House Of The Vestals (18 page)

Belbo seemed content with his meal, but then Belbo enjoys every meal, so long as there's enough of it; he smacked his lips, ate with his fingers, and laughed out loud at the novelty of sending his young master Eco to fetch more wine, accepting the tradition of reversing roles as a lark. Bethesda, on the other hand, approached each dish with an air of cool detachment. As always, her typically aloof demeanor masked the true depth of what was going on inside her, which I suspected was as complex and subtle as the most exquisite ragout. Partly she was skeptical of my cooking, partly she enjoyed the novelty of being served and the pretense of being a Roman matron, and partly she wished to hide any outward sign of her enjoyment because, ah well, because Bethesda is Bethesda.

She did, however, deign to compliment me on the egg pudding, for which I took a bow.

"And how was your day, Master?" she asked casually, settling back on the couch. I stood close by, my arms clasped deferentially behind my back. In her imagination, was I reduced to a slave-or worse, to a husband?

I recounted to her the day's events, as slaves are often called upon to do by their masters at the end of the day, Bethesda listened abstractedly, running her hands through her luxurious black hair and tapping at her full red lips. When I described my encounter with Cicero, her dark eyes flashed, for she has always been suspicious of any man who has a greater appetite for books than for women or food; when I told her I had called on Lucius Claudius she smiled, for she knows how susceptible he is to her beauty; when I told her of Stephanos's demise and the disappearance of the silver, she became deeply pensive. She leaned forward to rest her chin on her hand, and it suddenly occurred to me that she was very dangerously close to performing a parody of me.

After I had explained the unfortunate events, she asked me to explain them again, then called on Eco, who had been performing some childish hand-slapping game with Belbo, to come over and clarify some aspects of the story. Again, as he had at Lucius's house, he insisted that it was Stephanos whom he had heard laughing.

"Master," said Bethesda thoughtfully, "will this slave Thropsus be tortured?"

"Possibly." I sighed. "If Lucius is unable to recover the silver, he may lose his head-Lucius, I mean, though Thropsus could eventually lose his head as well, literally."

"And if Zoticus is found, without the silver, protesting his innocence?"

"He will almost certainly be tortured," I said. "Lucius would lose face with his family and his colleagues if he were to allow himself to be duped by a slave."

"Duped by a slave," murmured Bethesda thoughtfully, nodding. Then she shook her head and put on her most imperious expression. "Master, you were there! How could you not have seen the truth?"

"What do you mean?"

"You were drinking the wine of Lucius Claudius straight, weren't you? It must have addled your judgment."

Many liberties are allowed to slaves during Saturnalia, but this was too much! "Bethesda! I demand-"

"We must go to the house of Lucius Claudius at once!" Bethesda sprang to her feet and ran to fetch herself a cloak. Eco looked at me for direction. I shrugged. "Fetch your cloak, Eco, and mine as well; the night may be chilly. You might as well come along, too, Belbo, if you can manage to lift yourself off that couch. The streets will be wild tonight."

I will not recount the madness of crossing Rome on Saturnalia night. Suffice to say that on certain stretches of the journey I was very glad to have Belbo with us; his hulking presence alone was usually enough to clear a way through the raucous throng. When we at last rapped upon Lucius's door, it was once again answered by the master of the house.

"Gordianus! Oh, I'm glad to see you. This day only becomes worse and worse. Oh, and Eco, and Belbo-and Bethesda!" His voice broke a little as he said her name and his eyes widened. He blushed, if it was possible for his florid face to turn a brighter red.

He led us through the garden. The statue of Minerva gazed down upon us, her wise countenance a study in moonlight and shadow. Lucius led us into a sumptuously appointed room just off the garden, heated by a flaming brazier. "I took your advice," he said. "I hired men to search for Zoticus. They found him quickly enough, as drunk as a satyr and gambling in the street outside a brothel in the Subura-trying to win enough to go inside, he says."

