And then, as though the deepest corners of his mind had been given light, Ezra remembered a day long ago when the sky had gone dark at noon and the earth had trembled violently. He had been but a small boy when it had happened. He saw himself sitting on a mat in a rented house in Jerusalem, where his family had gathered for the Passover. His mother was laughing and talking with the other women while preparing food. And suddenly everything went dark. A great roaring sound came from the skies outside. His mother screamed. He screamed, too.
Now, lifting his head, Ezra opened his eyes, stared up at the stars, and said aloud, “‘And it shall come to pass in that day,’ says the Lord God, ‘that I shall make the sun go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in broad daylight.’”
The words of Amos.
Had the prophet spoken of God using Assyria in bringing judgment against Israel, or had his words held a deeper meaning? Had Amos also been given a warning of what would happen when the Messiah came to save his people?
“Jesus has risen!” his uncle had said all those years ago. And what Ezra had felt upon hearing those words came back to him now. Fear. Wonder. Excitement. Awe.
What if it was true . . . ?
Ezra stared a moment longer at the heavens. His heart beat within him, and he felt as though he had just awakened from a long nourishing sleep and was seeing the world clearly for the first time.
“Jesus has risen! I have seen him!”
Excitement filled him. He came back and sat down before Marcus again.
“Tell me everything about this woman you once knew. Tell me everything she ever told you about Jesus of Nazareth.”
Marcus saw the fever in his eyes. “Why?” he said, frowning. “What does it matter?”
“Just tell me, Marcus Lucianus Valerian. Tell me everything. From the beginning. Let me decide for myself what matters.”
And so Marcus did as he was asked. He gave in to his deep need to speak of Hadassah. And all the while he talked of her, he failed to see the irony in what he was doing. For as he told the story of a simple Judean slave girl, Marcus Lucianus Valerian, a Roman who didn’t believe in anything, proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ.
20
Julia poured herself another goblet of wine. It was so quiet in the villa. She was so lonely she even missed Primus’ caustic wit and vicious gossip. At least he had served to distract her from other disturbing thoughts about her life and approaching fate.
No one came to see her anymore. She was sick, and everyone she knew avoided her because of it. She understood all too well. Illness was depressing. It was tedious and boring. Only those suffering wanted to discuss it. She remembered several friends who had become ill. She had avoided them just as others now avoided her. She hadn’t wanted to hear a chronicle of pain and symptoms. She hadn’t wanted to face the fact that she was mortal. Life was too short to waste on someone else’s tragedy.
Now she was in a tragedy of her own.
Julia lifted the goblet to her lips and sipped. She wished she could get so drunk she wouldn’t be able to think about the future or feel the present. She would just drift on a sea of wine-sodden tranquility. No pain. No fear. Time without regrets.
Once she had dined on lotus. Now, she had to drink posca. However, enough of even the cheap wine and she would feel nothing at all.
No one cared. Why should they? She didn’t care. She had never cared. Not about any of them. She had just been pretending to enjoy herself.
Julia gave a brittle laugh that echoed in the chamber. Then she fell silent again, staring morosely into her goblet, wishing she could drown in the rusty-colored wine.
She felt hollow inside. Maybe the ravages of her disease were eating away parts of her that had once been there, unseen but essential parts. Life was a cruel joke. She had possessed everything she needed to be happy: money, position, beauty, complete freedom to do whatever she wanted. Hadn’t she taken control of unfortunate circumstances and overcome them by her own will?
So why was life now so unbearable? What had she done wrong?
Her hand trembled as she raised her goblet again, swallowing the bitter wine while trying to swallow the feelings that rose in her. She felt as though she was choking.
She would not think of anything unpleasant today. She would think of things that made her happy.
What had made her happy?
She remembered how she had always run to her brother, Marcus, when he came home to the villa in Rome. He had teased her and pampered her and adored her. Blinking back tears, she forced herself to remember that he had broken his promise to love her no matter what she did. She reminded herself that when she most needed him, he had turned his back on her.
