by Martha Marks
“How long do you need?”
She thought for a moment.
“Until the end of the year. Give me till Saturnalia.”
“And if you agree, we’ll be married soon after?”
“If I agree.”
Titus released one of her hands; then he stroked her cheek and playfully tapped the tip of her nose with a finger.
“You’ll agree.” And he pulled her to him for a kiss.
Chapter Seventeen
Lucilla had changed. Sullen and snappish, she wore the same increasingly dirty tunic every day, let unkempt hair fall around her shoulders, and seldom took a bath. Alexander couldn’t understand why Theodosia put up with her.
Stefan, on the other hand, had never looked better. He shaved off his beard, changed into a clean tunic every day, and managed to find a lot of time to be with Theodosia. They spent six or seven hours together each day, with Stefan riding one of her best horses all over the estate and giving orders to the other slaves... even when Theodosia was present. Quite a few eyebrows were raised when he assigned another man to take over his chores in the barn, so it was no surprise that the household staff began making sour jokes about their “new master.”
Alexander was certain the mistress and her coachman weren’t sleeping together, because Stefan spent every night in the barn, but their curious new relationship left him feeling like an outsider. Lonesome and inexplicably annoyed, he turned his attention to Lycos, throwing himself into the boy’s education. Since Theodosia was seldom in the library these days, Alexander and Lycos reclaimed it... without asking permission.
They were there one morning early in November, reading on the couch, when Theodosia and Stefan came in. Alexander rose and took the scroll from Lycos, who jumped up and scurried out. Theodosia stopped a few steps into the room, with Stefan looming behind her. It was the first time all three had been together in weeks.
“I apologize for the unauthorized intrusion, mistress,” Alexander said. “Lycos and I didn’t expect you to come here today. We’ll go somewhere else.”
“What’s he reading now?” Her interest sounded forced.
“The Odyssey.”
“You must be doing well as a tutor.” She managed a thin smile. “I’m going to teach Stefan to read, too. Any idea how we should start?”
“I’ve never taught an adult, mistress. It would be presumptuous for me to give you advice.”
Theodosia turned to Stefan.
“I’d like to speak with Alexander alone.”
When Stefan had gone, she moved forward and laid her hand on Alexander’s shoulder.
“It’s been a month since you called me anything but ‘mistress.’ Have I done something you disapprove of?”
“Who am I to disapprove of anything you do?”
“You are, I thought, our friend. We don’t have so many friends, Stefan and I, that we can afford to lose any.”
Alexander retreated from her lovely eyes... far enough to free his shoulder from her fingers.
“I told you once—mistress... I don’t believe in friendship between a Roman and a slave. The power equation is too lopsided. The social barriers are too great.”
“But we were friends for a few months. Where were those barriers then?”
“Just because we managed to forget about them for a time, it doesn’t mean they weren’t there.”
She peered into his face, then shrugged her shoulders.
“Fine. Perform your duties as my steward, and I’ll not burden you with further attempts at friendship.”
<><><>
Stefan appeared at Alexander’s door that same afternoon, while Flavia was lunching with Theodosia.
“I got to talk to you.”
Alexander made a half-hearted gesture of welcome. Stefan dropped to the floor and leaned against the wall.
“Why are you so angry?” Stefan asked after a moment.
“Who says I’m angry?”
“You don’t talk to nobody. You avoid me, and Theodosia, too.”
“You call her ‘Theodosia’ now?”
“To her face, yes. That’s what she wants.”
“So, then... why assume I’m angry? Maybe I’m perplexed. Maybe I’m jealous. Maybe I’m worried about what’s going to happen when your great friendship dries up. Maybe I just don’t know how to handle the situation. Maybe... lots of things.”
“Because you act angry.”
“Well, angry is one thing I’m not. But I am worried. Have you and the—your Theodosia—have you talked at all about the future? About Titus? About Otho? About Stefan? With so much gossip swirling around you two, what do you think is going to happen to you when she marries?”
Stefan had sat silently, tracing circles with a finger in the dust on the cement floor as Alexander spoke. At last, he raised his eyes.
“She ain’t gonna marry.”
Alexander snorted.
“That sounds like wishful thinking on your part and, if it’s true, it’s not smart on her part.”
“Why? She’s happy now. She don’t need a husband to feed her or give her a home. She don’t need nothing she ain’t already got.”
“Oh, of course not. She’s got me to manage her estate and you to have sex with... just as soon as she works up the courage. What a cozy trio we’ll make for the rest of our lives!” Alexander leaned forward. “Stefan, what happens when she decides she wants an heir? When the Romans begin to ostracize her? When she gets bored with you or finds out how many times you’ve slept with her maid? I don’t know how much longer you’re going to be able to keep that from her.”
“Lucilla won’t say nothing.”
“Don’t count on it. The mistress already knows Lucilla’s wild about you. You better pray Jupiter she never finds out there’s been more than amorous eyes between you two... or you’ll be saying ‘Yes, master’ to Tribune Otho before you can saddle your fine new horse.”
<><><>
“We must be married right away. Otherwise, I can have nothing more to do with you.”