"And the silver?"

"No sign of it. Zoticus swears that he never saw the silver or even knew that it existed. He says he slipped out the back of the house, through a window in the slaves' quarters. He says that Thropsus was boring him and he wanted to go out alone."

"Do you believe him?"

Lucius clutched his head. "Oh, I don't know what to believe. All I know is that Zoticus and Thropsus came in, Zoticus slipped out, and at some point in between Stephanos was killed and the silver was taken. I just want the silver back! My cousins came calling today, and I had nothing to give them. Of course I didn't want to explain the situation; I told them my presents were late and I'd come to see them tomorrow. Gordianus, I don't want to torture the young men, but what else can I do?"

"You can take me to the room where you kept the silver," said Bethesda, stepping forward and slipping off her cloak, which she tossed onto a nearby chair. Her cascade of black hair glittered with flashes of deep blue and purple in the light of the flaming brazier. Her face was impassive and her eyes were steadily fixed on Lucius Claudius, who blinked under her gaze. I quailed a bit myself, looking at her in the firelight, for while she wore her hair down, like a slave, and was dressed in a simple slave woman's gown, her face had the same compelling majesty as the brazen face of the goddess in the garden.

Bethesda kept her gaze on Lucius, who reached up to dab a bead of sweat from his forehead. The brazier was hot, but not that hot. "Of course," he said, "though there's nothing to see now. I had the body of Stephanos removed to another room…" His voice trailed off as he turned and led the way to the back of the house, taking a lamp from a sconce on the wall to light the way.

Under the lamp's flickering light, the room seemed very empty and slightly eerie. The shutters were closed and the bloodstained cloth had been removed from atop the chest.

"Which shutters were open when you found Stephanos dead?" said Bethesda.

"Th-these," said Lucius with a slight stutter. At his touch they parted. "The latch seems to be broken," he explained, trying to push them shut again.

"Broken, because the shutters were not opened by the latch, but forced," said Bethesda.

"Yes, we figured that out this morning" he said. "They must have been pushed open from outside. Some outsider forced his way in-"

"I think not," said Bethesda. "What if one were to seize the top of the shutters and pull them open, like so." At another window she wrenched the shutters open, breaking the little latch at the middle.

"But why would anyone do that?" asked Lucius.

I parted my lips and drew in a breath, beginning to see what Bethesda had in mind. I almost spoke, but caught myself. The idea was hers, after all. I would let her reveal it.

"The slave Thropsus said he heard first laughter, then a rattling noise, then a banging. The laughter, according to Eco, came from Stephanos."

Lucius shook his head. "That's hard to imagine."

"Because you never heard Stephanos laugh? I can tell you why: because he laughed only behind your back. Ask some of the slaves who have been here longer than Thropsus, and see what they tell you."

"How can you know this?" protested Lucius.

"The man ran your household, did he not? He was your chief slave here in Rome. Believe me, from time to time he laughed at you behind your back." Lucius seemed taken aback at such an idea, but Bethesda was not to be argued with. "As for the rattling Thropsus heard, you heard the same noise just now, when I wrenched open those shutters. Then Thropsus heard a banging, a thud-that was the sound of Stephanos's head striking the hard edge of the chest." She winced. "Then he fell to the ground, here I should think, clutching his chest and bleeding from his head." She pointed to the very spot where we had found Stephanos. "But the most significant sound was the one that no one heard-the clanging of silver, which would surely have made a considerable noise if anyone had hurriedly stuffed all the vessels into a bag and then run off with it."

"But what does all this mean?" said Lucius.

"It means that your wooden-faced slave, whom you believed to have no sense of humor, had his own way of celebrating Saturnalia this year. Stephanos pulled a little joke on you in secret-then laughed out loud at his own impertinence. But he laughed too hard. Stephanos was very old, wasn't he? Old slaves have weak hearts. When their hearts fail, they are likely to fall and reach for anything to support them." She seized the top of the shutters and jerked them open. "These were a poor support He fell and struck his head, and then kept falling to the floor.Was it the blow to his head that killed him, or his heart? Who can say?"

