Master and God

14

Lara’s death inevitably marked a shift in Lucilla’s life. For the first three years of Domitian’s reign she and her sister — or was she really her mother? — had been extremely close. Their difference in ages always made Lara the leader; Lucilla could now see that it was more than simple seniority. Lara had skills to teach and at first she provided their customer base. In retrospect, Lara always made their choices — who to work for, how to organise appointments, even what colour a client’s hair would be or the right moment to refresh a woman’s style. Lucilla, using her nimble skill with hairpieces, had had her own expertise so there had never been struggles for supremacy. It had always seemed natural that Lara took the lead.

Now, Lucilla had to make all the choices.

Although forlorn and insecure, she never neglected her business. Work offered itself as a natural solace. She was good at what she did; she could work even when her mind was wandering into thoughts of Lara and Lachne. Covering every task that she and Lara had once shared kept her intensely busy. One or two clients who had been particularly attached to Lara slipped away, but most stayed loyal. It became necessary to consider training an assistant.

She bought a slave. It was troubling for Lucilla, herself a freedwoman’s child, but she was at least able to purchase the girl from Flavia Domitilla. Lucilla did not have to venture into a slave market where the overseers treated their wares worse than animals, pulling open mouths to show how many teeth slaves had, letting lewd male customers fondle young girls’ breasts, loudly making coarse assertions about their sexual pasts and future possibilities. Instead, Domitilla’s girl, whose name was Glyke, could be quietly looked over at the house, then without embarrassment obtained from the steward; Stephanus only demanded a modest bribe for fixing the transaction.

A freedwoman’s slave could face a life of particular cruelty. Those who had endured beatings and other abuse in their early life sometimes imposed worse on their own slaves. Lucilla presumed Glyke would appreciate that this never happened to her. But after a year, the ungrateful Glyke ran away with a baker’s delivery boy. Lucilla could have reported this to the vigiles and had her runaway slave hunted, but she forbore. Glyke was in love. The baker’s boy might have pretended affection but he would dump her eventually. He had that look in his eye. For a girl so young, being abandoned would be enough punishment.

Glyke may never have realised she was only a few years younger than her new mistress. There was a world of difference between them in judgement and poise.

Nevertheless, Lucilla was hiding deep uncertainties. In some ways she was fortunate. She would survive financially. Her client base was sufficient. She might build a much bigger business; that would be hard work, though work she found a pleasure. Yet it would take all her time. Acquiring Glyke showed her the problems of management. Yes, the girl shared her labour, but Lucilla spent too much time training and supervising; with her own reputation at stake she could not trust the young slave to work on her own initiative. She had to house and feed her too. At the apartment Glyke slept in the workroom, but constantly nagged to be allowed into the Praetorian’s accommodation. She seemed unable to grasp that his rooms were outside Lucilla’s control and that Lucilla had no wish to put herself under any obligation to Vinius.

When Glyke ran away, Lucilla’s strongest feeling was relief. She bore the financial loss, which was compensated by being once more alone at home and unpressured. Having the apartment to herself again was wonderful. Vinius had said she could use the room with the couch as her private area; without Glyke, Lucilla did so.

Her ease with her own company did not mean she hankered for a reclusive life. At twenty-one, her unmarried state was becoming a source of unhappiness. She shrank from being trapped with the wrong partner but if she ever dreamed of her future, she imagined someone in her bed and at her table. Like Lachne, and Lara too, presumably, she was drawn to men. Despite her grim knowledge of life, as much as she yearned for physical love she harboured idealistic hopes. She wanted true male companionship; also, she believed she could be a good mother, if she ever had children.

She had few affairs. Nevertheless, she knew about men’s behaviour. At work she spent most of her days listening to women on this subject, usually complaining. A woman and her hairdresser might never spend time together socially, yet they were intimately acquainted with the fabric of each other’s lives. Husbands and sons, fathers and brothers, were routinely discussed. Their characters and careers were catalogued, their habits and adventures followed over time. Lucilla, who was a good listener, absorbed this and acquired more wisdom than she realised.

