Tacitus left the people he was drinking with and walked over to where I stood. “It’s going to take a sizeable gift to make things right with her, my friend.”
“What are you talking about?”
“When a wife or lover leaves the room with her head tilted at that angle”—he jutted his chin up and out, exaggerating the position of Aurora’s chin, but not by much—“the man has to pay the price. The higher the tilt, the higher the price.”
“Aurora is neither my wife nor my lover. She’s my slave.”
“Oh, Gaius Pliny, Gaius Pliny.” He shook his head and chuckled.
“Just leave me alone,” I snapped. “The woman is being entirely unreasonable. She wants me to look for some farm that Crispina might have come from.”
“That would take some searching, wouldn’t it?” Tacitus walked uncertainly back to his newfound friends.
I went out to the shed to make sure the woman’s body had been properly stored, if that was the word for what one does to a decapitated corpse. I’d told Segetius and Rufinus to put it on a table or board, up off the ground or floor. It was too dark in the shed for me to do much more than satisfy myself that they had followed my instructions, except that they had taken the blanket off her. Just as well. I wanted to examine whatever was protruding from the stab wound. By the door I found a small lamp and a flint to light it.
I laid a hand on the woman’s belly. When I was a child and had an upset stomach, my mother used to rub my belly. I wished I could do something to allay the terror and the agony this woman must have suffered. No human being should have to endure such things. In the dim light my hand found the stab wound with the protrusion. I managed to pull it out a bit farther.
Because I have seen animals give birth and because of what I had experienced recently in Naples, I recognized what I held between my fingers—the cord that connects a baby to its mother’s womb. It must have gotten hooked on the knife when the woman was stabbed and been pulled partway out. This woman had been pregnant, for not more than a couple of months, because there was no outward sign, but she was carrying a child.
Whose child was it? If this was Crispina, I could assume the child was her husband’s. If this wasn’t Crispina, then I had no way of knowing who was the father of the child. What was supposed to have been a quick trip down the Ostian Way to help someone Aurora had tried to rescue was becoming far too complex a piece of business. I felt like Theseus entering the labyrinth but without Ariadne’s thread to guide him back out.
* * *
How could I be such a fool? Why did I talk like that and storm up the stairs like a spoiled child? It must be because I’m so upset. I can’t get that horrible sight out of my mind, that poor woman. Was she Crispina? If she wasn’t, then what have I gotten Gaius into?
I hoped that this trip, this opportunity to work together again like we did when we were children, might bring us closer together. Yes, I’m that desperate as I see his marriage drawing closer. I believe Gaius has feelings for me—as more than just a playmate and childhood friend—but I don’t know if he will ever admit them or bring himself to express them. He is so respectful toward me—toward all women, really—and yet I see the way he looks at me. He doesn’t look at his other servant women that way and certainly has never looked at Livilla like that.
I wonder if I should be bold enough to tell him how I feel. I would be content—happy, even—to have the kind of relationship with him that my mother had with his uncle. I have to be realistic. The possibility that I could ever become the wife of a man with any prospects in life ended the day I became a slave. If Gaius were to free me—which I would never ask him to do—I might become the wife of a freedman. We could keep a small shop, I suppose, or live on a little farm, and work ourselves into an early grave.
I’ve heard Lorcis, Martial’s “wife,” argue that, no matter how hard she has to work, she is better off now than she was as Regulus’ slave.
But she didn’t love Regulus.
* * *
As much as I dislike being on boats, I find it soothing to sit beside a body of water. That’s why my villa at Laurentum is my favorite. It practically hangs over an inlet off the sea. The breaking of the waves below the house provides a kind of rhythm to my thinking. The flow of a river offers a different kind of tranquility. That’s what I was seeking as I walked down to the Tiber behind Marinthus’ taberna.
A river makes me think of the passage of time, of my own passage through life. I was there, now I’m here, and I’m going to be somewhere else. I can’t know what’s ahead of me—downstream—only what’s behind me—upstream. Past, present, and future—grammatical tenses as a metaphor for life. And yet it’s all connected. But the woman in the shed and her child had no future. What it was in their past that led them to the awful present, I would have to find out.
I don’t know how long I stood beside the river. I was jolted when Tacitus ambled up behind me.
“There you are, Gaius Pliny. It looks like we’ve done whatever we can here and those nice people I’ve been talking to are on their way to Rome, so I’m going to ride with them.”
He hadn’t been drinking long, but the wine must have been strong and he must have drunk a lot of it. I was just as glad to hear that he was leaving. Tacitus is not a pleasant companion when he’s in his cups.
“A parting thought,” he said, wagging a finger at me. “My friends and I were exchanging ideas about that ROTAS square on the wall. Amazing how a little wine clears the mind before a lot befuddles it. Anyway, it occurred to me that rotas appears in the square. And it means ‘wheel.’ You know, a wheel?” He jerked his head in the direction of the villa.
“That’s probably just a…a coincidence.” I couldn’t find any other word.
