The Eyes of Aurora

by Albert A. Bell, Jr.

  “You really do think you’re the gods’ gift, don’t you?” Aurora said bitterly.

  “Let’s just say I’ve cut a wide swath up and down this road,” Theodorus said with a smug smile, “and I’ve had no complaints.”

  “What does this have to do with the knife?” I reminded him.

  “I saw you two go upstairs and I knew what you were up to. I went up to the room that had been Crispina’s because I thought there might be something worth picking up. And I must say, sir, it didn’t sound like you were getting any complaints either.”

  He winked at me like we were fellow warriors in a cause. I gave him my hardest stare in return. Aurora slouched in her chair as though she was trying to disappear under the table. Livilla’s face turned to stone.

  “Well, anyway,” he said, clearing his throat, “I didn’t find anything worth taking in the room, but the knife was lying right on the bed. It was beautiful, and…I took it. I confess to that.”

  “Are you in the habit of stealing things from your father’s guests?” Tacitus asked.

  “Of course not. In this case I knew she was a slave. It’s illegal for her to carry a weapon. She couldn’t complain if it went missing. And if her master allowed her to carry a weapon”—he looked straight at me—“he would be just as guilty as she was. I had nothing to lose.”

  “Why did you stab Fabia’s corpse with it?” I asked.

  He drew back in amazement. “What? What are you talking about? I did no such thing.”

  “That’s where we found the knife after the fire.”

  “All I did with it, sir, was sell it to Segetius, out in the woods behind the taberna.”

  “What did he want with it?”

  “He said it would make a fine gift for his patron, that Regulus fellow you mentioned.”

  *

  Livilla did not say another word after Theodorus left our table. I paid our bill and we got into the raeda. Tacitus and Livilla rode in the back. I drove, with Aurora standing on the driver’s platform beside me.

  “There’s ice forming back there,” she said when she stepped up next to me. “And she has every right to be angry at us.”

  “There will be a steep price to pay for that, I’m sure,” I said. “I hope I’m the only one who has to pay it.”

  Aurora slipped her arm through mine. “I just hope you don’t decide that it’s not worth the price.”

  “Never. Not for a moment.” I gave her a quick kiss. “Would you like to drive?”

  “I would love to.” A smile spread over her face as she took the reins.

  As she drove, absorbed in the movement of the horses, I studied her, the woman I loved. Loving her would indeed cost me, but what else could I do? I would have to spend my life married to some woman I barely knew, someone I had yet to meet. Couldn’t I claim some bit of happiness for myself?

  “What do you think Livilla will do?” Aurora asked.

  “She already suspected that I love you. She promised me that she wouldn’t tell our mothers the real reason for breaking off the engagement, but that was before she learned about…this. Now I honestly can’t predict what she’s going to do.”

  “I haven’t heard any conversation coming from back there,” Aurora said. “That can’t be a good sign.”

  I took the reins back from her when we reached Rome. Driving a team of horses on an open road like the Ostian Way is pleasurable, though it requires some effort. Maneuvering through the narrow city streets at night requires finesse. If we had a problem, I didn’t want my servant to be held responsible and me to be blamed for letting a servant—a woman to boot—drive. After a few blocks I regretted my decision—another in a long series of mistakes. Aurora could have handled the horses much more deftly than I did. At a couple of points I sensed her wanting to take the reins from me, pulling to the right or left.

  When we dropped Livilla at her house, she said a terse good night to Tacitus but not a word to Aurora or me.

  Once Livilla was inside, Tacitus stuck his head out of the raeda. “In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a storm on the horizon, and it’s going to be a bad one. I didn’t think someone that young and that sweet could be so angry.”

  “Did she say anything?” I asked.

  “Not one word, the whole trip. I made one comment, and she gave me a look that pinned me to the side of the raeda. I didn’t dare say anything else.”