It would be wasted if she never found a man.

The place to look was obviously Alba. Lucilla had always loved Alba, and now without Lara dragging on her to stay in Rome near her children, Lucilla could go whenever she wanted. If the court was at Alba she could spend the whole summer there.

It was truly beautiful. On one side was a breathtaking view down a precipitous wooded hillside to the perfection of the lake bowl, its surface often turquoise in reflection of the sky, a scatter of water birds bobbing midway. A nymphaeum, or water-feature, had been cut into the shoreline rock, its entrance dramatically framing the view to Mount Albanus, which was topped by the glittering white Temple of Jupiter Latiarius. In the other direction enormous garden terraces faced towards Rome and the Tyrrhenian Sea, which could be glimpsed in the far distance.

Alba was called Domitian’s villa but was like a small city. There were women present though, apart from a few noblewomen, they tended to be employed either in menial tasks or predatory occupations. Of the men, Lucilla knew her first serious choice ought to have been easy: the freed slaves of the imperial family. But they seemed like strangers. After Lachne was freed and left the household, Lucilla had lost the advantages of knowing and being known well by any potential candidates.

It would appear she had plenty of alternatives: the Emperor’s advisers and personal attendants; artists, musicians, poets and learned men; architects, engineers; finance experts, secretaries, soldiers; athletes and professional gladiators. Some were married, though many left their wives elsewhere. Of those, some noble sorts were restrained and faithful: not many. Occasionally one of the better men would develop a soft spot for Lucilla and engage in cheery, acceptably flirtatious banter.

Most were to be avoided. They were, openly, just looking for a good time. In her early naive search for friendship, Lucilla struggled. As a hairdresser she was viewed as a cheaper, cleaner, patriotically home-grown version of the sordid Syrian flute girls or notorious Spanish dancers, just an easy lay for whom men would not even pay. Nobody admired a hairdresser for chastity. That she resisted encounters only raised a greater challenge to those men who believed they were special, where in their view ‘special’ meant sexually irresistible.

Others were available to Lucilla because they were so gauche that no woman with any sense would touch them. The fact that she appeared unconnected seemed to draw these hopeless characters to her; they were then outraged if she said no to them.

Some adventurers took an interest because they had assessed her success and were after her money. One even told her so; his honesty had a passing allure but she still refused him.

To find a loyal companion from among these potential disasters began to appear impossible. Lucilla could certainly have a string of sexual partners, if she could endure brief conjunctions, one-sided action, men who nervously checked the time of day to find excuses to leave, raw panic on their part if she ever seemed to grow needy. Occasionally she went to bed with someone, but she failed to find permanence or real pleasure.

She needed a man who would neither resent her talent nor try to take her over. He must have either a business or professional career, but not one where he needed a wife’s unpaid assistance; Lucilla wanted to continue her own work. It would be best if he was connected with the court, Lucilla’s world. He should have the same mobility as she did, for the same reasons.

However, the way Lucilla moved on a whim between Alba and Rome was in itself off-putting to many men. She looked flighty. Her freedom to wander hinted she might lead a double life: if she was not doing so now, she could do it in future, betraying any poor mongrel who kennelled with her permanently. Each knew about two-timing because they, men, did it all the time. They made duplicate assignations; flitted to new partners; lied and got away with it. Alba had many a careerist who for years kept a wife and children, dumped in some small town, on a farm, in a back-street of the capital, but who, in the separate world of the villa, lived it up with a dancer or singer or an imperial servant — a dresser, an embroiderer, a jewel-casket-minder, a hairdresser. Some moved around skeins of these ladies in an ever-changing country dance. Inevitably on retirement they would slink back to the small town or farm.

A problem was the subtly unreal atmosphere. Much as Lucilla loved the vast villa complex, she recognised its falsehoods. Alba lay twenty miles from Rome, which was just near enough to make the journey down the Via Appia in one day with the best transport. It seemed accessible; yet was remote. It seemed cosmopolitan, yet was intimate. Everything suggested simple country life, though a life suffused with luxury. Attendants padded everywhere in their resplendent white uniforms with gold decoration; white roses were brought in enormous quantities from Egypt to adorn and perfume the marble halls. Reality died at the entrance gates.

