Empire's End

by Leila Rasheed

  “Is he handsome? Is he very old?”

  I shrugged. “I think he’s about twenty. I don’t know if he is handsome.” I didn’t like talking about Publius, because there were so many things I didn’t know and couldn’t find out. Besides, my mother had become even more nervous now that we were preparing to leave. She kept me inside most of the day, sewing and weaving. It was as if she was afraid I would do something to disgrace us all before I got to Rome. “Now you are soon to be married,” she kept on saying, “things are different.”

  My reading became extremely boring, and also worrying. There was no more Aeneid; instead there were endless stories about how to be a good wife and mother. I was ready to learn about how to be a perfect Roman woman, but I did wonder why so many of them had to die in the end.

  “I wish I was married,” I complained to Livia. “I’d be my own mistress then.” The more I had to sit inside on days when it was sunny outside, the more I couldn’t wait to get to Rome.

  “The Emperor has two sons,” said Livia thoughtfully. “You could marry one of them.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I think they’re even older than Publius.”

  “So?” Livia picked up Lucia, my wooden doll, the one I hadn’t played with for a long time now. Lucia had long, slim limbs that really moved, and womanly curves. We had spent hours, Livia and I, playing at households and shopping with our dolls. We had visited Rome a thousand times in games. We had made clothes for them with scraps of our own old clothes. Now, Livia turned Lucia back and forth, like a noblewoman looking over a potential slave girl.

  “You should give your childhood dolls to Venus,” Livia told me. “It’s the elegant thing to do.”

  I didn’t really want to give Lucia away, even to a goddess. But after I had shown off about becoming a grown-up married lady, I felt I had to. Besides, it would get me out of the house for once. My mother listened, then nodded: the idea pleased her.

  “I am glad you are accepting childhood is over,” she said. “You are of the age when you should be married – whatever the philosophers say. You need a household of your own, and some children to keep you busy.”

  I wasn’t sure about that, but at least I was going outside.

  “You can come with me to the temple,” I told Nurse. “You will enjoy that, won’t you? You have never seen the temple of Venus.”

  Nurse smiled at me. There seemed a shadow in her eyes though, and she moved more slowly these days, as if carrying a heavy weight. But I had no time to worry about her as the days went on and my father began to arrange our passage to Rome. A whole household – all of us, and our belongings, and our slaves – had to be packed up. The horses were sold and the hens, too. I cried when the horses were taken away. I loved them.

  “Perhaps I can have a horse when I am married,” I said to Livia.

  Livia snorted.

  “Horses are only for men. Roman women do not ride – they are carried, like precious treasures.”

  The only creatures that still hung around the courtyard were the stray cats. Last year’s kittens were young toms now. Late in the night the brothers wailed and squalled and slashed each other’s ears with their sharp claws, fighting over territory, until someone forced themself to get out of bed and sling a sandal and a string of curses at them.

  One evening, the moment I had quietly dreaded arrived.

  “Miss,” Nurse began. She was at the door of my bedroom. “May I speak to you?”

  I knew she had come to see me especially, and chosen a moment my parents were both busy at the opposite end of the house. I feared what she was going to say, so I began talking quickly, trying to pretend she was not going to say it.

  “Of course, Nurse!” I rushed. “I am so looking forward to going to Rome! They say that everyone must see it once before they die. Aren’t you excited, Nurse? I’m so excited for you! Just think, who could have known you would be lucky enough to see Rome? You know Livia said we should sell you before we leave, but I said I would never sell you; I want you with me forever. I may have children some day and then you could look after them too and we would be so happy, wouldn’t we? So happy!”

  I went on like this for a long time. I can hardly bear to remember it. She waited for me to stop talking, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t. And in the end, because my throat was getting dry, I said: “I’m so sorry, Nurse, I have to go, my mother is calling me.”

  There was a pause as we both listened to the complete silence, and then she smiled sadly, and nodded, and stepped back into the shadows.

