“Fadia? I’ve never heard of a Fadia,” said Clodilla, a very contented divorcée these days. “Tell us more, Antonius, do!”
The massive shoulders lifted in a shrug. “That’s it, really. No one has ever heard of her.”
“Getting information out of you, Antonius, is like squeezing blood out of a stone,” said Celer’s wife, Clodia. “Who is Fadia?”
“Her father’s some filthy-rich merchant from Placentia.”
“You mean she’s a Gaul?” gasped Clodius.
Another man might have bridled defensively; Mark Antony merely grinned. “Uncle Lucius swears not. Impeccably Roman, he says. I suppose that means she is. The Caesars are experts on bloodlines.”
“Well, go on!” from Curio.
“There’s not much more to tell you. Old man Titus Fadius has a son and a daughter. He wants the son in the Senate, and decided the best way he can do that is to find a noble husband for the daughter. The son’s ghastly, apparently, no one would have him. So I’m it.” Antony flashed a smile at Curio, displaying surprisingly small but regular teeth. “You were nearly it, but your father said he’d prostitute his daughter before he’d consent.”
Curio collapsed, shrieking. “He should hope! Scribonia is so ugly only Appius Claudius the Blind would have been interested.”
“Oh, do shut up, Curio!” said Pompeia. “We all know about Scribonia, but we don’t know about Fadia. Is she pretty, Marcus?”
“Her dowry’s very pretty.”
“How much?” asked Decimus Brutus.
“Three hundred talents are the going price for the grandson of Antonius Orator!”
Curio whistled. “If Fadius asked my tata again, I’d be glad to sleep wearing a blindfold! That’s half as much again as Cicero’s five million! You’ll even have a bit left over after you’ve paid all your debts.”
“I’m not quite Cousin Gaius, Curio!” said Antony, chortling. “I don’t owe more than half a million.” He sobered. “Anyway, none of them are about to let me get my hands on ready cash. Uncle Lucius and Titus Fadius are drawing up the marriage agreements so that Fadia keeps control of her fortune.”
“Oh, Marcus, that’s dreadful!” cried Clodia.
“Yes, that’s what I said straight after I refused to marry her on those terms,” Antony said complacently.
“You refused?” asked Palla, raddled cheeks working like a squirrel nibbling nuts.
“Yes.”
“And what happened then?’’
“They backed down.”
“All the way?”
“Not all the way, but far enough. Titus Fadius agreed to pay my debts and give me a cash settlement of a million besides. So I’m getting married in ten days’ time, though none of you has been asked to the wedding. Uncle Lucius wants me to look pure.”
“No gall, no Gaul!” howled Curio.
Everyone fell about laughing.
The meeting proceeded merrily enough for some time, though nothing important was said. The only attendants in the room were poised behind the couch on which lay Pompeia together with Palla, and they both belonged to Pompeia. The younger was her own maid, Doris, and the elder was Aurelia’s valued watchdog, Polyxena. Not one member of the Clodius Club was unaware that everything Polyxena heard would be reported faithfully to Aurelia once Pompeia returned to the Domus Publica, an annoyance of major proportions. In fact, there were many meetings held without Pompeia, either because the mischief being plotted was not for dissemination to the mother of the Pontifex Maximus, or because someone was proposing yet again that Pompeia be ejected. One good reason, however, had permitted Pompeia continued admission: there were times when it was useful to know that a rigid old pillar of society with a great deal of influence in that society was being fed information.
Today Publius Clodius reached the end of his tether. “Pompeia,” he said, voice hard, “that old spy behind you is an abomination! There’s nothing going on here all of Rome can’t know, but I object to spies, and that means I have to object to you! Go home, and take your wretched spy with you!”
The luminous and amazingly green eyes filled with tears; Pompeia’s lip trembled. “Oh, please, Publius Clodius! Please!”
Clodius turned his back. “Go home,” he said.
An awkward silence fell while Pompeia bundled herself off her couch, into her shoes and out of the room, Polyxena following with her customary wooden expression, and Doris sniffling.
“That was unkind, Publius,” said Clodia after they had gone.
“Kindness is not a virtue I esteem!” Clodius snapped.
“She’s Sulla’s granddaughter!”
“I don’t care if she’s Jupiter’s granddaughter! I am sick to death of putting up with Polyxena!”
