“Would it be…easier for you if she were somewhere else?”
“I think she would do a fine job here, my lord.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“I’ve given you the only answer I can, my lord.”
I could see that he was going to break into tears if I pursued the matter any further. His eyes were pleading with me to change the subject. I cleared my throat. “But a woman as the chief scribe in a household? It’s unheard of.”
“If you’ll forgive my crudity, my lord, she doesn’t need a mentula to dip into an inkwell.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’ll also forgive your audacity.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
“All right, then.” I clapped my hands. “Write a letter for me, assigning her to this household.”
“Could she bring some books, my lord, to improve the quality of this library?”
“Certainly. Why not? Tell her to bring whatever you think suitable. I’ll seal it and we’ll send someone off with it today. Have her come up here right away. You’ll need a few days, at least, to show her what needs to be done.”
“Thank you, my lord,” he said, sharpening a pen.
“And you may need to come up here regularly, just to oversee her work.”
* * *
Dinner in the exhedra was a chilly affair, and not just because a light breeze was blowing down from the mountains. Since the house has a small kitchen and a cook unaccustomed to company, the meal was simple, featuring fish from the lake and vegetables grown on the estate. My appetite, along with my spirits, was dampened by Livia’s presence on the couch beside me and Aurora’s absence from behind me. Livia had insisted on having a meal packed for Aurora and Felix and sending them down to eat on the shore of the lake.
“The ‘newlyweds’ need some time to themselves,” she said.
The girl who served me did the job adequately, but she didn’t touch my foot when no one was looking or kiss the cloth she used to wipe the rim of my cup when she refilled it.
“Are your rooms comfortable, dear?” I asked Livia.
“They’ll do for a short visit,” Livia said. “I gather they’re not used much. One of your servants said some unusual things have happened in there.”
“Allegedly. You know how those stories get started. One jar falls off a shelf when no one’s around and before you know it the room is ‘haunted.’” I wanted to put her mind at ease to insure she stayed in the room.
“Perhaps you’d feel safer,” my mother put in, “if you moved to another room, Gaius’ for instance.”
“I’ll be fine where I am,” Livia said as she dipped another piece of fish into the garum sauce.
Julia, her cheeks still rosy from her “bath,” asked Pompeia, “Do I remember correctly that your family is from this area?”
Pompeia nodded and swallowed a large bite. “My father and Plinia’s mother were cousins. Our families have lived around here since Julius Caesar established the new town.”
“The Pompeius family has as many branches as our own Cornelii and Julii.” Julia laid a hand on Tacitus’ shoulder. “Are you related to any of the more distinguished ones? Pompeius Magnus by any chance?”
“No one that famous,” Pompeia said. “I don’t think I would claim it if I was. There are some people you’d just as soon not be related to.”
“Seneca’s wife was a Pompeia, wasn’t she?” Tacitus said. “Pompeia Paulina, if I recall.”
“I believe you’re right.”
“But no connection to your branch of the family?”
“I hope not.”
“Why wouldn’t you want to be related to her?” Livia groused. “Everybody’s heard of Seneca.”
“And everybody’s heard about the plot,” Pompeia said, obviously sorry the whole subject had come up.
“What plot?” Livia was sitting up on the couch now. Apparently there was at least one person who hadn’t heard of it.
“There was a plot to assassinate Nero,” Tacitus said. “Seneca was implicated, though no one is sure he was actually involved. Nero ordered him to kill himself. Pompeia Paulina tried to kill herself alongside him, but Nero forbade it. She lived several more years and is much admired for her loyalty to her husband and to his philosophy.”
“But they tried to kill a princeps?” Livia looked down her nose.
“Well, it was Nero,” Julia said.
“Still—”
“There’s no evidence that Pompeia or any relative of hers participated in the plot,” Tacitus said. “In a case like that, though, Nero always cast a wide net.”
“And anyone to whom my cousin Pompeia is related,” my mother said, “has some connection to us. Remember that.”
“It’s the sort of thing,” Pompeia said, clipping her words, “that one hopes is never talked about so it can be forgotten.”
“Then let’s talk about something else,” Julia said. “Where is your family’s home?”
Pompeia sighed in relief at the opportunity to change the subject. “They lived closer to Comum. My brother and I sold the property after the deaths of our parents. He prefers his place on the shore of the lake, just south of here. I haven’t been back here in some time. Rome is so much more an interesting place to live, and my husband left me a beautiful property at Narnia.”
Julia nodded. “Certainly much closer to Rome and yet far enough away from the city.”
“One never wants to be too far from Rome,” Pompeia said. “And being back here at this time is painful.”
“Why?” Julia asked.
“It was twenty years ago, almost to the day, when my husband drowned in this lake. The last time I saw him was in this garden. They never found his body.”
Julia picked up an apple that a slave had sliced. “They never found—”
“Let’s not dwell on the misfortunes of the past, dear,” my mother cut in. “We can’t change anything. Such memories only intrude on a pleasant evening.”
