Fire and Sacrifice

by Victoria Collins

  She stood at the gate and watched me go, looking pale. She wanted for me what she could not do. And that afternoon she would smile sweetly and ask about my day as if she did not yearn for the same.

  I bought myself a bracelet, my first ever. All my life I watched the daughters of the villa showered with gifts by the master, pretty things for pretty girls that I would never have, and they skipped round my sister and me jiggling their bracelets and necklaces in our faces. I couldn’t afford their gold and gemstones, of course, but I didn’t want to be like them, anyway. My new bracelet was a leather string with shiny wooden beads in red-pink and brown and yellow and my pumpkin-orange.

  I bought some wool to make winter socks too. Not the done thing, socks. But it would be my secret.

  My new woollen socks would be my next favourite thing. All those nights as a child sleeping in the frost to soothe my burns, but my feet were never burned. They just got cold. And no one saw. No one ever did a thing to help my little-girl feet that turned blue and numb at night so it hurt to walk on them and they were white bloodless things that I could not get to move. Mother didn’t even notice when I sat with them almost in the fire, or she said nothing because she couldn’t do anything more about it. They seemed to stay cold all my life after that. Well, now I could warm my own feet. I would make the thickest, longest socks I could with what I could afford and I would slip them on for bed in the coming winter, and lie under my workbench with my feet pressed against the end of the stone hearth where a little bit of warmth still oozed. And I would sleep.

  I decided that the next month I would buy yarn for socks for Urgulania.

  Aemilia and Pompeia fussed over my bracelet until I wanted to just launch myself into their arms for gratefulness.

  I was embarrassed to tell them about the socks, not at all fabulous, but Aemilia said it was a perfect idea. ‘You are so self-sufficient, Secunda! You continue to impress me.’

  Pompeia shot me a look that said she didn’t like the talk of self-sufficiency, but the compliment had already gone to my soul and my bottom lip was already wobbling and anyway, whatever small ideas I had prompted in Aemilia that day were just wisps of smoke compared to the fire Elian would ignite next, with gifts of his own.

  ***

  He still needs to finesse the form of her body, he says – it must be perfect before he can use it as a guide for the marble. He’s stalling.

  After a half hour of faffing about with the clay he came toward her, sheepishly, and said he had something for her.

  He pulled from his pocket a little oval stone. It flashed brilliant blue and she brought it up close to inspect it, and gasped. ‘Oh Elian! Secunda, look!’

  I lost her all over again.

  It was a tiny engraving of her on a blue gemstone the size of a large ring. Aemilia, all in white, emerged from the blue stone, or dissolved into it, I couldn’t decide. I didn’t say it, but it was the most beautiful most delicate little carving I had ever seen.

  ‘It is the right blue?’ he asked like a little boy.

  ‘Exactly!’ She was shining.

  ‘It is lapis lazuli. On top, it gets a white layer in . . . I don’t know the name in Latin . . . stone soft that you carve into to show the colour under. It is meant, um . . . The blue is your truth. Underneath. Whether you wear white or not.’

  She seemed suddenly to lose her breath. She closed her palm round the little gem and squeezed. I could see panic rising in her. She had no idea what to do with it and for a dreadful moment I thought she might give it to me and I would have to cherish it for her.

  In the background Dalmaticus made a noise, sending Aemilia into a panicked search for a hiding place for the gem. She dropped it down her cleavage.

  She gave a quick wry smile to Elian, who could not believe his eyes, as Dalmaticus shuffled past the portico and back inside.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I will treasure it.’

  Elian positively glowed. I wished I had a hot coal to drop on his foot.

  I don’t remember the rest of the conversation; I didn’t want to listen anymore. But sometime he said something about ‘cameo’ – ‘it’s a method of carving we Arabs have gifted to Rome’ – and she frowned, ever so slightly, a little crease between her brow, a question, a gap in knowledge she did not wish to own, and a delicate little mess on her pretty face.

