by Gwynn White
“Would you welcome a permanent death if it were offered? If you didn’t have so many of us under your care?”
“Never.”
Aurelia’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “You have not once tired of life, Madame?”
“Of course, but you and Lucius anchor me here as certainly as the mountains remain standing after millennia of war and destruction.”
“I am grateful, Prima Vita.” Aurelia dipped her head in reverence. She hadn’t called Petra by the name First Life in many long years, but it seemed fitting tonight given the dark turn her thoughts had taken.
A faint smile touched Petra’s lips. “And I am honored to count you among my Essentiae, Aurelia.”
“I do not mean to pry into a past you have long told me you wished never to remember again… but I have always wondered about your First Vellessentia.”
Petra rose from the pianoforte and walked toward Aurelia’s desk. “Surely you remember it is already written in the Immortal Codex. You encrypted it yourself.” She swept a hand across the vast library filled with thousands of books, many of which were the codex itself. Row upon row filled the farthest section of the library, a comprehensive history of their memories, their tragedies, their triumphs, their deaths.
“I meant the First Vellessentia, when you and Lucius and Clarius were created. Should not the origin story of our bloodline take prominence in the codex?”
Aurelia’s words were innocent, but they made Petra shudder and turn away.
“I’m sorry, Madame. I did not mean…” Aurelia’s voice trailed into nothing as Petra paced beside a long row of codex books, lost in memory. They had all seen so many horrors throughout their lives together. That Petra would be so hesitant to tell this story made Aurelia realize how abhorrent it must be.
When a soft knock sounded on the door, Petra had wandered into the section of the library housing the Year 1 AD Codex. There were no other Essentiae histories before this first ancient book.
“Come in,” Petra called, her fingers sliding down the spine of a book.
A pair of vivid brown eyes appeared as the door cracked open and Lucius entered.
“Coming to bed, my love?” he called to her after giving Aurelia a warm smile.
At first Petra did not speak. Lucius gazed at her without a word, his patience infinite. He knew her well enough to know she was lost in one of her memories.
“Aurelia has asked me for our origin story,” Petra finally said, glancing at her and pointedly avoiding his penetrating gaze.
After a moment, he raised his eyebrows at Aurelia. “You ask much, Mademoiselle.”
His words were not unkind, but Aurelia immediately rose and went to Petra, taking up her hands with a gentle squeeze.
“I beg forgiveness, Madame. I didn’t—I should have known not to ask. I only know it is a story that has never been recorded.”
Lucius’s gaze shifted from all the bookshelves around the room to Petra herself. “Aurelia is right. You should tell her.” He looked to Aurelia. “And you should make her. We have held onto our past long enough. To speak it out loud would relinquish its power over us.”
“It’s late, Aurelia,” Petra said, releasing herself from the girl’s grasp.
Lucius would brook no refusal. He pulled Petra to him, his arms loosely encircling her waist. “Beauty still walked alongside our horrors in those ancient days, my love,” he whispered to her.
“I remember it all,” Petra said, her voice lowering to match his. “It is the reason I fear to go back there.”
His wide and encouraging smile was disarming even to Aurelia. He had always had this way about him. Effortless confidence, a desire to please, but a tinge of dark jealousy lingering beneath the surface—a jealousy stemming from that secret past they had hidden from Aurelia for so long.
“I’ll tell you what I remember most from those days…” Lucius said, his voice playful as his fingers delicately smoothed a stray strand of hair from Petra’s forehead.
“Come to me now and loosen me
from blunt agony. Labor
and fill my heart with fire. Stand by me
and be my ally.”
Petra’s growing smile turned into a kiss as Aurelia politely backed away from them.
“Leave it to you to quote Sappho to tempt me back to Tivoli,” Petra whispered, kissing Lucius once more.
“I am not tired, Madame,” Aurelia said, risking the Prima Vita’s ire—out of curiosity or foolishness, she did not know. “I would be happy to transcribe any stories you might wish to share tonight.”
