“Felix is my problem, not anyone else’s, not even his grandmother’s.” Ygerna shot Helva a look that made even Helva twitch. “If Correus wishes to divorce me, I am sure that he will mention it to me.”
“My dear, there is no question of—” Antonia began.
“I can put up with Correus’s mother,” Ygerna said. “I have put up with worse.”
Helva opened her mouth and closed it again, and Appius almost laughed. Very few people had ever silenced Helva.
“What I will not put up with,” Ygerna said, “is meddling between me and Felix. He will never adjust if we quarrel over him, and it will frighten him besides.” This time she looked at Julia. “If you can’t leave it alone, I will take Felix and go someplace else. Is that clear?”
“My dear, you mustn’t do that.” Antonia put an arm around Ygerna’s shoulders. “That wouldn’t be safe at all. And you mustn’t listen to Julia, who is behaving very badly.”
“I don’t want to listen to Julia,” Ygerna said frankly. “But she makes me too mad. I do not have a very good temper,” she added, and this time Appius did laugh. Ygerna smiled back at him. “That is an understatement, I expect. I am going to go now and try to explain to Felix why everyone has been fighting.” Appius watched her walk away, with a thoughtful expression. She wasn’t much bigger than Felix, but Appius thought that he would back Ygerna against most people any day. She would certainly make good on any threat she chose to make. If they didn’t wish to find themselves explaining to Correus how it was that they had chanced to lose his son, his wife, and his unborn child, Julia was going to have to mend her ways.
“She’ll leave,” he said to Julia, “if you prod her into it. And if you do, so help me Isis, I’ll put you over my knee. It was a mistake to let you have that child in the first place, and I should have known it.”
“You didn’t have anything to do with it,” Julia said. “It was Correus. And what else was Correus going to do, leave the poor thing with that filthy wet nurse in that filthy fort while he went off with the army?”
“Better if he had, maybe,” Appius said. “Babies have been surviving a little dirt for years. But Felix isn’t going to survive you quarreling with his mother.”
“She’s not—”
“She is. So get it into your head. She’s right about Felix, and you know it. You are not stupid, Julia.”
There was very little answer to be made to that. With a frosty glance Julia swept past her father and into the house. Aemelia fluttered behind her, pausing to extricate her trailing mantle from a rosebush. Appius found himself alone with Helva and Antonia.
Antonia gave him a look of distant dignity. “I have things to attend to. Thank you for speaking to Julia. I’ve been trying to make her see sense for weeks. It isn’t as if she didn’t have babies of her own.” She picked up both baskets and the clippers and swept away. Helva might have been another rosebush in her path.
Appius gave Helva an exasperated look. “You’ve been making trouble again. Can’t you behave for more than three hours at a stretch?”
“I have every right to be concerned about our son,” Helva said sweetly.
“Correus is doing very well unassisted,” Appius said. “Don’t meddle. And don’t bring up divorce again or I’ll beat you.”
Helva giggled. “You wouldn’t. You only tried that once, remember?”
Appius laughed. He couldn’t help it. It had been in his young days when he had first been fool enough to buy Helva in a slave market in Gallia Belgica. She had done some forbidden thing, and when he had decided that she was getting totally out of hand and had tried to give her a thrashing for it, she had feigned the sounds of a woman in the throes of such passion that in ten seconds there was a crowd of cheering, hooting legionnaires outside his tent, and Appius had given up. Then she had refused to sleep with him until he apologized and bought her a new pair of eardrops. Helva’s body and the flower-garden beauty of her face had induced him to buy her in the first place, and she had quickly learned to use them to her advantage. Sometimes she still could. She was his one extravagance, his one silliness, the one thing he owned for its bright, impractical beauty alone.
“I should sell you,” he said sourly. “You’re a distraction.” He had said it before, but it wasn’t a possibility. He had adopted his son by her, given him his name. If he turned her out now, the scandal didn’t bear thinking about. And he wasn’t sure he wanted not to have Helva to look at anyway, not after all these years.
She linked her arm through his.
