Roma Eterna Read online

  I’m not sure what he means by that. Perhaps nothing.

  “Hardly,” I say.

  I realize that I’m staring. Scaevola is a gaunt, wiry man of middle height as well, perhaps fifty years old, balding, with his remaining thin strands of hair—red hair, like Lucilla’s—pulled taut across his scalp. His cheekbones are pronounced, his nose is sharp, his chin is strong; his eyes are a very pale, icy gray-blue, the blue of a milky-hued sapphire. He looks astonishingly like Julius Caesar, the famous portrait that is on the ten-denarius postage stamp: that same expression of utterly unstoppable determination that arises out of infinite resources of inner power.

  He asks me a few questions about my travels and about my homeland, listens with apparent interest to my replies, wishes me well, and efficiently sends me on my way.

  My knees are trembling. My throat is dry.

  Now I must meet my host the Count, and he is no easy pudding either. Nero Romulus Claudius Palladius is every bit as imposing as I had come to expect, a suave, burnished-looking man of about forty, tall for a Roman and strongly built, with a dense, flawlessly trimmed black beard, skin of a rich deep tone, dark penetrating eyes. He radiates an aura of wealth, power, self-assurance, and—even I am capable of detecting it—an almost irresistible sensuality.

  “Cymbelin,” he says immediately. “A great name, a romantic name, the name of a king. Welcome to my house, Cymbelin of Britannia.” His voice is resonant, a perfectly modulated basso, the voice of an actor, of an opera singer. “We hope to see you here often during your stay in Roma.”

  Lucilla, by my side, is staring at him in the most worshipful way. Which should trigger my jealousy; but I confess I feel such awe for him myself that I can scarcely object that she is under his spell.

  He rests his hand lightly on my shoulder. “Come. You must meet some of my friends.” And takes me around the room. Introduces me to the incumbent Consul, Galerius Bassanius, who is younger and more frivolously dressed than I would have thought a Consul would be, and to some actors who seem to expect that I would recognize their names, though I don’t and have to dissemble a little, and to a gladiator whose name I do recognize—who wouldn’t, considering that he is the celebrated Marcus Sempronius Diodorus, Marcus the Lion-Slayer?—and then to a few flashy young ladies, with whom I make the appropriate flirtatious banter even though Lucilla has more beauty in her left elbow alone than any one of them does in her entire body.

  We pass now through an atrium where a juggler is performing and onward to a second room, just as crowded as the first, where the general conversation has an oddly high-pitched tone and people are standing about in strangely stilted postures. After a moment I understand why.

  There are royals in here. Everyone is on best court behavior.

  Two princes of the blood, no less. Lucilla has me meet them both.

  The first is Camillus Caesar, the Prince of Constantinopolis, eldest of the Emperor’s four brothers. He is plump, lazy-looking, with oily skin and an idle, slouching way of holding himself. If Gaius Junius Scaevola is a Julius Caesar, this man is a Nero. But for all his soft fleshiness I can make out distinct traces of the familiar taut features that mark the royal family: the sharp, fragile, imperious nose, the heroic chin, above all the chilly eyes, blue as Arctic ice, half hidden though they are behind owlish spectacles. It is as if the stern face of old Emperor Laureolus has somehow become embedded in the meaty bulk of this wastrel grandchild of his.

  Camillus is too drunk, even this early in the evening, to say very much to me. He gives me a sloppy wave of his chubby hand and loses interest in me immediately.

  Onward we go to the next oldest of the royals, Flavius Rufus Caesar. I am braced to dislike him, aware as I am that he has had the privilege of being Lucilla’s lover when she was only sixteen, but in truth he is charming, affable, a very seductive man. About twenty-five, I guess. He too has the family face; but he is lean, agile-looking, quick-eyed, probably quick-witted as well. Since from all I have heard his brother Maxentius is a buffoon and a profligate, it strikes me as a pity that the throne had not descended to Flavius Rufus instead of the other one when their old grandfather finally had shuffled off the scene. But the eldest heir succeeds: it is the ancient rule. With Prince Florus dead three years before his father Laureolus, the throne had gone to Florus’s oldest son Maxentius, and the world might be very different today had not that happened. Or perhaps I am overestimating the younger prince. Had Lucilla not told me Maxentius was the best of the lot?

