A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow of Heaven (29 page)

“How long till soon?”

“I don’t know, Hanno, perhaps in a couple of months?”

“Will I see him tomorrow?”

“No, dumpling, not tomorrow. We’ll let you know as soon as we find out. Now let Livia talk to Andros. You’re doing a wonderful job with your broom.”

“I
am
doing a wonderful job! Thank you!” The smile came back.

“You
were saying…”

“I was saying how you are staying and I am going. Now, do you really have any interest at all in this?” She waved the grey ball at me. “It’s quite remarkable.”

“I’m listening.”

She lowered her voice for the first few words. “Our Celtic friend showed me how to make it. It’s mostly goat fat and beechwood ash, if you can find it, but any fine ash will do. You mix it with water and it cleans everything, even clothes. He calls it
soap
.”

“Remarkable.”

“He also claims it makes your hair shiny,” she said.

“You’ve used it on your hair, haven’t you? I can tell. You look stunning.”

“Don’t try to flatter me out of going and thank you.”

“Livia is beautiful!” Hanno said.

“Why thank you, dear. You’re beautiful, too.”

“Yeah!” Hanno dropped the broom and clapped by bumping the heels of his hands together in rapid succession.

“Where are your first gloves, Hanno?” I asked. “Those look newer. They are the second pair, aren’t they?”

Hanno nodded. “I don’t know.” He thought about it hard, and realizing he had no idea where he had left them, his lower lip began to tremble.

“They’re probably in our room,” Livia said. “Don’t worry about it, dumpling. We’ll find them.” She dried her hands on a towel and turned to me. “One of us is going to have to stay behind to look after the baby.” She patted the ball of her stomach.

“It cannot be me. And the thought of you here, safe with our child, will give me strength on my journey.”

“Crassus is going to
war
, Andros! Whose skills do you think are more valuable, a healer’s or a scribe’s?”

“Scribe indeed. Your sense of humor blossoms when your humors are out
of balance. Think on it, love—when has
dominus
ever gone anywhere without me?”

“I’m going,” Hanno said.

“That’s good, dumpling. It’s almost time for supper. Please put the broom in its place and be sure to wash that dust off before you come to table.”

“No, Livia. I’m going to war with Father Jupiter. Want to see me march?” He began to
limp about the room.

“Hanno,
you
are not going anywhere.” Seeing his face begin to crumple, I quickly rephrased. “Because we have a very important job for you. We need you to stay here and help look after little Marcus when he comes.”

“Or little Sabina.”

“Are they coming with Brenus and Taog?”

“You know, they may just. One or the other. You and Andros will have such fun playing with the baby while I’m away.”

“I refuse to have this discussion with a pregnant woman. Besides, it is entirely academic. We need only put our cases before
dominus
.”

“Let’s go to the kitchen, then. I have an insatiable craving for a plate of jellied eel.”

•••

The truth was, neither of us was anxious to go before Crassus to plead our case. Whatever his ruling, if he was determined to forego the sight, scent and touch of his beloved wife for two, maybe three years to achieve his goal, he would not think twice to demand the same of one of us. For a generation I had belonged to the growing, fortunate
familia
of the Crassus household. But now, just at the moment when Livia and I were about to make our own true family together, Crassus would snatch it away from us. Throughout my life, experience has been there to be my willing teacher, yet what a poor student I have made. Why can’t I remember that not once have I ever seen a coin, whether grimy copper or bright gold, that had but one side.

PART II –
A Hardness of Stone

Chapter X
VIII

55 BCE   -   Fall, Rome

Year of the consulship of

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Marcus Licinius Crassus Dives

As you came to the end of the last scroll, you who read this, did you laugh at our folly? I could not blame you if you had clucked or tsked, but can we be faulted for imagining that Crassus would take
some
interest in his newborn property and show
some
regard for its parents? He did neither. It was
both
of us he wanted and both of us he took. Livia was as skilled a doctor as
dominus
had ever seen, the equal of her mother and more, for Sabina had lacked the knowledge of the ancient Egyptian healing arts. Of course Crassus would take her, though I begged on my knees for him to leave her behind. When that failed, I had nothing more to say, for I would never ask for him to take her and leave me, even to be a father to our son.

Yes, a son,
Felix, born to us on the 3
rd
of October, seven pounds of soundless, red-faced fury that melted into entranced repose the instant he found his mother’s nipple. Our master’s plan was to set sail from Brundisium in November. Five weeks. That is all the time he gave us. So we held him, fed him and inhaled the indescribable scent that belongs only to new life. We stayed up nights to comfort his cries, then lay exhausted with him curled between us, lulled at last by the tiny rasp of his breath.

