by Martha Marks
“No doubt you feel the same way about me.”
“I did, till just now.”
“What changed your mind?”
Alexander turned his head and looked directly into Theodosia’s eyes at close range. The sudden intimacy caught her off guard, yet she didn’t seem able to move.
“Perhaps I see that you possess all the attributes your brother lacked. You’re bright, intuitive, and clearly a moral woman. If it’s true, as you say, that my face and voice and bearing betray my former freedom, then it’s equally evident that you would do no harm to anyone.”
Theodosia wanted to look away but couldn’t.
“So, you see,” Alexander said, “no matter how stern you’d like your slaves to think you are, it’s a pose as translucent as the wings of a butterfly.”
Now it was Theodosia’s turn to be speechless. After a moment, she freed her eyes from the grasp of his and moved to the next window, propped her palms on each side of the frame and turned her head slightly toward him.
“All this makes me wonder what form your rebellion will take... now that I’ve discovered your secret and you mine.”
“Perhaps I will feel no need to rebel against you. It should be a pleasant novelty to serve a Roman who is not only wealthy and powerful but intelligent and moral as well. From what I’ve seen, that’s a rare combination indeed.”
Theodosia threw her head back and laughed aloud at that sally, feeling at ease with him for the first time.
“Oh, Alexander! I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m afraid you’re in for a terrible letdown.”
“Why? Which of those attributes doesn’t fit? Your morality? Your wealth?” Irony again.
“Actually, I wish that were it.” She snickered. “Look, I’m just a woman, which means that the foulest free-born Roman male sleeping off his cheap-wine stupor in the street has more legal rights than I. And just wait till I marry. If I marry. Watch what happens then to my freedom, my property, and my so-called power. Besides,” she said, over-enunciating for effect, “my mother was Greek, which makes me a half-breed, neither fish nor fowl. A huge social obstacle. So you see, Alexander, we are both pawns at the mercy of Rome.”
Alexander frowned at that. Without a word, he went to the chest, which still lay open awaiting the return of its plundered contents. Reaching in, he removed another—much smaller—box. Then he stood before her again, his deportment much more formal than a moment before. With a stiff bow, he handed the tiny box to her unopened.
Puzzled, Theodosia dropped her eyes and lifted the lid. Inside, nestled into a white linen cloth, lay a gold signet ring.
Father’s seal. The symbol of Varro prestige for generations.
“Lucius Sergius Silus,” said Alexander, “took it off your brother’s hand the day after the murder and gave it to me for safekeeping.”
Theodosia slipped the ring onto the index finger of her right hand. It was much too big.
“Why did you wait till this moment to give it to me?”
“You forbade me to bring anything else out of the chest, remember? But maybe it’s not such bad timing, after all, since you appear to need consolation for your hopeless position in this cruel world that has treated you so savagely.”
“I guess to someone in your position, my position doesn’t seem too bad at all.”
“No, miss, it doesn’t.”
It was the first time that Alexander had dropped the stiff “mistress” in favor of the diminutive commonly used by close family servants. It was a natural shift that reflected the changing tenor of their relationship.
Their meeting had taken most of the day; soon it would be dinnertime. Theodosia remembered with regret that she had deprived Alexander of his lunch.
“Return the boxes to the chest and lock it up. Then, I suspect, you’ll want to finish that meal I forced you to abandon.”
She was almost to the door when he called to her.
“One more thing, miss, please. With your permission, I’d like to burn some old documents that I recently found in the chest. Nothing you’ll ever need.”
Theodosia glanced back.
Those old things are part of my heritage.
“No. Hold on to them for now. I may want to take a look at them someday.”
Chapter Five
Alexander completed his task and returned to the cubicle that was a perquisite of his position. Most of the household slaves slept on straw piles in dank barracks below the kitchen. The stable hands enjoyed fresher air, but their loft above the horses was a firetrap. The shepherds and goatherds lived in mud huts a mile to the north, with their own families, kitchen, garden, chickens, and dogs—a self-contained community. The only ones who slept in the villa were the porter, Lucilla, and Alexander.
His tiny room at the service end of the peristyle had little in common with the rest of the house. No frescoes brightened its tufa walls. No mosaic enlivened its cement floor. Besides the low bed, there were only a small chest and a lamp. No chair. No window. The rear wing was far from the hypocaust that heated the family rooms; it was cold in winter.
But this was Alexander’s sanctuary. Here alone he found privacy.
Tired and tense after the astonishing afternoon with Theodosia Varro, he closed the door, stretched out, and tried not to hear the voices of waiters carrying her dinner to the dining room. Yesterday at this time he hadn’t even met the new mistress. Now they knew one another, but the master-slave formality that Alexander had expected—and used so well to keep his distance from Gaius—had evaporated in just a few hours.
Wide-eyed, he stared at the ceiling, thinking of that evening a week ago when he had followed Stefan up the creaky ladder to the stable loft. He remembered his amazement as Stefan pulled a gunny sack out from under a pile of straw and handed Alexander his treasures: a painted wooden doll, a child’s silver cup, and a lock of the same golden-brown hair that would later catch Alexander’s eye in the library... keepsakes of a girl Stefan had loved all his life and never expected to see again.
