Authors: Alice Borchardt
Couches covered with purple silk velvet were arranged around two enormous half-moon-shaped tables. The pope’s couch occupied the space near the back wall in the opening between two ends of the tables. It was set high on a raised dais.
Musicians were gathered in the open area between the two semi-circular tables and the soft waterfall of notes from the harp and cythera mingled with the plaintive cry of the flutes.
On the curved walls, the larger-than-life frescoes of the twelve apostles looked down on the silks and velvets of the glittering guests.
From a tall mosaic panel in the center of the room behind the
pope’s couch, a stiff Byzantine Christ gazed down, his hand raised to bless the pontiff at dinner.
The apostles in the frescoes weren’t stiff or formal. They strolled together in groups through the lush beauty of a Roman summer. They resembled a crowd of peasants taking their ease at siesta time beneath the trees, heavy with fruit and foliage. Looking out over meadows alight with scarlet poppies and golden wheat ripening in the fields. Mark’s lion played like a kitten in the long, green grass. Matthew’s eagle soared like a falcon on the hunt. Peter lounged under a tree, his keys in his belt, nets folded beside him.
“Antonius!” Regeane said sadly.
“Yes,” Lucilla answered. “At first I thought he was mad hanging around those silly painters’ workshops, grinding colors, messing with plaster and stucco when Hadrian could have sponsored him. Assured him of a brilliant career in the church. But then when I saw what he produced … Alas, we poor Romans, floundering in a sea of barbarism, can still comfort ourselves with beauty. As though it were important,” she added bitterly.
Regeane, still gazing at the magnificent painting, said, “It is.”
“Yes,” Lucilla said thoughtfully. “Yes, you’re right. Perhaps these things are our immortality. Perhaps it is for them that we will be remembered when all else is dust.”
Elfgifa was standing beside Regeane’s couch. Augusta’s friends were making a big fuss over her. Indeed, dressed in adult clothing, her hair braided with pearls as Regeane’s, she looked a perfect little doll.
A big woman, dressed in the sober garb of a nun, pushed her way through the crowd around them and introduced herself. “I am the Abbess Emilia, and that, unless I miss my guess,” she pointed to the child, “is Elfgifa.”
The ladies around the child parted to let Abbess Emilia through. Emilia confronted Elfgifa with hands on her hips, an expression of disapproval on her face.
“Aunt Emilia,” Elfgifa said.
“Don’t ‘Aunt Emilia’ me, you naughty child. Your father has been frantic with worry about you.”
Elfgifa’s lower lip began to slide out and Regeane knew this was a danger sign.
“It wasn’t my fault I was captured by pirates.”
“Yes, it was,” Emilia boomed. “You know very well you were told not to run away and play with the fishermen’s sons. Our coast isn’t safe,” she explained to the rest. “The Northmen prowl everywhere, looking for loot, trying to take our people as slaves and sell them to the Greeks. Your father was afraid you were lost forever. In fact,” Emilia shook her finger in Elfgifa’s face, “you’ve grown up so much that even if I had found you, I don’t know if I’d have recognized you.”
Elfgifa appealed to Regeane. “Why do they always say you’ve grown? What do they expect at my age, for me to get smaller? You’ve grown, too,” she said to Emilia. “This way.” The little girl spread her arms in a measuring gesture. “Stout.”
A wave of soft titters swept the group of women around Emilia.
“Outrageous!” Lucilla said. “Young lady, not another word. Greet your aunt properly with a kiss on the cheek. I believe we had a discussion on the way here about the differences between private and public behavior.”
“I remember,” Elfgifa said, looking chastened and guilty.
Emilia folded her arms and stared down at the child. “It’s Elfgifa, all right.” She grinned and pinched her cheek and said to the child, “Fat is the word you want.”
Elfgifa looked annoyed. “My father says ‘fat’ isn’t nice,” she insisted. “Stout.”
Emilia gave a whoop of laughter. “My brother’s daughter in everything. He’s always twitting me about my girth. Happens whenever I see him, though that hasn’t been for a few years now. God bless him. I tell him I’m not one to confuse piety with misery. My ladies in the convent spend their time in works of holy charity. We care for orphans, visit the sick, and feed and shelter those pilgrims that come to our door. Believe you me, a girl who’s spent her night in sleepless vigil beside the bed of a dying man, or a long day supervising the education of a bunch of active youngsters doesn’t need to come to the table and find a bowl of thin gruel and a few slices of black bread. We laborers in Christ’s vineyards need to keep up our strength.”
