Back | Next
Contents

Chapter 13

The new domina decided that my room was best for her personal use. Our house was of the old villa style, with rooms in short wings around a central courtyard. Though a small, square chamber—the one I had occupied for as many years as I could remember—it had a narrow lattice that opened onto the courtyard and its door opened onto the main corridor to the interior of the house. Velninnia took one look and determined that this room would henceforth be hers.

The rest of Magistrate Lucanus’ goods and possessions arrived by wagon later in the day and, with it, two servants—one male, Fulvius, for him; and one female, Flavia, for her. After cursory introductions, the two set about unpacking their masters’ things and rearranging the interior of the house to suit the domina’s fancy. I kept out of sight in the kitchen where I helped Dorcas prepare a welcome meal for the new magistrate’s table.

Not until I came into the main dwelling some time later did I see that my few personal belongings—my clothes, cloaks and mantles, my precious books, my little box of pins and brooches, and the like—had all been dumped in a heap in the courtyard. I stormed at once to confront the culprits. “You thrown out my things!” I charged. “Why?”

Fulvius and Flavia were shaking out a thick woven cloth to lay on the floor beside my bed. Fulvius replied, “Domina said to take them away. This is her room now.”

Uncertain whether I had heard correctly, I said, “Who told you?”

“Domina . . .” He pointed vaguely in the direction of the house. “The new lady master . . .”

“Velvinnia?” I asked. “What do you mean ‘her’ room?”

“That’s right,” Fulvius replied without a glance at me. “The domina will have it for her private chamber.”

“Please, I do not hear very well,” I told them. “Are you saying that this is to be her chamber from now on?”

Fulvius, without deigning to look at me, said, “You heard right.”

“Where am I to go?”

Flavia—a squat, fat-faced young woman with a slight limp—turned to me and, speaking slowly so I would not misunderstand, was slightly more forthcoming, “We were not told anything more. Domina Velvinnia only said to clean out the room and make it ready for her.”

I did not care to cross paths with the domina again, so I went straight to the magistrate and entered the official chambers. The workroom was empty; he and Augustus were in my father’s chamber. The door was closed, but I gave a loud knock and stepped inside. Augustus stood beside the table on which were spread all the messages and petitions that had accumulated during my father’s infirmity. Lucanus glanced up.

“You do not enter the magistrate’s chamber uninvited,” he declared. “Never do that again.”

Augustus made to intervene. “If you please, magistrate. Aurelia was her father’s aide and assistant. She served him—”

Lucanus cut off his explanation with a chop of his hand. “Tullius is dead and I am here now. I do not require the assistance of a former official’s family members.” He made to wave me away but, seeing as I did not move, he snarled, “Well?”

“They have taken my room and thrown my possessions into the courtyard,” I informed him with as much calm as I could command.

“Who has done this?” he wondered blandly.

“Your servants. They say they are acting on the domina’s instructions.”

“There you are then.” He nodded and returned to his survey of the work before him. Augustus, standing off to one side, gave me a sympathetic look.

“What am I to do?” I demanded. “Where am I to go?”

Lucanus looked up sharply. “That is not my concern.”

I do not know what I expected, but it was not that. “Where am I to go?”

He dropped the scrap in his hands and regarded me as he might a buzzing insect intent on annoying him. “Am I to understand that you have failed to make suitable provision for yourself?”

“N-no,” I stammered. “I didn’t know . . . we didn’t know . . . everything happened so fast, I . . .”

“But, you must have relations—a brother, aunt, uncle . . . someone? Go to them.”

I was already shaking my head before he finished. “I have no one,” I told him. “No one like that.”

Augustus and Tomos, sad to say, were the only ones I could truly count as a friends. Augustus bit his lip, but remained silent.

“You cannot expect to stay here,” said the magistrate with a finality that allowed no argument. “Just because your lived here owing to your deceased father’s position does not give you the right to live here indefinitely. You’ll have to find someplace to go.”

The enormity of my predicament revealed itself to me then. “I have nowhere else,” I said, more to myself than anyone else. Whatever fight I had left bled away as a heavy, dark hopelessness descended upon me.

Lucanus stared at me, smug in his superiority. “Are you telling me your father was so reviled and despised in this town that no one is willing to come to the aid of his brat?”

A swift hot surge of anger flooded my being, scattering the despair of moments before. I stared at this jumped-up coxcomb in a rage of disbelief. How could anyone think this of my father—the best man I had ever known? I tried to find words and breath to defy his spiteful accusation, but words failed me. I could hardly breathe, I was so angry. If looks alone could have butchered, that man would have been a heap of flayed flesh, bones, and entrails at my feet.

