The Uncertain Hour (5 page)

“I prefer freeborn women to freedwomen, and freedwomen to slaves, but to me a slave as beautiful as Surisca is always a free woman,” he purred.

Surisca placed the towels on a chair and began to back out of the room.

“Will you bring our guest a clean tunic and some nard for his hair?” Petronius called to her.

“Yes, sir.”

To Martialis, who had climbed from the bath and was now vigorously toweling himself dry, Petronius said: “Do you want to buy her?” Martialis paused and looked at him incuriously.

“Sure, why not? How much?”

“Twenty thousand.”

“Lend it to me?”

“Never.”

“Anyway, what would I do with her? Other than the obvious?”

“And you call yourself a poet? No imagination whatsoever. You may have a hairy body, but you’ve got a depilated mind.”

“That’s good—depilated mind. I’ll have to steal that someday.”

“Meet me on the terrace when you’re dressed. I’ve got something I need to talk to you about.”

Petronius left the bathing room and made for the side terrace, which, facing south and overlooking a cove rather than the open sea, was protected from the prevailing winds and more suitable for entertaining. The kitchen slaves were busy preparing for supper, setting up braziers and screens, hanging wreaths and decorations, sweeping the flagstones.

Petronius leaned toward the sun, pulsing a few bare degrees above the horizon, low enough to reach beneath the bellies of the few lingering clouds and to caress them with fingertips of rose and lilac. Another few minutes and it would be gone, taking with it the last daylight Petronius would ever see. How had the afternoon passed so quickly? It seemed only a moment ago that the Praetorians had arrived with the arraignment, and yet it had been fully four hours since. And how had he frittered away those precious four hours? Worrying, fretting, chastising himself, when he might have been dancing, swimming, fucking like Martialis. Well, the guests would be here soon, and he had a sacred duty to them, too, one whose execution would surely help to restore him to a fitting state of soul. They’d all have heard the news by now—Baiae was a veritable cauldron of gossip—so he could dispense with lengthy explanations and condolences and get on with the business at hand. They wouldn’t need to be told how to behave; only Martialis would have trouble grasping the Roman point of view on all this. He would not take it well, Petronius imagined. He would cry and moan hysterically, probably, and certainly he would urge Petronius to flee. You have a fully provisioned yacht at your disposal, he’d say. What would it take to bribe or overcome the sentry? With the freshening breeze you’d be halfway to Corsica before anyone even knew you were gone. You’ll sail on to Spain, where my beloved uncle will welcome you into our mountain home. No one will ever find you there. You will never wear the toga again, or smell the acrid scent of purple dye. You will spend your days in the lovely woods of Boterdus, you will swim in our soft lakes of the Nymphs, and all you need for a fine and simple life will be provided for you. Sail away, Petronius, sail away! Will your precious honor preserve your rotting corpse in the grave, or stiffen your cock at the sight of some nubile lady mummy? We owe so little time to life, and all eternity to death, so let’s pay off our small debts first, Petronius. Just look at that wine-dark sea out there, teeming with hidden life. The receding tide is beckoning to you, Petronius, with a million salty fingers. Plunge in, the sea is big enough to hide you, too, as you swim away to Bilbilis, and cold enough to wash away all these filthy notions of duty and dignity and glory. You will emerge cleansed and renewed on the shores of Spain, Rome but a dreary memory, the harmless shadow of an evaporated dream. Sail away, Petronius, sail away!

Yes, surely Martialis would be shameless and emotional. He would be a challenge and a trial to Petronius tonight.

With all the bustle of the preparations for the banquet going on behind him, Petronius did not hear Martialis approach; suddenly, he simply found him there, leaning into the balustrade and peering into the cove. He wore a fresh white tunic and braided sandals, his hair glistening and reeking of nard, which, unable to afford himself, he always overapplied when dipping into Petronius’s personal stock.

“What secrets, Arbiter?” he whispered conspiratorially into Petronius’s ear.

“The stink of an expensive whore is even more offensive than a cheap one.”

“Getting stingy in our old age, are we?”

“Do you have any idea how much that bucketful of ointment in your hair cost me, Marcus?”

“Titus, let me tell you about the poor man who turned miser when he inherited a fortune. If he gets any richer, he’s going to starve to death.”

“Especially if he entertains parasites like you.”

