by Tessa Afshar
“It’s no business of yours,” I said. Heat gave way to a chill as his words sank in. I was picturing myself the way he had found me. Dancing with sensuous abandon, my tunic slipping over one shoulder, hair tumbling out of Delia’s careful arrangement. Drunk on sweet wine. For the first time in months, I saw with brutal clarity what I had become, and blanched.
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell your father.” His voice was quiet. Even in my intoxicated state, I could feel pity edging out the anger that had driven him.
I swallowed a rush of tears. “Thank you.”
He flicked the reins and we started to move. The fresh air settled on me like a blanket on a sleepy child. I felt altogether weary. My eyes closed. I leaned back imperceptibly. Behind me, Justus took in a sharp breath. An arm wrapped around my middle, tightening for a moment. He bent his head. I could feel the warmth of his face against my neck.
With a speed that caused me to stumble, he stepped back, withdrawing his hand, leaving enough space between us to make me feel cold. I had to grab the wall of the chariot to steady myself. The chariot picked up speed, as if he could not wait to deposit me at my doorstep. He escorted me to our door without a word and handed me to Delia when she unbarred the front gate. Before I could thank him, he walked away.
“What made him so cantankerous?” Delia asked.
“He does not like sharing his chariot,” I said and kicked a pot of basil on the way to my chamber.
It had taken a whole year and an embarrassing encounter with Justus for me to realize that I did not like the life I had created. I felt empty, useless, without a worthy end. All the praise I had won had not touched the wounds left by my mother and grandfather.
Justus stayed away from me after delivering me home half-tottering with drink. After three weeks, he finally condescended to visit us. His manner toward me had a frigidity that made me wince. Time and loneliness had tamed my temper. I would rather have his friendship than my pride. Father left us alone in the atrium when he went to fetch the letters he had written for Dionysius. I said, “Forgive me, Justus.”
He gave me a considering look. “You owe me no apology.”
“Of course I do. An apology as well as gratitude. Thank you for taking me away from that place before I disgraced myself beyond repair. I want you to know I heard your words that night. I haven’t gone back to that life.”
Justus plucked a basil leaf from a pot and twirled it in his hand. Its fragrance filled my nostrils. “I was young when I won my first chariot race. Too young,” he said. “For a few months, I lost my way too.”
I gave a pained smile. “You were seventeen. You had conquered champions. Grown men. Of course it went to your head. I have no excuse.”
“Perhaps it is not so much the years we live as the experiences we have in them. You were not prepared for that wave of spurious worship.” He dropped the basil leaf back into the clay pot and fingered the long crack on the side. “What happened to this?”
I colored. “I may have kicked it.”
He grinned. “You weren’t picturing my face at the time you did it, were you?”
“Of course not. I was picturing your kneecaps.”
Father came in, carrying a bundle of presents and letters to give to Justus. In spite of my brother’s injunction that we not write him, Father continued to send him letters. It would be Dionysius’s birthday soon, and Justus was traveling to Athens. He had purchased his first ship and was taking it on its maiden voyage. I thought of the Paralus broken into shards, lying somewhere at the bottom of the Mediterranean, the corpses of its passengers floating in the waves, becoming fish food. I shuddered.
“Take care of yourself, Justus. Ships are not always reliable.” My eyes must have given away the anxiety I felt at the thought of him sailing on a frail contraption of wood, floating like flotsam at the mercy of Poseidon.
His mouth tipped. “After driving bloody chariot races for years, I look forward to the peaceful waves of the sea.”
With little to occupy my time, my thoughts returned to our financial woes. I knew they cast a gray shadow over Father. He was scraping the bottom of his resources. The previous week, he had even sold a piece of land that had been in our family since the rebuilding of Corinth. He seemed determined to retire the Honorable Thief, considering it too dangerous. The more I thought on the matter, the more I concluded he was wrong. He had lost too much already. Were two sons not enough? Must he lose his home and inheritance also?
No, the answer was not that he should stop. The answer came in giving him the aid he needed. Fortune had prepared me for this task. My agile body, explosive speed, and physical strength made me a priceless weapon in Father’s hand. With me at his back, he could not be beaten. By day, we would collect secrets freely as we circulated in the best houses of Corinth. By night, we would use that knowledge to our advantage.
I considered the wasted months of my life, the way I had staggered from one worthless pursuit to another, desperate to find meaning. To find purpose. And now I had found it. I would help my father. Unlike him, I was too young, yet, to know my own heart fully. Too young to take note of my hunger for adventure.
“You need my help,” I said that afternoon over a quiet supper. I had dismissed the household, packed cheese, apples, olives, herbs, and hot bread, and carried our repast into a deserted corner of the garden. No one would overhear our conversation here. I was mastering the art of furtiveness.
“Need your help for what?” he asked. His voice held an edge of dread.
“To protect the Honorable Thief, of course.”
“No, Ariadne. If you are suggesting what I think you are, forget the idea. It is impossible. Put it out of your mind.”
“What, then? You will lose the house. The land you inherited from your great-grandfather. Become a laughingstock in Corinth.”
“I may become poor, but I will be respectable.”
