foreign cultures, anthropology, sociology and, you know, things of that nature.” Who is this man now talking? Who is it who listened? “You must put the rest of it out of your mind, Alexander. I command it. I want you at my side when we step inside a place where only one other Roman has ever set foot. We will enter their Holy of Holies, but unlike politic Pompeius Magnus, we cannot afford to be merely sightseers.”
Publius shrugged without understanding, but I felt my knees begin to buckle. “Tell me you will not do this thing,” I said, water rising to weigh upon my lower eyelids.
“I tell you we will. After Hierapolis, we continue south into Judea, and Jerusalem.”
Chapter XXXIV
54 BCE - Fall, Antioch
Year of the consulship of
Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus and Appius Claudius Pulcher
I don’t remember leaving, or walking the short distance to my rooms, or even writing the first draft of the letter. I must have moved with ghostly quiet, for thank Somnus, both Livia and Hanno were still sleeping soundly when the rising sun slipped a sliver of red through the drapes and across the table where my head lay on ink-stained hands. I rose stiffly, gingerly lifted the final copy from the table and crept from the room.
The gallery was chilly at this hour. The citrons in the courtyard watched my treason in bitter stillness as I unlocked the letter box, rolled my forgery, sealed it, waited for the wax to dry, then broke the seal and swept the debris into a pouch. After tucking the letter I had written in Tertulla’s hand back amongst the rest of the correspondence, I closed and locked the box. What a stroke of luck, you might say, not only that my lord and lady’s seals were identical, but that that they used the exact same color of wax. You may thank me for this romantic notion. In retrospect, my fortunes would have fared far better had a more random selection of utensils forced me to think twice about my pernicious meddling.
While I shivered at my task, shaking only a little from the cold itself, I could not stop thinking about the changes that had come over both my masters. War had hardened Publius, as it must. He and I were lovesick when last we met, between the distractions of lady Cornelia and Livia, neither one of us could have been the keenest judges in contests of discerning character. His cruelty and arrogance were hidden from me, and to be honest, I was blinded by and eternally grateful for his bravery, or to be more precise, his sense of timing.
Throughout the previous evening’s nightmare conversation, dominus appeared and disappeared, confident and commanding one moment, lost and uncertain the next. The wise Crassus would never dream of sacking the temples of Hierapolis or Jerusalem. He had never committed an act so foolhardy in all his long career. It was as if some daemon had possessed him, and I knew that monster’s name. I had half a mind to steal the portrait of Caesar he wore around his neck and crush it underfoot. His grey eyes went in and out of focus, sharp, then dim. I believe that when that faraway look came upon him, his thoughts were of Tertulla. But you who read this understand it served my purpose to think so.
Marcus Crassus' love for Tertulla was a great an unsullied thing, once. Theirs was a marriage celebrated throughout Rome as the paragon of partnerships, a bond unbroken for thirty-four years. If they could but look at each other through the eyes of their youth, there had to be a chance they would see the tragedy of this misadventure. I was there through all those years; I saw them newly wed, helped them build their homes, raise their children. No one knew the playful spirit and happy, stubborn intelligence of my lady from those days better than I—no one except her husband. I remember the banter between them the nights Crassus left with our fire brigade to make cheap purchase of some burning apartment building. The heat in their bedroom as lady Tertulla tried to coax her young spouse back to bed was enough to require the brigade’s expertise. It was embarrassing. But it was wonderful.
As atriensis, half my time was spent reviewing or turning away applications; every servant in Rome wanted to be a part of the familia of the house of Crassus. That, more than anything else I might remember,