But Alexander had just told him that she was, in fact, coming back.
Now, as he lay on his bed in the black cubicle, two faces appeared side by side on the ceiling, as if by some magic of his mind. The gold-flecked eyes and creamy features of one were sharp and fresh. He knew Theodosia Varro’s voice, her delicate clove-oil fragrance, the way her hair gleamed in the sun. The other face was harder to recall... just an olive-toned oval surrounded by dark, curly hair. The vagueness of Antibe’s features haunted him.
Sweet gods of Greece, I can’t even remember the color of her eyes!
After a time, he lit the lamp, took a sheet of papyrus from the chest, and began to write in Greek. The poem came slowly... a love lyric to the young wife whose face and voice seemed harder to recall with each passing year. When it was done, he lay back and let himself fall asleep.
When he awoke, he knew by the din in the kitchen hall that the mistress had finished her meal. He bundled the poem with others in the chest, stepped into the bright night, and made his way—as he often did—to an ancient pine at the edge of the garden, beside the sea. Most times when Alexander had gone out like this, his master had been in Rome and the suite on the second floor dark and shuttered. But tonight the shutters were open, and between them he saw the crimson, green, and gold frescoes aglow in the light of the lamp-trees. Soft notes of a cithara drifted out. A clear, lovely voice was singing in Greek.
He stood for a while staring at the water, enjoying the music.
Then, abruptly, it stopped. He glanced up to see a white-clad figure step onto the balcony. It was Theodosia Varro.
She leaned against the railing and raised her face to the sky, apparently unaware of the man in the shadows below. Alexander watched her briefly, then slipped away to the kitchen.
The new mistress had respected his privacy. He would not spy on her.
<><><>
Theodosia paced restlessly in her suite. Worries chased each other through her head like angry
squirrels.
Fear from the unsolved mystery of Gaius’ murder...
Anxiety about her too-frank conversation with Alexander...
Guilt for the absurd fortune in her strongbox...
And a strange new emotion that she couldn’t yet define...
Lucilla had unpacked the cithara that Phoebe had taught Theodosia to play so long ago. Hoping to take her mind off her worries, Theodosia picked out a few ballads before laying it down. The muse was absent.
With the cithara came memories of early days in the Subura. After Phoebe’s death, Theodosia had kept honing her skill at improvising. In recent years, Lucilla, the cithara, and a few books had provided companionship at times like this. But Lucilla had disappeared tonight.
The soft night beckoned, so she went to her balcony. A hum of voices from the kitchen formed a counterpoint to the waves breaking on the rocks below. Lucilla would be there with the others.
Love to know what they’re talking about.
Theodosia propped her arms on the railing and gazed at Orion.
My only companion tonight, I guess.
And then she knew. Loneliness was the new emotion tormenting her.
It was one thing to be a poor girl living with her maid, and quite another thing to be the mistress of an estate like this. For years, she and Lucilla had ignored the social gap between them as they shopped and cooked and ate every meal together. But that gap had widened fast in the last few days and would continue to grow.
Can I ever confide in Lucilla again if I think she’ll be out there every night, gossiping about me with my other slaves?
As the hubbub from the kitchen heightened the silence of the elegant apartment, Theodosia realized how thoroughly alone she was.
Everyone has someone to talk to but me.
She decided to take a walk.
Downstairs, she tiptoed past old Jason, the porter—one of the few servants left from her father’s day—who was dozing as he always had on his couch by the main door, and hurried out to the gardens. Meticulously designed when the villa was new, they swept along three sides of the house, engulfed the pergola, and fanned out to embrace the shore.
Enjoying the silver light that fell through the vines and leaves onto the stone floor, Theodosia made her way to the far side of the pergola and stared into the cove below, where she had often played as a child.
Juno the moon winked conspiratorially, slipping from cloud to cloud, teasing her to the beach. The rocky steps were moss-covered and slick. Weeds whipped her ankles, but she reached the bottom without slipping.
Halfway across the beach she kicked off her sandals and squished through the sand to a flat boulder lying just above the tide. There she climbed up, dangled her feet into the water, and reclined on the rock. Spellbound, she savored the mass of stars and the rustic silence—so unlike the cacophony of Rome at night—and lost track of time.
After a while, hearing voices, she glanced toward the pergola overhead. Staring down at her were Alexander and the gigantic stable hand. She turned her face away, hoping they would ignore her, but when she looked again they had reached the bottom of the steps and were headed in her direction.
“What are you doing here?” she said in Greek, sitting up but making no effort to pull her feet from the water.
The steward came as close as he could without wading into the surf, leaving his companion a few paces behind. He answered in Latin.
“Lucilla was worried about you, miss.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” she said in Latin. “I’ll be along in a bit.”
The giant came forward now, too, and addressed Theodosia. It was a terrible breach of protocol since she hadn’t acknowledged him, much less given him permission to speak. Furthermore, as if to compound his impudence, he used the familiar form of address.
