by Mark Tiro
“Antonia is beloved by the Emperor, just as is her brother Antinous. She will be taking over as high priestess and Sacerdote of Diana’s Temple immediately.”
Tears filled my eyes. Everything I had lived for was gone. I felt a giant wall grow in me, and I closed my eyes in terror, expecting…what? Pain, grief, misery. Everything I had done since I’d come here as a girl was now… now… everything important, everything that had given my life all the meaning it had was now crashing down around me.”
“It’s over,” he said. “Your reign of cruelty here. It’s done.”
I couldn’t help myself. I started crying. He kept right on talking.
“Antonia will take your place and return this Temple to the open, warm house of worship and comfort that it has always been for the women of Rome. Your days of strict, cold indifferent “piety” are over. That’s not piety; it’s just callous heartlessness. But like I said, I am not unkind. I will show you my mercy, even though Antonia has reported that you had nothing but the coldest form of indifference. I will allow you to keep your slave girl with you, when you go off into your exile.”
My mind started to pulse, to throb. I couldn’t see straight, everything collapsed into a tunnel, caving in all around me. I wanted to close my eyes, to curl up in a ball. To make it stop. But here I stood, facing the Praetorian Prefect as the world around dulled and greyed to black. I felt weak all over, numb. Everything faded and disappeared. My body grew almost too weak to stand.
One word—one thought—echoed around, over and over, through my mind.
Exile.
“You and your slave girl will leave this place today,” Turbo said. “I’ve ordered a detachment from one of my legions to escort you down to the port and place you on the next ship. You will be out of Italy very soon.”
He turned his back, and strode out. I never saw him again.
He was gone.
And by the next day, so was I.
6
Six
Our trip into exile, to the coast of Greece, was a blur.
It was winter, and so the captain had to hew to the coast, to avoid the swells and the waves that threatened to smash the boat into a million pieces. “All the body parts probably wouldn’t be done washing up on the shore until sometime after June,” the captain told us.
I did not do well with boats. I’d hated them ever since my father had taken us on a tour of the bay of Naples when I was a girl. One summer, we’d been invited to spend a month at a villa of a friend of his there. It was out of the heat of the city, and very pleasant. I loved it until one particular day when he’d taken us out onto the bay. He had served part of his time in the fleet, and had friends still serving over at the base at Misenum. So we went out in a cutter of some sort, and dad and him—they were having a great old time telling stories, and giving us a tour of the bay. But when we passed this one particular spot where old Pliny had died—you could still see the blown off shell of Vesuvius rising up behind the spot—one of the soldiers manning the cutter had started making the most vexing rocking movement.
I was just a girl of course, and I didn’t know any better. My dad’s friend had said something like, “Uh oh, that feels like an earthquake.” Of course, everyone knows there were lots of earthquakes there before Vesuvius went off. “That’s how it started you know,” he kept on, spinning out his story over the next hour as we just sat there, floating—trapped—on that boat in the middle of the bay with nowhere to go to get away from his talking. “First the earth moves, and then—boom!” He made this thunderous crashing sound with his hands. I was like seven or something. It terrified me.
And that was it. My mom said I wouldn’t stop crying, and my dad had to ask his friend to bring the boat back to Misenum before we’d even had a chance to enjoy lunch.
Now, I was on another boat. Arescusa was with me this time, and not my parents. But I thought about them a lot, during that boat ride into my exile. For the first three days straight, I cried—at least when I wasn’t bent over the side of the boat throwing up from the roughness of the waters. If it weren’t for having to throw up so often, I probably wouldn’t have come up above deck the entire trip. Before we’d embarked on the boat, Arescusa had had the presence of mind to send word back to my family in Rome.
As fortune would have it, our journey around the coast and over to Greece was so fraught with difficulties and setbacks—and took so long—that by the time we arrived, my mother had already made her own journey to Greece to meet us there. It was generally a crime for any Roman citizen to give food or water or other necessities to someone who had been sent into exile by the Emperor. Of course, being exiled by the Praetorian Prefect was the same as being exiled by the Emperor. Turbo though, had been true to his word, and I was allowed to move into a small villa that my family had arranged to purchase for us. We settled down there, in a little city on the coast of Greece. It was a place called Nicopolis… though it was so out of the way, I was sure that no one I’d ever met even knew the place existed.
I was not yet close to forty years old when we landed in Greece to begin our exile, and as it turned out, I still had more than half my life in front of me.
But I didn’t know that then. Maybe because I didn’t see any hope or future, about a month later—after the shock had worn off and we were set up in our villa, I fell into a dark, sad state of things. Grief and anguish overcame me, and I retreated into my bedroom, and into myself.
Without Arescusa, I’m sure I would have died from simply not eating or not drinking. She made me take water and forced me to swallow food. She exercised my limbs, and wiped my brow, all those long days and nights when I refused to get out of bed. Refused—or simply didn’t have the strength.
