The Uncertain Hour

by Jesse Browner

  “Did you really see the Laocoön?”

  “Yes, it’s still there, a little damaged but essentially intact. A little big to cart away, though. Someone resourceful will get their hands on it one day, I’m sure.”

  Pollia sighed. “How I should like to see that. Perhaps you can take us with you on your next trip, Petronius?”

  Petronius smiled ruefully down at her. “I should like nothing better, my dear, but I believe that was my last cruise to Spelunca.”

  “Oh, Petronius!” Simultaneously, like actors in a stage comedy, Fabius and Pollia raised their hands to cover their mouths, while all the color drained from their faces. Pollia looked as if she were about to be sick, and she turned her face to the wall in shame. Fabius made as if to get down on his knees.

  “No, Fabius, no.”

  “Petronius, I’m so sorry.”

  “Stop now. Listen to me, Fabius. And you too, Pollia.” He pulled them into a tight circle about him, his arms draped across their backs, hands clasped to the napes of their necks so that they might not attempt to pull away. He spoke in a low, calm whisper. “There is to be none of that here tonight. Tonight we are here to celebrate, do you hear me? There are to be no tears, no speeches, no farewells. We are here to eat, to laugh, to joke, to hear poetry if necessary. It is what I wish, and you must respect my wishes. And we have my young Spaniard tonight; he is your age, Fabius. Let us please show him what a Roman can do when he puts his mind to it. Set an example, yes? Fabius? Pollia?”

  They both nodded submissively, abashed, eyes to the floor. The back of Pollia’s neck was hot, and Petronius could feel it prickling with a sudden nervous sweat. It excited him momentarily, as if she were making a coded assignation with him, but the feeling evaporated as soon as it announced itself. He’d been strongly attracted to her when they’d first met, not long before, at an entertainment put on by Lucilius, but it had come to nothing when she’d rebuffed him with exquisite subtlety and courtesy. She was far more interesting and thoughtful than her rather conventional husband, but she was properly demure with her elders, giving a false first impression of mousiness that would certainly confound many a blustering senator when he tried to bed her in the coming years. Petronius was certain that she would scorn the louts and—when marital fidelity had exhausted its first blush of sanctity and sanctimony—give herself only to men like himself, men of the mind and the deed, if only he were there to enjoy her. He gave her neck a quick squeeze, and that of Fabius as well for good measure.

  “Now tell me, young ones, do you know everyone here?”

  “We know no one,” Fabius said forlornly.

  “You will find it very useful in your career to know a man before you meet him. You see that chubby, jolly old man with the gray hair and pigeon toes? That is the senator Decimus Anicius Pulcher, a very dear friend of my father’s youth. You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but he is one of the bravest and most honest men in Rome. During the persecutions under Tiberius, my father fell afoul of Sejanus and it was only a matter of time before his troubles caught up with him. In the midst of all this, Anicius gets up in the senate—he was lean and athletic in those days, with a booming voice—and defends my father at great peril to his own career and health. He saved my father’s life, no doubt about it, and if Sejanus hadn’t been brought down himself shortly afterward, there’d have been hell to pay for both of them. My father died young, of fever, and Anicius took me under his wing, protected me, taught me everything I know about being a man. He’s rather given himself over to the pleasures of the flesh these days—he has a particular weakness for young boys—but I suppose he’s earned it. Melissa worships him.

  “The gaunt, ramrod fellow with the cropped hair is Gaius Lucilius Junior, the great Neapolitan lawyer. He came to Rome as a boy; that’s where we met. We were inseparable, even as children. Studied Greek, rhetoric, and arms together, assumed the toga together, had our first whore together. He was the emperor’s procurator in Sicily, and if you ask him very humbly he may read to you from the poem he’s writing on the origins of volcanic activity. He’s quiet, but don’t let that fool you. Quite incredibly wealthy now, thanks to his marriage to Cornelia Felicia. That’s her with the dyed hair and the bangles. Society lady, a little frivolous, no intellectual, but generous and compassionate and absolutely devoted to Lucilius.