“It ain’t safe for you to come here alone, miss,” he said in uneducated Latin, and suddenly Theodosia understood why Alexander had switched languages. “There are brigands up and down the coast. Bet they wouldn’t like nothing better than to get their hands on you.”
“What would it be to you if they did?”
“I’d feel bad, as an old friend... if you’ll let me use that term with you.” The big man looked anxious. “You don’t recognize me, do you? I’m Stefan, miss.”
“Stefan?” She frowned in disbelief. “Little Stefanus... who used to bring sweets from the kitchen for all of us to feast on down here?”
He nodded as his shaggy face relaxed under a grin.
“And once took a beating when I snitched a honey cake intended for the master’s dinner party. Have I changed so much, miss, that you didn’t know me?”
Theodosia lifted her feet from the water and rose to her full height on the boulder. The stable hand was standing in the sand, but still he towered above her.
“Stefan? Oh yes, you have changed. Quite a bit! I had no idea who you were.”
She gave him her hands and let him help her off the rock.
“Why didn’t you come in last night to say hello?”
Stefan stared at her, saying nothing. It was Alexander who answered.
“He hasn’t been sure how to deal with you, miss. You spent many years in Rome, and he didn’t know how you’d feel now about people who knew you as a child. Especially since your brother sold off almost everyone else he’d grown up with.”
“Well, I’m not my brother! But, Stefan, why didn’t Gaius sell you, too?”
“Oh, he threatened to many times, up to a couple of days before he got killed. Alexander always managed to talk him out of it. Kept telling him how much more I’d be worth in the market once I stopped growing.”
Theodosia turned grateful eyes to Alexander.
Then she went to find her sandals, slipped them on, and headed for the stairs. Back in the gardens, she looked once more toward the cove.
“I love it down there. Doesn’t the army try to capture the brigands?”
“They go on raids every month,” Alexander said, “and they do get some each time, but they can’t get all of them.”
“Escaped slaves, no doubt. Have any of ours ever joined them?”
Then she blushed, suddenly uncomfortable with the topic.
“Not to join the brigands,” Alexander said. “But three fellows did run off together a few years ago.”
“What happened to them? Did they get away?”
“My lord Gaius hired men to hunt them. It took many months and lots of money, but eventually they caught two in Sicily and returned them to him.”
“What did Gaius do?”
“You know the usual punishment for running away.”
“Flogging,” she said softly. “Crucifixion, sometimes, if the escape is part of a slave uprising.”
“My lord Gaius decided to do both, to teach us all a good lesson, so the next day he sent for a meatman.”
“Meatman?”
“A professional flogger, miss.” Alexander’s tone was cool.
“With a set of mean-looking whips.” Stefan was more passionate. “Sharp pieces of metal set into the thongs.”
“You know that big double oak by the kitchen?” Alexander’s voice remained chillingly placid. “Well, the meatman crucified those two on it early one morning. Drove his long iron spikes through their hands and wrists... one man on each side of the double trunk, so they faced each other through the gap. They hung there the whole day, screeching and begging for mercy. That evening, your brother made all the rest of us watch as the meatman whipped them to death, right there on that tree.”
“What about the third man who ran away?” Theodosia asked when she trusted herself to speak.
“We never heard anything more from him.”
Without another word, Theodosia set off at a clip for the house. Halfway along the path, she stopped and turned.
“Something’s just occurred to me. That runaway you mentioned, the one who never was caught— Couldn’t he have been one of the thugs who ambushed my brother? Maybe he r
ecognized Gaius during the robbery and decided to kill him.”
“Not likely,” Alexander said.
“No, listen! Wealthy patricians don’t tend to get murdered on the street in Rome. Robbed, yes, but not killed. However, if one of the thugs was the third man who escaped from here... wouldn’t he have had reason for wanting to avenge his friends? That’s got to be it! He was involved in a robbery, a random crime on the street, when he saw his chance to get even!”
Alexander’s eyes darted from Theodosia’s face to Stefan’s.
“It wasn’t a robbery, miss. The master’s gold signet ring was still on his finger when the officials recovered his body later that night.”
“Well... robbers wouldn’t take anything so identifiable.”
“There were no robbers involved. And it wasn’t a random act.”
Theodosia paused for a moment. Alexander spoke with conviction, yet this information, if true, would shatter everything her fragile sense of security was built on.
“How do you know that?” she demanded.
The steward merely shook his head.
“Alexander, statements like that don’t come out of the blue. You must have some reason.”
“Please don’t ask me for reasons. I’m telling you the truth, but I can’t tell you how I know about it.”
Theodosia felt a surge of anger.
“Look, just because you refused to answer a few questions this morning—”
“That’s not it, miss.”
“Then... you’re saying the bearers really were guilty and the investigators covered it up. A lot of people thought so, and when the litter slaves were put to death it seemed to corroborate that rumor. But I didn’t believe it since the emperor didn’t order the execution of Gaius’ entire household in Rome.” She paused again. “There’s no getting around a certain question. Tribune Otho told me he saw you in Rome the day Gaius was murdered. Said he talked to you and—”