The Uncertain Hour

by Jesse Browner

  “There isn’t! I know my own peers far better than you do.”

  Martialis pushed away angrily. “And there’s something you will never know, Titus. There is another you out there somewhere, and he’s waiting for me, he’s waiting to give me his money and his friends and his prestige. He knows what I look like, and if I go about dolled up like a pimp and a clown he won’t recognize me. I’ll walk right past him and lose him forever if I take your advice. It’s bad advice, understand? It’s bad advice. And I need a drink. Why am I always so thirsty around you?”

  Martialis stalked off, leaving Petronius to marvel at the consistency with which every conversation with the boy ended in absurdity and recrimination. One might imagine that, on a night like this, their exchanges would be mellower, conciliatory—reflective, even. But that would hardly be in character, for either of them. Maybe it was better this way—after all, wasn’t the entire conceit of the evening that all should proceed as if nothing unusual were unfolding? Of all of them, Petronius included, Martialis seemed most determined to observe the edict, to play the petulant contrarian to the bitter end. Petronius shook his head. No, not bitter.

  Petronius shut his eyes and allowed the rhythmic sighing of the tide to envelop him. After a few moments, it felt as though the sea had invaded him, that he had become its container, that its ebb and flow were gently rocking him back and forth from within. He knew the feeling was just a side effect of the blood loss, but he permitted himself to indulge the pretense, that this was how his spirit would be absorbed into the natural world when he was dead. It was a lovely feeling, soothing and benumbing, but he could also sense resistance. His mind, or his soul, or whatever, was not ready for that release and would not plunge absolutely into that dissolution. It still had work to do, and it pulled him elsewhere, away.

  SHE DID NOT take the news of her husband’s death with the equanimity Petronius could have wished for. He would have hoped that she could share in his joy, but she was positively mournful. She did not weep or make sacrifices, but she remained thoughtful and quiet for several days, as one might upon hearing of the death of a long-lost companion of one’s youth, and she forbade him to touch her.

  He allowed as to how she had certain ambivalent feelings for the late Junius—an all-but-illiterate, clumsy brute, as far as Petronius could make out—of which Petronius had but the dimmest grasp. In the circumstances, he thought it perhaps best not to be overly demonstrative in his newfound optimism, and to allow some time to pass before raising the subject of altered circumstances.

  Finally, one evening in mid-September, with the crushing heat of the day just beginning to release its grip on the city, and the first hint of breeze for days stirring the muslin hangings on the palace terrace, as they sat on a vast daybed sipping at chilled pomegranate juice, Petronius felt he could hold off no longer.

  “Melissa,” he began tentatively. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we can put off this conversation any longer.”

  “I agree,” she said softly. He turned to her in surprise, and found that she was smiling, perhaps somewhat sardonically, in his direction.

  “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “Of course I do. You were going to ask me to come to Rome with you. And I will, Governor.”

  Petronius was so flabbergasted, and so at a loss for words, and must have been wearing such a ridiculous, clownish expression on his face, that Melissa burst into laughter. It was not happy laughter, nor yet even loving laughter, but Petronius reveled in it nonetheless. Rolling across the daybed, he took her in his arms, and although, consciously or not, she had crossed both her own arms over her chest, he allowed himself to bask in what he took to be a triumphant, threshold moment.

  “You don’t know how happy this makes me.”

  “I have an idea.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “I haven’t changed my mind. I’m a widow now, and my hand has been forced. I can’t very well return to my father in Cremona.”

  “I understand,” he said, burying his face in her neck to distract himself from the very brutal fact that he did not understand anything, and that it made not the slightest difference to him.

  In the following weeks, he tiptoed around the issue of their future plans. It was odd that, now she had finally made an unequivocal commitment to their life together, he felt the slightest strain, or constraint, in their relations, as if they were in an arranged marriage. Having dreamt of this moment for months, he now found himself almost embarrassed to be asking her about her preferences and desires, as if he barely knew her. He’d been summoned back to Italy without receiving an immediate new posting, and he assumed, for instance, that she would want to avoid living in Rome, prefering the quiet life of a rural estate in Campania or Tuscany. Yet when he began painting a delightful picture of their life in such a place, a life of letters, philosophy, and simple pleasures such as Horace himself would have approved, she interrupted him forthwith.

