The Uncertain Hour (21 page)

Although she was clearly ready, she neither expressed nor demonstrated any particular desire to be introduced to society. Nor was Petronius, who still clung to the forlorn hope that she would fail among his peers and be compelled to retreat to a quiet life in the country, especially eager to put his theory to the test. Instead, he limited their social contacts to intimate dinners with his few real friends. They dined frequently with Lucilius, his lawyer and childhood schoolmate, who lived directly next door—that is, they shared a common garden wall three-hundred cubits in length—and his wife Cornelia. The two women were not an obvious match, yet Melissa had had Cornelia domesticated in a matter of moments.

“Tell me, my dear,” Cornelia had asked her, with mischievous if not malicious intent, on their first evening together. “Do you miss Bithynia at all?”

“Do I miss Bithynia?” Melissa pretended to give the matter due consideration. “You could never have asked me that question if you’d ever had the pleasure of living in a garrison, Cornelia. The wide open space of the parade grounds; the solid, unpretentious architecture of the barracks; the simple, wholesome gruel of the mess tent; the scintillating company of your fellow officers’ wives; the honest joy of serving a grateful nation. I miss it terribly!”

Cornelia had turned to Petronius with a wink of approbation, while Lucilius had gaped with carnivorous admiration.

Petronius had no better luck with his father’s old friend Anicius, who was immediately charmed by Melissa’s lack of pretension and preceded to regale her with all sorts of off-color anecdotes of Petronius’s childhood and youth. Although Anicius was a scholar and a classicist, and Melissa had no education to speak of, they each found a kindred spirit in the other, to the extent that Petronius often felt superfluous in their company. Anicius straight away offered himself as Melissa’s tutor of Greek and republican literature, and she became a devout and dedicated pupil.

After they had been in Rome a month or so, Petronius was informed that the banquet that Tigellinus had been ordered to arrange in his honor had been scheduled. Melissa took the announcement with typical equanimity, and Petronius had to struggle mightily to keep his own trepidation at bay. This was her coming-out, so to speak, and much was at stake, though he took care not to stress that to her. He had no fear of her making a success of it. He told himself that his desire for her to fail was based on his conviction that life in Rome was ultimately impossible for one of her sobriety and integrity, and that it was in her best interest to be removed from its temptations and pollutions. He could scarcely acknowledge that he wanted her only to himself, and took no pleasure in seeing her admired and distracted by others, and feared above all things that his tenuous hold on her affections would be fatally compromised by her exposure to others, men especially, whose qualities might overshadow his own.

At the same time, as he sat on a stool in the corner of her dressing room and watched her spend hours directing her new, very expensive Athenian chambermaid at her hairdressing in anticipation of Nero’s banquet, he had to admit that he would be hard-pressed to maintain his vision of her as the demure mistress of a country estate, however well appointed. It was becoming increasingly clear that the sort of genteel retirement that he had foreseen would not be to her tastes or harmonize with her new social ambitions. He had to ask himself how well he really knew her—and acknowledge that, until recently, he hadn’t been especially motivated to know her better, so long as she continued to enthrall him—but one thing was now coming rapidly into focus: she belonged in Rome. It was all too easy to forget, as he observed her astonishing metamorphosis into a Roman society dame, that only six months earlier she had been the wife of a lowly, brutish centurion in a dismal provincial outpost, with no prospect before her but endless days of drudgery and privation. She had taken all her strength of character, all the coiled energy hoarded through a lifetime of powerlessness, and dedicated it to the quiet glory of her apotheosis.

“Well?” She stood before him on the night of the banquet in all her reborn splendor. A synthesis of palest azure and amethyst-hued Indian silk, encrusted with rubies, emeralds, and purple nacre, hung from her shoulders in elegant, weightless pleats. Bands of red, white, and yellow gold climbed up her forearms like wild vines. The soles of her sandals were sewn with diamonds, her hair was a glade of gold and ivory combs, woven with strands of tiny, bluish pearls from the seas beyond India, at the very edge of the world. A light dusting of white powder on her cheeks, brow, and chin set off the red of her lipstick and the kohl lining her eyes.

