Roma! Roma! There is no place on Earth like it.
Silently I vow that one day soon I will hold Severina Floriana in my arms. But it is a vow that I was not destined to be able to keep; and now that she is dead I think of her often, with the greatest sadness, recreating her exotic beauty in my mind and imagining myself caressing her the way I might dream of visiting the palace of the Queen of the Moon.
Lucilla gives me a little push toward the middle of the party and I stagger away on my own, wandering from group to group, pretending to a confidence and a sophistication that at this moment is certainly not mine.
There is Nero Romulus in the corner, quietly talking with Gaius Junius Scaevola. The true monarchs of Roma, they are, the men who hold the real Imperial power. But in what way it is divided between them, I can’t even begin to guess.
The Consul, Bassanius, smirking and primping between two male actors who wear heavy makeup. What is he trying to do, reenact the ancient days of Nero and Caligula?
The gladiator, Diodorus, fondling three or four girls at once.
A man I haven’t noticed before, sixty or even seventy years old, with a face like a hatchet blade and skin the color of fine walnut, holding court near the fountain. His clothing, his jewelry, his bearing, his flashing eyes, all proclaim him to be a man of substance and power. “Who’s that?” I ask a passing young man, and get a look of withering scorn. He tells me, in tones that express his wonder at my ignorance, that that is Leontes Atticus, a name that means nothing to me, so that I have to ask a second question, and my informant lets me know, even more contemptuously, that Leontes Atticus is merely the wealthiest man in the Empire. This fierce-eyed parched-looking Greek, I learn, is a shipping magnate who controls more than half the ocean trade with Nova Roma: he takes his fat percentage on most of the rich cargo that comes to us from the savage and strange New World far across the sea.
And so on and on, new guests arriving all the time, a glowing assembly of the great ones of the capital crowding into the room, everyone who is powerful or wealthy or young, or if possible all three at once.
There is fire smoldering in this room tonight. Soon it will burst forth. But who could have known that then? Not I, not I, certainly not I.
Lucilla spends what seems like an hour conversing with Count Nero Romulus, to my great discomfort. There is an easy intimacy about the way they speak to each other that tells me things I’m not eager to know. What I fear is that he is inviting her to spend the night here with him after the party is over. But I am wrong about that. Ultimately Lucilla returns to my side and doesn’t leave it for the rest of the evening.
We dine on fragrant delicacies unknown to me. We drink wines of startling hues and strange piquant flavors. There is dancing; there is a theatrical performance by mimes and jugglers and contortionists; some of the younger guests strip unabashedly naked and splash giddily in the palace pool. I see couples stealing away into the garden, and some who sink into embraces in full view.
“Come,” Lucilla says finally. “I’m becoming bored with this. Let’s go home and amuse each other in privacy, Cymbelin.”
It’s nearly dawn by the time we reach her apartments. We make love until midday, and sink then into a deep sleep that holds us in its grip far into the hours of the afternoon, and beyond them, so that it is dark when we arise.
So it goes for me, then, week after week, autumn in Roma, the season of pleasure. Lucilla and I go everywhere together: the theater, the opera, the gladiatorial contests. We are greeted with deference at the finest restaurants and shown to the best tables. She takes me on a tour of the monuments of the capital—the Senate House, the famous temples, the ancient Imperial tombs. It is a dizzying time for me, a season beyond my wildest fantasies.
Occasionally I catch a glimpse of Severina Floriana at some restaurant, or encounter her at a party. Lucilla goes out of her way to give us a chance to speak to each other, and on a couple of these occasions Severina and I do have conversations that seem to be leading somewhere: she is curious about my life in Britannia, she wants to know my opinion of Roma, she tells me little gossipy tidbits about people on the other side of the room.
Her dark beauty astounds me. We fair-haired Britons rarely see women of her sort. She is a creature from another world, blue highlights in her jet-black hair, eyes like mysterious pools of night, skin of a rich deep hue utterly unlike that of my people, not simply the olive tone that so many citizens of the eastern Roman world have, but something darker, more opulent, with a satiny sheen and texture. Her voice, too, is enchanting, husky without a trace of hoarseness, a low, soft, fluting sound, musical and magnificently controlled.
She knows I desire her. But she playfully keeps our encounters beyond the zone where any such thing can be communicated, short of simply blurting it out. Somehow I grow confident, though, that we will be lovers sooner or later. Which perhaps would have been the case, had there only been time.
On two occasions I see her brother the Emperor, too.
Once is at the opera, in his box: he is formally attired in the traditional Imperial costume, the purple toga, and he acknowledges the salute of the audience with a negligent wave and a smile. Then, a week or two later, he passes through one of the Palatine Hill parties, in casual modern dress this time, with a simple purple stripe across his vest to indicate his high status.
At close range I am able to understand why people speak so slightingly of him. Though he has the Imperial bearing and the Imperial features, the commanding eyes and the nose and the chin and all that, there is something about the eager, uncertain smile of Caesar Maxentius that negates all his Imperial pretensions. He may call himself Caesar, he may call himself Augustus, and Pater Patriae and Pontifex Maximus and all the rest; but when you look at him, I discover to my surprise and dismay, he simpers and fails to return your gaze in any steady way. He should never have been given the throne. His brother Flavius Rufus would have been ever so much more regal.
Still, I have met the Emperor, such as he is. It is not every Briton who can say that; and the number of those who can will grow ever fewer from now on.
I send a message home by wire, every once in a while. Having incredibly good time, could stay here forever but probably won’t. I offer no details. One can hardly say in a telegram that one is living in a little palace a stone’s throw from the Emperor’s official residence, and sleeping with the niece of Gaius Junius Scaevola, and attending parties with people whose names are known throughout the Empire, and hobnobbing with His Imperial Majesty himself once in a while, to boot.
The year is nearing its end, now. The weather has changed, just as Lucilla said it would: the days are darker and of course shorter, the air is cool, rain is frequent. I haven’t brought much of a winter wardrobe with me, and Lucilla’s younger brother, a handsome fellow named Aquila, takes me to his tailor to get me outfitted for the new season. The latest Roman fashions seem strange, even uncouth, to me: but what do I know of Roman fashion? I take Aquila’s praise of my new clothes at face value, and the tailor’s and Lucilla’s also, and hope they’re not all simply having sport with me.
The invitation that Flavius Rufus Caesar extended to Lucilla and me that first night—to spend the Saturnalia at the Imperial villa at Tibur—was, I discover, a genuine one. By the time December arrives I have forgotten all about it; but Lucilla hasn’t, and she tells me, one evening, that we are to leave for Praeneste in the morning. That is a place not far from Roma, where in ancient and medieval times an oracle held forth in the Cave of Destiny until Trajan VII put an end to her privileges. We will stay there for a week or so at the estate of a vastly rich Hispanic merchant named Scipio Lucullo, and then go onward to nearby Tibur for the week of the Saturnalia itself.