  In the end, there was so much to do that it was not until the day before we were due to take ship for Rome that my mother had time to take me to dedicate Lucia to Venus at the temple. The night before, I folded Lucia’s best dresses, thinking how long I had spent making them, imagining the day I would be a woman myself and have dresses like these. My heart beat fast. It made me feel a little sick to think that tomorrow, Lucia would be gone forever – gone to the goddess of love. It did not matter that it was years since I had played with her. She was leaving me. I would be alone. Grown up. A woman. The future looked as dark and mysterious as the sea at night, with only a dim path of moonlight, and shadows everywhere else.

  “Look after her, Venus,” I whispered. It took me a long time to fall asleep.

  When I woke up, I thought at once of Nurse. I would need her to help me get ready. I opened the door but she was not sleeping outside as she usually was.

  “Nurse,” I called, but she did not come. Annoyed at her laziness – today of all days – I hurried to get myself dressed. When I needed my hair brushed I came out again to look for her. But she was not there.

  My mother was looking for me, flustered. No one had seen Nurse, but there was no time to hunt for her. We had to hurry to the temple. My mother’s slave girl did my hair, and we went out in the litter – our hand-carried chair – together. My mother insisted on a closed litter, for her usual reason: “Now that you are soon to be married.”

  Behind the curtains of the litter, it was stuffy. I could not see the streets, except glimpses as the curtains swayed. I could smell things though: donkeys and goats, the fishmongers, baking bread and the vinegary sharp smell of wine and pickles. And garum: my favourite, salty fish sauce that made everything taste better. On a horse, I thought, I would be able to see far above people’s heads.

  We took a long time to get to the temple, for there were errands my mother needed to run on the way, but at last we arrived. A group of worshippers were already there. Some were girls, like me, with dolls in their hands. We glanced at each other shyly, but there was no time to make friends. Before I knew it, I had laid my doll on the altar of Venus. There was the smell of incense and a priestess recited prayers, and we were moved on – after my mother had given a donation, of course, for the temple roof. My prayer had gone to Venus, along with Lucia and her six dresses that I had sewn together with my own clumsy hands. The next clothes I sewed would be real clothes for real children, I realised. The thought made my stomach feel as if caged birds were fluttering all around inside it.

  My mother kept me close to her as we left the temple and returned to our waiting litter. I almost wanted to cry. I felt a little foolish, let down by the day and nervous about the future. Most of all, I felt angry with Nurse, for not being there, for being missing on the very first day I was grown up. I thought of all the cruel, stern, reproachful things I would say to her when I got back.

  But when I got back, she was not there.

  By the evening, it was clear – unbelievably – that she had run away.

  *

  “Someone has stolen her,” I said to my father. “Nurse would never run away. This is her home.”

  He looked at me with pity, but shook his head. “Who would steal an old woman? No, it’s clear she has gone. She picked a good day to run, knowing we would be sailing the next day. I will send out messengers and when she is caught she will be returned to Livia’s family, who will deal with her.”

 
“But – what will happen to her?”

  “She has run away. They will have to whip her or brand her.”

  “No!”

  “Camilla, if we do not, what is to stop every slave from doing the same?”

  “But not Nurse!”

  My father took my hand and led me to the window. From the window of his study we could look down towards the busy city and the marketplace.

  “You remember how we admired the arch that Septimius Severus gave to us?” said my father to me. “Do you remember how it stands up? I told you.”

  I shook my head. I did remember, but I didn’t want to.

  “It stands up because every stone remains in its allotted place, and does not change its position. In the same way, being a Roman means keeping your place and doing your duty, even when it is hard,” my father told me. “Out there, there are millions of slaves. They are in every household. They stay in their place because they respect the strength of Rome. The law says that if one slave kills his master, all the slaves in the household must be put to death, even if there are hundreds of them.”

  “That’s. . . not fair!”

