A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven (12 page)

Once inside, I headed straight for the massage rooms. Livia’s safety is paramount, I told myself. That argument rang false, though with noble tones. Lady Cornelia had only one slave to
guard them both. That reasoning was as ludicrous as it was unwise:  what could I add to their party that would ameliorate their protection. Sympathy? I should have kept Malchus with me; he was both large
and
discreet.

I was not clear on what it was that I intended, only that I needed to see her once more before leaving this place. In the next few moments, instinct would serve me better than brains, not once, but twice. I was lucky:  Livia was in the first enclosure. One could hardly call them rooms; they were roughly ten-foot square spaces formed by draperies which could be drawn open or left closed. The curtain between Livia
’s and lady Cornelia’s rooms had been pulled back and tied tight against the far wall so that they might converse without obstruction. The
medicus
and the patrician’s daughter lay face down on raised, padded tables, naked except for towels covering their modesty. An exhilarated cacophony emanating from the enclosure just beyond gave ample and continuous evidence that massage was only one of many offerings on the
balnea’s
menu. Thank Aphrodite, the curtains, at least, were closed.

From where I stood, I was at least temporarily invisible:  the men faced their clients, and both women had their heads turned in the direction of the athletic couple beyond. “Livia, darling,” lady Cornelia said, “for five
sesterces
more your masseur can make you moan like that. Shall I call for Buccio to fetch my purse?”

The muscled, bare-chested masseur with moonless midnight skin was pouring scented olive oil onto his hands. His shiny, curled hair lay so fine and tight upon his scalp it scarcely looked real. He could easily have been a warrior or a prince in his own land. He was young and smooth and exotic, and I didn’t much care for him at all. He must have had only a rudimentary understanding of Latin, for he showed no reaction to lady Cornelia’s suggestion. Unlike myself, whose breath found a high perch and refused to budge.

“You are kind, Cornelia, and unlike any highborn I have met. Oh, but that is heaven,” she said, interrupting herself as the African applied his skills to her feet. “But given the choice, and there were times when in my youth when I had none, I prefer more intimate surroundings. If you’ll allow me, it would be a privilege to say ‘no.’” Livia’s tone had slid from conversational to that voice with which all slaves are familiar, the flat, disassociated tone needed to withstand some memory better forgotten, but impossible to repress.

Exhale
.

Lady Cornelia turned to her older friend, “No one is going to force you to do anything against your will here. I promise.” Young as she was, she was not naïve. She had heard the change in tone, and understood that, hard as she might try, she would never bridge the span that yawned between them with a massage or a game of
trigon
.

Livia pushed herself up on her elbows and said a most sincere, “Thank you.” They both recognized that even those two words, softly spoken, had the power to push them apart, each into their separate worlds.

Lady Cornelia thought for a moment, then said, “Shall I have father buy you, and set you free, then?”

“Don’t joke about such things.”

“I’m serious. More oil,” she instructed her own masseur. “My heels are like leather.”

Livia lay back down
on her stomach, her right cheek on her hands. “Free.” The sound blew through her mouth with less weight than it deserved. “My mother fought for my freedom all her life.”

“Where is she now?”

“Dead, if the gods are kind. She was sent to the mines. I haven’t seen her or had word from her in twenty years.” Livia laughed, a short, mirthless sound. “Do you know what she told me:  she said you could never be happy, you could never fully experience love unless you were free. Freedom was the only thing that mattered.”

“Then let me help you honor her memory by granting her most fervent wish.”

“I believed her, when I was a child. But now, I don’t know. Even if it were possible, Cornelia, to gain this prize, what would I sacrifice? You’ve seen what life is like outside the walls of your estate. Freedmen are judged almost as harshly as we are. The stigma never fades. I’m thirty-seven and no virgin. What kind of man would have me? How would I live? Without the protection and patronage of
dominus
, what citizen would pay to be treated by a female doctor?”

“But you’d be
free
. You are beautiful. You could do what you choose.”

“Forgive me, Cornelia, I do not make light of your most generous offer, but I think my time
for a free life has past. Even my mother might offer different advice today. If I had money, or even family…. But I will think about it, seriously, I promise.” Livia laughed; now the sound was bright but dismissive. “Why are we even talking about this?
Dominus
would never let me go. He’s invested too much in my training. You might as well ask him to sell Alexander to your father. No, I am welcome in the house of Crassus, and my place is there.”

“You
want
to remain a slave?”

“I have a home there, my work is respected, and there is
…there are people there who care about me.”

“Hm. The house of Crassus is
renowned for training and keeping only the highest quality staff. If you say the life there is better than on the outside, I must believe you. Something has changed, though. My parents remarked on it – both Crassus and lady Tertulla seem different, somehow, since their return from Luca. Do you know anything about it?”

“I am only back from Memphis these few months; I really couldn’t say.”

“Well,” lady Cornelia said, dismissing even the hint of an unpleasant subject, “I pray they are well. When my friends and I talk of the marriages our fathers will arrange for us, theirs is the one we all hope to emulate. Whatever the matter, we’ll find a shrine and say a prayer for them on the way home.”

“You are sweet to do so.”

“Not so sweet that I wouldn’t steal your man there away from you,” lady Cornelia said.

“This fellow?” Livia said, gesturing back toward the African. “Take him. I have no preference.”

“Thank you, Livvy. I like the thought of his big hands upon me.”

“You’re not going to let him…
,” Livia said, alarmed.

The young lady laughed. “Of course not! My father would kill me. No, I mean he would
seriously
consider it. All he talks about is making a prudent political match for me. I tease him, but I mean to make him proud of me, in every way, including the stain I leave on my wedding sheets.”

