The Uncertain Hour (20 page)

She took the grand tour of the Esquiline villa in dumbstruck rapture. Seeing it through her eyes, he understood just how intimidating it might be. “You call it a villa,” she said, almost in a whisper, “but it’s twice the size of the governor’s palace in Nico-media.” Through the vast foyers, vestibules, reception galleries, and dining halls, each with its own coffered ceiling leafed in silver or gold, its gleaming columns of exotic stone, each floor a masterpiece of mosaic or marbling; the endless suites of bedchambers, salons, fitting rooms, and secluded offices; hot baths, cold baths, swimming pool and steam room, the private theater, the sprawling kitchen, each of its three hearths larger than her bedroom in Prusa; the army of attendants, clerks, managers, servants, and slaves, each with a name and a function to be mastered and remembered—they spent several hours on the first pass alone, until at last she could take no more and, with a sigh as much of resignation as of contentment, she collapsed in the shadow of a swaying cypress at the margins of the sculpture garden, under the sober gaze of Mars and a war party of Amazons. Petronius thought that perhaps he had asked too much of her on her first arrival, and that he ought to have introduced her more gradually to the overwhelming reality of her new home.

“It is all too much,” she said hoarsely.

“Does it not please you?” he asked hopefully. “My country estates are more modest.”

“No, it’s all quite spectacular.” She sighed again, this time less ambiguously. “It shall come to me in time. As you did, Titus.”

In the days that followed, Petronius worked feverishly to put the household in order, examined the books and accounts, received his various agents and managers, and generally reac-quainted himself with his business affairs, all ably and honestly managed by his Syrian freedman Antiochus in his absence. He hardly saw the new mistress of the house, but on those occasions when their paths crossed it was clear that she had taken to her new role with quiet zeal and determination. Her job, of course, was not to manage the enormous household staff—they had freedmen aplenty for that—but to set the tone, and because she had ample experience as an army wife in the discipline of decorum, she had an instinctive feel for dealing with the slaves, addressing the freedmen with respectful dominance, and dressing and acting the part of matron. She was swept up in the constant procession of dressmakers, cobblers, and jewelers called in to provide her with a suitable wardrobe. The choices she made showed both restraint, conditioned by a frank acknowledgment of her limited grasp of metropolitan fashions, and a joyous flexing of muscles she’d previously had little use for and barely realized she possessed. She seemed to grow larger and more powerful with every passing moment. And yet the consummate dignity with which she oversaw the household was precisely the same as that with which he’d seen her bargain for cabbage in the market at Prusa.

As word of Petronius’s return spread through the circles of his former society, they were besieged by well-wishers, distant cousins, debtors, and would-be parasites, all duly welcoming and deferential to them both. He introduced her under a plausibly northern pseudonym. No one, he thought, can have been taken in by the ruse, as she could scarcely pass for the patrician that her alias suggested she was. At the same time, given his name and reputation as a new favorite of the emperor’s, few would have ventured to offer her the least hint of disrespect, even had the truth of her origins become known.

He marveled at her confidence. “Will they not consider me inferior?” she asked him casually one evening at supper, a now-rare moment of intimacy and repose.

“Some might. None would say so to your face. Does it worry you?”

“Not especially. We had our share of snobbery even in the barracks. Let them think what they like. But I would be sorry to be a burden on your prospects.”

“I don’t think you need to be concerned about my prospects, darling.”

Petronius had sent word to the Quirinal immediately upon his arrival, but at that particular moment the emperor was preparing to inaugurate the first of the four-year games dedicated in his own name, and sent a brief note begging his patience. The games were to be modeled on the Greek festivals, with contests in music, poetry, gymnastics, and equestrian skills. Petronius himself attended several, and was present when Lucan introduced his
In Praise of Nero
, a dismal screed of shameless flattery that nonetheless won him fame and fortune—much good it did him. It was as the games were winding to their end that a messenger arrived informing Petronius that the emperor was ready to receive him.

“I think I’d better attend to him on my own this first time,” he told her. “He was just a little boy the last time I saw him. I’m not quite sure how much they say of him is true, and it might be best to keep you out of harm’s way for the time being.”