"But the silver!" demanded Lucius. "Where is it?"

"Where Stephanos carefully and silently hid it away, thinking to give his master a fright."

I held my breath as Bethesda opened the lid of the chest; what if she were wrong? But there inside, nestled atop some embroidered coverlets, glittering beneath the lamplight, were all the vessels and necklaces and bangles which Lucius had shown us that morning.

Lucius gasped and looked as if he might faint from relief. "But I still can't believe it," he finally said. "Stephanos never pulled such a prank before!"

"Oh, did he not?" said Bethesda. "Slaves pull such jokes all the time, Lucius Claudius. The point of such pranks is not that their masters should find out and feel foolish, for then the impertinent slave would be punished. No, the point is that the master should never even realize that he's been made the butt of a joke. Stephanos was probably planning to be out in the street enjoying himself when you found the silver missing. He would have let you rush about in a panic for a while, then he would have come home, and when you frantically told him the silver was missing, he would have shown it to you in the trunk."

"But I would have been furious."

"All the better to amuse Stephanos. For when you asked him why he had put the silver there, he would have said that you told him to and that he was only following your orders."

"But I never gave him such instructions!"

" Ah, but you did, Master,' he would have said, shaking his head at your absent-mindedness, and with his stern, humorless expression, you would have had no choice but to believe him. Think back, Lucius Claudius, and I suspect that you may remember other occasions when you found yourself in a fix and Stephanos was constrained to point out that it was due to your own forgetfulness."

"Well, now that you mention it…" said Lucius, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

"And all the while Stephanos was having a laugh at you behind your back," said Bethesda.

I shook my head. "I should have seen the truth when I was here earlier," I said ruefully.

"Nonsense," said Bethesda. "You are wise in the ways of the world, Master, but you can never know the secret workings of a slave's mind, for you have never been one." She shrugged. "When you told me the story, I saw the truth at once. I did not have to know Stephanos to know how his mind worked; there is a way of looking at the world common to all slaves, I think."

I nodded and then stiffened a bit. "Does this mean that sometimes, when I can't find something, or when I distinctly remember giving you an order but you convince me that it slipped my mind…"

Bethesda smiled ever so slightly, as the goddess of wisdom might smile when contemplating a secret joke too rich for mere mortals.

Later that night we joined the throng in the Forum, holding up our wax tapers so that the great public squares and the looming facades of the temples were illuminated by thousands and thousands of flickering lights. Lucius came with us, and joined in the joyful chanting of "Yo, yo, Saturnalia!" which echoed and boomed about the Forum. From the giddy smile on his face, I could see that he had regained his good humor. Bethesda smiled, too, and why not? On her wrist, glittering like a circle of liquid fire beneath the flicker of her taper, was a bracelet of silver and ebony, the Saturnalia gift of a grateful admirer.

"Gordianus! And Eco! How was your journey?"

"I'll tell you as soon as I get off this horse and discover whether I still have two legs."

Lucius Claudius let out a good-natured laugh. "Why, the ride from Rome is only a few hours! And a fine paved road all the way. And glorious weather!"

That was true enough. It was a day in late Aprilis, one of those golden spring days that one might wish could last forever. Sol himself seemed to think so; the sun stood still in the sky, as if enraptured by the beauty of the earth below and unwilling to move on.

And the earth was indeed beautiful, especially this little corner of it, tucked amid the rolling Etruscan countryside north of Rome. The hills were studded with oaks and spangled with yellow and purple flowers. Here in the valley, groves of olive trees shimmered silver and green in the faint breeze. The orchards of fig trees and lime trees were in full leaf. Bees hummed and flitted among the long rows of grape leaves. There was bird song or the air, mingled with a tune being sung by a group of slaves striding through a nearby field and swinging their scythes in unison. I breathed deeply the sweet odor of tall grass drying in the sun. Even my good friend Lucius looked unusually robust, like a plump-cheeked Silenus with frizzled red hair; all he needed to complete the image was a pitcher of wine and a few attendant wood nymphs.

