Going Home
“We’re leaving Leptis Magna?” my mother said.
I was confused. Home was here – this villa, this courtyard, those kittens, the comfortable feel of the mosaic floor beneath my feet.
My father grasped my hands and spoke directly to me. “You know I lived in Rome as a young man. Well, the Emperor has finally remembered his childhood friend! He has called for me personally. We are going back to Rome – to the centre of the world, Camilla! The only place that matters!”
“Rome!” I was thrilled. I squeezed my father’s hands. I had never been to Rome; I’d only heard people talk of it. If they had been there they sounded lordly and superior, and if they had not they spoke of it with longing and jealousy. Rome – the centre of the world! The home of the Emperor himself! The heart of the Empire!
My mother had found a smile by now. Her next words took mine away.
“At last, we can conclude things with Publius,” she said to my father. “It will be a joy to me to see my daughter honourably and safely settled.”
I dropped my father’s hands.
“You mean marry? Me, marry?” I said.
My mother smiled at me.
“You will finally be a grown woman,” she said softly. “We are so proud.”
I nodded uncertainly. I knew, of course, that I was engaged to be married. So was Livia, and so were most of my friends. I had a ring that my mother kept in a box in her room, which I had been given as a betrothal token. But the boy – Publius Maecenas – was in Rome, so far away, or so it had seemed until now. I had assumed that the engagement had been forgotten, that when I married it would be someone from Leptis Magna. We had met just once, when his family had visited Leptis Magna for the betrothal ceremony when I was only six. But now I was fourteen. I didn’t remember him at all. I searched my memory and came up with a vague idea of soft brown eyes, freckles and knobbly elbows.
“Fourteen is young,” said my father, as if reading my mind. “But at least you can get to know each other.”
I realised, the thought flying through my mind like a swallow dipping in and out of the eaves, that this was what all the messages, the secrets, had been leading up to. This invitation to Rome had not come out of nowhere. My father had been working towards it, perhaps begging the Emperor to invite him, perhaps speaking to others who had the Emperor’s ear, just as I wheedled my mother’s maid when I wanted some little toy or jewel and my mother was doubtful. And the end of it was that we were all going to Rome.
And I was going to get married.
“His family are well-born and rich,” my mother said. “It is a good marriage for a doctor’s daughter from the provinces.”
“You forget that we are friends of the Emperor,” my father replied. “Being from the provinces is no longer a disadvantage, when the Emperor himself speaks Latin with a Leptis Magna accent.”
Married, I thought. I would be a grown woman. With a household of my own. That didn’t sound so bad. Still, I had a thousand thoughts and fears. What would it be like being married? Would I enjoy being a grown woman? And what about, well. . . having babies? What if – an even more worrying thought – I could not have babies? I knew some women could not, and it seemed to make them very sad, for they spent much time and money coming to my father and then going to different temples and even sailing to faraway places where the gods had been said to work miracles. If I could not have children, what would I do all day? Would my husband divorce me? I realised that I had gone from not thinking of Publius at all to marrying him and divorcing him in less than a minute.
“Can I go on with my studies?” I asked my father.
He patted my head. “Yes, of course. There is no need for you to marry in a rush. Take your time. See how you like each other. I expect you will like each other very much!”
“It is best for girls to marry early,” my mother said gently. “She is nearly fifteen after all.”
“The philosophers disagree,” my father replied, and my mother could say no more.
I skipped out to tell Nurse the news.
“We’re going to Rome! Rome itself!”
Nurse was bending over the basket of wool, and she didn’t look up. I was disappointed.
“Nurse! Didn’t you hear? We’re all going to Rome! You too!”
When she did look up, I searched her face for the excitement I expected her to feel. I did not find it.
“To Rome?” she said, and her voice sounded blank and empty. “Must I go to Rome?”
“Of course!” I laughed aloud. “Of course you must come to Rome with us. We would not leave you here.”
I flung my arms around her neck and hugged her. She had fed me as a baby, put me to sleep every night. She had even given me a little amulet, a spell written on papyrus and contained in a reed, which I wore tied around my wrist all the time. It was a good-luck spell from a priest of Isis, meant to keep me safe from illness. Every time I looked at it, it reminded me of how much she loved me.
“I’m going to be married,” I whispered into her ear. The amulet dug into my wrist as I hugged her. “You can come and live with me in my new house, in Rome. It’s the greatest city in the world!”
Then I ran off to give thanks to our household gods, our Lares and Penates. Their familiar shrine was in the entrance hall, and we went every day, to speak to the warm, loving spirits who watched over us. I did not look back, because I was a little bit scared that Nurse was not happy about the news, and I did not want to think about that. There was no way I was going to go to Rome, marry a stranger and live in a strange house without Nurse by my side.