Enemies at Home (29 page)

Unnoticed by us at first, Gratus and I were being closely observed by another difficult slave. Myla had been hovering near us, in that nosy way of hers. As soon as she saw me looking at her, she edged away.

To my surprise, she then suddenly marched across the courtyard. I had never seen her move with so much determination. She went straight to where Galla Simplicia, her cousin and son were talking in a small group, interrupting them in such a rude way that Gratus sucked his breath sharply through his teeth. ‘That’s not acceptable!’

Myla addressed Sextus Simplicius. ‘Am I to be sent to that sale next week?’ she demanded loudly.

Simplicius looked flustered but he answered coolly, ‘It will be sooner than next week. As Valerius Aviola’s executor I can say that all the slaves whose freedom has not been specifically given in his will by their kind master will be going to market, yes indeed.’

Myla had gone red. Her next target was Aviola’s son: ‘You know that’s wrong! You know that was not what your father wanted!’

‘A decision had been made,’ Valerius said quickly, more positive than I had ever seen him.

‘I deserve better than this!’

‘You have always had good treatment.’

‘I was made promises.’

‘I think not. You must accept what has to be.’

‘Oh, young master, you have a kind heart – save me!’

‘No,’ said Valerius. Unable to bear her begging, he turned and walked away.

‘I have a child! What about the child?’ wailed Myla.

‘Do not worry about your offspring!’ Galla Simplicia blocked Myla from following her son. Her voice, normally so light in timbre, became hard: ‘It is not wanted in this household. You shall go together, mother and baby − “Buy one, get one free”.’

Beside me, Gratus gulped. I cringed too. ‘Galla was winning me over today, but that was a cruel put down!’

Gratus turned to me with an odd look. ‘Has anybody told you about her?’

‘Galla Simplicia?’

‘No, the slave woman.’

I mimicked the regular comment around here:
‘Oh, she’s just Myla!’

There was a moment of stillness. I gazed at the steward. He raised his eyebrows expressively, then also shrugged his shoulders in that elegant way he had.

‘I see there is a story. Please tell me?’

‘I could not possibly comment,’ replied Gratus.

‘Oh no! You cannot leave it there, Gratus. I know how things work. There is nothing to single out that slave as special, certainly not diligence at work. Yet normal household management is never applied to her. She herself implies she is untouchable. She does what she likes – normally very little. Polycarpus, though a good steward, use to let her get away with it.’

‘So what does that tell you?’ Gratus whispered secretively.

‘She had a protector. One who cannot protect her any longer.’ I gave Gratus a long look, then put a theory to him. ‘Try this: was Polycarpus the father of Myla’s children?’

‘O
h, strip me naked and whip me round the Forum of the Romans, Flavia Albia! Where did you get that from?’ I was slandering a fellow-steward and Gratus was raring to set me straight. Anyone would think stewards had a guild (not legal, since so many were not free). ‘I had reason to dislike the man but I had known him for years and Polycarpus would never have touched that dangerous piece of mischief.’

‘The man was too savvy?’

‘He had a decent wife and children—’

‘That never stops some people, Gratus.’

‘Not in his case. He was faithful – more or less – and, give him his due, he had far better taste!’

I let a slow grin creep across my face. ‘Well. Settle down, my friend. I was just testing. Part of my job. I saw Polycarpus’ attitude towards Myla for myself. He looked irritated by her, and annoyed at having to put up with her in his well-run establishment. I thought little of it at the time.’

Gratus reluctantly came down from his agitation. He would not demean himself by asking who I really thought Myla’s lover was, though I believed he wanted me to know.

I put him out of his misery. ‘Once you think about it, it’s obvious. She has been here for years. She has borne several children. Nobody ever enquires who their father is. Simplicius views her with distaste. Galla and Valerius Junior are vicious to her. Valerius will not hear Myla’s pleas; he absolutely wants her gone. Anyone but Myla herself would know it was stupid to ask him. Can there be any doubt, Gratus – Myla sees herself as special because she was singled out by the one person nobody else could question? It was Valerius Aviola who slept with her.’

