When she had gone, Appius sat for a long while with his head in his hands. He was not the kind of household tyrant who would tell his wife to shut her mouth and mind her spinning. But he had not expected this. He wondered uncomfortably if Antonia suspected that her own child was no match for his slave-born brother. He had once thought her devotion too single-minded to allow that thought, but perhaps he was wrong. She obviously feared some ill effect on Flavius by setting his brother as an equal to him. The gods knew Appius feared it himself, he thought unhappily, and he loved his first son. But Correus had to have his chance. It was all Appius had to give him.
When he came to bed that night, Antonia was already asleep (rather ostentatiously, he thought), and she rose early and bustled off to see to the household as soon as her maids had dressed her hair. Usually they made their plans together in the morning, and he knew she was giving him time to think on what she had said the previous night. Appius sighed and felt on the cool floor for his sandals. Antonia had learned to handle him very well after twenty years.
The inner workings of the great house were in full swing by the time he had dressed. The slaves had been up before first light and their mistress not long after them. Flavius and Correus were with their tutor, ploughing through the intricacies of Roman law and history, and Homer in the original Greek. Julia, who had already received as much education in the grammar school as was considered necessary for a girl, was with her mother, learning firsthand the skills of a thrifty housewife and the management of a staff that numbered in the hundreds. Appius could hear their voices in the kitchen concocting the evening’s menu (a company dinner with the family of Aemelius) and settling some squabble between Philippos and the cook, who was an artist and prone to temperament. Outside the walls, the field slaves would be at work and the gooseboy would be driving his fat white charges out to search for weeds in the young growth.
Appius made a frugal breakfast of bread and honey in the courtyard of Athena and had just laid down his napkin when Helva appeared, shooing a kitchen slave to take away the master’s tray. Her blond hair was curled and stuck about with gold pins, and she wore a pretty, trailing gown of yellow, with sandals to match. A spindle hung idly from one hand and a basket of carded wool from the other, but she appeared to be making little use of it. Antonia’s estimate of Helva’s usefulness was fairly correct, but there was little point in bestirring the woman to any task. Work simply was not in Helva’s vocabulary, or at any rate no more than it needed to be. Sold into slavery as a girl of fifteen, Helva had spent years building her position in the household on the only advantages left to her, her attraction for its master and his affection for the son she had borne him. Even now Helva’s sea-blue eyes and buttermilk skin, and the inviting curve of her hips, could stir his blood. Appius would have freed her if she had ever asked him, but he suspected that Helva didn’t want freedom. Not now. She had made her life and was content with it. She had servants of her own and pretty things to wear and a position of some privilege in the household. She was some years younger than he, and Appius suspected that she had every intention of seeing this pleasant life continued after his death. With a son adopted into the family of Appius, the prospects for this would be infinitely brighter.
Personally, Appius wished Helva well. He had provided in his will for her freedom and a small income, although Helva knew the latter was not such as would enable her to lead the life she enjoyed now. Her master’s love for Correus was based entirely on the boy himself and on the reflection of his own lost youth that Appius saw in him. For Helva he had the same amused and tolerant affection he would have accorded a lovely and temperamental chariot horse.
She brushed a white hand lightly over his hair and settled herself comfortably on the marble at his feet, making vague gestures toward work with her spindle.
“You look very bright today,” Appius said. “Like a buttercup.”
“I feel bright,” she said, her Latin still retaining a slight exotic accent. “Correus has told me, and the news is all over the house as well, of course. I am so proud that you find our son worthy.” She studied her spindle, and then looked up through a gold fringe of lashes. “How did the lady Antonia receive it?”
“I expect you know that, too,” Appius said drily, “or you wouldn’t be out here in the sun, ruining your complexion.”
Helva’s hands fluttered gracefully in her lap and then she laid one lightly on his knee. “You know I never interfere in what passes between you and your lady. But, for my son…” The hand crept slightly higher. “Come where we can talk without the servants goggling from behind every pillar.”
Appius detached her firmly. “I have appointments to keep in half an hour, so you can put that gambit away. I am not going to make love to you in broad daylight, and if I did, it would not change my mind.”