  He laughed. Much louder than she would be comfortable with and she reddened.

  ‘This is when I wish I could reach for you,’ he said. ‘Because that was just beautiful.’

  She smiled shyly, then wider, and I watched her sit and turn away from his gaze and fiddle her hands for the rest of the session.

  ‘If I might ask a favour?’ he ventured.

  Aemilia and I both raised an eyebrow. A dark dread spread through me.

  ‘First, a gift for you too, lady Secunda.’ He pulled from his case three little sacks and held them out to me, and I could smell straight away that they were spices from Arabia. I wanted them madly and madly hated him for playing me.

  He turned to Aemilia. ‘If both ladies will agree, I would like to draw Secunda – if you will release her to me for an afternoon? I will draw her at my apartment.’

  We both our hearts shrivelled at the words: hers at being passed over, mine wishing to be. For a fraction of a moment her eyes were white hot – not at me, she couldn’t, but at her world of walls and properness that meant only I could have the things she wanted. Getting to go to Elian’s home, to be alone with him. But I don’t want it. Desperately I don’t want it.

  But he is smiling that pretty smile.

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ***

  ‘May I?’ He was already too close to me, his hands moving to trace the scars on my cheek and compare it to the clear one (and compare to Aemilia’s?). I sat on my hands to squash the urge to slap him away.

  I didn’t bother answering him. In my head I screamed, ‘I don’t like to be touched!’ But he was so gentle and so intent on me and I wanted to do it for Aemilia, as if she could feel it through me.

  I just sat on the scratchy stool on the roof of his apartment where the light was good. His apartment was a dingy little box on the other side of the river, empty but for his work and a half-eaten loaf of bread discarded next to a half-carved something-or-other. I decided I would not tell Aemilia about him using the roof. She would like that too much.

  He showed no expression as he looked me over, his thumbs following the path of my bones and the dips above and below my lips and across my brow while I burned.

  I am not ashamed. Yes, Shadow Man, I have nothing to hide. Here are my wounds for all to see. What will you do with them?

  He puzzled over them, a great test for the sketch artist, I am sure. No else has ever had the gall to stare straight at my scars like that. Yet those dark eyes showed nothing as he picked at every sinew and ditch and blotch and lump, and I sat still as I could but really I wanted to run, desperately run. But I also wanted to see.

  I hoped that he was going to surprise me and when he turned round his parchment he’ll have corrected my face – because he can, with his magic charcoal.

  ‘You have exquisite bone structure,’ he said. ‘Nothing beats bone structure. What is your story?’ he asked without looking at me. ‘Not your burns,’ he said. ‘Why you were going to be executed.’

  He talked fast as he sketched, stepping back from his work then up close to it again, then coming at me with such intent I was about to cry out.

  He backed off again, still staring at my face as he walked backward to his board but taking no notice of my reactions. I was just shapes and shadows to him. It made it easier, I think.

  ‘Of course, my new friend Romans have been all over me with questions and stories of how my intriguing client came to acquire her intriguing new servant.’

  I realised that Aemilia had never asked me that. She had never even asked what I did to be on my way to execution the day she saved me.

  I loved her ev
en more, right then.

  I don’t want this question from Elian, not now when he already studied me so close, frowning, seeing nothing but me not even looking at his hand as he drew. It was all too much but he was so intense the answer was pulled from me despite myself.

  ‘I cooked for them. It was my job. They called me from the kitchen one day. They never called me from the kitchen. It was one of the best meals I’ve ever created. I had modelled and oiled white lychee berries to look like eggs, and then made twigs of pastry rolled in sugar and cinnamon to brown them, and made nests with some lavender twigs woven in for the scent, then I presented the nests sitting on real nasturtium leaves and flowers – they’re edible, you know – and some raspberries. I did one little plate between each two guests: my best ever. Anyway a dickhead friend of my dickhead master wanted to compliment the cook but of course wasn’t quite expecting this.’ I pointed at my face. ‘He said, “How can such a wild thing create such art? Let’s see if she really does go with this food,” and the animal stuck all his fingers right into my raspberry sauce in the silver bowl, mashed it over my neck, and tried to lick it off.’