  Flavius Rufus—who plainly knows that I am Lucilla’s current amusement, and who just as plainly isn’t bothered by that—urges me to visit him toward the end of the year at the great Imperial villa at Tibur, a day’s journey outside Roma, where he will be celebrating the Saturnalia with a few hundred of his intimate friends.

  “Oh, and bring the redhead, too,” Flavius Rufus says cheerfully. “You won’t forget her, now, will you?”

  He blows her a kiss, and gives me a friendly slap on the palm of my hand, and returns to the adulation of his entourage. I am pleased and relieved that our meeting went so well.

  Lucilla has saved the best of the family for last, though.

  The dearest friend of her childhood, her schoolmate, her honorary kinswoman: the Princess Severina Floriana, sister of the Emperor. Before whom I instantly want to throw myself in utter devotion, she is so overpoweringly beautiful.

  As Lucilla had said, Severina Floriana is dark, torrid-looking, exotic. There is no trace of the family features about her—her eyes are glossy black, her nose is a wanton snub, her chin is elegantly rounded—and I know at once that she must not be full sister to the Emperor, that she has to be the child of some subsidiary wife of Maxentius’s father: royals may have but one wife at a time, like the rest of us, but it is well known that often they exchange one wife for another, and sometimes take the first one back later on, and who is to say them nay? If Severina’s mother looked anything like Severina, I can see why the late Prince Florus was tempted to dally with her.

  I was glib enough when speaking with Junius Scaevola and Nero Romulus Claudius Palladius, but I am utterly tongue-tied before Severina Floriana. Lucilla and she do all the talking, and I stand to one side, looming awkwardly in silence like an ox that Lucilla has somehow happened to bring to the party. They chatter of Neapolis’s social set, of Adriana, of Druso Tiberio, of a host of people whose names mean nothing to me; they speak of me, too, but what they are talking is the rapid-fire Roman of the capital, so full of slang and unfamiliar pronunciations that I can scarcely understand a thing. Now and again Severina Floriana directs her gaze at me—maybe appraisingly, maybe just out of curiosity at Lucilla’s newest acquisition; I can’t tell which. I try to signal her with my eyes that I would like a chance to get to know her better, but the situation is so complex and I know I am being reckless—how dare I even think of a romance with a royal princess, and how rash, besides, inviting the rage of Lucilla Scaevola by making overtures to her own friend right under her nose—!

  In any case I get no acknowledgment from Severina of any of my bold glances.

  Lucilla marches me away, eventually. We return to the other room. I am numb.

  “I can see that you’re fascinated with her,” Lucilla tells me. “Isn’t that so?”

  I make some stammering reply.

  “Oh, you can fall in love with her if you like,” Lucilla says airily. “I won’t mind, silly! Everyone falls in love with her, anyway, so why shouldn’t you? She’s amazingly gorgeous, I know. I’d take her to bed myself, if that sort of thing interested me a little more.”

  “Lucilla—I—”

  “This is Roma, Cymbelin! Stop acting like such a simpleton!”

  “I’m here with you. You are the woman I’m here with. I’m absolutely crazy about you.”

  “Of course you are. And now you’re going to be obsessed with Severina Floriana for a while. It’s not in the least surprising. Not that you made much of a first impression on her, I susp
ect, standing there and gawking like that without saying a word, although she doesn’t always ask that a man have a mind, if he’s got a nice enough body. But I think she’s interested. You’ll get your chance during Saturnalia, I promise you that.” And she gives me a look of such joyous wickedness that I feel my brain reeling at the shamelessness of it all.

  Roma! Roma! There is no place on Earth like it.

  Silently I vow that one day soon I will hold Severina Floriana in my arms. But it is a vow that I was not destined to be able to keep; and now that she is dead I think of her often, with the greatest sadness, recreating her exotic beauty in my mind and imagining myself caressing her the way I might dream of visiting the palace of the Queen of the Moon.

  Lucilla gives me a little push toward the middle of the party and I stagger away on my own, wandering from group to group, pretending to a confidence and a sophistication that at this moment is certainly not mine.

