Out of the Waters (23 page)

Corylus dropped the chain over his neck and tucked the pendant, the amulet, under his tunic. Then he folded his old nurse in his arms. She felt as light as a plucked chicken. He felt a rush of love.

“I love you, little mother,” Corylus said. “You kept me safe as a boy, and you protect me still.”

He squeezed Anna again and stepped back, smiling. “Now, I'm already late,” he said. “I'll pick up a roll on my way to class. We'll deal with this business, whatever it is.”

Corylus quickly laced on his sandals. He was still smiling, but that was for show. He wished he could be more confident of what he had just told Anna; and he wished he didn't feel that he had a vicious dog on the end of the chain around his neck.

Because despite Anna's words, he wasn't sure it was
his
dog.

*   *   *

H
EDIA'S EXPRESSION REMAINED
pleasant as the new doorman announced the arrival of Senator Marcus Atilius Priscus. In truth the fellow's South German accent was so broad that if she hadn't known who was invited for dinner, she wouldn't be any wiser now.

Keeping her professional smile, she murmured to Saxa at her side, “Dear heart, we
cannot
keep Flavus on the front door until his Latin has improved. Not if we're going to entertain senators as learned as Lord Priscus, at least.”

Flavus was a striking physical specimen, tall and blond and ripplingly muscular. Hedia could certainly appreciate the fellow's merit, but she had never allowed appearances to interfere with her duty.

Hedia had never let
anything
interfere with her duty.

She was standing beside her husband as a matter of respect while he greeted his dinner guests, though she would not be dining with the men tonight. She didn't have a party of her own to attend: she planned to dine in her own suite, either alone or possibly with Alphena. She hadn't decided whether to issue the invitation, and she thought it likely that the girl would decline it if she did.

Varus wasn't present, though he would be dining with Saxa and his guests. That wasn't a protest, as it might have been with his sister in similar circumstances. The boy said he would work until dinner.

“Work” in his case meant that he would be reading something and taking notes. Hedia had recently looked through one of the notebooks Varus was filling, thinking that she should display interest in her son's activities. She had found them either nonsensical or unintelligible, though no more so than the passage from Horace to which they apparently referred.

Hedia's smile became momentarily warmer. Her son—stepson by blood but, in law and in her mind, her son—would never be the sort of man she socialized with; but he was a clever boy, and brave. Hedia had seen that the night in the Temple of Jupiter when Varus saved the world from fiery destruction.

Marcus Priscus waddled into the entrance hall, accompanied by a score of servants. There were no freeborn clients in his entourage. Sometimes a host would give his guests the option of bringing the number of diners up to nine with their own friends and hangers-on, but Priscus had not asked for this right and Saxa hadn't volunteered it. Hedia knew her husband viewed the dinner as a chance to frame his magpie's hoard of erudition with the solid scholarship of his guests and son.

“Welcome, my honored colleague!” Saxa called. “Your wisdom lights my poor house.”

“Welcome, Lord Priscus,” Hedia said, her voice a smooth vibrancy following her husband's nervous squeak. “Our household gods smile at your presence.”

“Lady Hedia,” Priscus said, beaming at her. “I recall your father fondly. He would be delighted, I'm sure, to see how his daughter has blossomed.”

Priscus was badly overweight and nearly seventy, but his undeniable scholarship had not kept him from getting quite a reputation for gallantry in his younger days.
A pity Varus isn't more like him,
Hedia thought.
We might get along better if we had something in common
.

Hedia murmured something appreciative to the guest, then turned to a deputy steward—it happened to be Manetho—and whispered, “Go to Lord Varus—he's probably in the library—and tell him that the guests are arriving for dinner.” Manetho nodded and vanished toward the back stairs.

Candidus was marshaling the members of Priscus' escort and leading them toward the kitchen where they would be fed with the household staff. There were probably as many more out in front, including litter bearers. Hedia was sure that Priscus hadn't walked here himself from his home on the west slope of the Palatine Hill.

