Authors: Bertrice Small
• • •
In the city, Aspar’s absence from his elegant palace was not noticed at first, but the empress Verina, a clever woman, kept her ear to the ground in all quarters. She and her husband had not the advantage of inheritance to keep their thrones safe. Aspar was important to them. Although an excellent public servant, Leo was not a master of intrigue at this early point in his reign; but his wife, raised in Byzantium, knew that the more one knew, the safer one was. A servant’s idle gossip caught her ear at first, and then she heard it again, this time from a minor official. The empress invited her brother Basilicus to come and visit her.
They sat on a terrace overlooking the Propontis, called by some the Marmara, one afternoon in late autumn, sipping the first of the new wine. Verina was a beautiful woman with ivory skin and long, black hair which she wore in an elaborate coiffure of braids that were fastened with jeweled pins. Her red and gold stola was of rich materials, and the low neckline showed her fine bosom to its best advantage. Her slippers were bejeweled, and she wore several ropes of pearls so translucent they seemed to shimmer against her skin and gown. She smiled at her brother.
“What is this I hear about Aspar?” she purred.
“What is it you have heard about Aspar, my pet?” he countered.
“It is said that he has closed up his palace and now lives in the countryside outside the city,” the empress said. “Is it true?”
“I would not know, sister dear,” Basilicus replied. “I have not seen Aspar socially for months now. I see him only when we have mutual court business to attend to, which is infrequently. Why would you care where Aspar lives, Verina? Although he is responsible for Leo’s ascent, you have never cared particularly for him. I know for a fact that his presence irritates you for it only serves to remind you that he is responsible for your good fortune.”
“It is said there is a woman living with him, Basilicus,” the empress said, ignoring her brother’s astute observation. “You
know that Aspar’s wife, Flacilla, is my friend. I would be very distressed to have Flacilla embarrassed by her husband’s peccadillos.”
“Nonsense, sister, you are simply consumed by curiosity,” Basilicus replied. “If indeed Aspar is living with some mistress, nothing, I suspect, would please you more than to drop a hint in Flacilla’s shell-like ear, thereby enraging her. You know that Aspar agreed to marry her only if she would remain discreet in her little adventures and not embarrass her family again. Aspar is not a man to install a mistress in his house, but if indeed he has, then by living in the country he is making an attempt to be circumspect in his affair. Besides, there is nothing wrong with a man taking a mistress, Verina. It is my opinion that our good general deserves a modicum of pleasure in his life. He will never obtain it from your dear friend Flacilla, who takes lovers like some women gather flowers in a field, and with less discretion, I might add.”
“Flacilla is young yet. She is many years her husband’s junior,” the empress said. “Aspar could not keep up with her, I assure you.”
“She could not keep up with him,” Basilicus said with a laugh. “Aspar is known to be a prodigious lover, my dear sister. An eighteen-year-old could not keep up with him, I am told by most reliable sources. Besides, Flacilla has two grown daughters. She is hardly in the first bloom of youth herself.”
“She had her children when she was fifteen and sixteen,” Verina said in defense of the lady. “They were fifteen and sixteen when she married them off last year. That only makes her thirty-two. Aspar is at least twenty years her senior. If he has taken a mistress, it will make my poor Flacilla the laughingstock of all of Constantinople. You must find out!”
“Me?”
Basilicus looked horrified. “How could I find out?”
“You must go to visit Aspar in the country, Basilicus. Perhaps these rumors are nothing more than that, rumors, but if they are true, then I must inform Flacilla before she is shamed before the court.”
“Go
to the country?
Verina, I detest the country! I haven’t
left the city in several years. There is nothing to do in the country. Besides, Flacilla should be delighted if Aspar has taken a mistress. It will keep him occupied, amused, and uninterested in her affairs. She almost caused a dreadful scandal again last week when the young gladiator she had been amusing herself with decided he was in love with her after she attempted to discard him.”
“I didn’t hear
that,”
the empress said, annoyed and curious as to why her network of spies had not reported this rather interesting tidbit to her. “What happened, Basilicus? I can see you know every delicious detail. Tell me at once, or I shall have you blinded!”