  “The other fellow, that scruffy boy with his face in the wine bowl, that’s my client Marcus Valerius Martialis, a poet. Spanish.”

  Petronius, Fabius, and Pollia crossed the room. Melissa, Ani-cius, Lucilius, and Cornelia were laughing gaily over something as he approached. Cornelia was in blue with gold trimmings. She was dripping with pink sapphires and heliodor, and had dyed her hair mulberry red; it gleamed like unction in the lamplight. Martialis was with them, and joined in their laughter, but even from halfway across the room Petronius could see that his was forced, uneasy, as if he were trying to follow a joke in a foreign language. Petronius dearly hoped that poor Marcus would find his way into the spirit of things over the course of the evening, as it would be very tiresome if he were to require continuous cajoling. Petronius thought that Marcus, notwithstanding his provincial upbringing, had it in him to rise above his own emotional failings, but he couldn’t be certain. After all, he hadn’t even been certain of himself until an hour ago, so how could he possibly trust Marcus to behave?

  At the same time, Marcus had been right about one thing: with all his literary connections, it was surely to him that the historians would come for a firsthand account of the death of Petronius. What if Marcus should speak out in anger and resentment? Although Petronius was confident of Marcus’s love and loyalty, in one of his hot-blooded snits the boy was perfectly capable of doing lasting, even permanent damage to Petronius’s reputation with a skewed account of the evening. A man’s reputation is a delicate vase, vulnerable in equal measure to the malice of enemies, the prurience of strangers, and the clumsiness of friends. Petronius would be very sorry indeed if, for the sake of a well-turned phrase, Marcus in a fit of pique should throw a memorable epithet at him and it stuck, the way Tubero the Stoic had ensured that the courageous, honorable, and self-effacing Lucul-lus would be forever remembered as “Xerxes in a toga.”

  “There you are, Petronius,” Lucilius said warmly, drawing him in with an arm about his shoulders. “We’ve just been laughing at you behind your back.”

  “Have you really? What have I done this time?”

  “It’s not you, actually,” said Cornelia. “It’s this funny little village you live in.”

  “What’s wrong with Cumae?”

  “It’s so … Greek.”

  “Ah, you mean Greek like Homer and Plato? Or Greek like Euripides and Epicurus?”

  “No, I mean the horrid sort of Greek. Greek fishermen. Greek vendettas. Do you know, as we were coming up from Bauli today, we ran into a nasty crowd on the main street. There was a poor woman on a mule, and they were taunting and tormenting her as they drove her through the village. They were all screaming at her.”

  “Onobatis.”

  “Precisely—’donkey-mounted.’ We were told she’d been taken in adultery. It was savage, backwards. You know, passing through those myrtle groves and sulfur pools from Baiae, it’s as if one were stepping into another century. It’s as if the Etruscans were never defeated.”

  “Vatia lived here quite happily. So did Cicero.”

  “Cicero hated it here, and you know it,” Martialis said testily.

  “In any case, Cornelia, if all those red-necked, Greek-speaking fishermen keep you vulgar rich out of Cumae, I’m all for them. The last thing I want to see is Cumae become another Baiae.”

  “No fear of that. There isn’t even a decent dressmaker here.”

  “What’s in the basket, Cornelia?”

  “Oh, I’d quite forgotten. I’ve brought you some candles and figurines for the holiday.”

  “How thoughtful. I’ll have Persis distribute them to the slaves.” Petronius held th
e basket out at arm’s length, and a slave stepped up from behind to seize and spirit it away.

  With a sweep of his arm, Petronius gathered Fabius and Pollia into the circle. “Have you all met Fabius Arvina and Julia Pollia?”

  “My congratulations on your election,” Lucilius said, bowing. “We hear promising things of you in the courts, sir.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Petronius made the introductions. Martialis circled the group and surreptitiously sniffed at Pollia’s hair behind her back. Petronius threw him a fierce, fleeting scowl, which Martialis returned with a cross-eyed grimace.

  “Senator.”

  “Quaestor.”

  Commagenus appeared silently at Petronius’s side.

