Pandora - By Anne Rice Page 0,42

for it’s the only way to cut their losses!”

I was quite impressed. All had gone so well. The darkness flowed back away from me, and there seemed for the moment a divine meaning in the warmth of the sun.

“You cheat my Mistress and you know it! You’re the scum of the Earth!” he went on. “Madam, do we ever purchase from this scoundrel again? I advise never!”

The slave trader broke into an inane smile, a hideous grimace of cowardice and stupidity, bowed and gave me back a third of what I’d given him.

I could hardly keep from another burst of laughing. I had to fetch the mantle from the ground again. Flavius did it. This time, I knotted it properly in front.

I looked at the gold which had been returned, scooped it up, entrusted it to Flavius and off we went.

When we had plunged into the thick crowd in the center of the Forum I did laugh and laugh at the whole affair.

“Well, Flavius, you’re protecting me already, saving me money, giving me excellent advice. If there were more men like you in Rome, the world might be better for it.”

He was choked up. He couldn’t talk. It was an effort to whisper:

“Lady, you have on trust my body and soul forever.”

I went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. I realized that his nakedness, the filth of the loincloth, all this was a disgrace he bore without a sign of protest.

“Here,” I said, giving him some money. “Take the girls home, put them to work, then you go to the baths. Get clean. Get Roman clean. Have a boy if you want. Have two. Then buy fine clothes for yourself, not slave clothes, mind you, but clothes that you would buy for a rich young Roman Master!”

“Madam, please hide that purse!” he said as he took the coins. “And what is my Mistress’s name? To whom shall I say I belong, if asked.”

“To Pandora of Athens,” I said. “Though you shall have to fill me in on the current state of my birthplace, because I have never actually been there. But a Greek name serves me well. Now, go. See, the girls watch!”

Lots of people were watching. Oh, this red silk! And Flavius was such a splendid figure of a male.

I kissed him again, and whispered in his ear, calculatingly, devil that I am, “I need you, Flavius.”

He looked down at me, awestruck. “I am yours forever, Madam,” he whispered.

“Are you sure you can’t do with me in bed!”

“Oh, believe me, I have tried!” he confessed, flushing again.

I made my hand into a fist and punched his muscular arm.

“Very well,” I said.

The damsels had already risen, at my gesture. They knew I sent him to them.

I gave him my key, the directions to my house, described the particularities of its gate, and the old bronze lion fountain right inside the gate.

“And you, Madam?” he asked. “You’re going in the crowd unaccompanied? Madam, the purse is huge! It’s full of gold.”

“Wait till you see the gold in the house,” I said. “Appoint yourself the only one who can open chests, and then hide them in obvious places. Replace all the furniture I’ve smashed in my . . . my solitude. There are many pieces stored in rooms above.”

“Gold in the house!” He was alarmed. “Chests of gold!”

“Now, don’t worry about me,” I said. “I know where to seek help now. And if you betray me, if you steal my legacy and I find my house ruined when I return, I suppose I shall have deserved it Cover up the chests of gold with carpets. The place has heaps of little Persian carpets. Look upstairs. And tend to the Shrine!”

“I shall do everything you ask and more.”

“So I thought. A man who cannot lie cannot steal. Now the sun is intolerable here. Go to the girls. They wait.”

I turned.

He caught me by coming round in front of me.

“Madam, there is something I must tell you.”

“What!” I said with an ominous face. “Not that you’re a eunuch,” I said. “Eunuchs don’t grow muscles in their arms and legs like that.”

“No,” he said. Then he took on a sudden gravity. “Ovid, you spoke of Ovid. Ovid is dead. Ovid died two years ago in the wretched town of Tomis on the upper rim of the Black Sea. It was a miserable choice of exile, a barbarian outpost.”

“No one told me this. What a revolting silence.” I threw up my hands over my face. The mantle fell. He