“Now, as for the child, tell me your name, little one, and your father’s. There are many Saxons living here in Rome. I can inquire among them. It’s possible that someone here knows your family.”
The child gave Regeane a reproachful look.
“Oh, God, yes,” Regeane cried. “I knew I was a fool when I bought her from the slave dealer, but, you see, she bit Hugo and I—”
“Wished to bite him yourself,” the little girl finished the sentence for her.
Regeane’s cheeks began to burn again. She glanced down angrily at the child. “I did not say that,” she exclaimed, then added equivocally, “well, not exactly …” Her whole face flamed. She was sure her cheeks were scarlet. “Must you repeat everything you hear?”
The small face looked up at her. The blue eyes were pools of reproach. The lower lip was extended again. “Why not, if you’re going to abandon me like a pregnant cat?”
“A what?” Regeane snapped.
“My father says that the three most annoying things in the world are a drunken man, a shrewish woman, and a pregnant cat. He says everyone wants to be rid of them. He told me when he tied a strip of leather around our tomcat’s things. You know,” she said, “the little furry things they have in the back.”
Regeane’s face felt incandescent. “Oh, God,” she said, “for heaven’s sake, hush.” She was afraid to look at the two men.
“Why should I hush?” the child protested. “Everyone knows about cats. They are very lecherous beasts. He was right, though. There were no litters for a while, but then they started back and my father said she must have found another friend. I asked him why our tomcat didn’t defend his honor, but he said—Ouch!” Regeane kicked her hard in the ankle.
“What did I do now?” the child asked in an aggrieved voice, clutching her bare foot.
Regeane glanced quickly and covertly at Stephen and Antonius.
Antonius was looking down. The black mantle covered most of his face, but his shoulders were shaking. Stephen’s hand was up, hiding a smile.
Regeane glared down at the child. “Stop going on about cats and breasts and all manner of foolishness. Tell us your name,” she said between her teeth, “and tell us now! Do you hear me?”
“Oh, all right. I was just getting to that. Elfgifa.”
“Elfgifa,” Stephen said.
“And your father?” Regeane asked.
“Eanwolf. He’s one of the king’s thanes,” she said proudly.
“Thank you, Elfgifa,” Stephen said. “If your father is an important man, it’s likely that one of the Saxons living here in Rome will know of him and we can return you to your kin. Your lady doesn’t mean to abandon you, but she has responsibilities of her own and must consider them.” He spoke gravely, graciously as if to an adult.
The child nodded.
Stephen rose. “Now,” he said to Regeane, “I’ll see about sending you to Lucilla. And,” he said gently to Elfgifa, “when you see Lucilla, be sure to ask her about breasts. She will explain their function and importance.” A shadow of the wicked smile returned to his face. “You may tell her I told you to apply to her for the information.”
VI
A FEW HOURS LATER, REGEANE SOAKED IN A POOL in the tepedarium at Lucilla’s villa. Lucilla sat on the side of the pool, studying her with open admiration. “What a pity. I had the perfect man in mind for you. He’s a little old. In fact, he’s very old, but a realist, my dear. He knows you wouldn’t share his bed for the joy of it. You’d be showered with presents and, if you’re as discreet as you are lovely, you could easily end by being a wealthy and influential woman.”
Regeane rolled over on her back and floated in the warm water, looking up at the ceiling of the bath. Plugs of thick glass set in the domed ceiling let in a soft, diffuse, yet brilliant light. She felt perfectly relaxed and happy. A half hour ago when she’d arrived, she’d been weeping and half hysterical with relief to find Lucilla not only alive, but well, and in fine fettle.
“We truly settled those devils! The temerity of it, that rat Basil coming to Rome in despite of the pope. The Papal Guard arrived. I sent men after you and the child, but they couldn’t find any trace of where you’d gone.
“I’m sorry I seemed to desert you. Evoie, the captain of my guard, became frightened when he saw Basil. He was convinced it was an assassination attempt by the Lombards. He was right, but he had the wrong woman in mind.”