He chuckled and, pouring himself another goblet of wine, began, “Well, my dear sister, your friend Flacilla had taken a young gladiator to her bed whom she had first seen at the spring games. A Thracian named Nichophorus; rather beefy I thought, but those muscular thighs of his were irresistible, I suspect. As is usual with Flacilla after a few months’ time, familiarity began to breed contempt. She grew tired of her muscular Adonis and, besides, her eye had lit upon Michael Valens, the young actor. Our Flacilla was struck anew by Cupid’s dart.”
“What happened to the gladiator?” Verina demanded.
“He caught them at the very same trysting place Flacilla had once shared with him,” Basilicus replied. “She is not a woman of great imagination, is she, sister? You would have thought she would have chosen another site to carry on her little passion, but no, ‘twas the very same spot. Nichophorus, informed by some mischief maker, found them there. He howled and raged, beating upon the door of the chamber in which your friend and her lover were cowering. Finally he broke the door down.
“Michael Valens, no hero, fearful that his beautiful face would be destroyed, escaped through a window naked as the day his mother had birthed him, I’m told, leaving a semi-garbed Flacilla to contend with the outraged gladiator. He railed loudly against her, cursing her and naming her a whore to all who would listen. The innkeeper finally called out the
guard, who chased after Nichophorus as he ran screaming after Flacilla’s litter, which was making its way down the streets of the city at an unusually great rate of speed.” Basilicus laughed. “The captain of the guard and his men were, of course, bought off by the patriarch. The scandal was hushed up. Nichophorus was sent to Cyprus. It is a very good thing Aspar was not in the city when it happened. He warned Flacilla when they married that if she caused any public scandal, he would send her to St. Barbara’s Convent for the rest of her life.”
The empress nodded. “Yes, he did, and the patriarch agreed to support him in such an instance. The Strabo family is not just a little annoyed by Flacilla’s indiscreet behavior, and their patience is worn thin by her. Hmmmmm, I wonder to what use I may put all this information, but of course the puzzle is incomplete until I know exactly what is going on at Aspar’s villa.” Her amber eyes glittered wickedly. “You will leave in the morning, brother.”
He groaned as he arose, kissing her hand. “The empress’s wish is my command, but Verina, I will expect the favor of my choice for this little task I undertake on your behalf. Remember that!”
“Within reason, Basilicus,” she purred, smiling broadly after him. He was such a good brother, the empress thought fondly as she watched him leave. Whatever was happening at the general’s villa, Basilicus would obtain the entire story, analyze it, and return to her with it. If she could not decide how to use his information, he would be able to advise her. They were very close, and always had been.
Basilicus left the city early the following day. He traveled in a large, comfortable litter, preferring not to ride in the warm sun. To his surprise, he napped most of the way, awakening as they entered through the gates of the villa. Zeno, the majordomo, greeted him politely, recognizing the prince from his own days at the general’s house in Constantinople.
“Where is your master?” Basilicus asked.
“He is walking by the sea, my lord,” Zeno replied.
Basilicus was about to tell Zeno to send a servant for Aspar,
but instead decided that he might learn something of value if he took his friend unawares. “Thank you, Zeno,” he said. “If you will but direct me.” He followed the majordomo through the atrium of the villa and across the interior garden, out into a large open garden that looked over the Propontis, and beyond into Asia.
“There is the path, my lord,” Zeno told him, pointing.
Basilicus hurried along the gravel walkway. It was a marvelous day with a flat, bright blue, cloudless sky above. The autumn sun was warm, and about him the damask rosebushes sported a mixture of late blooms and large, fat, round redorange rosehips. Then he saw them—Aspar and a woman, laughing together upon the beach. The woman wore a white chiton and was barefoot, as was her companion, who was garbed in a short red tunic. The sea was almost flat, a mixture of azure, aquamarine, and teal-green stretching like an iridescent fabric across to the hills on the other shore. Above them the gulls mewled and cried, swooping to the water and then pulling up sharply to soar in the windless sky.
Basilicus watched them for a long moment, enchanted by the picture they made, and then he called out, raising his hand and waving at the couple. “Aspar, my friend!” He stepped from the pathway to the sandy beach and began walking toward them.
