“But you’d be free. You are beautiful. You could do what you choose.”
“Forgive me, Cornelia, I do not make light of your most generous offer, but I think my time for a free life has past. Even my mother might offer different advice today. If I had money, or even family…. But I will think about it, seriously, I promise.” Livia laughed; now the sound was bright but dismissive. “Why are we even talking about this? Dominus would never let me go. He’s invested too much in my training. You might as well ask him to sell Alexander to your father. No, I am welcome in the house of Crassus, and my place is there.”
“You want to remain a slave?”
“I have a home there, my work is respected, and there is…there are people there who care about me.”
“Hm. The house of Crassus is renowned for training and keeping only the highest quality staff. If you say the life there is better than on the outside, I must believe you. Something has changed, though. My parents remarked on it — both Crassus and lady Tertulla seem different, somehow, since their return from Luca. Do you know anything about it?”
“I am only back from Memphis these few months; I really couldn’t say.”
“Well,” lady Cornelia said, dismissing even the hint of an unpleasant subject, “I pray they are well. When my friends and I talk of the marriages our fathers will arrange for us, theirs is the one we all hope to emulate. Whatever the matter, we’ll find a shrine and say a prayer for them on the way home.”
“You are sweet to do so.”
“Not so sweet that I wouldn’t steal your man there away from you,” lady Cornelia said.
“This fellow?” Livia said, gesturing back toward the African. “Take him. I have no preference.”
“Thank you, Livvy. I like the thought of his big hands upon me.”
“You’re not going to let him…,” Livia said, alarmed.
The young lady laughed. “Of course not! My father would kill me. No, I mean he would seriously consider it. All he talks about is making a prudent political match for me. I tease him, but I mean to make him proud of me, in every way, including the stain I leave on my wedding sheets.”
Lady Cornelia said something to her masseur, who spoke a single word to Livia’s, and the two made to switch places. This was my moment. Livia was turned away from me. The aureus in my palm was warm and basted with sweat, but held at the ready. I moved into view at the foot of Livia’s table just as lady Cornelia rolled over onto her back. She saw me straight away; all was lost! I smiled at her helplessly, beseechingly. To my astonished relief, she smiled back conspiratorially. I held the coin up to the man about to squeeze past me and motioned him to make good his departure in quiet haste. He grasped the hot gold piece, his entire face smiling, and went off to contemplate how he would spend this newfound windfall. There was no time to pour more oil. The African looked only mildly surprised when I took his dripping, gleaming hands in my own and rubbed them vigorously. I winked at him and made a gesture for his continued silence. He winked back at me, but the motion was mimicry without understanding. He started to say something, which I quelled, taking his hands and guiding them to lady Cornelia’s feet. Her expression said she found this pantomime at least as entertaining as her interrupted massage. I did not care; my improvisation was going well so far, providing my heart did not explode in my chest.
Before me waited the unsuspecting Livia. She lay with her ankles just off the table, toes pointed toward the floor, curtains of her unclasped hair thankfully blocking her vision.
“Oh! I think you’ve made a bad bargain, Cornelia.” Livia sighed as I attended to each individual toe of her left foot, pressing and separating, oiling the valleys between each, intent on making each touch a caress.
“And I think we are now perfectly matched,” she replied.
I had no idea what I was doing; fortunately my hands were guided by a higher authority: desire. Technique’s teacher was nothing more than imagining the ecstasies I would feel if our places were reversed. I gave what I wanted to receive. I was reluctant to leave any part of her, but I could not work on her feet forever. Moving up the length of each calf, I drew my fingers firmly back down her lean muscles till I reached her ankle. When Livia released a sigh of pleasure, my chest tightened; breathing became a voluntary thing.
I watched my African counterpart; when he stopped to replenish the oil on his hands, I did likewise. When he moved up onto the exposed, slightly spread tops of lady Cornelia’s thighs, I moved higher as well. Rubbing my hands to warm them, I positioned my thumbs on the back of Livia’s right thigh, as close as I dared to the towel which, were it to rise by the slightest fraction, would reveal all it was tasked to conceal. Pressing gently, I moved in alternating, short strokes down to the back of her knee, then up again, cradling and stroking the front of her leg with eight other beguiled fingers as I went.
Moments passed and somehow I found myself tending to the oiled and toned contours of Livia’s back. I had fallen into a reverie of tactility, no longer certain if Livia’s flesh or my own hands were the recipients of such mindless, focused attention. Every stroke and manipulation moved with but one intent: to elicit a sigh of contentment or a moan of pleasure. And there were many. A stifled cry from the adjoining table broke my mediation. Lady Cornelia’s masseur had found his way to her breast, and despite her earlier protestations, her nipple rose with eager curiosity to the rhythmic rolling of his thumb and forefinger.
“I think we had better stop,” she gasped, pushing his hand away.
“Oh, just a while longer, Cornelia. I am transported.” Livia stretched her arms and legs, an arrow of limbs and torso. “Alexander, you have Apollo’s own touch.”
There’s a coincidence: the masseur they originally hired for lady Cornelia has the same name as my own. Wait a moment!
Livia reached beneath her, grabbed a second towel from a railing under her table and deftly rolled onto her back as she covered herself. “Did you think,” she continued, “even after all these years that I could forget the touch of your hands?” With one arm across her chest, she raked her unbound hair away from her face and smiled up at me.
I did not know what else to do, and it was out of the question that I continue to stand there, stunned and silent. So I kissed her. Livia yielded, twisting on her side, curling up into my embrace. Her hand held the back of my neck, her knees bent, prodding me closer. Once she had been mine, and I had broken her heart. I was not deserving of this moment, but I would not give it up. Wetness pushed against the eyelashes of my closed eyes. The musk of the perfumed oil swirled lazily around us, moving as slowly as our mouths. But like all infinite moments, this one, too, proved itself false.
There came the sound of a scuffle at the entrance to the balnea, then shouting. I heard someone bellow something that sounded like ‘the enemies of Clodius!’ I broke from our embrace. “Lady Cornelia, call your man.” The look in my eyes won any argument she might have raised. She shouted for him, but there was no response, at least none that we could hear about the growing tumult. Patrons were running for the entrance, but the way must have been blocked. I watched as lady Cornelia’s masseur bolted for the back of the building. “There must be a back exit. Wrap those towels about you as best as you can. Quickly.”
I unhooked my cloak and threw it about Livia’s shoulders, forgetting my duty to serve the highborn lady Cornelia. We followed the path of the African, who had crossed the palaestra just in front of the empty frigidarium, disappearing into the hallway leading to the calidarium.