Her husband and Priscus were chatting, waiting for Pandareus and perhaps Varus as well before they went up to the outside dining area, overlooking the central courtyard. Instead of permanent masonry benches built into the walls, wicker furniture was brought up from storage and covered with goose down pillows covered with silk brocade whose ridged designs made the guests less likely to slip off than slick surfaces would.

“The learned Master Pandareus of Athens!” Flavus said, butchering the words even worse, if that was possible, than he had the senator's.

The servant who whispered the names of those arriving was a wizened Greek from Massillia in Gaul. He was extremely sharp—Hedia had never known him to misidentify a visitor—and would have been a perfect doorman if he hadn't had the face and posture of an arthritic rat.
By Venus!, the trouble the gods caused for a woman who simply wanted to present her noble husband with the proper dignity
.

Hedia smiled more broadly by just a hair. She wasn't fooling herself, of course; but the experience of behaving normally for a woman in her position had thrown a little more cover over the figures of her nightmare.

The scholar entered, looking faintly bemused. He didn't have an attendant, and Hedia could only assume that the tunic he wore was his best. One heard of rhetoric teachers becoming very wealthy, but Pandareus had clearly avoided that experience.

I must remember to check with Agrippinus to make sure that Varus' school fees are paid
.

Priscus greeted the teacher with obvious warmth. Varus had said that the men were friends despite the difference in their social position; this confirmed the statement.

Saxa glanced at Hedia and whispered nervously, “My dear? Do you suppose V-V…, my son, that is, will be joining us?”

“Yes, he'll be—” Hedia said. She stopped gratefully as Varus entered from the office with an apologetic expression. Two servants were trying to adjust his toga on the move.

“The noble Senator Marcus Sempronius Tardus, Commissioner of the Sacred Rites!” Flavus boomed.

There was silence in the hall, at least from the principals. Servants continued to chatter like a flock of sparrows, of course.

“What's this, Saxa?” Priscus said. “I wouldn't have thought you'd be inviting Tardus, not after that consular visit yesterday.”

He didn't sound angry, though he probably felt that he should have been informed of who the other guests were when he was invited. There were senators who certainly preferred never to set eyes on one another.

“I didn't…,” Saxa said, looking stunned. He turned to Hedia. “Dear one, did you invite Tardus? That is, I'm not misremembering something, am I?”

“No, little heart,” Hedia said coolly. “I'm sure Lord Tardus will inform us of why he is gracing us with his presence.”

Tardus entered the hall with attendants, crowding it again. No toga-clad citizens accompanied him, but the three men closest to the senator were the foreigners whom Hedia had seen with him in the theater. Close-up they seemed even more unusual, especially the man with the stuffed bird pinned opposite to the roll of his long black hair.

“Greetings, Lord Tardus,” Saxa said. “You are welcome, of course, but I confess that I was not expecting to see you today.”

“I was equally surprised yesterday, Lord Saxa,” Tardus said. “But your visit reminded me that we were colleagues with similar interests which we might be able to cultivate together.”

Hedia didn't recall ever meeting Tardus before, and if she had seen him casually in the Forum, he hadn't lingered in her memory. He would have merited the term “nondescript” were it not that his toga was hemmed with the broad purple stripe of a senator. He had the reputation of being not only superstitious but involved in kinds of magic that were discussed in secret if at all.

Hedia's smile was cold. She wasn't the one to talk, of course; not after the task she had given Anna.

“Well, I…,” Saxa said, his words stumbling as he tried to understand the situation. “I'm pleased that you're, ah, reacting in that fashion, Marcus Tardus, but in truth this isn't a very good time … that is—”

“I see that you're gathering for dinner,” Tardus said, nodding to the guests. The two senators and Varus wore their togas, showing that this was a formal occasion. “No doubt you'll have private matters to discuss, so I'll take myself away. Perhaps another time.”

“Why, yes,” Saxa said gratefully. “I appreciate your understanding.”

Priscus jumped as though he'd been cut with an overseer's whip … which, if the stories about him in his younger days were true, had indeed happened on occasion.