Senator Marcus Salvius Otho stood with his legs apart, hands on his hips in the heart of Theodosia’s garden, where the old Etruscan-urn fountain splashed noisy camouflage for a private conversation.
Stefan was busy in the barn this afternoon. Alexander had started a crew shoring up the sea wall below the pergola, in preparation for winter, and was down there with them right now.
Otho had been at the villa since yesterday morning, but Theodosia’s discussions with him had focused on his recent successful election. So far, she had managed to avoid talk of marriage. He was leaving within the hour; further evasion seemed impossible.
“That’s no way to propose marriage.”
“I’ve already proposed properly, and brought you gifts, and treated you like an empress. Now I want your decision.” He rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I’m an important man, Theodosia, offering you an important marriage. Ride to Rome with me today. We’ll have the ceremony at Nero’s banquet this evening—with all the court as our witnesses—and put a stop to those vile rumors about you.”
“You pay attention to rumors?”
“Rumors about you have a peculiar way of turning out to be true. Are you sleeping with that stable hand?”
“I don’t have to answer that!”
“Are you sleeping with him?” Otho’s voice rose as he grabbed her upper arms and pulled her toward him.
“No.”
His fingernails dug into her skin.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“Yes, because it’s true. It is the truth! But even if I were sleeping with Stefan, why should I be ashamed of it? Are you ashamed of the hours you’ve spent in bed with Marcipor or any of your other slave pets?”
“What has that scum told you?”
“Enough to know what you and Gaius used to do with him and Lycos and others.” She wrenched her arms away from the livid, bug-eyed senator. “You truly are disgusting, Otho. The lowest, most
menial slave in my kitchen has more natural nobility than you.”
Rage washed across Otho’s face. Theodosia turned to run to the house, but his hand was quicker. He seized her wrist, jerked her toward him, shook her violently, and slapped her with all his strength.
“Stefan!” she cried as Otho’s hand descended again and again, but the cry died in a surge of pain.
“Whore!” He fired a hot stream of spittle into her face and shoved her backwards over the rim of the fountain, into the cold water. “Slave-fucking whore! Now I know why you wouldn’t sell the bastard to Camillus.”
Theodosia wiped her face with her sleeve. It came away red.
Otho bent, grabbed her once more by both wrists, and yanked her out of the water.
“Gods, what pups the great Aulus Terentius Varro spawned! A lying blackmailer and a slave-fucking whore. Gaius told me—” He interrupted himself with a rude laugh. “By all the gods on Mount Olympus! Gaius was telling the truth, for once. Nizzo said he was. You’re no Roman lady, just a filthy Greek whore like your mother. Damn Gaius, he was right about you all along. Gods! To think how close I came to marrying you!”
Theodosia was struggling to escape his grasp, but Otho looped the fingers of his left hand into her hair, wrenching her neck as he pressed her against him, and delivered another of those horrid, invasive kisses.
With his right hand, he mashed her breasts for what seemed eternity; then he lifted her palla and under-tunic and rammed his long fingers—with their sharp, square, cutting nails—into the most private part of her body.
When he was done, he released her hair, made a fist, and punched her backwards. Theodosia crashed against the cement-filled urn in the fountain and crumpled up as the water spilled over her.
Through her pain and humiliation, she heard him stride away, shout for his horses and his slaves, and ride off.
<><><>
Alexander heard shouts and climbed the embankment under the pergola in time to see Otho and his retinue gallop away.
In the next moment, his ears detected a different, softer sound. He followed it to the garden and found Theodosia Varro doubled over in the fountain, vomiting. Her hair and clothing were soaked, and he knew from personal experience what had caused the bloody cuts on her face.
I will kill Otho.
“Stefan!”
Alexander lifted Theodosia out of the water.
“I’m so cold.”
He eased her to the pavement, threw his cloak around her, and held her close, trying to warm her. They were still there when Stefan ran up. Theodosia was too shaky to walk, so Stefan carried her to her bedroom.
Alexander sent Lucilla to tend their mistress.
The only thing he knew for a week was that Theodosia was not well. She saw none of the servants but Lucilla and refused to come downstairs or receive any visitors except Flavia. She took all her meals alone in her room, served only by Lucilla.
Stefan’s beard was beginning to grow back. Lucilla bathed again and fixed her hair and gave every other sign of being content once more.
The fifth morning after Otho’s departure, Etrusca was summoned for an unprecedented private visit with Theodosia. When she returned to the kitchen, the others—especially Lucilla—tried to get her to talk. Etrusca steadfastly refused. The substance of her conversation with the mistress remained a mystery.
Likewise, no one knew what had happened in the garden between Theodosia Varro and Senator Marcus Salvius Otho, but the kitchen theories grew more elaborate with each day of her second self-imposed isolation.
<><><>
It was late on the eighth night after Otho’s departure; the household had been quiet for hours. Alexander was lying on his bed, reading the Milesian Tales of Aristides—borrowed from the Varro library—when he heard a pair of timid taps on the door of the storage cubicle adjoining his. In the next moment the taps came on his door. He rose and opened it.
