The House of the Vestals rsr-6

by Steven Saylor

  Lucius gave me a hearty slap across the shoulders and walked me toward the villa. Eco ran in circles around us, like an excited pup. It was a charming house, low and rambling with many windows, their shutters all thrown open to let in the sunlight and fresh air. I thought of houses in the city, all narrow and crammed together and windowless for fear of robbers climbing in from the street. Here, even the house seemed to have sighed with relief and allowed itself to relax.

  "You see, I told you," said Lucius. "Look at that smile on your face! The last time I saw you in the city, you looked like a man wearing shoes too small for his feet. I knew this was what you needed-an escape to the countryside for a few days. It always works for me. When all the politicking and litigation in the Forum becomes too much, I flee to my farm. You'll see. A few days and you'll be a reborn man. And Eco will have a splendid time, climbing the hills, swimming in the stream. But you didn't bring Bethesda?"

  "No. She-" I began to say she refused to come, which was the exact truth, but I feared that my highborn friend would smirk at the idea of a slave refusing to accompany her master on a trip.

  "Bethesda is a creature of the city, you know. Hardly suited for the countryside, so I left her at home, with Belbo to look after her. She'd have been useless to me here."

  "Oh, I see." Lucius nodded. "She refused to come?"

  "Well…" I began to shake my head, then gave it up and laughed out loud. Of what use were citified pretensions here, where Sol stood still and cast his golden light over a perfect world? Lucius was right. Best to leave such nonsense back in Rome. On an impulse I reached for Eco, and when he made a game of slipping from my grasp I gave chase. The two of us ran in circles around Lucius Claudius, who threw back his head and laughed.

  That night we dined on asparagus and goose liver, followed by mushrooms sauteed in goose fat and a guinea hen in a honey-vinegar sauce sprinkled with pine nuts. The fare was simply but superbly prepared. I praised the meal so profusely that Lucius called in the cook to take a bow.

  I was surprised to see that the cook was a woman, and still. in her twenties. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight bun, no doubt to keep it out of her way in the kitchen. Her plump cheeks were all the plumper for the beaming smile on her face; she appreciated praise. Her face was pleasant, if not beautiful, and her figure, even in her loose clothing, appeared to be quite voluptuous.

  "Davia started as an assistant to my head cook at my house in Rome," Lucius explained. "She helped him shop, measured out ingredients, that sort of thing. But when he fell ill last winter and she had to take his place, she showed such a knack that I decided to give her the run of the kitchen here at the farm. So you approve, Gordianus?"

  "Indeed. Everything was splendid, Davia."

  Eco added his praise but his applause was interrupted by a profound yawn. Too much good food and fresh air, he explained, gesturing to the table and sucking in a deep breath. He excused himself and went straight to bed.

  Lucius and I took chairs down to the stream and sipped his finest vintage while we listened to the gurgling of the water and the chirring of the crickets and watched thin clouds pass like shredded veils across the face of the moon.

  "Ten days of this, and I think I might forget the way back to Rome."

  "Ah, but not the way back to Bethesda, I'll wager," said Lucius. "I was hoping to see her. She's a city flower, yes, but put her in the country and she might put out some fresh blossoms that would surprise you. Ah well, it will be just us three fellows, then."

  "No other guests?"

  "No, no, no! I specifically waited until I had no pending social obligations, so that we should have the place all to ourselves." He smiled at me under the moonlight, then turned down his lips in a mock frown. "It's not what you're thinking, Gordianus."

  "And what am I thinking?"

  "That for all his homely virtues, your friend Lucius Claudius is still a patrician and subject to the snobbery of his class; that I chose a time to invite you here when there'd be no one else around so as to avoid having you seen by my more elevated friends. But that's not the point at all. I wanted you to have the place to yourself so that you wouldn't have to put up with them! Oh, if you only knew the sort of people I'm talking about."

  I smiled at his discomfort. "My work does occasionally bring me into contact with the highborn and wealthy, you know."

