"As you wish, my mistress," Niklos said, making a reverence to her that just missed being insulting. He took the parchments and strode to the door. "I'll send Kosmos to guard you while I'm gone. I don't trust those soldiers to be respectful."
Olivia chuckled. "No more do I, but they're likely to look for female slaves rather than the owner of the villa who is also known to be the hostess of their General."
"You put more store in that than I do," Niklos warned as he started across the smaller of the two atria of the villa.
It was not long before Kosmos appeared in the door, his manner as humble as his body was formidable. He lowered his head and kept his eyes averted. "Niklos sent me, great lady," he said softly.
"He said he would," Olivia agreed.
"And the General Belisarius has returned. His horse has just been taken to the stables." For Kosmos this was a long speech, and as he concluded it, he appeared to be slightly out of breath.
Olivia gave Kosmos her full attention at this. "General Belisarius. Only he?"
"There are officers with him," said Kosmos.
"I will see them shortly, in the main reception chamber. Have flowers brought there, and send Hogni and… oh, I guess it had better be Hogni and Beltzin, to wait on them. They will want to have wine and meat as well as washing basins." To Olivia, this seemed woefully inadequate, for when she was young, nothing less than a full bath—calidarium, tepidarium, frigidarium—and a massage with costly oils followed by a nine-course banquet would be considered a proper welcome for so august a man as Belisarius.
"Very good, great lady. But you will be left alone, and that is what Niklos required I not allow to happen." Again he was sounding breathless.
"I give you my word that I will manage, and that I will be able to fend for myself. Besides, I must do something about my clothes or I will be more improper than they are." She went briskly toward the side door. "I am going now to my private quarters, and if you will see that Fisera joins me there, that will ensure I am not alone and you will be able to complete the commission I have given you." As she watched him go, she wondered if she had made a mistake in freeing him. Kosmos was not used to living on his own, and in these troubled times, she feared he would become prey to the first scoundrel who came across him.
She stopped these ponderings as she reached the door of her private suite of rooms. Always when she stepped through the door, she felt herself on the brink of the past. It pleased her to indulge in a sense of nostalgia; this afternoon she had to admit that there was a pang of something more. She stared at the frescoes on the wall, at the furniture and the ornaments she had gathered together here, and knew that as many of them as she took with her to Constantinople, it would not be the same, and that she would not find them as appropriate, as comforting as they were here, where they belonged. They were Roman; so was she. Here she was on her native earth and there she would be a stranger. Nothing would alter that, and she knew she would have to reconcile herself to it.
There was a gentle rap on the door on the far side of the room and this brought Olivia out of her reverie. "Yes?"
"It is Fisera, mistress," said the slave.
"Enter, Fisera," she said, speaking more briskly and moving with renewed vitality. This was not the time to be distracted, she reminded herself as she admitted the slave. There was too much to do.
Fisera had brought two long pallia with her, one of a rich deep-rose color embroidered all over with golden medallions, the other a strange shade that was almost not any color—a shadow tone between gray and tan and green—ornamented with dark brown silken embroidery and with accents picked out in seed pearls. She stopped, staring at Olivia. "Oh, mistress," she said in a faltering way.
"Tomorrow I am no longer your mistress, Fisera, and you do not need to call me your mistress any longer." She gave her a heartening smile. "Come, Fisera, don't be troubled. There is no reason for me to doubt your devotion, whether you wear a collar or not."
"You have been most kind to me, mistress," said Fisera with genuine feeling.
An expression that was not quite a frown passed fleetingly over Olivia's face. "Have I? I hope so. It was my intention, but that often counts for little."
Alarmed by this sudden change in Olivia's manner, Fisera reached out and touched her arm. "Have I offended you, mistress?"
"No," said Olivia, her demeanor changing again. "No, of course not. I was remembering the past. I've been doing a lot of that recently. I must be… getting old."
"You are young forever, mistress," Fisera said, more in wariness than flattery.
"I have that sort of face," said Olivia.
"Perhaps more than that," murmured the slave-woman. "I have been in your household for more than eight years and I have not noticed a change in you. There are those, not close to you, who have hinted that you must practice the magical arts of the old days, when sorcery was used by the witch Messalina." She said this last with her eyes averted.
"Messalina was hardly a witch: she had the misfortune to be married to that pervert Claudius, and that—" She heard the sound of her voice and broke off. "I cannot believe that Messalina used any arts but her own womanliness to lure her husband."
"They say that her husband wasn't all she lured," the slave said, her face more animated. "She was an infamous adulteress."
"And whose idea was that, do you think?" Olivia asked, and then, before Fisera could answer, she went on. "Well, that was hundreds of years ago, wasn't it? And I have guests who require entertainment this evening. You brought me the pallia, I see. Perhaps I ought to choose one so you may pack the other."
"It depends on what paenula you have selected." Fisera held up the rose-and-gold pallium. "This brings out color."
"So it does," agreed Olivia. "And still, do I want color? Do I want to shout or whisper?" She fingered the two pallia. "Which is best?"
"You have the gold pectoral, and you can wear it with this. It would make a very impressive—"
"You're probably right," said Olivia, reaching for the other pallium. "But tonight, ah, tonight I believe that I will harken back to the old times. This and the paenula of pale silk, you know the one. I'll wear them over the samite dalmatica, the one with the silver threads. And there's one other thing. Instead of a tablion, get me that pectoral in silver, the disk with the raised wings."
"If you like," said Fisera, clearly disapproving.
"There's just tonight, Fisera, and then you will be free to do or say whatever you wish to me, and you will have money enough to leave here and to establish yourself wherever you wish. You have been a good and faithful servant to me. For that, your freedom is a small enough token."
The sincerity in Olivia's voice clearly startled Fisera, and she hesitated before saying anything more. "Why the pectoral?"
"Because it reminds me of a very old friend, who gave it to me many, many years ago." Olivia's smile did not quite succeed, but she went on. "He told me a few home truths that I must remember while I live in Constantinople. What a hideous thought."
"If you go, none of us will be able to live. We will be taken by soldiers or monks and we will be more slaves then than ever we have been for you." This outburst was more alarming to Fisera than to Olivia, who had been expecting something of the sort since the day before yesterday.
"I have already sent copies of your writs of manumission to the monks for their records, and I will see that every one of you has their own writ to keep." When she had been young, almost half her household slaves could read. In the intervening centuries fewer and fewer slaves had acquired the skill until now less than a dozen of her staff were literate. "As long as you and the monks have the documents, there is safety for you. But you must keep the writ with you, so that you can prove that you are truly freed. You will have money and you will have supplies. Unless you choose badly, you will have no reason to regret being freed."