I ever tell you that an astrologer once predicted the day of my death?’
‘Really? But you must know that such predictions are impossible. Astrology is a general science.’
‘Of course,’ said Atia. She plucked an olive from a plate and gazed at it.
There was a long silence. ‘Now you have made me curious,’ asked Lydia, also gazing at the olive. ‘What day did he give you?’
‘It was a she, not a he—a very old woman in the Subura slum,’ said Atia.
‘And?’
‘I cannot recall the exact date she gave,’ Atia lied. In forty days. Atia popped the olive into her mouth and swallowed it whole. ‘She only said it would take place in my thirtieth year.’
‘How perfectly morbid! And how old are you now?’
Atia raised a brow.
Lydia laughed. ‘Come now, Atia. You do not really believe it, do you?’
Atia shook her head dismissively. She did not need to tell her friend that not only did Atia believe it, she had been looking forward to the date.
‘If the reading took place in the Subura, she was likely a charlatan,’ Lydia added. ‘Besides, old women will say anything to amuse themselves.’
‘We most certainly will,’ said Atia, sending Lydia a playful grin. A pair of centurions’ wives had taken up residence on the couch near them and a pair of young lovers were seating themselves upon the third of their trio of couches. Even in the furthest reaches of the Empire, it seemed, Atia could not escape the risk of gossip. ‘My real worry is the heat,’ said Atia, turning the conversation to a safe subject. ‘I fear it has begun to vex my nerves.’
‘It is a brutal time of year,’ replied Lydia. ‘Though not without its charms.’
‘Charms?’
‘I am speaking of the nights.’
‘Ah, the nights,’ said Atia, as if that explained everything. She shot Lydia a confounded look.
‘The nights being the only respite from the heat, of course,’ Lydia said with a wink.
‘Of course,’ said Atia. Her friend might have been speaking Latin, but she sensed another language at play.
‘To enjoy the nights more, I have begun to sleep on the roof of our villa.’
‘Have you indeed?’ said Atia. Her head swirled. She was beginning to feel the effects of the poppy.
‘I sleep on the roof of our villa because there is a wonderful view of the night sky.’ Lydia continued. Atia frowned. Why was Lydia repeating herself?
‘You sing of the night sky like a Grecian choir boy,’ Atia teased.
Lydia rolled her eyes and leaned forward, and the two women met in the middle of the couch. ‘I have taken a lover,’ Lydia whispered. ‘Is it not obvious?’
Atia sat back, mildly stunned. No, it wasn’t obvious, though now that she considered it, she did notice something of a lightness to her friend’s mood. She raised her glass in honour of Lydia. ‘Have you found it as satisfying as you had hoped?’ Atia asked in her public voice. ‘Viewing the night sky, I mean.’
‘It is utterly spectacular, my dear,’ said Lydia. She shot a glance at her husband, who had now begun to caress the Greek woman’s arm. ‘I highly recommend viewing it yourself.’
Atia tossed her friend a scolding grin. ‘You know my father would never allow me to...ah...sleep on the roof.’
‘But you are a grown woman, are you not?’
‘A Governor’s daughter does not sleep on the roof at all,’ Atia said. ‘And I fear she has never even seen the night sky.’
It was the unfortunate truth. Atia had never learned to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, despite having been married two more times. Atia’s second marriage had been worse than the first. After the old Senator had died, her father had married her to an ill-humoured tax collector as payment for a debt.
The man had been spiteful and rough with Atia, and had often criticised her looks, calling her less than what he deserved. On the rare occasions that he had visited her bed, he had been intent on harming her. And though the poppy tears had helped her endure the pain, they had not been able to shield her from his anger, or the bruises that had always decorated her skin after those terrible nights. Thank the gods her father had chosen to end the marriage and make Atia available for a better alliance.
Though that better alliance had proven to be folly. A prominent Senator, her third husband had claimed to be her father’s ally and had eagerly sought Atia’s hand. But on their marriage night, he had explained to Atia that he preferred not to see her face during the coupling act. The very next day he had introduced Atia to his mistress.
As it turned out, the Senator had been a spy. He had married Atia to learn more about her father’s efforts to secure Hadrian’s rule. When her father had learned of the Senator’s treachery, he had slain him at the baths and taken his finger as a prize.
Atia took another sip of wine. Now Lydia was motioning Atia towards her once again. Atia leaned forward and her friend whispered in her ear. ‘Love will always be elusive to women like us. But why not seize a little bit of life before it passes us by? A bit of pleasure? We are not getting any younger.’
Atia lay back on the couch and nodded her assent. Indeed they were not. Lydia was already a grandmother and Atia would have been if... She paused. If she had appealed to her husbands enough to get with child. She smiled and took another drink. The tears of poppy were simply a wonder. They made even the most difficult thoughts somehow easier to think.
‘I have been sleeping on the roof for many months now, in truth,’ said Lydia, tracing the rim of her glass. ‘I enjoy the night sky every night.’
Atia peered at Lydia. Was it the effect of the tears or did her friend seem to glow? ‘How would one go about such an endeavour?’ she asked casually, then filled her mouth with a wedge of melon.
Lydia grinned. ‘One must simply select the rooftop mattress one desires and then pay for it.’
‘Pay for it?’
‘Of course. Or offer some kind of gift in exchange. I recommend the Nabataean-made mattresses. They are especially comfortable.’
Atia could not conceal her wonder. Her closest friend was having an affair with a Nabataean man, whom she compensated with coin and gifts.
It was all very commercial, though she supposed that, in a sense, every union was so. Marriages were always negotiated and every woman was for sale. Or perhaps rent was a better term. Atia herself had been rented three separate times, in three separate marriages. She had never had any aspirations of love or pleasure. She was simply an object of trade in the economy of her father’s shifting alliances. If she survived beyond her prophesied death, she did not doubt that she would become such an object again.
Atia gazed at her friend in admiration. Why should she not strike her own bargain for a change? There was something liberating about the idea and it occurred to her that one would not have to be beautiful or desirable in such an arrangement. One would only need to be rich. And rich Atia was.
A vision of Rab’s dazzling grin filled her mind. Go away, she told it. He was her father’s prisoner, after all—the worst possible candidate for a lover. Besides, he had exploited her good will and sought to flatter her towards his own ends. It terrified her—how close she had come to believing his deception. She was certain that, had she allowed their encounter to go on for even a few more seconds, he would have tried to kiss her.
And she would have kissed him back. That was what scared her the most. It was as if his body had been beckoning hers, pulling her towards him by some invisible force.
Thank the