I winced. “You sound like Grandfather Dexios. He has enough respectability for our whole family and three more besides. Father, listen to me. What you do is important. Those men answer to no one. They plunder and pillage as they wish. Rome will not stop them.”
“Neither am I stopping them. Robbery is not true justice or a deterrent against future abuse, Ariadne.”
“It’s more than they would otherwise receive.”
He vaulted off the ground and began to pace among the barren clumps of lavender. “Even if I go on, you cannot join me. Don’t permit the taste of our adventure to lure you, Ariadne. It takes one minor mistake, one false step, and your life would be destroyed.”
“You cannot continue alone. You need my assistance.”
“In that case, I will not go at all.”
“I will go without you, then. Short of tying me to a post, you have no way of stopping me.”
He halted mid-pace. “This is too much! When did you become so defiant?”
I grinned, knowing I had won. “When was I ever not defiant?”
“No. You always had spirit. A bright spark of fire that lit up our home.” He shook his head. “Celandine thought you obstinate. I suppose you were. But I also thought you demonstrated a rare kind of strength and resolve. I tried always to encourage that part of you, Ariadne, though I knew Celandine believed it ought to be extinguished.
“But this—this insistence that you have your own way at any cost is something else.”
I threw my napkin on the ground. “Would you prefer it if I walked away from you like Dionysius?”
Father fell silent. We spoke no further that night, both of us wounded. For a week, the matter sat between us, an unresolved snarl. I forced the issue on the eighth day, too impatient to give him more time.
“I have thought of an official who would serve our purpose,” I said.
“No doubt you have. But I will choose the man. And the time. Three houses, no more. We can pay off the debt with that. And then we stop.”
“Agreed.” I grinned, ignoring his pallor. He would learn to appreciate
my help, I thought.
Justus returned, bringing our letters and gifts back unopened, the seals unbroken.
“He would not tell me what troubles him,” Justus said as he handed us the packages, still as pristine as when we had given them to him several weeks before. “He only said to tell you not to write him again.” Justus looked at his feet. “I am sorry, Galenos. I cannot imagine how this pains you.”
My father nodded once. His hands shook. I tried to hold him. He gave me a thin smile and stepped out of my arms. He had not allowed me to embrace him since the day Dionysius had come to accuse him. He acted as if he could not bear to receive my comfort.
Shoulders hunched low, he turned on wobbly legs and disappeared into his tablinum, where he spent most of his time these days.
I swallowed. “Would Dionysius not read my letter either?”
Justus shook his head. “What happened between you?”
“Family quarrel.”
Justus took my hand in his. “Tell me how to help you.”
Tears filled my eyes, and I ground my teeth to try and dispel them. Justus pulled on my hand until I fell against his chest. “You can cry,” he said, cupping the back of my head with a gentle hand.
Sometimes tears are a gift. They are the words our tongues cannot speak, the gall our bodies cannot expel. I wept in Justus’s arms that day, wept as he held me with a compassion that gave me leave to shed my tears. And though he offered me no solution and dangled no hope before me, I felt better once I was done crying.
When I stepped out of his arms, I sensed a shift. A subtle change in the way he looked at me. I thought that perhaps, for the first time, he saw me as a woman.
“Do you think he will change his mind?” I asked.
“It will require a miracle.”
Like Dionysius, I did not believe in miracles. The legends of our people might teach a moral lesson or two, but they had no power to reconcile man to man.
CHAPTER 15
WHILE I WAITED for Father to make a decision, I spent the time training, restoring to my body its former agility and strength. Though I had never stopped running, not even through those wild months of wine-soaked feasting, my body had lost its edge. My muscles ached as I pushed them once again into peak condition.
My jaw dropped when Father informed me of the identity of the man he had chosen to rob. A former slave who had bought his freedom back from his old master, he had gone on to make a fortune in the slave market. He was none other than the slave master who had sold Delia to Theo. The one who had bruised her so badly that she had been left with chronic headaches and a nearly broken spirit.
We sat in Father’s tablinum with the doors sealed. In the old days, his tablinum had had no door, and stood separated from the atrium only by a decorated curtain. Later, he had added double doors. It was late autumn, and the weather had turned brisk. The closed doors provided privacy as well as warmth. I pulled the loose sleeves of my wool tunic over my chilled arms.
“Aniketos sells a variety of slaves, of course, but he specializes in children for the pleasure houses. He likes to teach them the rudiments of the trade himself. They say he has a genius for cruelty.”
I curled my lip in revulsion. I had no admiration for slave traders. But a brutal beast like Aniketos deserved a different level of disdain. “Robbing him seems too insignificant a punishment. He sounds despicable. When shall we strike?”
“We will need to prepare carefully. His house is a fortress. He keeps new slaves there and holds the place as tightly sealed as one of Caesar’s garrisons.”
“How do we break in?”
“Every house has a weakness. Aniketos’s security focuses on keeping people inside; he does not wish his slaves to run away. But he is not as strong in keeping intruders out.”
“So we can get in. How do we get out?”
Father scratched his chest. “I have not resolved that problem yet.”
I raised an eyebrow. “It seems like an important detail.”
