Cressa nods, and they head to the colonnade that circles the port. Amara feels her spirits rise. Sunlight, reflected from the sea, ripples over the pillars and painted statues, and the call of the gulls, the sing-song shouts of the sailors sound almost musical. She helps Cressa sit down in a patch of sun by the water’s edge. Below their swinging feet, she can see grey fish darting in the clear water.
“Felix never told me where he sold Cosmus,” Cressa says. The mention of her son is so unexpected Amara does not know what to say. She looks at Cressa but cannot read her expression as her face is turned to the sea. “Fabia tried to find out for me, but we never managed it.”
“Fabia?” Amara asks in surprise. She cannot imagine Paris’s mother having the necessary bravery, or cunning, to make such an attempt.
“Why not Fabia? She sees more than you think. And everyone overlooks her. That’s what happens when you get old.” There is no mistaking the bitterness in Cressa’s voice.
“Even though it was so hard for you,” Amara says, desperate to try and make Cressa feel better. “Do you think maybe it might have been for the best? So that Cosmus wasn’t trapped at the brothel?”
Cressa turns to her, and Amara is shocked by how old and tired her face is in the full glare of the light. “I know that none of you understand,” she says. “That you think it’s something I should just get over,” Amara starts to protest, but Cressa raises a hand to stop her. “If you ever have a child, Amara, you will understand what I feel.”
She says nothing, aware of Cressa’s swelling belly, of the new baby she is carrying. They sit in silence, until Cressa starts to heave herself to her feet. Amara tries to help, but Cressa motions for her to stay where she is.
“Do you mind if I have a few moments to myself?” Cressa says. “You can wait here. I won’t be long.”
Amara is not keen on the idea. It’s never too safe at the harbour. But Cressa is looking down at her, eyes pleading, and she cannot refuse. “Alright,” she says. “But not far. I don’t want to be by myself out here for ages.”
Cressa sets off at a swift pace. She looks stronger and more determined than she has done for a while. The sea air was a good idea, after all. Amara holds onto the base of a pillar and cranes her neck round so she can see where Cressa is going. She watches her approach the docks then come to a stop by some amphora that are being unloaded from a boat. Cressa leans against one of the large jars, perhaps taking the weight off her swollen feet. She is looking out to sea, at the heave and swell of the water. Amara does too. The light is dancing on the waves. She looks further out, to where Venus Pompeiiana stands, the water breaking against the heavy stone base of her column. The goddess of love, Amara’s new mistress. She has more respect for her since the Vinalia. It was after her prayers to the goddess that her fortunes began to change. Don’t forget me, Aphrodite, she thinks, staring at the statue. Show me a way out, and the rest of my life is yours.
She glances back to where Cressa was standing and gasps, scrambling to her feet in alarm. A man is remonstrating with her, trying to stop Cressa leaning on his goods, but she is stubbornly clinging on. Amara breaks into a run. The man is shouting; it looks as if he is about to grab hold of her. Amara yells at her to let go, and to her relief, Cressa steps away, but then, in a violent movement, she pushes an amphora over the edge of the harbour wall. Cressa goes with it, pulled so fast over the side, she is almost a blur. She must have tied her cloak to the handle.
Amara cries out in shock. She hurtles past people, knocking them aside in her desperation to reach the water’s edge, oblivious to their anger. At the docks, she flings herself onto her knees. “Cressa!” she screams, leaning over the side of the jetty. “Cressa!” Her heart is pounding, her mind unable to take in what she has seen. She stares at the waves, but there’s no sign of her friend, just foam and a slight disturbance of the water where she broke its surface.
Amara stands up, distraught, looking for help. The man who shouted at Cressa is standing beside her, staring at the water, as dumbstruck as she is. She grabs his arm. “Can you swim? Can you jump in and save her?” She is sobbing, hysterical, almost pushing him in the water in her urgency. “Please, do something! Please! She’s going to die!”
The man shakes her off, furious. “That fucking bitch just stole some of my best olive oil! Do you think I’m going to risk drowning for some filthy, thieving whore?” He looks more closely at Amara, taking in her toga. “Were you with her? Do you have the same master?”