As tired as I was during the days, most nights, I struggled to sleep. When it did come, it was usually just before the cocks in the city announced with their interminable pride for anyone with two good ears to hear that the dawn had come and it was time to wake up. In my mind, I would conjure up Antonia’s face. And then I would dream about taking my revenge. At least, that’s when I was awake. When I was asleep, it was something else I dreamed of entirely. I would still see Antonia’s wretched face, of course. But when I slept, my fantasies never ended nearly as pleasantly. It would be better were I not to sleep at all, I thought—which I endeavored to make happen, to the best of my ability. This, of course, made these dreams, when the did come, unendurably worse.
But I did endure it, month after month, for almost a year after we’d arrived. And then slowly, little by little… one day, it was gone.
When I hadn’t been plotting out my revenge, or foaming at the mouth while being crucified in my sleep, I had been bracing for grief. Grief, and anguish and the terrible pain I knew would come from my exile. I’d put up defenses against them; I’d retreated to my room and pulled the sheets up tight over my eyes. I’d thought about hurling myself off a cliff, although then Arescusa would have been alone and sold off, or killed to avoid the expense of someone having to feed her. She had been so good to me, I decided whatever may come, I wouldn’t kill myself for that reason alone. This one little thing is about all I had left to give her.
Thank you Arescusa, I remember myself thinking one time, during that dark period. Not killing myself is the only way I could manage to say that to her.
But it was something.
In darker moments, I still fantasized over my revenge. But I didn’t have any fight left in me anymore. I was too tired now, even to think.
But in clearer moments—there were a few in there—I simply forgot what my grievances were for a while. Once, I even forgot I was in exile. And then I could breath. Just a little.
And so, little by little, I stopped plotting my revenge. I was still watching, steeling myself and waiting for the other boot to crash down and crush what little happiness we had now in our exile. After a while, Arescusa had gotten me to go on walks each morning, and then to eat breakfast outside in the courtyard. Months passed like th
is, and I found myself with more and more energy. The crushing twin weights of Antonia’s betrayal and my desire to avenge it had lifted. I went out with Arescusa more and more now.
The other boot never did crash down. Then, that one day, I woke up. That’s when it occurred to me—there was no other boot.
Just… no one cared.
No one cared.
Arescusa and I were free to live out our days here, eating breakfast in the courtyard, taking walks in the morning, and in the early evenings now too. I took a deep breath, just to see if I could. Then I let it go. That’s a relief, I thought. I can breathe. Everything just might be okay.
It was one of those days when we had gone down to the city’s Forum, to look at the fish that had come in that morning, when we came across a public lecture being given by a philosopher. Being public, even women were permitted to attend. Before my exile, by virtue of my position, I had spent quite a lot of time pouring over philosophy treaties.
Arescusa and I found a little patch of shade under a newly planted tree not too far off. We sat down there, just across the way from a small cluster of buildings. We watched as an old man limped out onto the porch of what we later learned was the small academy he ran there. Arescusa dug through our bags and pulled out some of the fruit we had just bought at the market. We both sat there, listening to the man talk and eating our peaches.
I don’t know how long he talked that day. That first time was an experience Arescusa and I would recount to each other again and again, until both of us were good and old, even as we would return throughout the years each time there was a new public lecture.
One day, Arescusa and I were sitting under that same tree, now with more leaves and more rings than it had back that first time we had come. She split a pomegranate this time instead of peaches, and we shared it. She must have torn it at the wrong angle, because it seemed like half the seeds went flying, leaving my face and half the summer tunic I was wearing dripping a reddish-purple everywhere.
“Sorry domina,” Arescusa said, a fearful look on her face as she rushed over and started wiping the sticky juice off as best she could.
But it dripped down faster than she could wipe, over my nose and into my mouth.
I burst out laughing. And I laughed and laughed and laughed. I hadn’t laughed like that since before the exile.
My laughing must have made her nervous, because she apologized again, this time even more emphatically. “I am so sorry domina.” I picked up some more of the seeds, and began squeezing them between my fingers, giggling as they exploded into sweet drops of purple and red juice that flew off in all directions.
Arescusa let out a small laugh. Which only seemed to encourage me. And so I made like a dolphin and I blew pomegranate juice out of my mouth, just as if it were a water spout. Now she was covered in purple too.
I couldn’t control myself. I was laughing so hard now, I started crying.
Arescusa ventured another hesitant, tiny smile. She hadn’t seen me laugh like this in years. Maybe never, now that I think about it.
Which for some reason set me off into more, uncontrollable giggling. I did the dolphin thing again, adding to the purple all over both of us. Now she was laughing, right along with me.
Our laughter somehow mixed into tears of relief.
Relief and joy, and sticky pomegranate juice.
I reached over and hugged her.
“No more ‘domina’,” I said, looking into her eyes through the tears that had filled my own eyes. “Please, no more Arescusa. Look where our lives have taken us. Into exile, I know. And I am sorry about that. But we are sitting here, in Greece, listening to philosophy. And all while, we’ve finally succeeded in donning the purple.”
We both looked at each other, and then broke down giggling some more.
“We’ve done it all together Arescusa. So thank you. Thank you. No more calling me ‘domina’, okay?”