“When did you get all that amber? You have too much jewelry.”
“I bought it myself,” she said reproachfully. He made her a generous allowance. “I have so few pleasures, Appius. Don’t begrudge me this one.”
“I’m going bankrupt buying my wife jewelry,” he said. “Trying to keep her ahead of you.”
“What difficulties you have,” Helva said sympathetically. She patted his hand. “I’m sorry I’m such a trouble.”
* * *
A piercing shriek erupted from the bath.
“Master Felix!”
Nurse’s voice. Felix must be having his bath. Ygerna poked her head in and followed the sounds and the trail of dropped clothing to the warm room. No one had ever been able to convince Felix to take a cold bath by any method short of brute force. Since the cold bath was not to clean so much as to promote health, it had finally been decided by all concerned that Felix was healthy enough.
Felix erupted from the depths of the pool like a porpoise, naked except for the gold bead around his neck, the lucky amulet that all Roman boys wore until they came of age. He hurled himself at the bank of the pool in a shower of water.
“I’m a fish!” he announced proudly.
“Well, Nurse is not,” Ygerna said. Nurse was wringing the water from the ends of her apron. “I am going to go into Veii, to the market there. If you will stop being a fish and let Nurse dry you, you may come with me.”
Felix was one of those children to whom a trip to anywhere was worth the going. He would cheerfully accompany anyone who would take him, to the fish market, the law courts, to the barn to dose a sick horse, to the fuller’s shed with the dirty laundry, to the smith to mend a pot. He got around a good deal that way, attached to one or another member of the household. Maybe if she took him to the market at Veii, it would distract him from wondering why everybody in the family started screaming as soon as his name was mentioned.
Veii was an old Etruscan town to the north of Rome, the third point of a triangle between Appius’s lands, Veii, and the city of Rome itself. Ygerna sent her maid to the stables to ask for a carriage and a slave to drive it, since Julius had been given over to Diulius’s tutelage now. Ygerna was mildly surprised to find Julius driving the carriage anyway, but Felix greeted him delightedly and demanded to sit beside him.
“Diulius has gone to show a team to some old general who wants to make the green team famous this year,” Julius said. There were four factions in the circus races: blue, green, red, and white. “And there wasn’t anybody else handy.” He checked the traces and readjusted a strap.
“What you mean is, you ducked off since he wasn’t there to watch you,” Ygerna said. “Well, I won’t tell on you.” She settled herself on the cushions of the carriage, with her maid Cottia beside her. “But you can have Felix.” The sun was out, and the weather, with the capriciousness of fall, had turned warm again. Felix was a much more restful companion when he traveled outside.
“Right. Come and sit up here, and if you behave, you can drive some. If you don’t, I’ll smack you.”
Felix seemed to find this arrangement reasonable and settled in beside Julius. They set off down the long drive that joined the big house to the main road beyond, Ygerna fidgeting among the cushions in the carriage. If one wanted to get somewhere, it seemed simpler to drive a chariot or just saddle a horse and ride, but Correus assured her that ladies did neither of those things in Rome, and Ygerna got no pleasure
out of being considered an oddity. She was too pregnant to ride or drive now anyway, and the carriage, tedious as it was, was a retreat, a respite from treading on eggs in her father-in-law’s house. She didn’t know what she was going to buy in Veii, besides peace and quiet.
Peace and quiet proved to be relative. It was market day in Veii, and before they reached the city gates the road was jammed with traffic. There were private carriages and litters, litters-for-hire, horses, donkeys, and two-wheeled carts pushed by the countryfolk and loaded down with turnips and live chickens. A flock of sheep went baa’ing across the road and snarled the traffic hopelessly, while a white-haired gentleman leaned out of his litter and swore at them. A duck, escaped from somewhere, ran past in the other direction, quacking, a piece of string still tied to one foot.
“We’ll never get through this,” Julius said. He maneuvered the carriage up to the city gates and stopped, looking disgusted.