  “Won’t we live in Rome, then?”

  “I didn’t think you’d be interested. I have so many social responsibilities in Rome, too many business and tribal connections. It would be a whirlwind, and Nero’s court is a viper’s nest.”

  “No. I’ve spent my entire life in the provinces. I won’t finally return to Italy, only to be isolated in some backwater yet again. We’ll take our chances in Rome.”

  Petronius had misgivings about this course of action, and about the wisdom of exposing Melissa to the snobbish and gossip-riddled Roman aristocracy, but he suppressed them in his eagerness to accommodate her in any way he could. His heart, however, was heavy with foreboding.

  It was in this solemn and far-from-satisfactory atmosphere that they prepared for their journey westward. There was remarkably little to do, as Petronius insisted that everything she chose to leave behind could be replaced with more and better in Rome, and she was pleased to acquiesce, packing just a modest trunk of clothing for the sea voyage. He deeded their lakeside villa to the Fourth Scythian as a house of recuperation and recreation for wounded soldiers. As for himself, aside from his several ceremonial togas, he chose to return home with only his gold-hilted dagger, the myrrhine ladle, and the Prusa kouros.

  In late September, word came from Rome of the election of his successor, who arrived shortly thereafter. He told Petronius that his star was on the rise in Rome, and that his letters to Nero were often read aloud at imperial dinners and literary gatherings. The emperor, it was said, had lofty ambitions for Petronius upon his return. Petronius spent two days briefing the new governor on his duties—the very least he could get away with without an unseemly appearance of impatience—but even that minimal nod to duty was too much for his successor, whose attention often wandered to the drapes and furniture, which apparently were not to his taste. In the end, he was kind enough to lend the couple the proconsular yacht, equipped with a luxurious stateroom, for the homeward journey. They left Nicomedia in early October, calling at Smyrna, Athens, Knossos, and Syracusa.

  At first, the sea air and new prospects appeared to agree with her. She spent several hours a day alone at the railing on the prow of the ship, her face uplifted into the sun and wind. At meals, for the first time since they’d met, she seemed genuinely curious about Petronius’s life and occupations in the capital, peppering him with questions about domestic arrangements on the Esquiline and how she might expect to be received. She appeared to be genuinely eager to prepare herself for all the personal adaptations and accommodations she would need to make. Yet as the coast of Sicily hove into view and the yacht eased its way throught the Straits of Messina, the weight of the unknown began to sap her of her vitality, and she fell silent. She seemed to be living in a state of suspension, neither in one world nor in the other, like a fish hibernating beneath the ice. He thought that perhaps she was in shock, not yet fully able to grasp the immensity of the gift that fortune had bestowed upon her, and so he gave her some space to grow into understanding. The s
ubject of her husband’s death, and most particularly of Petronius’s hand in precipitating it, did not arise. For his part, Petronius had not a single thought to spare to the luckless Aulus Junius or his sacrifice to their happiness.

  It would have been much faster to bypass the city center on their way to his house, but she had never been to Rome before. If she was awestruck by her first sight of it, she kept her impressions well concealed. As their litter negotiated the crowds on the Ostia road, passing through the old cattle market, with the racetrack to the right, the ancient temples to the left, the imperial palaces looming above, and the great central forum directly ahead, she nodded serenely at each, as if she were running down a mental checklist or, better yet, as if she were an empress passing through a crowd of well-wishers. “Look!” Petronius would say, as they trundled down New Street, “There’s the rostrum” or “It’s the Temple of Apollo,” and she’d say “Yes, there it is.” It was like watching someone talk in her sleep, in response to some unseen questioner in a dream. As for Petronius, it had been three years since he’d last seen the city of his birth, and he was giddy enough for the both of them. Beyond the forum, the road began to rise, and they soon found themselves on the hushed, immaculate streets of the Esquiline, with their walled gardens and discreet mansions.