“I’m sure you do,” Augusta murmured. “Now, as for the child …”
Elfgifa spun around and looked at Regeane accusingly. “You’re going to send me away, aren’t you?” Then she ran toward Regeane and threw herself into her arms.
Regeane clasped her and lifted her up, setting her on her hip. Elfgifa wrapped her arms around Regeane’s neck and rested her cheek against hers.
For a moment Regeane was simply overwhelmed with love. She trembled with its intensity. “Don’t you want to go home? Your Aunt Emilia will take good care of you until your father can come get you. She’s a kind woman, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” Elfgifa said, “but she makes me study my letters. And she lectures me all the time about right and wrong. If I sneak off to play, she acts like I committed a sin, and she thinks I should work in the kitchen and scrub the pots. She won’t let me climb trees and I have to stay inside when it rains. She nags, ‘Stand up straight or you’ll get a hump in your back.’ ‘Don’t get your dress dirty.’ My father says if you wear clothes they’re
supposed
to get dirty and—”
Lucilla clapped her hands, bringing Elfgifa’s tirade to an end. “Headstrong should have been your name, not Elfgifa. Regeane loves you. Try not to give her any more pain than you have to. Besides, a little work and discipline will do you good. Quickly enough you’ll be returned to your father and allowed to run wild as usual.”
“Oh, heavens,” Emilia said, throwing up her arms. “It’s true. He treats the child more like one of those wayward men of his. He treats her as though her thoughts and opinions mattered.”
“That’s because they do,” Lucilla snapped. “She is the daughter of a thane, is she not? At the very least she’ll become the mistress of a large household.”
Emilia looked flustered for a moment, then gave Lucilla a quick smile. “I’ve never heard it put quite that way, but yes, I suppose you’re right.”
Lucilla spoke then to Elfgifa. “Regeane is sending you with Emilia because it’s … at present, a lot safer. She loves you and wants what’s best for you.”
The child threw her head back and her deep, blue eyes looked sadly at Regeane.
Regeane’s free hand stroked the soft curls at the back of Elfgifa’s neck. “I want you to be happy and to preserve you from harm, little one,” Regeane said in a very low voice to her, “and you wouldn’t be either happy or safe with me. I want to see you with people who love you and can care for you properly.” She shook her head. “Circumstances …” Words failed her for a moment and her eyes filled with tears. “Circumstances being what they are, I can’t.”
Elfgifa stared at Regeane solemnly for a moment, then tightened her arms around Regeane’s neck. Her soft kiss was a whisper of love and trust against Regeane’s cheek. “I’ll be good,” she promised, “and I’ll try to do what Aunt Emilia tells me.”
“Mother,” Augusta said. “The pope is going to his couch. The feast is beginning. We must recline.”
Regeane set Elfgifa down and found herself enveloped in Emilia’s quick, unexpected embrace. “Thank you for your sweet compassion. You’ll never know how happy it’s made us to get the child back. My brother adores her. You have our eternal gratitude.” Then she hurried away to join the other nuns seated across the room.
Lucilla nodded to Regeane as though she were a mere acquaintance and she, too, walked away toward her seat near the foot of the table.
Regeane stood for a moment, watching her, holding Elfgifa by the hand, Augusta beside her. “How strange,” she murmured. “She must be one of the most powerful personages in Rome and yet propriety consigns her—”
“Be quiet,” Augusta interrupted harshly as she looked quickly around. “Someone might hear you. My mother is continually a disgrace and an embarrassment to me,” she added with an air of martyrdom. “She has sufficient fortune to live modestly—as a proper Roman matron should—and devote herself to the church, to relief of the poor. But instead she consorts openly with the lowest element in the city. She dabbles in politics and other matters unbecoming to a woman of rank. And
above all, she continues to see a man whose company she should properly avoid as occasion of sin.”
Regeane bit back the retort already forming in her mind. Elfgifa broke in on her angry thoughts to ask, “Are we going to eat lying down again?”
“Yes,” Regeane said sternly. “It’s the custom here and, as guests, we must do honor to our hosts.”
“I didn’t object,” Elfgifa replied in an injured tone. “I was only asking.”
THE MUSIC WAS SOOTHING AND BEAUTIFUL. THE conversation among the guests civilized and subdued, the food and many wines a complex tapestry of color and flavor, an embarrassment of riches.