A delegation of Lucilla’s maids arrived and collected Elfgifa. They oohed and aahed over her. The most knowledgable of them, Susanna, pronounced her beautiful, which Regeane was sure secretly pleased Elfgifa. Then they all agreed she needed a thorough scrubbing and new clothes.
Elfgifa asked the question Stephen had told her to ask. Everyone, including Lucilla, found it hysterically funny. They departed, whooping with laughter, taking Elfgifa with them to be bathed, fed, dressed, and cosseted.
To Regeane, it seemed as if she were now caught in the matrix of some glowing jewel. The pool was of gray polished marble, the floor surrounding it peach, the walls of alabaster marble inlaid with green porphyry, each inlay shaped into fantastic trees and tall ferns.
The water swirled around her, cradled her, soothing away her fears and relaxing the tension in her muscles. She floated in delightful, languorous peace.
“I think it’s the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” she told Lucilla. “I didn’t know people lived in such surroundings, enjoyed such luxury. I thought only churches were decked in glowing stone, cut and polished with such exquisite care.”
Lucilla smiled at Regeane’s artless admiration. “Oh, yes. Some did and a few still do. It’s said that this villa was built by the Emperor Hadrian for a favorite of his—whether boy or woman, I can’t say. But he intended a quiet retreat, small, where he could come and relax without being surrounded by the hordes of courtiers, hangers-on, supplicants, and other nuisances.”
“He made a wonderful thing,” Regeane said muzzily, closing her eyes and drifting in the blood-warm water.
“Did he?” Lucilla scanned the room with a slightly cynical expression.
The change in her tone made Regeane open her eyes and look inquiringly up at her face. “Didn’t he?”
“What if I told you that once the hypocaust that heated these baths was fired by slaves who never saw the sun from one end of the year to the other. Men, and perhaps women, to whom even the simplest of human joys were denied. Since the water must always be kept warm to await their master’s pleasure, those slaves had no rest from their labors.”
Regeane rolled over with a splash and stood.
“I’m sorry.” Lucilla smiled with gentle malice. “Did I spoil your fun?”
“Yes.”
The water was shallow, coming up to Regeane’s shoulders.
She paddled over to where Lucilla sat. The beautiful room seemed suddenly darkened by horror.
Regeane rested her arms on the edge of the pool. Lucilla reached down and gathered Regeane’s long hair together and coiled it into a knot at the neck.
“My pleasure isn’t worth such suffering,” Regeane said.
Lucilla laughed. “Don’t worry, little one. That was long ago. Now, my men are paid extra to fire the hypocaust and they’re always happy to do so. They spend the money in the wineshops and bordellos of Rome. This world is better than that of the ancients. I only wanted to make the point that all this beauty and luxury aren’t conjured up by magic. There’s always a price to be paid.”
Lucilla, naked as Regeane was, slid into the water behind her and began washing her hair, scrubbing Regeane’s scalp with her fingers and then smoothing out the tangles with a steel comb.
Regeane rested her cheek against the cool marble at the edge of the pool and submitted to Lucilla’s ministrations. She shifted when Lucilla’s fingers fell from her head and began gently to caress her breasts.
“I see—the price,” Regeane said.
“No,” Lucilla said with a soft laugh. “Not at al
l. You come highly recommended. Stephen is …” Lucilla paused. “A powerful man. A powerful protector. You need not love me or even allow me to make love to you.”
She finished with Regeane’s hair and draped the long coil of it over her shoulder. She was behind her, breasts pressing against Regeane’s back, her belly against the soft curve of her buttocks. Lucilla’s head drooped forward, lips near Regeane’s ear.
“You needn’t accept my love, little one, but do accept it. For know my love can’t hurt you. I can’t make you pregnant, can’t enslave you into a marriage you hate. I can’t even take that oh-so-marketable virginity of yours.” Lucilla laughed softly. “I haven’t the equipment.”
Deep in Regeane’s brain, the silver wolf stirred, and woke, rising from the abyss of primal darkness to welcome the pleasure brought by Lucilla’s touch. The beast, aflame with life’s sweetest happiness, is innocent of man’s fall from grace. Desire burned in the wolf. Desire without conscience, memory, or regret.