Amara looks again at the water. Its surface is almost calm now, as if Cressa never jumped in, as if she never even existed. Amara cannot swim. With every moment that passes, the chance of Cressa surviving recedes. If she’s not already dead. She realizes other sailors and merchants are starting to gather behind them, exclaiming to one another, excited by the commotion. Fear grips her.
“No,” she says, trying to hide her distress, to control her trembling. “I don’t know her. I’ve just seen her around.” Amara turns and walks as fast as she can without running, back towards the marine gate.
34
When you are dead, you are nothing
Pompeii graffiti
She can barely get through the words, she is crying so much. Amara pours it all out to Felix. They are alone, and he is standing close to her, grasping her arms to keep her steady. She wants him to hold her, to comfort her, to share her grief. Instead, he listens to the whole story without interrupting, his face impassive.
“You did well not to tell them you shared a master,” he says, when she has finished. “They would have made me pay for the oil. And Cressa had cost me enough already. Barely earned a penny in months.”
Amara is shocked out of her sobbing. Felix is looking at her, completely unmoved by her distress. His coldness should not be a surprise, but it still hurts, and with the pain comes the anger. She shoves him, blinded by rage. He steps back, and she hits him again, not a slap, but a punch. He is too quick for her, and she misses his face, catching his shoulder instead. “I hate you!” she screams. “You don’t give a shit about anybody! She died because of you, and you don’t care. You don’t feel anything. I hate you!” He dodges all her blows; she is too upset to aim straight. “I wish you were dead!” Amara shouts, catching hold of his clothes, trying to shake him. “I wish you were dead!” He grabs her right arm, twisting it behind her back. She cries out and drops instantly to her knees.
“You don’t get to tell me what I feel,” Felix shouts, his mouth so close to her ear it deafens her. He releases her with a shove, and she cradles her arm. “Stupid fucking bitch. Do you think I chose this life? Do you?”
Amara says nothing. She has never questioned how Felix came to run the brothel. He seems made for it. He crouches beside her, agitated, and she shrinks away. “I was born here. Not here.” He gestures at the study, as if impatient with its existence. “Downstairs. You think I don’t know what it’s like? That I don’t understand?” His face is unrecognizable with anguish. “My mother wasn’t as brave as Cressa. Too much of a fucking coward to kill herself and spare her son.”
Amara doesn’t move, doesn’t dare say anything. She cannot imagine Felix will forgive her for seeing him like this, not when he realizes what he has just said. He is hunched over, and for the first time since she has known him, he looks defeated. She understands, watching him then, that however much she hates him, Felix will always loathe himself more. “My father, or the man my whore of a mother insisted was my father, ran this place,” he says. “He gave me my freedom, so I suppose he must have believed her. But not until I had served a long apprenticeship.” He is staring at the desk – presumably his father’s – when he says this. Amara thinks of his meticulous book-keeping, imagines him sitting there as a child, watched over by an older, nastier version of himself. Learning his trade. But then she remembers the graffiti on her cell wall.
Amara looks away from Felix, her breathing shallow. Is it possible her master was once a prostitute? That he lived the same li
fe as Paris? She is afraid to speak, to remind him of her presence, but the growing silence is frightening too. “What happened to your mother?” she says, her voice small.
“She died when I was ten.” He is staring at the red wall, his eyes glazed. His grief is so palpable that Amara forgets herself. In that moment all she can see is the frightened boy who lost his mother, who was tormented by his father, and her heart aches for him. She touches his arm, her fingers gentle.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Felix is startled out of his own thoughts. “Don’t touch me,” he snarls, getting to his feet. Amara scrambles out of the way, afraid he will kick her where she sits. He stares at her, and they both know she can see the tears in his eyes. “Get out.”
She runs from the room.