“We’ll walk,” Ygerna decided. “Leave the carriage here and go and buy a drink. One,” she added. “Then come, and stay with it until we get back.”
Julius didn’t protest. There was a wine stall he knew of just inside the gates, which were always open during daylight. Its small outdoor terrace commanded a view both of the gates and of the street that led to the Veii market. It looked like a good place to settle in.
Ygerna took Felix by the hand, and they strolled off toward the market, with Cottia in attendance. The day was warm, and Ygerna slipped her cloak off and gave it Cottia to carry. She always seemed to feel hot now. Felix tugged her into a quicker pace toward a stall filled with jointed wooden toys, brightly painted with black and red patterns. The shopkeeper, a round man in a red apron, held up a dog with a movable tail and a collar of red stars.
Felix put his hands on the counter top, which was nose-high, and peered up over it.
“Are you sure this is what you want? I will only buy you one thing.”
Felix nodded. If he saw something else, the chances were good that he could make a great enough nuisance of himself to acquire that, too.
Ygerna paid the toymaker and laughed. Every time they shopped, Felix wanted the first thing he saw and she asked him if he were sure and they ended by buying something else as well on the way home. Felix laughed, too, and she winked at him. It wasn’t that Felix didn’t listen to her because he didn’t like her, she thought. Felix didn’t listen to anybody. There was a certain amount of comfort in that.
They prowled on among the stalls, inspecting oil of jasmine and attar of roses in small stoppered bottles; jewelry made by the Veii Metalworkers’ Guild, glowing against a backdrop of black silk and little piles of uncut gems; baskets of red and brown straw; iron pots and fire dogs; pots of eye ointment and bottled remedies advertised to cure lung disease, bad humors of the blood, and all female ailments. In the butcher’s shop, a goose hung upside down, awaiting its fate, while beside it hung a dressed lamb. The lamb was black with flies, and Ygerna choked and looked away. Her stomach gave a little protesting heave as they stepped out into the center of the street. It was crowded with market goers and shopkeepers off to buy their noon meal in one of the chowder stalls or bakeries that clustered together at one end of the market. The butcher brushed by them in a bloody apron, and Ygerna thought the smell would choke her.
“Are you all right? My lady?” Cottia looked at her anxiously.
“I… I think so. It’s just hot. And that meat smelled so bad.” Her face was chalky, and her insides felt empty. “I think maybe I had better sit down, though.”
“Oh, Isis!” Cottia wailed, looking around them at the crowd jamming the market square. “Where?” It was impossible even to stand still here for very long. And what was she going to do if her mistress fainted?
“Here, I think,” Ygerna said suddenly, and sat. Odd lights were beginning to dance across her field of vision.
“Ygerna?” Felix tugged at her mantle. “Mama?” He was beginning to be frightened.
“Here, move back from her. It’s only the heat and the crowd, I expect,” a low, rich voice said, and Ygerna looked up to see a dark woman in a deep red gown bending over her. Her skin was gold, and her hair and eyes were black. There were small gold drops in her ears and a delicate gold necklace around her throat. Her gown was plainly made, with no embellishments except a band of embroidery at the hem, but it was of silk. She was probably fifty if one looked closely at the fine web of lines around her eyes and throat, and she was the most beautiful woman Ygerna had ever seen.
“I saw you wobbling on your feet a minute ago,” she said gently. “I was afraid you were going to be sick – I always was with my babies. Go and get her some water,” she said to Cottia over her shoulder.
“It was the smell,” Ygerna said faintly. “And I was so hot.” She sounded indignant. Nothing ever made her sick.
Cottia brought the water, and Ygerna drank it thirstily while Felix stared silently at the lady. He’d never seen anyone so pretty, not even Aunt Aemelia. She looked like the statue of Aphrodite in the Temple of Venus and Roma, except that Aphrodite was a blond and this lady had a pile of thick black hair like jet, pinned up with gold pins with little knobs on the ends.
“Are you queen of something?” he asked. The queens in his nursery stories were always more beautiful than anyone else, unless they were evil ones, and then, of course, they were ugly.
