was warm and cold at the same time. Her heart both raced and soared with his loving. But if her place was in his heart, and in his arms, then why was she afraid? Then, her crisis overwhelming her, Cailin cried out with pleasure, and her fears were quickly forgotten in the security and the safety of his loving arms. Happily she snuggled against him and fell asleep.
When she awoke in the morning, he was already gone. Nellwyn brought her a tray with newly made yogurt, ripe apricots, and fresh bread with a little pot of honey. “Master Arcadius asks if you will pose for him today. He says he is almost finished, and can be gone by week’s end if you will but cooperate. I think he is anxious to return to Constantinople. The summer is over. He talks about the autumn games.”
“Tell him I will be there in an hour,” Cailin told her servant. “I want the statue completed, and mounted upon its pedestal in the garden before my lord returns. It will be my wedding surprise for him.”
“I never saw anything like it before,” Nellwyn admitted. “It’s so beautiful, lady. I thought only the gods were portrayed so.”
“The statue represents Venus, the old Goddess of Love,” Cailin explained. “I have simply posed in place of the goddess for Arcadius.”
Cailin ate, and then having bathed, joined the sculptor in his studio. Nellwyn in attendance, she removed her tunica and took her position. He worked for a time, his eye moving between the smaller clay statue he had originally fashioned from her pose and Cailin herself. When he saw she was growing tired, he stopped, and Cailin put on her tunica before they went to sit outside in the sunshine and drink sweet, freshly squeezed orange juice, and nibble upon sesame cakes that Zeno brought them.
“I shall miss your company,” Cailin told Arcadius. “I enjoy all your wicked gossip, and have learned much of those with whom I will have to associate when I am married to Aspar.”
“Your life will not be easy,” he answered her frankly. “Those at the court with whom you should associate will avoid you until they know you, and even when they know your true worth, some will continue to shun you, Cailin Drusus. Only those of whom you should be wary will be eager to cultivate your friendship due to the influence you have with Aspar, or because they hope to seduce you as they have so many others. Your virtue, in light of the gossip surrounding you, will truly madden them.”
“What a paradox you Byzantines are,” Cailin said. “You espouse a religion that preaches goodness, and yet there is so much evil among you. I do not really understand your people at all.”
“Our society is simple,” Arcadius told her. “The rich desire power, and more riches. These things make them feel invincible, and so they behave as other people would not dare to behave. They are crueler, and more carnal, and because their faith promises them forgiveness if they will but repent, they do so every now and then, ridding themselves of their past sins so they may go and sin some more.
“This is not unique to Byzantium alone, Cailin. All civilizations reach this apogee at some point in their development. Those less rich imitate their betters; and the poor are kept in their place by a top-heavy bureaucracy and a beneficent ruler who allows them into the games free. Bread and circuses, my dear girl, keep the poor in check, except for those rare times when plague, or famine, or war interfere with the workings of the government. When those things happen, even emperors are not safe on their thrones.” He chuckled. “I am a cynic, as you can see.”
“All I desire,” Cailin replied, “is to marry my dear lord, and if the gods will it, bear him a child. I shall live here in the country, raise my children, and be content. I want no part of Byzantium’s intrigues, Arcadius.”
“You will not be able to escape them, dear girl,” he said. “Aspar is not some unimportant noble with a country estate to which he may retire. This idyll you have been living cannot continue once you are married. You will have to accept your proper place at court as the wife of the empire’s First Patrician. Take my advice, dear girl, and do not ally yourself with any faction no matter how seductively they importune you to join them, and