Helva giggled. “You did once, remember? In a tent. It was raining.”
“I was a lot younger, and all you wanted from me then was a new bracelet.”
She had got it, too. Helva’s eyes were shrewd, flirtation abandoned. “Appius, you wouldn’t change your mind?”
“I’m not changing my mind about Correus. Or about being badgered by you. But I can’t simply ride over my wife’s objections, and it may take time before the ceremony is officially done. In the meantime, if you say one word on the subject of Antonia to Correus, I will strangle you with my bare hands.”
“Never! It would break his heart.”
“How did you find out? Were you listening at doors? If you heard it from one of the servants you had best tell him to keep his tongue between his teeth.”
“Certainly,” Helva said primly, and Appius suspected, with relief, that his first suggestion had been correct.
“Good. Now take yourself off and do whatever it is that you do when you’re trying to look industrious.”
Helva departed with a flounce, leaving Appius wishing for the second time in two days that the lord of the Underworld would obligingly remove all women from his vicinity.
Antonia, seeing her go, nodded in satisfaction from the pantry window and set off briskly to other work with her maids behind her.
The house of Appius pursued its usual course for the remainder of the day, albeit with a bit more bustle than usual. They kept country hours on the estate, rising with the sun and going to bed at its setting, and a company banquet was a rarer event here than in the fashionable houses of the City. Appius kept his business appointments while Antonia took charge of preparations for the evening. In the kitchen, the cook continued to create, and threw a pastry mold at the scullery maid.
Correus and Flavius had their first workout with Forst and acquired several promising bruises and a healthy respect for the barbarian long spear. They also learned two good German swear words. After they had scraped themselves clean and soaked their bruises in the hot pool in the baths, Correus went to pay his respects to his mother in her chamber before dining.
He kissed her cheek and she patted the couch beside her. “Sit down. You have a few minutes yet.” She inspected him. “You look very fine. You do your father proud.” His resemblance to Appius was really uncanny, she thought, and was briefly grateful to the gods for having put this advantage to his hand.
“Flavius is the star of tonight’s performance,” he said lightly. “Old Aemelius has a girl child, it seems, and the general has a match in mind.”
“Oh, that,” Helva brushed the subject of the girl child away. “I knew that. But what is important now is that your father know how grateful you are for the opportunity he has given you. You must make sure of a chance to tell him publicly tonight, so that everyone else knows, too. You mustn’t let yourself be slighted.”
“My father is well aware of my gratitude,” Correus said. “I’m not going to lick his sandals at dinner. And I’m not going to stand in Flavius’s light. This has been a bit much for him to take already, I think, though he said he was glad for me. And he won’t let me attend him anymore. He said it wasn’t f
itting.”
“Well, of course he was glad about it. You’ve been friends since you were babes together. Why shouldn’t he be?”
Correus had long grown accustomed to letting his mother’s schemes and advice wash over him like so much sea spray, and to taking his own road afterward, but tonight she grated on already overtired nerves. “Because he’s not, and I know it and he knows it, and neither one of us says anything about it, because we can’t, that’s why! He has always had what I would have given my soul for, and I am an interloper, and that twists him up!” Correus took a deep breath and got a grip on himself. “Don’t worry, Mother, it will all work itself out, especially after we’re posted to our legions and aren’t kept as close as two sticks to chafe on each other. But I am not going to make a spectacle of myself at dinner.”
He kissed her cheek and departed, saying that it would be rude to be late, and Helva flung herself back on her couch in exasperation.
* * *
The family of Aemelius was arriving as Correus made his appearance, and Appius presented him simply as “my son, Correus,” a somewhat ambiguous definition duly noted by Antonia.
Aemelius was a round, pleasant-faced man with pink cheeks and mild blue eyes and a gray fringe of hair encircling his head. His toga bore the broad purple stripe of a senator. Trailing in his wake were his wife and daughter, the one plump and motherly, the other a delicate child of about fourteen with dark eyes and a pretty face. “My wife, Valeria Lucilla. My daughter, Aemelia.” Appius greeted them and brought his own family forth to be presented. He was formally attired in a toga bearing the narrow purple banding of a knight, the equestrian class that ranked only slightly below the senatorial families. Flavius was similarly dressed, while Correus wore the plain white toga of the free citizen, the formal adoption ceremony having not yet taken place. And as he was unused to it, he found himself spending much of his time keeping the accursed thing properly draped.