Regeane was bewildered, but delighted by the first courses of the banquet. She and Elfgifa feasted on thrushes and bobolinks braised in a white wine sauce, their flesh permeated by the sweet taste of the figs used to fatten them.
Augusta gave them both a look of disapproval and contented herself with a salad of endive, watercress dressed with oil, a little honey, and some wine, saying, “At my age I have to watch my weight. The two of you should be more careful,” she warned darkly. “The eating habits you form now will follow you all your life.”
Elfgifa dutifully tried some of the salad and made a wry face at the bitter taste of the greens.
They were seated near the pope’s couch and Regeane saw him smile at Elfgifa’s reaction to the greens. Then he sent over a dish from his own table.
“For the child,” the smiling servant said as he presented it to Elfgifa.
Augusta stiffened into complete disgust when she saw the contents of the dish—pears cooked in cinnamon honey and wine in a light sauce thickened only with a few egg yolks.
Elfgifa ignored Augusta’s admonition that she would ruin her appetite for dinner and gorged herself saying, “I don’t care. I like what’s here now.”
Servants then cleared away the heavy, scrolled silver dishes and the guests washed and dried their fingers. The serving man poured rosewater over their hands.
Elfgifa got rosewater up her nose because she tried simultaneously to sniff the scented water and wash her hands at the same time. She began sneezing violently.
Rigid with fury, Augusta lay propped on her right elbow, pretending Elfgifa didn’t exist, while Regeane, scarlet with embarrassment, tried to repair the damage and stop the sneezes by bathing Elfgifa’s face with a napkin steeped in the offending rosewater.
“Oh, good heavens,” Regeane whispered, completely exasperated. “Can’t you stay out of mischief for even one second?”
Elfgifa’s little face scrunched itself up and she looked like she might begin to cry. Regeane was immediately conscience-stricken.
“I’m sorry,” Elfgifa said. “I didn’t mean it. Only the water smelled good and I wanted—”
“Hush,” Regeane said, taking the little girl’s face between her hands and kissing her on the forehead. “There’s a good girl. Now, don’t cry.”
Elfgifa refused to be comforted and hung her head. “Is that why you want to be rid of me? Because I’m not a good girl? I must be bad, because everyone’s always telling me things to do and not to do and—oooh! Look how pretty!” she said, her grief forgotten like a passing shadow.
One of the serving men was offering the guests cups. They were glass, each in the shape of a different flower.
“Can I have any kind I want?” Elfgifa asked as the servant paused before them holding the tray laden with the glass confections. Elfgifa bounced up and down with delight. “I like the
sunflower. No, the harebell. No, I don’t know. The lily is so pretty.”
“Don’t kick so,” Augusta said in a dreadful voice. “Make up your mind and don’t break it.”
Elfgifa subsided immediately and her two large, blue eyes instantly became pools of tears.
“Don’t be cruel, Augusta,” Regeane snapped. “She’s only a child.”
“So I’ve noticed,” Augusta hissed. “A nasty, sloppy, hateful little …”
Elfgifa looked stricken and pressed close to Regeane’s side.
Regeane could feel her own passionate anger drain the blood from her face and she draped her arm over Elfgifa’s shoulders. “Yes,” she said softly. “You can have any one you like.”
“I think I like the blue harebell best,” a subdued Elfgifa whispered to Regeane as she looked up fearfully at Augusta.
Regeane glanced at the servant. The handsome, young man was staring at Augusta with dislike.
“Very well,” Regeane said. “I’ll take the lily and,” she added maliciously, “since you like it, Augusta will have the sunflower.”
Regeane’s lily was of rare, clear crystal, the petals each tipped in white, while Elfgifa’s harebell was a pale blue streaked with darker sapphire markings, each placed to suggest the delicate coloration of the spring flowers.
The beverage served in the cups was a dessert wine. Regeane chose a sweet raisin, Elfgifa one scented with roses, and Augusta, predictably, took the beverage redolent of violets.
A young girl strolled into the opening between the tables and took her place near the musicians.
Conversation among the guests stilled as they waited expectantly for her to begin singing.
“Doesn’t look like much, does she?” Augusta said.
Indeed, to Regeane’s eye the simply dressed girl was plain, almost ugly. She was dark-haired, her high-cheekboned face was distinguished only by a hooked nose, but when she began to sing, Regeane forgot the tall, thin body and the almost ugly face. The girl’s voice was a golden thread of liquid beauty winding among the strings. The flute accompanied her with a sad, lilting melody.