'I can teach you what the world really is, not what poets imagine it to be. How to impose your will on it. Just like you can teach me about Rome.'
She laughed, nervous now, but a little thrilled. 'What an instructor you must be!'
'I can teach you what it is to be a woman.'
'You, a man?'
'I can teach you what it is to be a man.'
Valeria looked at him uncertainly, confused as to what they were talking about. He was looking at her with an expression of frank equality, and it disturbed her.
'I can teach you about men and women.' Suddenly Galba reached with his powerful arm around her neck to grip her shoulder, and pulled to kiss her. The action was as quick and practiced as a sword stroke, and before she could resist or exclaim, his mouth was on hers, his beard against her skin, his breath and tongue insistent.
It frightened her, and she jerked her head back, pulled free her arm, and slapped him awkwardly. It was hardly more than a tap because of her fear and confusion, and it produced only a sardonic grin.
'Please stop,' she whispered.
He bent to kiss her again.
So then she reared away from him in earnest, spilling her wine cup and knocking over her chair as she pulled upright. 'How dare you!'
He stood too. 'Indeed, I'm a man of daring. You've never known one, Valeria. Let me show you what real men are like.'
'I've just been married!'
'To a man who is never around, or half absent when he is here. He's at least a day's ride away, and your maidservant is off with Lucinda. Stop dreaming about life and experience it. Seize opportunity, or your life will be filled with regret.'
'What opportunity?'
'To be with a real man and soldier who could win you a real empire, not just this rude fort.'
She stepped back until she pressed against the tapestry on the wall, still sensing the dreadful mural behind it. Her indignation grew with her embarrassment. How could she have miscalculated so disastrously? 'You've misunderstood my invitation. By the gods, you're just a common soldier! You dare make an advance on the newlywed wife of your commander, a praefectus of Rome?' She drew herself up, trying to be haughty but her voice breaking. 'A senator's daughter, a woman chaste and loyal? You've mistaken an offer of friendship for an offer of another kind!'
'Don't pretend you didn't expect that. Or welcome it.'
'Certainly not! Do you think I'd ever be physically attracted to the likes of you? That I would be intimate with someone of your station?'
'You impish flirt!'
'I'm sorry that you misinterpreted my invitation.'
'I misinterpreted nothing.'
'Now I must ask you to leave, and not return unless my husband is present.'
She thought herself too good for him, this preening bauble? Galba's fury was growing. 'You asked if I pretend, and the answer is no, Roman girl. I'm an honest man and thus incomprehensible to someone as false as you. You play at outrage? I know your kind. By the gods, you can be sure I won't come back to this house, with your husband or without him. Everyone knows that your favored birth is the only cause of Marcus's appointment, and that the two of you combined couldn't survive a day on the Wall without the protection of men like me.'
'What arrogance! Get out of here!'
He stepped back, the distance between them suddenly yawning. 'I'm going, to leave you to your loneliness. But someday, when you really grow up, you may indeed want a real man-and when that day comes, you'll have to come to me, not me to you, and then we'll meet in the stables, not here.'
'How dare you speak to me like that!'
'How dare you toy with me at your table.'
'I despise you!'
'And I laugh at your pretensions.'
She broke into tears and fled.
Galba looked after her, an inner pain of defeat flickering across his face, and then he kicked angrily and overthrew their table, crockery shattering on the floor and red wine spilling across the mosaics. Marta, who'd come to the door to witness their fiery exchange, darted back into the kitchen. The senior tribune began to stride toward the entry hall in fury but then checked, turned, and looked back at the kitchen with a glower. The slave bitch had heard it all! He was boiling, and needed release.
So he stamped back in that direction and burst into the hot chamber. All the slaves but Marta scampered like rabbits. Her face was red from the heat of cooking, her tunic unpinned to the cleavage of her breasts, her arms bare, and she looked at the soldier with fear and triumph as he charged, sweeping her up in a crush of arms and plopping her down on the chopping block, food knocked aside, his hand ripping open the front of her tunic, her apron up around her waist, her thighs shouldered apart.
Marta was grinning fiercely. 'This is what you want, Galba. This is what you deserve. Not a highborn girl, but a woman!'
He ravaged her like an animal, his roar of fierce lust echoing through the commander's house like a taunt, and Marta's own cries carried even farther, drifting down the corridors and echoing in the drafty rooms. They penetrated finally to the sleeping chamber where Valeria lay alone, weeping.
XXII
I would like to be surprised by this tale, but I'm not. I have made too many reports about the things people do or say in the heat of passion. 'He seems injudicious,' I observe mildly to Marta.
'He'd exercised so much power over base women that he mistook his opportunity with Valeria. Or was so frustrated that he was willing to take a risk.'
'You thought him foolhardy?'
'Men should know their station.'
Of course! It's interesting that slaves are more conscious of proper station than any of us. I wonder if any of this disaster would have occurred if all involved had simply accepted the duty and conformity that sustains the empire.
'Still, quite risky in the commander's house.'
'He still thought of it as his house, inspector. And he was reckless from envy. This issue of command was eating at him. He also knew she'd never breathe a word of this to Marcus; he'd calculated in advance that her embarrassment would be greater than his own. But he also knew he was finished with her and finished with her husband. He'd gambled, and lost. He'd let his shield drop and been stabbed to the heart.'
'And went to you.'
'He was a stag in heat, and I his substitute.'
'You endured it.'
'I enjoyed it.'
I shift uncomfortably, never quite accustomed to the bluntness of slaves. 'Did they see each other again before Marcus came back?'
'Of course. Petrianis is a cramped place.'
'How did she react?'
'She was cool, but not as outraged as she pretended. His advance repelled but fascinated her, I could tell. Not that she welcomed it, but she couldn't help but be flattered. Curious. I know she heard us crying out as we coupled. Galba was a man of passions her husband didn't have. He was a stag, and she was like a fly to a spider. He sensed this, and it tormented him. Tormented her. We laughed at both of them. With my class, these things are much simpler.'