My dear sweet husband doesn't have a clue!
thought Hedia with a mixture of affection, exasperation, and fear. There was definitely reason for fear if this weren't handled properly—and at once.

“We would be delighted to have you join us for dinner, Lord Tardus!” Hedia said brightly. Smiling as though she had just received the gift of eternal youth, she went on to the majordomo, “Agrippinus, have three more places set; Lady Alphena and I will sit upright in place of the third couch.”

Lowering her voice, she continued, “And Agrippinus? Ask Lady Alphena to prepare for dinner. I'll be up in a moment to discuss jewelry with her. Please press upon her the urgency of the situation.”

The majordomo strode from the entrance hall, calling sharply to underlings. Hedia hoped Agrippinus intended to speak to Alphena himself rather than leaving the unpleasant task to a junior who might not understand its importance.

The men were all looking at her. Well, that wasn't the sort of thing that made her nervous. Saxa and Varus were puzzled, but Priscus was obviously relieved.

Hedia expected Tardus to smirk at his successful throw of the dice, but instead he seemed numbly accepting. The trio of foreign servants were sharply interested in everything around them but particularly, it seemed to Hedia, in Varus and herself. She couldn't tell how old they were. In their fifties, she had guessed from a distance; but close up, what she saw in their eyes suggested they were older than that, and perhaps impossibly old.

“Dear, is that correct?” Saxa said, completely at sea now. “I'd understood that you wouldn't be joining us. And Alphena, well, Alphena never dines with the family.”

“Indeed, it's time that our daughter becomes more comfortable in polite society,” Hedia said. “And what better place than a meal with erudite friends, discussing fine points of literature?”

She continued to smile. On the walls of the hall were death masks of ancestors going back almost two hundred years, and by Venus!, some of those wax masks would be less obtuse than her husband was showing himself at the moment.

“Well, just as you say, dear,” Saxa said. “Ah—”

“Take your guests to the dining room, my lord and husband,” Hedia said gently. She wondered if her smile looked as brittle as it felt. “Lady Alphena and I will join you very shortly.”

Leaving Manetho to take charge of chivvying the men to the outside dining area, Hedia herself strode briskly to the back stairs. These were intended for the servants, but Hedia needed to get to her daughter as quickly as possible. It wouldn't have done to rush up the main stairs ahead of three senators, and she certainly wasn't going to wait until they had shuffled in chatty, leisurely fashion to the couches set on the roof above the black-and-gold hall, with a good view of the central courtyard.

A quick-witted footman saw Hedia coming and sprinted ahead of her, bellowing up the back staircase in a Thracian accent, “Hop to, you wankers! Her ladyship's on her way!”

Hedia grinned wryly. She'd been announced in more gracious and mellifluous terms, but this had the merits of being short and extremely clear. When she got a moment to catch her breath, she would learn who the footman was and tell Agrippinus to promote him for initiative.

The stairs weren't clear when Hedia reached them, but servants who had been lounging there only moments before were scattering like a covey of quail. She lifted the skirts of her long tunic in both hands and trotted up.

Part of her was appalled to think of how embarrassing it would be if she tripped on her hem and broke her neck. Another part—the part that made her giggle as her slippers pattered on the plain brick steps—realized smugly that if she
did
break her neck, her own problems were over.

Alphena was leaning over the mezzanine railing, watching Tardus' entourage being escorted toward the kitchen. Hedia approached her from behind, swallowing her initial flash of irritation. Florina and a bevy of other maids fluttered around the girl, afraid to warn her that Hedia had arrived but obviously afraid of what would happen if they didn't say something. Agrippinus stood by the public stairs, bowing as Saxa and his guests passed in their stately fashion.

“Come, daughter,” Hedia said in calm, cultured tones. “Let's get you ready for dinner so that their lordships don't feel that you're insulting them. Syra—”

She turned her head slightly. Her maid, as expected, stood at her elbow; she panted, probably more from nervousness than the exertion.

“—go to my suite and fetch my jewelry box. I'll pick out pieces for Lady Alphena while she's getting into her synthesis.”