6.
Cold Marble
We set sail from Leptis Magna on a hot spring day. The harbour was crowded with a consignment of panthers and lions for the games in Rome, and as soon as I heard the snarling from the cages and smelled the reek of them, all thoughts of Nurse were driven out of my head. Their eyes were as fierce as the sun itself – I couldn’t look into them without blinking. I had never seen anything so golden. My mother went into a panic: what if they got loose on the ship?
But the crossing was calm and none of the beasts got loose. We could even wave to the other ships that were travelling alongside us. I saw my first dolphins, threading like silver needles through the sun-glittering sea, and the captain pointed out a plume of smoke from the island where the god Vulcan’s forge was said to be. Mountains rose, blue shadows on the horizon. Veils of cloud hung over them. High up, beyond the clouds, in a bright, shining world, the gods lived. Maybe Lucia was up there with Venus, I thought to myself. And then we were in Italia: the home of the Romans, the heart of the Empire.
As soon as we reached dry land, we were flung into a confident, sweaty, bustle of people who all seemed to know where they were going. We must have stood out as new arrivals, because carriage drivers swarmed around us immediately.
“Bargain ride – direct to Rome!”
“Looking for a carriage? This is the fastest – you’ll go like Mercury!”
I clung to my mother’s hand, but my father, eyes gleaming, charged into the fray and came back with a carriage driver he swore was the best and cheapest of all. I wasn’t sure about that, but I was just glad to get away from the port.
We travelled up the busy Appian Way. I peered through the window of the carriage, fascinated by the messengers galloping by on official business, the farmers and slaves working in the fields. It all seemed so busy. It was busy in Leptis too, but now I felt as if the place I had come from was rough and crude. It was not so much that the villas I glimpsed from the carriage were finer and more magnificent than the ones in Leptis, or that there were more of them. It was just that they had a way of looking completely at home in the landscape, as if they were safe.
Yes, safe. That was how it felt here – that we were at the heart of the Empire, not on the borders. Look wherever you wanted, you saw only Rome. It was hard to believe that this was all under the control of someone my father had once played marbles with. Even harder to believe that in the year I was born, the Empire had been in such chaos that it was sold off by its soldiers to the highest bidder. I thought of Septimius Severus with more awe and fear than I had ever done before. It was as if we were going to meet Hercules or Dionysus.
My father had arranged for us to break the journey with an old friend who was spending the summer in one of these villas. We left the main road and followed a path up the hill. Cypress trees cast long shadows over the fields where some slaves were still toiling. I remembered Nurse, and wondered where she was and if she was safe. In the distance, sunlight flashed from metal and I thought of hot metal burning, branding skin.
“What a beautiful house,” my mother breathed, breaking into my sad thoughts.
The sun was setting, casting a pink and lilac glow over the villa and the vineyards that ran down the hill to the river. As we approached I could see my father’s friend standing smiling and waiting for us under the portico. We stepped down from the carriage, rattled and tired and sweaty.
“Quintus Camillus, my friend!” the master of the house called out, and hurried to embrace my father. Lucius was a big, jolly man, whom my father would have diagnosed with an excess of yellow bile if he had met him in the street in Leptis Magna.
“Lucius!” My father’s eyes were full of tears of joy. “And, Aemilia, you don’t look a day older than when I last saw you.”
Lucius’ wife stepped forwards with a gracious smile. She was tall and dressed in silk, with gold and pearls around her neck and a jewelled ring for every slender finger. I felt travel-dusty and awkward, next to her.
“You’re back from exile in the provinces!” Lucius clapped my father on the back.
“Finally,” my father replied. “Back at the heart of things, where I should be.”
“Ah, there is nowhere like Rome,” Lucius said with a grin. “You have been away for so long – you must hear the latest gossip. Did you know that the senate. . .”
They vanished into the depths of the house, leaving us with Lucius’ wife.
“Your house is beautiful, Aemilia,” said my mother.
“Oh, just a country villa, but we have a good site for it,” she said modestly. “But come in, you must be so thirsty and hungry after your long journey!”
We went in and paid our respects to the family gods, Lares and Penates, in the entrance hall. As we walked into the courtyard, slaves came scurrying with bowls of rosewater and dried fruits. I tried not to stare, but it was impossible not to notice how comfortable, well-designed and carefully tended the house was. Water danced in fountains, cooling the air. Vines embraced the pillars, making shade from which ripe grapes hung down temptingly. If you glanced towards any window or arch, you were sure to see some especially beautiful bit of mountain or sea, framed as if in a picture. It was clear that it had all been planned to show off everything that was beautiful about the area. There were no stray cats slinking about, and although there were plenty of slaves, none of them were sitting by the impluvium, comfortably carding wool that still smelled of sheep. I swallowed, feeling homesick for our simpler world.