  "Ah, but it's a different matter, socializing with them. I won't even mention my own family, though they're the worst. Oh, there are the fortune-hunters, the ones on the fringes of society who think they can scrape and claw their way to re-spectability like a ferret. And the grandpas, the boring, self-important old farts who never let anyone forget that some ancestor of theirs served two terms as consul or sacked a Greek temple or slaughtered a shipload of Carthaginians back in the golden age. And the crackpots who claim they're descended from Hercules or Venus-more likely Medusa, judging from their table manners. And the too rich, spoiled young men who can't think of anything but gambling and horse racing, and the too pretty girls who can't think of anything but new gowns and jewels, and the parents who can't think of anything but matching up the boys and girls so that they can breed more of the same.

  "You see, Gordianus, you meet these people at their worst, when there's been a dreadful murder or some other crime, and they're all anxious and confused and need your help, but I see them at their best, when they're preening themselves like African birds and oozing charm all over each other like honey, and believe me, at their best they're a thousand times worse! Oh, you can't imagine some of the dreadful gatherings I've had to put up with here at the villa. No, no, nothing like that for the next ten days. This shall be a respite for you and me alike-for you from the city, and for me from my so-called circle of friends."

  But it was not to be.

  The next three days were like a foretaste of Elysium. Eco explored every corner of the farm, as fascinated by butterflies and ant beds as he was by the arcane mechanics of the olive oil press and the wine press. He had always been a city boy-he was an abandoned child of the streets before I adopted him-but it was clear he could develop a taste for the country.

  As for me, I treated myself to Davia's cooking at least three times a day, toured the farm with Lucius and his foreman, and spent restful hours lying in the shade of the willows along the stream, scrolling through trashy Greek novels from Lucius's small library. The plots all seemed to be the same-humble boy meets noble girl, girl is abducted by pirates/giants/soldiers, boy rescues girl and turns out to be of noble birth himself-but such nonsense seemed to fit my mood perfectly. I allowed myself to become pampered and relaxed and thoroughly lazy in body, mind and spirit, and I enjoyed every moment.

  Then came the fourth day, and the visitors.

  They arrived just as twilight was falling, in an open traveling coach drawn by four white horses and followed by a small retinue of slaves. She was dressed in green and wore her auburn curls pinned in the peculiar upright fan shape that happened to be stylish in the city that spring; it made a suitable frame for the striking beauty of her face. He wore a dark blue tunic that was sleeveless and cut above the knees to show off his athletic arms and legs, and an oddly trimmed little beard that seemed designed to flout convention. They looked to be about my age, midway between thirty and forty.

  I happened to be walking back to the villa from the stream. Lucius stepped out of the house to greet me, looked past me and saw the new arrivals.

  "Numa's balls!" he exclaimed under his breath, borrowing my own favorite epithet.

  "Friends of yours?" I said.

  "Yes!" He could not have sounded more dismayed if he was being paid a visit by Hannibal's ghost.

  He, it turned out, was a fellow named Titus Didius. She was Antonia, his second wife. (They had both divorced their first spouses in order to marry each other, generating enormous scandal and no small amount of envy among their unhappily married peers.) According to Lucius, who took me aside while the couple settled into the room next to
mine, they drank like fish, fought like jackals, and stole like magpies. (I noticed that the slaves discreetly put away the costliest wines, the best silver, and the most fragile Arretine vases shortly after they arrived.)

  "It seems they were planning to spend a few days up at my cousin Manius's place," explained Lucius, "but when they arrived, no one was there. Well, I know what happened-Manius went down to Rome just to avoid them."

  "Surely not."

  "Surely yes. I wonder that they didn't pass him on the way! So now they've come here, asking to stay awhile, 'just a day or two, before we head back to the city. We were so looking forward to some time in the country. You will be a dear, won't you, Lucius, and let us stay, just for a bit?' More likely ten days than two!"

  I shrugged. "They don't look so awful to me."

  "Oh, wait. Just wait."

  "Well, if they're really as terrible as that, why don't you let them stay the night and then turn them away?"