“But all of the words in the square can be written in a circle, starting with ROTAS and coming around so the R at the end of SATOR overlaps that first R in ROTAS.” He handed me a piece of papyrus he was holding in one hand and pointed to the letters of the puzzle written in a crude circle. “See, a wheel. Also, the puzzle has five lines in it, and the wheel in that damnable garden had five spokes. Do you think that means anything?”
“I’ll have to give it some thought.”
“You do that.” He patted me clumsily on the shoulder. “And, while you’re at it, think about this. The word SATOR means a plowman. Right?”
“Yes. We all know that.”
“Well, I know it’s crude to say this, and I’m slightly drunk and I apologize in advance to you and to that poor girl in the shed over there, but think about sex and plowing. You know, there’s a long tradition of plowing as a metaphor for coupling.” He belched loudly and thrust his pelvis forward a couple of times. “For example, in his Antigone, Sophocles has Creon say, ‘There are other furry meadows for him to plow.’ ”
As much as this strain of conversation disgusted me, I couldn’t dismiss him summarily. “Are you saying there might be some connection between that square and what happened to that girl—even the way she was violated?”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s all just coincidence.” He waved an unsteady hand. “I know how much you love a good coincidence.”
VI
Since Tacitus would not be using it, I let Aurora stay in the room Crispina had been in and I took the other vacant room in the taberna. Those were the only two rooms at the top of that staircase. They’d originally been intended for the owner of the place, Marinthus said, but because of his aching knee joints he had had rooms added on the back of the building for himself and his family. I felt Aurora would be safer close to me, even if we weren’t speaking to one another, than across the road in Justus’ taberna. I had hoped Tacitus would agree to take Segetius and Rufinus—“the two asses on their asses,” as he called them—back with him, but he was too inebriated to consent. I stuck them in a room in Justus’ taberna. It was a relief to have everyone, even Tacitus, situated somewhere else for the time being. I needed to reflect, think, ponder.
But al
l of those proved difficult in Marinthus’ dining room. A young couple celebrating their marriage came in with friends and took over the place. From the look of them and from their speech, I gathered they were from some of the neighboring farms. This was probably the most festive night they would enjoy in their entire lives. To find some peace and quiet, I took my meal on the terrace, even though it was a bit cool for eating outdoors. But the stew was hot and the bread still warm from Marinthus’ oven. The heat that the tufa paving stones had absorbed during the day kept my feet comfortable.
As I sat in the gathering dark, thoughts of two women whirled in my mind. One was the poor girl whose decapitated body lay in the shed behind the taberna, out of my sight now, thankfully. How could one human being do such a thing to another? How could men rape a defenseless girl like that? How could other human beings stand by and watch it being done? Was it part of some bizarre ritual, like Dionysus’ Maenads tearing an innocent animal apart? Did they take perverse pleasure in it?
Those were questions I’d often asked myself about the games in the arena. This situation, though, was different in a significant way. The games had originated as munera, a blood sacrifice to the gods and the spirits of the dead—another good reason not to believe in such things. The people executed were being punished for crimes committed—at least in theory—and their deaths were supposed to gain the favor of the gods and the spirits for the rest of us.
But what had happened in Tabellius’ villa was murder, pure and simple. In spite of what I had told Aurora, I resolved to continue to try to find out who had done it. That poor girl and her never-to-be-born child had to have an advocate—no, an avenger. A person savage enough to do such a thing must be punished. And what if he had another victim in mind? He had to be stopped. But, without the first clue, how could I find him? It had to be a “he.” Of that I was sure. I couldn’t imagine a woman who could devise such a horror—especially inflicted on another woman—or have the physical strength to commit it. And it had to be a man (or men) to rape her so violently.
Tomorrow I would examine the girl’s body more closely, and when I got back to Rome I would question the two sons of Sextus Tabellius to see if they had any idea who might have been using their father’s house for such a nefarious purpose, if it was not one of them. Beyond that I did not know what else I could do.
The other woman in my mind was, of course, Aurora. What if something happened to her? I didn’t expect her to be murdered—though that was not impossible on the streets of Rome—but she could get sick or have an accident befall her. How would I live if she were no longer part of my life? And what part could she have after my marriage to Livilla?
With the raucous wedding celebration going on behind me, and absorbed in my thoughts, I paid no attention when someone came out of the taberna and onto the terrace. Only when she sat down in the chair next to mine did I realize Aurora had joined me. She had cleaned herself up, put on a different gown—a dark red one—and applied perfume. The gown and the perfume, which was not her usual scent, must have belonged to Crispina. I knew Aurora hadn’t brought any with her on what we thought was going to be a short jaunt out here and back, overnight at worst. The fact that Crispina hadn’t taken any of her possessions except her bag with her when she left meant, to me, that she had intended to come back. What had prevented her?
Neither of us spoke at first as we gazed out over the river. A torch in a bracket on the wall behind me let me see Aurora’s face while leaving mine mostly in the dark.
“I must apologize, my lord,” she said at last, looking at the river, at the shed—anywhere but at me—“for being angry at you earlier. I know there is only so much you can do, only so much anyone can do. You have no obligation to Crispina. I appreciate the effort you’ve made and your care for that poor woman who was murdered, whether she was Crispina or not.”
