… he struggled for a word that wouldn't make him as cruel as his Emperor, but gave up. He had no feelings for her beyond sympathy. She hadn't said a single word to him. He realized he didn't even know her name.
'Livia,' she said, as if she had read his thoughts. Her voice was soft and she had a lilting accent he found difficult to place.
'I am Rufus, keeper of the Emperor's elephant.'
'So that is the smell? I feared someone had spilled a pot of night soil.'
She turned to face the wall and curled up tighter, wrapping her arms protectively around herself. For a moment he was overwhelmed by a mixture of pity and concern and rose with the intention of joining her on the cot and giving her what comfort he could. But there was something terribly forbidding about that turned back and he stopped halfway. Instead he opened the door that linked the room to the barn, and spent his wedding night alone amongst the sweet-smelling soft hay and relentlessly crawling insects beside Bersheba.
In the morning he fed and watered the elephant and exercised her in the park. When he returned to the barn he saw the tiny figure of Livia watching from the doorway and led Bersheba towards her.
'No,' she said, backing away with a cry of fear.
'You are safe with Bersheba,' Rufus assured her. 'She may be big, but she's harmless. She won't hurt you.'
'What would you know of hurt?' she snapped and retreated inside the house, slamming the door behind her and leaving him wondering at the contrariness of women.
They spent that day, and the following one, in a sort of silent battle that could have no victor. He sensed there were things she wanted to say which pride or stubbornness stopped her from saying. This was his home, familiar and comforting in its humble way. For her it was an alien world filled with strangeness and potential dangers, not least the massive beast who shared their living space. But silence, like promises, only exists to be broken. It is impossible for two people forced to live together in a confined space not to communicate, at least by gesture, and gesture was eventually followed by words.
On the third day, they were taking their evening meal together when she began to talk about herself, and Rufus discovered in quick succession that she had been born in the province of Achaea, was probably about twenty years old, had lived the life of a nomad, and was now principal acrobat in a troop of dwarf entertainers.
He continued to sleep in the barn, where at first he dreamed dreams of Aemilia. But there came a point in his nocturnal reflections when Aemilia's heavy-bodied softness was replaced by a smaller, more delicate frame. He sensed a change in Livia, too, and on the night when she reached out to touch him as he turned to go to his straw mattress he was almost expecting it.
It was Livia who took the initiative. She held his hand and led him to the bed, where she gently pushed him backwards. Then, never meeting his eyes, she shrugged off her dress and stood before him.
He was entranced. He had never seen anything so perfect. Her beauty took his breath away — and terrified him. The moment Caligula understood what he had given two mismatched outcasts, he would separate them.
Livia, meeting his gaze for the first time, read his thoughts in a glance. 'Come,' she said. 'We must make good use of what time we have.'
They lay together, cheek against cheek, her body tiny and vulnerable, but soft and tantalizing, against his. He reached for her, drawing her still closer, and bent his head to kiss her. She put her hand to his lips.
'First there are things you must know,' she whispered. 'I have sold my body. Men have sold me. Despite my size, perhaps because of it, men have always desired me. I have been used in ways that disgust me and would sicken you. If we are to be together, and stay together, you must first know this.'
He could feel the dampness where her cheek met his, and a tear rolled from the corner of his eye to mingle with hers. And as the grey of the early dawn began to show through the thin cracks in the wall, it was her head that came to his and there was no barrier to the kiss.
At first, he treated her like a fragile doll, afraid his size and strength would cause her pain. But she soon made him aware that, in her own way, she was as strong as he, and that she found his size, in every sense, a source of great pleasure. She taught him things, about her body and his, he would never have discovered for himself in a lifetime.
Rufus would remember the weeks that followed as the eternal summer of his life. Each day brought a new reason to be thankful, each night a new source of wonder. Livia was full of contradictions. He discovered that, although she wanted to be loved, she could not bear to be smothered. If he tried to help her with the household tasks she would snap at him with her teeth bared like an angry terrier. Yet minutes later another Livia would be revealed, the Livia who craved affection and could combine passion and compassion in a way that left him weak and bewildered.
She was determined to prove herself as a wife as well as a lover. She attacked the squalor he had been happy to live with, brushing like a tiny whirlwind, and did what she could with their meagre resources to turn the room behind the barn into a home. Only one thing came between them.
'Why must we live with that stinking animal?' she asked one evening as they lay together. 'You have the Emperor's favour. Surely you can ask for another position.'
'But Bersheba is my charge. She — '
Livia put a hand to his lips and rolled astride him, laughing. 'Do you love the elephant more than you love me?'
Rufus hesitated only for an instant, but an instant was enough.
'You do love the elephant more than you love me!'
Nothing he said would change that opinion. His only option was to prove her wrong, and it was an exhausted Rufus who staggered from their pallet the next morning. At least Bersheba was less complicated.
But an elephant used to regular habits, who has found herself abandoned, is apt to be moody.
Bersheba ignored Rufus when he greeted her. Perhaps she was hungry; he should have fed her an hour ago. Turning his back on her, he began to pitch sheaves of hay into her feeding area. His thoughts returned to the hours before and the velvety softness of Livia's flesh and the way her small teeth had bitten into his lip as they both reached the height of their passion at just the right mo -
Why was he lying on his back on the packed earth floor with the crossbeams of the barn spinning sickeningly above him?
As the spinning slowed, he tried to stand, but only contrived to struggle as far as one knee before being overcome by nausea and sitting back with his head in his hands.
The next time his whirling head allowed him to look up, Bersheba stood over him, ominously close, her trunk swinging rhythmically. He thought she might be going to hit him again, for he realized now that what had felt like the roof falling in on him was a blow from that fivefoot length of solid muscle. But the swinging stopped and instead she gently curled it round his arm and pulled him to his feet.
Rufus shook his head ruefully and went to where the fruit was stored. 'I apologise, mighty Bersheba.' He placed a bruised apple in the bowl formed by the end of her trunk. 'It is going to be more difficult than I had realized to look after my two ladies in the manner they deserve. But I have learned my lesson.'
Bersheba snorted her acceptance and went back to her hay. Rufus opened the big double doors to allow the sunlight of a glorious morning to stream inside, cutting through the thin clouds of dust rising from the elephant's straw floor. His heart filled with the simple joy of living as he stepped out into the clean air of the park. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs until they could take no more.
'Is the honeymoon over so soon?'
XXV
Lucius, the officer who had delivered Rufus to Drusilla's bedroom, sat on the damp grass a dozen paces up the slope towards the palace. He seemed in no hurry to rise, but lay back, staring at the sky with a contented look. Rufus walked over to him, stood for a while, until he realized how foolish he must appear and took his place on the ground beside the young soldier.
'Everything is so clean and pure on mornings like this, don't you think? Whatever happened yesterday is gone for ever and the day ahead holds nothing but promise. It reminds me of the hour before a battle when one sees