Theodosia Varro stood alone in the dark, her face wan in the light from Alexander’s lamp, her hair disheveled, her soft sleeping tunic wrinkled.
“I’m sorry to bother you. I know it’s late, but I couldn’t sleep. May I please come in?”
Alexander smiled, genuinely amused. At times, she was imperious; other times, she acted as if the villa belonged to someone else.
“There’s nowhere to sit, miss.”
Her eyes explored the little room, and she shivered.
“You don’t get heat back here?”
“That’s why I wear this wonderful wool.” It was a feeble joke, and he knew it. Slaves’ clothing was notoriously coarse and scratchy. “Look, you didn’t come here at this hour to check on my comfort.”
“No.”
Theodosia dropped to the thin mattress and let the words tumble out.
“I’m going to have a baby. I never realized that could happen after just one time. We only did it once! I’ve been thinking there was something wrong with me, but it wasn’t until I talked to Etrusca that I knew for sure what was happening. I must’ve come close to losing it that day in the fountain.” She let out a long sigh and looked at him. “Please, Alexander, this isn’t easy for me. Don’t lecture me about social barriers or lopsided equations. I’ve come to you as a friend. I trust you, and I need your help.”
Alexander closed the door.
Theodosia Varro... pregnant with a slave’s baby?
The ramifications of it stunned him. He stared at her, wondering what her fellow patricians would do to her when they found out. Then, shedding his usual reserve, he sat beside her and took her hand.
“Have you told Stefan?”
“No. And you mustn’t tell him either. I’ll decide what to do without pressure from him.”
Of course, it wouldn’t occur to you that a slave might have a right to knowledge of his own child.
It was easy, sometimes, to forget how very Roman she was.
“So... nobody knows except Etrusca and me?”
“And Flavia. I told her today.”
Alexander let out a low whistle.
“Why?”
“I couldn’t deceive her. She’s such a true friend. Can you believe it? They heard rumors that I was sleeping with Stefan and decided to ignore them. She says Titus still wants to marry me, and their father approves.”
They’re just as greedy for your money as everyone else.
“Is that what you plan to do?”
“I might have, but... How can I marry Titus with someone else’s baby—a slave’s baby!—growing inside me?”
“What did the lady Flavia say about that?”
“Said she’s heard of women who can get rid of it.”
“That’s a good way to die.”
“Find someone to do it. Ride to Rome tomorrow and ask around.”
“I won’t do that, miss.”
Theodosia pulled her hand away.
“I say you will!”
“You said you came to me as a friend. If so, you’ve no right to order me to do something that will risk your life. That’s not something friends do to one another.”
“It’s my life. I’ll risk it if I choose.”
“It’s not just your life. Think about Stefan and Lycos and Lucilla and Marcipor and Nicanor and Etrusca and the hundred-odd rest of us out here. What happens to us if you die in some grimy cellar in the Subura?”
“What do you suggest I do?”
Alexander took a few moments to think.
“Go away before your condition begins to show. Go to Greece. Tell everyone you’re looking for your mother’s people, to help them out now that you’ve got money. After the baby’s born, bring it home and let Etrusca raise it.”
“As a slave?”
“You can always set him free—or her—in a few years. And once you’re back, you can marry Titus if you want to without giving him a slave’s baby for an heir.”
“You make it sound easy, but— I’ll think about it.”
She stood and stepped to the door; then she turned ar
ound, sat again, and raised her hands to her face. Alexander had followed her up; now he followed her down.
“Alexander... Oh, this is so hard!” She took a deep breath. “Do you know anything about my mother?”
The question startled him even more than the news of her pregnancy.
“Why do you ask?”
“You do know something, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Theodosia’s eyes began to fill.
“It’s true then!”
“You’re not making any sense, miss.”
Her control broke at that. Face contorted, she struggled to speak through long, shuddering sobs.
“Otho called m-my m-mother a whore. ‘Filthy Greek whore.’ He said Gaius... and Nizzo... both said it was true.”
Impulsively, Alexander wrapped his arm around her shoulders, trying not to enjoy her warmth too much.
“My father wouldn’t have m-married a... m-married a whore!”
“Of course not.”
“He told me once how he m-met her.” Theodosia smiled through her tears. “He was governor of Corinth, and his wife had died, and one day when he was riding with his m-men he saw her in the—” She hiccoughed and paused to get control of herself. “My mother was working in a field. He had his men call—” another hiccough, “her over to meet him, and he fell in— love with her right there. She was very poor, but— never in his life had he seen such— a beautiful woman.”
“That’s a lovely story, miss.”
Her sobs were subsiding, but the hiccoughs continued.
“He was leaving Greece soon, and he— talked with her family and persuaded them to let her— go to Rome with him. He’d never have brought a whore home to— be the mother of his son, would he? Or— given his daughter the same name?”
“Of course not, and you shouldn’t pay attention to malicious gossip. You know Senator Otho will say anything to hurt you for refusing to marry him.”
Theodosia sniffed and nodded. After a few moments, she bent and wiped her eyes on her tunic.