A Mixture of Madness, Book II of The Bow - By Levkoff, Andrew Page 0,32

slaves are familiar, the flat, disassociated tone needed to withstand some memory better forgotten, but impossible to repress.

Exhale.

Lady Cornelia turned to her older friend, “No one is going to force you to do anything against your will here. I promise.” Young as she was, she was not naïve. She had heard the change in tone, and understood that, hard as she might try, she would never bridge the span that yawned between them with a massage or a game of trigon.

Livia pushed herself up on her elbows and said a most sincere, “Thank you.” They both recognized that even those two words, softly spoken, had the power to push them apart, each into their separate worlds.

Lady Cornelia thought for a moment, then said, “Shall I have father buy you, and set you free, then?”

“Don’t joke about such things.”

“I’m serious. More oil,” she instructed her own masseur. “My heels are like leather.”

Livia lay back down on her stomach, her right cheek on her hands. “Free.” The sound blew through her mouth with less weight than it deserved. “My mother fought for my freedom all her life.”

“Where is she now?”

“Dead, if the gods are kind. She was sent to the mines. I haven’t seen her or had word from her in twenty years.” Livia laughed, a short, mirthless sound. “Do you know what she told me: she said you could never be happy, you could never fully experience love unless you were free. Freedom was the only thing that mattered.”

“Then let me help you honor her memory by granting her most fervent wish.”

“I believed her, when I was a child. But now, I don’t know. Even if it were possible, Cornelia, to gain this prize, what would I sacrifice? You’ve seen what life is like outside the walls of your estate. Freedmen are judged almost as harshly as we are. The stigma never fades. I’m thirty-seven and no virgin. What kind of man would have me? How would I live? Without the protection and patronage of dominus, what citizen would pay to be treated by a female doctor?”

“But you’d be free. You are beautiful. You could do what you choose.”

“Forgive me, Cornelia, I do not make light of your most generous offer, but I think my time for a free life has past. Even my mother might offer different advice today. If I had money, or even family…. But I will think about it, seriously, I promise.” Livia laughed; now the sound was bright but dismissive. “Why are we even talking about this? Dominus would never let me go. He’s invested too much in my training. You might as well ask him to sell Alexander to your father. No, I am welcome in the house of Crassus, and my place is there.”

“You want to remain a slave?”

“I have a home there, my work is respected, and there is…there are people there who care about me.”

“Hm. The house of Crassus is renowned for training and keeping only the highest quality staff. If you say the life there is better than on the outside, I must believe you. Something has changed, though. My parents remarked on it – both Crassus and lady Tertulla seem different, somehow, since their return from Luca. Do you know anything about it?”

“I am only back from Memphis these few months; I really couldn’t say.”

“Well,” lady Cornelia said, dismissing even the hint of an unpleasant subject, “I pray they are well. When my friends and I talk of the marriages our fathers will arrange for us, theirs is the one we all hope to emulate. Whatever the matter, we’ll find a shrine and say a prayer for them on the way home.”

“You are sweet to do so.”

“Not so sweet that I wouldn’t steal your man there away from you,” lady Cornelia said.

“This fellow?” Livia said, gesturing back toward the African. “Take him. I have no preference.”

“Thank you, Livvy. I like the thought of his big hands upon me.”

“You’re not going to let him…,” Livia said, alarmed.

The young lady laughed. “Of course not! My father would kill me. No, I mean he would seriously consider it. All he talks about is making a prudent political match for me. I tease him, but I mean to make him proud of me, in every way, including the stain I leave on my wedding sheets.”

Lady Cornelia said something to her masseur, who spoke a single word to Livia’s, and the two made to switch places. This was my moment. Livia was turned away from