Domitian aimed to prove that ‘Rome’ was the Emperor. Power no longer resided in the Senate, which was physically tied to the Curia in the city Forum; power now centred on him. He had not retreated to Alba in the same way as Tiberius, the emperor he most studied, a grim figure who had exiled himself in Capri in order to lead a life of morose perversion, set apart from Roman society. Instead, Domitian made Alba the heart of things that mattered.

His villa was regarded as a gloomy citadel, full of suspicion and menace. Its beauty and amenities belied that. His architect, Rabirius, who was now creating a staggering new palace in Rome too, had devised at Alba a building with sophisticated use of space and materials. Domitian’s personal pleasures were cultural. He surrounded himself with music and poetry, plays and readings in his theatre, athletics and gladiating in his arena. He also loved hunting. Despite spindly legs and a pot belly, he had become a notably good archer, capable of shooting two arrows into the skull of a deer so they looked like horns. Once he made a slave hold up his fingers, and shot arrows through them, causing no wounds. And he spent many hours walking in his magnificent gardens.

In addition to outdoor activities he gave dinners, dinners which were almost a chore to him because he preferred to eat his main meal at lunchtime in private. In the evening he merely watched others, blighting their enjoyment as he stared and munched an apple glumly. His social reticence stood for his austere moral authority. Even so, for those privileged to share his life at Alba, he kept a famously elegant table, though he tended to terminate banquets early then retreat to his private quarters.

Once Domitian was out of sight anything went. Each evening came a sense of restraint being lifted. Lucilla felt temptation, though usually she shied from the decadence. Yet sometimes her loneliness became too much to bear.

It was late summer, the days already shortening though they were very hot and their evenings sultry. The Emperor was gathering an army for Moesia. Domitian was heading there in person, soon. His advisers, his freedmen, his Praetorians would accompany him. The Guards’ Commander, Cornelius Fuscus, had been given overall command.

They were all keyed up. The court’s impending shift had imposed an end-of-term atmosphere that unsettled both those who must go and those who would remain in Rome.

Lucilla became unbearably restless. Last time, when the Emperor went to Germany, her sister had still been alive and in order to spend time with Lara she had accepted that the removal of the court simply meant the sisters would for a time exist more quietly in Rome. Now a greater sense of loss hung over her. Not only was her domestic life solitary, but with the big masculine exodus she lost all chance to make connections. In over a year she had made no connections that she valued. She had no lover. She could not envisage ever acquiring one. Looking around at the men she encountered, she was as half-hearted about them as they were towards her. Her faith in herself diminished. She was not only frustrated, but intensely lonely.

On one particular evening, any man who deployed a scruple of charm could have had her. A few shared jokes would have done it. A gift of half a bowl of cherries, some tame philosophical theory, caressing the arch of her foot as she sat on a flight of steps, all would have been sufficient. Perhaps luckily for her, this wild mood that laid her open to seduction was too scary for most of them.

On the main terrace the Emperor was attending a concert in his miniature theatre. It was a perfect gem, marble-decorated, intimate and exclusive. Twenty or so tiers of stone seats formed a tight semi-circle, so close that friends on one side could converse across the centre with others opposite, while from his marble throne midway, Domitian could preside and feel himself the centre of a sophisticated gathering.

Tonight’s elegant music was too refined for many hangers-on, who had stayed outside, too rowdy, too impatient and shallow to appreciate measured cadences of lyre and flute. People had clustered in small groups on a terrace with an enormous fountain bowl, waiting for Domitian to emerge with his immediate coterie. They were quiet but louche. Flagons were being passed around, strong perfumes filled the air, lewd jokes flickered through every verbal exchange and it was blatantly assumed everyone present had world-weary hopes of copulation.