The two stood companionably side by side, staring in abstraction at the golden tide pools in the cove below, their surfaces blindingly opaque in the glancing sunlight. The slaves had finished their work and fallen silent; the surf had receded to the distant promontory, now barely audible as a wistful sigh; the larks were ascendant. The light failed abruptly, and a pair of crabs appeared as if by magic at the bottom of the nearest pool, fighting it out over a fish head. Petronius whirled around to face the open sea. The sunset was over, and he’d missed it.

“Damn it!” he barked. Martialis turned with him.

“What’s happening, Titus?”

“Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

“What’s the matter?”

Petronius spun away from Martialis and slapped his hands on the balustrade. He hung his head, as if in mourning or shame.

“I’ve had word from the emperor. I’ll be dead by the morning, Marcus.” Petronius had tried to say it flippantly, tenderly, even as he recognized what a stupid thing it was to say. But in fact, he had no idea how it came out, as he suddenly found himself light-headed, a buzzing in his ears, his knees giving way, and compelled to prop himself up against the balustrade. Nor did he catch Martialis’s reply, if there was one. By the time he regained his balance and composure, the poet was weeping silently, his shoulders heaving. Petronius tried to place a comforting hand on his, but Martialis pulled it away.

Petronius began to talk. “Only to you, Marcus, could this possibly come as a surprise. What a fool you are. Have you been living in Scythia? Don’t you know what’s going on in Rome? They’re using Piso’s little conspiracy as a pretext to wipe out the entire political class. They tell me the streets of Rome are grid-locked with funeral processions these days. When Seneca and Lucan died, then Ostorius Scapula, then Annaeus Mela, then Rufrius Crispinus, didn’t that give you some hint that I might be a marked man too? I knew them all, every single one. Frankly, it’s a miracle I’ve lasted this long.”

Petronius fell silent, exhausted and depressed, but at least Martialis had stopped crying. He stared out to sea, his eyes wild and unseeing. In his hands he held a small ball of amber that Petronius had given him once, long ago, on some forgotten occasion. He rolled it between his palms, which he then cupped over his nose, as Petronius had taught him to do in times of distress. After a while, it appeared to have its intended effect; or perhaps it was just hunger and the sea air. Martialis heaved several deep sighs.

“It’s not that I’m surprised, Titus. I suppose I knew it would come to this eventually. But you might have found a gentler way to tell me.”

“What could I do? I only found out about it a few hours ago.”

“‘Sit down, Marcus, I have something to tell you.’ ‘Marcus, you are like a son to me,’ and so on. Not ‘I’ll be dead by morning.’ I ask you, is that considerate?”

“Forgive me. I’m not myself this afternoon. You’re right, it was very selfish of me.”

“Selfish and cruel.”

“You’re right, son.”

Martialis began to cry again. “And what am I supposed to say now? ‘I’ll miss you?’ What would a
real
Roman say? Nothing about broken hearts, I imagine.”

“Well, since you ask, I suppose a real Roman might try to make it a little easier on me, instead of wallowing in his own misery.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? No scene, no mess, no recrimination. Well, forget it. You had your chance to adopt a dog, and you adopted me instead. This is what you get for giving in to your paternal instincts.”

“Please don’t be so bitter. It’s not as if I’d chosen for this to happen.”

“Oh no? Tell me you couldn’t get out of this if you really wanted to. You have your yacht. You could escape.”

“No.”

“I don’t know why I bother. Of course you won’t. Anyway, if the warrant arrived this afternoon,” Martialis, said almost as if to himself, “why are you still alive?”

“I’ve only been arraigned so far. My case, it seems, is being tried this evening at the emperor’s villa in Baiae, so the death sentence won’t get here until dawn. Look, Marcus. I’m luckier than most, with this grace period. When they came for Seneca, he had to do it then and there; they didn’t give him enough time to alter his will. Vestinus wasn’t even allowed to finish his supper. I’ll have had eighteen hours. It’s unheard of, luxurious. All the omens are good, I’ve got all my papers in order, I’ve said most of my good-byes, I’ll have plenty of time to do right by the household slaves. A sky full of stars, a fragrant breeze, a very special supper. All told, a beautiful night ahead.”

“And open veins at dawn,” Martialis spat bitterly.

