The red and white silk softened the bright sunlight, filling the tent with a warm glow. The panels facing the river had been rolled up, letting in the view and framing it like a picture. Sunlight danced on the green water and cast lozenges of light into the tent, where they flitted and danced across my hands and face. I heard the sound of splashing again and now I saw its source, a group of young men and boys, fifteen or more, who frolicked in the water just beyond the tent. Some of them wore bright-colored scraps of cloth about their loins, but most were naked. Beads of water clung to their sleek flesh; in the sunlight they glimmered as if chased with jewels. When they moved into the shade beneath trees they became dappled, like spotted fauns. Their splashing caused the lozenges of light to dance wildly inside the tent.
I walked toward the center of the tent, where Trygonion awaited me with a beaming smile on his face. He stood beside a high couch strewn with red and white striped pillows, holding the hand of the woman who reclined upon it. The woman was turned so that I could not see her face.
Before I reached the couch a figure suddenly appeared before me. She looked hardly older than a child but wore her auburn hair coiled atop her head and was dressed in a long green gown. "Mistress!" she called, keeping her eyes on mine. "Mistress, your guest is here to see you."
"Show him to me, Chrysis." The voice was sultry and unhurried, deeper than Trygonion's but unmistakably feminine.
"Yes, Mistress." The slave girl took my hand and led me before the couch. The smell of perfume grew stronger.
"No, no, Chrysis," her mistress said, laughing gently. "Don't put him directly in front of me. He's blocking the view."
Chrysis tugged playfully at my hand and pulled me to one side.
"That's better, Chrysis. Now run along. You, too, Trygonion-let go of my hand, little gallus. Go find something for Chrysis to do up at the house. Or go look for pretty stones along the riverbank. But don't let one of those river satyrs catch either one of you or who knows what might happen!"
Chrysis and Trygonion departed, leaving me alone with the woman on the high couch.
Chapter Ten
“The young men you see in the river wearing loincloths are mine. My slaves, that is-my litter bearers and bodyguards. I let them wear loincloths here at the horti. After all, I can see them naked anytime I wish. Also, it makes it easier for me to pick out the others. Any young Roman worth being seen naked knows that he's allowed to come swimming along my stretch of the Tiber anytime he wishes-so long as he does it in the nude. They come down from the road along a little pathway hidden beyond those trees and leave their tunics hanging on branches. At the height of summer on a hot afternoon there are sometimes more than a hundred of them out there, diving, splashing each other, sunning themselves on the rocks – naked by my decree. Look at the shoulders on that one… "
I found myself staring at a woman of no few years-knowing that she was about five years older than her brother Publius Clodius, I calculated that she was probably forty, give or take a year. It was hard to say whether she looked her age or not. However old she looked, it suited her. Clodia's skin was certainly finer than that of most women of forty, the color of white roses, very creamy and smooth; perhaps, I thought, the filtered light of the tent flattered her. Her hair was black and lustrous, arranged by some hidden magic of pins and combs into an intricate maze of curls atop her head. The way that her hair was pulled back from her forehead gave emphasis to the striking angles of her cheekbones and the proud line of her nose, which was almost, but not quite, too large. Her lips were a sumptuous red which surely could not have been natural.
Her eyes seemed to glitter with flashes of blue and yellow but mostly of green, the color of emeralds, sparkling as the sunlight sparkled on the green Tiber. I had heard of her eyes; Clodia's eyes were famous.
"Look at the gooseflesh on them!" She laughed. "It's a wonder they can stand to go in the water at all. The river must still be frigid so early in the year, no matter how warm the sunshine. Look how it shrivels their manhoods; a pity, for that can be half the fun of watching. But notice, not one of them is shivering. They don't want me to see them shiver, the dear, brave, foolish boys." She laughed again, a low, throaty chuckle.
Clodia reclined on her divan with her back against a pile ofcushions and her legs folded to one side beneath her. A long stola of shimmering yellow silk, belted below her breasts and again at her waist, covered her from her neck down. Only her arms were naked. Even so, no one could have called the costume modest. The fabric was so sheer as to be trans-parent, so that it was hard to tell, in the glittering light from the sun-spangled river, how much of the sheen of her contours came from the shiny silk and how much from the sleek flesh beneath. I had never seen a dress like it. This must have shown on my face, for Clodia laughed again, and not at the young men in the river.
"Do you like it?" She looked steadily into my eyes as she smoothed her palm over her hip and down her thigh to the bend of her knee. The silk seemed to ripple like water before the advancing edge of her hand. "It comes all the way from Cos. Something new from a famous silkmaker there. I don't think any other woman in Rome has a dress like it. Or perhaps they're like me, not quite brave enough to wear such a garment in public." She smiled demurely and reached up to the silver necklace at her throat. She spread her fingers, and I could clearly see, thanks to the transparency of the silk, that while she rolled one of the lapis baubles between her forefinger and thumb, with her little finger she delicately stroked one of her large, pale nipples until it began to grow excited.
I cleared my throat and glanced over my shoulder. The young men in the water were now throwing a leather ball back and forth among themselves, making a game of it, but every now and then they shot glances toward the tent. No wonder they had come to the river on the first warm day of the year, I thought. They came to look at her no less than she came to look at them. I cleared my throat again.
"Is your throat dry? Did you walk all the way from the Palatine?" She sounded genuinely curious, as if walking for any distance outdoors was a feat she had watched her litter bearers perform but which she had never attempted on her own.
"Yes, I walked."
"Poor dear, then you must be thirsty. Here, look, before she left,
Chrysis put out cups for us. The clay pitcher holds fresh water. The wine in the silver decanter is Falernian. I never drink anything else."
The vessels were set on a little table beside her. There was no chair, however. It appeared that visitors were meant to stand.
My mouth was in fact quite dry, and not entirely from the heat of the day. Clodia's cup was already full of wine, so I reached for the pitcher of water and poured myself a cup, drinking it slowly before I poured myself another.
"No wine?" She sounded disappointed.
"I think not. It's bad for a man my age to drink wine after exerting himself in the heat of the day." If not bad for my bowels, I thought, then bad for my judgment in such company. What would the transparent silk dress begin to look like after a cup or two of strong Falernian?
"As you wish." She shrugged. The silk pooled above her shoulders, then rippled like a sheet of water over her breasts.
I finished the second cup of water and put it down. "There was a reason you sent the gallus for me?"
"Yes, there was." She turned her gaze from me and fixed it on the young men in the river. I watched her eyes flit back and forth, following the leather ball. Her face remained impassive.
"Trygonion said it had something to do with Dio."
She nodded.
"Perhaps I should close the tent flaps," I said.