  Elian stopped drawing and was standing there with his arms folded, listening intently.

  I sunk. ‘I don’t like being touched,’ I mumbled.

  He nodded acceptance of this. ‘And?’

  ‘I fought, of course,’ I shrugged. ‘I went batshit: the more I kicked the more they tried to hold me until somehow I’m being held flat across the table. Some drunk has got my arms pinned from across the table, someone’s got my ankle, and the first bastard is lifting his tunic – he had to get me back, I suppose. Limpdicks always do. So I went batshit some more and managed to mash his jewels with my other knee. He went down like a sack. They let go, and I got in a swing with the candelabra from the table. I still don’t know if I killed him. Either way there was no way the master was letting that go. He had to save face, make it public as he could. So after a night in chains they dragged me to the forum, meaning to throw me off the Rock of Tarpeia. The rest you know.’

  Elian nodded just once. ‘You are indeed a woman of fire. This is the beauty’ – he raised his eyebrows and grinned – ‘and the trouble.’

  He worked a few moments more in silence then declared, ‘It is done.’

  I didn’t want to see the drawing. But I did. He didn’t ask, just thrust in front of me with a big smile and said, ‘Thank you for your time.’

  I couldn’t stop looking at it. The eyes were a little bit beautiful. They had fire. I could even almost see that exquisite bone structure. He had drawn my scars in every detail but they were fine in soft charcoal shapes and my eye still shone from between them, and it was a big beautifully shaped eye I’d never realised I had.

  I wanted to cry. It leapt hard and fast to my throat and eyes and I couldn’t hold my mouth still. I said thank you really fast and ran, knowing that he saw my tears and hoping he knew they were because I loved it.

  All the rest of that day and the next and maybe the one after that, I could see that face in my mind’s eye.

  I watched myself in my mind’s eye and I was different. I saw myself move gracefully through the forum, smile prettily at a butterfly, and I imagined a man watching me from across the street and then a moment when two hearts meet as he witnesses me make the delicious discovery that he had hovered there day after day to catch a glimpse of me.

  In my mind’s eye I saw him watching as I prepared the evening meal, seeing the concentration and intelligence in my face, and he would smile at me with a husband’s love, a husband looking at his wife across the hearth who has come to love so dearly how the work intensifies her brow and slackens her jaw such that he is compelled to rise, to kiss her forehead.

  I will never have this, of course, but I knew then that I wanted this for Aemilia. One of us would have it, and I swore I would get her through that year no matter what. She would have this if it was the last thing I did.

  ***

  The priestesses called for the little bottle of olive oil I’d made for their skin. Being near fire in the closed quarters of the temple is very drying. I held the urn over my coals a moment before taking it to them, to warm it a little.

  In the evenings when they sat together in the common room, they each held out their palms for me to distribute a coin of oil, and I loved to stand in the corner and watch as they delicately, reverently, rubbed the oil up their arms and over their shoulders and necks. Marcia and Licinia put it also on their lips, which shone in the candlelight.

  I showed Aemilia my drawing that evening – me in charcoal, which suited me, I thought. Elian had made the grey look warm. You had to be very careful or it would smudge and I’d be all but a smoky veil – not like Aemilia’s portrait which would last forever, mine would be a fleeting temperamental thing but beautiful nonetheless. She loved it! She studied it and smiled and said, ‘He sees what I see.’

  Aemilia paid more attention to herself than usual that night. Her eyes followed her hand as though she saw her skin for the first time, the way Elian did when he sculpted her. Down over the shoulder, middle finger leading, then pointer, then palm down and round and over the oiled skin. It is his hand she sees.

