The Queen's Handmaid (11 page)

Varius slowed and turned her to face him. “No, do not tell me I have offended even you with my words.” His look on her was
dark, intense, and his voice melodic. He smelled of something she did not recognize. Ink, perhaps? It was a good smell.

She shook her head. “No. No offense.”

He smiled. “Ah, good. I should not wish to think—”

“Lydia!”

She jerked her head toward the sharp voice.

“My lady, I . . . I was coming soon—”

“I am tired and wish to sleep and yet have no one to wait on me. I was forced to search for someone.” Her attention rested on Varius. “It seems you are otherwise occupied.”

“No, Varius was only—”

Octavia waved a hand. “Do you think I concern myself with the affairs of plebeians and servants? The details are nothing to me. I only know Herod recommended you as the girl who would serve his betrothed wife. I shall have to tell him you seem fit only to serve children.”

It should not have troubled her, this censure from a Roman noblewoman who had little to do with Lydia’s life or her future, and yet the feeling of having displeased Octavia, of being seen as unfit, worthless—it was like the floor of the courtyard falling open beneath her. Like the wide-eyed surprise of the bird on the temple altar earlier as its throat was cut, the sharp shock of being nothing more than a means to an end.

She wished to redeem herself in Octavia’s eyes, convince her to stay silent with Herod. But at the lifeless look in the woman’s eyes, Lydia pushed away the selfish thought and instead touched Octavia’s arm with a gentle but affectionate pressure.

“How may I please you, mistress?”

The question hung unanswered in the humid courtyard air, and it seemed the question she had been asking all her life.

Ten

L
ydia spent the next morning and afternoon making drastic changes to Octavia’s bedchamber and praying that the woman would be pleased rather than angry at her presumption.

The room was in urgent need of freshening. How long had Octavia’s former handmaid been missing? If the rumors of the girl’s dalliance with Marc Antony were true, perhaps she was not focused overmuch on pleasing Octavia even while she remained.

Lydia removed the heavy drapery at the windows, had it taken to the courtyard and the dust beaten from it by a slave. Octavia’s gauzy dresses were washed and hung in the sunlight to dry, then arranged on hooks in the wall. Floors and walls were scrubbed of accumulated soot, wicks trimmed in lamps, and vases of fresh flowers brought from the gardens.

“Lydia, you have worked some magic.”

Lydia’s heart thudded at Octavia’s sudden appearance, but she smiled a nervous welcome at the woman’s return from a meeting with Herod and Antony.

Octavia took in the chamber. “While I have been watching over Rome, it appears you have been watching over me.”

“It would seem too long since anyone had, mistress.”

Octavia closed her eyes briefly. “Yes, you could say that.” The words seemed to reach into that place of sadness again, but then she blinked and tried to smile. “All of this restored beauty puts me in mind for some new pleasures.” She crossed to a table, fished through the contents of a small wooden box, then turned to Lydia with a handful of coins. “Here, take these. I want you to go to the market and make some purchases for me.”

Lydia let her drop the coins into her palm but shook her head. “I have not left this house since arriving, my lady. I would not know where—”

Octavia waved a hand. “It doesn’t matter how long it takes you. There is time to get lost and explore the city if you like. Here, I shall make you a list.”

“I . . . I should not wish to leave you, if you are still feeling the darkness, my lady.”

Octavia sighed. “Just to hear your concern lifts my spirits, Lydia. Perhaps you can convince me that there is value still in this life. But not today.”

Minutes later, armed with nothing more than a scrap of papyrus scrawled with Octavia’s demands and a pouch of heavy coins, Lydia crossed the courtyard, biting her lip.

The freedom to explore Rome was a wondrous gift, but she would prefer to watch over Octavia. And Lydia had no idea where to begin, nor what areas would be unsafe to roam.

“Stealing away for a secret tryst, are we?”

Lydia peered around a leafy palm to the voice hidden in the shadows.

Varius appeared, his teasing smile falling on her.

“What? No! No . . . I . . . Octavia asked me to make some purchases for her.” Why did she always sound like a child when she spoke with him?

Varius emerged from the portico and drew closer. “She has come to rely on you thoroughly, I see. And so soon. But I am not surprised. You have that effect on people everywhere, I would guess.”

