But what if we lived? What if dominus was right and the Parthians were easily overcome? To survive would condemn the child to a life of servitude. Coming home would be tantamount to making our own son a slave. The obvious and literal escape clause was easily blocked: should either of us run away or attempt to flee, the offer would be rescinded. The only way to free Felix was to die.
To understand how Crassus could imagine that we would be comforted by such an offer, you must see it from his point of view. To him, choosing freedom, a life outside the aegis of his beneficence, was a poor decision indeed. The security, housing, sustenance, sense of familia-the life he gave his slaves was better by far than anything that could be imagined beyond his influence. He was undoubtedly right; Crassus was an exception to the Roman norm. But he also understood, because I had explained it to him on numerous occasions, that servitude to an enlightened master was a viper with seductive and unshakeable fangs: the more a slave was injected with the venom of comfort and security, the more numb he became to his own condition.
So Crassus, knowing what it would mean to Livia and me, would give our son the choice, should we not return, of making his own way in the world. Felix Alexandros would be able to choose his own destiny. From that moment on, there was not a day that passed without the contemplation of our cruel dilemma. We were determined to give our newborn son the chance to become a free man.
•••
The day before Crassus was to hear the decision from the senate regarding his invasion plans, I made yet another attempt to dissuade my master from his costly revenge. We sat together in his office.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” he had said. “I believe my wife was raped. I am going to war because I believe her.”
“She would never betray you,” I said quietly.
“Let me tell you a story,” Crassus said. “I named Publius after my brother. Before he was murdered, one time when we were children, I came upon him playing with a toy catapult that belonged to me. Publius had broken one of the strings that secured the basket and was trying to repair it. I pushed him aside, looked at the damage and saw how easy it would be to fix. I left it in the dirt, and never played with it again.”
I did not know what to say. “You need time.”
“I do not think I am not alone in my misgivings about that night,” Crassus said, “Your lady is finding it more and more difficult to accept what happened that night in Luca. True, it was she who had warned me away with her eyes. But it was I who froze, as hard and as unmoving as quarry marble. And when at last my indecision thawed, what action did I take? I faded into the darkness. I cannot tell you with certainty whether it was her silent plea or cowardice that finally moved me.” He paused to rub brusquely at his eyes, as if by doing so, he could blind himself to that one memory. “We do not speak of it.”
“With respect, dominus, could it be you, not domina, who is finding your…predicament more difficult to accept? My lady adores you. She wants things as they were. I can see it in her every movement, in the way she looks at you when she knows you cannot see. She wants to reach you, dominus, but grows afraid she no longer knows how.”
“I would have been no match for him. I know that. But better to have died in that accursed room than live with what I have become. I am no coward, Alexander. I can not be a coward.”
“You have both suffered; there are no cowards in this house.”
“It does not matter,” he said, sounding beaten and exhausted. “The logic of it, the political expediency, the weighing of pros and cons-it is all beside the point. He was there, she succumbed, I did nothing. These facts are irrefutable. Though we love each other still, the wound is open and foul. I know of only one balm that will heal it.”
“There is another, dominus.”
“If the plant from which it grows lies not in Parthia, it is a false cure.”
I took a breath. “Forgive domina. Forgive yourself. Forget Caesar.”
He turned on me suddenly. “I told you once before not to speak of this again. You have no idea what you ask. Your words of comfort offer none. They are noises you make with the vain hope that I will find the sounds pleasing and logical. You know nothing of this!” I flinched, thinking he was going to strike me. “Sounds without meaning, Alexander. Your philosophy is useless here.” He walked behind his table and sat, resting his arms on the gilt lion paw armrests of his chair. His fingers caressed the grooves of each claw.
He spoke again, his voice soft and terrifying. “You will never understand, Alexander. No. You can never know. But I can show you; there is a way. Do you wish to know? Do you want to feel it in your heart till it cracks from the knowing?” His words flowed black and thick, a spume noisome and vaporous. “Then do this,” he said. “Put Livia in that room. See Caesar’s hands on her breasts, Alexander. Hear the rustle of fabric as he pushes up her tunic and thrusts his cock up inside her.” Crassus exhaled with a sound like a bull before the priest’s blade falls. “Then, when you can see him grunting behind the only love you have ever known, when you have done that, then you put yourself in that doorway. And you stand there, and you watch. Watch and do nothing. Look at him. Look at the tears on her cheeks. Now, tell me again. Tell me to forget Caesar. Go ahead, Alexander. Tell me to forgive myself. Tell me. TELL ME!”
I stood quite still, trying to shut out the image that once envisioned, would never depart. Crassus, now disgusted, waived his hand at me as if he were swatting a fly. “Get out. And if you ever ask that of me again, or attempt to move me from my course, I will have you flogged, or worse.”
•••
I waited for Crassus on the steps of the curia. Clouds with flat bottoms moved across the sky as if they glided on the surface of a calm sea. In my mind’s eye I saw the forum, the people, the entire city under water; the real world was up there, and we were the dark reflection beneath. Behind me, the double doors of the senate’s meeting house finally creaked open and a dozen blinking lictors stepped into the light. They formed a double line into the center of which my lord strode. Following close behind were his legates and senior officers, junior senators themselves. Crassus adjusted his toga with a yank and nodded for our company to proceed down the steps. He was not happy.
“Bad news,” I said, elbowing my way without opposition into the channel of refuge made by his guards. “I see the others did not adjourn.”
“I consign the others to Pluto’s ass,” Crassus said, holding out the scroll with his invasion proposal. I took it.
“You expected this,” I said as we walked through the forum. People stopped to stare or wave. Many applauded as Marcus Licinius Crassus passed by. Our pace remained steady. “Therefore you cannot be exceedingly disappointed.”
“I am the dog who sits patiently by the dining couch night after night, swallowing his drool at the prospect of scraps that never come. Foolish dog. Octavius!” A man in his mid-thirties with short, unruly hair and flushed cheeks who still managed to look boyish rushed up, the hem of his toga bunched up in his hands so he wouldn’t trip while running. His was the first letter we had received asking for a commission.