  ‘Secunda, come.’ She reached for me. ‘Your skin gets as much of the fire as ours.’ She poured a disc of oil onto her palm and pressed it to the scar tissue on the back of my hand, gently smoothing it in, along my hand and up my arm, both her hands at work on me. I’ve never felt a more divine thing.

  ***

  Dalmaticus was out on an errand. There was space. I quietly left the Regia courtyard, made my way on a brief errand of my own, across to the kitchen, leaving Elian and Aemilia alone.

  Let their moment be my gift.

  AIR

  Tristan

  November 114 BC

  ‘What’s the whisper?’ asked Secunda, pretending to be distracted by the contents of her frying pan.

  ‘Aemilia and you-know-who are in the clear.’ I knew that’s what she was dying to know. ‘It’s Dalmaticus again today. Certain among priestly and senatorial ranks declare it inappropriate that the head priest of Rome spends most of his money on renovating a temple that does not support a priesthood.’

  The Temple of Castor and Pollux next door to our temple had in those days become a meeting ground for businessmen.

  ‘So why does he?’

  ‘Because he’s smart and he’s a Metelli.’

  She still didn’t understand. Secunda didn’t share my love of politics.

  ‘He’s showing his support for the rising businessmen. Besides that, he just relates to them because his family are self-made men. Because there’s loads of money there – most of them are retired knights; you need money to have horses – and also more and more power because the senate is out of favour with the people for being full of the Old Families – that would be your Aemilii and others – who do too many favours for each other. It does tend to mean he loses favour from said ranks himself; it’s all very Roman. Point is, keep out of his way. He’s got wind of the gossip. He’s a bull looking for something to charge at today.’

  WATER

  Pompeia

  November 114 BC

  She lived for tomorrow then – I could feel that she was no longer really with us. For her, every day was one day closer to him and away. There was lots of joy in her, yes, but it was the joy for what was to come. Here, then, there was only waiting and counting and all her energy pushed into holding the fire down.

  I caught her stroking the ripples in her pillow and it reminded even me of how she might trace the ripples in a man’s back as he lay beside her.

  I wondered a moment if she had broken her vows, but she’d never, of course. She is Aemilia.

  Besides, she is clearly longing. Longing is the want of a thing out of reach. It’s why it’s called ‘longing’, I suppose, because it feels such a long way.

  But is Elian as strong as her, to survive the wait?

  ***

&nb
sp; I was feeling a bit rotten about being made Terentia’s spy. It worked out well that there was such toasty mischief that day that I would never tell her anyway, so I was saved from my conscience.

  It was a wobbly start.

  Secunda and Pet seemed both rather chastened with the unspoken knowledge that Terentia sent me to check on things, but it was only a moment before Pet had my hands in hers, whispering and gushing her relief because she wasn’t sure she could bear another session like the last. (I noted that she actually hadn’t asked me to come before now, however!)

  I think Elian felt the same, which was beautiful, and concerning.

  Then came the day’s work, and his request to Aemilia.

  ‘Um, forgive me, dear priestess, uh . . .’ he said. ‘This is a . . . prickly request. I am sorry but I must ask you today to turn around.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Aemilia said.

  ‘I am sorry, dear lady, but this sculpture, it is . . . all sides.’

  We three girls burst into a giggle. He wanted to do her bum!

  She cleared her throat and turned round. I sat on the bench beside her, staying close. Secunda sat where I imagined she had every time, on the ground with her mill, where she could see both their faces – well, usually.

  They tried to behave and be serious and he focused on his work as though her bottom was not involved, while he charmed me with stories of Petra.

  Clever man, to charm the friend.

  His work is a search for the divine in everything, he said, in beauty and balance. Not bad, I thought.

  He learned his craft from his father who, with him as apprentice, carved the homes and tombs and sacred places into the rock city.

  ‘Isn’t it awfully hot all the time?’ I couldn’t help but ask. I am not made for heat.