“I don’t imagine I’ll wait ‘til dawn. You know, Nero always sends his ‘doctors’ along with a sentence, just to make sure it’s carried out. I don’t want any of them scurrying around while I’m at it, it would spoil the whole thing for me. I’d like it to be done before they get here.”

“But can you be sure they’ll wait until daybreak?”

“I’ve thought of that already. Come. The others will be here by now.”

Martialis froze in horror. “Surely you’re not going through with this dinner tonight?”

“Of course I’m going through with it. Why do you think you’re here? Do you think I’d give you exclusive rights to my last words, so you can turn them into tawdry doggerel?”

Martialis’s eyes instantly brimmed over like a little boy’s, and his lips contorted and quivered. A Roman would have turned away directly to hide his shame, but Martialis stood fast, like Horatio at the bridge, as if he were defending something. Petro-nius felt the boy’s dignity as a rebuke. He’d thought he was simply making a joke, but perhaps after all he’d wanted to see the poet cry just a little more. He hadn’t meant to be cruel, but if it was good for a man to be mourned with tears, how rare and wonderful to be alive to see them! In a house full of Roman patricians, he could hardly hope to see anyone else crying in the course of the evening. He’d take the tears where he could get them, even if grudgingly offered. And besides, why should he, tonight of all nights, have to spend himself in tenderness for others’ feelings? Surely there would be time enough to resent him after he was gone?

“Look, Marcus,” he began in a tone he’d once used when compelled to demote a favored centurion. “I’m sorry, but you must try to understand. I have to take this seriously. The way a man dies is just as important as the way he lives. I’m very lucky, compared to many, to have this chance. I’ll only have one opportunity to get it right. What should I do? Crawl under a rock? Wait for them to chop my head off like some wretched brick-maker?”

Martialis’s tears continued to flow, drenching the front of his tunic, blinding him, slopping from his nostrils, splashing hotly off his upper lip. But he stood his ground, silent and accusing.

“Come on, now,” Petronius said, reaching for Martialis’s arm, which the boy jerked away sullenly. “I won’t argue with you. You will just have to accept that I am to die. Is it really so hard? Can your life really mean so much to you?”

“I would run naked into a bog of pig shit to preserve it.”

“Would you? I doubt it. Is that how you would have yourself remembered? You, of all people? You’re the most ambitious nonentity I’ve ever met. You spend every waking moment trying to make people think well of you.”

“Yes, but I’ll die in bed, not like some pantomime Hector with one eye on posterity and the other on his voice coach.”

“I have no doubt you’ll die in bed, Marcus, biographer at your side. That’s all I ask for myself: the chance to choreograph a fitting death. Do you know how rare that is, and how fortunate I am to have it? Isn’t it what we all dream of—the chance to prove to ourselves once and for all that we are the person we’d always imagined ourselves to be? I’d be a fool not to jump at it. You know you’d do the same.”

The first cool breeze reached them from the open water, and the peace of dusk descended. The surf was no more now than the easy breath of a man asleep and dreaming in a sling at the far end of the orchard. A fire crackled, unseen, beyond the garden wall. The last of the swallows dropped from the purpling sky and disappeared beneath the outhouse eaves; the first bat emerged, bobbed along the rim of an invisible vortex, and plunged into the treetops. First and last, last and first: of what possible interest or comfort could it be to Petronius that this was the most perfect evening since the dawn of time? We grasp at the world’s beauty and draw it into ourselves, metabolize it, store it up against future famine and blight. Now that Petronius had a surfeit of it, he had no further use for it; it had been leaking and oozing from him all day, this attenuated concentrate, despite his every effort to contain it. It was dripping and splattering upon everything he touched and felt and thought, his every memory become a saturated, tacky thing, unrecognizable and clinging, unmanageable. This was what he could not convey to Martialis, or to Melissa—he felt himself in immediate danger of melting away entirely into a pool of liquid self, and must keep cool above all things. He was like an orgiast who has overindulged and must find a way to ease his path to sleep—either he can purge himself or he must walk it off, calmly and deliberately. On this of all nights, explosive purging was no option, howsoever convenient and tempting.

The lamps came to life in the dining hall behind them, flinging their muddled shadows across the cove to the far shore, and Petronius and Martialis turned arm in arm for the house. As they turned, the very last ray of sunshine was sliding off the sul-furous ridge of Mount Gaurus, and was gone.