Rubies of the Viper

by Martha Marks

  Several days a week, she went riding with Alexander; occasionally, Stefan came along. They might travel for an hour without talking, then dismount and sit together under the trees or on a rock by the sea, talking of everything from Alexander’s approach to poetics to the serious business of Theodosia’s estate. The change in her steward amazed her. He had grown ebullient since the night of the storm, laughing and joking with a spontaneity that Theodosia would not have thought possible before.

  One morning in June, the three made a trip to the Etruscan necropolis outside Caere. They approached from the west, walking their horses through narrow streets still rutted from the processions that had carried long-dead chieftains to their rest. Mint and wild garlic mingled with yellow calendula on the roadsides, their fragrances shouting down the dusty smell of old tufa. Swallows swooped and shrieked overhead, as if angered at this intrusion into their nesting grounds.

  Pausing at the first beehive-like structure, Theodosia touched the ridged stones and wondered about the people who had sculpted them.

  Stefan was leading the way along the street, with Theodosia in the middle and Alexander in the rear. Suddenly, he stopped between a pair of large tombs.

  “Race you to the top!” he said, taking off without warning.

  “You cheat!” Alexander shouted.

  Theodosia whirled in time to see him drop his reins and head for the mound nearest him. She eyed a third tomb on the opposite side of the street and decided to accept the challenge. It was a tough climb up the weed-covered dome, but when she reached the summit—panting and sweaty—her companions applauded from atop their perches.

  “What do I win?” Stefan called.

  “He does cheat, doesn’t he?” Theodosia shouted in Alexander’s direction. “You decide what he wins.”

  “We all win… a spectacular view.” Alexander pointed toward the southeast, behind Theodosia. “Just look.”

  Theodosia turned and gasped. Scores of grass-covered burial mounds filled the valley all the way to the distant hills, each one containing the remains of a family dead for half a millennium.

  “Hey,” she said after a while, “somebody needs to help me down.”

  Stefan hurried over and reached up to give her confidence. Near the bottom, her foot slipped. She would have fallen, but he caught her. Shaken, she clung to him for a bit, looking into his blue eyes. Then she jumped to safety.

  Further along the street, Theodosia stopped at another tomb. Narrow steps led down to the below-grade entrance.

  This is it.

  “Let’s see if I can still do this.” She slipped her right hand into a crevice at the edge of the slab that sealed the tomb. “They all have catches somewhere. Father showed me how to release this one. The trick is finding the right pressure point.”

  After a few more tries, the latch loosed its hold, and the door clicked open. Theodosia grabbed its smooth edge with her left hand.

  “Find something to prop this with,” she said. “We don’t want to get trapped. There’s no way to release the catch from inside.”

  Stefan left, returned with a rock that only he could have lifted, and dropped it in front of the open door.

  “Think that’ll do?”

  “Probably be here as long as the tomb is.”

  “I’m certainly not going to try to move it,” said Alexander as he led the way into the underground chamber.

  Theodosia followed, guided by a shaft of light from the stairwell. The air was clammy and cold. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw stone cornices and benches encircling the perimeter and frescoes of leaping dolphins, sea horses, and nobles at table.

  “The Etruscans were extraordinary people,” she said. “Treated their women as equals... which is something the Greeks and the Romans have never seen fit to do.” She dropped onto one of the carved benches. “Father once brought me to this tomb. It was his favorite, and he wanted me to see it.” Her voice echoed in the vaulted room. “Hardly anyone ever comes here anymore.”

  Stefan threw the bolt on one of the interior doors and opened it. A swell of dankness billowed into the outer chamber.

  “Somebody could live here,” he said, “and nobody else would ever know it.”

  “Father said they built their tombs just like their houses. When people died, they laid them on stone beds and surrounded them with everything they had used and enjoyed.”

  “But there’s nothing here.”

  “It’s all been stolen. Sad, isn’t it?”

  “Well,” said Alexander, “you own lots of Etruscan urns and statues. You could bring them all back.”

  “I don’t feel that sad.”

  <><><>

  They left the necropolis through the woods, planning to picnic by the river a mile or so away. The riverbed took a sharp bend where they came upon it.

  “How odd,” Theodosia said. “The bend seems to point straight to the necropolis. It’s almost like a sign from the gods!”

  “Maybe the gods want us to have our lunch here,” Alexander said. “Looks like a divine spot to me.”

  <><><>

  Theodosia wasn’t sure when Titus first learned of the extraordinary privileges she was now granting her two favorite servants, but from the very beginning, Otho knew everything she did.

  If she had spent an afternoon in the barn with Stefan, Otho berated her. If she had ridden alone with Alexander, he called her a fool. And once—when the three had planned a picnic trip to Lake Bracciano—he showed up on the road and accompanied them, changing the nature of the outing considerably.

  Theodosia often wondered which of her slaves was Otho’s spy.

  Still, she was happier now than ever before and—no longer fretting over Gaius’ brutal life and death—content to enjoy the summer as Titus and Otho battled for her favor. Though she expected to marry one of them some day, she never failed to experience a thrill when Stefan wrapped his hands around her waist and lifted her off the filly. And, with increasing frequency, she wondered what it would be like to kiss him.

