Marcellus must have found my story easy to believe. Helena looked completely drained. I felt she needed more than a rest under a rug and a hot drink. She needed someone to look after her. The worst part was, my normally competent lady looked as if she thought so too.
As I rode the steward’s mule back down the villa track I could hardly remember a word from her between when I brought her to the house and when I left. Only those eyes, which had settled on me with a stillness that made me hate leaving her.
Something was wrong. One more problem. One more buried relic to excavate as soon as I had time.
Damn the steward, waiting in Herculaneum for his mule;
I stopped off and took dinner in Oplontis with my friends. Frankly, I thought they all seemed more relaxed, now I had pushed off to live elsewhere.
Helena’s prophecy about the maid was correct. The daft chit had been sent to the slave market! Incredible. I hoped she found a more charitable mistress; I never saw her again.
Nothing was said to me. Next day I raised the matter with Aemilia Fausta myself. She heard my views, then threatened to terminate my teaching post. I advised her to do it; she crumbled; I stayed.
My disgust was not simply because the girl had been attractive. After half a day with Helena I could barely remember what Fausta’s maid was like. But I thought there must be better ways of keeping discipline.
I would not allow this set-to with Fausta to affect our professional relationship. She grew keener than ever to improve her musicianship. She had found a new incentive: she told me that Aufidius Crispus was planning a huge banquet for all his friends on this part of the coast.
Rufus was going. He refused to take his sister, he told her he was escorting a girl he knew. Fausta seemed startled. I hoped that meant the girls her brother knew were unsuitable types; it promised more fun.
I had great hopes of the Crispus thrash. Partly for Aemilia Fausta, who was determined to gate-crash the event. And partly because she was taking her harp. So to beat time unobtrusively (and talk her past unfriendly doormen), the noble Aemilia Fausta was taking me.
XLVIII
My friend tells me whenever women feel that way the hero always turns out to have limp hands, a sneering mother, and a bladder condition which affects his private life. Luckily I never knew Aufidius Crispus well enough to hear about his family or his medical complaints.
He had taken a villa at Oplontis (hired it, leased, borrowed, simply pinched it for the night, who knows? - who cared, when the setting was gracious, the liquor was lavish and the beautiful after-dinner dancers were pretty well nude?). According to local custom, the villa had belonged to Poppaea Sabma, Nero’s second wife. This Imperial connection held out a hefty hint of the ambitions of our host.
Poppaea’s villa was the dominating feature at Oplontis. Probably the people who had lived in it managed to overlook the clutter of rude fishing huts beyond their boundary and thought their villa was Oplontis. People who inhabit such opulence find it convenient to ignore the poor.
For most of our stay this grand complex stood shuttered and dark. Arria Silvia tried to get in for a look round, but a watchman chased her off. As far as we could gather, when Poppaea married Nero this villa became subsumed into the Imperial estates, and after she died it stayed empty. There seemed a reluctance to do anything with the place, as if the waste of such a beautiful woman’s life, and the cruel means of her death at Nero’s hands, had struck even the Palace bailiffs with a sense of shame.
Most of the mansion was on two floors, with the building girdled by single-storey colonnaded walks and gardens on all sides. A wide terrace lay right on the seafront, leading to a grand central suite. The side wings must have contained over a hundred rooms, each decorated in such exquisite taste that as sure as eggs get broken they would be stripped out and renovated the next time the villa was occupied. It was ripe for refurbishment; by which I mean, it was lovely as it was.
I could never exist anywhere so huge. But it gave a spare-time poet plenty of scope to fantasize.
Dinner was held properly at the ninth hour. We arrived in good time. From the array of chairs congesting the Herculaneum road this was one of the largest functions I would ever be assisting at. The magistrate had set off ahead to collect his bit of fancy stuff, but Aemilia Fausta believed other people paid their local taxes for her personal convenience so she had commandeered an escort from her brother’s official staff; they marched us briskly past the crowds, queue-hopping at public expense.