Introductions performed, Appius escorted his guests into the dining room, where a larger table had been placed and extra couches brought in. Aemelia and Julia shared a couch and soon fell to giggling between themselves, while the adults made conversation over the first course. The cook had done himself proud, Correus thought, inspecting the table laden with cracked lobsters and fish in pastry baskets made to look like conch shells. The best glass goblets were in use, and the centerpiece was a triumph of pastry columns supporting a melon carved like a ship and laden with dates and olives.
“What does he stiffen the dough with to make it take that weight?” Correus murmured.
“I don’t know,” Flavius whispered back. “Plaster, probably. At any rate, I wouldn’t eat it.”
“Jupiter, no! I remember tucking into one of his concoctions that was all tarted up to look like honey cake with little mint-leaf birds on top and discovering that the old devil had made it out of fish and cheese sauce. I don’t know why party food always has to look like something else,” he added irritably, inspecting a lobster claw for any unsuspected contents. The folds of his toga slithered away as he moved, and he made a grab at them.
“Relax,” Flavius whispered. “You look like someone caught in a net. Just remember to keep your left arm clamped against your side, and it won’t go anywhere.”
“How the hell can I eat with my left arm clamped against my side?” Correus demanded.
“Very carefully,” Flavius suggested with a wicked grin. “That damned left arm of yours gives you enough of an advantage with a sword. Serves you right to have a few minor inconveniences.”
“I don’t call losing my clothes while trying to eat a minor inconvenience,” Correus said, cautiously picking at a pastry basket with his right hand. “I’m going to have Paulus drape the damn thing the other way around next time and the hell with fashion. Anyway, you look elegant enough for both of us.” He eyed the crisp, immaculate folds of Flavius’s toga and the careful curls that crowned his dark head. Correus’s own hair grew over the left brow in a spiral cowlick that no hair oil could persuade to lie flat.
“I feel just like a bull dressed up for market,” Flavius shot back.
“Maybe the Senator will come and look at your teeth after dinner,” Correus said unsympathetically. “You’re getting off easy, you know. She’s a pretty little thing and she has a nice voice. Julia seems to like her.”
“Julia’s just starved for someone her own age and a little gossip to giggle over,” Flavius said. “Julia doesn’t have to marry her.”
“Oh, Julia already knows whom she’s going to marry,” Correus said. “He’s going to be as tall as the Colossus at Rhodes and twice as handsome as Phoebus Apollo, and one day he’ll rise to be emperor and give her enough jewels to weigh down an elephant. She told me so.”
“I suppose you mean that I’m being just as impractical,” Flavius said.
“Not at all. But I don’t see why you couldn’t get starry-eyed over little Aemelia. I think she’s pretty. And she seems to like you.”
“Dear Correus. Always practical.”
“I’ve had to be,” Correus said grimly. “It gets bred into you.”
“Sorry,” Flavius said. “I expect it does. It’s just that I wanted to have some fun before I get respectable.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Correus said thoughtfully, “I suspect you could have quite a lot of fun with Aemelia.”
Flavius gave the girl another glance. She was lovely… and she was looking at them. He smiled tentatively, and the girl smiled back.
The second course appeared, its high point a roast peacock encased in a pastry shell to which its bright plumage had been reattached in a triumphant fan. It was borne by two slaves in pristine tunics under the watchful eyes of Niarchos, the elderly Greek majordomo who ruled over the indoor servants. They were followed by three younger boys with trays of other delicacies, and the wine steward’s boy with a gleaming jug of the best of the best wine. He poured carefully, holding the jug just high enough above the goblets so that the light would properly display the richness of the wine. He looked nervous, and as he came to Aemelia she gave him a friendly smile that lit up her face like a dark rose. The boy, staring in open admiration, slopped some of his burden onto the table and then departed in haste while Niarchos followed, fire in his eye.
