Counting the Stars

  Lollia takes him into a back room. The place is a warren and much bigger than it appears from the street. She shuts the door. There’s a greasy-looking couch, but they both stay standing.

  ‘She’s not a working girl, you understand,’ says Lollia.

  He hadn’t thought that she was, but when you came to think of it, why not? Aemilia was female. She was ugly, but not that ugly. And here in Lollia’s house there didn’t seem to be any other employment.

  ‘She’s going to do the heavy for me,’ says Lollia.

  ‘The heavy?’

  ‘The cleaning,’ explains Lollia, ‘the scrubbing and washing and doing out the rooms and all that. I lost my house slave a couple of months ago, and it’s all got away from me. Course, Aemilia’s still recovering, but I’ve been told she’s a good worker. She’d better be, the food she’s eating and no return for it yet.’

  ‘Still recovering?’

  A flash of alarm crosses Lollia’s face. ‘I thought you’d come from the house?’

  ‘I was there this morning.’

  ‘Well, then, you know how she was.’

  He nods. ‘So she’s here now?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s best she keeps indoors, that’s what I was told. One good thing, the way she looks, none of the punters’ll get any ideas about her. She’ll keep at her work steady.’

  ‘Can I see her?’

  A familiar look of calculation and fear crosses Lollia’s face. She glances quickly at the door. She wants him out of here. He digs out his purse, and gives her a denarius.

  ‘It’s worth that much to me, if we can have half an hour alone. No interruptions.’

  She nods. The coin vanishes, a flash of silver into her dirty wrap. She goes out of the room leaving behind a smell of stale sweat and violet perfume.

  Aemilia is unrecognizable. Her face is swollen, green and yellow with fading bruises. She has a bandage over one eye. Her hair has been shaved off at the front, where there’s another bandage.

  Her bandages are rags crusted with blood. She is wearing an assortment of clothes that don’t fit properly and obviously don’t belong to her.

  ‘What happened to you?’ he asks in horror, forgetting everything else.

  Aemilia’s one eye stares at him, hard and dark but somehow vacant too, as if she’s given up registering things. She doesn’t even seem surprised to see him here.

  ‘Did my lady send you?’ she asks. Her voice has changed too. It’s hoarse. She wears a scarf wrapped around her throat. Perhaps she’s got a cold, he thinks stupidly, then notices there are more bruises around the edge of the scarf.

  ‘No, she didn’t send me. The doorman told me you were here.’

  ‘No one’s supposed to know where I am,’ says Aemilia, her voice quickening with panic. ‘My lady swore it.’

  ‘He heard the directions that were given to the litter-bearers.’

  ‘Litter-bearers?’ asks Aemilia vaguely.

  ‘He said you were brought here in a litter.’

  ‘I can’t hardly remember it.’

  This isn’t Clodia’s work. It couldn’t have been Clodia who did this. She might slap Aemilia about, but she would never half kill her.

  Aemilia moves her neck stiffly. ‘I feel funny,’ she says. ‘I get dizzy when I stand up too long.’

  ‘All right, sit down over there.’

  He should help her but he can’t bear to touch her as she lowers herself painfully on to the couch.

  ‘Was it the mistress who did this to you?’

  ‘She never would,’ says Aemilia, and he hears a familiar possessive anger in her voice. ‘She never would hurt me in her life. It was her who sent me here to keep safe.’

  ‘Then who was it that hurt you?’

  Aemilia hesitates. Slowly, her hands reach up and fumble at the bandage which holds in place the pad of rags over her left eye. There’s a knot at the back of her head which she has to undo. It takes a little while, and neither of them speaks. The knot is undone. The bandage falls loose. Very cautiously, Aemilia eases away the pad of rags.

  There is no eye. There is a raw, red, mashed swelling with a gap in the centre of it. Bitter liquid fills his mouth. He wants to turn away but Aemilia’s remaining eye fixes him.

  ‘My lady says that they make glass eyes in Egypt,’ says Aemilia. Her fingers are shaking. ‘They paint them so you wouldn’t know them from real. They cost a lot of money, but she’s going to send away for one. They’ll match the colour, she says.’ There is a note of pride in her voice.