Pushing Marcus from her mind, she began to chronicle the relationships in her past: her father and mother, Claudius, Caius, Atretes, Primus, Calabah. Every name roused regrets and anger, resentment and self-pity—all followed by self-defense and self-justification. No one had a right to tell her how to live. No one! Yet that’s what everyone had always tried to do.
Her father had expected her to be who he wanted her to be rather than who she was. Claudius wanted another wife like the one who had died. He had been a fool to chase after her when she had run away one night. It wasn’t her fault he fell off his horse and broke his neck. Caius had been cruel. He had used her body and her money for his own pleasures and then, when circumstances turned against him, he had beaten and blamed her. Caius had poisoned her life. What better retribution could she have made than to poison him in return?
Her heart ached as she thought of Atretes. Atretes, oh, most beautiful of men . . . how she had loved him. Never had there been such a gladiator. He had looked like a shining god to her with his perfect features and blazing blue eyes and his beautiful, powerful body. Throngs of women had wanted him—and men, as well—yet all Atretes had wanted was her. At least until she had chosen to protect herself against his complete dominance by refusing his offer of marriage, making instead a marriage of convenience with Primus. Then even Atretes, whose plebeian barbaric morality had defied reason, had deserted her.
She frowned as images of the past swirled in her mind. If she had it to do over again, what would she have done differently? How could she have changed anything and retained control over her own life?
One by one, in each case and with each person, Julia sat in the judgment seat, acquitting herself of all blame. Yet, the niggling doubt remained and fed upon her heart: Was it the things done to her that had made the course of her life, or was it things she had done to herself?
She sipped again, trying to dull the pain in her breast. It only intensified.
If she hadn’t married Primus, everything might be different now. She might still have Atretes. Hadn’t he bought a villa for her? Hadn’t he wanted her to be his wife?
She thought of the child she had borne him, and the pain deepened, raw and cold, gripping her heart. She could still hear the faint echo of a soft, helpless cry and her own words coming back to haunt her. “Put him on the rocks. Let him die.”
She closed her eyes tightly, her knuckles whitening on the wine goblet. It wasn’t her fault. Atretes had said he hated her. He had said he didn’t want the child. He had said he wouldn’t claim it as his own. What else was she supposed to do with it?
Hadassah had entreated her. “Look at your son, my lady.”
Atretes’ son.
Her own son.
She moaned, struggling to press the emotions down into the deepest recesses of her being where she could forget them. The pain within her became heavy and unbearable.
It was all Calabah’s fault. Calabah with her cunning lies, her mastery at manipulation. “You can forget about it now. It’s over and done with. Put it behind you.” Calabah’s words echoed in Julia’s mind. Over and over she heard Calabah, with her seductive words, reminding her that every man Julia had ever known had hurt her . . . Calabah with her seductive reassurance that no man could possibly understand and love a woman the wa
y another woman could.
“With me, you’ll always have your freedom. You can do whatever you want.”
Calabah with her empty promises. Calabah, a woman who embodied a stone tomb.
“I’ll always love you, Julia. I’ll never try to make a slave of you the way a man would.”
But a slave she had become, in ways she had never fathomed possible. A slave to others’ expectations, a slave to her own passions . . . to circumstances, to fear.
A slave to guilt.
Groaning, Julia rose from her couch. Her stomach lurched, and she gritted her teeth against the rising nausea. Perspiration broke out on her pallid skin. Swaying, she set the wine goblet down and leaned against a marble pillar to steady herself. The nausea subsided slightly.
A stream of sunlight poured into the peristyle. How she hungered for warmth. She walked out into it and lifted her head to feel the sun on her face. She was filled with a deep, aching longing. She stood in the warmth, wanting it to soak in through her skin and warm her from the inside out. Sometimes she was so cold even the hot waters of the tepidarium were not enough to warm her. Sometimes she thought the coldness emanated from her very heart.