Lydia ducked her head and toyed with the silk pouch.

“Where is the slave she has tasked to accompany you? Surely you are not going alone?”

A slave. That would have been a logical request.

At her hesitation, Varius took her arm in his. “Your humble servant, then, my lady.”

“No . . . no, thank you, Varius. That is not necessary.”

But Varius would not be dissuaded. He insisted first on a walk under the lofty pines of the Palatine to look over the Circus Maximus in the valley below.

He drew close, so her gaze traveled the length of his raised arm to where he pointed. “There at the end is where the chariots emerge.” His voice was low, a murmur against her ear, as if the telling were a secret. “It is the most thrilling thing you could imagine. All those thousands in the seats, screaming for their favorites.”

He lowered his arm and shifted to stand almost behind her, his hand resting lightly on her hip. “Close your eyes. I will help you see it.”

She obeyed, and his lyrical voice filled her senses.

“It is like a festival and a banquet and a war, melded into one great spectacle of glorious color and heat. The deafening crush of the crowd, a sea of white togas striped in all the colors of the Republic, raised fists, perfumed air, the sand churning under
chariot wheels, black horses sheened with sweat, and the walls and wheels of golden chariots glinting like a dozen eyes in the bright, bright sun.”

Lydia inhaled deeply, the sharp scent of the pines mixing with the imagined smell of sweat and glory, raising the hair on her arms.

Varius still whispered in her ear. “There is blood and beauty, death and victory, all of it in one place, in one day, for everyone to feel. You would weep and you would laugh to see it, Lydia.”

She nearly did both with only the imagining.

“Come.” Varius woke her from his spell and pulled her away from the lip of the hill. “It grows late and the sun will be falling into the west before your purchases are made.”

She turned from the Circus Maximus, not a little breathless. If the chariot-racing stadium was such as he described, what must the famed theaters built for gladiator fights and the battles of wild beasts be like? Would she be in Rome long enough to witness such?

On the other side of the Palatine Hill, the valley below held the magnificent Forum, the heart of Rome. It stretched into the distance like a city unto itself, and they paused before descending for Varius to point out its highlights—the Via Sacra winding through basilicas and the Temple of Vesta, the Curia Julia where the Senate would meet once the building was finished.

“They’ve been at it for years now, but it was Julius Caesar who began the project, and it seems to have fallen off since his death. Perhaps the new Caesar will finish it. Or perhaps when he has his way, there will be no need for a Senate at all.”

“If the Curia is not finished, where do they meet now?” Octavia had mentioned that the Senate would convene to vote on Herod’s request. Would it be somewhere below?

“In the Theatre of Pompey, some distance from here. It’s a magnificent theater, with a large quadriporticus behind for strolling and shopping before and after the dramas, and there is a curia in the rear where the Senate meets.” Varius led her down the path toward the Forum. “It was on those steps where Julius Caesar met his end.”

They descended the path, then the steps that led into the Forum as the sun also lowered behind the western end of the Forum, bathing the white marble forest in a pinkish hue. She hurried Varius along, concerned about the setting sun and Octavia left so long alone. But she wished to linger, to take in every moment of it—the way the stones felt under her feet, the breeze that went from cool and feathery on the hill to warm and humid as they descended, the light falling on Varius’s dark hair and handsome features.

The Forum still boasted crowds, and they jostled through, Varius pulling her along to make her purchases. She sniffed the perfumes in tiny amphorae he waved under her nose before making her choice, tasted the olives he bought and placed into her mouth.

Near the western end of the Forum, the Curia Julia’s marble went from pink to gold, blinding the eyes. They turned to face the length they had traversed. It had grown cooler, and Lydia rubbed her arms to fight the chill.

Varius circled her shoulders with his arm and pulled her against the heat of his body, saying nothing.

She was content to experience this moment, bathed in gold itself, this sense of belonging, of being important to someone—a man—in a way she had never felt.

Except Samuel.

A stab of something—guilt?—lessened the warmth in her heart. She pushed it away.