  “It is Roman law. It is our law. We have peace, because our law works. We must show the world how Rome behaves to rebels, or every slave will rise up and destroy us. We did not ask to be Romans, but we are – and we must hold together.”

  There was nothing else for me to say. I cried in my room for the rest of the night.

  How could Nurse have run off? I asked myself over and over again. How could she have been so ungrateful? I punched my cushion and pretended it was her. I would have broken my doll and pretended it was her, but Lucia was with Venus now.

  None of it made a difference. The next day the weather was fair, and we set sail for Rome, as planned.

  208 AD

  6.

  Cold Marble

  We set sail from Leptis Magna on a hot spring day. The harbour was crowded with a consignment of panthers and lions for the games in Rome, and as soon as I heard the snarling from the cages and smelled the reek of them, all thoughts of Nurse were driven out of my head. Their eyes were as fierce as the sun itself – I couldn’t look into them without blinking. I had never seen anything so golden. My mother went into a panic: what if they got loose on the ship?

  But the crossing was calm and none of the beasts got loose. We could even wave to the other ships that were travelling alongside us. I saw my first dolphins, threading like silver needles through the sun-glittering sea, and the captain pointed out a plume of smoke from the island where the god Vulcan’s forge was said to be. Mountains rose, blue shadows on the horizon. Veils of cloud hung over them. High up, beyond the clouds, in a bright, shining world, the gods lived. Maybe Lucia was up there with Venus, I thought to myself. And then we were in Italia: the home of the Romans, the heart of the Empire.

  As soon as we reached dry land, we were flung into a confident, sweaty, bustle of people who all seemed to know where they were going. We must have stood out as new arrivals, because carriage drivers swarmed around us immediately.

  “Bargain ride – direct to Rome!”

  “Looking for a carriage? This is the fastest – you’ll go like Mercury!”

  I clung to my mother’s hand, but my father, eyes gleaming, charged into the fray and came back with a carriage driver he swore was the best and cheapest of all. I wasn’t sure about that, but I was just glad to get away from the port.

  We travelled up the busy Appian Way. I peered through the window of the carriage, fascinated by the messengers galloping by on official business, the farmers and slaves working in the fields. It all seemed so busy. It was busy in Leptis too, but now I felt as if the place I had come from was rough and crude. It was not so much that the villas I glimpsed from the carriage were finer and more magnificent than the ones in Leptis, or that there were more of them. It was just that they had a way of looking completely at home in the landscape, as if they were safe.

  Yes, safe. That was how it felt here – that we were at the heart of the Empire, not on the borders. Look wherever you wanted, you saw only Rome. It was hard to believe that this was all under the control of someone my father had once played marbles with. Even harder to believe that in the year I was born, the Empire had been in such chaos that it was sold off by its soldiers to the highest bidder. I thought of Septimius Severus with more awe and fear than I had ever done before. It was as if we were going to meet Hercules or Dionysus.

  My father had arranged for us to break the journey with an old friend who was spending the summer in one of these villas. We left the main road and followed a path up the hill. Cypress trees cast long shadows over the fields where some slaves were still toiling. I remembered Nurse, and wondered where she was and if she was safe. In the distance, sunlight flashed from metal and I thought of hot metal burning, branding skin.

  “What a beautiful house,” my mother breathed, breaking into my sad thoughts.

  The sun was setting, casting a pink and lilac glow over the villa and the vineyards that ran down the hill to the river. As we approached I could see my father’s friend standing smiling and waiting for us under the portico. We stepped down from the carriage, rattled and tired and sweaty.

  “Quintus Camillus, my friend!” the master of the house called out, and hurried to embrace my father. Lucius was a big, jolly man, whom my father would have diagnosed with an excess of yellow bile if he had met him in the street in Leptis Magna.

  “Lucius!” My father’s eyes were full of tears of joy. “And, Aemilia, you don’t look a day older than when I last saw you.”

