How I had despised my handsome proconsul! And how he had revenged himself on me for that!
I stayed in Istria two more days and then I returned to the city. There was a gift waiting for me from Falco: a sleek piece of carved ivory that showed a house of strange design and a woman with delicate features sitting pensively beside a lake under a tree with weeping boughs. The note from him that accompanied it said that it was from Khitai, that he had obtained it in the land of Bactria, on India’s borders. He had not told me that he had been to Bactria too. The thought of his travels on behalf of Roma dizzied me: so many voyages, such strenuous journeys. And I imagined him gathering little treasures such as these wherever he went, and carrying them about with him to bestow on his ladies in other lands. That thought so angered me that I nearly hurled the ivory piece away. But I reconsidered and put it in my cabinet of curios next to the stone goddess from Aegyptus.
It was his turn now to invite me to dine with him at the palace of the Doges, and—I assumed—to spend the night in the bed where the Doges and their consorts once had slept. But I waited a week and then a second week, and the invitation did not come. That seemed out of keeping with my new awareness of him as a man of great attainment. Perhaps I had overestimated him, though. He was, after all, a Roman. He had had what he wanted from me; now he was on to other adventures, other conquests.
I was wrong about that, too.
When my impatience had darkened once again into anger toward him and my fury over having let him use me this way had obliterated all the regard for him that had developed in me during his visit to my estate, I went to my uncle Demetrios and said, “Have you seen this Roman proconsul of ours lately? Has he been ill, do you think?”
“Why, is he of any concern to you, Eudoxia?”
I glowered at him. Having pushed me into Falco’s arms to serve his own purposes, Demetrios had no right to mock me now. Sharply I said, “He owes me the courtesy of an invitation to the palace, uncle. Not that I would accept it—not now. But he should know that he has given offense.”
“And I am supposed to tell him that?”
“Tell him nothing. Nothing!”
Demetrios gave me a knowing smirk. But I was sure he would keep silent. There was nothing for him to gain from humiliating me in the eyes of Pompeius Falco.
The days went by. And then at last came a note from Falco, in elegant Greek script as all his notes were, asking if he might call on me. My impulse was to refuse. But one did not refuse such requests from a proconsul. And in any case I realized that I wanted to see him again. I wanted very much to see him again.
“I hope you will forgive me, lady, for my inattentiveness,” he said. “But I have had a great deal on my mind in these recent weeks.”
“I’m certain that you have,” I said drily.
Color came to his face. “You have every right to be angry with me, Eudoxia. But this has been a time of unusual circumstances. There have been great upheavals in Roma, do you know? The Emperor has reshuffled his Cabinet. Important men have fallen; others have risen suddenly to glory.”
“And how has this concerned you?” I asked him. “Are you one of those who has fallen, or have you risen to glory? Or should I not ask you any of this?”
“One of those who has risen,” he said, “is Gaius Julius Flavillus.”
The name meant nothing to me.
“Gaius Julius Flavillus, lady, had held the post of Third Flamen. Now he is First Tribune. Which is a considerable elevation, as you may know. It happens that Gaius Flavillus is a man of Tarraco, like the Emperor, like myself. He is my father’s cousin. He has been my patron throughout my career. And so—messengers have been going back and forth between Venetia and Roma for all these weeks—I too have been elevated, it seems, by special favor of the new Tribune.”
“Elevated,” I said hollowly.
“Indeed. I have been transferred to Constantinopolis, where I am to be the new procurator. It is the highest administrative post in the former Eastern Empire.” His eyes were glittering with self-satisfaction. But then his expression changed. A kind of sadness came into them, a kind of tenderness. “Lady, you must believe me when I tell you that I greeted the news with a mixture of feelings, not all of them pleasant ones. It is a great honor for me. And yet I would not have left Venetia so quickly of my own choosing. We have barely begun to know each other; and now, to my immense regret, we must part.”
He took my hands in his. He seemed almost to be at the edge of tears. His sincerity seemed real; or else he was a better actor than I suspected.
A kind of numbness spread through me.
“When do you leave?” I asked.
“In three days, lady.”
“Ah. Three days.”
“Three very busy days.”
You could always take me with you to Constantinopolis, I found myself thinking. There would surely be room for me somewhere in the vast palace of the former Basileus where you now will make your home.
But of course that could never be. A Roman rising as swiftly as he was would never want to encumber himself with a Byzantine wife. A Byzantine mistress, perhaps. But mistresses of any sort were no longer what he needed. Now was the time for him to make an auspicious marriage and undertake the next stage of his climb. The procurator’s seat at Constantinopolis would detain him little longer than his proconsulship in Venetia had; his path would lead him before very long back to Roma. He would be a flamen, a tribune, perhaps Pontifex Maximus. If he played his cards right he might some day be Emperor. I might be summoned then to Roma to relive old times, perhaps. But I would not see him again before then.
“May I stay this night with you?” he asked, with a strange new note of uncertainty in his voice, as though expecting that I might refuse.
But of course I did not refuse. That would have been crass and petty; and in any case I wanted him. I knew that this was the last chance.
It was a night of wine and poetry, of tears and laughter, of ecstasy and exhaustion.
And then he was gone, leaving me mired in my petty little provincial life while he went on to Constantinopolis and glory. A grand procession of gondolas followed him down the canal as he made his way to the sea. A new Roman proconsul, so they say, will be arriving in Venetia any day now.
From Falco I had one parting gift: the plays of Aeschylus, in a finely bound volume that had been produced on the printing press, which is one of those new inventions of which they are so proud in Roma. My first reaction was one of scorn, that he should give me this machine-made thing instead of a manuscript indited by hand. And then, as I had done so many times in the days of my involvement with this difficult man, I was forced to reconsider, to admire what at first sight I had seen as cheap and vulgar. The book was beautiful, in its way. More than that: it was a sign of a new age. To deny that new age, or turn my back on it, would be folly.