the marble. ‘For Rome’s greatest Governor has lifted me from squalor and shown me mercy.’
‘Bravo,’ she said, feeling unreasonably happy. ‘You have learned the dance.’
He flashed a begrudging grin and extended his hand down to her and when she rose to her feet it was as if they were really dancing.
‘If Fortuna wills it, you will walk free tomorrow,’ she said. If Fortuna willed it, this would be the last time they would ever speak again.
‘You do me a kindness,’ he said. ‘Why?’
‘I find it...tedious to watch other people suffer.’
‘I am grateful to you,’ he said. She noticed that he had not released her hand. She glanced at the floor, unsure of how to respond. ‘Truly,’ he said, willing her to look at him again. ‘I owe you a debt.’
Atia blinked. Obviously he was trying to win her favour again. What prisoner ever expressed gratitude to his captor?
‘Yes, that is it,’ she said. ‘That is the tone of sincerity you must strive to convey.’
He lowered his voice. ‘It is not a tone. I am sincere.’
What a strange thing for him to say. But of course you are not sincere, she wished to tell him. You are a prisoner. You will say anything to engineer your escape.
‘When you stand before my father tonight you must work hard to veil your thoughts,’ she said. Meanwhile, her own thoughts had begun to run riot.
‘You appear to know quite a lot about the veiling of thoughts,’ he observed. He squeezed her hand. There was very little distance between them now. She could smell his clean olive scent.
‘Yes, I believe I am something of an expert in that particular skill,’ she admitted.
She had been veiling her thoughts all her life, in truth—from a father who used her, from husbands who despised her, even from her own awareness. Thoughts were dangerous, because they always led to pain. ‘If my thoughts are concealed, they cannot be used against me,’ she said.
‘And yet perhaps you are not so very adept at concealment as you think,’ he whispered. She glanced at his lips, the bottom lip so much larger than the top, like a pillow upon which she might lay her secrets.
‘I am extremely adept,’ she countered. She had meant the statement as a kind of jest, but the words came out thick and heavy.
‘Can you guess my thoughts in this moment?’ he asked.
‘No, I am afraid I cannot.’
His lips were so close. It was as if he wished to kiss her. ‘I am thinking that you are very beautiful.’
His breath washed over her, bathing her skin with sensation. It flooded down her limbs, making her feel relaxed and alert all at once. What had he said? That she was beautiful?
Beautiful?
She froze. She was many things, but beautiful she was not. Something was amiss.
She stepped backwards. He was watching her closely, his eyes smouldering with...with that look. That very well-crafted, remarkably believable approximation of desire. Something was very, very amiss.
He tilted his head back to take in the length of her body and his eyes fixed on the belt of her tunic—the place where she had stored the key to his cell.
And there it was—a glimpse of the truth. His mind was not on her—of course it was not. Had she forgotten how her terrible hooked nose made her completely undesirable? Nay, he was thinking of the key. He did not desire her. He desired escape.
She took another step backwards. And to think that she had tried to tutor him in the art of performance! What a fool she had been. She had almost been taken in by him, had waited for his kiss, had longed for it, even. How could she have forgotten herself in such a way?
‘Do you think me that naive?’ she asked.
‘Apologies, I do not underst—’
‘Guards!’ she called.
Atia tipped the vial into her goblet and watched two cloudy drops mix with her wine.
‘How many for you, Lydia?’ she asked her friend.
‘Only one, dear,’ said Lydia, glancing at the door. ‘And be quick.’
Just beyond the small bedroom, every bored patrician in Bostra had gathered. They milled about the column-lined courtyard of her father’s large villa, trading compliments and spoiling for gossip.
‘You are making me look bad,’ said Atia, tipping a single drop of the poppy tears into Lydia’s goblet, then a third into her own. She swirled the liquid inside her glass and thought of the moment that afternoon when she realised Rab had been lying to her. The tears will wash away the pain, she told herself.
It was a long-practised refrain—a phrase she had invented in the days after her first marriage, almost eighteen years ago now. She had been only twelve years old at the time—a full two years younger than the proper age for a Roman marriage.
It had been a trying time. After her mother’s death, her father had been eager to rid his doma of his three daughters. Her eldest sister had refused to marry, so he had sent her to serve at a temple in distant Crete. He had rewarded a military ally with the hand of Atia’s second-eldest sister, who had inherited the beauty of their mother.
He had had more difficulty finding a husband for Atia. ‘Your nose is a problem,’ he had told her. ‘No man wishes to pass such a thing along to his children.’ Eventually, however, her father had found a beneficial match in the person of an elderly Senator—a political ally with a taste for young girls.
The tears will wash away the pain, Atia would always tell herself when she heard the heavy treading of the Senator’s sandals on the marble floor outside her bedchamber. She would quickly tip the vial to her lips and, when he turned her over and laid his wrinkled stomach across her back, she would close her eyes and find peace.
‘Come, Atia,’ urged Lydia. ‘Before we are missed.’ Atia tipped one last teardrop into her goblet and the two women slipped back into the courtyard. They followed a crowded walkway to the dining room, where they stretched out at opposite ends of a lounging couch surrounded by tables full of delicacies.
Lydia raised her goblet. ‘To Arabia Petraea.’
‘To Arabia Petraea,’ Atia repeated, then took another long sip of her wine.
It was a sly joke the two women shared, for neither had wished to come to Rome’s easternmost province. Lydia had followed her husband here three years ago. A lesser tribune in Trajan’s Second Legion, the womanising commander had survived the change of administration from Trajan to Hadrian thanks in no small part to the wise counsel of his wife.
‘What troubles you, Atia?’ Lydia asked now, casting a wary eye on her husband. The old lecher had cornered a young Greek woman and was shamelessly caressing her cheek.
‘Nothing at all, my darling,’ Atia said, because her troubles seemed insignificant in comparison to the humiliation Lydia currently suffered.
‘Come now, I can see that something worries you,’ Lydia prodded. She reached for a fig. ‘Beyond the usual worries, of course.’
Atia sifted through her catalogue of worries to find one suitable to discuss publicly. Her stomach twisted as she envisioned burning ghutrahs and starving prisoners and innocent Nabataeans doomed to die. She wondered if her own death would come before all of them.
‘You are familiar with the science of astrology?’ she asked her friend.
‘Of