  ‘Who did that to you? Who took out your eye?’

  ‘My lady sent for a surgeon. He said the eye was past saving and had to be took out for fear that it would kill the sight in the other eye. He said that eyes have sympathies, one for the other. So he did that, he took it out. My lady held my hand. I squeezed so hard I was afraid I’d break her bones.’

  ‘But the injury – who did it?’

  ‘It was her brother,’ says Aemilia. ‘Him that they call Pretty Boy. You know him. Everyone knows him.’

  Pretty Boy. ‘He likes your style. Don’t worry, he’ll never cause you any trouble. He’s incredibly sweet and loyal.’

  ‘And he tried to strangle you.’

  ‘My lady stopped him. She come in and she stopped him. He didn’t know she was in the house –’

  ‘Never mind that. Tell me why he did this.’

  Aemilia’s one eye stares at him.

  ‘That’s why he went for my eyes, cos he thought I’d been spying on them. I would never have said a word. My lady knows that. She would of stopped him if she was there when he come back to find me.’

  The room seems dark. Aemilia’s eye socket gapes at him.

  ‘You must cover your eye.’

  ‘I can’t tie the bandage myself, not at the back.’

  He goes behind the couch. He has never touched her, and he doesn’t want to touch her now. He waits while Aemilia settles the pad of rags back over her eye socket, and then takes the ends of the bandage, winds them to the back of her head, and ties the knot. Her hair smells.

  ‘There,’ he says, ‘does that feel all right?’

  She reaches behind her head, and tests the knot. ‘It’ll do,’ she says.

  ‘Listen, Aemilia, it isn’t safe for you to stay here. That doorman knows where you are. He’ll pass it on to the other slaves and Pretty Boy could come to hear of it. You don’t want him sending someone down here after you.’

  ‘I’ve been sold here. I can’t run away, you know what’ll happen to me. With this eye, I can’t hide.’

  He thinks quickly, and decides. ‘I’ll buy you. Lollia will agree if there’s enough in it for her. I’ll have you sent down to the country, where you’ll be safe.’

  She laughs, a hoarse disbelieving laugh. ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘Because I don’t like what Pretty Boy’s done to you.’

  She’s silent for a bit, thinking it over, then she says, ‘I would never see my lady, if I went away.’

  ‘You won’t see her anyway, Aemilia, if Pretty Boy sends one of his goons to finish the job.’

  ‘It’s only you who says he’ll do that. My lady will have talked him down by now, made him see that I’m no danger to him. It was only in his anger he did this. It goes in the family. You know how she’ll lash out and then she’s so sorry after it.’

  ‘She would never do such a thing,’ he says quickly.

  ‘No,’ says Aemilia, ‘she hasn’t the strength. And not to me anyway, she wouldn’t. I’m best staying here, where she’s provided for me. I’ll take my chance.’

  He argues, but there’s no moving her. He sees that she can’t imagine a life without Clodia, any more than he can. Literally, she would rather die. He can’t help but feel an unwilling respect for her, as if they were enemies who had slogged it out on the battlefield and ended up binding each other’s wounds.

  ‘She did do it, you know,’ says Aemilia suddenly, as if she’s paying him back for his offer of he
lp.

  ‘What?’ His hair crisps with horror. He knows instantly, beyond intuition, what she means.

  ‘You know. She did it. I was there. I didn’t do anything to help, she didn’t let me. It had to be done just right. I washed the crocks, that was all. But I didn’t stop her. Why shouldn’t she be free? She picks up whoever takes her fancy and then she puts him down. Maybe he didn’t like it – maybe you don’t like it – but that’s the way she is. No one can hold her, it’s not in her nature. She tells me everything.’

  ‘You’re lying, Aemilia –’ But he knows she isn’t. He feels it in the room now: her hatred. She’s not grateful to him, she’s not a defeated enemy, all that battlefield crap was in his head, not hers. She’s powerless and a slave, half blinded but still stronger than him because she has the power to destroy him. She knows it. She’s going to use it. Again, her lips part.