  There is Nero Romulus in the corner, quietly talking with Gaius Junius Scaevola. The true monarchs of Roma, they are, the men who hold the real Imperial power. But in what way it is divided between them, I can’t even begin to guess.

  The Consul, Bassanius, smirking and primping between two male actors who wear heavy makeup. What is he trying to do, reenact the ancient days of Nero and Caligula?

  The gladiator, Diodorus, fondling three or four girls at once.

  A man I haven’t noticed before, sixty or even seventy years old, with a face like a hatchet blade and skin the color of fine walnut, holding court near the fountain. His clothing, his jewelry, his bearing, his flashing eyes, all proclaim him to be a man of substance and power. “Who’s that?” I ask a passing young man, and get a look of withering scorn. He tells me, in tones that express his wonder at my ignorance, that that is Leontes Atticus, a name that means nothing to me, so that I have to ask a second question, and my informant lets me know, even more contemptuously, that Leontes Atticus is merely the wealthiest man in the Empire. This fierce-eyed parched-looking Greek, I learn, is a shipping magnate who controls more than half the ocean trade with Nova Roma: he takes his fat percentage on most of the rich cargo that comes to us from the savage and strange New World far across the sea.

  And so on and on, new guests arriving all the time, a glowing assembly of the great ones of the capital crowding into the room, everyone who is powerful or wealthy or young, or if possible all three at once.

  There is fire smoldering in this room tonight. Soon it will burst forth. But who could have known that then? Not I, not I, certainly not I.

  Lucilla spends what seems like an hour conversing with Count Nero Romulus, to my great discomfort. There is an easy intimacy about the way they speak to each other that tells me things I’m not eager to know. What I fear is that he is inviting her to spend the night here with him after the party is over. But I am wrong about that. Ultimately Lucilla returns to my side and doesn’t leave it for the rest of the evening.

  We dine on fragrant delicacies unknown to me. We drink wines of startling hues and strange piquant flavors. There is dancing; there is a theatrical performance by mimes and jugglers and contortionists; some of the younger guests strip unabashedly naked and splash giddily in the palace pool. I see couples stealing away into the garden, and some who sink into embraces in full view.

  “Come,” Lucilla says finally. “I’m becoming bored with this. Let’s go home and amuse each other in privacy, Cymbelin.”

  It’s nearly dawn by the time we reach her apartments. We make love until midday, and sink then into a deep sleep that holds us in its grip far into the hours of the afternoon, and beyond them, so that it is dark when we arise.

  So it goes for me, then, week after week, autumn in Roma, the season of pleasure. Lucilla and I go everywhere together: the theater, the opera, the gladiatorial contests. We are greeted with deference at the finest restaurants and shown to the best tables. She takes me on a tour of the monuments of the capital—the Senate House, the famous temples, the ancient Imperial tombs. It is a dizzying time for me, a season beyond my wildest fantasies.

  Occasionally I catch a glimpse of Severina Floriana at some restaurant, or encounter her at a party. Lucilla goes out of her way to give us a chance to speak to each other, and on a couple of these occasions Severina and I do have conversations that seem to be leading somewhere: she is curious about my life in Britannia, she wants to know my opinion of Roma, she tells me little gossipy tidbits about people on the other side of the room.

  Her dark beauty astounds me. We fair-haired Britons rarely see women of her sort. She is a creature from another world, blue highlights in her jet-black hair, eyes like mysterious pools of night, skin of a rich deep hue utterly unlike that of my people, not simply the olive tone that so many citizens of the eastern Roman world have, but something darker, more opulent, with a satiny sheen and texture. Her voice, too, is enchanting, husky without a trace of hoarseness, a low, soft, fluting sound, musical and magnificently controlled.

  She knows I desire her. But she playfully keeps our encounters beyond the zone where any such thing can be communicated, short of simply blurting it out. Somehow I grow confident, though, that we will be lovers sooner or later. Which perhaps would have been the case, had there only been time.

  On two occasions I see her brother the Emperor, too.

  Once is at the opera, in his box: he is formally attired in the traditional Imperial costume, the purple toga, and he acknowledges the salute of the audience with a negligent wave and a smile. Then, a week or two later, he passes through one of the Palatine Hill parties, in casual modern dress this time, with a simple purple stripe across his vest to indicate his high status.