Regeane yielded to the wolf as she had to Lucilla’s touch. They were one and the same. Her head slipped back to rest, eyes closed, against Lucilla’s shoulder while the long fingers explored her body.
“Come,” Lucilla whispered, guiding Regeane toward the flight of steps at the end of the pool. “Come out of the water where my kisses can delight you.”
They lay together on linen towels beside the pool. True, Lucilla was no longer young, but she was beautiful, skin soft, muscles firm and taut, belly flat and tight, her big breasts upright, ripe, and full.
Only her hands and face showed her age—the soft pleating of the skin of her wrists and the sadness of her eyes as she bent over Regeane’s young body.
“Ah, what torment. Why do I torment myself so?” she whispered.
“What torment?” Regeane asked as she reached up with her own hands, trying to give back some of the exquisite pleasure wrought by Lucilla’s gentle, sure fingers.
“Hush,” Lucilla murmured, lowering her mouth to Regeane’s breast. “Be still. Love me. Let me love you.”
Regeane felt the wolf, strong in her, whimpering deep in her throat as her body seemed to ignite into a quivering fire of pleasure.
The moisture flowed between her legs, rich, warm and sweet, as Lucilla’s mouth reached down, lips parted, tongue red between her teeth for that final, most intimate kiss of all.
Later, they dressed in Lucilla’s chamber. Lucilla handed Regeane a transparent silken tunic, then began slipping her own arms into another just like it.
“What happened to my clothes?” Regeane asked.
“Phew. Those rags. I burned them.” Lucilla covered her own tunic with a stola of soft, white linen, embroidered with gold at the neck and hem.
Regeane donned the tunic, then looked down at herself. “I can’t walk around like this. It’s … indecent.”
Lucilla smiled. “No. I have a stola for you, too, but first I want to show you something.”
Lucilla’s room was as most Roman bedrooms, very simple, unadorned, the walls whitewashed. Her large bed of cedar inlaid with gold was the only departure from the norm. It was comfortably appointed with a goose-down tick, lush pillows, and bleached linen sheets and hangings.
She noticed the direction of Regeane’s gaze and said, “Yes. You northern barbarians have taught us Romans a few things. Bless you for it. You sleep more comfortably than we do.”
Then she turned to Regeane, the appeal in her eyes wistful, almost sad. She touched Regeane’s cheek gently. “Share that bed with me tonight, my pretty one.”
Regeane took the soft hand between her palms and kissed it. Unaccountably, there were tears in her eyes. “I thought I’d never know love, but today you showed me what it is. I’m glad you still want me, glad I wasn’t too … clumsy.”
“Clumsy?” Lucilla freed her hand from Regeane’s grasp and, taking her face between her palms, kissed her softly on the lips. “Inexperienced, perhaps. Experience comes with time. But clumsy? No. No. Never clumsy, my sweet one, but come.”
There were two crowns of flowers on the bed resting on the coverlet. White lilies and roses were woven together with rosemary and thyme.
Lucilla placed one on Regeane’s head, then led her to one end of the room where a strip of tapestry covered the wall. She pulled a cord and the tapestry leaped aside.
Regeane looked at herself. She had never seen herself, not all of herself. The figure that looked back was beyond her reckoning of beauty, beyond her wildest dreams.
The face, crowned with flowers, was a soft oval; the eyes of melting tenderness, their depths both gold and luminous black; lips brushed with the blush of rose petals; her skin reflected the pallor of the lilies with its fresh velvety softness.
Her body was as Antonius had said, slender, but with the tightly furled slenderness of the bud almost ready to burst into bloom; small breasts tipped in pink, high and pressing against the silken gown; the dark pubic triangle below a mystery of desire and fruitfulness.
Regeane stretched out her hand until it almost touched the silver mirror; surely the girl-woman standing before her must be a painting, could not be real, could not be herself.
But the fingers of that outstretched hand mimicked the movement of her own arm and her reaching fingers brushed the polished silver surface of the mirror.
Lucilla stood nearby, her smile like the serpent offering the apple to Eve.
“Gundabald lied,” Regeane said.