Most of the local quality, and some mere smut, were dining here courtesy of big-hearted Crispus tonight. The first people I spotted were Petronius Longus and Arria Silvia. They must have let themselves be netted to assist the great man’s aim of extending very public hospitality on a wide social front. A true patron. Father figure to starveling clients from all ranks. (Buying in support from top to bottom of the voting tribes.)
Petronius would take his free bread buns and run. I happened to know that since Petro had been elected to the watch he had never cast a vote. He believed a man on a public salary should be impartial. I didn’t agree but I admired him being so stubborn in his eccentricities. Aufidius Crispus would be an unusual politician if he had allowed for such morality in the voters he was courting.
Petro and Silvia did not speak to me at that juncture. They were inside, watching my progress with satirical smiles. I was still outside. I was hopping about in my best mustard tunic while my formidable female companion argued with the chamberlain at the door.
The man consulting the guest list knew his barley from his oats. This function was slickly organized. There was never any question of me barging us in bodily; if I tried any rough stuff, the heavy mob in studded wristguards who were lurking with a backgammon board behind the potted plants would fix us in a genteel arm lock and wheel us on our way.
Aemilia Fausta was a woman of few ideas but when she got one she recognized a treasure she might never possess again and she stuck to it. As she weighed in I felt seriously impressed. Tonight she was trussed up in mauve muslin, with her small white bosoms like two cellar-grown mushrooms arrayed in a greengrocer’s trug. A castellated diadem sat rock steady on her pillar of pale hair. Bright spots of colour, some of it real, fired her cheeks. Determination to see Crispus made her as sleek and as wicked as a shark on the scent; the chamberlain was soon thrashing with the breathless desperation of a shipwrecked sailor who had spotted an inky fin.
‘What host,’ sneered Aemilia Fausta (who was a small woman, fairly bouncing on her heels), ‘draws up a steward’s dining list which includes himself or his hostess? Lucius Aufidius Crispus would expect you to know: I’ announced the noble Fausta with unspeakable gall, ‘am his fiancée!’
The only thing that diminished this defiant gambit in my eyes was that for the lady it was simply the truth.
Beaten, the hapless flunkey led us in. I raised a fist to Petro, accepted a coronet from an extremely pretty flower girl, and then as the magistrate’s sister whirled ahead I padded along behind, carrying her cithara. A clean-cut master of ceremonies weighed up the situation fast, then settled Fausta with a bowl of Bithynian almonds while he glided off to consult Sir. Surprisingly quickly he slid back. He assured Aemilia Fausta that her place was waiting in the private dining room, the elegant triclinium where Crispus himself would be presiding over the premier guests.
I don’t know what I had expected, but the speed and good manners with which his castoff was made welcome provided an early hint that Aufidius Crispus possessed dangerous social expertise.
XLIX
The master of ceremonies started to apologize.
‘Forget it. I’m just her harp teacher; no need to fiddle with your seating plans again-‘
He promised to squeeze me in, but I told him when I was ready for any squeezing I would do it myself.
It was almost eating time, but I slipped out through the late-corners to scrutinize the flotilla of fabulous barges which had clustered against the spacious
platform on the villa’s seaward side. The Isis Africans took only a moment to find; she had been moored aloof from this nautical scrimmage, on her own, slightly out in the Bay. She was lying dark, as if everyone had already disembarked.
It was hardly a function where the host hovered on the doorstep in his best boots, waiting to shake hands; some of the hands he had invited were too clammy to touch. But Crispus must be in the house by now. I re-entered from the terrace to sneak an early look at him if I could.