The lady opened her eyes wide and looked at him with an odd little laugh. “Not these days,” she said. “Now hold onto my skirt so you don’t get lost. We’re going to go and sit in that litter over there – do you see the one with the blue curtains?”
“I’m all right now,” Ygerna said. She felt dreadful and conspicuous sitting on the ground in the middle of market day.
“You’ll be better if you lie down for a while,” the woman said. “Please come. I’m not in any hurry, and I remember how awful I used to feel when I was pregnant.”
Ygerna stood up and balanced herself carefully. “Thank you, then.” The woman gave her an arm, and Ygerna leaned on it as they crossed the square, with Felix trotting on one side and Cottia behind them, carrying Ygerna’s cloak and Felix’s wooden dog.
The litter must have been the woman’s own. It was far better appointed than the litters for public hire, and the slaves standing beside it gave her a respectful bow as they approached. Inside was a sea of gold and deep red cushions; a light inner curtain of pale silk gauze let the occupants see out without passersby seeing in when the blue outer curtains were opened.
“Is there someone to whom I can send a message for you?” the woman asked.
“No, there’s only my driver. It was so crowded we left the carriage at the gates.”
“You’re not from Veii?”
“No. My husband’s in the army. I’m living with his family. His father is Appius Julianus.”
“Ah, I have heard of him. I met him once, when I was younger.”
“My name is Ygerna.” Some introduction seemed to be called for, although the woman had volunteered none. “It is Flavia Agricolina on my citizenship papers,” she added with a face of distaste.
“You are foreign?”
“British,” Ygerna said. “My uncle was a king of the Silures.”
“And you left that to marry a Roman soldier?” The woman’s face had a peculiar expression, as if she were looking back into some time that was gone now. “My name is Berenice,” she said.
Ygerna nodded. She had the feeling that the woman expected her to know the name, and was braced for her reaction. “I left all that because the Roman governor wanted to make me queen of the Silures,” Ygerna said, “and my uncle Bendigeid wanted to kill me to stop him. He was a terrifying man, my uncle. The god was very strong in him. It was like looking at a fire that has jumped the hearth.”
“The god?”
“The Sun Lord, the Shining One. Lugh Long-Spear.”
“I see. I knew a man like that once. He heard God speak to him. Or maybe he only thought he did.”
“What happened to him?”
“He started a war with Rome, and he died.”
Ygerna looked at Berenice curiously, wanting to ask more and not sure that it would be polite or that the woman would tell her if she did.
“It was in Judaea,” Berenice said after a moment. “He took the Holy Temple with him, and most of his people. A whole country gone because one man started a war.”
Judaea – the name turned over in Ygerna’s mind, and something Correus had told her about the emperor Titus came back to her… Titus, who had triumphed with his father, Vespasian, after that war. Titus, the conqueror of Judaea. Titus, who had brought back a Jewish mistress and made a scandal…
Berenice watched the recognition in the other woman’s eyes. “You’ll do yourself no good by being seen with me,” she said. She sounded as if she had said it to other people before and they had agreed and left. Titus had sent her away twice when public opinion against her ran too high. The last time he had made it plain that those who wished to remain in his favor should stay away from her also.
“My husband always said the Senate should have minded its own business,” Ygerna said.
“He was wrong,” Berenice said. “They were too afraid of me.”
She had been “that foreign woman,” and the Romans still remembered Cleopatra. Berenice was immoral. She had had three husbands and had left one of them to live with her brother, and rumor said it was incest. She had been a queen, first of Colchis and then of Cilicia. She had been queen in everything but name when the Romans gave her brother Ituraea to rule. She was the daughter of Herod Agrippa, the last king of the Jews. She had done her best to stop the massacre that the Roman procurator Gessius Florus had let loose on Jerusalem and nearly been killed in the trying. Later she had tried to stop the revolt that followed it. There had been no stopping either. It was all too late, and she had watched the city fall down around her. She was over forty when Titus fell in love with her and took her to Rome.
The Emperor's Games Page 10