  ‘I told her he never had that sparrow killed, but she wouldn’t believe me.’

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’ he asks in a low voice, but she doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. Her work is done.

  He should think of the man who died, but all he can think of is the sparrow. Clodia’s husband didn’t kill it. It died, that was all. Birds die. How long do sparrows live, anyway?

  No. He sees it now: there’s more. The mosaic is complete and he’s standing above it, reading its images of frozen violence. It was Aemilia who killed the sparrow, because she was jealous. Clodia caressed it once too often. She must have turned her back on Aemilia to punish her, and given all her attention to the bird, murmuring to it in a voice so low that Aemilia couldn’t hear the words, rubbing its soft body against her lips, her cheeks –

  Aemilia killed it, and made Clodia believe her husband had done it.

  He has moved away from her, to the other side of the room.

  ‘You’re taking a risk, Aemilia,’ he says. ‘Why are you so sure I won’t go to the Metelli and tell them what you’ve said?’

  ‘Not you,’ she says. ‘I know you. You won’t do that.’

  She is right. She knows him all too well. She looked ahead and maybe the eye which Pretty Boy had ruined saw more clearly than her good eye. Aemilia saw a future where she was separated from Clodia, and he was not. She saw a future where he would follow Clodia, no matter what darkness she led him into, as long as he could pretend not to know. She put a stop to it.

  Twenty-four

  Night-time on the Palatine. He’s come here alone, but he wasn’t afraid of being attacked as he threaded his way through Rome’s simmering night streets. The gods are perverse. They destroy those who want to cling on to their lives, and save those who don’t want to be saved.

  All the same his blood quickens at a movement in the shadows. Pretty Boy’s place is close by, and Rufus’ rented house is more or less next door to it. And over there is the wall of Clodia’s house. It’s quiet tonight. No comings and goings. Her ‘palace on the Palatine’ that’s no better than Lollia’s tuppenny brothel. The same traffic, and the only difference is that it’s less honest here. In they go and out they come. Pretty Boy, Rufus, even that bastard Egnatius who swills his teeth with urine and drawls, ‘After all, our Lesbia’s an experience everyone should have at least once in his life.’

  Catullus’ hand hurts. He has thudded his fist into the wall. He can do nothing. He’s helpless. His body feels as if it’s crawling with lice.

  He must not think. He’s got to find a way back to his own place, his lake, his Sirmio and the noise of lapping water that was there when he was a child and will be there when he is dead.

  He will go back there, with Lucius. He thinks of Lucius at this moment, uneasily awake in the Roman night, watching out for his boy’s return as he always does. Lucius will think Catullus is at some party, or with some woman.

  ‘I never really drop off until you’re home,’ he said once. Catullus sees Lucius turn over in his bed, light his candle, and begin to read.

  ‘I’m coming home,’ Catullus promises in his head. ‘We’ll go back to Sirmio. I can’t do this any more.’

  Shadows flare along the house’s façade from the lamps set burning at its entrance. It’s late, but not too late. The entrance is not yet locked and barred. The doorman is still at his post. Catullus draws his cloak more closely around him, and hails the doorman, who stands up suddenly as if startled from the beginning of sleep.

  ‘Falling asleep on duty,’ remarks Catullus. ‘I am here to see your mistress.’

  The doorman fumbles for command of the situation. ‘She’s not at home.’

  ‘Say, “My mistress is not at home.”’

  ‘Oh, it’s you again.’

  ‘Yes. Say it. You must have been deeply asleep, to forget how to address a visitor.’

  ‘My mistress is not at home,’ says the doorman.

  ‘Good.’

  No one’s going to stand in his way tonight, because he’s got nothing to lose. ‘And now tell me the truth. Where is she?’

  ‘She’ll be back soon. I’m to keep the door until she comes home.’

  ‘Back from where? The house of Publius Clodius Pulcher?’

  ‘I don’t know. Could be there, could be somewhere else,’ says the doorman, with a touch of his former impudence.

  ‘I advise you to think of a better answer.’

  ‘All I know is, I’m to keep the door until she returns.’