To his surprise, she was not in the least put out at being left behind. “Please do,” she yawned. “None of my dresses are ready in any case. I wouldn’t know what to wear.”

Petronius knew, even before he entered the palace, that it was not a place he would care to spend much time in. The outer courtyard was milling with thuggish young men, knights in their teens and early twenties who swaggered and jostled and spat and swore, and who grudgingly made way for him as he pushed his way through the throng. These were the “Augustans” he had heard so much about, Nero’s preferred companions on his nightly rounds of bullying and mayhem through the darkened streets of the city. Petronius had long been aware, of course, of the emperor’s aversion to philosophers and intellectuals—after all, his mother had entrusted his education to a dancer and a barber—but he had attributed the rumors to exaggeration and patrician resentment. Now he saw with his own eyes, as his praetorian escort guided him to the reception hall, that it was all true. The corridors swarmed with the low-born and the venal, moneylenders and syndicalists and horse traders, and Petronius recognized hardly a single face. It was difficult to imagine how he would make a place for himself in this world—not that he would want to. He had never considered himself a snob—after all, he had spent much of the last three years entrusting his life to brave and honorable knights and commoners in the ranks—but merely being in the presence of these courtiers brought out a sense of superiority and disdain in him that would be hard to conceal. Just as a man who works in the sewers or the pig sties longs to feel himself clean at the end of the day, Petronius found himself from those very first moments at the court wishing to distinguish himself from this mob of cutthroats and boors. He drew some comfort from the fact that the hallways were lined with the sublime works that he had sent home from Bithynia, even if the louts paid them not the least attention or leaned against them as if they were hitching posts.

The crowd in the reception hall was somewhat more refined. A number of senators lingered in a desultory way at the margins of the room, gathering in small, defensive clusters against the hordes of delegations that had come to congratulate the emperor on the successful completion of the games. Several of Petronius’s peers recognized him and tried to wave him over, but he bowed and pressed on toward the dais at the back of the hall, where Nero and his coterie were receiving their encomiums. As Petronius approached, he saw his escort whisper to one turbaned courtier lounging near the edge of the dais, who immediately rose to his feet and crossed to another who sat directly beside the emperor. This second courtier, a chubby, rosy-cheeked man several years older than the rest, scanned the room with the eyes of a choleric hog and fixed him with a look of languid malice. Then he turned to the emperor, spoke in his ear, and pointed at Petronius. Nero’s countenance lit up in apparently genuine delight, and he waved him to the dais with a broad grin. A hush fell upon the room and all eyes turned to Petronius, a wide path suddenly opening up down the center of the hall to let him through.

He studied the emperor’s face as he approached. He was still the same wicked boy Petronius had met eight years ago, only now a young man in his early twenties: broad head tapering to a narrow jaw; bulbous nose and jutting, ill-proportioned ears; under a forceful brow, wide arrogant eyes the color of a fish pond; full lips curled in a perpetual sneer, even when smiling in pleasure; straight, glossy black hair, now graced with wispy sideburns. His cheeks were already beginning to fill out with the evidence of sloth and self-indulgence. Around him, a pride of young barbarians in various poses of torpor stared at Petronius with the impassive curiosity of juvenile predators. Nero rose from his chair and strode to the edge of the dais. He wore a victor’s laurels at his temples.

“So what do you think, Petronius? I have just been awarded first prize by these Greeks.” His voice was a pure, aristocratic baritone, most out of consonance with his cruel features. He was speaking to Petronius, but his words were directed at the entire assembly.

“Forgive me, Sire. I did not know you were a contestant.”

“I wasn’t!” He laughed absurdly. “I am recognized in my role as presiding deity.”

“When all are equally inspired, it is the muse who must take credit.”

“I’m the muse, am I? Lucan said much the same in his poem, didn’t you?” He gestured toward a young Spaniard couched uncomfortably at the back of the dais, apart from the others. “Did you hear it? It’s a gem. He’ll recite it for us one evening soon.”

“I look forward to it, Sire.”

“So, you’re back in Rome. I need you here most desperately. What did you bring us from Bithynia?”

“A rare
kouros
, in perfect condition, a time traveler from the dark ages.”