Lucilla drifted among them, in a set centred on Earinus, Domitian’s eunuch. He was an exquisite youth, selected in Pergamum to be sent to Rome for the Emperor, then too beautiful to be sent back after the Emperor took a new moral stance. Domitian had decided to shame his brother Titus, who had once kept eunuchs, by banning male castration as an unnatural outrage; even so, he ignored his own strictures by favouring this smooth, scented boy in his bracelets and necklaces. Earinus tasted the Emperor’s wine, then passed him his rare fluorspar cups like Ganymede attending Jupiter, an analogy Domitian adored since it made him godlike.

As ever, prurient talk dwelt on just how much the cup-bearer had lost in his castration, and what sexual acts Earinus could still perform. People harped on his painful snip obscenely. Unabashed, he lapped up attention. According to him, he was much in demand among senators’ wives, especially as there was no risk of pregnancy. Despite any diminution of his sexual drive, he slept with anyone. He even offered himself to Lucilla, not entirely joking.

‘Do you want a bunk-up — half price to you?’

Lucilla was exasperated by the self-centred toyboy, who she knew had actually cut off his hair and sent locks to his hometown of Pergamum in a gold box; he had begged a poet to write a celebratory lyric about it, as if he were a person of account.

‘Wobble yourself, Earinus. I like a lover with balls.’

Just at that moment she saw Gaius Vinius.

Vinius, who had a true love of music, had emerged from the theatre. Off duty and unarmed, he came at a fast clip up a short flight of marble-veneered steps to where Lucilla and her companions were noisily clustered on the flat terrace. He must have left the concert early, apparently overcome by tristesse. Lucilla thought she even saw him wipe away a tear.

She knew he had spotted her. He obviously heard the conversation. His expression of contempt was searing. They did not speak. Vinius disappeared. Lucilla felt cheap — then annoyed, because what she did and who she knew were her own affair, whatever the Praetorian thought.

What he thought suddenly mattered to her. That made her more angry.

When Domitian emerged and his party flocked after him out of the theatre, Lucilla severed herself from the group she had been with. Her mood was sour, not least because she had been drinking wine after little to eat. Wine had a crazy attraction that night, so she was carrying a flagon as she walked off by herself. She went just fast enough to deter anyone from trying to speak to her.

There was a long promenade, sheltered by a high hillside wall, which led away from the theatre. On her left, a line of narrow flower beds with low walls carrying water channels was graced at intervals with grottos, statues and fountains. More formal planting with topiary lay to her right. Everywhere seemed to be full of entwined couples and people laughing, with distant screams that were impossible to interpret: silliness, feigned protest, or even real cries for help, though nobody took any notice. Part way along this terrace a tunnel under the hillside had steps leading down, then a passage wide enough for four abreast that went to the upper terrace and living quarters. Her original thought had been to head back to her room that way. Furious, wretched and befuddled, Lucilla missed the entrance.

Someone, a man, started following her.

After a lurch of panic she recognised that level tread. Surreptitiously, she confirmed it was Vinius. Lucilla flounced off. His slow footfall continued.

At the farthermost end of the promenade, where hardly anyone else had wandered, she reached a small garden room enclosed by high walls and foliage, with a petal-shaped pool decorated with ornamental shrubs. Lucilla stopped and waited, with a pitter-patter of anticipation, for Vinius to catch up.

He was not happy with her. ‘What in Hades are you doing?’

‘Walking.’

‘Crap. For what reason are you tripping around in a dream by yourself, carrying a wine flagon?’

‘I want to get away from people.’

‘By inviting the wrong attention? These gardens are my bored colleagues’ domain. They judge women on a sliding scale — that’s from slag through slut, via filthy tambourine dancer, and ending up only with eminently fuckable — ’

‘None of them came near me.’

‘Only because I gave them all the evil eye.’

Vinius was right. A number of the men sauntering on the terrace were Praetorians, enjoying their regular evening haunt. It was an empty kind of recreation and they might well be looking for trouble. A woman could tell herself the Guards didn’t frighten her; any woman who genuinely thought that was stupid. Yet here Lucilla was, a long way from other people, and alone with one of them. ‘I don’t need your protection.’