I slipped off my horse and discovered I still had legs after all. Eco sprang from his mount and leaped into the air. Oh, to be a fourteen-year-old boy, and to never know a stiff muscle! A slave led our horses toward the stable.

Lucius gave me a hearty slap across the shoulders and walked me toward the villa. Eco ran in circles around us, like an excited pup. It was a charming house, low and rambling with many windows, their shutters all thrown open to let in the sunlight and fresh air. I thought of houses in the city, all narrow and crammed together and windowless for fear of robbers climbing in from the street. Here, even the house seemed to have sighed with relief and allowed itself to relax.

"You see, I told you," said Lucius. "Look at that smile on your face! The last time I saw you in the city, you looked like a man wearing shoes too small for his feet. I knew this was what you needed-an escape to the countryside for a few days. It always works for me. When all the politicking and litigation in the Forum becomes too much, I flee to my farm. You'll see. A few days and you'll be a reborn man. And Eco will have a splendid time, climbing the hills, swimming in the stream. But you didn't bring Bethesda?"

"No. She-" I began to say she refused to come, which was the exact truth, but I feared that my highborn friend would smirk at the idea of a slave refusing to accompany her master on a trip.

"Bethesda is a creature of the city, you know. Hardly suited for the countryside, so I left her at home, with Belbo to look after her. She'd have been useless to me here."

"Oh, I see." Lucius nodded. "She refused to come?"

"Well…" I began to shake my head, then gave it up and laughed out loud. Of what use were citified pretensions here, where Sol stood still and cast his golden light over a perfect world? Lucius was right. Best to leave such nonsense back in Rome. On an impulse I reached for Eco, and when he made a game of slipping from my grasp I gave chase. The two of us ran in circles around Lucius Claudius, who threw back his head and laughed.

That night we dined on asparagus and goose liver, followed by mushrooms sauteed in goose fat and a guinea hen in a honey-vinegar sauce sprinkled with pine nuts. The fare was simply but superbly prepared. I praised the meal so profusely that Lucius called in the cook to take a bow.

I was surprised to see that the cook was a woman, and still. in her twenties. Her dark hair was pulled back in a tight bun, no doubt to keep it out of her way in the kitchen. Her plump cheeks were all the plumper for the beaming smile on her face; she appreciated praise. Her face was pleasant, if not beautiful, and her figure, even in her loose clothing, appeared to be quite voluptuous.

"Davia started as an assistant to my head cook at my house in Rome," Lucius explained. "She helped him shop, measured out ingredients, that sort of thing. But when he fell ill last winter and she had to take his place, she showed such a knack that I decided to give her the run of the kitchen here at the farm. So you approve, Gordianus?"

"Indeed. Everything was splendid, Davia."

Eco added his praise but his applause was interrupted by a profound yawn. Too much good food and fresh air, he explained, gesturing to the table and sucking in a deep breath. He excused himself and went straight to bed.

Lucius and I took chairs down to the stream and sipped his finest vintage while we listened to the gurgling of the water and the chirring of the crickets and watched thin clouds pass like shredded veils across the face of the moon.

"Ten days of this, and I think I might forget the way back to Rome."

"Ah, but not the way back to Bethesda, I'll wager," said Lucius. "I was hoping to see her. She's a city flower, yes, but put her in the country and she might put out some fresh blossoms that would surprise you. Ah well, it will be just us three fellows, then."

"No other guests?"

"No, no, no! I specifically waited until I had no pending social obligations, so that we should have the place all to ourselves." He smiled at me under the moonlight, then turned down his lips in a mock frown. "It's not what you're thinking, Gordianus."