  <><><>

  Alexander was updating the record books in his room one steamy morning early in July when a houseboy brought a summons to the library. He straightened his tunic and smoothed his hair as he walked through the peristyle and into the atrium. When he pushed aside the sapphire-blue curtain, he found Theodosia sitting at her desk, twisting the ring on her right index finger.

  “Lucilla’s sleeping with someone,” she said, without a greeting. “She slips out of her bedroom at night when she thinks I’m asleep.” Her eyes hardened. “Got any idea who it is?”

  Alexander threw up his hands in mock self-defense.

  “Hey, it’s not me!”

  She’s more upset than she’s letting on.

  “Oh, I know that. Ever devoted to your Antibe.”

  Alexander let his hands fall and looked away.

  Antibe.

  “It’s not just that she’s gone at night,” Theodosia went on. “It’s her whole attitude lately. She seems to resent everything I ask her to do.”

  “Want me to speak to her?”

  Theodosia shook her head and absentmindedly picked up her reed-pen.

  “She’s my maid. I can certainly tell her if her behavior displeases me.” She rapped the pen a couple of times against the edge the desk. “It’s just that... I gave her my word I wouldn’t interfere again in her romances.”

  “Again?”

  “It’s not much of a story.” The pen began rapping harder on the desk. “Do you know who she’s sleeping with?”

  “No, miss,” he lied.

  The rapping increased in intensity, then it stopped.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s Marcipor.” A few more thumps of the pen. “I can’t blame her for falling for him. He’s such a handsome fellow.”

  <><><>

  “She knows about you.” Alexander kept his voice low.

  Lucilla looked up from the corner table where she was sitting with Stefan. Her eyes widened suddenly,
and she wrinkled her nose. Lucilla always reminded Alexander of a rabbit—jumpy, with big ears and feet—but never more so than now.

  “What’re you talking about?”

  Alexander glanced cautiously around the rebuilt kitchen.

  Theodosia had been true to her word. Her slaves’ airy, new, above-ground barracks—with straw compacted into mattresses instead of spread on the floor, plus equally modern shuttered windows—was a model of benevolence, their improved bath more conducive to cleanliness. There was greater space between the kitchen tables now, but still it was easy to hear what one’s fellows were saying.

  He pulled a stool from a nearby table.

  “She knows you’re sleeping with someone,” he whispered to Lucilla. “She knows you leave her suite at night.”

  “If she don’t like it,” Lucilla said with a shrug, “she’ll let me know.”

  Alexander turned to Stefan.

  “She suspects it’s you, although she’s trying to convince herself it’s Marcipor.”

  “It might have been Marcipor.” Stefan smiled at Lucilla as she laid her hand on his knee. “’Cept she found somebody better.”

  He put his hand atop Lucilla’s and gave it a gentle squeeze.

  “But why should the mistress care? Slaves was sleeping with slaves a thousand years ago. What’s a healthy man supposed to do around here? Rape Theodosia Varro?”

  “She’d probably like that.” Lucilla giggled. “You know how she teases you.”

  “She don’t know she teases.”

  “Look, Stefan.” Alexander tried to be patient. “You’re not just a stable hand any more. You’re the mistress’ oldest friend. Her dearest friend.”

  “He’s my dearest friend, too,” Lucilla said.

  Alexander ignored her.

  “Don’t you realize how much she cares about you?”

  “Too bad.” Lucilla’s hand slipped out from under Stefan’s and slid along his thigh. “Because the one he cares about is me.”

  “That attitude will get both of you into trouble. We’re not talking about Rila, the goatherd’s daughter.”

  Stefan was unimpressed.

  “Hell, I was sleeping with Rila before Theodosia Varro came back. What’s the difference if I sleep with her goatherd’s daughter or with her maid?”

  “Well, for one thing, Theodosia Varro doesn’t wake up in the night and call for her goatherd’s daughter to attend her.”

  Alexander turned his attention to Lucilla.

  “If I were you, I’d be worried about what happens when she decides to find a maid who’s more interested in serving her than in screwing her coachman.”

  “Mind your own business. I’ve been with her for two years. I know her better than you.”

  “You can go ahead and take a short cut to the slave market, for all I care. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let you drag Stefan along with you.”

  “I ain’t dragging him nowhere! He’s man enough to decide who he sleeps with. Besides... she promised I could have anyone here I wanted.”

  Lucilla’s arms encircled Stefan’s waist. Then she stuck her tongue out at Alexander.

  “Don’t think I’ll give him up just because she’s itching to get her hands on his prick!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nizzo showed up the morning of the last day of July. Alexander led him to the library and went to find Theodosia. It was too hot to ride these days, so she had taken to spending a few hours each day in the barn, talking with Stefan as he worked among her horses.

  Alexander knew exactly what would happen today. Nizzo would argue for her to sell him the farm, and she would argue for him to make changes, and neither would budge. At least that was what had happened in June when the freedman last came to the villa.

  From the peristyle an hour later, Alexander saw them pass by, headed for the service yard.