A fleeting expression on my mother’s face made me think she wasn’t concerned only with Pompeia’s feelings, but the conversation quickly degenerated into banalities—the new hairstyle worn by Domitian’s wife, Martial’s latest book of salacious poems, and so on. The only reason I didn’t excuse myself was because I didn’t want to leave Tacitus and Julia to endure the company of my wife and mother-in-law without reinforcements. I need not have worried about Julia, though. She answered Livia’s every insult about the provincial character of the house or the food with a wit worthy of one of Martial’s epigrams.
At one point Pompeia excused herself to use the latrina. Livia got up to join her. “Is there room for two?”
“There’s plenty of room,” Julia said. “But we use the bushes at the other end of the garden. Mine’s the one with the yellow flowers on it. They were white when I arrived.”
I turned my head to cover my chuckle and noticed Naomi, sitting at my mother’s feet, with her hand over her mouth. My mother, on the other hand, was clearly appalled.
Upon their return the two women brought the dinner to a mercifully early conclusion by professing to be tired from their travels and ready for bed.
As we watched the two short, stubby women wend their way across the garden my mother said, “Really, Gaius, how are you and Livia going to have a family if you don’t share a room?” Since she discovered her illness she has been pushing the subject of children like a man setting the pace for the oars in a trireme. I wondered how she would feel if Aurora provided her with a grandchild.
A miracle could happen, I wanted to say, like a god impregnating the mother of Romulus and Remus. “Mother, we’ve had this conversation. You heard Livia say that my room was simply too small for two people. She could never be comfortable in there.”
“Then why don’t you build some larger rooms?”
“I suppose I could do that.” Anything to keep up a pretense that made my mother happy for whatever time she had left. I looked around the garden and poin
ted to the west wall. “The land on the other side of that wall is open and flat and overlooks the lake. We could break through there and add a wing.”
“It wouldn’t be difficult,” Tacitus said. “You don’t have to worry about a neighbor’s house being in the way, as you would in Rome. There would be a lovely view.”
“Yes, the view was quite lovely,” my mother said.
A vision, or a memory, arose in my mind of walking in that garden. “Do you know why my father walled it up?”
“He said he was concerned about you wandering out there and falling into the lake.”
“Was that a real concern?” Surely I was too sensible a child to do something like that.
“It certainly was. The old vegetable garden extended from the house to where the land drops off into the lake. And you were an adventuresome child. One of the servants once found you on the very tip of the land. One more step and you’d have been in the lake.”
“I could have walked through the rear gate just as easily,” I pointed out.
“We could lock that, and there was no gate at all on this opening.”
“Why didn’t he just put up a gate?”
“I think he was concerned about the political situation, too,” Mother admitted. “It was near the end of Nero’s reign, twenty years ago. There were rumblings of trouble on the frontiers. That opening in the wall left us vulnerable. He seemed to decide to do all this rather suddenly and did not consult me.” She took a long sip of her wine. “He rarely consulted me on anything.”
I fell silent as I looked at the space where the opening had been. I was warming to the prospect of enlarging the house, for reasons other than my mother’s impossible dream for a grandchild. “You know, it wouldn’t be a bad idea. To run this place more efficiently I need to bring in a few more people. The ones I’ve brought up here will need space. We might add eight or ten rooms.” I was envisioning a rectangular addition with four rooms on each side and two at the end, a space that Xenobia and Phineas might share.
“Just make sure one of them is large enough for you and Livia. It’s not natural for a husband and wife to spend so much time apart.”
“Well, as she said, the rooms here are small.”
Mother raised herself on both elbows and leaned toward me. “But it’s not just here, Gaius. You two are hardly ever together. She spends so much of her time on her estates.”
For which I thank the gods. “Her family has their property, Mother, and she inherited a large estate from her first husband. These places don’t run themselves. With her father dead, she has to help her mother manage things. Give us time.” An eternity, perhaps. “Meanwhile, we’ll get started tomorrow on an addition.”
“An addition to the family is what I want,” Mother groused. “You ought to get started on that tonight.”
“We’re young,” I said. “There’s plenty of time.”
“There may not be,” Mother said quietly. “You never know.”
“As long as we’re talking about building,” I said, “I’m thinking about finishing that temple my father began.” I had ridden past the site but it was far enough off the main roads that I had never taken the time to examine it. By now it was badly overgrown.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Mother said.
“Why not? It puts our family in a bad light to leave it unfinished, as though we don’t have the will or the resources.”
Mother turned her eyes on me with what I recognized as her pleading look. “Please don’t, Gaius. Please.”
* * *
The ride down to the shore of the lake took only a few moments. Neither Felix nor I said much, since the path was narrow and the horses unfamiliar to us. I could see that Felix was uncomfortable with the whole idea of riding. He sighed in obvious relief when we dismounted and tied the reins to a tree.
“That looks like a good spot,” I said, pointing to a place where the shore jutted out enough to offer an uncluttered view of the mountains across the lake and a few boats still on the calm water. “Shall we eat there, husband?” We had agreed to call one another “husband” and “wife,” in part to mock ourselves and in part to make people think we were getting accustomed to the idea.