  After letting Tacitus out at his house, we drove the raeda to my back gate. It took only a few moments to unload the money chest. Then I sent two servants to take the raeda to the livery stable where we had rented horses earlier. “Tell the owner he can have the horses in exchange for the two we rented earlier. He’ll know he’s getting much the better of the deal. The raeda is mine now, I guess. Find out what he’ll charge to store it at his stable.”

  Naomi and Demetrius watched us work, barely suppressing their curiosity. Finally Naomi said, “Forgive me, my lord, but you left here on foot and now you come back bloodstained, in a raeda, carrying loot like pirates returning from a raid. That gown Aurora is wearing isn’t one of ours. What happened?”

  “All I will say is that it’s a complicated story and the less you know, the better for you.”

  *

  The next day, near midday, my mother called me to her room. She seemed to be in better spirits, but I couldn’t ask her how she was feeling because I wasn’t supposed to know that she was ill. I was surprised and concerned to find Pompeia there. The expression on her face struck me as self-congratulatory.

  “Good morning, Mother. Pompeia Celerina, it’s a pleasure to see you, as always.”

  Pompeia barely nodded to me. I guess her excitement over getting her money back in the lawsuit had worn off. What would I have to do for her next to stay in her good graces?

  “We’ve asked you here,” Mother said, “to discuss plans for a marriage between our families.”

  My mouth moved a few times before I was able to say, “Mar…marriage plans? Between our families? But Livilla told me she didn’t want to marry me.”

  “She doesn’t,” Pompeia said, “and I think I understand why.” She glared at me. “But I have another daughter, if you’ll recall.”

  “Yes. Livia. Wasn’t she recently widowed?” I felt as though I had glanced at the horizon and noticed a dark cloud moving toward me, the storm that Tacitus had predicted.

  “That’s correct,” Pompeia said. “But this morning Livilla suggested to me that we arrange a marriage between you and Livia. I rushed right over here to talk to Plinia, and she agrees.”

  “The marriage doesn’t have to take place immediately,” my mother said. “That wouldn’t be proper, but we do want to have an agreement.”

  I leaned against the wall to keep my knees from buckling.

  “I know what you’re probably thinking,” Pompeia said. “You’ve heard that Livia has a different personality than Livilla—a bit more assertive, one might say.”

  “No, I hadn’t heard that.” I’ve heard that she’s a shrew.

  “I won’t deny that she was a difficult child to raise,” Pompeia said, “but I suspect that several years of marriage to a very nice man will have made her more malleable, like a piece of soft metal that can be worked into something beautiful.”

  So this is how I would be punished for what Livilla heard at the table at Marinthus’ yesterday! I wished she had taken out her anger by hitting me or in some other more direct method, not by condemning me to a lifetime of misery.

  “Livia will be returning from Spain by the Kalends of November,” Mother said. “We want the marriage to take place early in the new year, but we’ll discuss that with her when she arrives.”

  XIX

  It has been almost a month since that awful incident out at Tabellius’ villa, but I still dream about it and recall it when I’m awake if I happen to touch my ear. Lentulus notified us that he has bought the villa and is in the process of tearing it down—starting in the rear garden—so all evidence of w
hat happened there will be erased. As Livilla said, it truly was a house of horrors.

  Crispina and her servant, whose name we never knew, were cremated and their ashes scattered, Lentulus assures us. I can’t feel any sympathy for the man. He raped Fabia before she was killed and would have done the same to me, if Gaius and Tacitus hadn’t arrived. Livilla delayed Crispina, but she could not have stopped her by herself.

  All that remains, like the distant rumble of thunder after a storm has passed, is the effect this series of events has had on Gaius and me. We are closer than we’ve ever been, but I think Gaius’ confidence in himself has been shaken. He feels he should not have been so easily taken in by Crispina and that he missed seeing some obvious clues. I’ve reminded him that I was misled, too, and I contributed to his confusion. Without my realizing it, Crispina made me one of her accomplices at the same time that she had me marked as another victim.