Petronius did not know what to say to her. That she was beautiful? Elegant? Unsurpassed? It was disturbing, frightening even, to look at her. She seemed scarcely human at all, at once too dazzling and too fragile, a rare Nilotic dragonfly or the fulminating deity of some beleaguered cult. She looked, above all, unlike herself, and yet precisely as she was always meant to be. It was as if he had known her only as a lovely block of marble, and a master sculptor had come along and hewn out the perfect form that had lain dormant within. Petronius didn’t much care for it.

“You are every inch a Roman,” he stammered at last. She gave him a sharp look.

“Are you feeling all right, Titus? You’re positively ashen.”

“Just a little nervous, that’s all. Big night for us both.”

“Well, I promise you needn’t worry about me.”

Petronius was given the place of honor on the middle couch of the emperor’s dining party, while Melissa was similarly honored at the Empress Octavia’s table. Evidently, Petronius had taken Tigellinus’s place at Nero’s side, and he glowered with his piggy eye throughout the evening from his exile on the outer couch, never deigning to address a single word to Petronius. It seemed that Tigellinus was a horse breeder by training, which surprised Petronius not in the least. The other members of their party included one horror named Vatinius, a clubfooted shoemaker grown fabulously rich as the major vendor of footware to the army; Menecrates, the emperor’s pet lyre player; and a gaggle of inoffensive, semi-anonymous senators, including Nero’s fellow consul Cornelius Lentulus. The emperor’s voice coach stood nearby at the alert, and on several occasions was compelled to admonish his master for endangering his voice by speaking too loudly or immoderately, but he did not join them for supper. Petronius had expected to find Seneca there, but thought it perhaps unwise to ask after him, given the reportedly tempestuous nature of his relationship with his former pupil.

They discussed the topics of the day: the financial crisis and the recent depreciation of the coinage; the rising of the Iceni tribe in Britain under its Amazon-like queen, Boudicca; the appearance of a comet in the northern sky that had caused great alarm. When Menecrates, who had recently received an estate in Umbria as a gift from Nero, complained about the difficulty and expense of furnishing it, Petronius offered to advise him on selecting statuary and other artworks, and this gave the emperor his opening. He began by praising Petronius lavishly for the refinement and subtlety of his taste, declaring that he would have no one else to direct and guide him when he built his new palace. Petronius responded with self-deprecation, but the conversation in general took a learned, aesthetic turn that effectively excluded everyone but Nero and himself. They spoke at some length, as if they were the only two present, not only about Greek and Roman sculpture, but about verse and music, musical instruments, murals and mosaics, the various materials appropriate for furniture-making. Nero surprised him by the breadth of his knowledge, given his youth and other pursuits, and so long as they kept to such topics their conversation was quite natural, informal and reciprocal. Not that it made Petronius eager to rethink his resolve to shun the court, but at least he would have someone interesting to talk to while he was bound to it.

At some point in the evening, Nero turned to Petronius and spoke to him in a low, conspiratorial tone, his hand on his shoulder.

“I must have you here at court with me, Petronius.”

“Me, Sire? Of what possible use could I be to you?”

“I need your eye. I’m surrounded by boors and vulgarians, you know. I need an adviser of taste and sophistication. Someone who
understands
me.”

“Your majesty flatters me. I’m a simple soldier, more suited to canvas and gruel than to marble and silk.”

“Indeed I doubt it.”

“Even as we speak, arrangements are under way for my retirement to my estates, where I hope to tromp grapes and press cheese for the rest of my natural days.”

Nero ran his tongue along his lower lip and eyed Petronius suspiciously. “Very well,” he said slowly. “But should you find that your plans have changed, I’ll expect you to come to me first.”

