.’

  Vita swallowed hard. ‘Perhaps I can start by asking here in the Aventine. Surely the local matrons will know of something—possibly nearby.’

  ‘In that case you should not go knocking on doors until the afternoon,’ stated Avidia. ‘Just now all the matrons will be at the baths.’

  Vita turned and gazed down the entryway at the flooded atrium. All the matrons of the Aventine in one place? Perhaps the clean up could wait.

  ‘Come, dear Avidia,’ she said. ‘Let us go for a dip.’

  Chapter Three

  When the vigile’s wife wandered into the warm tepidarium that morning, Ven thought he was seeing a ghost. A halo of steam surrounded her as she padded noiselessly across the tiles and he felt certain that she was not walking, but floating.

  An unfamiliar lust gathered within him as his ghostly vision crossed to the warm pool—itself obscured by a cloud of vapour. The soft-footed ghost slipped off her drying cloth and hung it on
a hook.

  Blessed Isis, there she was, all of her, standing a pool’s length away from him, blurry in the mist, naked but for a loincloth. He feared to blink, lest she disappear into the steam.

  Not a ghost, but a goddess.

  It was the only way to explain what he saw. She was a divinity in the flesh, for no intangible spirit could have played host to such a generous apportionment of attractive curves. Her breasts alone were a revelation—so round and full, like abundance itself. They ruled over a pillowy stomach that spread into lush, wide hips and succulent thighs that seemed the perfect staging ground for worship.

  She stepped into the pool and started towards him.

  He redoubled his efforts on his domina’s back, which he was supposed to be rubbing. Still, he could hardly concentrate on the task and continued to look up as she approached, his heart beating faster.

  His own imagination had outdone itself. Red lips and dark brows were coming into view, along with long ropes of hair the colour of the sandy earth. It fell around her generous breasts, caressing her perfect pink nipples.

  She was an incarnation of divinity for certain, a dangerous ghost that he had summoned from the netherworld to remind him of what he could not have.

  ‘What is wrong, Ven?’ barked Lollia. ‘Why have you stopped rubbing?’

  ‘Apologies,’ Ven muttered.

  ‘My legs.’

  Ven moved to the other side of the massage bench, turning his back on the vision. His domina’s legs! What was the matter with him? He was a slave, after all. The only goddess he served was the one sprawled before him.

  The other was just vision—a meaningless fantasy he had conjured in his mind for a reason he could not guess. He cleared his mind and concentrated on his task, willing his ghostly siren to disappear for ever.

  * * *

  Vita hung her drying cloth on a hook and stepped into the warm pool. Her whole body relaxed as she let its balmy waters carry her worries away. There were precious few bathers today: a handful of swimmers and just a smattering of loungers on the benches at the far end of the expanse. It was the perfect morning for a swim.