Appius chuckled. “Even my servants do you homage, little mistress,” he said, with a smile at Aemelia, and the girl blushed. Flavius, he noted with satisfaction, was rapidly developing an expression not much less admiring than that of the wine steward’s boy.
“This is excellent,” Aemelius said, contentedly nibbling at a dish of veal cooked with nuts. “Most delightful. Appius, your house could match any in Rome, you know. Tell me, my friend, why have you never requested senatorial rank? I’m sure the Emperor would grant it. In fact I’m surprised it has not been offered without the asking, especially with your military record.”
“It was offered,” Appius smiled. “By the late Emperor Nero. In fact it took all the influence I possessed to persuade him not to grant it to me. You see, country life suits me very well. Evenings such as this” – he gestured at the extravagantly laden table – “are pleasant with neighbors and friends. But a steady diet of it and a constant stream of clients underfoot – no, it’s just not in my line.” The display of wealth necessary to keep up a senator’s position, especially under so capricious an emperor as the late and unlamented Nero, could also bankrupt a man.
Aemelius nodded. “Perhaps you were wise, my friend. I must confess I sleep better myself out here away from the noise and filth of the City. And country living certainly can’t be faulted when it counts fresh asparagus among its blessings!” He selected a young shoot from the dish before him. “Your chef has a light hand with vegetables. I wish he could teach mine that there are other ways to cook an asparagus than boiling it into submission.”
“He is an excellent chef,” Antonia said proudly, “if a touch temperamental. He is at war with our steward at the moment, and as for the rest of t
he staff, they go daily in terror of him.”
“Genius is always allowed temperament, Mother,” Flavius said. He reached across the table. “Lady Aemelia, if you’ll try the sweet, I’m sure it will attest to his abilities.” The girl smiled and took the tidbit from his hand, while Julia grinned impudently at Flavius and received a furious glare in return.
“Behave yourself, Julia,” Correus said, “or I’ll tell who put glue in Philippos’s inkpot.”
Aemelia had been modestly brought up and had no brothers to squabble with; she ignored these exchanges, but when she felt the company’s attention turned away from her, she let her dark, curious eyes stray to the two brothers across the table.
As the last course was removed, three flute girls, barefoot and with roses in their hair, came in to play while a fourth performed a slow, grave dance in accompaniment. Appius and Aemelius congratulated themselves that they had made a promising match, while their wives conversed together of housekeeping and servants. The following week was the Ludi Ceriales, held each April to honor the Corn Mother Ceres, who quickens the land again in spring. Aemelia expressed a desire to spend the holiday in Rome, enjoying such of the celebration as her mother considered suitable.
“I’m afraid not, my dear,” her father said. “I have an appointment which I simply cannot break, and I don’t want you in the City on festival day with no better escort than your slaves.”
“Why not let my sons escort your ladies?” Appius offered. “I’m sure they’d trade their studies for a festival with no complaints.” A private look directed at Flavius and Correus indicated that they had better. “It will give Aemelia and Flavius a chance to get acquainted without being thrown together entirely alone,” he murmured to Aemelius. “Julia, you may go with them,” he added, seeing his daughter on the verge of protest.
“Excellent,” Aemelius said. “Well, my dear, you are to have your treat after all.”
Aemelia and Julia bounced happily on their couch while Correus and Flavius exchanged rueful glances. Escorting their little sister, Flavius’s prospective bride, and the bride’s mother about the City was not their idea of how best to enjoy a rollicking festival day, but since their chances of going at all were otherwise slim, they might as well make the most of it. Now that it was within a month of their departure for the army, Appius had been little inclined to allow them to neglect their training, and in any case he disapproved of the games at the Arena, holding that being a spectator to bloodshed in the presence of a mob was a bad pastime for a soldier. Missing the games (Valeria Lucilla would most certainly not allow her daughter to visit the Arena) would be little disappointment to Correus, who didn’t care for them. And for Flavius, who did enjoy them, the presence of Aemelia was beginning to be a strong counterattraction.
The Centurions Page 4