  She took the grand tour of the Esquiline villa in dumbstruck rapture. Seeing it through her eyes, he understood just how intimidating it might be. “You call it a villa,” she said, almost in a whisper, “but it’s twice the size of the governor’s palace in Nico-media.” Through the vast foyers, vestibules, reception galleries, and dining halls, each with its own coffered ceiling leafed in silver or gold, its gleaming columns of exotic stone, each floor a masterpiece of mosaic or marbling; the endless suites of bedchambers, salons, fitting rooms, and secluded offices; hot baths, cold baths, swimming pool and steam room, the private theater, the sprawling kitchen, each of its three hearths larger than her bedroom in Prusa; the army of attendants, clerks, managers, servants, and slaves, each with a name and a function to be mastered and remembered—they spent several hours on the first pass alone, until at last she could take no more and, with a sigh as much of resignation as of contentment, she collapsed in the shadow of a swaying cypress at the margins of the sculpture garden, under the sober gaze of Mars and a war party of Amazons. Petronius thought that perhaps he had asked too much of her on her first arrival, and that he ought to have introduced her more gradually to the overwhelming reality of her new home.

  “It is all too much,” she said hoarsely.

  “Does it not please you?” he asked hopefully. “My country estates are more modest.”

  “No, it’s all quite spectacular.” She sighed again, this time less ambiguously. “It shall come to me in time. As you did, Titus.”

  In the days that followed, Petronius worked feverishly to put the household in order, examined the books and accounts, received his various agents and managers, and generally reac-quainted himself with his business affairs, all ably and honestly managed by his Syrian freedman Antiochus in his absence. He hardly saw the new mistress of the house, but on those occasions when their paths crossed it was clear that she had taken to her new role with quiet zeal and determination. Her job, of course, was not to manage the enormous household staff—they had freedmen aplenty for that—but to set the tone, and because she had ample experience as an army wife in the discipline of decorum, she had an instinctive feel for dealing with the slaves, addressing the freedmen with respectful dominance, and dressing and acting the part of matron. She was swept up in the constant procession of dressmakers, cobblers, and jewelers called in to provide her with a suitable wardrobe. The choices she made showed both restraint, conditioned by a frank acknowledgment of her limited grasp of metropolitan fashions, and a joyous flexing of muscles she’d previously had little use for and barely realized she possessed. She seemed to grow larger and more powerful with every passing moment. And yet the consummate dignity with which she oversaw the household was precisely the same as that with which he’d seen her bargain for cabbage in the market at Prusa.

  As word of Petronius’s return spread through the circles of his former society, they were besieged by well-wishers, distant cousins, debtors, and would-be parasites, all duly welcoming and deferential to them both. He introduced her under a plausibly northern pseudonym. No one, he thought, can have been taken in by the ruse, as she could scarcely pass for the patrician that her alias suggested she was. At the same time, given his name and reputation as a new favorite of the emperor’s, few would have ventured to offer her the least hint of disrespect, even had the truth of her origins become known.

  He marveled at her confidence. “Will they not consider me inferior?” she asked him casually one evening at supper, a now-rare moment of intimacy and repose.

  “Some might. None would say so to your face. Does it worry you?”

  “Not especially. We had our share of snobbery even in the barracks. Let them think what they like. But I would be sorry to be a burden on your prospects.”

  “I don’t think you need to be concerned about my prospects, darling.”

  Petronius had sent word to the Quirinal immediately upon his arrival, but at that particular moment the emperor was preparing to inaugurate the first of the four-year games dedicated in his own name, and sent a brief note begging his patience. The games were to be modeled on the Greek festivals, with contests in music, poetry, gymnastics, and equestrian skills. Petronius himself attended several, and was present when Lucan introduced his In Praise of Nero, a dismal screed of shameless flattery that nonetheless won him fame and fortune—much good it did him. It was as the games were winding to their end that a messenger arrived informing Petronius that the emperor was ready to receive him.