Hugging herself, she closed her eyes and saw amber, reddening heat against her eyelids. Patterns moved. She didn’t want to see anything more than that. She didn’t want to think about anything or feel anything other than this one single moment in time. She wanted to forget the past and not be afraid of the future.
Then the light was gone.
Shivering, she opened her eyes and saw that the ray of sunlight was now obscured by a cloud. Sadness welled up inside her until she felt she was suffocating beneath the weight of it.
Inexplicably, she felt like a frightened child desperately in need of her mother. Only three others were in the villa with her now, all slaves: Tropas, a Greek cook; Isidora, a household servant from Macedonia; and Didymas, the Egyptian handmaiden she had bought after Eudemas had run away.
Was it only two years ago that she had had a household of servants at her beck and call? She had once owned four Ethiopian litter bearers, two bodyguards from Gaul, a handmaiden from Britannia, and two others from Crete. There had been more servants when Calabah had lived in the villa, all beautiful young women from the farthest reaches of the Empire. Primus had had his own retinue of male servants, all except three of whom he had sold before deserting her. He had taken the handsome lute player from Greece and a brutal mute Macedonian with a hard face. She hoped the Macedonian had slit Primus’ throat and dumped him overboard to become food for the fish. What a conniving, insidiously evil man he had been. Worse than Caius by far.
Over the past few months, she had been forced to sell most of her own slaves. She no longer had aurei for luxuries, let alone a plenitude of denarii for the barest of essentials. She had had to resort to whatever means she had to raise money. With only three slaves left to wait on her, life was looking increasingly grim.
Feeling weary, she decided to retire. Leaning heavily on the marble banister, she went up the stairs slowly. Her head was spinning from the wine. She staggered along the upper corridor and entered her bedchamber.
Didymas was tying back the thin netting over her sleeping couch. Julia saw the stiffening in her shoulders as she entered the room. She had whipped her two days ago for shirking her duties.
“Did you wash the floor as I told you to do?”
“Yes, my lady.”
“And put fresh linens on the couch?”
“Yes, my lady.”
Julia was annoyed by Didymas’ placid tone. She saw no evidence of animosity in the girl’s shuttered expression, but she sensed it. She needed to be put in her place. Julia looked around the room, searching for something to criticize. “There are no flowers in the vases.”
“The vendor wanted two sesterces for lilies, my lady. You only gave me one.”
“You should’ve bargained with him!”
“I did, my lady. He had many customers and wouldn’t come down in price.”
Julia’s face reddened in shame. Many customers. And every one of them had more money than she. “The room is depressing without flowers.”
Didymas said nothing, and her servile silence depressed Julia even more. The servants her family had owned in Rome had always served with warmth and affection. They had never been coldly withdrawn, holding grudges when they were properly and rightly disciplined. She remembered some had even laughed as they went about their duties.
She thought of Hadassah. Swaying, Julia grasped the doorjamb, leaning heavily into it. She didn’t want to think about Hadassah. The decline of her own life had begun with that wretched girl. If not for her, nothing would be as it was.
Blinking back tears, she looked at Didymas’ expressionless face. The slave girl stood where she was. She would do nothing to help until commanded to do so. Somewhere in the defenseless recesses of Julia’s mind, a betraying realization came. Hadassah wouldn’t have waited. She wouldn’t have stood staring at nothing, face stony, her entire being silently screaming her animosity. Hadassah would have come to her and put her arms around her.
Julia looked at the rich trappings of the room and felt its barrenness. She didn’t want to enter it. “I’m going out today,” she said flatly.
Didymas stood silent, waiting.
Julia glared at her. “Don’t just stand there! Lay out my blue palus and bring me a basin of warm water.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Dejected, Julia watched her handmaiden find the blue palus and place it on the couch. She pushed her hair back from her face and entered the room with as much dignity as she could muster, ignoring Didymas as she left the room to fetch the water.