‘You need a good hiding. You’ve gone wild here. For some dumb, ethical reason I feel called to intervene.’

Lucilla took off again, but this time with Vinius alongside. Now that they had spoken he seemed to calm down. They strode along together as if simply admiring the topiary until they reached the great viewing area, a balcony that gave a wonderful panorama with views of Rome and the sea. They fetched up by its balustrade, which bore massive plant pots, its rough stone still warm from heat beating on it all day.

To cover their awkwardness, Lucilla began asking questions. ‘I saw you come out of the music.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you go to hear concerts by yourself?’

‘I like concerts.’

‘It seemed to have upset you.’

‘I was moved. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing.’

‘I don’t think of you as emotional.’

‘Then you don’t know me.’

‘No.’ Lucilla’s voice was drab, but firm. ‘And maybe you don’t know me either. You put yourself in judgement on me tonight, unfairly.’

‘Those people are trash.’ It was a harsh denunciation, a soldier’s. ‘It’s not only tonight. I’ve watched you when you didn’t know. I’ve seen you among real lowlifes here. Wallowing with the squeaky-boys. You keep atrocious company.’

‘Earinus is harmless.’

‘No; he’s vile!’

Blinking back tears, Lucilla blundered away from him, alone this time, and plunged down to a flight of steps which led into a huge underground hall like a grandiose passageway that was called the cryptoporticus. At the end where she entered, Domitian had built a great platform from which he could survey the length of the grandiose gallery. Sometimes he summoned the Senate there and glowered down at them from his vantage point.

There were few people about because most preferred to be outside, but some small groups were in the giant vaulted passage, talking quietly. To avoid unwelcome overtures, Lucilla had to act as if she was going to meet someone. She teetered down the wide, steep stairs, realising she was more tipsy than she liked. She reached the flat, a long gallery that must be over three hundred yards long. This part had small high windows, designed to flood the passage with sunlight that would reflect off the highly polished marble walls and provide almost theatrical illumination for the Emperor on his podium. With few oil lamps, the place was deeply gloomy after dark.

People stared at her. Becoming nervous, she found an exit.

A new broad terrace opened out of doors, with the cryptoporticus forming its back wall. More peaceful parterres, with neatly trimmed hedges and topiary, extended to far vistas. Statues climbed out of tangles of roses in graceful allees. Enormous trees of unimaginable antiquity reached for the sky.

She turned right and marched quickly to the end of the gardens, where a statue made a feature among a semi-circle of stone benches, with curtains of tall, trimmed cypress trees behind. She slumped on one of the benches.

Feet crunching on the path announced that Vinius was joining her again; she was not entirely surprised. He sat down a couple of yards from her, watching her disapprovingly although the mood between them seemed less hostile now.

‘You’re a strange girl.’ He said it with a half-admiring, half-troubled tone. ‘Why don’t you find yourself a boyfriend to keep you out of mischief, or get married nicely?’

‘Because I’ve had a look at what’s available.’

She heard Vinius laughing. ‘Fair enough!’

There was a silence, after which he shuffled along towards her, holding out his hand for her wine flagon. Lucilla gave up custody. He gulped, let out a disparaging noise; it was white, girlie wine, too acid. Nonetheless he drank greedily. When he stopped he offered the flagon back, but she had had sufficient earlier. Vinius sat, with his head flung back, looking up at the early stars.

‘So you approve of marriage,’ Lucilla challenged. ‘Well, I hear you’ve done it enough times.’

‘Marriage has its uses.’

‘Did you ever have children?’

‘One.’

‘Boy or girl?’ There was such a long pause, Lucilla rounded on him: ‘Juno, you are appalling; you don’t even remember!’

‘I was thinking about my daughter,’ Vinius responded coldly. Vinia Arruntina. A grand name for such a tiny tot. She would have been, what — eight? nine? now. Her father’s little girl; his lost princess; forever his baby…

Lucilla watched Vinius. She was surprised that his mood tonight was so strained. When she changed the subject, intuition nudged her to ask, ‘Will you tell me about Dacia?’

‘What do you want to know? Why?’

