foreman, and spent restful hours lying in the shade of the willows along the stream, scrolling through trashy Greek novels from Lucius's small library. The plots all seemed to be the same-humble boy meets noble girl, girl is abducted by pirates/giants/soldiers, boy rescues girl and turns out to be of noble birth himself-but such nonsense seemed to fit my mood perfectly. I allowed myself to become pampered and relaxed and thoroughly lazy in body, mind and spirit, and I enjoyed every moment.
Then came the fourth day, and the visitors.
They arrived just as twilight was falling, in an open traveling coach drawn by four white horses and followed by a small retinue of slaves. She was dressed in green and wore her auburn curls pinned in the peculiar upright fan shape that happened to be stylish in the city that spring; it made a suitable frame for the striking beauty of her face. He wore a dark blue tunic that was sleeveless and cut above the knees to show off his athletic arms and legs, and an oddly trimmed little beard that seemed designed to flout convention. They looked to be about my age, midway between thirty and forty.
I happened to be walking back to the villa from the stream. Lucius stepped out of the house to greet me, looked past me and saw the new arrivals.
'Numa's balls!' he exclaimed under his breath, borrowing my own favorite epithet.
'Friends of yours?' I said.
'Yes!' He could not have sounded more dismayed if he was being paid a visit by Hannibal's ghost.
He, it turned out, was a fellow named Titus Didius. She was Antonia, his second wife. (They had both divorced their first spouses in order to marry each other, generating enormous scandal and no small amount of envy among their unhappily married peers.) According to Lucius, who took me aside while the couple settled into the room next to mine, they drank like fish, fought like jackals, and stole like magpies. (I noticed that the slaves discreetly put away the costliest wines, the best silver, and the most fragile Arretine vases shortly after they arrived.)
'It seems they were planning to spend a few days up at my cousin Manius's place,' explained Lucius, 'but when they arrived, no one was there. Well, I know what happened-Manius went down to Rome just to avoid them.'
'Surely not.'
'Surely yes. I wonder that they didn't pass him on the way! So now they've come here, asking to stay awhile, 'just a day or two, before we head back to the city. We were so looking forward to some time in the country. You will be a dear, won't you, Lucius, and let us stay, just for a bit?' More likely ten days than two!'
I shrugged. 'They don't look so awful to me.'
'Oh, wait. Just wait.'
'Well, if they're really as terrible as that, why don't you let them stay the night and then turn them away?'
'Turn them away?' He repeated the phrase as if I'd stopped speaking Latin. 'Turn them away? You mean, send away Titus Didius, old Marcus Didius's boy? Refuse my hospitality to Antonia? But Gordianus, I've known these people since I was a child. I mean, to avoid them, like cousin Manius has done, well, that's one thing. But to say to them, to their faces-'
'Never mind. I understand,' I said, though I didn't, really.
Whatever their faults, the couple had one overriding virtue: they were charming. So charming, indeed, that on that first night, dining in their company, I began to think that Lucius was wildly exaggerating. Certainly they showed none of the characteristic snobbishness of their class toward Eco and me. Titus wanted to hear all about my travels and my work for advocates like Cicero. ('Is it true,' he asked, leaning toward me earnestly, 'that he's a eunuch?') Eco was obviously fascinated by Antonia, who was even more remarkably beautiful by lamplight. She made a game of flirting with him, but she did so with a natural grace that was neither condescending nor mean. They were both witty, vibrant and urbane, and their sense of humor was only slightly, charmingly, vulgar.
They also appreciated good cooking. Just as I had done after my first meal at the villa, they insisted on complimenting the cook. When Davia appeared, Titus's face lit up with surprise, and not just at the fact that the cook was a young woman. When Lucius opened his mouth to introduce her, Titus snatched the name from his lips. 'Davia!' he said. The word left a smile on his face.
A look of displeasure flashed in Antonia's eyes.
Lucius looked back and forth between Davia and Titus, speechless for a moment. 'Then you… already know Davia?'
'Why, of course. We met once before, at your house in the city. Davia wasn't the cook, though. Only a helper in the kitchen, as I recall.'
'When was this?' asked Antonia, smiling sweetly.
Titus shrugged. 'Last year? The year before? At one of Lucius's dinner parties, I suppose. An odd thing-you weren't there, as I recall. Something kept you home that night, my dear. A headache, perhaps…' He gave his wife a commiserating smile, and then looked back at Davia with another kind of smile.
'And how is it that you happened to meet the cook's helper?' Antonia's voice took on a slight edge.
'Oh, I think I must have gone into the kitchen to ask a favor of the cook, or something like that. And then I… well, I met Davia. Didn't I, Davia?'
'Yes.' Davia looked at the floor. Though it was hard to tell by the lamplight, it seemed to me that she was blushing.
'Well,' said Titus, clapping his hands together, 'you have become a splendid cook, Davia! Entirely worthy of your master's famously high standards. About that we're all agreed, yes? Gordianus, Eco, Lucius… Antonia?'
Everyone nodded in unison, some more enthusiastically than others. Davia muttered her thanks and disappeared back into the kitchen.
Lucius's new guests were tired from traveling. Eco and I had enjoyed a long, full day. Everyone turned in early.
The night was warm. Windows and doors were left open to take advantage of the slight breeze. There was a great stillness on the earth, of a sort that one never experiences in the city. As I began to drift into the arms of Morpheus, in the utter quiet I thought I could hear the distant, dreamy rustling of the sheep in their pen, the hushed sighing of the high grass far away by the toad, and even a hint of the stream's gentle gurgling. Eco, with whom I shared the room, began to snore very gently. Then the fighting began.
At first I could hear only voices from the next room, not words. But after a while they started shouting. Her voice was higher and carried better than his.
'You filthy adulterer! Bad enough that you take advantage of the girls in our own household, but picking off another man's slaves-'
Titus shouted something, presumably in his defense. She was not impressed. 'Oh, you filthy liar! You can't fool me. I saw the way you looked at her tonight. And don't you dare try to bring up that business about me and the pearl-diver at Andros. That was all in your own drunken imagination!'
Titus shouted again. Antonia shouted. This went on for quite some time. There was a sound of breaking pottery. Silence for a while, and then the shouting resumed.
I groaned and pulled the coverlet over my head. After a while I realized that the shouting had stopped. I rolled onto my side, thinking I might finally be able to sleep, and noticed that Eco was standing on his knees on his sleeping couch, his ear pressed against the wall between our room and theirs.
'Eco, what in Hades are you doing?'
He kept his ear to the wall and waved at me to be quiet.
'They're not fighting again, are they?'
He turned and shook his head.
'What is it, then?'
The moonlight showed a crooked smile on his face. He pumped his eyebrows up and down like a leering street mime, made a circle with the fingers of one hand and a pointer with the opposite forefinger, and performed a gesture all the street mimes know.
'Oh! I see. Well, stop listening like that. It's rude.' I rolled to my other side and pulled the coverlet over my head.
