The Skystone

XVIII

The Villa Britannicus humbled me. I found myself facing a statement of wealth so sublime that I felt like a pauper again in spite of my hoard of gold and my successful weapons manufactory in Colchester. I had always known that the Britannicus family was a rich one, but the evidence that now confronted me in the size and the condition of the villa and its surroundings shouted of a wealth beyond human comprehension. On my first day there, after I had been shown to my quarters and had unpacked my few belongings, Luceiia took me in to the room she called her cubiculum, although she admitted it really belonged to her brother, and showed me a plan of the place, pointing out the various sections to me and explaining their several purposes, In plan, the house itself was an enormous "H" built on an east-west axis. The main family living quarters closed off the westernmost end of the "H" to form a quadrangle. All of the four buildings facing the enclosed courtyard of the quadrangle were domestic buildings, housing the villa's servants and domestic facilities such as baths, laundry, bakery, kitchens and the like. The main crossbar of the "H" was built with a portico that gave on to a second, outer courtyard at the east end. This was sheltered on three sides — by the "crossbar" itself, and by the north and south wings. These buildings housed stables, granaries, livestock barns, a spacious smithy with several forges, a carpentry shop with a barrelmaker's shop attached, a pottery and a tannery.

Luceiia took me on a tour of inspection. The entire villa was two-storeyed, and the walls surrounding the inner courtyard were of solid stone — huge granite pebbles, all smooth and rounded, bonded together by strong concrete. The extended wings flanking the outer courtyard were of timber framing and plaster mixed with broken flint.

The Britannicus family were justifiably proud of their villa. It had two completely separate sets of baths, one for the family itself and the other, a larger facility, for the servants and the tenants who farmed the surrounding land. Luceiia pointed out to me that all of the buildings flanking the inner courtyard were entered from the courtyard. This did not surprise me, and indeed seemed not worth mentioning, until she also pointed out that all the buildings flanking the outer yard opened into the fields surrounding the villa. Only four small doors permitted pedestrian access from these buildings to the outer courtyard. That did surprise me. She saw my surprise and smiled and told me to blame the anomaly of the outer courtyard on herself. When Caius had left for Africa, she had decided to beautify the place. She had transformed the courtyard, blocking up the entrances to all the buildings around it and opening new ones on the other side. Now the threshing floor, the entries to the cattle sheds, sheep pens and swine sties were hidden from the casual visitor. Having masked the front of the building, she had then proceeded with the construction of a great, sweeping arc of an entrance road leading to the main portico. She had seeded the entire yard with new grass and lavished attention on it, and when it had grown rich, she had planted formal gardens of flowers — roses, violets, pansies and poppies. The only remnants of the days before her changes were the twelve mighty trees that had always stood there: four oaks, three elms and five great copper beeches.

"Come, Publius, " she said after I had admired the scene. "You have some idea now of the layout of the place. Now we can look more closely. " That was when the humbling process began. I may have thought, as I listened to her talk about the plan of the villa, that I was getting some idea of what it was like, but I was wrong. The reality beggared description. The ground floor of the family quarters, for example, was palatial, and every room was differently floored. The floors in the main rooms were mosaic, in a multitude of colours, showing scenes of Greek myth and legend: I saw depictions of Europa and the Bull, Leda and the Swan, and Theseus and the Minotaur. The lesser rooms on that floor were merely tessellated, laid out in geometric shapes and patterns that dazzled the eyes with their brightness and colours.

The triclinium, the great dining room, held an open-sided arrangement of matched oaken dining tables that would seat upwards of sixty guests in comfort, and the walls were panelled in sheets of lustrous green and yellow marble so highly polished that I could see myself reflected in them. Against the walls, ranked side by side, were deep-shelved cabinets — some open-fronted, some with doors — that held the family's wealth of plate and dinnerware: platters and bowls and serving dishes and knives and utensils of gold and silver and copper and tin and bronze; exquisite Samian pottery, richly glazed and decorated; cups and beakers and vases of polished glass; and two enormous drinking cups of aurochs horn, polished and worn, glossy with age and ornamented with mounts of finely crafted gold.