‘Flavia Albia, I bow to your powers of conjecture!’ replied Gratus. He was pretending he had known nothing about it. But that was only because he was a very good steward, and very good stewards are impervious to gossip.

A
fter seeing that those who held power over her had now all ganged up against her, Myla stomped off, heading towards the kitchen.

Gratus left me, needing to be among his staff. I waited a moment, gathering my thoughts, then I followed Myla.

I would have liked to corner her alone, but Galla’s younger daughter was there ahead of me − Simplicia, a thin young woman in decorous dark funeral clothes. Her mother’s daughter, she also had several pieces of gold jewellery and such immaculate face colours I wondered where she had her makeup done. She was probably painted by a slave at home, so I did not bother to ask.

When I came in, she had only just arrived and was addressing Myla. ‘I heard a baby crying.’

‘He’s watching her,’ replied Myla gruffly, nodding at the youth Cosmus who was with her. ‘Supposed to be.’ He was peering into food stores like any ravenous young boy. Unlike the sharp knives in my family, he had no notion of stopping and looking innocent on the approach of adults.

Simplicia was indignant, though not because the baby had been left to cry. She pointed to the child, who was no longer lying in the basket I had seen before, but in an elderly wooden cradle. Despite its age, it was well-made, perhaps by the family’s estate carpenter. ‘I have been searching for that!’ Simplicia exclaimed indignantly. ‘It was ours – we all had it, my sister and brother and me. It is now wanted for my sister’s baby. You have no right to it; please remove your child at once.’

A married woman even though still young, she spoke forcefully and with obvious annoyance, but Galla had brought her up to treat slaves politely. Simplicia clearly knew Myla, and made no threat of punishment.

Truculent but mute, Myla lifted the child, then took her out of the kitchen.

‘You can go!’ snapped Simplicia at Cosmus. She seemed to know him too. From her tone, she may have been afraid he would refuse her instructions.

He ambled off, but that was because I added sharply, ‘Get lost, Cosmus!’

Simplicia dropped onto a stool and momentarily covered her face with her hands as if things were all too much.

I sat down with her. ‘Do you mind if we talk?’

Simplicia raised her head, rocking the cradle absent-mindedly with one narrow foot, perhaps unconsciously reclaiming the heirloom. I said what I wanted to ask was delicate and I particularly hoped to spare her mother. That gave the daughter an excuse to speak frankly, if she needed one.

‘Can you tell me about your father’s relationship with Myla?’

Her mouth tightened and she gazed fixedly at a pot on the hearth. ‘She was there, she was available, he slept with her.’ Her voice was tight; it obviously rankled. I waited. ‘There was never anything to it, other than he was the master and she was his slave.’

I reassured her quietly. ‘This happens everywhere.’ As the young woman remained frowning and silent, I went on, ‘I am not condoning it, but men who own slaves, and women too, presume that is what the slaves are there for. A condition of slavery is to be used for sexual purposes. Masters have the right to do it. Slaves have no right to say no.’

Simplicia relaxed, heaving a large sigh. ‘She accepted it. My father was head of the household so she thought it made her better than the rest.’

‘He only slept with Myla?’

‘He was a man of habit.’

‘Excuse me if this is painful, but did it have any bearing on why your parents divorced all those years ago?’

‘None at all. My mother would not have stood for it, but that is irrelevant, Flavia Albia. It happened later.’

I nodded. I could see the situation. Aviola liked things easy. Set up a routine, so he did not have to think about it: answered his correspondence, ate his supper, had intercourse with his usual slave. All matter-of-fact, because he was the master and he owned the slave to provide whatever he needed: offer a napkin, hand him ripe fruit, lie down on her back – or her front, or stand up, or kneel for him. He did not even bother to go out and buy someone beautiful or skilled in exotic practices. He used the house girl.

It was more than possible his father had used Myla’s mother the same way.

So, when he wanted relief, Valerius Aviola called Myla in, screwed her, then dismissed her. He wouldn’t have made conversation. He would dislike her offering endearments. If she was moody because of her period, he could give her a slap if he wanted. When she was too pregnant, he could go out and have himself professionally serviced, then he could openly complain about the cost.

