School of Athens
Page 18
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ATHENS
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Theresa enters the bathing room and motions for her servants to leave her. When the last girl leaves the room, she lets her robe fall to the tile floor below, walks into the steaming waters and begins washing her skin with a sponge. Normally, this is a task she leaves to her servants, but on this particular day she has a scheme to execute, one that calls for privacy. Theresa slowly dips the back of her head under the water and allows her hair to fan out on the surface of the water.
From just outside the bath chamber Cleon watches his wife dab her body with the sponge. He has just returned home from a long journey to Thrace and had hoped for a lavish meal (which, unbeknownst to him, the servants were preparing at that very moment), but was quite satisfied to find his wife amid her daily bath instead.
Catching his wife in the bath unawares happens rarely and only so often as Theresa wishes to influence her husband in some dramatic fashion. She knows Cleon takes particular joy in watching her from what he believes to be a hidden location, and so the act of bathing on these occasions becomes an intricately-planned seduction for Theresa. She choreographs her movements in the bath as carefully to coincide with her husband’s arrival home and after years of practice her routine is almost perfected.
Theresa lifts her head from the pool and pulls her hair over her shoulders, twisting it into a single tail to squeeze the water back into the bath. She turns her back to the entrance and resumes cleaning herself with the sponge. Cleon lurks in the darkened hallway for a moment, watching the contours of his wife’s body refract in the rippling waters with as he leans against a pillar in the hallway.
“You missed a spot,” he says, appearing from shadows as he walks into the chamber.
Theresa smiles. “I haven’t finished yet,” she replies without looking over her shoulder.
“But you always miss that same spot,” Cleon notes.
“Then why don’t do you come in and wash it for me?” Theresa suggests.
Cleon grins as he loosens his robes and steps gingerly into the steaming waters of the bath. He massages Theresa’s shoulders for a moment before his wife finally turns around and kisses him hello. “Did you miss me?” she asks.
“Terribly!” he replies. “There was a small slave rebellion at the mines and I had to pay King Teres a small fortune to quell the uprising with his army. And you wouldn’t believe the cost of pack mules these days! And now that the—”
Theresa learned long ago that enduring the minutia of business was the price of marrying a successful merchant. Most days she would let Cleon prattle on for hours, if necessary, about one concern or another, most of which were never very interesting. She would nod her head politely, smile at his minor victories and offer solace when he endured small injustices. Occasionally, as a reward for lending him her ear, Cleon would inquire about her well-being. Theresa knew this wasn’t an invitation to begin explaining the details of her day so much as it was a token of appreciation for allowing him to vent his frustrations openly. “Not nearly as vexing as your day, my dear,” she would always reply.
But today is different.
“Shhhh!” Theresa instructs. “You’ve had a long journey back home, dear, and now its time to relax. Besides, you weren’t the only one tending to business these last few weeks.”
Cleon laughs at the thought of his wife laboring for hours by candlelight over the ledgers that occupy even his dreams. “Oh?” he replies, the condescension oozing from his lips. “And how clean did the chambermaids keep the house while I was gone?”
Theresa playfully splashes her husband. “Very funny, my dear,” she says, kissing Cleon gently on the neck, “but let’s see who’s laughing after you answer this question.”
“And what question is that?”
“How would you like to be the next archon of Athens?”
Cleon pushes his wife away and gazes into her eyes with a vacant expression of surprise and disbelief. Theresa simply smiles back deviously, turns her shoulder to him and waits for Cleon to finish washing her back.