She looks at him, trying to work out what he knows and what he doesn’t know. But she can’t read him. ‘You’ve got nothing to be jealous about, my dear poet,’ she says.
He is her dear poet again. She is turning the force of herself on to him, sensing somewhere deep in her instincts just how far he is from her – as she did with Aemilia, long ago on that day down at Baiae. Just as she does with everyone. That’s over. It’s Rufus’ turn to suffer, if he’s capable of suffering over her. No, he isn’t the type. Vengeance is more his style.
Catullus cups her cheek with his hand, then traces the smooth warm line of her jaw. It is perfect, unbroken. He thinks of the swollen mess that Pretty Boy made of Aemilia’s face. He thinks of Metellus Celer lying on his bed in a pool of his own liquid shit, while saliva bubbled from his mouth. What a long labour it must have been for him to reach his death. Clodia wasn’t in the room. Surely if she’d been there, she’d have had to pity him.
‘You remember your sparrow?’
‘Of course – how can you imagine I’d ever forget him?’
‘I was just wondering. Did you get another in the end?’
‘No, not yet.’
my girl’s sweet sparrow, her darling
for whom she’d have torn out her own eyes
and left herself blinded;
He quotes himself, still stroking her cheek. He feels her smile come under his fingers.
‘I love that poem,’ she says.
‘I wrote it for you.’
‘Much the nicest of the poems you’ve written about me, darling.’
She has recovered herself.
‘I must go now,’ he says, and his hand drops to his side.
‘Let me know when you’re back in Rome.’ She can’t quite hide her relief that he hasn’t pursued the subject of Aemilia; or of her brother either –
– or of anything or anyone.
But suddenly she surprises him. She comes close, nestling into him, almost like a bird. He smells her warm hair, the perfume on it, and the sweetness of her body.
‘If people ever said to you…’ she mutters into the darkness of his body, ‘… if people ever said bad things to you about me – really bad things, I mean, not just same old same old – you wouldn’t believe them, would you?’
He holds her. She is so warm, so soft. She seems to melt into him as if their lives are one life. The last time, his brain hammers at him, the last time, the last time, the last time. Now you know what she is. In a moment he will release her. He will never hold her again.
Or will he? Is there some present that doesn’t end, where Clodia’s sparrow always hops and cheeps, and where he kisses her, a thousand kisses and then a hundred more, and then another thousand –
Don’t fool yourself. In a moment they will separate and become two people again. She will have to hurry, before the doorman gives up hope of her return and locks and bolts the main door.
He’ll have to hurry too. He can feel time at his back, chasing him.
He’ll let go of her. He’ll see her flit away. He’ll watch her out of sight, until he can no longer tell where the grey of her cloak ends and the black of night begins.
‘No,’ he says, still holding her, ‘I wouldn’t believe a word of it.’
Nulla potest mulier tantum se dicere amatam
vere, quantum a me Lesbia amata mea est.
My Lesbia, loved by me
beyond any woman
who calls herself beloved.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Counting the Stars
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Helen Dunmore, Counting the Stars
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