“Cousin Gaius,” said Antony, “is not a fool. You’ll gain no access to his wife without someone like Polyxena present, Clodius.”
“I know that, Antonius!”
“He’s had so much experience himself,” Antony explained with a grin. “I doubt there’s a trick he doesn’t know when it comes to cuckolding husbands.” He sighed happily. “He’s the north wind, but he does adorn our stuffy family! More conquests than Apollo.”
“I don’t want to cuckold Caesar, I just want to be free of Polyxena!” snarled Clodius.
Suddenly Clodia began to giggle. “Well, now that the Eyes and Ears of Rome have departed, I can tell you what happened at Atticus’s dinner party the other evening.”
“That must have been exciting for you, Clodia dear,” young Poplicola said. “Very prim and proper!”
“Oh, absolutely, especially with Terentia there.”
“So what makes it worth mentioning?” Clodius asked grumpily, still incensed over Polyxena.
Clodia’s voice dropped, became fraught with significance. “I was seated opposite Cicero!” she announced.
“How could you bear such ecstasy?” asked Sempronia Tuditani.
“How could he bear such ecstasy, you mean!”
All heads turned her way.
“Clodia, he didn’t!” cried Fulvia.
“He certainly did,” Clodia said smugly. “He fell for me as hard as an insula coming down in an earthquake.”
“In front of Terentia?’’
“Well, she was round the corner facing the lectus imus, so she had her back to us. Yes, thanks to my friend Atticus, Cicero slipped his leash.”
“What happened?’’ asked Curio, helpless with laughter.
“I flirted with him from one end of the dinner to the other, that’s what happened. I flirted outrageously, and he adored it! Not to mention me. Told me he didn’t know there was a woman in Rome so well read. That was after I quoted the new poet, Catullus.” She turned to Curio. “Have you read him? Glorious!”
Curio wiped his eyes. “Haven’t heard of him.”
“Brand new—published by Atticus, of course. Comes from Italian Gaul across the Padus. Atticus says he’s about to descend on Rome—I can’t wait to meet him!”
“Back to Cicero,” said Clodius, seeing Forum possibilities. “What’s he like in the throes of love? I didn’t think he had it in him, frankly.”
“Oh, very silly and kittenish,” said Clodia, sounding bored. She rolled over on her back and kicked her legs. “Everything about him changes. The pater patriae becomes a Plautus ponce. That was why it was so much fun. I just kept prodding him to make a bigger and bigger fool of himself.”
“You’re a wicked woman!” said Decimus Brutus.
“That’s what Terentia thought too.”
“Oho! So she did notice?”
“After a while the whole room noticed.” Clodia wrinkled up her nose and looked adorable. “The harder he fell for me, the louder and sillier he became. Atticus was almost paralyzed with laughter.” She shivered theatrically. “Terentia was almost paralyzed with rage. Poor old Cicero! Why do we think he’s old, by the way? To repeat, poor old Cicero! I don’t imagine they were more than a foot from Atticus’s door before Terentia was gn
awing on his neck.”
“She wouldn’t have been gnawing on anything else,” purred Sempronia Tuditani.
The howl of mirth which went up made the servants in Fulvia’s kitchen at the far end of the garden smile—such a happy house!
Suddenly Clodia’s merriment changed tenor; she sat up very straight and looked gleefully at her brother. “Publius Clodius, are you game for some delicious mischief?”
“Is Caesar a Roman?’’
*
The next morning Clodia presented herself at the Pontifex Maximus’s front door accompanied by several other female members of the Clodius Club.
“Is Pompeia in?” she asked Eutychus.
“She is receiving, domina,” said the steward, bowing as he admitted them.
And off up the stairs the party went, while Eutychus hurried about his business. No need to summon Polyxena; young Quintus Pompeius Rufus was out of Rome, so there would be no men present.
It was evident that Pompeia had spent the night weeping; her eyes were puffed and reddened, her demeanor woebegone. When Clodia and the others bustled in, she leaped to her feet.
“Oh, Clodia, I was sure I’d never see you again!” she cried.
“My dear, I wouldn’t do that to you! But you can’t really blame my brother, now can you? Polyxena tells Aurelia everything.”
“I know, I know! I’m so sorry, but what can I do?”