“Jesu!” Aspar swore softly beneath his breath. “It is Basilicus.”
“The empress’s brother?” Cailin replied. “Did you invite him?”
“Of course not. He has obviously heard something, my little love. He is a clever, and a sly fox. He has come with a purpose, you may be certain. I can only wonder at what it is.”
“He is very handsome,” she observed.
Aspar felt a twinge of jealousy at her words. He had no cause, he knew, to doubt her. She was simply making an observation, and yet he felt resentful. He did not want to share Cailin with anyone, he thought, as Basilicus finally reached them. “Is there some emergency that you invade my privacy?” he said ungraciously to his friend.
Basilicus was somewhat taken aback by the unfriendly tone of the general’s voice. Dear lord! Caught between his sister’s unbridled curiosity and the annoyance of the most powerful man in the empire. No one would envy him his position at this moment. “There is no emergency,” he said. “I simply felt like a day in the country, Aspar. I did not believe my arrival would cause you to behave like a bear with a sore paw,” Basilicus replied, put off but determined to remain.
“Your guest will be thirsty and hungry, my lord,” Cailin said quietly. “I will go and make certain that Zeno has refreshments prepared.” She nodded politely at the prince, and left the two men on the bench.
“What a glorious creature!” Basilicus said. “Who is she, and where, you fortunate man, did you find her?”
“Why are you here?” his companion demanded bluntly. “You detest the country, Basilicus. There is another reason, I know.”
“Verina sent me,” Basilicus admitted. Honesty always worked with Aspar, the prince knew. Besides, Aspar was not a man to trifle with, particularly when he was in a difficult mood such as now.
“Good lord! What does your sister want of me that she would send you to the country after me, Basilicus? Tell me! We will not return to the house until you do.” Then Aspar chuckled, obviously finding humor in the situation. “Your poor body will soon go into shock, my friend. I do not believe it has been in the warmth of the sun in years.”
“Verina heard that you had closed up your house in the city and moved out to your villa. She has also heard that you have taken a mistress. You know her curiosity is greater than most women’s,” Basilicus said to Aspar. “And, of course, she is Flacilla’s friend.”
“And she hopes to get me in her debt,” Aspar observed wisely.
“How well you seem to know my sister,” Basilicus said mockingly.
“I also know of the recent scandal involving my wife that the patriarch hushed up,” Aspar replied. “I may be living in
the country, Basilicus, but my channels of information have simply stretched a bit farther. There is little happening in the city that I do not know about. Because I am happy, and because my wife’s relations have quieted the gossip surrounding her and her recent lovers, I am content to let the matter rest, lest my own arrangement be brought to light. You know as well as I do, Basilicus, that Flacilla is perfectly capable of creating a scandal around this villa and its inhabitants simply to deflect attention from her own outrageous behavior. Because she is not a happy woman, the idea that I should be happy would be galling to her. That is why I live here now rather than in the city. My conduct is subject to less scrutiny at Villa Mare, or so I believed until today.”
“You do not seem to be living a very profligate life, Aspar,” Basilicus observed as they now walked from the beach up the garden path to the villa. “Indeed, if I had not known you, I would have assumed you were simply a well-to-do gentleman and his wife. Now tell me, before I die of curiosity, who the girl is and where you found her.”
“You do not recognize her, Basilicus?”
The prince shook his dark head. “No, I do not.”
“Think back, my friend, to a night several months ago when you and I together visited the Villa Maxima to take in a notorious and particularly salacious entertainment that had the city agog,” Aspar said.
Basilicus thought a moment, and then his dark eyes grew wide.
“No!”
he said. “It cannot be! Is it? You bought
that
girl? I do not believe it! That exquisite creature with you on the beach is patrician-born without a doubt. She cannot be the same girl!”
“She is,” Aspar said, and then offered his friend a brief history of Cailin and how she had come to Villa Maxima.
“So you rescued her from a life of shame,” Basilicus noted. “What a soft heart you have, Aspar. It would be better that others, including my sister and your wife, not know it, I suspect.”
“I am only softhearted where Cailin is concerned,” the general told his friend. “She makes me happy, and is more a
wife to me than Flacilla has ever been. Anna would have liked her, too.”