Lady Cornelia said something to her masseur, who spoke a single word to Livia’s, and the two made to switch places. This was my moment. Livia was turned away from me. The
aureus
in my palm was warm and basted with sweat, but held at the ready. I moved into view at the foot of Livia’s table just as lady Cornelia rolled over onto her back. She saw me straight away; all was lost! I smiled at her helplessly, beseechingly. To my astonished relief, she smiled back conspiratorially. I held the coin up to the man about to squeeze past me and motioned him to make good his departure in quiet haste. He grasped the hot gold piece, his entire face smiling, and went off to contemplate how he would spend this newfound windfall. There was no time to pour more oil. The African looked only mildly surprised when I took his dripping, gleaming hands in my own and rubbed them vigorously. I winked at him and made a gesture for his continued silence. He winked back at me, but the motion was mimicry without understanding. He started to say something, which I quelled, taking his hands and guiding them to lady Cornelia’s feet. Her expression said she found this pantomime at least as entertaining as her interrupted massage. I did not care; my improvisation was going well so far, providing my heart did not explode in my chest.

Before me waited the unsuspecting Livia. She lay with her ankles just off the table,
toes pointed toward the floor, curtains of her unclasped hair thankfully blocking her vision.

“Oh! I think you’ve made a bad bargain, Cornelia.” Livia sighed as I attended to each individual toe of her left foot, pressing and separating, oiling the valleys between each, intent on making each touch a caress.

“And I think we are now perfectly matched,” she replied.

I had no idea what I was doing; fortunately my hands were guided by a higher authority:  desire. Technique’s teacher was nothing more than imagining the ecstasies I would feel if our places were reversed. I gave what I wanted to receive. I was reluctant to leave any part of her, but I could not work on her feet forever.
Moving up the length of each calf, I drew my fingers firmly back down her lean muscles till I reached her ankle. When Livia released a sigh of pleasure, my chest tightened; breathing became a voluntary thing.

I watched my African counterpart; when he stopped to replenish the oil on his hands, I did likewise. When he moved up onto the exposed, slightly spread tops of lady Cornelia’s thighs, I moved higher as well. Rubbing my hands to warm them, I positioned my thumbs on the back of Livia’s right thigh, as close as I dared to the towel which, were it to rise by the slightest fraction, would reveal all it was tasked to conceal. Pressing gently, I moved in alternating, short strokes down to the back of her knee, then up again, cradling and stroking the front of her leg with eight other beguiled fingers as I went.

Moments passed and somehow I found myself tending to the oiled and toned contours of Livia’s back. I had fallen into a reverie of tactility, no longer certain if Livia’s flesh or my own hands were the recipients of such mindless, focused attention. Every stroke and manipulation moved with but one intent:  to elicit a sigh of contentment or a moan of pleasure. And there were many. A stifled cry from the adjoining table broke my mediation. Lady Cornelia’s masseur had found his way to her breast, and despite her earlier protestations, her nipple rose with eager curiosity to the rhythmic rolling of his thumb and forefinger.

“I think we had better stop,” she gasped, pushing his hand away.

“Oh, just a while longer, Cornelia. I am transported.” Livia stretched her arms and legs, an arrow of limbs and torso. “Alexander, you have Apollo’s own touch.”

There’s a coincidence:  the masseur they originally hired for lady Cornelia has the same name as my own. Wait a moment!

Livia reached beneath her, grabbed a second towel from a railing under her table and deftly rolled onto her back as she covered herself. “Did you think,” she continued, “even after all these years that I could forget the touch of your hands?” With one arm across her chest, she raked her unbound hair away from her face and smiled up at me.

I did not know what else to do, and it was out of the question that I continue to stand there, stunned and silent. So I kissed her. Livia yielded, twisting on her side, curling up into my embrace. Her hand held the back of my neck, her knees bent, prodding me closer. Once she had been mine, and I had broken her heart. I was not deserving of this moment, but I would not give it up. Wetness pushed against the eyelashes of my closed eyes. The musk of the perfumed oil swirled lazily around us, moving as slowly as our mouths. But like all infinite moments, this one, too, proved
itself false.

There came the sound of a scuffle at the entrance to the
balnea
, then shouting. I heard someone bellow something that sounded like ‘the enemies of Clodius!’ I broke from our embrace. “Lady Cornelia, call your man.” The look in my eyes won any argument she might have raised. She shouted for him, but there was no response, at least none that we could hear about the growing tumult. Patrons were running for the entrance, but the way must have been blocked. I watched as lady Cornelia’s masseur bolted for the back of the building. “There must be a back exit. Wrap those towels about you as best as you can. Quickly.”

I unhooked my cloak and
threw it about Livia’s shoulders, forgetting my duty to serve the highborn lady Cornelia. We followed the path of the African, who had crossed the
palaestra
just in front of the empty
frigidarium
, disappearing into the hallway leading to the
calidarium
.

“What’s happening?” Livia asked.

“Anarchy,” I replied.

Chapter VIII

56 BCE   Fall, Rome

Year of the consulship of

Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus and L. Marcius Philippus

From behind us, a voice called, “Mistress!”

“Buccio! What has happened?!” lady Cornelia cried. I have noted how often questions escape our mouths when the answers are known to us even before we begin to speak. It is my contention that we do this in order to let our minds catch up with our brains. Or perhaps it is the other way round. In any event, we stopped to give the old slave time to catch up to us. He held one hand to his head and a bundle of his lady’s things under his other arm.

“
Your pardon, lady,” the little man said. “I did my best.” Lady Cornelia grabbed her clothes from him.