Lucia stopped. “Rosa, please — who is Giuliano? ”

Rosa smiled, but there was a wistful sadness in her expression. “Why, he’s your lover.”

Chapter 28

It would be a multiple ceremony, Regina decided, an overlapping celebration of life, motherhood, and complicated relationships.

First there was the birth of Aemilia, daughter of Leda, Regina’s half sister, and niece to Regina herself. Then the girl Venus had reached her menarche. Venus was the daughter of Messalina, granddaughter of Regina’s aunt Helena. And at the center of it all would be the marriage of Regina’s own daughter Brica to the young, clear-eyed freedman Castor.

It would all be held, she had decided, on the spring feast of Beltane when, according to the tradition of the Celtae, the warmth of the returning sun and the fertility of the earth were celebrated. Regina and Brica had been here in Rome for two years already, and it would be a nice reminder of her days with Artorius.

Of course her elaborate plans immediately threw everybody into a state of confusion. For days the Order’s big communal house on the Appian Way was filled with the smells of cooking, with the din of clumsily practiced musical instruments, and with the hammering of nails as decorations were put up everywhere.

Which was all, of course, according to Regina’s design. For they all needed a distraction from the looming presence of the Vandals, the dreadful horde of black-painted barbarians who were even now, so it was said, camping on the plains north of Rome.

On the day before the ceremony, Amator came to visit her, at the Order’s house.

He walked into her small office and prowled around its shelves and cupboards, fingering the heaps of scrolls and wax tablets. His face was caked with cosmetics, with white powder on his cheeks and black lining to emphasise his eyes. Despite these expensive efforts he looked his age, or older, and, she knew now, he was plagued by ulcers and gout, the sicknesses of an indulgent old man. Today he seemed oddly nervous.

“I see you have found yourself some gainful employment,” he said. “How long have you been here — two years? You have been busy. Busy, busy, busy.”

She spread her hands over her scrolls and tablets, her seals with the Order’s kissing-fish symbol. “I deal in information. That is how things work, Amator. Businesses, cities, empires. You should know that.”

“I had no idea you had developed such talents.”

“There is much you don’t know about me.”

“Perhaps I should have hired you, rather than Brica.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so, Amator. My ambitions have nothing to do with you.”

He faced her. “You’re cool now that you don’t need my money anymore, aren’t you? And are these records of your Order’s work?”

“Yes. But there is some history of the Order here — reaching back to the days of Vesta, in fact. I like to maintain such things. And—” She hesitated.

“Yes?”

“There is something of myself as well.” She had begun to write out a kind of biography, the story of her own complicated life and the great events that had shaped it. “I want my granddaughters to know where I came from — how they got here. You have a starring role, Amator.”

He laughed. “You should make it into a play. Your petty self-justification and trivial complaints would be a great favorite in the Theater of Nero.” He turned around, arms spread, almost elegantly, like a dancer. “But none of this scraping and scribbling will do you a grain of good when the barbarians come. All they will want is your money. That and the bodies of your beautiful nieces.”

“I have prepared for that contingency.”

“You are a foolish and complacent old woman. The Vandals will slit your throat.”

“We’ll see.”

He gazed at her, curious, clearly trying to be dismissive, not quite succeeding.

From her first days here she had, in fact, been preparing for the eventuality of breakdown. She had, after all, lived through it all before. Her life had been devoted to finding a safe haven for herself and her family. Rome itself, with its mighty walls and monuments of marble and eight hundred years of arrogant domination, would surely be more shelter than poor Verulamium had been. But still she had prepared what she thought of as a bolt-hole.

For all his bragging, she saw that Amator was not nearly so well prepared. Good, she thought; the more vulnerable he was the better, for she was not done with him yet. Toward that end, in fact, she had made sure to invite him to the wedding of her daughter and the other celebrations. The more he was close to her, the more opportunity she would have to deal with him.

“The ceremonies are not until tomorrow. Why are you here, Amator? Are you so sorry to lose a worker from your bread shop?”

“Brica is a flat, dull girl. She has looks, but none of your spark, little chicken.” But his fencing was unconvincing. “I am more concerned about Sulla.”

“Ah. Honesty at last. Your pretty boy.”

Amator said tensely, “I was not aware until this morning that he is to attend your ceremonies. I had not intended to bring him.”

“We gave him his own invitation.”

“Yes,” he said. “And I know why. Venus. ”

The boy, whose true inclinations evidently did not match Amator’s own, had become besotted with Venus, granddaughter of Helena, and he had been invited to the girl’s coming-of-age ceremony.

“I have no problem with that. The boy has a good heart.”

Amator jabbed a finger at Regina. “I know you engineered this, you witch. You made sure they met, and encouraged their relationship thereafter. And I know why.”

She smiled. “To hurt you? Amator, how could you think such a thing?”

“Your revenge is petty, Regina.” But his face, under its mask of cosmetics, was contorted.

“Sulla is just your bed warmer,” she said. “And evidently a reluctant one at that.”

“Oh, perhaps it started like that. But now …” He paced. “Can you understand, Regina? Have you ever loved?”

“I understand that you are a foolish and selfish old man,” she said coldly. “Your heart has been kept beating, and your cock hardened, by the soft body of this boy. But now he is growing away from you. And when he is gone, you will have nothing left.”

“My life is not complete,” he said, sighing. “Of course I have a daughter — Brica — but she is not mine and never can be. I understand that; I accept it. And I have no son … I have named Sulla as my sole legatee. Do you see? The boy is no longer a servant, but my lover, my heir. He is the best part of me. And now, yes, now I fear I am losing him.”

She shrugged, careful not to show any reaction to this news about his legacy. “I don’t know why you’re bringing this to me.”

He hung his head. “Whether or not you have brought this cow-eyed niece of yours between us deliberately, I ask you to give him back to me. There — I submit myself to you. You have beaten me, Regina. Are you happy?”

She made no reply.

When he had gone, she summoned Amator’s boy, Sulla, to her office.

Regina told him carefully that Amator was jealous and angry. That after tomorrow’s feast Sulla would not be allowed near Venus again. That Amator had been lying about his intentions regarding his legacy. That he saw the boy as useful for one thing only, his supple body, and that in future he planned not just to use Sulla himself but also to hire him out to some of his friends, for the sport of it. That Sulla would not be released from this servitude until he was too old to be attractive, or his body too damaged to be useful.

She told Sulla all this briskly, and turned away to her work, as if uncaring of his reaction.