The family slept on the upper floor, which was reached by a double flight of spacious, marble steps. Up there, I found real cause for astonishment. The floors were all of wood, for one thing, but such wood as I had never seen before. I asked Luceiia about them and she told me they were of pine, imported to Britain by her great-grandfather years before, and planed and then polished to a deep, reflective glaze by more than a hundred years of care and cleaning.

The most amazing thing of all, however, was that each of the ten sleeping-chambers on that upper floor had a window, and was therefore filled with light. The windows were small, and covered with wooden shutters fitted with louvered slats that could be closed completely, or angled to permit light and air to enter. I had heard of such things, and had even seen a few, but I had never seen them used so lavishly before. Normal Roman sleeping chambers were precisely that: tiny, lightless cubicles containing a bed, and perhaps a table. Because of the profusion of light, however, each of the ten chambers was decorated in a different colour, the walls and draped windows and the carpets on the floors blending their hues to give each room a character quite different from any other. My own room, which was separated from Caius's by a short, lateral corridor with a window at the eastern end and a chamber door on each side, was decorated in pale gold, while his was a spacious chamber of cool greens. Luceiia's own chamber was white and silver, with pale blue carpets and window drapes, and a bed covering of blue and silver silk the value of which must have been incalculable, made as it was in the distant lands far beyond Constantinople to the east.

The temperature throughout the entire house was uniform, thanks to the heated air carried to the various rooms by the hypocausts, hot-air ducts fed by the furnace that burned constantly beneath the bath house and was refuelled twice each day by the household servants. Luceiia led me from the upper floor to the family bath house by means of a stairway that descended to the inner courtyard from the passageway that ran along the outside of the upper floor.

Once again I was impressed beyond my expectations. The family bath house lacked none of the facilities one would expect to find in a major public bathing house. There was a spacious undressing room, divided by rod-hung curtains for privacy, and lined with niches for holding clothing. Directly outside this room were three pool rooms laid out in sequence —

cold, tepid, and hot — and beyond those, closed off by heavy, waterproofed curtains, was the sudarium, or steam room, which held a number of stone plinths and was looked after by an attendant skilled in massage and depilation.

We did not linger in the bath house, but I asked her about the glazed tiles that lined the walls and the pools, and she told me that they, too, had been imported from beyond the seas.

It was a relief to emerge again into the scented coolness of the inner courtyard where, even this late in the year, the air was redolent of green and growing things. This inner courtyard was split into four quarters by intersecting pathways. The two plots closest to the living quarters were ornamental, lined with privet hedge and planted with a profusion of red poppies, some of which still bloomed. The far plots were given completely to vegetables and fruits. I could tell from the pride with which she described the plants that this garden was Luceiia's special concern. She pointed out two plum trees, a cherry tree and two apple trees, all pruned severely and healthy-looking.

At the intersection of the two pathways, she turned right and led me to the kitchens and the bakery, pointing out that most of the household servants lived above these places. Both facilities were enormous, spotlessly clean and well enough equipped to serve two hundred people on the shortest notice.

At the far end of this side of the courtyard, furthest from the furnaces that heated the house, Caius had placed the room in which he kept his wines. I felt my eyes grow large as Luceiia began to show me the treasures this room contained. It was filled from floor to ceiling with shelves, separated by walkways just wide enough to permit the installation and removal of the very largest of the amphorae, barrels, casks and jars of all shapes and sizes that lined the shelves. Each separate container was clearly labelled and numbered, and their contents ranged from the thick, rich, sweetened wines of Greece to the dark, red, tangy wine made from the grapes grown on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. There were amphorae of the succulent wine of Aminea and a wide selection of the various wines of Gaul, including the light, sweet wine of the south that is neither red nor white but a mixture of both.