I walked through the atrium. It was mainly red, painted with a mock colonnade of fluted yellow columns, through which massive double doors appeared, decorated with emblematic figures and set with azure studs, among distant perspectives of fanciful scenery, religious objects and triumphal shields. A connecting room brought me into a peaceful enclosed garden - live plants plus horticultural landscapes on the inner walls. Beyond that lay the grand saloon, which opened through two majestic pillars straight into the main gardens - a wonderful, typically Campanian effect. Most of the couches for visitors of quality had been set up in the saloon, so when I looked in, noise and warmth and the perfume from scores of fresh garlands were spilling out into the summer night. Smaller reception rooms contained table space for the lower sort. None of this was what I wanted. Fighting back through the scrum, by a lucky guess I found the lavish kitchen suite; with, as I expected, the master dining room stationed alongside.
The triclinium at the Villa Poppaea was approached through two pillars where winged centaurs crouched on guard. It was a small room, painted in the ethereal architectural style which characterized the villa, and included a fine mural of a mock courtyard gate with winged sea horses writhing on its architrave below a shrine to some patron god. On the back wall a particularly vivid painting of a bowl of figs caught my eye.
Tonight the room was piquant with fine, scented oils. The standard nine places, in couches of three, lay under graceful swags of embroidered cloth, beneath peacock feathers arcing over tall floral displays; peacocks in full display were also a motif in the decor of the house. I made a few mental notes of these gracious touches, in case I ever gave a dinner party at home.
I had arrived too early; Crispus was not there yet. The place of honour on the central couch still lay unoccupied.
I did see Aemilia Fausta, looking pleased with herself though tense, tearing at grapes on the left-hand couch - not quite the most exalted place. Two senators I failed to recognize were positioned more prominently, on either side of their host’s empty place. A couple of women were flashing heavy jewellery, and there were two younger men fashionably arrayed in circular cheesecloth dinner gowns. One was our blond god Rufus, standing at the top of the room, talking to one of the senators. He had dumped the famous floozie on her own at the end of the table, just in front of me.
I knew her the minute I saw her. I gulped in a good eyeful before she turned and realized: long, pale feet, kicking each other fretfully as she was ignored by the magistrate; then a body that was slender and full at the same time, sheathed in some fine silvered cloth which looked as if it would slide wonderfully under a man’s hands if he risked taking hold of her. Half a fortune in lapis lazuli beads circled her throat. Dark shining hair, curled at the front, then its heavy mass battened under a round gold net. That neat, deep-blue necklace and the close, golden cap made her look younger and sweeter; compared to the unashamed flamboyance all around, she had a compact, understated elegance. Tonight she was the best-looking woman in Campania, but people in Campania have garish taste and I was probably the only man who knew.
A slave tidied her sandals at the foot of her couch so she twisted round to thank him and saw me. I was lolling in the doorway with Fausta’s instrument under my left arm and my right hand in her abandoned almond bowl. Until Helena looked back I had been munching my way methodically through the nuts.
Eyebrows I would have recognized across the width of the Circus Maximus shot up as the magistrate’s escort glued her bonny brown eyes on me. I mouthed a silent, admiring whistle. The Senator’s golden-capped daughter turned away (supplying an overhead view of a gorgeously haughty shoulder), with what she meant to be an expression of utter disdain.
She ruined the effect by preceding it with a distinctly sultry wink.
There was a flurry which heralded Crispus’ approach, then I was hustled out. I shed the harp onto a slave as I went, ordering him to stow it at the back of Fausta’s couch. (I had no intention of carting round someone else’s cithara all night.) Accepting the situation, I let myself be pushed off to the public rooms. I would have liked to identify Crispus, but good timing is a crucial part of my work. Now, with his favoured guests chomping at the manger, was not the time to draw the big man’s attention to my Emperor’s communique.
I glanced into the saloon again but the appetizer course was already proceeding formally and although there were one or two free places they were beside men who looked unfriendly or women with fat fingers and false hair. I ducked round a file of waiters shouldering trays of dressed endive, then foraged among the lower orders until I flopped down with relief between Silvia and Petronius.