"And what am I thinking?"

"That for all his homely virtues, your friend Lucius Claudius is still a patrician and subject to the snobbery of his class; that I chose a time to invite you here when there'd be no one else around so as to avoid having you seen by my more elevated friends. But that's not the point at all. I wanted you to have the place to yourself so that you wouldn't have to put up with them! Oh, if you only knew the sort of people I'm talking about."

I smiled at his discomfort. "My work does occasionally bring me into contact with the highborn and wealthy, you know."

"Ah, but it's a different matter, socializing with them. I won't even mention my own family, though they're the worst. Oh, there are the fortune-hunters, the ones on the fringes of society who think they can scrape and claw their way to re-spectability like a ferret. And the grandpas, the boring, self-important old farts who never let anyone forget that some ancestor of theirs served two terms as consul or sacked a Greek temple or slaughtered a shipload of Carthaginians back in the golden age. And the crackpots who claim they're descended from Hercules or Venus-more likely Medusa, judging from their table manners. And the too rich, spoiled young men who can't think of anything but gambling and horse racing, and the too pretty girls who can't think of anything but new gowns and jewels, and the parents who can't think of anything but matching up the boys and girls so that they can breed more of the same.

"You see, Gordianus, you meet these people at their worst, when there's been a dreadful murder or some other crime, and they're all anxious and confused and need your help, but I see them at their best, when they're preening themselves like African birds and oozing charm all over each other like honey, and believe me, at their best they're a thousand times worse! Oh, you can't imagine some of the dreadful gatherings I've had to put up with here at the villa. No, no, nothing like that for the next ten days. This shall be a respite for you and me alike-for you from the city, and for me from my so-called circle of friends."

But it was not to be.

The next three days were like a foretaste of Elysium. Eco explored every corner of the farm, as fascinated by butterflies and ant beds as he was by the arcane mechanics of the olive oil press and the wine press. He had always been a city boy-he was an abandoned child of the streets before I adopted him-but it was clear he could develop a taste for the country.

As for me, I treated myself to Davia's cooking at least three times a day, toured the farm with Lucius and his foreman, and spent restful hours lying in the shade of the willows along the stream, scrolling through trashy Greek novels from Lucius's small library. The plots all seemed to be the same-humble boy meets noble girl, girl is abducted by pirates/giants/soldiers, boy rescues girl and turns out to be of noble birth himself-but such nonsense seemed to fit my mood perfectly. I allowed myself to become pampered and relaxed and thoroughly lazy in body, mind and spirit, and I enjoyed every moment.

Then came the fourth day, and the visitors.

They arrived just as twilight was falling, in an open traveling coach drawn by four white horses and followed by a small retinue of slaves. She was dressed in green and wore her auburn curls pinned in the peculiar upright fan shape that happened to be stylish in the city that spring; it made a suitable frame for the striking beauty of her face. He wore a dark blue tunic that was sleeveless and cut above the knees to show off his athletic arms and legs, and an oddly trimmed little beard that seemed designed to flout convention. They looked to be about my age, midway between thirty and forty.

I happened to be walking back to the villa from the stream. Lucius stepped out of the house to greet me, looked past me and saw the new arrivals.

"Numa's balls!" he exclaimed under his breath, borrowing my own favorite epithet.

"Friends of yours?" I said.

"Yes!" He could not have sounded more dismayed if he was being paid a visit by Hannibal's ghost.

He, it turned out, was a fellow named Titus Didius. She was Antonia, his second wife. (They had both divorced their first spouses in order to marry each other, generating enormous scandal and no small amount of envy among their unhappily married peers.) According to Lucius, who took me aside while the couple settled into the room next to mine, they drank like fish, fought like jackals, and stole like magpies. (I noticed that the slaves discreetly put away the costliest wines, the best silver, and the most fragile Arretine vases shortly after they arrived.)

