Paulina. If she found out I’d had you when she can’t.”
As soon as I spoke, I regretted it. Damn! I needed to work on my slave mentality. Never give away information. Never.
“Oh, ho!” Decius grasped the implications immediately; what mental acuity he had was entirely focused on advancing himself. “So that’s the way the wind blows. And do you think the domina has much influence with her husband?”
“It all depends.” I shrugged; ambiguity is all. “But if I were you I wouldn’t breathe a word to Paulina about tonight.”
“Right,” he said.
I left him pondering insofar as he was capable of it. As I crossed the courtyard to Paulina’s cubiculo, a gust of wind lifted my cloak. I felt my ass flapping in the breeze.
You don’t need to know much about the rest of the winter. It was cold and cramped, damp and wretched. Rain and sleet frequently confined us all to the insularium. Decius Mundus carried on a cautious flirtation with Paulina that kept her in a constant state of arousal that I was obliged to relieve. I did not see much of Decius as Pater dined at domus Claudius more often than not, and whenever Pater was there, I was banished to the kitchens. I would have thanked the gods for that respite, but I still wasn’t speaking to them, specifically not to Isis, except in my dreams with their tantalizing snippets of her story—or mine.
The only other part of the day that gave me any relief was our late morning trip to the baths. The palatial buildings were the largest indoor space in Rome, cavernous, with ceilings so high birds nested on the ledges of pillars. Doves mostly. Their sound brought back my dream—if it was a dream—of the Temple of Jerusalem and Anna the prophetess sitting below the walls in the terraced garden surrounded by birds. Sometimes, weightless in the warm water, I could feel my dove form hovering over me just out of reach. If Isis was all sovereign, one of her titles, why couldn’t she just pick me up in her hands and toss me lightly into the sky as Anna had in my dream?
As it turned out, it was in the baths that Isis reentered my life by way of idle gossip. The gods are like that; they will stoop to any means.
“Do you know what I heard?” said Agrippina Lucilla, as she did almost every day. A well-preserved older woman, with skillfully dyed hair, she knew everything and everyone, and her life centered on imparting her knowledge.
“I am sure you are going to tell us,” said Faustina Gnaea, who liked to pretend indifference and even disapproval of rumor spreading, but subtly encouraged people to be indiscreet.
“Well, ladies, it’s about Libo.”
“Which Libo?” someone asked. “Scipius Libo Bassanius?”
Roman nomenclature was complex and burdensome, I found, worse than declaiming nine generations of lineage, and getting worse all the time as the Romans became more self-important.
“No, cara, Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus.”
“Well, what about him? He’s always struck me as a bit of a nonentity.”
“You can’t call the great grandson of Pompey a nonentity,” objected Agrippina.
“And isn’t he related somehow to Scribonia, you know, the first wife of Augustus, when he was still called Octavian?”
“Grand nephew, I believe. But, my dear, that’s not a connection to be mentioned in polite circles.”
“That poor woman was maligned. Accused of moral perversity just because she objected to her husband’s mistress. I ask you,” said Maxima Fabia, a handsome woman who had managed to keep control of her own considerable wealth as well as her docile husband’s.
“Well, it is perverse,” pronounced Faustina. “A wife’s duty is plain.”
“Oh, yes,” ventured Paulina. “She has to put up with her husband’s adultery, but risk exile or death if she gets up to anything on her own.”
There was an awkward silence. One or two women coughed discreetly. Everyone knew Paulina’s appalling family history, and everyone speculated, behind her back of course, about the condition of her marriage and morals. But it didn’t do to be too outspoken about your discontent.
“Yes, well, as I was saying,” Agrippina resumed once everyone had registered Paulina’s gaffe and stored it up to use against her, “I have it on good authority—and of course I am not at liberty of reveal my sources—that Libo is about to be appointed Princeps Senatus.”
There were various gasps and exclamations. I was indifferent. What did I care who headed the Roman Senate. It would make no difference to the condition of the slaves who carried the senatorial class on their backs.
“Oh, now I know the one you mean,” Paulina caught on. “I sat next to him at a Lupercalia banquet. He’s cute.”
There is no exact Latin equivalent for the word cute, but that was the sense. I was embarrassed for Paulina. I was pedisequa to a ditz. Then I was further horrified that I identified with her enough to wish she wouldn’t be such an idiot. I didn’t want to care.
“Are you quite sure, Agrippina?” said Faustina. “Apart from his ancestry, I don’t see what he has to recommend him. The position requires age, experience, and of course, superior morals.”
“There’s something more here than meets the eye,” quavered Drusilla Livilla, an old woman who seemed to be everyone’s mother-in-law but no one’s mother. She liked everyone to admire her perspicuity, though she didn’t usually follow up her clichés with any actual observations.
“Well, I’ll tell you one person who won’t like it,” said Fulvia, whose other names I couldn’t remember. She was one of the younger wives, like Paulina.
“Whatever can you mean, Fulvia? Don’t just hint about it,” demanded Agrippina.
“Well, it’s no secret. The Emperor.”
“Why, what could he possibly have against Libo?”
“Don’t you know?” said Maxima. “Libo is always running off to astrologers and dream interpreters. Too un-Roman, darling,” she laughed. “Dear Tiberius,” she paused so that everyone could catch the note of intimacy. “He does rather have a bee in his bonnet about foreign cults.”
“But everyone consults astrologers,” pointed out Agrippina. “Tiberius has his own astrologers on staff.”
“But I have heard that Libo goes to extremes.”
“We don’t want extremists heading the Senate,” croaked Drusilla. “Moderation in all things, as what’s his name said.”
“Libo
