The Splendor Before the Dark

by Margaret George

  “I am sorry,” I said, letting go of her arm. “I just don’t understand. Tell me why you came to Greece at all and why you are here now.”

  Like a wary animal, she stood ready for flight. I motioned for her to sit on one of the couches. I sank down on one across from her. “I am glad you are here,” I said. “Really.”

  She laughed in that warm way I remembered. “Really?”

  “Yes, really. Now tell me.”

  She drew a deep breath. “I was honored by your invitation. But I could not take off so much time from my work. Your tour is lasting longer than a year. And I did not wish to be in your household. I didn’t belong there, and it would give rise to ugly gossip.” She smiled. “Once again you have a wife. I have been the mistress before; I have no desire to repeat that.”

  No desire . . . no desire . . .

  “No desire?” There, I repeated her words, to my own horror. I could not seem to control what I said. It must be the wine.

  “No desire to be in that position,” she clarified, a smile playing about her lips. She seemed pleased that I had objected to her words. “It is not an enviable one. But I wanted to see you compete; as you said in your invitation, I was at the first competition, and it would be fitting if I saw you now.”

  “I gather you saw the ten-horse race,” I said.

  “Yes. But it was less than happy for me. For a moment I thought I had traveled all this way just to see you get killed. I cannot . . . There are no words for my joy when you crawled out and back into the chariot.”

  She got up from the couch, came over, and knelt in front of me, taking my hands. “You are safe. I came here tonight to take your hands and hold them again, giving thanks that I can, that you are uninjured. I needed to assure myself that you were still as you always were.”

  The touch of her hands was too much. I stood and pulled her up with me, embracing her. “I am here. As I always have been.” I kissed her deeply and fiercely; the years apart fell away, and we were both as we always had been, all the intervening events and people faded, dissipated into the night air.

  She returned my kiss hungrily, no hesitation, no holding back. We were together again; in some ways we had never really been apart.

  As had happened the first unexpected time we had been together, we were swiftly in bed and ravenously making love. Time enough later for talk.

  * * *

  • • •

  And talk we did, in the languid hours that followed. All the questions that had once seemed so important now did not. I did not want to demand answers, only let her speak so I could understand her. I lay staring up at the ceiling, just dimly visible, listening to her.

  “I have seen you many times but you have not seen me, since—since we parted,” she said. She turned toward me, putting her head on my shoulder, where I could hear her soft voice.

  “I saw you at the relief station after the Fire,” I said. “I remember saying something stiff and stupid. But it was so awkward.”

  “And this isn’t?” She pressed her naked body up to mine.

  I laughed. “No, it isn’t.”

  “I felt awkward, too,” she admitted. “I couldn’t fill out forms properly at the aid station, I was so confused at suddenly seeing you.”

  “That was the last time I saw you,” I said. “But we have come close. There was that time Poppaea summoned you, knowing I was away. And I did want to thank you for your warning about Senecio.” I leaned over and kissed her again. “There. I have thanked you.”

  “I have seen you other times, though,” she said. “I came to the two funerals. You passed right by me and didn’t see me.”

  “So you have made a habit of watching me from a crowd?” I asked. “That is what you have done here, too.”

  “It was a safe way to see you.”

  “Why was it important to see me?”

  She fell silent. I thought she would not answer. Then she whispered, “Because I love you.”

  The unexpected words sang through me. But she took my silence for disbelief.

  “When we parted, I said I would always love you. I meant it. I keep my promises. Don’t you remember my words?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But at the same time you said you would not marry me.”

  “I said I wouldn’t marry a man who lied, as you did.”

  “I don’t lie anymore. I don’t need to. I lied only because I had no choice at the time. So that is over. Is that my only fault in your eyes? If so, then you need to find another one to keep us apart.”

  “Are you forgetting you are married?”

  “This wife is not like Poppaea. She would not resent you.”

  She laughed. “Oh, Lucius. You are still Lucius, very naïve about women!”

  “Ah. How good it is to hear you call me Lucius again.” I pulled her close to me. “Whatever we want to call ourselves, and whatever we are to each other, please do not leave me again.”

  “But—my work is in Velitrae.”

  “I did not mean we had to be together all the time. Only that we should never be apart in our souls again.”

  “At our first parting, I promised to never leave you. And in my own way I never have,” she said.

  LXV

  ACTE

  The night seemed short; the night seemed very long, as when Zeus had stretched one night into three as he lay with Alcmene and conceived his heroic son Hercules. It could not have been too long for me; would that it had been longer.

  It was hot, but a cooling breeze blew across us from the terrace, fanning us solicitously. I could hardly believe that I was here, with him, like this.

  But isn’t that what you wanted? I asked myself. Why did you come all the way here? To hide in a crowd and look at him secretly, as you have done back in Rome?

  Yes, partly, I answered in my mind. That was safest. But finally that was unsatisfactory. Let him dismiss me, so I can be free of him, I thought. And the only way for that to happen was to reveal myself to him.