  "Turn them away?" He repeated the phrase as if I'd stopped speaking Latin. "Turn them away? You mean, send away Titus Didius, old Marcus Didius's boy? Refuse my hospitality to Antonia? But Gordianus, I've known these people since I was a child. I mean, to avoid them, like cousin Manius has done, well, that's one thing. But to say to them, to their faces-"

  "Never mind. I understand," I said, though I didn't, really.

  Whatever their faults, the couple had one overriding virtue: they were charming. So charming, indeed, that on that first night, dining in their company, I began to think that Lucius was wildly exaggerating. Certainly they showed none of the characteristic snobbishness of their class toward Eco and me. Titus wanted to hear all about my travels and my work for advocates like Cicero. ("Is it true," he asked, leaning toward me earnestly, "that he's a eunuch?") Eco was obviously fascinated by Antonia, who was even more remarkably beautiful by lamplight. She made a game of flirting with him, but she did so with a natural grace that was neither condescending nor mean. They were both witty, vibrant and urbane, and their sense of humor was only slightly, charmingly, vulgar.

  They also appreciated good cooking. Just as I had done after my first meal at the villa, they insisted on complimenting the cook. When Davia appeared, Titus's face lit up with surprise, and not just at the fact that the cook was a young woman. When Lucius opened his mouth to introduce her, Titus snatched the name from his lips. "Davia!" he said. The word left a smile on his face.

  A look of displeasure flashed in Antonia's eyes.

  Lucius looked back and forth between Davia and Titus, speechless for a moment. "Then you… already know Davia?"

  "Why, of course. We met once before, at your house in the city. Davia wasn't the cook, though. Only a helper in the kitchen, as I recall."

  "When was this?" asked Antonia, smiling sweetly.

  Titus shrugged. "Last year? The year before? At one of Lucius's dinner parties, I suppose. An odd thing-you weren't there, as I recall. Something kept you home that night, my dear. A headache, perhaps…" He gave his wife a commiserating smile, and then looked back at Davia with another kind of smile.

  "And how is it that you happened to meet the cook's helper?" Antonia's voice took on a slight edge.

  "Oh, I think I must have gone into the kitchen to ask a favor of the cook, or something like that. And then I… well, I met Davia. Didn't I, Davia?"

  "Yes." Davia looked at the floor. Though it was hard to tell by the lamplight, it seemed to me that she was blushing.

  "Well," said Titus, clapping his hands together, "you have become a splendid cook, Davia! Entirely worthy of your master's famously high standards. About that we're all agreed, yes? Gordianus, Eco, Lucius… Antonia?"

  Everyone nodded in unison, some more enthusiastically than others. Davia muttered her thanks and disappeared back into the kitchen.

  Lucius's new guests were tired from traveling. Eco and I had enjoyed a long, full day. Everyone turned in early.

  The night was warm. Windows and doors were left open to take advantage of the slight breeze. There was a great stillness on the earth, of a sort that one never experiences in the city. As I began to drift into the arms of Morpheus, in the utter quiet I thought I could hear the distant, dreamy rustling of the sheep in their pen, the hushed sighing of the high grass far away by the toad, and even a hint of the stream's gentle gurgling. Eco, with whom I shared the room, began to snore very gently. Then the fighting began.

  At first I could hear only voices from the next room, not words. But after a while they started shouting. Her voice was higher and carried better than his.

  "You filthy adulterer! Bad enough that you take advantage of the girls in our own household, but picking off another man's slaves-"

  Titus shouted something, presumably in his defense. She was not impressed. "Oh, you filthy liar! You can't fool me. I saw the way you looked at her tonight. And don't you dare try to bring up that business about me and the pearl-diver at Andros. That was all in your own drunken imagination!"

  Titus shouted again. Antonia shouted. This went on for quite some time. There was a sound of breaking pottery. Silence for a while, and then the shouting resumed.

  I groaned and pulled the coverlet over my head. After a while I realized that the shouting had stopped. I rolled onto my side, thinking I might finally be able to sleep, and noticed that Eco was standing on his knees on his sleeping couch, his ear pressed against the wall between our room and theirs.

  "Eco, what in Hades are you doing?"