Octavia’s party was set up on the dais in a parallel grouping beside the men’s. Like Nero, she was of the most distinguished patrician stock, but her company, unlike her husband’s, reflected the nobility of her lineage. Melissa was the sole plebeian. Like Petronius, she enjoyed the place of honor at Octavia’s left, and whenever possible he cast a glance in her direction. She seemed to be holding her own with casual aplomb—indeed, to be monopolizing the conversation and thoroughly charming all within earshot. Of course, so long as Nero remained at his place, Petronius was not free to mingle at his own pleasure, but on the several occasions when the emperor rose to make his rounds of greetings, Petronius was able to pay brief visits to the ladies’ group. On one such foray, he found Melissa deep into the relation of a complicated story involving her Mauritanian maidservant, a swineherd, and a purse of silver denarii found under a mulberry bush. He stood behind her chair and listened, his hand lightly draped over her shoulder. She told the story with a delicate balance of reserve and bawdy wit, perfectly modulated for her high-born audience. It was as if she had been training for this night her entire life. When she was done, the ladies all laughed and clapped their hands with genuine delight and begged for more. She glanced up at Petronius for the briefest instant, and in her eyes he read gratitude, joy, and love. It was like a slap in the face, that look. Perhaps he staggered; in any case, he made his excuses, bowed, and returned to the emperor’s party.

He did not remember much of the rest of that banquet. On the way home in their litter, Melissa was uncharacteristically jovial and forgiving about her evening and her social prospects. She did not act like one who has triumphed over adversity or concluded a business transaction greatly to her advantage. She acted instead like one who has been restored to the good graces of a dear friend with whom she had quarreled.

“Of course, they’re mostly a bunch of breathless hens. Take away their jewels and hairdressers and they’re no better or cleverer than any wife you’d meet in the barracks. Easily led, you know, easy to please.”

“But it all seems like such a waste of time and energy. Why bother making the effort to cultivate such people, when they have nothing to offer you?”

“Are you jealous, Titus? It’s only a bit of fun. I have more than enough time for serious pursuits; I’m sure I can spare an evening a month to being frivolous, for once in my life. Why else come to Rome? I love it. I feel as if I had come home, as if this was where I were meant to be.”

“They’ll suck you in, you’ll see. You think you’re stronger than they are, and you may be, one on one. But it’s seductive and relentless and ultimately irresistible. All this was why I left Rome in the first place.”

“Really? I thought you’d left Rome to meet me.”

He allowed her to rhapsodize uninterrupted for the rest of the ride. If she noticed his silences and reserve, she made no comment on them. At home in bed, she made love as if Petronius were an inanimate object. Normally, that was just the way he liked her; that night, he was simply glad to feel that he was alone.

He lay awake long after she had fallen into a deep sleep. It took him some time to identify the source of his upset. At first, he traced it to the look she had given him at supper. She had never looked at him that way before—in a way, it had been more disturbing to be at the receiving end of her gratitude and girlish elation than if she had expressed undying hatred for him. It came as a shock to him to find that he did not actually want her pliant, female, and dependent. He wanted her aloof and condescending, as she had been to him in the beginning, when she had first opened his eyes to his own true nature. That was the woman he had fallen in love with, not this … matron. If he wanted a social appendage or a congenial equal—howsoever beautiful, accomplished, or obliging—there were a thousand such in Rome to choose from. He wanted his cruel mistress. What if she were gone for good? Who was this female Proteus, changing her shape at will? Who had she been ten minutes, one minute before he had met her? How had it come about that she, an uneducated commoner, had found herself at home in this exalted circle, whereas he, born and bred to it, found himself alienated and disconsolate? As he lay in bed that night, he was desperate enough to consider the possibility that, were he to tear her from Rome and return her to provincial squalor, keep her entombed in some sleepy outpost with only goats and tax inspectors’ wives for company, she might revert to form. Evidently, her happiness and fulfillment were not good for either of them.

He was silent at breakfast the next morning, and she could not draw him out.

“What’s come over you, Titus? Are you ill?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Talk about what?”

“I can’t stand it here any longer.”

Her tone in response was cautious and measured, as though she were talking to an eccentric stranger who might yet prove to have a dagger concealed about his person. “When you say ‘here,’ where is it, precisely, that you’re referring to?”

“Here in Rome, of course! This terrible place, these awful people.”

Again, she considered carefully before answering. “Titus, you spent three weeks on the boat extolling Rome’s virtues and raving about how happy we’d be here.”