‘Not mine!’
‘Decent manners. Wonderful patience. Knew a thing or too; he took a lot of interest in the world. He always had time for an old codger. I shall miss our talks… Let me know if you need anything, Flavia Lucilla. So long as I am still here.’
Did he ask you to look out for me?
He would have done, if he had thought of it. ‘That man was a hero, girl. Did you know he won the civic crown for saving a life in battle?’
‘I found it. It is a little crumpled, but very beautiful.’
‘Keep it safe for him.’
You speak as if he is coming back.
‘He knew I had a weakness for hazelnut slices. He would often bring me one from the fine bakery on Ten Taverns Street. So thoughtful.’
Whenever Lucilla passed the bakery now, she bought pastries for Cretticus and chatted to him. When the pumice-seller gave up, the old man told Melissus to give her a good price on the lease for the spare shop, which he knew she wanted. ‘Trust a pretty woman to wind a helpless old-timer around her sneaky little finger!’ complained the agent. But he too was growing older and lazier, so he went along with it. Thus Lucilla was able to open a neighbourhood manicure and hair business as she had always wanted. Two lively girls worked for her; they tended customers on the street or indoors, and lived in an upstairs mezzanine. One was her slave Glyke, now returned without the baker’s boy though with suspicious bruises and unfeasibly good intentions.
After Alba, Lucilla had wondered if Vinius might have left her a farewell note at Plum Street, but there was nothing. Only his bequest now silently gave her comfort as she grieved; perhaps in some friendly way he had wanted that for her.
She never regretted running away from him. She believed he was not for her. She felt he had always made that clear. She could never have resolved the conflict she perceived between how much she wanted him and its impossibility. So at Alba, when he left her alone briefly, she bolted from their pavilion, rushed to the residential quarters, gathered her things and fled down the hill to the Via Appia. She hitched a lift on a cart, right then in the clear air of dawn, before most people were stirring. She went not towards Rome, but down south to the Bay of Naples, where she stayed at another imperial villa until she could be certain Vinius had left Rome.
Afterwards, sometimes she dared to remember being in his arms. How, after only clumsy couplings with others, she and this man had straightway come together as a perfect fit. How they moved together, in effortless synchronicity and with such deep pleasure. How when their exercise left them exhausted, she cried a little, so Vinius wiped her eye with his index finger, murmuring kindly, ‘No tears!’ before they both fell into profound sleep.
How her troubled mind had drowned in peace, her body melting against his…
He was dead. No point speculating. Cherish the past for what it was, an ideal, a signal that human happiness might be a possibility. Raise your standards. Make a decent life, Lucilla. Life is all there is. If it’s only once, it must be good… He had been right. If perfection only happened once, that was better than never. Now nothing for her would ever again entail complete despair. So thank you, Gaius Vinius Clodianus, son of Marcus, thank you for your good deed, a deed that brightened somebody’s dark world.
Onwards then. Life had to be gone through. In the year of the news of the Battle of Tapae, sad as she was, Flavia Lucilla picked herself up. Determined to improve herself, she stopped dallying with awkward lovers and ignored the fast set. She attached herself to a more cultured circle, keen to educate her mind. She dressed smartly but with taste. She was chaste, or at least careful, even though nobody knew it. She listened, learned to judge, tolerated many fools, made a few good friends, and eventually she suggested to a man she knew that they should be married.
He was a teacher. What could be better than that?
How she came to this marriage eventually was through mutual friends. By that time, Lucilla knew a lot of people. Many were at Alba, to which she returned whenever the imperial ladies went. There in particular she now explored society with better discrimination. At one point, as a tribute to Vinius, she tried to appreciate music; this was not a success, partly because it made her miserable on his behalf but also because she tended to drift off into her own thoughts.
For a brief period she dallied among the building project teams. Hearing one of the great Rabirius’ drawing assistants one day discussing business with a site supervisor, she had been struck by the power of professional men, relaxed in their expertise. It had an almost erotic effect, although subsequently when an architect tried to take up with her, Lucilla found him deceitful and indecisive, which soon cured her.
Eventually she alighted instead on the verge of Domitian’s literary circle.
Joining a writers’ group is a mistake even for professional writers — especially for them, if they have any self-respect. Lucilla was too inexperienced, so far, to take that attitude.
The girl would learn.
Although life on the frontiers was tricky, back in Rome it was a time of civic certainty. Domitian had returned from his initial success in Moesia to hold a Dacian Triumph (spurious, in the light of the coming defeat at Tapae) and to appoint himself Censor. Unlike his predecessors in that role, he held the post alone and was to be censor for life. This would involve him enforcing much moral legislation, particularly the Augustan divorce laws. He enjoyed regulating conduct. The main point was that the censor reviewed the lists and supervised the political orders; this gave Domitian full control of the Senate.
In case anybody ever missed his significance, he took to appearing at all public occasions, including Senate meetings, in full triumphal uniform. That meant parading with a laurel wreath on his best toupee, a gold and ivory sceptre, and elaborate white robes that signified the honorand was representing Jupiter. The one-day ceremonial regalia for a general had been extended to permanently suggest divinity.
Domitian felt himself to be under Jupiter’s personal protection, but his foremost devotion was to the goddess Minerva. Minerva was sometimes equated with the Greek Athene, though she had very ancient roots in Etruscan Italy. Helmeted and depicted carrying a tall spear, she was a goddess of war and warriors, but her patronage extended to significant peacetime activities: wisdom in general, medicine, commerce, crafts, music and poetry. At Domitian’s court this was particularly good news for poets, who cluttered up audience rooms, all hoping a well-disposed attendant would place an elegy in the Emperor’s bedroom, or a well-timed public recital would have them reading aloud just as he dropped by. Domitian had apparently stopped writing himself, but loved the tyranny of patronage.
Lucilla first engaged with this circle originally through Claudia, a pleasant woman married to the poet Statius; she had a daughter by a previous marriage to a different poet, a young girl who was extremely musical and whom Claudia closely chaperoned. Lucilla met mother and daughter at a recital, then heard a reading by Statius who had a famously good voice. He, like his father before him, had been a prizewinner in the literary category at the Naples Games, which were now defunct after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Coming to Alba, he hoped to become known for his magnum opus, an epic in twelve books called the Thebaid. He was still polishing this piece of work, though he regularly read excerpts. It told the story of the Seven Against Thebes, a Greek power struggle which involved episodes of extreme violence; that was not to Lucilla’s taste, especially in the period after Vinius died. However, the writer was a man much-liked, and with good reason, she thought; she learned simply to wonder quietly at the subjects authors choose.