*
Amara closes the door of the flat behind her, stands on the pavement, her back to the wood. She feels torn apart, almost as much by her confusion over Felix, as her grief for Cressa. She cannot bear to go into the brothel, to face Britannica, to make Cressa’s death real, to see her fall in the water again as she tells the others what happened. She lurches off down the street, walking quickly but without aim. Rufus comes into her mind, the way he holds her, tells her he loves her. But it would be unthinkable to disturb him at his own house, in the daytime, with her ugly whore’s tale of pregnancy and death. She almost takes the street that will lead to Drusilla’s house, sensing the courtesan would not turn her away, and yet, she doesn’t really know her. Amara’s feet know where they are taking her before she realizes it herself. The potter’s shop on the Via Pompeiana. To Menander.
She stands outside the shop, watching. He is there, laughing with another slave. A young woman. There is no sign of Rusticus. Amara feels a pang. Perhaps this is his girlfriend now. She has no right to mind what he does; she was wrong to come here and impose her grief on him. Menander sees her just as she is turning away, and he rushes from the shop.
“Timarete!” he calls, stopping her. He catches up, sees her face wet with tears. “I can’t talk outside the shop,” he says. “Wait here. We can walk to the fountain.”
Before she has time to protest, he has run back. Amara sees him talk to the slave girl at the counter who stares at her, curious, then fetches him a bucket.
“Come on,” Menander says, rejoining her. “This way.”
They walk quickly down the street. “I’m sorry,” Amara says. “I’m sorry for what happened between us.” They reach the fountain, where a small gathering of gossips is already milling about. It’s a favourite haunt for loitering slaves.
“Never mind that now,” he says, pulling her to the side to let an impatient man pass. “Tell me what’s wrong. Has somebody hurt you?” His concern for her is so obvious, it makes her want to cry all over again.
“Cressa is dead,” she says. “She was pregnant. We went to the harbour together.” Amara stops, not wanting to describe Cressa’s final moments, the flash of her cloak, the foam on the water. “She drowned herself.”
“It was just the two of you? You were left alone there? At the docks?”
Amara nods. “Nobody would help. Nobody. And when this man asked me why I was upset, I said I didn’t know her.” She covers her face with her hands, overwhelmed by her final act of betrayal. Menander puts down his bucket and embraces her. She clings to him, crying into his shoulder.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Menander says. “It’s alright. It’s not your fault.”
“Nobody helped, nobody cared,” Amara says. “They were just angry she pushed an amphora of oil in the water. She didn’t matter. And now she’s gone, and it’s like she never lived at all. Like she was nothing.”
“She wasn’t though,” he says. “You loved her, didn’t you? She mattered; she mattered to you, to her friends.”
“I didn’t help her; I let her drown.”
“You couldn’t help her,” he says. “And she chose to drown.”
Amara lets Menander hold her, until she becomes suddenly aware that they have attracted a number of gawpers, no doubt listening to every word. She straightens up, wiping her face. Menander confronts the small crowd, hovering with their buckets. “Just leave us alone, will you?”
“Fuck you,” one of the other slaves mutters, but the gossips still turn round to give them some privacy. Nobody here wants a fight, not when they all have masters waiting.
“You did nothing wrong,” Menander repeats, holding her shoulders, making her look at him. “You hear me? Nothing at all.”
Amara looks at his kind face, at the dark eyes she has tried so hard to forget, and knows that she will never love Rufus, not how she loves this man. “I’m sorry I sent Dido,” she says. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you myself.” As soon as she says the words, she can see how she hurt him. “I don’t love him,” she says. “But I owe him.”
“He bought you,” Menander says, letting go of her. “I understand.”
It isn’t only money that Amara meant. She owes Rufus for more than that. She owes him some semblance of loyalty, not to make every word she says a lie. But she doesn’t want to hurt Menander even more than she already has. He bends to fill the bucket with water he doesn’t need, except as an excuse for Rusticus. “I didn’t want you wasting your feelings on me,” Amara says, as he works the pump. “Not when I can’t give you anything.” Even though I want to, she thinks. “And I’m sorry I came here, dragging you out, burdening you. I just couldn’t bear what happened to Cressa, and I forgot. I forgot I shouldn’t have been speaking to you. That I should have left you alone.”
“You can always speak to me.” Menander lifts the bucket down, moving away from the well. “Always. And I know you have to look after yourself. I understand that.”