“Nothing, dear one, nothing.” Clodia seated herself in the manner of a gorgeous bird settling, then smiled around the group she had brought with her: Fulvia, Clodilla, Sempronia Tuditani, Palla, and one other whom Pompeia didn’t recognize.
“This,” said Clodia demurely, “is my cousin Claudia from the country. She’s down on a holiday.”
“Ave, Claudia,” said Pompeia Sulla, smiling with her usual vacancy, and thinking that if Claudia was a rustic, she was very much in the mold of Palla and Sempronia Tuditani—wherever she came from must deem her racy indeed, with all that paint and lush bleached hair. Pompeia tried to be polite. “I can see the family likeness,” she said.
“I should hope so,” said cousin Claudia, pulling off that fantastic head of bright gold tresses.
For a moment Pompeia looked as if she was about to faint: her mouth dropped open, she gasped for air.
All of which was too much for Clodia and the others. They screamed with laughter.
“Sssssh!’’ hissed Publius Clodius, striding in a most unfeminine way to the outer door and slamming its latch home. He then returned to his seat, pursed up his mouth and fluttered his lashes. “My dear, what a divine apartment!” he fluted.
“Oh, oh, oh!” squeaked Pompeia. “Oh, you can’t!”
“I can, because here I am,” said Clodius in his normal voice. “And you’re right, Clodia. No Polyxena.”
“Please, please don’t stay!” said Pompeia in a whisper, face white, hands writhing. “My mother-in-law!”
“What, does she spy on you here too?”
“Not usually, but the Bona Dea is happening soon, and it’s being held here. I’m supposed to be organizing it.”
“You mean Aurelia’s organizing it, surely,” sneered Clodius.
“Well yes, of course she is! But she’s very meticulous about pretending to consult me because I’m the official hostess, the wife of the praetor in whose house Bona Dea is being held. Oh, Clodius, please go! She’s in and out all the time at the moment, and if she finds my door latched, she’ll complain to Caesar.”
“My poor baby!” crooned Clodius, enfolding Pompeia in a hug. “I’ll go, I promise.” He went to a magnificent polished silver mirror hanging on the wall, and with Fulvia’s assistance twitched his wig into place.
“I can’t say you’re pretty, Publius,” said his wife as she put the finishing touches to his coiffure, “but you make a passable woman”—she giggled—”if of somewhat dubious profession!”
“Come on, let’s go,” said Clodius to the rest of the visitors, “I only wanted to show Clodia that it could be done, and it can!”
The door latch flipped; the women went out in a cluster with Clodius in its middle.
Just in time. Aurelia appeared shortly thereafter, with her brows raised. “Who were they, hustling themselves off in a hurry?”
“Clodia and Clodilla and a few others,” said Pompeia vaguely.
“You’d better know what sort of milk we’re serving.”
“Milk?” asked Pompeia, astonished.
“Oh, Pompeia, honestly!” Aurelia stood just looking at her daughter-in-law. “Is there nothing inside that head except trinkets and clothes?’’
Whereupon Pompeia burst into tears. Aurelia emitted one of her extremely rare mild expletives (though in a muffled voice), and whisked herself away before she boxed Pompeia’s ears.
Outside on the Via Sacra the five genuine articles plus Clodius scurried up the road rather than down it toward the lower Forum; safer than encountering someone male they knew very well. Clodius was delighted with himself, and pranced along attracting quite a lot of attention from the well-to-do lady shoppers who frequented the area of the Porticus Margaritaria and the upper Forum. It was therefore with considerable relief that the women managed to get him home without someone’s penetrating his disguise.
“I’m going to be asked for days to come who was that strange creature with me this morning!” said Clodia wrathfully once the trappings were off and a washed, respectable Publius Clodius had disposed himself on a couch.
“It was all your idea!” he protested.
“Yes, but you didn’t have to make a public spectacle of yourself! The understanding was that you’d wrap up well there and back, not simper and wiggle for all the world to wonder at!”
“Shut up, Clodia, I’m thinking!”
“About what?”
“A little matter of revenge.”
Fulvia cuddled up to him, sensing the change. No one knew better than his wife that Clodius kept a list of victims inside his head, and no one was more prepared to help him than his wife. Of late the list had shrunk; Catilina was no more, and Arabs were probably permanently erased from it. So which one was it?
“Who?” she asked, sucking his earlobe.
“Aurelia,” he said between his teeth. “It’s high time someone cut her down to size.”