There was one whole section of shelves that held different wines, all in small jugs that a man could hoist easily to his mouth on a bent elbow, and one of these Luceiia broke open and passed to me. It was ambrosia! Cool and nectar-sweet, imported, she told me, from the lands of the Germanic tribes I had fought against myself, years before. Had I known they could produce wines as superb as this, I would have stayed there longer, non-combatant.

We crossed the courtyard again to the northern wall, me still carrying my open jug, and she showed me the laundries and the dry storage rooms that occupied that wing, as well as the cool room, again furthest from the furnaces. This was the only other room in the whole building that, like the wine room, had no hypocausts. It was separated from the rooms on either side of it by thick stone walls, plastered on the inside with thickly strawed mud and painted white. The floor, I noticed, was of concrete and was channelled for drainage. During the summer months, this room was packed with ice and salt and straw to keep it cool, and carcasses of oxen, sheep, pigs, deer and other game hung on iron hooks suspended from beams in the ceiling. There were no cobwebs in the corners, and no speck of dirt on the walls or on the floor.

By the time we had completed our tour of the entire villa, the day was almost gone, and I was speechless. We ended our tour in a large and spacious smithy, having been over every square foot of the Villa Britannicus, and I was looking around me at the empty forges and braziers and at the tools that hung ranged in neat rows everywhere I looked.

"Well?" Luceiia asked. It was the first word either of us had spoken in a long time. "What do you think?"

I scuffed my foot on the concrete floor. No grit. No ashes. I looked again at the brazier closest to me, and at the tongs and hammers that flanked it.

"Everything looks new. "

Luceiia's eyebrow went up and she laughed. "Everything in here is new, Publius. This is your personal place, Publius Varrus's smithy, planned by Caius and furnished and equipped by both of us in what seemed the vain hope that you might someday come here. We both agreed that we would hate you to be bored or purposeless under our roof. " I had already guessed as much. I turned towards her, positioning myself so that I could see her face clearly in the late-afternoon light.

"You really expected me to come? Why?"

She gave me the full benefit of her dazzling, dizzying smile. "Why not?

You are the closest friend my brother has. And he has hoped for a long time, ever since you left the army, that you would come to the west to share his dream with him some day. We both did, even though I did not know you. We hoped at least that if you did come, even to visit, this smithy would encourage you either to stay or to return often. " She held up her hand as I made to speak and I waited for her to finish what she had to say. Her expression became serious. "Publius, " she said, "I know you have made a life for yourself and built an enterprise in Camulodunum. "

"Colchester. " I grinned.

She returned my grin. "If you must. Colchester. But Caius will be home soon and he will no longer be a soldier. His whole life will be different, and he has been planning it for years. It would make him very happy if he were to find you waiting here to greet him. God knows there's room enough here for all of us, but Caius has a special place for you in his plans, which you already know something of. Before too many days have passed, you will know more of them. "

I perched myself, smiling, on the edge of the brazier nearest me; she saw the look in my eyes and hurried on.

"In any event, whether you choose to stay or no, you will be going up into the hills to look for skystones. Am I not correct?" I nodded. "Well, then, " she continued, with an eagerness in her voice that surprised and touched me, "if you find any such stones, you will probably want to start smelting them immediately. And now you can. Here. " She looked around her, and suddenly she resembled a very young girl far more than a beautiful, ripe woman. "You may find that not everything you need is here. If we've overlooked anything important, we can acquire it easily in Aquae Sulis. "

I sighed and smiled again, shaking my head, and then moved to where a pile of rust-covered ingots had been stacked in a corner. Beside the stack was a large, lidded bin. I raised the lid and looked inside. The bin was full of charcoal. I tested a piece between my finger and thumb. It was high-quality charcoal. I looked at her again.

"Where did you and Caius find all this?"

She looked perplexed. "I had the smith from Quintus Varo's villa buy everything he could think of that you might need. Why? Has he done badly?"