Amara looks down. It feels as if he is letting her go, and she doesn’t want him to. “There is nobody like you,” she says, unable to tell him she loves him. “There is nobody else like you in my life.”
“Or mine, Timarete.” He leans forward, kissing her quickly on the forehead. Then he picks up the bucket, turning to go. “Please be careful. And don’t blame yourself.”
*
Britannica understands, as soon as she sees Amara, that something is wrong.
“Cressa?” she demands, her voice high with anxiety. “Cressa?”
Amara cannot bear to tell her Cressa is dead while they are alone; she isn’t even sure Britannica will understand. All the other women are out, even Beronice, and she has to wait while Britannica paces the corridor, muttering to herself, sometimes turning to shout at Amara who only shakes her head.
When Dido and Beronice return, they are both with customers. She knows her stricken face will have told them there is bad news as soon as they step over the threshold, but they are still obliged to pleasure the men first. Amara sits in her old cell, waiting for them to finish.
“Where is she?” Beronice says, rushing in as soon as she is free. “Where’s Cressa? What’s happened to her?” Britannica hovers by the bed, looking from Beronice to Amara, her eyes wide with fear.
“I’m sorry,” Amara says. “I’m so sorry.”
“No,” Beronice shakes her head, understanding. “No, she isn’t. She can’t be.”
“She jumped into the sea at the harbour,” Amara says, trying to keep her voice steady. “She tied herself to an amphora to make sure she drowned. I couldn’t get there in time to save her. I didn’t realize.”
“No!” Beronice wails. “No!”
It had been Britannica’s grief Amara feared, but instead, it is Beronice who loses all control. She beats her fists on the walls of the cell, tearing at her hair, at her face, screaming and crying. “I loved her!” she sobs. “I loved her! She can’t be dead!”
Amara doesn’t dare touch her; Beronice is like a mad woman. Britannica curls up in a ball on the floor, covering her ears. Dido walks in. She has no need to ask what has happened. She throws herself at Amara, and they hold one another, rocking back and forth.
&nb
sp; They are all still crying and keening when Amara hears Victoria, her patter cutting across the noise. “Oh! I can feel it! How big you are!” There is shrieking and giggling from the Spanish girls, and the deeper tones of male voices. Amara disentangles herself from Dido and steps out into the corridor. She stands in silence, her shadow reaching out across the floor.
A man is draped over Victoria, but her attention is only half on him. She has heard the wailing. “Who?” she says to Amara. “Who is it?”
“Cressa.”
“Out!” Victoria shakes the man’s arm from her shoulders. He looks at her, bewildered by this whore who moments before was panting after him. Victoria shoves him hard. “Get out!” she yells, her face red with fury. “All of you! Out! I don’t want any fucking men in here!”
Ipstilla and Telethusa stand frozen with fear and surprise. One of their customers gives a nervous laugh. “What the fuck is this?”
“I said, all of you, out!” Victoria screams, wrenching his arm from around Ipstilla’s waist. He steps back, too shocked to hit her. His companion makes the sign of the evil eye.
“You heard what she said!” Amara shouts. “We don’t want you in here. Get out!”
Beronice rushes from the cell behind her. She looks unhinged with her scratched face and wild hair. “Bastards!” she shrieks. “She’s dead, can’t you leave us in peace?”
The men need no more urging. They don’t even take the time to hurl insults back. Instead, they hurry from the house of angry women, almost tripping over the doorstep on their way to the street.
35
You may look perhaps for a troop of Spanish maidens to win applause by immodest dance and song, sinking down with quivering thighs to the floor.
Juvenal, Satire 11.162
On any other morning, Felix would have been down to rage at the takings, but their wild grief has made the women untouchable, for one day at least. Amara wonders if he too might be grieving but crushes her sense of sympathy. Whatever happened to Felix as a child does not change who he is now. Fabia dresses their hair, her own face red from crying. Amara remembers what Cressa said about the old woman trying to find Cosmus, wonders what else the two women talked about, what secrets Fabia might know about their master.
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