  Lucius’ wife stepped forwards with a gracious smile. She was tall and dressed in silk, with gold and pearls around her neck and a jewelled ring for every slender finger. I felt travel-dusty and awkward, next to her.

  “You’re back from exile in the provinces!” Lucius clapped my father on the back.

  “Finally,” my father replied. “Back at the heart of things, where I should be.”

  “Ah, there is nowhere like Rome,” Lucius said with a grin. “You have been away for so long – you must hear the latest gossip. Did you know that the senate. . .”

  They vanished into the depths of the house, leaving us with Lucius’ wife.

  “Your house is beautiful, Aemilia,” said my mother.

  “Oh, just a country villa, but we have a good site for it,” she said modestly. “But come in, you must be so thirsty and hungry after your long journey!”

  We went in and paid our respects to the family gods, Lares and Penates, in the entrance hall. As we walked into the courtyard, slaves came scurrying with bowls of rosewater and dried fruits. I tried not to stare, but it was impossible not to notice how comfortable, well-designed and carefully tended the house was. Water danced in fountains, cooling the air. Vines embraced the pillars, making shade from which ripe grapes hung down temptingly. If you glanced towards any window or arch, you were sure to see some especially beautiful bit of mountain or sea, framed as if in a picture. It was clear that it had all been planned to show off everything that was beautiful about the area. There were no stray cats slinking about, and although there were plenty of slaves, none of them were sitting by the impluvium, comfortably carding wool that still smelled of sheep. I swallowed, feeling homesick for our simpler world.

  Aemilia looked at us with fascination as we washed our hands and politely nibbled the fruit.

  “It must be so hard to live in the provinces,” she murmured. “I hear it is complete desert in Libya – dry as a bone! With barbarians and wild beasts swarming everywhere!”

  My mother and I opened our mouths at the same moment to protest.

  “There are beautiful gardens in Leptis, and we too have green mountains,” my mother said. “And our theatre has the most magnificent views of the sea.”

  “Really?” Aemilia was clearly not sure that Leptis Magna contained anything to match up to Rome. “Just one theatre? Poor you.”

  When we went for dinner, we we
re even more amazed. We had owned one bust of the Emperor. Here, in the triclinium alone, there were several, all in different colours of marble. Everywhere you looked were elegant bronze statues, or murals that looked like real life.

  “So close to Rome, one can get anything,” Aemilia said with a wave of her elegant, pale hand, ringed with cameos and gold. “Our next project is a new bathhouse.”

  “We have a bathhouse,” grumbled Lucius.

  “Yes, but it’s so tired-looking – I hate setting foot in there.” Aemilia made a face. “So important to be up to date. I’m sure Camilla will agree?”

  She smiled at me and I blushed. Not even Livia’s family had a bathhouse of their own.

  Even in this cool spring weather, when the sun had almost set, I noticed Aemilia did not step outside without a slave coming running to hold a parasol over her head. When her fingers brushed my arm, they felt like cool marble. For the first time ever, I felt as if my skin was coarse and sunburned. After all, in all the pictures of the imperial family, Julia Domna, the Empress, was shown with ivory-pale skin. I washed extra hard that evening, not that it made any difference. I was as brown as a man, as Aemilia had pointed out over dinner.

  After Aemilia had left us alone in the bedroom we were to share, my mother removed her veil and shook the creases from it with surprising viciousness.

  “Lucius and Aemilia are very kind,” I ventured.

  “A pity they did not show us some of this kindness when your father was banished,” my mother replied. I was startled. It was the first time that I had ever heard her speak about that time.

  “They did not protect us then. No one in Rome did,” she added, then shut her lips tightly, as if she felt she had spoken too much.

  “I thought you left Rome because of the troubles the year I was born?”

  “No, your father was sent away before that. Some of the other doctors were jealous of his skill. They spoke ill of him to the Emperor Commodus. We were lucky he was not executed.” She sighed. “Rome is a dangerous place.”