Lucius smiled once more, and Petra finally gave an imperceptible nod.
“Thank you, Madame.” Aurelia rushed to her desk, flipped to a new page in the codex she was working in, and held her quill poised for a long night ahead.
“Shouldn’t you start a new book?” Lucius asked.
Aurelia shook her head. “I can add it to a new book later. Is the story that long?”
Lucius let out a laugh and grinned as Petra suppressed a smile of her own.
“Yes. As you may have noticed”—he brought Petra’s hand up to his lips and kissed it—“immortality takes a fair amount of time.”
Part I
2 BC
The Villa di Avidus
1
The Birth
Tivoli
July 13, 2 BC
Rough hands shook Petra’s shoulders hard, but her tear-caked eyelids wouldn’t open.
“Wake up, girl, or you won’t live through the night.”
Rubbing last night’s dust and sorrow from her eyes, Petra made out the hulking shape of Silvipor, the favorite house slave of her Master Clarius Valerius Avidus, in the room she shared with all the other slave women.
The way the long shadows crossed Silvipor’s weary, pock-marked face brought it all back to her. No. She must not let the images come. They fought her, as she had fought with her master before all was lost yesterday. Petra concentrated on the flash of Silvipor’s eyes in the moonlight, willing the memories away.
“The master’s baby has nearly come,” Silvipor whispered.
“I don’t care.”
The whites of his eyes shone as he glanced at the other sleeping slaves around them. “You must not say such things.”
She drew away from him and pressed her lips into a hard line. The heat of her rage battled with a wave of shivers from the cool night air pouring in from the open window.
“The mistress was screaming when I left the villa. She thinks the baby is turned inside her. The master says you must come. You have to deliver the child now your mother has been taken by the gods.”
“No!” Petra shouted, ignoring the other slaves waking around them. “Even the gods wouldn’t make me do that.”
Silvipor shook his head. “The gods would see you dead if you do not.”
“Then I will die.”
The visions hit Petra again, so rich with detail she tasted last night’s dust in her mouth, smelled the fear in her mother Diantha’s cracking voice. Petra had followed them out into the villa’s inner courtyard as her mother stumbled behind the master, his grip on the chain around Diantha’s neck as hard as the iron it was made from. The master heeded no pleas for mercy. With a flick of his wrist, he cut Diantha’s throat, her soundless scream deafening as Petra collapsed before her mother’s prone body. Blood splashed onto the mosaics as the dagger flashed in the fading light of the setting sun. Diantha gasped for one last breath that would never come again.
All this butchery because her mother refused to allow him to harm his wife with the witless folk cures advised by the neighboring village midwife: a bloodied, rotten hyena’s foot pressed to the abdomen and a potion of goose semen. What foolish nonsense! It was not the Greek way. Not her mother’s way. She had had more sense in one hand than these rural midwives had in their whole bodies.
A palm covered Petra’s mouth, but it wasn’t Silvipor. It was her Lucipor.
“Be still.” The fear lacing Luc
ipor’s whisper made her realize she was shaking again. He had never once stepped foot in the women’s slave quarters. The punishment would be severe if Master Clarius found out. She glanced at Silvipor, but now he stood waiting outside the door on the path leading up to the master’s house.
“Lucipor,” she breathed into his mouth, when his palm was replaced by his lips against hers. As he pulled back, she looked into his shadowed eyes, wishing she could see their true color: a deep brown as fine as the richest soil in all of Italy. But the faded colors of night hid the details of his beautiful face from her. “The master is asking for me. What should I do?”
“You must go. You must do what the master asks of you.” His fingers touched the bronze slave collar at her neck to remind her of her place.
“You forget I was not always a slave, Lucipor,” she whispered, drawing attention to his name, a combination of slave boy and their master’s praenomen. “I remember what it felt like to be free back in Greece before the Roman army stole us from our homes.”
“You are not free now.”
“I can be again.”
“Not that way. Any way but that, Petra.”
