My sweetness? That hard-faced predatory woman? “You don’t want to put a horse in a chariot race before it’s broken to the harness. Sure way to lose the race and disappoint the bettors.”
“You may have a point, Bone. In any case, I’m turning her over to Bonia. I’m off to the Palatine today. You know where. I’m taking Helen.”
“Yes, I remember. And I beg permission to accompany you, if you will allow me. I believe a certain cubicularius is ready to be indiscreet.”
Apparently one of the eunuch’s many functions was to get the goods on as many highly placed officials as possible in case his mistress ever needed a favor. Espionage and blackmail were a way of life in Rome.
“No, Bone, I need you here today. This one is going to bear watching.”
“But I’ve been softening him up since—”
“The goddess speaks.”
“Oh, all right. Have it your way. You always do,” her devotee sulked.
“Here we are, Red,” the woman addressed me for the first time since we left the Forum.
The alley gave onto a street. Across from us was a portico, the entire wall around it brightly painted. A grape vine and a fig tree framed the doorway, illustrating the name of the establishment. Yes, that’s right: the Vine and Fig Tree, straight out of Hebrew scripture. Both the figs and the grapes had enticing suggestive shapes—visual double entendre. If you missed the point, scantily clad nymphs frisked to the right and the left for almost half a block. The most striking feature of the fresco was the cats, more cats than women, of every stripe and color in every conceivable pose.
The eunuch opened the thick wooden door, and I heard the sound of running water. Among my people, wells and springs were considered sacred, a source of vision and healing, an entry way to the Otherworld. The sound made me homesick, but I couldn’t afford to let down my guard now, so I blinked hard and swallowed my tears. When my eyes focused I saw that I was in a courtyard or atrium. A fruit tree of some kind (not a fig) gave a tiny bit of shade, and the sound of the water came from a fountain—something I had never seen before, because the Celts did not share the Roman obsession with plumbing. All around the rim of the fountain sat cats, sleek, elegant cats—black, striped, calico, orange, grey—watching goldfish dart around the pool. I stared at the small beasts in fascination. Celts had domesticated dogs and of course cattle, but cats—wild cats—I’d only glimpsed at a distance.
“It’s the novica.”
The voice came from above my head. I looked up and got my first glimpse of the women I would come to know more intimately than I knew my mothers. Their barely covered breasts spilled over the balcony railing. They had only just woken up; they looked tumbled, tired, blowsy, their eyes a little smudged or puffy. They were as varied as the cats, a full range of hair and skin color, shape and size. They all stared at me, sizing me up, their new comrade and competition.
“Would you get a load of that hair!”
“She won’t need a lamp in her room.”
“I wonder what kind of dye she uses to get that color?”
“By the tits of Isis, look at her bush. It’s the same color.”
“Oo, I don’t think I’d want to use dye down there.”
“No, stulta, I mean she must have been born that way.”
“That’s enough, ladies,” said the eunuch. His boss had disappeared into the deeper recesses of the house. “Be nice. Sooner she settles in, the better it’ll be for everyone.”
“She can’t understand us, Bone. She’s a barbarian,” said a big blonde woman.
“Oh, really, Berta. Like you’re not,” said a small dark one.
“She speaks Latin like a sailor,” put in Bone, but they ignored him.
“I did not mean it as an insult, Succula. I am proud to be a barbarian. You hear me, proud. Who would want to be Roman?”
My sentiments exactly. I looked at the woman more closely, wondering if she were a Celt. Her accent didn’t seem quite right. But maybe she would be an ally. Maybe she wanted to escape.
The domina, who clearly owned everything and everyone in sight, reentered the atrium followed by a female version of the hulk and two little girls. At the sight of her, all the women turned tail and scurried back to their rooms.
“Here she is, Bonia,” my captor said. “I leave her to you. Bone doesn’t think she should work today, but we’re going to be one short, so you decide. Don’t give her to anyone who doesn’t like some lip. With training, I think she might learn to crack the whip. Until she’s broken in, you’re going to have to keep her on a short leash.
“Helen!” she barked. “I told you to be ready at the sixth hour sharp. Go get Helen,” she instructed the little girls.
Before the little girls had finished mounting the stairs, Helen appeared followed by a woman who seemed to be her hairdresser and make-up designer.
“You like, domina?” the attendant inquired.
“Very nice,” the domina understated.
Helen gave a whole new meaning to the word golden; blonde had nothing to do with it. Her minimal attire was just a shade lighter gold than her skin and hair. She drifted down the stairs as if a slow breeze carried her.
“Yeah, a thousand ships, give or take a few,” commented Bone.
“Go see if the litter is ready,” the domina ordered the girls. “Step on it, Helen. Save the undulating grace for the senator.”
“There’s a girl could go far,” remarked Bonia as the two women left. “If she had any brains, that is. Fortunately for Domitia Tertia she doesn’t.”
That was the first time I had heard my captor’s name. It seemed possible that Bonia might be the sort of person who keeps up a running commentary. I decided to pay close attention.
“Come along, dearie,” Bonia turned to me, giving me a quick once-over. “Not the Helen of Troy type, but I expect you’ll do. I don’t always follow her reasoning, but Domitia knows how to pick ‘em.”
After following Bonia through a confusing series of corridors and rooms, I found myself in a back courtyard off the kitchen that had a high wall and no exit that I could see. Bonia gestured for me to recline on a bench and sent the little girls to fetch wine and food. I ate ravenously—bread with a black paste made of olives, as well as cheese, figs, and grapes. I’d had barely enough food to keep me alive since I’d run away from the mountains in Iberia where I had been the revered, even worshipped, prisoner of a Celtic tribe whose youth, male and female, had been killed or taken captive by—who else—the Romans. One of their remnant had found me washed up and near dead on the shore and the surviving old women had, it is true, saved my life. In return I was supposed to single-handedly—or wombedly—repopulate their village. But I had had other plans. I still had other plans.
After my long fast, the wine hit my veins like
