The Venus Throw (33 page)

The slave looked at me, perplexed. “No, Master. The mistress is entertaining the visitor in the little garden at the back of the house.”

“Oh, dear. Has the visitor been here long?”

“Quite some time, Master. Long enough to have finished the first ewer of wine and sent for another.”

“Have you heard . . . shouting?”

“No, Master.”

“Harsh words?”

She frowned. “Please, Master, I never eavesdrop.”

“But you’d notice if your mistress had, say, strangled the other woman, or vice versa?”

The girl looked at me strangely, then managed an uneasy laugh. “Oh, you’re making a joke, aren’t you, Master?”

“Am I?”

“Shall I go tell the mistress that you’re home?”

“No! Just go on about your business, as if I’d never come in.”

I quietly made my way to the back of the house. It was possible, from a little passageway off my bedroom, to look
through a screen of ivy into the small private garden where Bethesda and Clodia were sitting. They were not alone. Chrysis sat on a pillow at her mistress’s feet. Diana was seated next to her mother, holding her hand. Their voices were low, hardly more than a murmur. Their tone was somber. They seemed to be deep in serious discussion. That was the last thing I had expected. What on earth could these women have in common?

I reached out with my forefinger and pushed aside an ivy leaf to get a better look at Clodia. Even in an unassuming stola of soft gray wool she was stunningly beautiful. At least she’d had the sense to put on decent clothing before she came calling at my house. I looked at Bethesda, expecting to see jealousy on her face. Instead her expression was pensive and melancholy, mirroring that of the other women.

Clodia’s voice was so low that I had to strain to hear.

“With me, it was an uncle, not blood-kin, but one of my stepmother’s brothers. Like you, I kept it a secret. I was fifteen, a bit older than your Diana. My father had just betrothed me to my cousin Quintus, but with Father away from Rome the wedding had to wait. That was quite all right by me. I wasn’t eager for marriage, like some girls. But of course, if I
had
been married, then perhaps . . .” She took a breath and went on. “Uncle Marcus had always looked at me in a certain way. You know what I mean.” The other women nodded sympathetically. “Perhaps it was the betrothal that set him off, thinking that once Quintus took me he would never have the chance again. One day, at the family horti, he caught me alone.” She took a deep breath. “Afterward, one wonders how the gods could allow such a thing to happen.”

“You never told your stepmother?” said Bethesda.

“I hated her then. I hated her even more after what Uncle Marcus did. He was her brother, after all. I didn’t trust her. I thought she might take his side.”

“What about your own brothers?” said Diana.

“I should have told them. I did tell Publius, but not until many years later, after Uncle Marcus was dead.”

“But your sisters—surely you told them,” said Bethesda.

“My half sisters were closer to their mother than to me. I couldn’t trust them not to tell her. No, the only person I told was an old slave woman who had been with my father since long before I was born, and I told her only when I began to realize that Uncle Marcus had planted a baby in me. She showed me what to, do, but she warned me that if I aborted the child I might never be able to have sons.”

“A Roman superstition!” Bethesda clucked her tongue.

“Still, it proved to be true. That was another reason I never told my husband about what Uncle Marcus did to me, and what followed; Quintus would have blamed me for giving him a daughter instead of a son. He would probably have blamed me for tempting Uncle Marcus. It’s the way men think. Quintus knew he wasn’t the first, but he never knew about Uncle Marcus. He died, never knowing.”

I listened, disturbed, and then astonished by what Clodia did next: she leaned forward and took Bethesda’s hand, the one Diana was not already holding, and pressed it between her palms. “But you said that it was the same with you, Bethesda—that you kept it a secret.”

Bethesda lowered her eyes. “Who could I have told? A free Roman girl might have recourse to law or family—but an Egyptian slave girl in Alexandria? The man had done the thing often to my mother while she lived; she told me that the master’s abuse would kill her in the end, and it finally did. After she died, he turned to me. I was much younger than you were, Clodia, not even old enough to bear a child. He did the thing to me only once, or tried to. I suppose he thought I would be docile, like my mother, but after the things she had told me I knew what to expect and I decided I would die before I let him have his way with me. He tied my wrists with a rope, the way he had tied her so many times. He liked to hang her on a hook on the wall. I had
seen her like that, seen what he did to her, and when he tried to do the same things to me a kind of madness came into me, the madness the gods put into men and women to give them strength beyond their bodies. I was more limber than he realized. I wriggled free. It turned into a battle. I bit him as hard as I could. He threw me against the wall, so hard I thought I’d been crushed like a beetle. I couldn’t breathe. My heart stopped beating. He could have had his way with me then. He could have killed me. He was a powerful, respected man. No one would have thought the less of him for the death of a slave. No one questioned the death of my mother. No one would have questioned my death.”

“Oh, Mother!” Diana drew closer to her. Clodia bit her lip. Chrysis bowed her head. Bethesda’s eyes glittered, but her cheeks remained dry. “I lay on the floor, stunned. I couldn’t move, not even a finger. I waited for the sky to fall. But do you know what he did? He turned as white as a cloud, mumbled a curse and left the room. I think the shade of my mother must have spoken in his ear, shaming him. Instead of having me killed, he simply got rid of me. He sent me to the slave market. I was not a very satisfactory slave, apparently.” She managed a brittle smile. “Men would buy me and return me before the day was done. I was sent back to be resold so many times that the man at the slave market made a joke of it. I was still young. I suppose I was beautiful—almost as beautiful as you, Diana. But word spread among the buyers that I was poison, and no one would bid on me. Finally, of course, the right man came for me. I think it must have been a whim of the goddess the Romans eau Venus that sent him to the slave market that day, with barely enough coins in his purse. I was the cheapest slave on the block, and still he could barely afford me!”