Felix untied the baskets containing our supper which had been strapped across his horse behind him. I unfolded the blanket I’d been riding on and spread it on the ground.
“Yes, very pleasant, wife,” Felix said as he began unpacking the baskets. “I suppose we can thank the lady Livia for being so jealous of you that—”
“That she would send me to Lusitania or Armenia, if she could, not just to this shore.”
“She has good reason to be jealous. You are a beautiful woman and my lord Gaius Pliny is obviously in love with you. Perhaps I should be jealous.”
“You are a kind and gracious man, husband. Neither of us asked to be put in this situation, but it’s certainly not the worst situation a slave ever faced.”
“That’s true, wife. We couldn’t ask for more considerate masters, both the elder and the younger.” He set out a plate of fish, some bread, a block of cheese, and a wineskin.
“The old man was certainly good to my mother.”
He looked out over the lake and sighed. “How did you become a slave?”
“When I was six my mother and I were sold to pay off my father’s debts.” The memory was still painful—being dragged away by men who were saying things I didn’t understand, my mother in tears. “I came into Gaius Pliny’s household when I was seven. Somehow Gaius and I became friends right away. And the last couple of years…”
“Rather more than friends?”
I could feel myself blush. “That’s one way to put it.”
Felix scrounged in one basket, then the other, and looked up in frustration.
“What’s the matter?”
“They forgot to pack a knife. I guess we’ll just have to tear things apart with our hands.”
I reached up under my gown and unsheathed the knife strapped to my thigh. “Don’t tell anyone you saw this, husband.”
Felix scooted away from me. “By the gods, Aurora! Do you always carry that?”
“Only in situations where I’m not sure how safe I’ll be.”
“Do you not feel safe with me?”
“I barely know you. I think you’re a good man, but—”
“Are you going to slice the bread and cheese or use it on me?”
I began slicing the bread. “I’m sorry, Felix. But we’re out here alone. We don’t even have a kitchen knife to protect ourselves.”
“No, you’re right. You just caught me by surprise. You know a slave can be punished for carrying a weapon. You could be accused of plotting your master’s death. Where did you get it?”
“My master gave it to me.” I handed him a piece of bread and started to slice the cheese. He uncorked the wineskin.
“My wife is a woman of many talents, it seems. With horses, for instance. Where did you learn to ride?”
“My father bred horses, near Carthage. I was on a horse as soon as I could sit up. But my mother said he lost money on the races. A lot of money. After he sold the horses…he sold us.” I needed to talk about something else. “What about you?”
“Nothing so glamorous. I was born the son of a slave. I’ve never known any other life. You at least must have some memory of not being a slave.”
“I barely remember anything else. I do recall a farm on the edge of the desert. My most vivid memory is the way the sand would sometimes blow into the barns and the house. I’ve often wondered if it has covered them by now.”
“In spite of everything, wife,” Felix said, “Fortune has certainly smiled on you, and I guess she’s given me a wink, to make up for…”
* * *
The next morning, as soon as it was light enough, Tacitus and I walked around the area where the addition would be built. I had brought a hammer, some stakes, a knife, and a coil of thin rope. Two ladders were already set up against the wall.
“It’s entirely feasible,” Tacitus said, scuffing an outline in the dirt. “Probably only three rooms on each side, though, and two across the back wall.”
“Or perhaps one large room across the back wall, to mollify my mother.” I drove stakes in the ground to mark the corners of the new work.
“Do you really want to build a room that Livia might actually share with you?”
“I doubt she’ll ever set foot on this place again.” I handed Tacitus one end of the piece of rope and strung it around the stakes to guide the men who would dig the foundation, squaring it off as best I could. Phineas and Xenobia might enjoy a larger room.
“Does that mean you’ll become a more frequent visitor here?”
Before I had to answer that question the servants whom I had chosen as a work crew the previous evening began to assemble. Being a rural estate, this house had more male servants than my house in Rome, so we could do a good part of the work ourselves. Taking up a knife, I scratched two lines down the plaster on the wall.
“I’ve measured from the corner of the building, inside and out,” I said. “This is where the opening used to be. As long as we stay within these two lines, we won’t damage any of the rooms around the garden. The older servants say this wall is like the rest of the house, two rows of finished stone with rubble in between.”
“My lord,” one of the men said diffidently, “none of us is stoneworkers.”
“Oh, I realize that. We’ll need to hire a crew of masons to finish the walls of the addition, but we can begin knocking this down ourselves. You’ll take down the finished stone on the outside and begin to dig the foundation of the addition. You can see where we’ve staked the outline, so a couple of you start digging.” I handed shovels and picks to several of the stronger-looking men. “The rest of you, take out this side of the wall. Be careful so we can reuse this finished stone. It won’t be enough, but I’ve sent Felix to the quarry down the road to order more.”
I planned to have Felix running back and forth to the quarry for as long as it took to get enough stone to complete this project. I’d even given him money to stay overnight in the village near the quarry and encouraged him to do so if he felt it necessary to oversee the shipping of the stone. He seemed to understand me. He had left at dawn. I hadn’t seen Aurora yet today.
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