You may wonder at our choice of a name
that means happy, blessed and lucky. Wonder no more. The choice was not ours, but lady Tertulla’s. Do not forget we were but pets, and never has there been a bitch that names its own litter. Yes, I was bitter. Far easier was it to absorb the consequences of a life without choice when I was the only one suffering those consequences. Now one had become three, and it was as if I had been enslaved anew. Curio’s harsh words rose like bile; I drank to drown them out, but I cannot hold my wine. Livia held my forehead as I kneeled over the basin. She ground mint and waneb root (the herb she had insisted on buying that day at the baths) and suffused them into a tea. Within minutes I was still bitter, but at least my stomach and head were much improved. We decided Felix was a name hard to dislike; perhaps, for once, this would not be another instance for life to laugh at us poor mortals with its sadistic sense of irony.

Hanno was entranced. The moment his stabl
e chores were through, he dashed to our quarters to thrust his head into Felix’s basket to see what ‘little brother’ was up to. That is, after he’d passed inspection.

“Don’t you dare touch that baby till you’ve washed your hands, young man.” Livia guided Hanno to the basin.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Hanno scrubbed away as Livia had shown him, rubbing the tops of his hands and the bumps where his fingers used to be.

“Soap,” she reminded him.

“It’s very slippery! I can’t hold it.”

“Do you want me or Andros to help you?”

“No, I can do it by myself! I like the bubbles. They have shiny  colors.” The boy chased the ball around the basin, splashing water on the floor. “It’s very slippery,” he repeated.

“Would you like some help now?” Livia asked gently.

“Yes, please.”

Hanno was very gentle with the baby; to watch them together on
ly multiplied our sense of loss.

•••

We gave Felix all the love we could for as long as we could. Then we handed him to lady Tertulla and followed our master to war. The separation from Hanno was unspeakable. He had to be physically restrained and no amount of affection or reassurance would stop the flow of his tears.

Those
partings chipped another piece from the foundation of what I had convinced myself to think of as my friendship with Marcus Crassus. It fell to the ground, and though it might be repaired with care and time, I would not, could not ever be the one to bend my scarred back to pick it up.

•••

Dominus
was not totally heartless; in fact he was generous beyond measure, though his kindheartedness bore the cruelest of ironies. Not only had lady Tertulla promised to personally see to the care of little Felix, our lord made this pledge:  if the fates were merciless and neither Livia nor I returned to claim our son within three years, Crassus, or Tertulla in his absence, would go before a magistrate with
dominus’
written instructions to perform the ceremony of manumission. He showed us the scroll—a guarantee of our boy’s freedom, including a stipend of 5,000 sesterces a year, until his 25
th
birthday, at which time a place would be found for him to continue working on the estate as a freedman, if he so chose. All that was required to satisfy this generous arrangement was that both his parents be casualties of Crassus' war.

But what if we lived? What if
dominus
was right and the Parthians were easily overcome? To survive would condemn the child to a life of servitude. Coming home would be tantamount to making our own son a slave. The obvious and literal escape clause was easily blocked:  should either of us run away or attempt to flee, the offer would be rescinded. The only way to free Felix was to die.

To understand how Crassus could imagine that we would be comforted by such an offer, you must see it from his point of view. To him, choosing freedom, a life outside the aegis of his beneficence, was a poor decision indeed. The security, housing, sustenance, sense of
familia
—the life he gave his slaves was better by far than anything that could be imagined beyond his influence. He was undoubtedly right; Crassus was an exception to the Roman norm. But he also understood, because I had explained it to him on numerous occasions, that servitude to an enlightened master was a viper with seductive and unshakeable fangs:  the more a slave was injected with the venom of comfort and security, the more numb he became to his own condition.

So Crassus, knowing what it would mean to Livia and me, would give our son the choice, should we not return, of making his own way in the world.
Felix Alexandros would be able to choose his own destiny. From that moment on, there was not a day that passed without the contemplation of our cruel dilemma. We were determined to give our newborn son the chance to become a free man.

•••

The day before Crassus was to hear the decision from the senate regarding his invasion plans, I made yet another attempt to dissuade my master from his costly revenge. We sat together in his office.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” he had said. “I
believe
my wife was raped. I am going to war because I believe her.”

“She would never betray you,” I said quietly.

“Let me tell you a story,” Crassus said. “I named Publius after my brother. Before he was murdered, one time when we were children, I came upon him playing with a toy catapult that belonged to me. Publius had broken one of the strings that secured the basket and was trying to repair it. I pushed him aside, looked at the damage and saw how easy it would be to fix. I left it in the dirt, and never played with it again.”

I did not know what to say. “You need time.”

“I do not think I am not alone in my misgivings about that night,” Crassus said, “Your lady is finding it more and more difficult to accept what happened that night in Luca. True, it was she who had warned me away with her eyes. But it was I who froze, as hard and as unmoving as quarry marble. And when at last my indecision thawed, what action did I take? I faded into the darkness. I cannot tell you with certainty whether it was her silent plea or cowardice that finally moved me.” He paused to rub brusquely at his eyes, as if by doing so, he could blind himself to that one memory. “We do not speak of it.”

“With respect,
dominus
, could it be you, not
domina
, who is finding your…predicament more difficult to accept? My lady adores you. She wants things as they were. I can see it in her every movement, in the way she looks at you when she knows you cannot see. She wants to reach you,
dominus
, but grows afraid she no longer knows how.”