A Flame in Byzantium

you will be able to complete the commission I have given you.' As she watched him go, she wondered if she had made a mistake in freeing him. Kosmos was not used to living on his own, and in these troubled times, she feared he would become prey to the first scoundrel who came across him.

She stopped these ponderings as she reached the door of her private suite of rooms. Always when she stepped through the door, she felt herself on the brink of the past. It pleased her to indulge in a sense of nostalgia; this afternoon she had to admit that there was a pang of something more. She stared at the frescoes on the wall, at the furniture and the ornaments she had gathered together here, and knew that as many of them as she took with her to Constantinople, it would not be the same, and that she would not find them as appropriate, as comforting as they were here, where they belonged. They were Roman; so was she. Here she was on her native earth and there she would be a stranger. Nothing would alter that, and she knew she would have to reconcile herself to it.

There was a gentle rap on the door on the far side of the room and this brought Olivia out of her reverie. 'Yes?'

'It is Fisera, mistress,' said the slave.

'Enter, Fisera,' she said, speaking more briskly and moving with renewed vitality. This was not the time to be distracted, she reminded herself as she admitted the slave. There was too much to do.

Fisera had brought two long pallia with her, one of a rich deep-rose color embroidered all over with golden medallions, the other a strange shade that was almost not any color—a shadow tone between gray and tan and green—ornamented with dark brown silken embroidery and with accents picked out in seed pearls. She stopped, staring at Olivia. 'Oh, mistress,' she said in a faltering way.

'Tomorrow I am no longer your mistress, Fisera, and you do not need to call me your mistress any longer.' She gave her a heartening smile. 'Come, Fisera, don't be troubled. There is no reason for me to doubt your devotion, whether you wear a collar or not.'

'You have been most kind to me, mistress,' said Fisera with genuine feeling.

An expression that was not quite a frown passed fleetingly over Olivia's face. 'Have I? I hope so. It was my intention, but that often counts for little.'

Alarmed by this sudden change in Olivia's manner, Fisera reached out and touched her arm. 'Have I offended you, mistress?'

'No,' said Olivia, her demeanor changing again. 'No, of course not. I was remembering the past. I've been doing a lot of that recently. I must be… getting old.'

'You are young forever, mistress,' Fisera said, more in wariness than flattery.

'I have that sort of face,' said Olivia.

'Perhaps more than that,' murmured the slave-woman. 'I have been in your household for more than eight years and I have not noticed a change in you. There are those, not close to you, who have hinted that you must practice the magical arts of the old days, when sorcery was used by the witch Messalina.' She said this last with her eyes averted.

'Messalina was hardly a witch: she had the misfortune to be married to that pervert Claudius, and that—' She heard the sound of her voice and broke off. 'I cannot believe that Messalina used any arts but her own womanliness to lure her husband.'

'They say that her husband wasn't all she lured,' the slave said, her face more animated. 'She was an infamous adulteress.'

'And whose idea was that, do you think?' Olivia asked, and then, before Fisera could answer, she went on. 'Well, that was hundreds of years ago, wasn't it? And I have guests who require entertainment this evening. You brought me the pallia, I see. Perhaps I ought to choose one so you may pack the other.'

'It depends on what paenula you have selected.' Fisera held up the rose-and-gold pallium. 'This brings out color.'

'So it does,' agreed Olivia. 'And still, do I want color? Do I want to shout or whisper?' She fingered the two pallia. 'Which is best?'

'You have the gold pectoral, and you can wear it with this. It would make a very impressive—'

'You're probably right,' said Olivia, reaching for the other pallium. 'But tonight, ah, tonight I believe that I will harken back to the old times. This and the paenula of pale silk, you know the one. I'll wear them over the samite dalmatica, the one with the silver threads. And there's one other thing. Instead of a tablion, get me that pectoral in silver, the disk with the raised wings.'

'If you like,' said Fisera, clearly disapproving.

'There's just tonight, Fisera, and then you will be free to do or say whatever you wish to me, and you will have money enough to leave here and to establish yourself wherever you wish. You have been a good and faithful servant to me. For that, your freedom is a small enough token.'

The sincerity in Olivia's voice clearly startled Fisera, and she hesitated before saying anything more. 'Why the pectoral?'

'Because it reminds me of a very old friend, who gave it to me many, many years ago.' Olivia's smile did not quite succeed, but she went on. 'He told me a few home truths that I must remember while I live in Constantinople. What a hideous thought.'

'If you go, none of us will be able to live. We will be taken by soldiers or monks and we will be more slaves then than ever we have been for you.' This outburst was more alarming to Fisera than to Olivia, who had been expecting something of the sort since the day before yesterday.

'I have already sent copies of your writs of manumission to the monks for their records, and I will see that every one of you has their own writ to keep.' When she had been young, almost half her household slaves could read. In the intervening centuries fewer and fewer slaves had acquired the skill until now less than a dozen of her staff were literate. 'As long as you and the monks have the documents, there is safety for you. But you must keep the writ with you, so that you can prove that you are truly freed. You will have money and you will have supplies. Unless you choose badly, you will have no reason to regret being freed.'

'Rudis says that we are being freed so that the invaders will spend time gathering us up so that you can escape and that you have no intention of letting us remain free once the threat of Totila is over.' Fisera had started to cry in the sudden and violent way that made Olivia think of a summer thunderstorm.

'Why would I free you if I intended that? Why would I bother? I would need only to tell you where you must go and you would have to comply with my wishes. If Rudis is correct, then I have done this most stupidly.' She put one hand on her hip. 'If you want a military escort, I suppose I could convince the General to provide you one. And speaking of the General,' she said in a more hasty tone, 'I suppose I ought to prepare to greet him. Get me the dalmatica and the paenula and the pallium and that silver pectoral, and then help me do something with my hair. And for the love of… the Saints, don't fret. You will be safe when you leave.'

Fisera sniffed deeply as she began to follow Olivia's orders. Her fears had been assuaged but they had not vanished.

Some little time later, Olivia emerged from her room to seek out her guests. She was magnificent to see, though most would have been hard-pressed to say why, for she was dressed almost as mutedly as a religious. Somehow, in the colors and chaste silver ornaments, she contrived a richness that was far more impressive than the gaudy colors worn by the retinue of General Belisarius, who was arrayed in bright red and orange with bright medallions on his bracchae and his high leather boots.

'We are more grateful to you, great lady, than we can express,' said the General as he made a reverence to his hostess. 'Your reception of us has been princely.'

'Hardly,' she said with candor, recalling the splendor of the courts of Nero and Otho and Vespasianus, half a millennium ago. 'You are most welcome here, General, as are your men.' She looked around the room, her eyes lingering briefly on Drosos whose hair was still wet from the baths and who wore turquoise silk and a pallium of silver and lavender.

Belisarius indicated his fourteen companions. 'There are a number of us, as you see, more than we had thought there would be at first, and you are more than generous to provide for us on such short notice. From what we have seen of Roma inside the walls, you are more fortunate than most.'

'And more circumspect,' said Olivia. 'Only a fool would think that Totila would wait for us to prepare for him before he attacked.' She was very much a part of her reception room, which was a pale, faded blue with false fluted columns painted silver. Yet instead of vanishing into the walls, she seemed to make all the room an extension of