  Catullus moves back a few paces, thinking. He could get admission and wait in the house, but the doorman will give Clodia his name as she enters, and she’ll be prepared for him. He wants to catch her off guard.

  ‘I’ll return later. Tell your mistress I called for her. You have the name.’

  He turns the corner of the house and backs deep into its shadow. She will have to come this way. If she’s in a litter, he can step out and stop the bearer slaves, but he doubts that she’ll want to call attention to herself by using a litter for such a short distance. She’ll walk, accompanied by a couple of slaves with torches.

  His eyes are accustomed to the dark now. Of course it is never really dark or quiet here, among the great houses with their lamps and torches, their gangs of slaves on night duty, their rich owners coming and going at all hours. But it’s dark enough. He feels as alone as if the Palatine were still a green hill, inhabited by a couple of shepherds living in rough stone huts. The wind would sigh just the same. The shepherds would turn over on their straw pallets, breaking a dream of happiness.

  He is watching for the light of torches, and so he almost misses her as she flits past in a long cloak, her head covered by a hood. But it’s her, he knows her from the way she moves.

  ‘Clodia!’ he says softly, and comes out of the shadow to stand in her path.

  She gasps, but doesn’t cry out.

  ‘It’s me,’ he says. ‘Quick, come into the shadow. No one can see us there.’

  She does as he says. She’s breathing hard and as he pulls her close he feels the bumping of her heart. She’s been running.

  ‘You came from your brother’s?’ he asks her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You shouldn’t walk alone at this time.’

  ‘It’s only a little way,’ she says, her voice sounding surer now.

  ‘There are some violent people around. Real thugs. You ought to be careful.’

  ‘Darling, of course I’m careful.’ She laughs. ‘Why is it such ages since I’ve seen you? I heard you were back in Rome. Anyone would think you were avoiding me.’

  ‘I’m serious, Clodia. Terrible things happen. I met a girl the other day who’d been attacked. She’d lost an eye.’

  She freezes in his arms. ‘What do you mean?’ she raps out.

  ‘And she’d been half strangled too. It’s a miracle that she lived.’

  ‘Why are you saying this to me?’

  ‘Because it concerns you.’

  ‘It’s no concern of yours.’

  ‘No, I see that. I begin to see that. I once thought otherwise, but th
at’s what young men are like. They see only what they want to see. You must have laughed many times, you and Aemilia, after I’d left you.’

  She pushes him away and stares at him. There’s enough light for him to see the shining darkness of her eyes. Wide eyes, Hera eyes. The eyes of a goddess who loved her brother so much that she shared his bed.

  ‘You are so beautiful,’ he says.

  She is silent, studying his face.

  ‘We didn’t laugh,’ she said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t know why I said it.’

  They are silent again. She is looking at him intently, and he allows her. He feels as if there’s a mask over his face.

  ‘I can’t make you out,’ she says at last.

  ‘I know. It’s too dark.’

  ‘Not as dark as all that. The moon has risen,’ she says, and she’s right. A half-full moon is coming in the sky. He can see more and more of her.

  ‘I came to say goodbye,’ he says.

  ‘Are you going away? I thought you were staying in Rome now.’

  ‘My plans have changed. I’ll come and go, I expect. Sirmio, Rome – and I might go back to the East. But I shan’t live here permanently again.’

  ‘You sound so strange, darling, not like yourself at all. So cold.’

  ‘Aemilia sounded strange, after your brother’s hands had dug into her windpipe.’

  She takes a quick breath. ‘Don’t blame me for that. I didn’t know –’

  ‘You don’t have to justify yourself to me, Clodia. I believe that you didn’t know.’

  She stretches up to him. Her lips touch his, quick and warm. They taste of wine.

  ‘Who have you been drinking with?’ he asks.

  ‘Just with my brother.’

  ‘You didn’t pop in on Rufus?’

  ‘That’s over. More than over. I’m surprised you didn’t know.’ Her voice sharpens. ‘We are enemies. He hates me, and I hate him. There’s going to be a court case –’

  ‘So I heard,’ he says, stopping her. He does not want to hear it all again, from her lips.