Clutching the edge of her marble vanity table, Julia sat down heavily. She stared into the shiny metal surface of her mirror and saw reflected there a pale thin face with dark circles beneath large brown eyes. The dark hair was in disarray as though the stranger she stared at hadn’t bothered having it brushed or combed for days. How long had it been?
She picked up a tortoiseshell comb and began to work it through the tangles. Finally, giving up, she decided to wait for Didymas to return. When she did, Julia rose and washed her face. As she dabbed her cheeks with a cloth, she sank down once again on the chair before the mirror and commanded Didymas to comb her hair.
Julia winced at the first tug of the comb and turned on the servant in a rage. “Stupid girl! Hurt me again and I’ll send you to the lions. I did it once before, in case you didn’t know. And I’ll do it again!”
Didymas’ face whitened. Gratified to have cowed the slave, Julia turned around and lifted her chin. “Now, do it properly.”
Hands shaking, Didymas worked with tedious caution.
After a few minutes, Julia felt worse than before. The slave girl’s fear was more depressing than her animosity. Lifting her eyes, Julia looked at Didymas’ pale, tense face. The girl’s eyes flickered, and Julia felt her work even more slowly. Disheartened, Julia looked away.
“Your hair is very lovely, my lady.”
Julia took a strand of dull, dark hair and wound it around her finger. She knew the words for what they were. Empty flattery. “It used to shine,” she said bleakly.
“Would you like me to brush some scented oil into your hair, my lady?”
So deferential now with the threat of the arena hanging over her head. “Yes, do that,” Julia said tersely, glaring at her in the mirror. “Make it shine again by whatever means we have available.”
Didymas’ hands shook as she poured a few drops of oil into her palms, rubbed them together, and then worked the oil gently into Julia’s hair and scalp. Sighing, Julia relaxed slightly, for the massaging felt good. “Braid it into a crown,” she said.
Didymas did as commanded. “Are you pleased with it, my lady?” she said when she was finished.
Julia studied the effect critically. The coiffure that had once made her look like a queen now made her look austere. “Eudemas used to weave
pearls into my hair,” she said.
“There are no pearls, my lady.”
“I didn’t ask you to remind me!”
Didymas took a step back, her eyes reflecting her fear.
Julia regretted saying anything about the pearls. What did the servants think of her circumstances? Did they whisper among themselves and gloat over her reversal of fortune? They were only concerned with their fates, not hers.
“What is there in the jewelry box?” Julia said imperiously.
Didymas opened the box and studied the contents. “Three glass-bead necklaces, my lady, and some crystals.”
“I must have more left than that,” Julia said impatiently. “Bring it here.” She snatched the box from Didymas and put it on her lap. Sifting through the contents, she found nothing more than what Didymas had said. She took an amethyst crystal from the box and held it in the palm of her hand. She had bought it long ago in Rome from an eastern magus who had set up a booth in the marketplace. Her friend Octavia had been with her. Last she had heard, Octavia’s father, deep in debt, had committed suicide. What had become of Octavia? Julia wondered. Was she still giving away her favors to whatever gladiator would accept them? Or had she finally found a man of her own station who was fool enough to marry her?
Julia held the amethyst in her hand. What had the man told her about it? Hadn’t he said the crystal had some sort of healing quality? She slipped the chain around her neck and held the crystal tightly in her hand.
Asklepios, let it be so.
“See what you can do with the beads,” she said, and Didymas undid her hair. She braided it again, weaving the glass beads into the strands this time. Julia studied the finished effect and sighed. “That will have to do.”
“Yes, my lady,” Didymas said.
“You may go.”
“Yes, my lady.” Didymas bowed low and hurried from the room.
Julia picked up a pot of white lead and smoothed some of it beneath her eyes to erase the dark shadows. How much would it take to erase the darkness beneath her eyes now? She worked expertly and set it down again, taking up a pot of red ocher. She added a final touch of kohl to her eyelids and then stared at her reflection.