LXVI

My mother never came so late. Petronius was suspicious of the open air at night. I decided there was no chance whoever was lurking out there could be anybody I might wish to see.

 

I had bought some pottery lamps with my early fees from the senator, so I lit them all now for the first time to make it obvious that I had come to stay. Keeping one eye on the balcony door, I peeled off my clothes, poured myself a bowl of water, and washed all over until the smell of wealth and decadence was gone from my cold skin. I walked into the bedroom, making a lot of noise, found a clean tunic I was fond of, then combed my hair. It was still too short to curl.

All this time whoever it was went on waiting outside.

I wanted to go to bed. I went back into the main room, picked up one of my lamps, then steered my tired legs out onto the balcony. I was utterly exhausted and completely unarmed.

The air was soft, and faint noises of the city in the dark rose occasionally with that odd sharpness you get sometimes as sounds reach the sixth floor.

“Now there’s a sight!”

She was standing by the balustrade staring out, but as soon as I spoke she turned around: eyes like warm caramel in a creamy almond face. The gods only know how long she had been there; or what doubts assailed her confidence while she waited for me to come home.

“Sosia wrote to me about your view.”

“Not the view,” I said.

And went on looking at Helena.

 

She stood there, and I stood here, she in the dark and I with my lamp, neither of us certain any longer if we were friends. Distressed moths began to zoom in from the night. One day we would talk about what had happened, but not now; there was too much to re-establish between us first.

“I thought you would never come. Are you drunk?” I had called at several all-night wine shops on my way home.

“I’m sobering rapidly. How long have you been waiting?”

“A long time. Are you surprised?”

I thought about that. No. Knowing her, I was not surprised.

“I thought I would never see you again. Lady, what can I say?”

“Now you’ve spat in my eye in public, perhaps you should call me Helena.”

“Helena,” I murmured obediently.

I had to sit down. Levering myself onto the bench I kept for dreaming out of doors, I groaned with weariness.

“You want me to go,” she offered awkwardly.

“Too late,” I said, echoing another day. “Too dark. Too dangerous…I want you to stay. Sit by me, Helena; sit with a man on his balcony and listen to the night!” But she stayed where she was.

“Have you been with a woman?”

It was too dark for me to see her face.

“Business,” I said.

Helena Justina turned away, looking over the city again. There was a tight band squeezing my ribcage from the side where I damaged myself in Britain right round to the side I was not hurt at all. “I’m so glad to see you!”

“Me?” She turned back fiercely. “Or just anyone at all?”

“You,” I said.

 

“Oh Marcus, wherever have you been?” This time when she asked there was a different catch in her voice.

I told her about the Embankment, and I told her about Vespasian.

“Does that mean you’re working for the Emperor?”

I was working for her.

“I’m working for myself. But he agrees that if I save up the money to qualify, he’ll include me in the lists as second rank.”

“How long will it take?”

“About four hundred years.”

“I can wait!”

“That’s if I never eat, and I live in a barrel under the Fabrician Bridge. I won’t let you wait.”

“I’ll do what I want.”

Helena Justina rubbed her hand over her eyes and as her temper rasped I realized she was as tired as me. I held out one hand; at last she came. She perched alongside; I laid my arm behind her to shield her from the roughness of the wall. She sat stiffly, leaning a little away from me. I tugged back the mantle she wore over her head, and when I stroked the warm softness of her hair suddenly she closed her eyes. I knew now that meant yearning, not distaste.

Tucking in a loose strand that belonged folded back above her ear, I told her quietly how I had always liked the way she twisted up her hair.

“While I was waiting,” Helena reported frostily, pretending to ignore that, “I saw off three chits in indecent frocks who had heard you might be rich—” I reached for her hand; she was wearing my ring. I expected that. Though not to feel it on the third finger of her left hand. “Your mother came.” The reassuring clasp of her fingers answered mine. “She thought someone should stay; she warned me that you would troop in eventually, cold and tired and drunk and miserable as Cerberus. She thinks you’ll come to no good.”

“She thinks I need a good woman.”

“What do you think?”

“If I found one, I’d disappoint her.”

“You might disappoint each other. Or—”

“Or,” I agreed carefully, “we might not! My darling, that isn’t the point.”

After a moment Helena began again.

“You once said, if you loved me it would be a tragedy. But what if I love you?”

“I’ll forgive you, if you can forgive yourself.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but I stopped her, laying one finger gently against her lips. “Don’t. I can’t bear that. You’ve seen how I live. I could never bring you here. You know what my prospects are—virtually nil. I can’t insult you with promises. Better accept how things are. Better say nothing, lady. Better run while you can—”

“It’s too late.” Helena Justina repeated my previous words bleakly.

I released her and covered my face.

 

The moment passed.

 

A huge moth plunged into my lamp. He lay on the table, not even singed though stunned. He was two inches long and shaped like a catapult bolt, with strong mottled brown wings, folded close. He looked as dazed as I felt.

I stood up, lifting him delicately in the hem of my tunic; you can be a brave man but not enjoy the struggles of a live moth in your naked hand. Helena put out the lamp.

I placed the moth on a flower in my window box. He staggered slightly then stood docile. I left him there to fly off or take his chance with becoming a pigeon’s breakfast in the morning. For a while I stood looking over Rome. The moment had passed, but her words would remain with me. As I worked alone, whenever there was privacy and quiet, Helena’s words would be there.

“Marcus!” she begged.

I turned back to her steadily. There was barely enough light from the lamps indoors for me to make out her face. It didn’t matter; I knew everything about her. Even hunched in sadness with her confidence gone, the sight of her caused a deep throb of panic and excitement within me.

“You know that I shall have to take you home.”

“Tomorrow,” she told me, “—if you want me to stay.”

“I want you to stay,” I stepped across the balcony.

The senator’s daughter gave me a look that said she knew what was on my mind, and if the thought had not existed in the first place it would be there now; it was that sort of look. I was near enough to reach down for her with one arm around her waist. Then I swung her up, locked against me while I let myself start to remember how it felt to hold her close. We were both wary but she seemed quite co-operative, so I picked her up. Helena Justina weighed slightly less than a government ingot; not quite too heavy to handle, though difficult to steal…A man could carry her over his threshold and still not lose his silly smile; I know, because that is what I did.

It was so long past curfew the noise of delivery carts was finally beginning to quieten. It was far too late for me to take her home, or for anyone from her father’s house to collect her from me. Tomorrow morning everything I knew of life would start again. Tomorrow I would have to take her back.

That was tomorrow. Tonight she was mine.