The other women laughed at that, even as they wiped their eyes.

“And your husband knows nothing of what happened to
you before you met? Of what the man did to you, and your mother?” said Clodia.

“Nothing. I never told him, and I think I never will. I told my daughter, because I thought she should know what befell her grandmother. And now I have told you.”

I was appalled, bewildered, dumbfounded—not only at what Bethesda had said, and the fact that she had kept such a secret from me, but at the unaccountable intimacy between the women in my garden. What strange alchemy had transpired to make them so unguarded with one another? Where were the normal barriers of slavery and status that should have separated them? The world seemed to tremble beneath my feet, just as my fingers trembled as I closed my spyhole in the ivy and silently fled to my study.

A
t length, I sent a slave girl to inform Bethesda that I had returned and was in my study. Clodia appeared soon after, along with Chrysis. They were both smiling, as if they had just shared a good laugh. The visit with Bethesda and Diana had apparently ended on a happy note, which confused me all the more—how could they speak of such dreadful things and then part laughing?

“I dropped by to see if you had anything to report, and you weren’t here,” said Clodia, feigning petulance. “I trust you’ve been busy on my behalf, out scraping up something useful about Caelius—perhaps some fresh news about those slaves he bribed to poison Dio?”

“Nothing as useful as that, I’m afraid. Have you been here long?”

“A while.”

“I hope you weren’t bored.”

“Not at all. Your wife made me feel very welcome.”

“Did she?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

That was the gist of the interview, and Clodia and Chrysis soon departed.

Darkness fell. Dinner was served. I was uneasy, unable to look at Bethesda or at Diana in quite the usual way. I asked Bethesda what she had thought of our visitor. “An interesting woman” was all she said.

“I take it she put your mind to rest, concerning my whereabouts last night.”

“Yes.” Bethesda did not elaborate.

“Well, good. All’s back to normal, then?”

“I was never aware of any disruption to our routine,” said Bethesda.

I bit into a crust of bread. This saved me from biting my tongue.

It was a quiet meal. As the last course of savory onions with wine was served, Bethesda cleared her throat. “Our visitor invited us to a party.”

“A party?”

“The day after tomorrow. Clodia says she has a party every year, to mark the beginning of the Great Mother festival.”

“And she invited
you?”

Bethesda bristled at my skepticism. “She invited both of us.”

“I don’t think the sort of parties Clodia throws are likely to be—”

“I shall be hard pressed to find a suitable stola for the occasion.” She peered thoughtfully into the middle distance, contemplating her wardrobe.

I sighed. For Bethesda, a personal invitation from a patrician like Clodia must have seemed almost too good to be true, an opportunity not to be missed, an acceptance into Palatine society. I was surprised myself, though I was beginning to learn not to be surprised by anything Clodia did.

Later that night, in bed, Bethesda pressed herself against me and asked me to hold her. As I took her in my arms, I longed to tell her that I knew her secret, that I understood
her silence, that it made no difference. But the words did not come. Instead, I used my hands and lips and tongue to show her what I felt. Afterward, contented, she fell into a deep sleep. But I remained awake long into the night, staring into the darkness above, wondering how a man can ever think he knows the whole truth of anything.

The next morning I sent a messenger to Eco’s house, to see if he had returned. The messenger came back with the news I expected: Eco was not yet back. He would come to me as soon as he arrived, I thought, no matter what the hour.

If he didn’t arrive soon, anything he discovered would be of no use. The trial would begin the next morning.

I decided to spend the day in my study rather than to go down to the Forum again to search for evidence concerning Caelius and poison. I had spoken in enough ears; word of what I was seeking would continue to spread without me. Perhaps a limb that was barren yesterday would bear fruit today. If so, it would be wise to stay where any messenger could be sure to find me. And of course, Eco might arrive at any moment.

I began another letter to Meto, and ended by burning it, as I had the last. The thing on my mind was not something I could share with him in a letter. Bethesda and Diana spent the day sewing in the garden. They seemed to be in good spirits, talking to one another in low voices and laughing. I watched in silence, content merely to observe, like a guardian keeping watch on the living.

It was not an informer, but Trygonion who finally came knocking at my door that afternoon, so frantically that Belbo made no effort at all to restrain the little gallus from rushing into my study.

“Come!” he cried, trembling and gasping for breath. “Come at once!”

“What now, Trygonion?” I sighed.

“He’s done it! He’s actually done it! Despite all her precautions. Oh, Cybele, damn his eyes!” He clutched his face and stamped his feet.

“Trygonion! What’s happened?”

“He’s poisoned her. She’s dying! Oh, please, come at once!”

It was no wonder that Trygonion was out of breath; he had run all the way from Clodia’s house, and expected me to run all the way back with him. We arrived in the little dead-end street like gasping runners after a marathon. The door to Clodia’s house was not even shut, but stood open as Trygonion had left it.