“Your uncle?”
“Yes. He told me I was ugly.”
“Pimp!” Lucilla spat the word and stroked the long spill of hair on Regeane’s shoulders. “That’s what pimps do—lie to the girls they sell. Degrading them for losing their honor. Saying ‘Only I could love you,’ so that they despise themselves and so are easier to buy and sell. But I don’t pimp. My women know their worth.
“Ah, I should love to lead you forth to a banquet. I would invite the sons of Rome’s best families to amuse myself by watching them vie for the honor of being the first to possess you, the first to embrace you. None knowing that I have come before all the rest. But enough.” Lucilla drew back. She jerked on the cord and the tapestry covered the mirror again.
“What we experienced today is but the gustato, the appetizer before the banquet. This is to teach you how to be delighted. I will train you in the arts of pleasing him and yourself. And, last of all, in the most delicate task—that of teaching him to be your enduring source of boundless pleasure. But come, this is the time of day I love most. We’ll sit together in the atrium, take the air, and watch the sun set. It’s best not to gaze too long into a mirror. In your case it might lead to an excess of vanity; in mine, my dear, despair.”
“You’re beautiful,” Regeane said as they strolled together along the gravel path that edged the atrium pool.
“Yes,” Lucilla said. “I believe there’s something left of what I was when I was your age. And doubtless I could still ensnare a lover or two, but I’ve reached the time of life when I value my leisure, my quiet evenings in the garden alone or in the company of a good friend. I’m rich enough to indulge myself.”
She paused beside the fountain that fed the pond. A bronze nymph, green with age, poured clear water across a fall of stone, crusted with emerald moss, into the long, still pool. The water reflected the changing hues of the evening sky, now a sheet of gold as the sun-struck clouds drifted across the surface, shading into the turquoise and violet at the approach of darkness.
The villa garden was a dream of beauty. Iris, purple and yellow, bloomed at the edge of the water, clumps of lavender, and, here and there, the arching stems of the rose of paestum still bore large pink flowers.
The beds, arranged against the back of the house, held sun-loving herbs—yellow-crested yarrow, small-flowered fragrant chamomile, large-leafed basil, and tall scarlet-flowered sage. Climbing the pillars of the porch were the tall thorny stems of the Eglantine rose, heavy with the scarlet rosehips of autumn.
The gentle fragranc
e of each herb bathed them as they passed. Here and there, Lucilla stopped to brush a leaf gently with her fingers and drink in the perfume. She remarked that it was a pity that the rosa gallica had faded for the season. Regeane followed her, wrapped in a dream, until they reached a marble bench. Resting on it were a pitcher and two cups. Both goblets were miracles of the glassmaker’s art.
Regeane lifted hers to catch the last light. A cameo of white on blue showed a procession of youths and maidens turning garlands to escort the chariot of the bride. “How beautiful,” she whispered.
“And how apropos,” Lucilla said as she raised the silver pitcher to pour the wine. The silver spout was the head of a wolf.
Knowledge fisted Regeane in the belly. She was in a trap.
The cup fell from her hands into a patch of thyme growing at her feet. The wine stained the white flowers like a splash of blood.
She was in a trap, a beautiful, dangerous trap.
Truly, she could abandon herself to the loveliness of this heavenly garden, to the pleasure of Lucilla’s caresses. But this idyll could have but one ending. The mountain lord would come to claim her and one of them would die!
“My God! What’s wrong?” Lucilla exclaimed, setting down her own cup to stretch out her hands to Regeane.
Regeane bent over, clutching her stomach for a moment. She felt again that blurring of the world and the first shadows that took her before she changed.
Desperately, she fought it off. The shadows around her in the evening garden reached toward her, but then drew back as she felt Lucilla’s hands on her arms.
“What is it, girl?” Lucilla asked.
Regeane realized that for a little while she’d allowed herself to think like a normal woman … To look at her approaching marriage and her bridegroom the way any other young girl would. She couldn’t. She didn’t dare.
Regeane reached down, fumbled for the cup lying among the thyme, afraid she’d broken it. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Your wonderful cup,”
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