  “I think I’d better attend to him on my own this first time,” he told her. “He was just a little boy the last time I saw him. I’m not quite sure how much they say of him is true, and it might be best to keep you out of harm’s way for the time being.”

  To his surprise, she was not in the least put out at being left behind. “Please do,” she yawned. “None of my dresses are ready in any case. I wouldn’t know what to wear.”

  Petronius knew, even before he entered the palace, that it was not a place he would care to spend much time in. The outer courtyard was milling with thuggish young men, knights in their teens and early twenties who swaggered and jostled and spat and swore, and who grudgingly made way for him as he pushed his way through the throng. These were the “Augustans” he had heard so much about, Nero’s preferred companions on his nightly rounds of bullying and mayhem through the darkened streets of the city. Petronius had long been aware, of course, of the emperor’s aversion to philosophers and intellectuals—after all, his mother had entrusted his education to a dancer and a barber—but he had attributed the rumors to exaggeration and patrician resentment. Now he saw with his own eyes, as his praetorian escort guided him to the reception hall, that it was all true. The corridors swarmed with the low-born and the venal, moneylenders and syndicalists and horse traders, and Petronius recognized hardly a single face. It was difficult to imagine how he would make a place for himself in this world—not that he would want to. He had never considered himself a snob—after all, he had spent much of the last three years entrusting his life to brave and honorable knights and commoners in the ranks—but merely being in the presence of these courtiers brought out a sense of superiority and disdain in him that would be hard to conceal. Just as a man who works in the sewers or the pig sties longs to feel himself clean at the end of the day, Petronius found himself from those very first moments at the court wishing to distinguish himself from this mob of cutthroats and boors. He drew some comfort from the fact that the hallways were lined with the sublime works that he had sent home from Bithynia, even if the louts paid them not the least attention or leaned against them as if they were hitching posts.

  The crowd in the reception hall was somewhat more refine
d. A number of senators lingered in a desultory way at the margins of the room, gathering in small, defensive clusters against the hordes of delegations that had come to congratulate the emperor on the successful completion of the games. Several of Petronius’s peers recognized him and tried to wave him over, but he bowed and pressed on toward the dais at the back of the hall, where Nero and his coterie were receiving their encomiums. As Petronius approached, he saw his escort whisper to one turbaned courtier lounging near the edge of the dais, who immediately rose to his feet and crossed to another who sat directly beside the emperor. This second courtier, a chubby, rosy-cheeked man several years older than the rest, scanned the room with the eyes of a choleric hog and fixed him with a look of languid malice. Then he turned to the emperor, spoke in his ear, and pointed at Petronius. Nero’s countenance lit up in apparently genuine delight, and he waved him to the dais with a broad grin. A hush fell upon the room and all eyes turned to Petronius, a wide path suddenly opening up down the center of the hall to let him through.

  He studied the emperor’s face as he approached. He was still the same wicked boy Petronius had met eight years ago, only now a young man in his early twenties: broad head tapering to a narrow jaw; bulbous nose and jutting, ill-proportioned ears; under a forceful brow, wide arrogant eyes the color of a fish pond; full lips curled in a perpetual sneer, even when smiling in pleasure; straight, glossy black hair, now graced with wispy sideburns. His cheeks were already beginning to fill out with the evidence of sloth and self-indulgence. Around him, a pride of young barbarians in various poses of torpor stared at Petronius with the impassive curiosity of juvenile predators. Nero rose from his chair and strode to the edge of the dais. He wore a victor’s laurels at his temples.

  “So what do you think, Petronius? I have just been awarded first prize by these Greeks.” His voice was a pure, aristocratic baritone, most out of consonance with his cruel features. He was speaking to Petronius, but his words were directed at the entire assembly.