  What matters, I keep telling Gaius, is that she did not get away with murder—neither Fabia’s nor mine. And he did recognize that Segetius was one of Regulus’ spies, no matter how much Tacitus and I tried to dismiss his appearance as a coincidence.

  But there are so many other clouds on the horizon—his mother’s situation, her insistence that Gaius marry soon, Livilla’s anger at our betrayal of her, Domitian’s determination to undermine Gaius’ reputation. We have some anxious days ahead.

  * * *

  On the second day before the Ides of November, I was supervising Melanchthon in replacing some plants in my garden that weren’t doing so well. The slow-witted Rufinus, still missing his lifelong friend and protector Segetius, had attached himself to Melanchthon, who is more comfortable talking to his plants than to other people. Taking advantage of an unseasonably warm day, Hashep and Dakla were playing in one corner of the garden. Listening to them, I was reminded of Heraclitus’ saying that “Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.”

  Aurora was sitting and reading in the sun outside the room next to mine, which was still hers and, as long as I had any say about it, would always be hers. Her hair was done up in a bun to conceal the chunk Crispina’s axe had chopped out. The nick on the lobe of her right ear had healed nicely, although she was still self-conscious about the little bit that was missing.

  We all looked up when Demetrius called, “My lord, the lady Livia.”

  The widow Livia, my bride-to-be, had come to see me, uninvited and unannounced. Instead of waiting for Demetrius to summon me, she followed him into the garden. With servants in tow, Livia didn’t look like a grieving widow. She wore a red stola and a white cloak with a red tasseled border. Demetrius barely had time to blurt out her name, but, even without a proper introduction and never having seen her before, I recognized this younger version of Pompeia Celerina.

  “Good morning, Gaius Pliny,” she said, without a hint of friendliness or even warmth.

  “Good morning, Livia,” I replied, “and welcome to my house.”

  “Soon to be our house, I guess.” As she sized up the garden, her squint and the wrinkling of her nose showed her dissatisfaction.

  I wiped my hands on my tunic, anticipating that she would extend her hand to me or give me a kiss on the cheek, but she made no move toward me. “I expected our first meeting to be more formal, with our mothers present.”

  “What’s the point in that? May we talk privately?”

  I gestured toward my room. “We can talk in here.”

  “You,” Livia said to Aurora, “stand by the door and make sure no one interrupts us or overhears us. And that includes you.”

  As soon as the door was closed, Livia plopped down in the only chair and said, “Gaius Pliny, I know that you don’t want to marry me, any more than I want to marry you.”

  Not only disagreeable and unsmiling, she was as blunt as the hammer between the eyes of a sacrificial animal. I sat down on my bed and tried to be more courteous. “I know this is all happening too soon after the loss of your husband. I’m sorry my mother is putting such pressure on us. And I’m sorry for your great loss. Have you found a suitable place for your husband’s ashes?” I wanted to show some concern.

  She snorted, not the way people do when they think something is ridiculous but the way a pig snorts. “Funny thing about those ashes. I was carrying the urn when we crossed the Ebro—for safekeeping, you understand—and it slipped right out of my hands. Sank to the bottom of the river before anyone could retrieve it.”

  “That is…a shame. And such a great loss.” It was all I could say to mask my horror. What had my mother and Livilla gotten me into?

  “It was no great loss—neither the urn nor its contents. Liburnius left me quite well off. My mother is pushing for this marriage just as hard as yours is. She wants a grandchild, but she’s not going to get one from me. If the lack of children is a detriment to your political career, I suppose you can ask Domitian for the three-child privilege.”

  This conversation was becoming much too intimate and much too political, much too fast. I felt sure Domitian would grant me the ius trium liberorum, but I did not want to mark myself any more clearly as his man by asking for it. “Well, I know there are…ways to insure—”

  “The only way to guarantee I don’t have a child is for you never to touch me.” Her voice had a pitch and a volume that made me wonder if any door could grant her the privacy she desired. “My virginity is still intact and I intend to keep it that way. You can keep your damn mentula to yourself.”

  I swallowed hard. “Very well.”