“You can keep the
kouros
, Petronius. You know I don’t go in for such rubbish. And a woman, yes? A northerner?” He said it without guile—gods, of course, expect no one to be surprised by their omniscience.

“A mistress. A keepsake, Sire.”

“You’ll bring her to meet us. Octavia could use some decent company. Tigellinus here”—he waved toward the rosy-cheeked man—“will organize a banquet in your honor. Come then, both of you. But now I have these tiresome delegations to attend to. We’ll talk more.”

They bowed to one another, and the audience was at an end. Petronius decided to walk home, leaving with a stronger determination than ever to avoid being sucked into the inner circles of the court. His first instinct had been spot-on. For someone like him—an aristocrat, a power broker by default, a gentleman steeped in the ancient republican virtues, philosophy, and ethics—cultivating Nero’s friendship would be a thankless endeavor fraught with danger and the need for constant, enervating vigilance. Only twenty minutes in that festering cesspool had reminded him—in a way that years in the senate and on the battlefield had not—of all that he had once sought to be: a good man living a good life, making every decision on the basis of an immutable set of beliefs and standards of behavior and honor. It had made him feel old, and wise, and virtuous, none of which he was except, perhaps, in contrast to Nero and his courtiers. Some ambitious men had gravitated into Nero’s orbit by necessity, being independent neither of means, birth, nor mind. Their connections were all they had, intrigue their sole exchangeable currency, ruthlessness their only motor of ascent. None of that applied to Petronius. He had the wealth, the detachment, and the motivation to break free. It would mean, of course, abandoning all political ambition and civic duty while Nero remained enthroned—which, given his age and strapping good health, would probably mean the rest of Petronius’s life—but he knew beyond any doubt that it was a price he would be pleased to pay, and that ultimately it would bring him to greater wisdom and peace of mind than a life devoted to navigating the treacherous maze of imperial politics.

He would have to go about this disengagement very cautiously. One does not simply say “no” when a man like Nero invites one into his inner sanctum. Petronius’s letters and dispatches from Bithynia had convinced the emperor, according to several reports, that Petronius was the very paragon of discernment, the embodiment of all that was tasteful and refined; it would not be safe to disappoint him or to be in the least offhanded in declining to embrace his friendship. Nero had made his point most eloquently by reminding Petronius that even his closest companions were under perpetual scrutiny, and that his informers had, in the space of only a few days, penetrated into the very heart of Petronius’s domestic arrangements. If Nero wanted him as his friend, or his adviser, or in whatever capacity he had in mind, that’s just what he would be until such time as he could extricate himself gracefully. There were surely others who had been in his predicament and successfully resolved it; it wouldn’t take long to sniff them out and learn how they had managed.

As for Melissa, there was no doubting now, if ever there had been, that coming to Rome had been like a second birth for her. Whereas most people, newly come into wealth and status, might overcompensate through vulgar displays of extravagance, Melissa maintained exquisite poise and restraint. If anything, she moved more slowly, spoke more deliberately and modestly, like one who has nothing to prove to anyone. In short, she behaved as if she had come home to a beloved safe haven. It was not what Petronius had expected, nor, if he were honest with himself, quite what he had hoped for. It was not that she had changed; on the contrary, she took the very same competence and candor that had buoyed her through the bleakest years of barracks life and applied them with consummate ease to her new circumstances, thereby seeming to change the entire world around her just by her presence in it, the way a flock of geese gains in dignity and grace when a swan appears among them.

From a secluded corner of his study, Petronius sat one day contemplating Melissa through an open doorway as she read in the garden. A kitchen slave came to her with some query or complaint. Melissa unobtrusively allowed the scroll to drop to her feet, as if she were too courteous to acknowledge that she had been interrupted, and listened with solemn concentration. She responded briefly, and the slave bowed and departed, only to return a few moments later with three other slaves in tow. Melissa stood to speak to them at their level. This was clearly a conversation with genuine give and take, and Melissa accorded each her full attention. When it was over, the issue having evidently been settled to everyone’s satisfaction, Melissa returned to her reading. As they retreated, the slaves conferred among themselves with obvious pride. With no experience in managing a large household, and despite all the little uncertainties of her own status, Melissa had already mastered an extremely fraught and complex relationship.