Yet, there he sat in his oily conceit, his arrogance thick as the stupidity that nourished it. “So, you have nowhere to go.”

I did not trust myself to answer, but stared mutely furious at him.

But the man sitting in my father’s chair was not finished humiliating me the orphan before him. “I cannot accept that this is my problem,” he said. “You should have been thinking what to do long before this. You knew this day was coming. You should have been making plans for yourself. This, you failed to do, so now you come crying to me. Again, this is not my problem. You are not my problem.”

He made a flicking motion with his hand to shoo me away. Again, Augustus plucked up his courage and spoke. “Tullius devoted his whole life to Venta. He was neither reviled nor despised—far from it. He was highly considered and there are many here who owe him a debt of gratitude. Allow me to speak to them and I am certain a place will be found for Aurelia. But it grows late and I do not think—”

“Enough, you two!” Lucanus cried. “Enough.” He straightened and, crossing his arms over his narrow chest, glanced from one of us to the other as he considered a solution. Finally, speaking loudly so there would be no mistake, he said, “You can stay here until you find someone who will have you—a few days only. Until then, you will help the servants with their chores. I’m sure here is much to do to make this place livable. Go see Fulvius and he will put you to work.”

Thoroughly humiliated, my cheeks burning with shame, I turned without a word and left the chamber.

I did not go directly to Fulvius, but instead returned to the kitchen. Dorcas was peeling onions into a bowl. She saw my face and realized something terrible had happened. “Aurelia, dear—what is it?” I had held my tears until I she spoke, and then the deluge began.

When, after several halting attempts and a sip of sweet wine to calm me, the flood resided enough, I explained to her the awful things the new magistrate had said, and how my room had been taken over by his hag of a wife and my belongings thrown out into the courtyard. We talked awhile after that. Dorcas, good and kind, listened to me and did what she could to comfort me. She was mother to me in those moments. “What will you do?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head, desolation once again descending over me in a dark, gray cloud. “My father is dead. I have no other family.”

That night, after helping serve the meal Dorcas had prepared, I ate a from the leavings—the scraps Lucanus and Velvinnia discarded—and slept on the kitchen floor. It was not the most comfortable or restful sleep I had ever known, but at least it was warm and quiet—and away from the two tyrants.

Over the next few days, Fulvius treated me as his personal slave, giving me the chores he found too odious or tiresome to do himself. And when he was not ordering me to fetch that, or carry this, then it was the domina issuing commands. The female servant, Flavia—for reasons unknown—was released from kitchen duties at night and I was made to serve the meals in the evening. I learned quickly enough to eat from the preparations before the dishes were served, so I got more than just the crumbs and leavings. Velvinnia also made me wash her underclothes and empty her chamber pots; but I was not allowed to touch what she considered her finer things since, as she explained, I obviously would not know how to treat them properly.

One morning she went out to, as she said, “delight in the steaming waters of the local baths.”

Venta does not have a bathhouse—as I might have told her, if she had deigned to ask me. The town did have a public bath once upon a time, but the roof collapsed some years before I was born and, through lack of funds or skill, or both, the damage had never been repaired and the place—like so much else in our little outpost of the empire—was slowly crumbling into ruin, the bricks and stones being carted off for more useful purposes elsewhere.

Domina Velvinnia returned some time later in a red-faced huff. She stormed into the courtyard fuming about the shocking lack of basic necessities and human comforts in this fly-blown turd of a town. She had worked herself into a rage and vented her anger on the first person to cross her path. Unfortunately, that was me. I was carrying a basket of eggs that had just been delivered from the market and she saw me darting into the corridor leading to the kitchen and called to me.

I pretended I had not heard and kept going.

“Girl!” she shouted, angrier and louder. “Come here when I command you!”

I stopped and turned. “Did you speak, domina?”

“Come here!”

I moved a step or two closer. “Was there something you wanted?”

She glanced around furiously. “Look at this place!” she growled, casting a wayward hand toward the empty courtyard. “Filthy as a pig wallow! Clean it!”

“Clean it?” I looked around. The courtyard had been swept the day before and was just as tidy as it ever was.

“Sweep it!” she screamed. “Sweep it at once!”

“But it was swept last evening,” I pointed out. “There is nothing to sweep.”

She charged forward and snatched the eggs from my grasp. Raising the basket she hurled it across the stone-paved yard; it spun in the air, spilling eggs along its path until smashing against the ivy-clad wall. Broken eggs marked the flight of the basket, bright yellow yolks and whites oozing into a sticky goo on the pavement.