  He kept his ear to the wall and waved at me to be quiet.

  "They're not fighting again, are they?"

  He turned and shook his head.

  "What is it, then?"

  The moonlight showed a crooked smile on his face. He pumped his eyebrows up and down like a leering street mime, made a circle with the fingers of one hand and a pointer with the opposite forefinger, and performed a gesture all the street mimes know.

  "Oh! I see. Well, stop listening like that. It's rude." I rolled to my other side and pulled the coverlet over my head.

  I must have slept for quite some time before the moonlight, traveling from Eco's side of the room to mine, struck my face and woke me. I sighed and rearranged the coverlet and saw that Eco was still up on his knees, his ear pressed fervently against the wall.

  The two of them must have been at it all night long!

  For the next two days Lucius Claudius repeatedly drew me aside to fret over the intrusion on my holiday, but Eco went about his simple pleasures, I still found time to read alone down by the stream, and to the extent that Titus and Antonia intruded on us, they were in equal measure irritating and amusing. No one could be more delightful than Titus at dinner, at least until the cup of wine that was one cup too many, after which his jokes became a little too vulgar and his jabs a little too sharp. And no one could be more sweetly alluring over a table of roasted pig than Antonia, until something happened to rub her the wrong way. She had a look which could send a hot spike through a man as surely as the beast on the table had been spitted and put on to toast.

  I had never met a couple quite like them. I began to see how none of their friends could refuse them anything. I also began to see how they drove those same friends to distraction with their sudden fits of temper and their all-consuming passion for each other, which ran hot and cold, and could scald or chill any outsider who happened to come too close.

  On the third day of their visit, Lucius announced that he had come up with something special that we could all do together.

  "Have you ever seen honey collected from a hive, Eco? No,

  I thought not. And you, Gordianus? No? What about you two?"

  "Why, no, actually," said Antonia. She and her husband had slept until noon and were just joining the rest of us down by the stream for our midday meal.

  "Does that water have to gurgle so loud?" Titus rubbed his temples. "Did you say something about bees, Lucius? I seem to have a swarm of them buzzing in my head this morning."

  "It is no longer
morning, Titus, and the bees are not in your head but in a glen downstream a bit," said Lucius in a chiding tone.

  Antonia wrinkled her brow. "How does one collect the honey? I suppose I've never given it much thought-I just enjoy eating it!"

  "Oh, it's quite a science," said Lucius. "I have a slave named Ursus whom I bought specifically for his knowledge of beekeeping. He builds the hives out of hollowed strips of bark, tied up with vines and then covered with mud and leaves. He keeps away pests, makes sure the meadow has the right kind of flowers, and collects the honey twice a year. Now that the Pleiades have risen in the night sky, he says it's time for the spring harvest."

  "Where does honey come from? I mean, where do the bees get it?" said Antonia. Puzzlement gave her face a deceptively vulnerable charm.

  "Who cares?" said Titus, taking her hand and kissing her palm. "You are my honey!"

  "Oh, and you are my king bee!" They kissed. Eco made a face. Confronted with actual kissing, his adolescent prurience turned to squeamishness.

  "Where does honey come from?" I said. "And do bees really have kings?"

  "Well, I shall tell you," said Lucius. "Honey falls from the sky, of course, like dew. So Ursus says, and he should know. The bees gather it up and concentrate it until it becomes all gooey and thick. To have a place to put it, they gather tree sap and the wax from certain plants to build their combs inside the hives. And do they have kings? Oh, yes! They will gladly give their lives to protect him. Sometimes two different swarms go to war. The kings hang back, plotting the strategy, and the clash can be terrific-acts of heroism and sacrifice to rival the Iliad!"

  "And when they're not at war?" said Antonia.

  "A hive is like a bustling city. Some go out to work in the fields, collecting the honey-dew, some work indoors, constructing and maintaining the combs, and the kings lay down laws for the common good. They say Jupiter granted the bees the wisdom to govern themselves as repayment for saving his life. When baby Jupiter was hidden in a cave to save him from his father Saturn, the bees sustained him with honey."