‘Not many people will discuss such things with a hairdresser. It’s all, “So does Julia really sleep with him?” As if while I’m pinning up a curl Flavia Julia would exclaim, “Uncle Domitian had incest with me again last night!”, then allot him a score as a lover.’

Gaius Vinius let out an uncharacteristic giggle. He gulped more wine to calm down. ‘So that’s what hairdressers talk about… Well, does he sleep with Julia?’

‘I don’t know. You’re as well-placed as me to observe.’

‘We don’t do bedroom duty. Thank the gods.’ After another pause, Vinius said not unsympathetically, ‘I see him with the imperial ladies. I’d say he does have genuine affection for the women in his family. The niece. The wife too. They say Julia is the one person who can exert a softening influence on him.’

‘I believe it’s true.’

‘Do you reckon she is frightened of the situation?’

‘She must be. I feel sorry for her. She can never remarry; it would be the man’s death sentence. I just think,’ said Lucilla, ‘as long as Domitian is alive, Julia will have to act sweet, look trusting, appear entirely happy with her fate — and never, ever share her thoughts with anybody.’

In silence, they considered Julia’s loneliness. Vinius offered the wine flask. This time Lucilla had some, then he took it back and drank again, hard.

Vinius was looking at her rather intently.

He changed the mood. He jumped to his feet, exclaiming, ‘We got distracted. So — Dacia!’ He was holding out his hand to her, so although she did not take it, Lucilla stood too and they walked. With night air cooling her flushed face, she felt much calmer; she now allowed herself to enjoy the beautiful location as they sauntered back down the gardens to where a large fountain had been built into the outer wall of the cryptoporticus.

They stopped to admire. Neptune. Two fellows on dolphins, wrestling snakes. Creepers ran up the high walls.

Vinius provided an epitome of the frontier arrangement, the recent Moesian disaster and the ongoing Dacian situation. ‘Free Europe is a vast area and the tribes there are very mobile, constantly roaming, hard to pin down. Gracilis, my centurion, served in Moesia. He says the Dacians live between two different groups of Sarmatians — the Iazyges on the great plains to their west and the Roxolani on their eastern flank — so he reckons they may feel pincered. It is a fluid situation, though. This side of the Sarmatians, the Suebi, who are Marcomanni and Quadi, are clearly eyeing up Pannonia. All these peoples are looking across the frontiers and seeing our Empire, so prosperous and well-organised, so civilised, just beckoning to them.’

He explained it well. Lucilla congratulated him and he said it was because his centurion had to instruct the men; as beneficarius, Vinius had to write the brief for the centurion. Lucilla suddenly remembered him at the vigiles station house, dipping pen into ink with a playfully fancy gesture.

Something in his tone had given her another flash of insight: ‘You don’t want to go!’

‘You will never persuade a soldier to say he does not want to fight.’

‘Do you like being a Praetorian?’

‘It’s probably treason to say anything different. You’ll get me sent to the beasts.’

‘You still don’t want to go. I know you, Gaius Vinius.’

‘Yes,’ he said gravely, as if noticing something significant, or seeing a truth for the first time. ‘I believe you do, Lucilla.’

When they began walking on again something — everything? — was different. They were hand in hand, their fingers intertwined.

Close to the fountain, clipped fretwork hedges allowed people to look out again at the panorama, though from intimate niches in the hedge. They stood there and gazed. Neither was seeing much.

Vinius spoke. His voice, that baritone that had always stirred Lucilla, was low: ‘Be true to yourself, girl. Look after yourself.’

‘I am better than you think.’

‘I think you’re adorable.’

‘Don’t talk like that.’

‘Don’t push me then. Don’t make me the guardian of your morals. Don’t be unfair on both of us.’

In two heartbeats the conversation had plunged into dangerous areas.

They walked again, now like close friends. They were two of a kind, like-minded, both outsiders, naturally bonded, mutually rueful. Whether friends or something else, both knew what was happening between them.