“There!” she cried, shaking with rage. “Now wash it! I want it to shine! Do you hear? I want everything to shine!”

I stared at her for as long as I dared, then turned away and retrieved the empty basket. I then went to fetch washing cloths and a bucket of water. Queen Velvinnia was gone when I returned and I proceeded to scrap up the broken eggshells and gunk; after that, I washed the entire courtyard just as she ordered. I was still down on my hands and knees, scrubbing the threshold at the street, when she returned. Hands on hips, she gave the courtyard a cursory glance and informed me that it was not good enough. “Do it again!” she said. “Do it right this time.”

I knew better than to argue. So, without a word, I refilled my leather bucket and began once more with new washcloths. I did not see her again until evening. But my degradation was not over. Flavia and Fulvius had been freed from their duties for the night, so it fell to Dorcas and me to serve the highly exalted Magistrate of Venta and his consort their evening meal. Yes, Dorcas had been employed as cook until another, perhaps more suitable, kitchen master could be found. My own position remained undefined, but I was content to help Dorcas. I ferried the dishes to and from the table, poured the wine, and such.

This night, Lucanus had invited two of Venta’s leading elders to join him—an attempt to curry favor among the town’s elite—men I knew, or at least had met once or twice before through business with my father. Both, so far as I knew were honorable citizens, upright and of good repute, and their wives were respected women. Wine and olives from Iberia had been bought for the occasion and special dishes requested. Dorcas had performed wonders and I was on my best behavior—after what had happened earlier in the day, I did not wish to invite another confrontation or rekindle the domina’s wrath.

“Thank you, Aurelia,” said one of the visitors as I made to refill his cup. “I am sorry about your father. He was a good man.” He smiled sadly. “How are you faring?”

“She serves here,” Velvinnia cut in. “For now.” As if to emphasize this point, she said, “We’ll make a decent servant of her yet.”

The guests exchanged awkward glances, but I continued as if I had not heard and the uncomfortable meal continued. Lucanus, however, was not finished. Perhaps he wanted to show himself master over his house, or wished to impress his august visitors, or demonstrate his authority—I don’t know. But I had just placed the bowls of olives in the cloth-covered table, and finished pouring the wine into the fine cups, when the magistrate demanded, “Where are the eggs?”

“Magistrate?” I was not certain I had heard him correctly.

“I asked you a question, girl!” he said, raising his voice. “Did you hear? Where . . . are . . . my . . . eggs?” He glanced at his guests and gave a little half-smile. “She is deaf, you know.”

Turning back to me, he said—with humiliating exaggeration, “I gave specific orders that eggs in spiced wine were to be served tonight—a delicacy for my special guests.” He put out a hand to his table companions and bathed them with his benevolent smile. “Good food for good company, am I right?”

I hesitated, deciding how best to answer. The magistrate frowned, his guests looked uneasy, and his harpy wife pursed her lips and gazed in smug satisfaction at me having to answer for this unforgivable infraction.

“Girl, I asked you a question,” he declared. “The eggs. Where . . . are . . . my eggs?”

“Velvinnia broke them,” I blurted. Unable to avoid the looming conflict, I waded in boldly. “Your wife threw them across the courtyard and broke them.”

“What?” he challenged.

“The boy brought the basket you ordered from the market,” I explained, keeping my tone even, factual. “The domina was angry at not finding a bathhouse in town. She grabbed the basket from me and threw it across the courtyard. All the eggs flew out and they smashed on the pavement.”

He gawped at me. His guests, stunned, lowered their cups, uncertain how to react. One of the women gave me a sympathetic look.

“Am I to believe this?” demanded Lucanus.

“It is the truth.” I was aware of Velvinnia glaring razors at me. “If you don’t believe me, ask your wife.”

Slapping her hand flat on the table, Velvinnia reared up out of her chair and shouted, “Lying bitch! Get out of my sight!”

I looked to the magistrate. “There are no spiced eggs tonight,” I said—as if I had not heard the insult. “Would you like more olives instead?”

“Go!” he said, flicking his hand at me. “We will speak of this later.”

Needless to say, Dorcas served the rest of the meal. I retreated to the kitchen where I spent the night. Then, some little time before dawn, I awoke with a stiff back and a bold new thought: There is someone I can go to.

What is more, the invitation had already been given—the voice warm, heart-felt, sincere. As I sat in the silent room, the early morning light creeping in through the open doorway, the very words came back to me. You can stay as long as you like. Please, do come.



Back | Next
Framed