I let her apology linger in the air between us for a moment. It doesn’t hurt to let a servant—even one you love—experience a moment of anxiety now and then. “I’m sorry I was so abrupt with you,” I finally said. “When we get back to Rome I’m going to continue to search for the person who did this. If necessary, I will come back out here.”
She closed her eyes and lowered her head. “Thank you, Gaius. That means so much to me.”
We couldn’t talk for a few moments as the revelers poured out of the taberna and made their way down the path to two boats tied up at Marinthus’ small dock. Aurora had to shift her chair closer to mine to make room for them. They lit lamps, hung them from poles at the front and rear of their boats, and embarked, full of good spirits and lewd jokes, most of them about the copulatory practices of farm animals.
“Are you getting ideas for your wedding celebration?” Aurora asked.
I let the question sink of its own weight.
After they had passed, Aurora did not shift her chair back to where it had been. “I’m sorry. That isn’t a joking matter, is it?”
“No.”
“When you marry Livilla,” she said, still watching the wedding party cast off, “please send me away. To Misenum would be best, I think.”
My head jerked toward her. “What? Why would you say something like that?”
“Because I couldn’t stand to watch you making another woman happy.” Her voice had a catch in it.
“Do you think I’m going to make her happy?” I didn’t see how I could when marrying that sweet little girl was the most dismal prospect I had ever contemplated.
Aurora turned in her chair toward me. Her face glowed in the light of the torch. “Yes, I do, Gaius, because that’s the sort of man you are—so tender and loving, so thoughtful. You always have been, as long as I’ve known you. Do you remember the first day my mother and I came into your uncle’s house in Comum?”
“Yes. You looked so lost, so frightened, clinging to her.”
“I was. I had no idea what was going to happen to me. I couldn’t understand most of what was being said around me.” Her voice faltered at the memory of that fear. “You were on the other side of the atrium, playing with a pair of clay horses. You came over and gave me one and we sat down by the impluvium and played together. I felt that, as long as I was with you, I would be safe. For the last fifteen years I’ve never lost that feeling.”
“But we’ve grown up, Aurora. Our lives are bound to change. Just like the Tiber, we move on to different places. You have the skills to make a life for yourself. I could…emancipate you. I will, if you want me to.” I’d never said that before because I was so afraid of her answer.
“No,” she said quickly. “Please don’t.”
My heart began beating again.
“I want to belong to you, Gaius, and this is the only way I can.”
That I was surprised to hear. “But if you were free, we might—”
She held up her hand to stop me. “Don’t start imagining what can never be. Your friends—even Tacitus—would laugh behind your back. Your mother would never let us be together. If you defied her, it would make you miserable and eventually you would hate me.”
We watched a few boats sailing down the river, their lights flickering like stars come down to earth. “I can’t deny that most of what you said was true.” How could I, when I myself had snickered at men of my class who had had affairs with slaves or freedwomen? “Except the part about hating you. I could never do that.”
A large piece of wood floated by, probably the last thing we would be able to make out before darkness became complete.
“What’s to become of us, Gaius?” Aurora said softly. “Are we just going to drift, like that wood, carried wherever the current of our lives takes us?”
“By the gods, you have a gift for asking the most vexing questions.”
“And you have a gift for evasive answers.”
“That’s how one survives in Rome.” I turned to face her, almost in despair. “How can I answer that question? Do you think I haven’t been searching for an answer? You know I love you.”
<
br /> “But you’ve never told me you do.”
“Didn’t I just say it?”
“No, you said that I know you love me. That’s not the same thing as you simply saying it. Like this.” She blinked back tears. “Gaius Pliny, I love you.”
Thankful that, in the dark, she couldn’t see how wet my eyes were, I said, “Aurora, I love you.” Then, from somewhere deep in my heart, other words gushed up, words that I could not suppress, any more than I could have stopped Vesuvius from erupting. “I know now that I have loved you since the first time I laid eyes on you, and I will love you as long as I live.”
She reached over and took my hand, sending a warm, aching sensation coursing through my whole body. The urge to take her up to my room was overwhelming.
“I know what you’re feeling,” she said, her voice growing husky. “I feel the same way. I want the same thing.”
“But we can’t. We both know we can’t.” I tried to pull my hand away, but she wouldn’t let me. Instead she kissed it and drew it to her breast.
“Why can’t we, Gaius?”
“There’s another one of your vexing questions.”
She moved my hand so that it cupped her breast. “But we both know we can’t evade the answer to this one.”
*
Marinthus and his servants were too busy cleaning up the dining room to notice us as we hurried through. I didn’t see Theodorus. He was probably off being the gods’ gift to some woman. When we got up to my room I embraced and kissed her with the eagerness of a man who hasn’t eaten for days. She seemed equally hungry. Our garments dropped to the floor. Even with just a single lamp lit, her beauty took my breath away. Forget Praxiteles and his Venus. The most beautiful woman on earth was standing right in front of me—from the rise and fall of her perfect breasts as her passion deepened, to her slender waist, to the curve of her hips, and those long, graceful legs.
The Eyes of Aurora Page 8