I laughed in disbelief. "No, Luceiia, he has done superlatively well. This place is better designed and better equipped than my own smithy at home. I am just amazed, that's all. Amazed and grateful. This is a gesture worthy of an emperor — and an empress. "

"No, Publius. " Her smile and her head shake were deprecatory. "But worthy of a friend, I hope. I am glad you like it. "

"Like it? I love it. "

I bent and picked up a heavy iron ingot. "And if there is anything lacking, which I doubt, I have everything here that I would need to make it myself."

I dropped the ingot with a loud clank.

"Good," she said. "Excellent. Now we should return to the house. We have guests to prepare for. "

"Guests? Who's coming?"

"Friends and neighbours, all anxious to meet the redoubtable Varrus. " She took my arm and led me out into the daylight again, into the lane that ran along the outer walls at the back of the villa. Away to our right, to the north-east, a line of hills loomed in the evening sky, their flanks shadowed by gathering dusk, their upper slopes still catching the rays of the sinking sun. I nodded towards them.

"Are those your dragon hills, the Mendips?"

"Aye. That's where your skystones are. "

I stared at their darkening shapes, feeling excitement stirring in my gut, and my feet stopped moving of their own accord.

"I know you have said so, but do you really know someone who can take me there, to the exact place?"

Her hand still lay on my arm, which I held bent to support it, and now she squeezed the muscle of my forearm comfortingly, although the pressure almost stopped my heartbeat.

"It is all arranged. Meric, one of the local Druids, knows where to take you and what to show you. You will meet him tonight. "

"You invite Druids to dinner?"

She laughed. "Of course! They are people, just like us. They even eat the same food, so it is quite simple to entertain them, except that, most of the time, they entertain me. You will enjoy the Druids, Publius Varrus, I promise you. "

We started to walk along the lane, and the liquid song of a thrush suddenly reminded me of the confrontation I had had on the road with Nesca's assassins. Luceiia must have been watching me closely, for she noticed my abrupt change of mood and asked me what was wrong.

"Nothing, " I answered. "The bird's song reminded me of some trouble I had on the road, that's all. It's nothing for you to be concerned about. "

"It is if it concerns you. " Her voice was low and serious, and I turned to be able to see the expression on her face. And seeing it I decided, on an impulse, to confide in her.

"Well, " I admitted, "I will confess to a slight concern. It has to do with my reason for coming here. "

She frowned. "That sounds ominous. Tell me truly — what was your reason for coming? You have not mentioned one. Not that it would make any difference, " she hurried on. "I am only glad you came, but I sense a trouble in you now that has not been there since we met. " I thought for a few seconds, then I asked her, "Do you know a man called Quinctilius Nesca?"

She glanced towards me, taking her eyes from the road ahead of her. When she answered me her tone was quiet and non-committal.

"Yes, but not well. I have met him once or twice. Why do you ask?"

"What kind of a man is he?"

She threw back her head, hard enough to toss her long, dark hair, and this time her tone was definitive. "He is completely odious. Fat and repulsive and disgusting. A banker. A money-lender. But that's not what you mean, is it?" She pursed her lips delicately, and we walked on in silence for a few paces before she said, "Quinctilius Nesca is not a man whose company Caius would tolerate for long, nor would he ever seek him out. Where do you know him from?"

"I don't. " I took a deep breath, wondering as I did so that I should be so open with this woman who, twenty-four hours ago, had been an unmet stranger. Then I began at the beginning and told her the whole story of Caesarius Claudius Seneca and our confrontation, together with its aftermath on the road from Colchester. She listened without interruption, and by the time I had finished we were back at the main entrance to the family quarters. She led me directly in to her cubiculum and nodded me to a seat, where I waited while she poured us both a cup of wine. I drank in silence while she mulled over what I had told her. Finally she spoke.

"All of this has happened since Caius left the country?"

"Yes. All within the past few months. "

"And you only ever saw this Seneca that one time?"

"That particular specimen of Seneca, yes. Once was enough. "

"Yes. I agree. But he shares his peculiar gifts for winning popularity with all his breed. " A pause. "How long ago, exactly?"