  “Vellia wishes to inform you that supper is served,” he whispered. Petronius nodded.

  “Have they all buggered off for the holiday?” Cornelia inquired. Petronius looked at her in alarm. It was dangerous enough that her husband had been a close friend of Seneca’s; far riskier, however, that she should still be affecting the coarse mannerisms of the emperor’s late wife, Poppaea Sabina, almost two years after her death. In this day and age, such insensitivity to the shifting nuances of court fashion was more than enough to destroy a career, or worse. Petronius made a mental note to raise the issue with Lu-cilius before the evening was out.

  “Yes,” he said, touching her lightly below the elbow to turn and guide her toward the door. “They’ve buggered off for the revels and left us to fend for ourselves. I do hope you won’t mind carving the boar.”

  “I’d gut him with my bare teeth for a taste of Lucullo’s sow’s vulva.”

  “That’s the only reason you’re here, isn’t it? You people disgust me, you really do. Still, I think you’ll be pleased.”

  Petronius and Cornelia glided toward the door, and the others followed, making a cheerful noise. But at the top of the stairs, they paused and gasped collectively. Even Petronius himself, who had given the orders, could not help but be impressed.

  At the center of the terrace, the great pergola of Lebanese cedar had been hung with garlands of fragrant melilot entwined with roses, drooping between the crossbars and spiraling down the posts. Chains of silver bore crystal lamps like sparkling fruit, twinkling and winking among the viburnum, shrouded in the smoke rising from censors of myrrh and filtering through the leafy canopy, twisting off into braids that climbed and vanished on a steady, gentle breeze into the cloudless night. A sliver of yellow moon quivered over Pithecusa. The air was laced with thyme, incense, and burning fennel.

  Beneath the pergola, the great semicircular dining couch had been prepared for nine, overlaid with mattresses, cushions, and a single vast counterpane of purple silk embroidered with gold and silver thread, which glowed and pulsed in the crystalline lamplight. The couch was sheltered from the wind on two sides by a great hinged scrim of Nile reeds, painted and lacquered in gleaming scarlet with Egyptian motifs, that Petronius’s greatgrandfather was said to have procured from the household of Cleopatra during his prefecture of Egypt. The surface of the water table, an ornamental pool at the axis of the couch, was afloat with small ceramic dishes and lamps in the form of pleasure craft and waterfowl; the dishes, nudged toward the diners’ side by a plashing fountain, held mounds of olives, nuts, and relish. Larger bronze platters rested on the basin’s edge, heaped with cold steamed fish, raw oysters and vinegar on beds of crushed ice, the roast eggs of songbirds, and figpeckers baked in peppered egg yolk. Nine slaves, one per diner, stood at the ready around the couch to help the guests with their sandals and provide them with napkins and goblets.

  Melissa was at his side, resting gently against him. He put his arm around her waist and spoke to her in a whisper.

  “Are we not to have any time to talk in private?” “Are you sure that’s what you want, Titus?” she replied. “You’ve had me to yourself all week and done nothing about it.”

  “I need … I’ve needed to find the right words to say to you.”

  “I’ll be here when you’ve found them.” And she moved on down to where Lucilius awaited her with outstretched arm. Petronius followed her with his eyes. Was it that she’d changed so much since that day, eight years earlier, when they’d met in the ruined merchant’s house, or that she’d changed not at all?

  PETRONIUS SQUINTED INTO the dark shadows of the peristyle, and was just able to discern the silhouette of a cloaked woman. She stepped into the courtyard, but the light was failing there, too, and he could make out no distinguishing features of her face.

  “Who are you?” he demanded sharply.

  “An art lover, like you,” she said somberly.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you doing here, Governor?”

  “You know me?”

  “Everybody in Prusa knows everybody else. You’re the only man in Prusa I don’t know, so you must be the governor.”

