Avitoria
The Empress herself gave me a medicine chest. It was a silver box, with the staff of Asclepius worked on the lid, the snakes curling around the staff. On the sides, the figures of Hercules and Dionysus were engraved, because the box had been made in Leptis Magna. It was the most expensive thing I had ever owned, and looking at the gods of my home made me feel homesick.
“Perhaps you have the skill of your father,” the Empress told me. I hoped I had. I did not want to disappoint her – or her slaves, who had come to rely on me to take care of their health.
My first job, however, was nothing to do with medicine.
The Empress’s hair was styled every day by a team of slaves who had been trained in the latest methods. For an hour daily, she sat in her chair while three women worked like architects to create a crowning glory for her. Finally they decorated it with gilt, ivory and glass hairpins, which sparkled like a halo when the light touched them. Other slaves applied her make-up, the scented creams and perfumes. These all came in glass or gold pots and vessels, inlaid with patterns or images of serpents or birds. Finally they draped her in her silk stola and the woollen shawl she wore now that we were in cold Eboracum. All this time, she dictated her letters and notes to me, and I did my best to take down every word, in Greek or Latin.
But illness comes suddenly to everyone, and one day the hairdressers were all sick: feverish and vomiting. I arrived to find the Empress as upset as I had ever seen her.
“Camilla,” she greeted me at once, “take the slave Aisopos and go out and find me a hairdresser.”
She must have seen the hesitation on my face, for she added, annoyed: “You have been here every day. You have seen exactly how I like my hair. Go and find someone who can dress it as well as my slaves, or I’ll have the three of them beaten. Go!”
I went. Aisopos was an elderly lame Ethiop who looked after the Empress’s petty cash. I had treated him for fever before, on several occasions. He was clearly as doubtful as I was of the wisdom of sending me to find a hairdresser, but there was no going against the Empress’s orders. I put on my heavy shoes and cloak for the streets and, with Aisopos following close behind me, set out into Eboracum in search of someone who could do hair the way they did it in Rome.
Where should I look for a hairdresser? I wondered. I turned away from the smelly, noisy streets where the potters and the smiths and the leatherworkers lived, and instead headed towards the forum. I led the way hesitantly, occasionally glancing at Aisopos in hopes of a hint. I didn’t want to ask him – after all he was the slave, I was supposed to be in charge – but he caught my eye. I raised my eyebrows hopefully, and he widened his and looked completely blank. Clearly he too had no idea where to find a high-class hairdresser in a city full of soldiers.
I prayed under my breath to Fortune to guide my footsteps, and she must have listened, for as I passed the marketplace, I ran full-tilt into a blonde girl, who cried out and dropped the basket she was carrying. Out clattered hairpins, polished mirrors, combs, ribbons, false hair, and all kinds of other things.
“Fool of a child!” she burst out, and then spotted the richness of my dress and the fact I was followed by a slave. Her eyes widened and she ducked down as if to avoid a blow, and hastily collected her things back into her basket.
“You’re a hairdresser!” I exclaimed.
“One of the best,” she replied cautiously. “I belong to Theodora.”
I had no idea who Theodora was, though I did think it was an unusual name – Greek. I did not care, however. I grabbed all her fallen goods and returned them to the basket as fast as I could. Baffled, she stared at me.
“Come with me,” I told her. “If you’re really as good as you say, the Empress will make you and your mistress rich, and I hope I will live another day!”
We hurried back through the streets to the palace. She had seemed a little doubtful at first, but a coin from Aisopos had convinced her that whoever we were, we could pay. The girl was older than me, I guessed, but not by many years. I noticed she was pretty, and she was polite and obedient, but there was a sadness in her face that nothing I said to reassure her seemed to cut through – there was a dullness in her eyes, which were the blue of a spring sky. Her name was Avitoria.
We burst triumphantly – well, Aisopos and I were triumphant – into the portico of the palace, and the doors opened for us. We crossed the courtyard and I went into the Empress’s apartments. I heard Geta’s voice from outside and hesitated.
“But, Mother, I have no idea how to answer this peasant,” he was saying, petulantly. “Does an emperor worry about who owns some miserable strip of land not even fit for farming? Why should I waste my time on this?”
“Because, my son, this is the business of governing the Empire,” the Empress said patiently. “One day, you and your brother will do this together.”
Geta’s snort was audible through the panels of the door, and I stepped back hastily. “Together! I will do nothing together with that man. I know that he has been taken off to the North because the soldiers prefer me – to try and make him look like a soldier when we all know he’s nothing but a murderer who cannot control his passions.”
“Geta!” The Empress’s voice was sharp. Halfway through her next sentence Geta yanked the door open and strode out. I was glad I had moved aside. He stormed off and I dared to lead Avitoria inside.
Luckily, she was as good as she had promised. Her fingers flew through the Empress’s hair as skilfully as a woman weaving a patterned cloth, and the frown on the Empress’s face softened, line by line erasing as the waves were smoothed out and plumped up and curled. When the glittering crown of hairpins was finally perfect, she stood up with a smile.
“You may tell your mistress you will serve me from now on,” she told the slave girl. “Every day, be here before daybreak.”
Avitoria bowed in acknowledgement. Our eyes met and I smiled at her, thrilled to have succeeded in the task for the Empress, but she just looked back at me without returning the smile, her eyes flat, as if long ago a veil had dropped over them that she had decided never to raise again.
“Why did you smile at her? She was just a slave,” you say.
It shocks me a little. We have two slaves on the farm, Caledonians born into slavery. I think we treat our slaves well – we feed them the same food we eat, we free them when we can and they are never beaten. They can live together, have possessions, have children. Almost every slave we have freed has chosen to stay here, to farm the pieces of land we have given them. My father always taught me that to free a slave without giving them a means of feeding themselves is just a slow way of murdering them.
But enslaved is still enslaved.
“I suppose I was lonely,” I say. “There was no one else of my age around, and. . .” I tail off.
“It doesn’t matter,” you say, bored already. “What happened next?”
I look down the hill. Avitoria was a Caledonian. But she had not been born into slavery. She knew what it was like to live free.
I take a deep breath and go on with the story.