Aemilia looked at us with fascination as we washed our hands and politely nibbled the fruit.
“It must be so hard to live in the provinces,” she murmured. “I hear it is complete desert in Libya – dry as a bone! With barbarians and wild beasts swarming everywhere!”
My mother and I opened our mouths at the same moment to protest.
“There are beautiful gardens in Leptis, and we too have green mountains,” my mother said. “And our theatre has the most magnificent views of the sea.”
“Really?” Aemilia was clearly not sure that Leptis Magna contained anything to match up to Rome. “Just one theatre? Poor you.”
When we went for dinner, we were even more amazed. We had owned one bust of the Emperor. Here, in the triclinium alone, there were several, all in different colours of marble. Everywhere you looked were elegant bronze statues, or murals that looked like real life.
“So close to Rome, one can get anything,” Aemilia said with a wave of her elegant, pale hand, ringed with cameos and gold. “Our next project is a new bathhouse.”
“We have a bathhouse,” grumbled Lucius.
“Yes, but it’s so tired-looking – I hate setting foot in there.” Aemilia made a face. “So important to be up to date. I’m sure Camilla will agree?”
She smiled at me and I blushed. Not even Livia’s family had a bathhouse of their own.
Even in this cool spring weather, when the sun had almost set, I noticed Aemilia did not step outside without a slave coming running to hold a parasol over her head. When her fingers brushed my arm, they felt like cool marble. For the first time ever, I felt as if my skin was coarse and sunburned. After all, in all the pictures of the imperial family, Julia Domna, the Empress, was shown with ivory-pale skin. I washed extra hard that evening, not that it made any difference. I was as brown as a man, as Aemilia had pointed out over dinner.
After Aemilia had left us alone in the bedroom we were to share, my mother removed her veil and shook the creases from it with surprising viciousness.
“Lucius and Aemilia are very kind,” I ventured.
“A pity they did not show us some of this kindness when your father was banished,” my mother replied. I was startled. It was the first time that I had ever heard her speak about that time.
“They did not protect us then. No one in Rome did,” she added, then shut her lips tightly, as if she felt she had spoken too much.
“I thought you left Rome because of the troubles the year I was born?”
“No, your father was sent away before that. Some of the other doctors were jealous of his skill. They spoke ill of him to the Emperor Commodus. We were lucky he was not executed.” She sighed. “Rome is a dangerous place.”
We got ready for the night in silence. My mother unpacked our household gods and we said a quick prayer to them. It made me feel more at home, as if things were normal, and I decided I would do this every single night that I was away from home. Then I remembered that I would not be going home. If I married Publius, I would be staying in Rome. That thought sank like a heavy stone into my heart and lay there.
I lay awake. The room was the perfect temperature and the sheets a finer cotton than any we had ever slept on before. But it was hard to get used to the cooler air, and I ran over and over what my mother had said, trying to understand it. No one could stand up to imperial power, that was clear, so was it really fair to blame my father’s friends for not defending him against the old emperor? Now Septimius Severus was emperor and we were in favour. There was really nothing to worry about – was there?
“We must be careful,” my mother said aloud, into the darkness.
I turned over to face her. I could see only the outline of her face. The moonlight that came through the small window made everything look black and white.
“Why?”
“The Emperor’s sons have a. . . bad reputation. They say Caracalla is like a wild beast. First he had his poor young wife, Plautilla, sent into exile. Then he had her father murdered. Plautianus was a powerful man, and he was the Emperor’s friend from childhood, just as your father was. But Caracalla still had him put to death.”
Plautianus. I remembered the headless carved figure on the arch that I had pointed out. The head had been sheared off as if with an executioner’s axe. It seemed that if the Emperor wanted you dead, he did not just kill you – he killed all memory of you, too. No matter how powerful you might have been, he blasted you out of existence.
“But the Emperor will protect us, won’t he?” I was wide awake now.
“I hope so. . .” She sighed. “I should not trouble you with this. Forget I said it. Your father has all the hopes – that leaves me with all the fears.”
It was the first time, I realised, that I could remember her saying anything to me that was not either a reproof or an instruction. It was the first time she had spoken to me as an adult and an equal, rather than a child. And even though what she had said was worrying, the heavy stone in my heart lightened a little. Perhaps being a married woman in Rome would not be so bad after all – not if my family stayed close to me.
We woke early, and were soon on our way to Rome. I looked back at the villa, feeling sorry to have to leave it so soon. It was so comfortable that even though Aemilia and Lucius might be untrustworthy, it was impossible not to feel as if you could stay there forever. Everyone seemed happy. My father had once told me to look at the slaves to judge the worth of a place. “If the slaves seem happy,” he had said to me, “you can be sure that the household is a happy one.”
And then I thought of Nurse again. She had seemed happy, but she had still run away.