  At close range I am able to understand why people speak so slightingly of him. Though he has the Imperial bearing and the Imperial features, the commanding eyes and the nose and the chin and all that, there is something about the eager, uncertain smile of Caesar Maxentius that negates all his Imperial pretensions. He may call himself Caesar, he may call himself Augustus, and Pater Patriae and Pontifex Maximus and all the rest; but when you look at him, I discover to my surprise and dismay, he simpers and fails to return your gaze in any steady way. He should never have been given the throne. His brother Flavius Rufus would have been ever so much more regal.

  Still, I have met the Emperor, such as he is. It is not every Briton who can say that; and the number of those who can will grow ever fewer from now on.

  I send a message home by wire, every once in a while. Having incredibly good time, could stay here forever but probably won’t. I offer no details. One can hardly say in a telegram that one is living in a little palace a stone’s throw from the Emperor’s official residence, and sleeping with the niece of Gaius Junius Scaevola, and attending parties with people whose names are known throughout the Empire, and hobnobbing with His Imperial Majesty himself once in a while, to boot.

  The year is nearing its end, now. The weather has changed, just as Lucilla said it would: the days are darker and of course shorter, the air is cool, rain is frequent. I haven’t brought much of a winter wardrobe with me, and Lucilla’s younger brother, a handsome fellow named Aquila, takes me to his tailor to get me outfitted for the new season. The latest Roman fashions seem strange, even uncouth, to me: but what do I know of Roman fashion? I take Aquila’s praise of my new clothes at face value, and the tailor’s and Lucilla’s also, and hope they’re not all simply having sport with me.

  The invitation that Flavius Rufus Caesar extended to Lucilla and me that first night—to spend the Saturnalia at the Imperial villa at Tibur—was, I discover, a genuine one. By the time December arrives I have forgotten all about it; but Lucilla hasn’t, and she tells me, one evening, that we are to leave for Praeneste in the morning. That is a place not far from Roma, where in ancient and medieval times an oracle held forth in the Cave of Destiny until Trajan VII put an end to her privileges. We will stay there for a week or so at the estate of a vastly rich Hispanic merchant named Scipio Lucullo,
and then go onward to nearby Tibur for the week of the Saturnalia itself.

  Scipio Lucullo’s country estate, even in these bleak days of early winter, is grand beyond my comprehension. The marble halls, the pools and fountains, the delicate outer pavilions, the animal chambers where lions and zebras and giraffes are kept, the collections of statuary and paintings and objects of art, the baths, everything is on an Imperial scale. But there is no Imperial heritage here. Lucullo’s place was built, someone tells me, only five years ago, out of the profits of his gold mines in Nova Roma, ownership of which he attained by scandalous bribery of court officials during the disastrous final days of the reign of old Caesar Laureolus. His own guests, though they don’t disdain his immense hospitality, regard his estate as tawdry and vulgar, I discover.

  “I’d be happy to live in such tawdriness,” I tell Lucilla. “Is that a terribly provincial thing to say?”

  But she only laughs. “Wait until you see Tibur,” she says.

  And indeed I discover the difference between mere showiness and true magnificence when we move along to the famous Imperial villa just as the Saturnalia week is about to begin.

  This is, of course, the place that the great Hadrianus built for his country pleasures seventeen centuries ago. In his own time it was, no doubt, a wonder of the world, with its porticos and fountains and reflecting pools, its baths both great and small, its libraries both Greek and Roman, its nymphaeum and triclinium, its temples to all the gods under whose spell Hadrianus fell as he traveled the length and breadth of the Roman world.

  But that was seventeen centuries ago; and seventeen centuries of Emperors have added to this place, so that the original villa of Hadrianus, for all its splendor, is only a mere part of the whole, and the totality must surely be the greatest palace in the world, a residence worthy of Jupiter or Apollo. “You can ride all day and not see the whole thing,” Lucilla says to me. “They don’t keep it all open at once, of course. We’ll be staying in the oldest wing, what they still call Hadrianus’s Villa. But all around us you’ll see the parts that Trajan VII added, and Flavius Romulus, and the Khitai Pavilions that Lucius Agrippa built for the little yellow-skinned concubine that he brought back from Asia Ultima. And if there’s time—oh, but there won’t be time, will there—?”