have my lovers cared more for me than themselves. Drosos truly enjoyed
'And the rest of it?' asked Niklos, with a warning gesture to her to keep her voice low.
'Ah, yes, the rest of it. For now there is no risk from the rest of it,' she reminded him. 'In time, there might be, but who is to say if there will be time? Drosos is still in Roma and I am here—in Constantinople.' She was more adept than he at indirect speaking. 'Certainly something will have to be arranged in the interim, but I am not as concerned about that as you are. It is always possible to find something that will do for a while, even here.'
'You, cynical?' Niklos teased her with affection.
'I, practical. I, resigned, my friend, not cynical.' She pulled the long folds of her bronze-colored paenula more closely around her. 'I don't care if they say this city is hot; I am chilled. There is a darkness here, a coldness that has nothing to do with the sun.'
'Olivia, mistress, be careful who hears you complain. This place is different from Roma in many, many ways,' said Niklos, once again looking toward the shadowed room that joined the vestibule.
'Romans, luckily, are expected to be impulsive and capricious. Didn't that dreadful Andros Trachi tell me so at length?' She was moving restlessly once more. 'Everyone knows that we can accept no city but Roma as home, and that for us she is the center of the earth.'
Niklos followed her as she rushed into the larger of the two reception rooms that opened onto the vestibule. 'Nevertheless,' he persisted, 'don't be too condemning. We are here on sufferance, and from what I can tell, we are not going to be accorded too much of that.'
'Yes; yes. But from what I have seen, a mere widow, with or without a fortune, is hardly worth any attention, and one from Roma is little more than an amusement. It's our manner, you know, and our lack of propriety.' There was not much annoyance in the tone of her voice, but the expression on her face was enough to make Niklos change the subject.
'Will you accept the invitation of Antonina? She is determined to fulfill her obligations to you for Belisarius' sake, if not your own. She has said she will introduce you to the best society of the city.'
'And who can guess why,' said Olivia as she made a swift inspection of the changes that were being wrought in the room. 'I suppose we have to have those dreary Saints everywhere, don't we? I already asked for an ikonostasis in my private rooms—so it will be understood that I am pious—is it really necessary to have another, do you think?'
'The Emperor is a religious man, and his court follows his example,' Niklos pointed out. 'And you are a sensible woman.'
'At my age, I had better be,' she said, and laughed again, this time with genuine mirth. 'Very well; see that we have another screen to load up with bad art, and a few more of those horrid hanging braziers for incense. And while you are being so protective, send a messenger to Antonina. I will call upon her later this afternoon if she is receiving anyone.'
'And if she is not?' inquired her majordomo.
'Then discover when she is prepared to have my company for an hour or so, and we will then arrange things to that purpose.' She shrugged. 'I suppose I must do this eventually: why not now?'
Niklos did not answer, but his relief was apparent in the speed with which he carried out his orders.
By the time the slave had been sent as a messenger to the enormous house of Belisarius, Olivia had completed her rounds of the house she had purchased and was ready to dress for the forthcoming visit. Since her last banquet in Roma, she had continued to choose subdued clothing and modest-but-costly ornaments to wear, sensing that this would offset some of the adverse attitudes the Byzantines had toward Romans.
Still, she balked at the enclosed palanquin that Niklos had arranged for her transportation to Belisarius' house. 'I don't like being enclosed,' she said as Niklos assisted the slaves in drawing the draperies around her.
'You are in Constantinople, and women of good reputation do not show themselves on the street except in going to the hippodrome and the market squares. The penitential processions also require that all women show themselves, but cover their faces for the Sin of Eve and the Fall of Man.' He was stern with her, needing her to use her wits more than she had been willing to do.
'I might as well immure myself and be done with it—and I have done that already and found it appalling.' She pulled the silken hanging closed with her own hands. 'If I do not speak to you when I return, it is your own fault, Greek.'
Since Olivia only called Niklos Greek when she was displeased with him, he did not respond, but stepped back and permitted the bearers to start off with their Roman burden.
Belisarius' house was one hill over—although Olivia refused to think of such bumps as hills—and in a street that was made narrow with the extensive reconstruction and rebuilding that was the passion of Justinian. By the time the bearers set the palanquin down, they were sweating and blowing hard as dray beasts for the added effort of lifting the vehicle around the heaps of masonry and over piles of rubble that littered the streets increasingly as they neared the palace of the Emperor and his most ambitious project—the expansion of the Basilica of the Most Sacred Wisdom.
Four armed guards uniformed in the manner of Belisarius personal soldiers flanked the door to the house as Olivia was helped from the palanquin. All the men watched her closely, each with a hand on the hilt of his sword.
'I am Olivia Clemens, a widow from Roma,' she told the majordomo of Belisarius' house. 'I would like the honor of spending a little time with the august lady who is wife to the great General Belisarius.' She hoped that was formal enough for these ceremony- and ritual-loving Byzantines.
The majordomo, a smooth-faced eunuch in garments far richer than what most merchants could afford to wear, made her a deep reverence as he admitted her to the vestibule of the enormous house. 'Be kind enough to wait here; one of the household women will escort you to the august lady.'
'How good of you,' said Olivia mendaciously.
The eunuch said nothing as he moved away from her, leaving her to stand by herself in the huge octagon- shaped entryroom with nothing more to look at than a series of dreadful frescoes of military Saints in battle against devils and other foreigners all in grotesque and frozen postures. Olivia found herself longing for the mosaics of her youth. Where, amid this vehement and abstracted suffering, was one dolphin, one dog worrying a bone, one cherub dangling a flute or a wine cup? These were the scenes she recalled most affectionately from those long-ago days when she grew up. In her father's villa there was one wall showing Jupiter turning into a bull, with a buxom Europa waiting for her lover with more enthusiasm than awe. There had been two swineherds in the corner of the fresco, off to the lower right-hand corner. They had been sharing a wineskin and bread, and they idly watched the transformation. One of them was forever in the act of tossing a scrap to a tabby cat. There had been nothing so everyday, so human in the art Olivia had seen here in Byzantium; even in Roma now, the touches she loved were disappearing.
'Great lady?' repeated the eunuch, who had returned.
Olivia looked up sharply. 'Oh; excuse me. These pictures—' She indicated the walls.
'Antonina is a woman of much piety, and this is only the outward sign of it,' said the eunuch, apparently favorably impressed by Olivia's interest. 'If you will condescend to follow me, I will bring you to Antonina.'
'Thank you,' said Olivia, falling into step behind the slave.
'You are not the only great lady to visit Antonina today,' said the eunuch. His voice was low and mature: he had been emasculated after manhood. Because he had run to fat it was hard to say if he had ever been handsome, but there was a sweetness to his round face that could once have been more attractive than it was safe for a slave to be.
'What is your name, slave?' asked Olivia.
'I am Arius,' he told her, apparently surprised at the question.
'In Roma, I always wanted to know the names of those who did me service so that I would be able to leave some token of my appreciation for good service,' she said, remembering how many slaves had once been able eventually to buy their freedom with those accumulated tokens. Olivia was still distressed that those laws had been changed.
'No token is necessary. This is Konstantinoupolis, great lady, not Roma, and here we give thanks to God, not to those whose place it is to serve.' He had led the way down a long hall and now stopped at two tall doors. 'These are the reception apartments of the august lady Antonina.'