"It seems they were planning to spend a few days up at my cousin Manius's place," explained Lucius, "but when they arrived, no one was there. Well, I know what happened-Manius went down to Rome just to avoid them."

"Surely not."

"Surely yes. I wonder that they didn't pass him on the way! So now they've come here, asking to stay awhile, 'just a day or two, before we head back to the city. We were so looking forward to some time in the country. You will be a dear, won't you, Lucius, and let us stay, just for a bit?' More likely ten days than two!"

I shrugged. "They don't look so awful to me."

"Oh, wait. Just wait."

"Well, if they're really as terrible as that, why don't you let them stay the night and then turn them away?"

"Turn them away?" He repeated the phrase as if I'd stopped speaking Latin. "Turn them away? You mean, send away Titus Didius, old Marcus Didius's boy? Refuse my hospitality to Antonia? But Gordianus, I've known these people since I was a child. I mean, to avoid them, like cousin Manius has done, well, that's one thing. But to say to them, to their faces-"

"Never mind. I understand," I said, though I didn't, really.

Whatever their faults, the couple had one overriding virtue: they were charming. So charming, indeed, that on that first night, dining in their company, I began to think that Lucius was wildly exaggerating. Certainly they showed none of the characteristic snobbishness of their class toward Eco and me. Titus wanted to hear all about my travels and my work for advocates like Cicero. ("Is it true," he asked, leaning toward me earnestly, "that he's a eunuch?") Eco was obviously fascinated by Antonia, who was even more remarkably beautiful by lamplight. She made a game of flirting with him, but she did so with a natural grace that was neither condescending nor mean. They were both witty, vibrant and urbane, and their sense of humor was only slightly, charmingly, vulgar.

They also appreciated good cooking. Just as I had done after my first meal at the villa, they insisted on complimenting the cook. When Davia appeared, Titus's face lit up with surprise, and not just at the fact that the cook was a young woman. When Lucius opened his mouth to introduce her, Titus snatched the name from his lips. "Davia!" he said. The word left a smile on his face.

A look of displeasure flashed in Antonia's eyes.

Lucius looked back and forth between Davia and Titus, speechless for a moment. "Then you… already know Davia?"

"Why, of course. We met once before, at your house in the city. Davia wasn't the cook, though. Only a helper in the kitchen, as I recall."

"When was this?" asked Antonia, smiling sweetly.

Titus shrugged. "Last year? The year before? At one of Lucius's dinner parties, I suppose. An odd thing-you weren't there, as I recall. Something kept you home that night, my dear. A headache, perhaps…" He gave his wife a commiserating smile, and then looked back at Davia with another kind of smile.

"And how is it that you happened to meet the cook's helper?" Antonia's voice took on a slight edge.

"Oh, I think I must have gone into the kitchen to ask a favor of the cook, or something like that. And then I… well, I met Davia. Didn't I, Davia?"

"Yes." Davia looked at the floor. Though it was hard to tell by the lamplight, it seemed to me that she was blushing.

"Well," said Titus, clapping his hands together, "you have become a splendid cook, Davia! Entirely worthy of your master's famously high standards. About that we're all agreed, yes? Gordianus, Eco, Lucius… Antonia?"

Everyone nodded in unison, some more enthusiastically than others. Davia muttered her thanks and disappeared back into the kitchen.

Lucius's new guests were tired from traveling. Eco and I had enjoyed a long, full day. Everyone turned in early.

The night was warm. Windows and doors were left open to take advantage of the slight breeze. There was a great stillness on the earth, of a sort that one never experiences in the city. As I began to drift into the arms of Morpheus, in the utter quiet I thought I could hear the distant, dreamy rustling of the sheep in their pen, the hushed sighing of the high grass far away by the toad, and even a hint of the stream's gentle gurgling. Eco, with whom I shared the room, began to snore very gently. Then the fighting began.