  She’s giving him a tour.

  Curious, he stepped out and strode along behind them.

  Theodosia’s new kitchen-bath-and-barracks building was everything Nizzo opposed. He made sure that she knew it.

  Neither was he impressed by the sight of Nicanor in his clean brown tunic, his wounds healed and his belly fuller than it had ever been before.

  <><><>

  That afternoon, Alexander was in a storage room, supervising one of Milo’s assistants as he measured grain, when he heard someone call his name. He stepped outside and flagged down the houseboy.

  “The mistress commands your presence. She’s real angry.”

  Alexander left the kitchen worker to finish his task and strode through the peristyle to the atrium. He found Theodosia standing in front of the sapphire-blue curtain.

  “Get in here.”

  Astonished at the fury in her voice, Alexander followed her into the library. Euripides’ Andromache, which they had taken turns reading aloud last evening, lay on the floor. He remembered leaving it open on a table when they parted. Now he bent, picked up the scroll, and handed it to her.

  “I don’t want it,” she said. “I threw it down there.”

  “Then what—”

  “Open it.” Her voice was icy, her eyes equally cold.

  Alexander unrolled the scroll. Inside was a sheet of papyrus identical to those in her desk. On the sheet, scrawled but legible, was a laughable attempt at a rhymed couplet.

  The sad fate of the brother

  will soon come to the sister.

  Alexander looked up. Theodosia’s face was pale and pinched; her hands trembled despite an obvious effort to steady them.

  She’s more frightened than angry.

  “This is nonsense,” he said, laying the sheet on a table.

  “I wonder.”

  “You wonder... what, miss?”

  “Why you wrote that and left it for me to find.”

  “I thought we’d gotten past suspicions like that. I didn’t write this, you know.”

  “No, I don’t know that.”

  “Well, it’s true. Threatening you is the last thing I’d ever do.”

  “If you didn’t write it, who did?”

  “Someone who wanted to make you mistrust me.”

  “Who else knows you write poetry?”

  “Just Stefan. But he can’t write, so even if he—”

  “I’d never suspect Stefan of something like this!” The confidence in her voice was devastating.

  You’d suspect me, but not him.

  Never before had Alexander been jealous of Stefan’s special, life-long relationship with their mistress, but jealousy swept over him now.

  “You have access to my library,” Theodosia continued.

  “I never come alone. Not allowed to, remember?”

  “You were here last night.”

  “You invited me in.”

  “You knew what I was reading.”

  “So would anyone who saw that scroll on the table.”

  “You are the one who wrote that.”

  “No!”

  “I say yes!”

  Jealousy quickly gave way to panic as Alexander realized there was no way he could prove his innocence. He hadn’t seen that frozen look in Theodosia Varro’s eyes since their first encounter back in May.

  “Miss, I— If you’ve learned nothing else about me by now, you should know—” He faltered again, groping for a credible defense. “If I’d written this, it would be better poetry!”

  He felt the blood congealing in his veins under her fixed, icy stare.

  Gods, I will run this time. I can’t stand being sold again.

  After a terrible, lengthy interval, Theodosia blinked. Crossing the space between them, she put a hand on his shoulder and shook it.

  “That’s what I thought. I’m sorry, Alexander. I had to make sure... test you… see how you’d react.”

  Her face was close to his, her eyes intense, her clove-oil fragrance almost too delicious for him to bear. He turned his own eyes away as relief coursed through his body.

  Theodosia released
his shoulder then, and though for a time he could not face her, he knew she was still very close.

  “You frightened me, miss. Please don’t do that again. If you have a doubt about me or a question about something you think I’ve done... give me the chance to answer you in a normal way.”

  “Actually, I wasn’t sure I could frighten you.”

  “Oh, you can. Don’t worry!” Alexander met her eyes again. “A slave’s greatest fear—at least for one like me, who lives or dies on his owner’s confidence—is losing that confidence.”

  “Then you, at least, can relax now.” Theodosia rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “I, on the other hand, still have to figure out who wants to see me dead.”

  She hasn’t looked this frightened in months.

  Alexander wanted to wrap his arms around her, to comfort her, but he resisted the temptation. Such gestures weren’t for slaves.

  “It’s Nizzo,” Theodosia said, fingering the sheet. “Didn’t you leave him here alone this morning when you went to find me?”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions.”

  “Hey, I’ve been threatened in my own home! I’ll jump to any conclusions I like. I don’t want that man here ever again. Don’t ever want to see him again. You’ll deal with him at the farm. Understand?”

  Alexander nodded.

  “Damn Nizzo!” She wadded the sheet and threw it to the floor. “I thought I was over Gaius’ death. Felt really safe again. I was so afraid when I first got here, especially of you. Now, just when I’d relaxed—”

  She broke off in mid sentence, knelt beside the wad, and stared at it.

  Can’t you see that somebody wants you afraid again?

  An instant later, she raised her eyes... bright with discovery.

  “Nizzo murdered Gaius!”

  Alexander gave half a laugh.

  “Impossible. He had no motive, nothing to gain.”

  Theodosia stood up and nodded.