“And just how do you plan to do that?” Palla asked.
“It won’t do Fabia any good either,” he said thoughtfully, “and she’s another needing a lesson.”
“What are you up to, Clodius?” asked Clodilla, looking wary.
“Mischief!” he caroled, grabbed for Fulvia and began to tickle her unmercifully.
*
Bona Dea was the Good Goddess, as old as Rome herself and therefore owning neither face nor form; she was numen. She did have a name, but it was never uttered, so holy was it. What she meant to Roman women no man could understand, nor why she was called Good. Her worship lay quite outside the official State religion, and though the Treasury did give her a little money, she answered to no man or group of men. The Vestal Virgins cared for her because she had no priestesses of her own; they employed the women who tended her sacred medicinal garden, and they had custody of Bona Dea’s medicines, which were for Roman women only.
As she had no part in masculine Rome, her huge temple precinct lay outside the pomerium on the slope of the Aventine just beneath an outcropping rock, the Saxum Sacrum or sacred stone, and close to the Aventine water reservoir. No man dared come near, nor myrtle. A statue stood within the sanctuary, but it was not an effigy of Bona Dea, only something put there to trick the evil forces generated by men into thinking that was her. Nothing was what first it seemed in the world of Bona Dea, who loved women and snakes. Her precinct abounded in snakes. Men, it was said, were snakes. And owning so many snakes, what need had Bona Dea for men?
The medicines Bona Dea was famous for came from a garden all about the temple itself, beds of various herbs here, and elsewhere a sea of diseased rye planted each May Da
y and harvested under the supervision of the Vestals, who took its smutty ears of grain and made Bona Dea’s elixir from them—while thousands of snakes dozed or rustled amid the stalks, ignored and ignoring.
On May Day the women of Rome woke their Good Goddess from her six-month winter sleep amid flowers and festivities held in and around her temple. Roman citizen women from all walks of life flocked to attend the mysteries, which began at dawn and were ended by dusk. The exquisitely balanced duality of the Good Goddess was manifest in May birth and rye death, in wine and milk. For wine was taboo, yet had to be consumed in vast quantities. It was called milk and kept in precious silver vessels called honeypots, yet one more ruse to confound male things. Tired women wended their way home replete with milk poured from honeypots, still tingling from the voluptuous dry slither of snakes and remembering the powerful surge of snake muscle, the kiss of a forked tongue, earth broken open to receive the seed, a crown of vine leaves, the eternal female cycle of birth and death. But no man knew or wanted to know what happened at Bona Dea on May Day.
Then at the beginning of December Bona Dea went back to sleep, but not publicly, not while there was a sun in the sky or one ordinary Roman woman abroad. Because what she dreamed in winter was her secret, the rites were open only to the highest born of Rome’s women. All her daughters might witness her resurrection, but only the daughters of kings might watch her die. Death was sacred. Death was holy. Death was private.
That this year Bona Dea would be laid to rest in the house of the Pontifex Maximus was a foregone conclusion; the choice of venue was in the province of the Vestals, who were constrained by the fact that this venue had to be the house of an incumbent praetor or consul. Not since the time of Ahenobarbus Pontifex Maximus had there been an opportunity to celebrate the rites in the Domus Publica itself. This year there was. The urban praetor Caesar’s house was selected, and his wife Pompeia Sulla would be the official hostess. The date was to be the third night of December, and on that night no man or male child was permitted to remain in the Domus Publica, including slaves.
Naturally Caesar was delighted at the choice of his house, and happy to sleep in his rooms on the lower Vicus Patricii; he might perhaps have preferred to use the old apartment in Aurelia’s insula, except that it was at present occupied by Prince Masintha of Numidia, his client and the loser in a court case earlier in the year. That temper definitely frayed easier these days! At one stage he had become so incensed at the lies Prince Juba was busy telling that he had reached out and hauled Juba to his feet by seizing his beard. Not a citizen, Masintha faced flogging and strangling, but Caesar had whisked him away in the care of Lucius Decumius and was still hiding him. Perhaps, thought the Pontifex Maximus as he wandered uphill toward the Subura, just this night he could sample one of those deliciously earthy Suburan women time and the elevation of his fortunes had removed from his ken. Yes, what a terribly good idea! A meal with Lucius Decumius first, then a message to Gavia or Apronia or Scaptia…
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