“I cannot do what you ask—”
Lucipor stopped her words with a kiss, but she pushed him away, glaring at him, willing him to understand.
“I will kill him if I see him again.”
Lucipor shook his head. “I know you have a will of iron, Petra, but please listen to me. Your mother was a mother to me too. Losing you both would…” He let his words fade into another kiss, and this time she did not fight him. This time she kissed him back, knowing it would likely be the last time she would feel the touch of him. They had had so little time. Merely a few months of stolen moments, of shy looks, of hands touching in the shadows when the master’s back was turned.
Lucipor pulled away and held her head in his hands. “Your kiss was a farewell, Petra.” His voice broke as he said the words.
“If you are ever freed, find out where Master Clarius sold my father. Take care of him? He will need you.”
“Don’t be foolish. Your father needs you. Live for him.” His thumb slid down her cheek. “Live for me.”
“I will do what I must. If it means I die in revenge of my mother’s murder, then so be it.”
Petra almost felt the slice of the blade the master had slid cleanly through her mother’s neck. Had it only been just last night? Her anger surged, and she pulled back from Lucipor.
Master Clarius Avidus commanded loyalty at the end of a whip. If he did not get it, he would fly into a rage. At twenty-five, he was young in mind if not in body—too young to take control over his father Lucius Valerius Avidus’s villa and vast latifundia filled with endless wheat fields. But his father, a man they had all loved and respected, had died late last year of the fever. A fair master and pater he was, and a kind one.
Clarius was the opposite; his rage was so uncontrollable even his father refused him as he lay dying. Young Clarius’s mercurial nature had left him unwilling to reconcile with his father at the bitter end. Everything had changed that day, and the once idyllic life at the Villa di Avidus turned into misery. It was no worse a life than those lived by other slaves in the vast Roman Republic, which stretched all the way from Hispania to Asiana. Many suffered a far worse fate. She had heard rumors of slave revolts in previous decades led by Spartacus somewhere south of Rome, and she often wondered if she would have had the courage to join them had she been born a man. She was glad Lucipor had never talked of escape. She could not have born Clarius’s cruelties without him by her side.
“Go, Petra,” Lucipor said. “Be silent. Do good work. And come back to me. Don’t do this for the master. Do it for his father and his father’s grandchild. Please.”
She did not answer, only turned to slip on her tunic and tie her long black hair away from her face. She glanced at him from time to time, trying to memorize his face. Tonight, his dark brown hair was curled behind his ears but, as always, a few strands had fallen loose to tumble down his gaunt cheeks. His shoulders, once thin, were now broad and wide, perfect for enveloping her in an all-consuming embrace.
Many months ago, the master had ridden away in his chariot all in a rage. The horses charged through the fields, unable to stop. The master had not seen her crouched over near the road leading away from the villa, picking grapes from the vines alongside Lucipor. So focused had Petra been on her own thoughts, her own daydreams of soaking in a pool of cool water, she hadn’t noticed in time. Lucipor was laboring behind her as she dawdled, but he tossed the fruit to the ground and caught her around the waist, whipping her back against his body as the master’s horses galloped by no more than an arm’s length away.
The shock of the moment did nothing to make her forget the feel of Lucipor’s arms around her. She had always thought him thin, short, gaunt. But as his chin hovered over the top of her head and his muscled arms surrounded hers, Petra realized Lucipor had grown into a man. She asked him later that day how old he was. He said he couldn’t remember, but he figured he was probably at least eighteen, the same as she was. It only took a single moment—a single touch—and then her daydreams were filled with him. It wasn’t just her in the cool pool of water. Lucipor was there now, with those same strong arms surrounding her.
Before Petra left the slave quarters, Lucipor’s arms came around her again. He held her hard against him, muscles taut. Petra lifted her face up to his last kiss, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the little slave girls wake up and stare wide-eyed up at them.
Let the girl stare, Petra thought. Let the slaves whisper. I defy them all.
“Remember our Sappho, Petra?” Lucipor whispered. “Labor and fill my heart with fire. Stand by me and be my ally.”
