“Greetings, Claudia,” I called. I was filled with exultant joy as I crouched down on the ground in front of her and looked at her face under the brim of the straw hat.
Claudia started and stared at me with her eyes widening in fright and her face flushing scarlet. Suddenly she flung a bunch of muddy pea stalks in my face, stood up and ran away behind the hut. I was flabbergasted by such a reception and swore to myself as I rubbed the earth out of my eyes.
I followed her hesitantly and saw that she was splashing in some water and washing her face. She shouted angrily at me and told me to wait on the other side of the hut. Not until she had combed her hair and put on clean clothes would she come back.
“A well-brought-up man gives notice when he is coming,” she snapped angrily, “but how can one expect such good manners from the son of a Syrian money-lender. What do you want?”
She had insulted me. I flushed and turned away without a word. But when I had taken a few steps, she came after me and took my arm.
“Are you really so touchy, Minutus?” she cried. “Don’t go. Forgive my hasty tongue. I was angry because you took me by surprise, ugly and dirty from work.”
She took me into her modest little hut which smelled of smoke, herbs and clean linen clothes.
“You see, I too can spin and weave, as Romans of old should be able to,” she said. “Don’t forget that in the old days even the proudest Claudian steered his oxen behind the plow.”
In this way she was trying to excuse her poverty.
“I prefer you like this, Claudia,” I replied politely, “with your face fresh from spring water, to all the painted silk-clad women of the city.”
“Of course,” Claudia admitted honestly, “I’d rather my skin were as white as milk and my face beautifully painted and my hair set in lovely curls on my forehead and my clothes revealing more than they concealed and myself smelling of the balsam of the East. But my uncle’s wife, Aunt Paulina Plautia, who has let me live here since my mother died, does not approve of such things. She is always dressed in mourning, prefers silence to speaking, and keeps away from her equals. She has more than enough money but she gives her income to charity and to even more doubtful purposes rather than allowing me to buy rouge and eye shadow.”
I could not help laughing, for Claudia’s face was so fresh and clean and healthy that she really had no need for cosmetics. I wanted to take her hand, but she jerked it away and snapped that her hands had become as rough as a slave-girl’s during the summer. I asked if she had heard about my accident, but she replied evasively.
“Your Aunt Laelia would never have let me in to see you,” she said. “Anyhow, I’ve become humble and realize that nothing but harm would come to you from knowing me. I wish you well, Minutus.”
I replied roughly that I could make my own decisions about my own life and choose my own friends.
“Anyhow, you’ll soon be rid of me,” I remarked. “I have a promise of a letter of recommendation to go to war against the Germans under the famous Corbulo. My leg is better and only a fraction shorter than the other one.”
Claudia quickly said she had not even noticed that I limped at all. Then she thought for a moment.
“Actually you are safer in the field,” she said sadly, “than in Rome where some strange woman can take you away from me at any moment. I should grieve less if through some foolish ambition you lost your life in war, than if you fell in love with someone else. But why do you have to go and fight against the Germans? They are horribly large, and powerful warriors. If I ask Aunt Paulina nicely, she’d certainly give you a letter of recommendation to my uncle, Aulus Plautius, in Britain. He commands four legions there and has been very successful. Obviously the Britons are much weaker opponents than the Germans since Uncle Aulus is no military genius. Even Claudius managed to claim a triumph in Britain, so the Britons can’t be very fierce opponents.”
I did not know this and I asked her eagerly for more details. Claudia explained that her mother was a Plautius. When Aulus Plautius’ wife, Paulina, had taken her husband’s parentless niece under her wing, Aulus had good-naturedly regarded Claudia as a member of his family, especially as they had no children of their own.
“Uncle Aulus did not like my mother, Urgulanilla, at all,” Claudia told me, “but in any case, Mother was also a Plautia and my uncle was very offended when Claudius, for indefensible reasons, divorced my mother and sent me naked to be laid on her threshold. In fact Uncle Aulus was prepared to adopt me but I am too proud for that. Legally I am and shall remain the daughter of Emperor Claudius, however repulsive his habits are.”
To me her descent was a dull topic of conversation, but the thought of the war in Britain excited me.
“Your legal father Claudius by no means tamed the Britons, even if he did celebrate it as a triumph,” I said. “On the contrary, the war goes on there all the time. It is said that your Uncle Aulus can already claim over five thousand enemy dead from several years’ fighting and that he thus has also earned a triumph. They are obstinate and treacherous people. As soon as there is peace in one part of the country, war breaks out again in another. Let’s go and find your Aunt Paulina at once.”
“You’re in a great hurry to gain military honors,” said Claudia teas-ingly. “But Aunt Paulina has forbidden me to go alone into the city and to spit on the Imperial statues. So I’d be glad to come with you, for I haven’t seen her for several weeks.”
We walked back into the city together and I hurried home to change into more suitable clothes. Claudia did not want to come in for fear of Aunt Laelia, but waited at the gate and talked to Barbus. When we went on to the Plautia house on the Celius hill, Claudia’s eyes were glittering with rage.
“So,” she cried, “you’ve been making friends with Agrippina and her cursed son, have you? That shameless old hag is a dangerous woman. Anyhow, she’s old enough to be your mother.”
I protested in surprise that while Agrippina was certainly beautiful, she was reserved in her manner and her son was much too young and childish for me.
“I know more than enough about those depraved Claudians,” snapped Claudia. “Agrippina sleeps with anyone if she thinks he might be useful. The Emperor’s treasurer, Pallas, has been her lover for a long time. She is trying to find a new husband, but in vain. The men who are noble enough are much too cautious to get involved in her intrigues, but anyone as inexperienced as you could be easily seduced by any immoral widowed matron of Rome.”
Bickering together, we walked through the city, but in fact Claudia was pleased when I told her that no one had seduced me yet and that I had remembered the promise I had made to her on the way home from the Moon temple the day I had received the man-toga.
In the Plautius courtyard there was a long row of busts of ancestors, death masks and war souvenirs. Paulina Plautia proved to be an old woman with large eyes which seemed to be looking straight through me. One could see from her eyes that she had been weeping. When she heard my name and errand, she was surprised and brushed my cheek with her thin hand.
“This is strange,” she said. “Like an unbelievable sign from the only God. Perhaps you don’t know, Minutus Manilianus, that your father and I became friends and exchanged a holy kiss when we had broken bread and drunk wine together at the love-feast. But something very evil has happened. Tullia had spies put on your father. When she had sufficient evidence she denounced me quite recently for having partaken in shameful Eastern mysteries.”