  I was certainly happy to comply with her stipulation. Ours would not be the only such arrangement in Rome. I almost chuckled to myself. For several years I have pitied Regulus because he and his wife, Sempronia, have exactly this sort of marriage, and everyone in the city is aware of it, and aware of, shall we say, Sempronia’s devotion to Sappho’s way of life.

  “I know I’m not the beauty that my sister is,” Livia said. “Our mother reminded me of that every day while we were growing up. The bitch never would admit it was because I look so much like her. I doubt you have any desire to couple with me. Nor do I with you, meaning no offense. You’re a handsome enough man, I suppose.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  She was oblivious to my sarcasm. “And I don’t prefer other women, if that’s what you’re thinking. I simply find the whole idea of fucking to be as repulsive as the word.”

  I recoiled at hearing such a vulgarism fall from the lips of an aristocratic woman. Livia forged ahead as though she were quoting Virgil.

  “If my mother wants a grandchild, she’ll have to rely on somebody fucking Livilla. You and I can keep up the appearance of a marriage, as my late husband and I did, as long as I have my own quarters and my own money and don’t have to account to you for what I do with either of them.”

  “What…what sort of sum—”

  She waved her hand dismissively and tilted her head back so that she was talking down to me. “Mentioning a particular amount at this point would be plebeian. We can negotiate that later. As I said, my late husband left me well cared for, so I won’t make a heavy demand on you in that regard. If you have a favorite slave girl—or boy, for that matter, as Liburnius did—I don’t care. Fuck her all you like.”

  “Well, I—”

  “Oh, don’t bother to deny it. All you men have some little bedmate.” She looked toward the door as though she could see through it. “Just don’t flaunt the arrangement in front of me or my friends. That’s what Liburnius did. Rode around in a litter with his filthy catamite. When I sold off some of our slaves after his death, that little cocksucker was the first to go. And I made sure he would be working in the mines. They have some deep mines in Spain. I hope he’s dead by the end of the year.”

  “I imagine he feels the same way.”

  “Pssht. Don’t waste your sympathy on him.” She bristled and her voice got louder. “The way he pranced around, a ring on every finger, his nails painted—all ninet
een of them. I wouldn’t tolerate such humiliation from my late husband, and I won’t tolerate it from my next one either. Is that clear?”

  I nodded slowly, still reeling from her verbal assault. “I assure you that you will have no cause of complaint from me.”

  “If we understand one another, then, I will tell my mother that I consent to this marriage. I hope you’ll tell your mother the same.”

  “I think the conditions you’ve set forth make everything…quite clear. Of course, we should wait to announce the marriage until after you’ve observed the proper period of mourning.”

  “If you think so. It doesn’t matter to me.” She heaved her bulk up from the chair and opened the door before I could do it for her.

  As she left, she paused long enough to look Aurora over like a prospective buyer, even putting a pudgy finger under her chin, raising her head and turning it from side to side. When she noticed the bit missing from Aurora’s ear, she rubbed the lobe between her fingers and said, “What happened? Did Gaius bite it off in the throes of passion?”

  Aurora turned crimson and gave me a wide-eyed look.

  “Not at all. I can explain,” I started to say.

  “No matter,” Livia said. “You have excellent taste, Gaius. Just remember what I said. Oh, by the way, Mother and Livilla and I are leaving tomorrow for our estate at Narnia. We’ll be there until after the new year, in case you need to contact me.”

  I came to the door, blowing out a long breath. Tacitus had been right about how profoundly angry Livilla was. I was watching my punishment gather up her servants and waddle toward the front of the house.

  “What did she mean about your good taste?” Aurora asked, touching her earlobe, a habit she has developed since that awful day at Tabellius’ villa.

  “ ‘Excellent taste,’ ” I corrected her. “She said ‘excellent,’ and she’s right.” I held Aurora’s hand for a moment as I recounted my conversation with Livia. Due to the penetrating quality of Livia’s voice, she had heard more of it than Livia intended.