  He was asleep. I could tell from his breathing. He lay absolutely still. He must be exhausted, with an exhaustion an ordinary citizen could never know. As I had from the beginning, when he was only eleven and I seventeen, I wanted to protect him.

  In my mind I could still see the boy he was, called Lucius then, lost in that crowd at the palace, wandering about. I, a servant in the royal household, had offered him a goblet of drink. He remarked that I did not look Roman. Astute of him, as I was from Lycia. The evening was to celebrate his mother’s marriage to the emperor Claudius. He and Claudius’s children were hauled up on stage to acknowledge the union. All three looked miserable, as they were.

  Later, when he had been renamed Nero and forced to marry Claudius’s daughter Octavia, I had revealed a palace plot to murder him—not the first and not the last. By then he was seventeen and I twenty-three, and we became lovers.

  Anyone but Lucius—Nero—would have accepted our status as the traditional emperor-mistress one, but he wanted to marry me and tried to bring it about. At the time he was still too young and inexperienced to know how to get his own way against the advisers and gatekeepers. But it was a romantic and valiant try. By the time he could have brought it about, it was I who backed away. But had I ever, really?

  And back to the question: why am I here? What does it achieve?

  The answer: do I have to justify happiness, even fleeting happiness?

  He sighed and rolled over, his arms seeking me. Drowsy, he smoothed my hair and traced his fingers down my cheek. Burying his face against my neck, he kissed my throat, sending shivers down my arms. Languidly, we came together again, a slow contrast to our first heated coupling.

  The dawn was coming; I could hear it in the faint morning noises of birds outside, could feel a change in the breeze wafting over us. In the light of day, what would we do?

  As the roo
m lightened, I could study his profile as he lay on his back, eyes closed. I knew he was not asleep, just stretching out our secret time as long as possible. But it could not last much longer.

  I raised myself on an elbow and peered down at him. “We have to get up,” I whispered.

  He groaned. Then opened his eyes and smiled. “Do we have to?”

  “I do,” I said. “I must be dressed if I want to avoid a scandal.”

  He laughed. “It’s been a long time since you have been in the royal quarters, and your concern is out of date,” he said. “There is no scandal, no matter what I do. It has taken me years to find that out. The dispensation comes with the word ‘emperor.’”

  “It’s been seven years since I was here,” I said. “Perhaps you are right. Finding a woman in your room pales in comparison to the other things you have been accused of in those seven years. In fact, people might be relieved that you have embraced such a mundane transgression.”

  He laughed, a true laugh, and got up, grabbing his discarded tunic and pulling it over his head.

  “Your wardrobe has changed,” I said, pointing to the vivid flowers on the knee-length garment.

  “Do you like it?” he asked with a grin.

  “It’s different,” I said.

  “I feel at home in it,” he said, smoothing its wrinkles.

  “And what about your hair?” His hair was a mass of tumbled waves past his shoulders.

  He tossed his head. “It gave the visiting senators something to gossip about,” he said, seemingly unbothered by this.

  Oh, Lucius! Do you not see? “What did they come for?” I asked.

  “To see the games, of course. At least that was their excuse, although when I questioned them they did not seem to know much about them. Their real reason was to see me and tell me to come back.”

  “Perhaps you should consider it.”

  He frowned. “Let us not talk about Rome now,” he said. “It is far away and I do not wish to think about it.”

  Oh, Lucius! Do you not see? “Very well,” I said. I put my arms around him. Oh, how I wanted to protect him—from himself.

  We had a leisurely breakfast on the terrace, speaking of other things.

  “Whom did you travel with?” he asked me.

  “A company from Velitrae,” I told him. “People curious to see the games and visit Greece.”

  “When?” he asked, sipping his juice, looking at me.

  “We arrived in time for the games at Olympia, a week ago.”

  “How long will you stay?”

  “We are leaving in a few days,” I said. “Such a long way to travel for such a short time, I know.”

  He leaned over to me, reaching for my hand but not taking his eyes from mine. “Will you stay and come to Isthmia with me?”

  It hurt to say, “Alas, I cannot. My business . . .”

  He sighed. “I have two important projects to unveil at Isthmia. I wish you could be there to see them . . .”

  “It cannot be. But tell me of them,” I said gently.

  He rose. “I will later, then. Now I must get ready for the final ceremony, receiving my victory wreath. You will come to that!”

  We walked to the Temple of Zeus, out in bold daylight together. But once there, we separated as he took his place with the victors in front of the temple and I joined the spectators, a noisy and jubilant crowd, waiting to shower the winners with flower petals. I stood on tiptoe to see him bow his head for the wreath of wild olive branches to be placed on it, with the announcement that Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus had won the crown for the ten-horse chariot race. His voice ringing through the crowd, he cried out that he accepted it in the name of Rome and the Roman people.

  There were a great many awards still to be handed out; it took all morning. After that there would be an official banquet for the victors, and the two hundred and eleventh Olympiad would be formally declared at an end.