The night grew quiet. Though far from other people, they had a clear sense that elsewhere revellers had dispersed. Scents of roses, lilies and cypresses had whispered around them unnoticed. They descended to lower levels. They passed sunken gardens, parklike areas, belvederes, gazebos, galleries of statues, circular promenades, vistas to ornamental specimen trees or fishponds.

They came across a pavilion, empty now, though it had been occupied earlier. A fastidious man, Vinius wondered by whom? There were still sun-bleached cushions on couches, among abandoned flower garlands, cold perfume burners, and half-eaten bowls of tiny wild strawberries from Nemi.

By a pillar, they stopped. Vinius turned Lucilla towards him. They kissed quietly, without prior fuss. It seemed inevitable.

‘This is not a good idea.’ A cliche, but Vinius was fumbling to express reluctance while not really feeling it. He let her go. They were still close. They could not bear to draw apart.

‘A man of honour.’

‘Probably insane.’

Lucilla forced herself to support his decision. ‘We should go back, before we do something we shall both regret forever.’

‘And regret it all night if we don’t…’ Vinius was almost laughing. Both knew: they thought they were strong-willed but the attraction between them had become intense.

‘You go.’

‘I want to see you safe.’

‘I shall be. Let me stay here by myself a little longer, then when no one is about I’ll walk up quietly.’ To encourage him to go, Lucilla moved away, further into the pavilion, where she perched on a couch hugging her knees lightly. It was a flat stone structure, made like a triple dining-couch for picnicking in this dainty gazebo which in daylight would have dramatic views. Head back, she savoured the warm night air.

Gaius Vinius decided to take himself off. ‘Goodnight then.’

‘Goodnight.’

Next minute he was back, urgently leaning down over Lucilla. ‘Stuff honour!’ His lips were on hers. He was so aroused that to refuse him would be frightening.

Lucilla did not want to refuse. She kissed him back, much more intently than the first time. Juno — just for once it was her turn. Time to forget rectitude, time to ignore caution, time for what she so much needed, all she sensed this man would give her…

‘Agreed?’

‘Once!’

‘Once then,’ said Gaius, terse. His hands were moving over her. She was reaching for him… Lucilla seemed to hesitate. Still just in command of himself, Gaius cancelled her objections. ‘Accept it. You’re desperate. I’m going to Dacia and may never come back.’

‘No cheap excuses,’ said Lucilla.

He laughed quietly. Gaius Vinius showed amusement more often than she had realised; he could be full of warmth, overwhelming the affection-starved Lucilla. ‘No excuses at all!’

He was unfixing the roundel fasteners of her sleeves, tugging and trying not to seem like a man who had undressed too many women. Lucilla pulled the tang on his belt to release the buckle, hoping not to reveal how rarely she had undressed men. He took her in his arms, with a suppressed groan. For a short, wild moment she wished she had a better body, bigger breasts, more energy, enough experience — before, for the first time in her life, Lucilla gave herself into the care of a man whose competence, as a matter of pride, included both their needs.

He was not normally one who boasted, but he heard himself declare to her crazily, ‘If it’s only once, it must be good! Flavia Lucilla, I am going to make love to you all the way to the gates of Hades, then all through the Elysian Fields and all the way back here. You won’t know whether to beg me to stop or plead with me for more…’

Gaius Vinius knew all about routine love-making in some anaemic relationship for his own swift relief. He wanted better, much better tonight. He was ready to deploy heart, lungs, muscles, imagination, and an unlikely sensitivity in order to achieve it. He wanted to blot bloody Dacia from his consciousness, his reluctance to go there, his centurion’s dark premonitions, his own emptiness at what his life had been so far and its pointlessness if he should not survive battle. He wanted to purge the profound sadness that had swept through him at the music recital. To do so, every fibre of him wanted this girl who could be so sweet, and who was so worth saving, and with whom on this strange evening he had felt such extraordinary closeness.

You fuck to forget. Every soldier knows that. On the eve of departure, you fuck blindly to create memories to see you through that long march which may be your last… Yet there could be more. Gaius Vinius believed in it, and that night he found it: in not just extreme physical passion, but complete exultant joy.