"Two months ago... three at the most. "

"And they are still looking for you?" She shook her head. "A pity about your limp. "

"Aye. And my grey hair. "

Another short pause, then, "You are still angry at Seneca, aren't you?" I took a sip of my wine. "Yes, I am. "

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"I can answer that, " she said. I was amazed at how she reminded me of her brother. He would have said exactly the same things to me, in the same tone of voice. "You won the fight. He was the loser. You did not suffer at his hands. Only at his tongue, and that you should have forgotten by this time. At least, you should have put it out of the forefront of your mind. "

"Luceiia, " I said, knowing she was correct, "you may be right. " I scratched at a sudden itch under my arm. "I probably should have. I just don't seem to be capable of forgiving or forgetting either the man or the occasion. "

Her voice was insistent. "I ask you again. Why?"

"I don't know why, Luceiia!" I heard a note of irritation coming into my own voice. "Pardon me, but that is the way he affects me. I have been asking questions about him. The man is notorious — infamous. And it seems the more I hear about him, the more I detest him. He offends everything I hold in esteem. I sometimes think... "

"Go on. Finish it. " Again her brother's tones. "You sometimes think what?"

I shook my head. "I don't know, it suddenly sounded foolish even to me. I was going to say that I sometimes think he's the personification of everything that is rotten in the Empire, but that would be giving him too much importance. He's simply an evil little man with too much power and too much money. "

Luceiia got up and crossed to the side table on which the wines rested. She picked up the jug again and replenished my cup.

"The Seneca family is immensely wealthy, Publius, and wealth is power. We Britannici have learned that about the Senecas to our cost over several generations. But an evil little man? You told me he was a great, hulking brute of a fellow!"

"He is. He's big and strong, well muscled and in good shape. That's not what I meant by 'little. ' I meant it more in the sense of mean and petty. " She sat down again. "Never make that mistake, Publius. This man is not petty. No Seneca is petty. Mean, malicious, malevolent and cruel, yes, but not petty. And your thought was far from foolish. He and his whole clan are the personification of all that is sick in Rome. It has been bred into him. Unfortunately, as a family, they are far from unique. I have heard Caius say many times it is those very attributes you describe that have brought down our country and the Empire. All the corruption, all the vices, all the faults and all the weaknesses of Rome are centred in its so-called nobility, and the Seneca family is typical of its worst excesses. You have made a bad enemy there, I am afraid. You say he returned to Constantinople?" I nodded. "Good, " she said, emphatically. "Let us all hope he stays well away from Britain in the future. In any event, you are not likely to come face to face with Quinctilius Nesca around here. " As she finished speaking, the major-domo came into the room and announced that we had only half an hour to be prepared to welcome our guests. Luceiia excused herself and left immediately, leaving me to make my way back to my quarters.

I walked slowly, thinking about the amazing depths I had discovered in this remarkable woman in so short a space of time, and as I walked I caught sight of my own reflection in the marble walls of the room I was passing through. I stopped and looked at myself, trying to raise my right eyebrow the way she and her brother raised theirs.

"That, my friend. " I said to my reflection, "is the woman you are going to have to learn to live without for the rest of your life. Forever. Unless you can find some miraculous way to win her. " But guilt squirmed in my belly with my lust and in my heart with my swelling love, and I refused to allow myself to contemplate what Caius's reaction would be if he were ever to discover my presumptuousness in daring to dream about his baby sister. Dinner that night was both a delight and a trial. I was "on parade" —

under inspection as surely and as thoroughly as I had ever been under Caius's command in the army. I fought my natural aversion to meeting strangers and tried with all my heart to be friendly and affable. To my surprise, I seemed to be successful, and I found myself enjoying the attention being lavished on me and responding to it in a way that I had never been capable of before.