  Buoyant and with shining eyes, surrounded by his household and the senators, Nero sought me out afterward. The gray-green wreath sat proudly on his brow. Loose petals covered his hair and shoulders, flung by the cheering crowd.

  “It belongs there,” I said, reaching out to touch it. He was so supremely happy, believing that he had earned his honors, not letting himself doubt that the judges were fair. He needed this above all things, and in my eyes it made him achingly innocent.

  He glanced around at his company, quickly introducing me to some of them—Epaphroditus, Phaon, Nymphidius. I might have known them in passing long ago, but my memories of them were fuzzy. Then I almost fainted as Poppaea appeared—I went cold.

  “Sabina,” said Nero. “Or, as previously known, Sporus.”

  The person—it could not possibly have been Poppaea herself—nodded in acknowledgment. Gulping, I knew I must ask later about Sporus.

  “You are all coming to the victors’ dinner,” he said. “All!”

  * * *

  • • •

  It was a rowdy affair, with boisterous abandon as the athletes could eat and drink all they wished, their victories now secure, and their friends could indulge to the maximum along with them. I watched Nero bounce around gleefully, greeting everyone familiarly, whether he knew them or not. The women stayed on the sides, looking on keenly. Statilia stood in dignified silence, by herself.

  Should I approach her? What was the protocol? Was there any? What should I say? Hello, Empress. I enjoyed last night with your husband.

  As if she had read my mind, she walked over to me—no hurry, just a deliberate pace.

  Had I seen her before? No, I did not think so. She had come into his life after I had gone. She was a mature woman, probably a bit older than he was, like me—why was he drawn to older women? Was he even aware of this? Poppaea had been older, too. Poppaea . . .

  “I believe you are Claudia Acte?” she asked. She had a deep, soothing voice.

  “Yes, Empress,” I said, lowering my head.

  “I have been waiting for you,” she said. “It was just a matter of time.”

  I bristled at this. As if I were a dog who had come to a whistle. “I am not sure what you mean,” I replied, trying to keep my voice neutral.

  “Only that when there is a longing, it finds its way home.”

  I let the silence stretch out.

  “I have heard about you,” she said. “Oh, not from him, but from others. You left a deep impression on many.” She laughed. “You turned him down. Not many emperors have that experience.”

  Why was she so sanguine about it? Did she not feel bad—either about taking a man who had been turned down or that his feelings had been hurt? The first would mean she had no envy, the second that she didn’t care about him.

  Again, as if she read my thoughts, she said, “It was good for him. There should always be someone or something one can’t have. Or else we are sated; better to always be a little hungry.”

  “You are wise,” I said. Best leave it at that. I watched her shrewd but nonjudgmental eyes, with their slight lines at the edges.

  “Yes, I am,” she replied, answering my thought. “And so you know, I can read people, and that’s a gift and a curse. So I knew what you were—probably—thinking, and I answered it.”

  “You are frightening,” I blurted out.

  “There, I didn’t need to read that,” she said. “Don’t be frightened. Without this gift, I would not have survived. You do not need it; you will survive. You are a wise person, too. He is in good hands.”

  “He is not in my hands,” I said.

  “He is in both our hands,” she said. “But yours are stronger than mine.”

  * * *

  • • •

  In keeping with her wisdom, she did not visit his quarters that night, leaving us to ourselves.

  “What an understanding
wife you have,” I said. “You are right; she is different from Poppaea.”

  Having carefully removed his victory wreath and set it reverently on a stand, he lay down on a couch and propped up his legs. “You have heard the tired old joke, My wife doesn’t understand me? This one does,” he said, laughing.

  “It was considerate of her,” I said. “She will have you back shortly. My party is leaving in a few days.”

  “If only you could come to Isthmia,” he said. He waited for me to say something. “But since you cannot, let us enjoy these last days. The last days here, at any rate. Olympia will remain the place where I have been happiest in all the world, with you here to crown it with a joy above the victory crown for me.”

  LXVI

  NERO

  Olympia was quickly drained of people and excitement. The temporary buildings, erected for visitors and ceremonies, were dismantled. Only the workers and officials stayed on, and they would soon depart, too, and Olympia would revert back into a sleepy green site, slumbering through the next four years before awakening.

  Most of my party departed for Isthmia and nearby Corinth, but Acte and I lingered behind. I still could hardly believe that she was here with me, after being a phantom in my mind for so long. But soon, like Olympia, she would disappear, like a dream.

  As the grounds emptied out, we explored them, walking beside the two rivers and seeing how different they were—the Alpheios was slow and sluggish, the Kladeos unruly and rushing. From the top of the Kronos hill we could see the sea and liked to sit on a rock at the very top, staring out. There was always a cool breeze that soothed our faces, blew our hair, and rustled through the pines all around us.

  “Across that water lies Rome,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “A different world.”

  “This one isn’t real, you know,” she said. “The real one is across the water.”

  “They are both real,” I said. “I prefer this one.”