‘Avoid the mussel dumplings!’ Silvia advised, hardly bothering to greet me. ‘Lucius saw them half an hour ago, congealing well.’ She shared my mother’s views on serving food. And I was not surprised to find she had sent our lad into the kitchen even here. ‘The top table are having ostrich but there won’t be enough for us-‘
‘What’s it going to be then, Lucius?’ I asked in some hilarity. I did know his name was Lucius, though I only called him that if we were sensationally drunk. ‘One of those doss where a clever chef makes a ton of rock salmon look like forty different cuts of meat?’
Petro chuckled, before opening his mouth and dropping in Colymbadian olives; they were superb - huge fruits from Ancona, swum in amphorae Ion and herbs until they became infused with a fragrance you never find in the small, hard, brine-soaked Halmadian sort people normally eat.
Petronius assured me they had caught so many sea bass and lobster for this evening, the water level had sunk two inches in the Bay. Two annoying Campanian revellers were boasting about Baian oysters; we watched in silence, both of us remembering the oysters they dredge up in Britain from the cold, murky channel between Rutupiae and Thanet, and their dusky brothers from the north banks of the Tamesis Estuary… Petro tucked into the dinner wine with a wry face. It seemed fine to me, though I could tell he despised it. He had been tasting local vintages while I was away from Oplontis and enthused educationally about sparkling whites and robust young reds while I tackled the hors-d’oeuvres, feeling jealous of having given up his company.
I was really missing Petro. This morose pang reminded me I had work to do. The sooner I did it, the sooner I could escape from Herculaneum back to my friends.,.
If the hired waiters were hoping to get ready, they hoped wrong. The invitees were planning on a long night. The plebs displayed cautious manners but the senators and knights and their ladies were piling into the viands, all eating twice as much as they would at home since this was free. The noise and the scents of sizzling wine sauces must have blown on the breeze to Pompeii, three miles away. The liquor slaves were skidding on the wet soles of their bare feet as they rushed round with refills, barely bothering to show the charcoal to the hot wine scuttles or measure the spice. There was no doubt Crispus was achieving what he wanted. It was the sort of ghastly communal occasion that everyone would remember later as a wonderful time.
After a couple of hours the Spanish dancing troupe arrived. Those of us around the bottom table redoubled the cheer we were just putting up as our main course dishes hove in sight. The waiters were doing their best, with gristly good temper, but it was a job and a half feeding such a throng, and there were the usual aggravating women who ordered up veal medallions in fennel sauce - without the fennel, please!
I guessed that the entertainers were timed to suit the nobs in the triclinium, who had their own swift fleet of carver
s and carriers under supervision of a wily major-domo. Sure enough, when I went to ask the winged centaurs how matters were progressing, a great silver platter with one forlorn cinnamon pear was just coming out after the dessert course as a table tray of finger bowls swept in. I could hear the furious clack of Hispanic castanets, while one of those singers with no voice but a great deal of bravado was expressing anguish loudly in ferocious Spanish style. Through the portals I glimpsed a fiery girl with floor-length blue-black hair and not much in her clothes coffer striking attitudes which demonstrated her nakedness most attractively. I was so busy admiring her formidable fandango I forgot to look out for Crispus. Lackeys staggered past me under cornucopiae of fresh fruits, some so exotic I was unsure what their names were, then the doors slamined, and I was shooed away again.
I rushed back and in an undertone told Petro about the dancer, he whistled enviously at this bonus of my job.
Silvia had organized a main course for me. I managed to cram in a gingered duck wing, a potted salad, and a few mouthfuls of roast pork in plums, then I nipped back to the triclinium hastily. Things had moved on faster than I wanted. The host and most of his private party had dispersed. The two women with the jewellery were talking about their children, ignoring one of the younger men, before whom a different dancer with hypnotic stomach muscles was spiralling majestically.
Judging by the care with which the catering had been ordered, I reckoned my man had emerged now for some heavy social mingling. Making himself agreeable, as Helena Justina called it. Once they had eaten his dinner, people would feel even better about him if they saw him putting himself out to compliment them on their dress sense and enquire after their elder sons’ careers. He would be moving round doing good work for himself; Aufidius Crispus was an operator on a determined scale.
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