He shrugged. “I wrangled an invitation from his wife for an early supper tonight. We can see for ourselves what we are up against.”
“How did you do that?”
He clasped his hands in his lap. “I steadied her when she staggered against a step and almost fell.”
I looked at him suspiciously. “You tripped her, you mean.”
“Well. That too. I told her about you. The famed beauty of Corinth. I should warn you, I suppose.”
Something in his tone made me frown. “What?”
“She has an unmarried son.” His eyes danced.
I blanched. “You are enjoying this too much.” Clearly he meant to make me suffer for forcing his hand. I clenched my teeth and resolved to beat him at his own game.
Aniketos and his family lived halfway between the port of Cenchreae and the city of Corinth in one of the new villas that were sprouting around the busy metropolis and the seaport that fed it. It took us less than half an hour in our rented carriage to arrive at Aniketos’s door. The villa was more grand than elegant, making up in ostentation what it lacked in style. It was clear that the man wished to impress. Too much carved marble, too many painted statues and busts—Roman replicas rather than Greek originals—dotted the landscape.
We were shown into the house by a pair of half-naked slave girls. Their identical features marked them as twins, a rare and expensive indulgence. I was taken aback when they showed us into the peristyle, the back garden of the house, with twelve columns on each side to support the partial roof. Half as many columns would have been elegant. Twelve blocked the sun and created an unwieldy space. A stunning table had been laid with gold plates and cups, surrounded by the usual three couches. The walls were decorated in deep vermilion. Colorful murals spread over every available surface. It must have cost Aniketos a fortune.
The garden smelled of rosemary and thyme, clumps of the late-blooming herbs growing in large pots. Pink and purple cyclamen and delicate white crocuses peeked through the landscape at the feet of garish statues of several gods.
Rarely had I seen so many expensive objects thrown together in one place. It hurt my eyes to observe this hodgepodge of opulence combined with such lack of taste. And why were we in the peristyle? It would have been an appropriate spot for an outdoor supper earlier in the fall when the mild weather made sitting outside a pleasant experience. But it was too cold to dine in the garden this time of year. Any hostess with the tiniest glimmer of sense would have known to serve supper in the triclinium, the indoor dining room.
And then I knew. We were here to be impressed, not to be comfortable. The paintings and statuary, the columns and marble must have made this the richest space the villa had to offer. What mattered if we shivered so long as we were dazzled? Aniketos wanted his visitors to forget his humble beginnings, to remember only his spectacular success.
Our host and hostess arrived then. I studied Aniketos as he sauntered toward us. Reed thin and narrow featured, the man walked with the spare grace of a weasel. His eyes darted from Father to me. They rested on me with a calculating air that made my skin crawl. I had worn my blue tunic, the one that had catapulted me into acclaim, and his stare lingered too long on the wrong places. I was going to enjoy his misery, I decided.
Father made introductions, calling Aniketos’s wife a vision of beauty. She was a vision of something. A wall of overpowering perfume hit me at her approach. I tried not to flinch, keeping a smile pasted on my face. Her makeup artist, if she had one, must have found her inspiration from an old Egyptian sarcophagus, for her cosmetics were thick and dramatic, black kohl outlining her eyes and extending to her temples. Her earrings were long enough to brush the tops of her shoulders. Fascinated, I tried not to stare at her lobes, which had extended so far that they looked like thin rolls of parchment.
A young man joined us. He had his father’s curly hair and roving eyes, with thick lips out of proportion with his tiny nose. I almost fell over when I realized he had bathed in the same perfume a
s his mother. The double dose of the powerful stench made me want to gag. Father gave a toothy smile. I could see my discomfort entertained him. Gritting my teeth, I smiled back. He would not find me so easy to discourage.
“This is my son, Dryops,” Aniketos said. “Why don’t you young people share a couch?”
I wondered how long I could hold my breath before losing consciousness. Was thirty minutes too long? Reclining on my left elbow as required by good manners, I tilted my head as far away from Dryops as I could without falling onto the table. According to Roman etiquette, Father and I had brought our own napkins from home, and I placed mine upon the table.
“Linen,” Dryops said, examining the fabric. “The embroidery is middling.” He handed me his. “This is what I consider fine.”
I admired the napkin before returning it to the owner, forbearing to mention that it was stained. When the first course arrived, to my horror, I saw that it was roasted snails, covered in a revolting sauce. I hate snails.
“These were fed on goat milk, you know,” said Aniketos’s wife, whose name escaped me. “The greedy things fed so well, we could hardly extract them out of their shells.” If there was one thing I hated more than snails, it was talking about how they were prepared. I gazed balefully at my plate.
“Eat up, Ariadne,” Father said cheerfully. “My daughter adores snails. How clever of you to have guessed.”
“Why, you told me, Galenos.” The lady of the house purred her words rather than spoke them. “Do you not recall? When I asked about your favorite dishes? You said anything I prepared would surely please you. But your daughter was inordinately fond of snails. I listened, as you see. Your celebrated daughter is the talk of Corinth. Anything to please her. I am sure my son agrees.”
I needed a distraction. “Your paintings,” I said, pointing to one fresco, “are so . . . vivid. And you have so many of them.”