“Te amo,” Petra said a little too loudly, her recklessness growing along with her anger.
“Then love me enough to live.”
“Come, girl,” Silvipor whispered harshly from across the room, his shadow trailing across the beds of snoring slave women as he stood in the moonlight pouring in through the open doorway.
She moved to follow him, but Lucipor grabbed her arm, his eyes piercing her even in the half-dark.
“Promise me,” he said.
Petra nodded, but only so he would release her. She had no intention of keeping her word. He could not ask this of her. No one could.
Ever vigilant, Silvipor licked his fingers and smoothed back the frizzy strands of dark brown hair at her temples when she reached him.
“Your eyes are puffy,” he said gruffly.
“Let the master see my grief.”
“You forget it was your own mother who refused to do as he commanded. He was well within his rights.”
“He murdered her.”
“It is the way of it, girl.” His tone brooked no further insolence.
As they rushed along the rocky path toward the master’s quarters, Petra was glad she had donned her second tunic. A chill had descended into the valley on this windless night. They entered through the servants’ posticum at the side of the main house.
“Wait, I need to fetch my mother’s supplies.” As Silvipor grunted in irritation, his scowl reminding her of an angry bear, Petra hurried into one of the tiny rooms along the side of the house where the slaves’ cleaning supplies were kept. There was no one in the room, so she quickly knelt before the tiny trunk where her mother kept medical instruments and midwifery tools. She would take the supplies with her, of course, but she was looking for something else.
Beneath all of the other tools, she found the bottle she sought. The phial was unmarked and the liquid inside was clear. It came from the red mortanine flowers growing along the banks of a tiny island in the lake beyond the master’s fields. Her mother discovered it was an effective rat poison years before.
With shaking hands, Petra slipped the phial into her mother’s bag and followed Silvipor out of the room. Every house servant they passed upon entering the villa rushed them
along with either a gesture or a word until, eventually, Petra heard the screams.
She had often accompanied her mother, Diantha, on her midwifery rounds among the Avidus slaves and servants as well as those in neighboring villas throughout the countryside, but while the master had once trusted her mother’s skills before he took her life, he had forbidden Petra to assist in his child’s birth. Petra’s mother was renowned for her skill, much of which her own mother had taught her back in Corinth, Greece, before Roman soldiers had taken her whole family as slaves. Diantha had helped the slave women deliver their babies. In fact, she had helped deliver the master himself before Petra was born.
As little as she knew about midwifery, Petra could tell by the sheer terror lacing Constantia Avidus’s screams something had gone horribly wrong. Petra assumed it was a breech baby, but her mother had never let her deliver one before. Even if she did help them, and Clarius’s wife and child died anyway, Petra knew he would kill her purely out of vengeance.
The master did not care for his wife, but he remained loyal to her. Such a man could never love. Not truly. Not the kind of love she and Lucipor felt. The kind that turned hearts into liquid, the kind that melted a gaze into moonlight. Petra said a prayer to Venus and Artemis, the Roman and Greek goddesses of fertility, though why she could not say. She believed in her mother’s Greek gods and goddesses—not those of her masters. This child’s delivery meant only another master to serve, and who was to say he wouldn’t be as cruel as Clarius when he came of age? She rubbed the smooth glass of the phial within the supply bag and slipped into the mistress’s quarters. The master was there, his back turned to her, and Petra thought it strange. Birthing was women’s work. Then again, he had killed his midwife, so who was left but inexperienced slaves and servants?
Constantia was looking up at him with terror in her eyes as he held the backs of his fingers to her perspiring temple. Rarely had Petra seen him showing such tenderness toward her. Petra had expected him to be raging at Constantia for putting his baby at risk, or at least the servants for not serving him fast enough. It was his way. And, yet, both he and his wife were locked together in this silent moment of anguish. Petra wanted to hate Clarius for evoking this strange sense of pity for them, but she could not. She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head, and it was then Constantia noticed her.