Of course, it goes without saying that I had Luceiia to thank for my new-found ease. She glowed that night with enthusiasm for everything I had ever done, it seemed. She led the dinner conversation with an infallible knack for making me and my opinions the centre of the evening and the standard against which all other opinions and experiences must be judged. And all through the long, formal meal I was aware of her presence, her shimmering beauty there at the opposite end of the table. There were sixteen people seated there, and I have long since forgotten who they were, although I came to know all of them well in the years that followed. Only three people stand out in my memory, because they all stayed at the villa that night: Meric the Druid, who was far less outlandish and barbaric than I would have guessed; Domitius Titens, a local landowner and former tribune with whom I later became fast friends, and Cylla, his beautiful and waspish wife, who sought then and forever after until her death to take me to her bed.

That she failed to do so is no great source of pride, for it was not my steadfastness that kept me from her willing body — only circumstance at first, and loyalty later.

She began her assault on me at first meeting when, in that way that women have, she let me know in no uncertain terms, yet only with her eyes, that she would rut with me at my whim. Her husband was oblivious. Not so Luceiia, however, and I was later witness to a series of smiling, verbal thrusts that would have disembowelled a mere man. I missed the start of this exchange of savage wit and feminine venom and could only assume later, in the light of things Luceiia said, that Cylla had made a lewd comment about the convenience of the arrangement Luceiia and I shared, alone together in the villa. Luceiia made little of the comment at first, dismissing it as unworthy of response. Cylla, however, was persistent, going on about it with envious tenacity until Luceiia decided she had had enough, and told her so. It was at that point that I approached them, unwarily, and heard their exchange of pleasantries before they noticed me. I pretended to have heard nothing, and they abandoned their dispute when, shortly afterwards, we were called to dine.

By the end of dinner, I was again enmeshed in Luceiia's beauty and had lost all awareness of Cylla's charms. I thought no more about her until she came to my bed in the small hours, awakening me and throwing me into a panic.

I had been dreaming of Luceiia, feeling her there beside me in the bed, warm and strong and silken, and then suddenly I was no longer dreaming. The breast I was fondling was warm and real, and the body pressed against my swollen penis was alive and urgent. I awoke very quickly, and must have called Luceiia by name, for a laughing, whispering voice said, close to my ear, "No, not Luceiia. Luceiia isn't here. " And as I struggled to raise myself on one elbow, blustering in sleepy panic, I heard Luceiia's voice say, "Ah, but she is, my dear, and you, I think, are in the wrong bed. "

By the time I had sat up and shaken myself completely awake, Cylla was gone, and Luceiia spoke from the doorway of my room.

"Go back to sleep, Publius, and sleep well. "

I saw her shape, outlined in the moonlight as she turned to leave.

"Wait! Wait, Luceiia!" She turned back to me as I rubbed the last of the sleep out of my eyes. "What's happening?" I asked her, though I knew, finally. "What was that all about?"

Her voice was low-pitched. "I sent Cylla away. She is a foolish woman and a dangerous one. Her husband is not as stupid as she thinks he is. Had he awakened and found her gone, he would have come right here. There are only two beds she could visit, apart from his, and Meric is too old and too holy to appeal to her. "

"Uh, " I grunted, at a loss for words. Then I found my tongue. "Thank you for that. I was asleep and thought it was a dream. "

"I know." I could have sworn I heard a smile in her voice. "I heard you."

"But... how did you come to be here? What hour of night is it?"

"It is late, Publius, but I have known Cylla all my life. I knew she would come to you. So I waited for her. Would you rather I had not?"

"No! No. I thank you for your thoughtfullnes. You may have saved my life. You were right. That was both foolish and dangerous. And unsought. "

"Then your broken dream was not of Cylla?" Again there was that smiling sound in her tone.

"I cannot remember, " I lied. "No, no, I was not dreaming of Cylla. "

"Good. Then go to sleep again. She will not be back tonight, and we have to be afoot early tomorrow. Meric is not a patient guide. Good night, Publius. "

She closed the door gently as she left, and I had a hard time regaining my lost slumber.