  She was an Italian, with a powerful Cisalpine accent, perhaps from Mutina or Verona. Petronius thought she might be a whore, especially given her impudent way of answering questions with questions. Perhaps he had interrupted an assignation—this dismal relic would certainly offer a discreet trysting spot in a town where privacy was at a premium—and her client was lying low somewhere nearby, waiting for an opportune moment to make his escape. And yet it seemed unlikely that an Italian whore should have found her way to this dreary provincial city. That she was of the lower classes, in any case, was perfectly clear. Petronius took her for a soldier’s wife.

  “I ask you again: What are you doing here?”

  “There are few enough places in this city where a woman can go to be alone with her thoughts. Now there’s one less.”

  “Why should a respectable woman need to be alone with her thoughts?”

  “Why should the ruler of a great Roman province spend his afternoons dreaming among the ruins?”

  “I’ll escort you to the barracks.”

  “Thank you, Governor.”

  They walked through the darkened streets, instinctively choosing the smaller and less frequented ways, neither of them wishing to be recognized, either individually or in each other’s company, though it would have made little difference in any case, as the town was as vacant and silent as if it had been evacuated before an oncoming army. Every so often, they passed beneath a torch or lamp placed at important intersections, and as they did he would turn to get a better look at her. She kept her head down and held the hood of her cloak tightly beneath her chin, so he had to be content with fleeting glimpses. She was not young, perhaps in her late twenties, but her posture was upright and strong, her gait confident in the incongruous fur boots she wore—swag, no doubt, from one of her husband’s campaigns in the north. Her hair appeared to be the lightest brown, almost blond, and her full lips, though somewhat dry and cracked, betrayed a kind of erotic or sensual disdain. Her nose was small and sloped, a legacy of the Gallic invasions of centuries past.

  Her name was Melissa Silia. Her husband was Aulus Junius, a centurion of the local cohort, attached to the Fourth Scythian. Petronius knew it by reputation, a legion despised by the high command for its laxity and want of fighting spirit. Aulus had seen some action in Illyria and Pannonia, and had risen through the ranks on the basis of plodding, brutal competence, but since then had been posted from one dismal backwater to the next. He and his wife had lived in Prusa for the past three years; it would probably be his last posting, as he was to retire within eighteen months. He had not yet decided whether to settle on his allotment on the River Savus in Illyria, there to raise beans and cabbage, or to sell the allotment and return to his family cooperage in Cremona. The couple had no children.

  All this she told Petronius with detached candor, as if providing the biographical background of a stranger at a judicial inquiry. It came pouring out of her unbidden, and yet, for all her frankness, there was something hard about her, something that had been damaged long ago and poorly reset. She didn’t need to tell h
im how miserable her life was—that came through eloquently just in the cold facts—or that she held her husband in haughty disdain. It would have been improbable, Petronius imagined, to endure a life one hated for so long and not to develop calluses. He sensed that he was not the first stranger to whom she had related this story. It came out of her almost as if by rote, the way a refugee might tell the tale of her lost family to every passer-by, in the forlorn hope of hitting on that one in a million who had relevant information. It was also as if she didn’t fully grasp the significance of the accumulated facts—as if, were she to explain them patiently enough to all who would listen, someone out there would finally be able to tell her what they meant. That was it—she seemed to be in shock, unable to absorb the enormity of the disaster that had befallen her. Petronius had seen civilians behave that way in warfare, following the destruction of their community and family.

  She told him that she was the daughter of a Cremona cooper who had married her off to the son of his rival in the hope of consolidating their businesses and monopolizing the local trade. Her new husband, ambitious but stupid, had instead joined the military shortly thereafter, with forlorn dreams of glory. In his absence, she had gone to live with her in-laws, who had treated her with bullying contempt, more like a slave than a daughter. She had been lively and flighty then, and had begged her own father to take her back, to no avail. Ultimately, and against all odds, her husband had been promoted again and again, having been consigned to the ninth cohort of his legion, the weakest and therefore the one from which the ablest soldiers were transferred elsewhere. When he was promoted to centurion, he sent for her, and she had lived in military barracks ever since. He had seen no action in many years, and thus had had no opportunity to enrich himself on booty, his dreams of glory faded to dull anticipation of a comfortable retirement.