Varius pointed to a raised platform nearby. “The Rostra. Where speakers spout their rhetoric. It’s where Marc Antony gave his funeral speech for Julius Caesar. Got the Roman mob so whipped up, they burned down the homes of Brutus and Cassius and chased them from the city.”

Was there a note of jealousy in Varius’s voice at the effectiveness of Marc Antony’s recitations?

“And just a couple of years ago, when Marc Antony had finally had enough of Cicero’s meddling, he had the man killed and then hung his severed head and right hand there on the Rostra.”

Lydia shuddered. “His right hand?”

Varius smiled. “To signify his pen and the words it had produced, I suppose. It was not enough for Antony’s last wife, Fulvia, though. She came and pulled out his tongue, then jabbed it repeatedly with her hairpin to condemn his speeches as well.” He shrugged. “Perhaps I shall suffer a similar fate.”

Lydia forced her gaze from the gruesome memories of the platform and lifted it to the Palatine. The Forum lay in gloomy dusk. “It is time for me to return.”

They talked little on the walk back. Lydia’s heart was full of the closeness of Varius, but her mind churned with the symbols of death and violence she had seen today. What kind of city was this Rome, so intent on power and strength to find its place in the world?

Varius left her outside Antony’s home, perhaps reluctant to be seen with her.

She delivered the purchases to Octavia, who thankfully was in the bedchamber of her youngest, stroking the sleeping child’s hair with a peaceful, if somber, expression.

In the days to follow, Varius seemed to frequent the house more than expected for a poet, and he often took a turn around the courtyard with Lydia in the evenings. On the night of their fifth day in Rome, he left her with a kiss on the hand and a warm good night.

She walked slowly to the room she shared with the other female servants of Herod’s party.

Near the door, she heard loud voices and slowed. Riva’s voice she recognized, but not the other—a man’s. Was Riva so bold as to entertain a man in the shared chamber? Should Lydia confront her or slink away to return later?

“I have nothing, I tell you!” Riva’s words were edged with fear.

Lydia drew closer to the door, leaned around the frame. A brawny man dressed in a dark tunic had his back to her, but Riva’s white face and wide eyes matched the fear in her voice. Was that a dagger in his hand?

He reached for a bedding mat and slashed it open.

A memory surfaced—Samuel’s rooms, torn apart by someone searching for the scrolls.

The man had Riva pinned against the back wall.

Lydia turned and fled to the front of the house, where a slave always guarded the door.

“Please, come quickly!” She stumbled into the hall and grabbed at the arm of the bare-chested slave. “A servant girl is being attacked!”

Eleven

T
he brutish slave who always guarded the door, with his short sword strapped to his waist, shook off Lydia’s grasp as though she were an insect. “Servant girls—bah! What is that to me?”

Lydia balled her fists. “He . . . he is stealing from the household. Searching through belongings for anything of value!”

At this, the slave’s jaw tightened, bulging the veins in his neck. “Where?”

Lydia turned and fled toward the shared room. Riva’s cries sounded through the hall as they approached.

“Where are they?” The intruder was still firing questions at Riva. “Tell me and live. I know you brought them from Alexandria!”

From behind her, the slave barreled past and into the room without pause. Lydia hovered at the door frame.

The intruder spun, Riva in his grasp and the dagger at her throat. The girl’s eyes bulged like a fish in the market and her lips were drawn back over her teeth.

The room was in chaos—belongings flung aside and bedding torn.

Lydia’s glance darted to the corner where she’d secreted the scrolls. The urn looked undisturbed. For now.

“I care not what you do with the girl.” The slave’s voice was the growl of a predator. “But you are not leaving this room alive.” The sword had found its way into the slave’s hand and he half crouched, his stance wide and ready.

Riva’s attacker seemed to realize the pointlessness of his hold on the girl and cast her aside into the disarray of the room. Riva scrambled backward until she slammed against the side wall, and her hands worried at the plaster behind her as though she would push her way through. Her skin was plaster-pale already, her hair disheveled.

The two men faced off, but the slave had been bred and trained to defend the household, and his sword was longer than the thief’s dagger. It was only a moment before the slave’s sword punctured the black tunic at gut level. The trespasser doubled over the sword and grabbed at the blade as if to pull it from his belly. The slave held the sword as the man fell, freeing it from his body.