A flash of blue against the dusty green of the close-ranked trees drew his attention and he smiled. He doubted whether his father had ever worn anything so vivid even in the days when he was close to Emperor Tiberius. Lucius must have brought someone to help him with his inspection. In a way, it was a surprise to find him out here at all. His father had never been a man of the soil. Running the family estate was an obligation, but the task of working it could safely be left to his freedmen and his slaves. Yet here he was, rising at cockcrow and getting his hands dirty.
As he approached, the blue turned out to be turquoise and belonged to a skirt whose owner was part hidden behind a tree. Valerius saw no sign of his father, but he could make out the low drone of a man’s voice. The twisted olive trunks and low branches disguised his approach until he was a few paces away. He saw the girl in the instant she saw him. Long black hair, a pair of frightened brown eyes and a sharp gasp as her hand flew to her mouth. She sat at the base of a tree with her legs half tucked beneath her and the skirt draped decorously around. His eyes were drawn to the high breasts that quivered beneath her shift and he smiled to show she had nothing to fear. He turned to face his father.
Lucius stood directly across from the girl. Valerius had intended to surprise the old man, so a little shock might have been expected, but not the anguish that was written plain across his face, nor the ferocity of a man ready to kill to protect whatever terrible secret he’d been discovered in. A pruning knife lay at the old man’s feet and Valerius realized he was fortunate it hadn’t been in his father’s hand.
‘Father?’ He grinned uncertainly. ‘I brought you food.’
After a moment’s hesitation the old man’s face slowly crumpled and the fire vanished from his eyes. Lucius stumbled forward to take Valerius in his arms, then stepped back to stare in a kind of wonder at the wooden hand.
‘I am responsible for that. I sent you there.’ Valerius shook his head, but Lucius smiled sadly. ‘No, do not deny it, we both know it is true. But I swear here and now that I will repay this debt before the end.’
The girl had taken herself out of earshot and now sat a few yards away, her head bowed and her face concealed behind the dark veil of her hair. She was younger than Valerius had thought, probably no more than seventeen.
‘Ruth,’ his father called. ‘You should go back and help in the kitchen.’
She rose with a dancer’s grace, and, still without looking at Valerius, walked off down the slope.
Lucius’s eyes followed her swaying back and his face radiated a kind of awkward, bemused contentment. With a shock Valerius understood the reason for his father’s reaction. Surely it wasn’t possible? He was ancient: in his sixties. The girl could be his daughter. His granddaughter. And she was a slave. Lucius, the defender of all things moral, who would have damned another man for even thinking such a thing? Yet what else could explain his earlier defensiveness? And he had changed. Already Valerius had seen that Lucius was more at ease with himself than he had ever been.
‘She is very pretty,’ he said.
‘She is just a slave,’ Lucius replied in a tone that invited no further conversation.
Valerius leaned back against a tree. If his father wanted to believe no one knew, he was happy to go along with it. But it was just as well he’d found out. Ruth was pretty. And desirable in a wholesome, vulnerable way. If he hadn’t been aware of his father’s feelings he might have invited her into his bed. He pushed the thought aside and returned to the reason for his visit. ‘You should see Olivia.’
Lucius frowned. In the past he would have rejected the suggestion outright. Now, Valerius was heartened to see, he was prepared to consider it. But the old man would not give in easily.
‘She shamed me,’ he grumbled. ‘She should have accepted my choice of husband. A woman’s duty is to obey her father.’
‘You made the wrong choice.’ Valerius’s words had no force behind them; this was a subject they had argued to the bones.
‘Perhaps, but still…’
‘You are always welcome. She has been asking for you.’
‘I will think on it.’
Valerius turned the subject back to the estate and they walked together through the olive trees, commenting on this one or that. Did it need pruning? Was it too old to provide the best quality oil? Lucius complained about dwindling profits, but hinted that a solution was in hand. Twice on the way back to the villa Valerius had the feeling that his father had something important to say to him. Twice the moment passed.
‘Will you stay the night?’ the old man asked. ‘Granta and Cronus would enjoy your company — as I would.’
‘I cannot. I have an appointment… with Seneca.’
A shadow fell over Lucius’s eyes. ‘Be very careful, Valerius.’
XI
The villa of Lucius Annaeus Seneca filled the mouth of the valley: a great stucco palace bordering three sides of a landscaped garden that would comfortably have held the tents and horse lines of a legion. And the main part of the complex, the building that faced Valerius as he approached, was as deep as it was wide, extending back to the hills two hundred paces beyond. In the foreground peacocks and tiny antelopes the size of terriers grazed the irrigated lawns and nipped the heads from flowers beginning to wilt in the heat.
His host waited for him in the shade of the colonnaded portico. Seneca looked relaxed, overweight and successful, his fingers weighed down by gold rings and his puffy, heavily jowled face saved from being ugly by a strong nose and shining grey eyes that radiated benevolent intelligence. The only sign of anxiety was in the hand he ran across the mottled skin of his bald head as he beamed a welcome.
‘Valerius, my boy, it has been much too long. Let me see you now. By the gods, you have become a man, and what a man. Those shoulders, that chest. You exercise every day? Of course you do. And the hand?’ Valerius lifted the walnut fist so Seneca could see it clearly. ‘A masterpiece. You have been through the fire, and it is the fire that makes us who we are.’ Valerius had witnessed a law court hushed by the sound of Seneca’s voice addressing a crowd from the rostra sixty paces away, but in conversation the philosopher was softly spoken, almost mellow in tone.
‘I’m glad to see you well, master Seneca.’
Seneca laughed, but for the first time Valerius detected a hint of bitterness. ‘I am no longer your master, Valerius. I am no man’s master, perhaps not even my own.’ He brightened again. ‘You have been to visit your father? Of course. A son’s first duty is to his family and you were always a dutiful son.’
Valerius felt as if he was swimming against a tidal wave of flattery and fought back with a little of his own. ‘You have a fine house, sir, and a wonderful estate.’
‘And I am forgetting my manners. Please come inside.’ Seneca led him through a large vestibule and across a broad inner courtyard, striding out like a man ten years younger and talking as he went. ‘ They say I am too rich.’ He didn’t identify who they were, but Valerius knew Torquatus would be among them. ‘ They say I could not afford this if I had not been stealing from the Emperor’s purse. What do they know of Lucius Annaeus Seneca? For the first time in Rome’s history is a man to be condemned for being successful? I have lived each minute of my life in the pursuit of profit or contentment, and sometimes the two are not exclusive, though both, I grant you, can be difficult to come by.’
They reached a room with large windows and walls painted in imitation of the gardens outside. Seneca lay on one couch and Valerius sat opposite him. The philosopher studied him seriously.
‘There is a sickness in the air, a political sickness that could very well be fatal. I do not intend you to catch it, Valerius, though you may feel I have exposed you to its vapours by bringing you here. In this room we may speak freely; the acoustics are poor and, as you see, the nearest doorway far enough away to keep the slaves honest. You have been clever, as I intended you to be. A young man visits his father’s estate and makes a neighbourly call upon his former tutor. Is it not natural? Your presence will be reported, certainly — they have six spies in my household that I know of and who knows how many that I do not — but I doubt it will arouse suspicions, and if it does, I believe you are agile enough to allay them.’