It makes you wonder why anybody gets married. The man never had to remember her birthday or listen to her endlessly dissecting what some inane friend of hers said yesterday.

To spare Simplicia, I myself established basic facts: Aviola and Galla were divorced for many years. After they split, he started to sleep with Myla. It was a regular occurrence and she bore him children. He did not formally acknowledge the children. They were sold elsewhere while young. Myla had said she had borne ‘several’ and they were now ‘gone’. Then one day Aviola chose to remarry. It had no implications for him, but was bound to affect her. Superfluous, she lost her special position. She was supposed to return to being a bowl-bringer and pot-watcher.

I decided not to offend Simplicia by trying to probe what kind of person her father was. Hardly the worst sexual predator. People he knew spoke of Mucia and him as a likeable couple. He must have possessed some charm. Mucia wanted the full joys of marriage with him.

I reckoned that his ex-wife and children knew what went on but were able to ignore it. Whenever the children saw him, he may have been discreet. But it was his right. They too had to put up with it. From his point of view it was perfectly acceptable, much better than, say, adultery with someone they knew socially. Sex with a slave did not count.

For Myla it did count but who cared about that?

‘Inevitably your father’s new marriage meant change. You said your mother would not have permitted a liaison − nor would Mucia Lucilia, I imagine. Your mother and Mucia had been friends; I imagine they were women of a like mind. We can say, when your father married, Myla had no further use and was a menace to his new wife?’

‘Exactly!’

‘But Myla would not accept her demotion?’

‘She was being very difficult.’ That would be the problem a wife had to address. She could not have a slave undermining her position. A slave who made demands or harboured expectations. Mucia Lucilia may have been surreptitious with her redecoration plans in the apartment, but for her Myla had to go. Hermes, Mucia’s freedman, claimed she was always diplomatic, but I wondered.

‘Mucia Lucilia saw what had been going on.’ I wondered if Galla even warned her about it. ‘Mucia was no meek young bride, but a woman who knew she had to pre-empt trouble. She insisted that Myla be sold? I am guessing your father agreed, yet found it hard to tell Myla? I expect he wanted Polycarpus to break the bad news.’

‘No.’ Simplicia was quiet. ‘He told her. My father had made it plain to Myla what was to happen.’

You could see that as decent honesty – or a cold attitude.

‘Did Myla believe him?’

‘Not really. The woman is impossible … Yes, Flavia Albia, she was upset. We all knew that, and we are not vicious; we understood. She was
verna,
born to a slave of ours long ago; she had never been anywhere else and was terrified. I do not blame her feelings, yet she should have seen the position, her own position, my father’s, my new stepmother’s. If she had behaved modestly, shown she was willing to carry out her duties as a general maid, it might have been feasible to keep her in one of our houses. Instead, she was rude, she was belligerent—’

‘And she was carrying another child,’ I said. ‘Did your father, more than reasonably some would say, agree nothing should happen until this baby was born?’

‘He was a decent man.’ His daughter fought a sudden rush of tears.

She was a decent girl – even though she had just evicted her baby half-sister from the family cradle for having the bad fortune to be born to a slave.

A
change in the activity out in the courtyard signalled that people were leaving. Simplicia stood up and went to rejoin her relatives. She said no farewell to me, simply inclined her head and walked out. In a way, this chit of nineteen treated me with less respect than she gave her father’s slave.

It was a familiar experience. I might be a free citizen, a widow and ten years her senior, but I worked. For many people that put me down at the level of bar staff and public entertainers. To girls like Simplicia, I was practically illegal.

I, too, returned to the courtyard. Most people had gone and the last stragglers were disappearing. Gratus had everything swept up, put away, taken out to a mule in no time. His staff carried off food hampers and baskets of tableware. He came and said goodbye to me.

‘These were here – shall I leave them out or put them indoors?’

He meant the two chairs. I said he could leave them. I had lost any sense of responsibility towards this apartment and its contents. ‘You are very observant, Gratus. The ungrateful Simplicii don’t deserve you. If I can think of anyone I know who needs a good steward, I shall put in a word on your behalf.’