“Then what should I call you now? ‘Sacerdote’…” she had started to say the old word which had hung like an albatross around my neck.
“Oh god no, not that,” I laughed. “How about Porcia?” I ventured. I hadn’t thought of the name for many years; not until just then when it came out of my mouth.
I heard myself say it. It was my name. Porcia. It was a name no one had called me since before I had gone into the Temple.
But it was my family name. Our ancestors had come from Tusculum, and we were Porcii.
“Porcia then,” Arescusa echoed back, softly.
As she did, I cried.
These tears had waited decades to flow.
7
Seven
As we sat there, half laughing, half crying, with pomegranate-stained tears running down our faces, a man walked over to shady patch under the tree where we were sitting.
Oh what a sight we must be to see, I thought. When I looked up—after wiping the pomegranate juice out of my eyes—I saw him standing there.
With no pleasantries and no introductions, he looked at Arescusa and then at me. And then he burst out in the most gentle sort of laughter.
It was really sweet.
“You demonstrate the point the master makes,” he said, gesturing up to the porch where the man we’d come to hear speak was leaning onto an old crutch. His body always seemed just on the verge of giving out, but his voice boomed calm and bright. It was a clear voice though, and it held within its gentle notes a balm that seemed to settle deep into my soul. I felt safe here. Safe and comforted, and peaceful.
“What do you mean?” I asked, still smiling as I wiped my face clean with the bottom of my tunic.
“It’s not what happens in life, but our opinions about what happens that trouble men.” He stopped abruptly, then added, “Or women,” laughing at himself as he did. “Men or women, whichever the case may be.”
“You’re quoting him?” I said, gesturing over to the porch in the courtyard of the academy where the man with the crutch was still speaking. “You’re quoting the master? Why can’t you just speak plainly, and for yourself?” I retorted, friendly enough I hoped, as I still hadn’t really stopped smiling from the pomegranate episode. “You know, almost twenty years I spent quoting this tractate or that scripture, and in the end, you know what?”
He stood silent, his mouth a little agape, but with a somewhat mischievous smile on his face.
“You know what? Nothing would have worked so well for me as had I simply just said what I really knew in my heart to be true. But of course the heart is weak, and too easily swayed by the ambition of minds that would make it blind.”
“Wow, maybe you should be the master then?” he grinned. “You are very good with words, very clear. Oh, and I am sorry, by the way. I will try to be accurate with my words.”
I heard a voice—probably the last one I ever would have expected in this conversation.
“Well, you should be sorry.”
It was Arescusa, cutting in to rebuke him. I turned in shock to look at the girl, only to see that she looked like a strong woman now, rather than a girl. Oh, and she was wearing the same, big, mischievous grin on her face as he was on his.
I smiled quietly to myself, and felt a warm balm well up inside my chest. I wanted to cry, out of joy. Everything was okay now. Everything was okay.
“I guess what I mean,” he went on, realizing now that he was playing to a full audience of two, “is that it’s not what happens to you that makes you feel this way or that; it’s not getting splashed everywhere by the carelessness of your slave that makes you mad, or angry or lash out. It’s how you think about what happens to you. So many matrons in your position would have lashed out at her. But I look over and see both of you just laughing and smiling.”
It was his attempt at formality, and I generally felt comfortable with him. But still, there was one thing—one little, other thing—that I felt now for the first time in my life. When he had called Arescusa a slave—which of course she was, and had been her entire life—a sharp ‘no
’ reverberated through my mind. I felt a powerful surge of determination, though I did not know at the time what my determination was for.
“She is not a slave!” I heard myself blurt out. I was just as surprised as was everyone else that I’d said it. Once I realized what’d I’d said, I quickly corrected myself. “Well, she is a slave now. But not for much longer! She is to be freed. Soon. On the Saturnalia festival, in just over a month.”
Arescusa did not say anything. She stood up, though, still with the most pleasant, unworried look of serenity and calmness, despite my outburst.
She turned to him, and said, “Please forgive my mistress. She must be confused, as the sun is hot, and she is certainly not feeling well.”
I had been almost afraid to even look over at Arescusa. Until she’d said her words. Then I did. I did look over at her.
“No, I’m feeling fine, although a little sticky,” I said. “Arescusa—this Saturnalia will be the last one where we make light of it and only pretend you’re a free woman. I should have freed you years ago, but I guess I needed to get blinded by pomegranate juice to make it so I could see. I love you. You deserve so much more than I’ve ever been able to give.”
Then I wrapped my arms around her in a hug. When I pulled back, I saw that all down her face, tears were streaming out.
Reaching over, I handed her the other half of the pomegranate that had started off this whole mess. “Maybe this will help? It mixes quite well with tears.” I couldn’t finish my words. I broke down crying now too. I reached over and threw my arms around her again. “I am so sorry for all the pain I’ve caused you. I am so, so sorry. You stayed with me, after the exile, even though you could have slipped away and left at any time.”
“Domina,” she said, bowing formally.
“Porcia, remember?” I said. “And thank you Arescusa. I will take care of you, whatever you need now. My family owes you that much. I owe you that much.”