Cornelia stepped onto the ladder and took hold of it with trembling hands. She took a step down, and then another, until she was visible only from the waist up. It was all Lucius could do not to call to her. Despite his silence, she seemed to sense his presence. She paused and turned her head. She looked straight at him.
She moved her lips, mouthing silent words intended only for him: “Forgive me.”
Cornelia took another step, and another, then vanished from sight. The crowd let out a collective groan. Men shook their heads and shuddered. Women dropped to their knees and wailed.
While she descended, the ladder moved slightly, relaying the vibration of her steps. Then the ladder was still. Lictors stepped forward and pulled it from the hole. The ladder was a long one; the vault was many feet underground. A large, flat stone was placed over the opening. The mound of earth was spread over the stone and pounded with mallets until the ground was even and no sign remained of the opening.
The new Virgo Maxima, with averted eyes and a trembling voice, stood on the spot and uttered a prayer to Vesta, asking the goddess to forgive the people of Roma for allowing such a breach of piety and to restore her favour to the city. The Pontifex Maximus and his retinue began to withdraw. Catullus was the last to leave, led off by the boy. It seemed to Lucius that there was a smile on the man’s gaunt face.
The crowd gradually dispersed, until only Lucius remained. He stared at the place where the opening had been. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear. Cornelia had been swallowed by the earth. Yet he knew she must be still alive, still breathing.
Why was Lucius still alive?
Lucius knew the answer. He had been saved by a quirk of fate. The Master and God of the world, who saw enemies everywhere and executed men without reason, who watched thousands die in the arena without mercy, had been swayed by a sentimental whim. Earinus was the one human being for whom Domitian felt any semblance of love; when Earinus sang in the black room, Lucius had wept. For that reason alone, Domitian had spared him.
Lucius had been saved by a tear. The absurdity of it only deepened his despair.
He thought of Cornelia’s final words: “Forgive me.” He was alive and unscathed, a free man. For his affair with Cornelia he had suffered no consequence whatsoever. For what should he forgive Cornelia? It made no sense, yet he was certain that she had mouthed the words forgive me.
What did it mean?
AD 93
Reclining in the shade of his garden on a hot afternoon in the month of Augustus, Lucius reflected on the unexpected path his life had taken over the last two years.
The punishment of Cornelia had marked a low point in his life. Existence had lost all meaning. His taste for life had vanished. Nothing brought him pleasure. Was he in pain? If so, his pain was not a sharp agony – a reminder that he was alive – but a dull, hollow sensation, like a foretaste of death. He was stripped of all emotion. He did not loathe the world or hate the people in it; he felt nothing.
Now, all that had changed. His time of utmost despair was in the past. Once again he was able to take enjoyment from simple pleasures – the bright colours and sweet fragrances of flowers in his garden, the cheerful songs of birds, the humming of bees, the warm sunshine on his face, the cooling breeze on his fingertips. He was alive again – fully alive, not merely existing, experiencing each moment as it occurred. He was conscious of himself and accepting of the world in which he lived. He had attained a state of contentment that he had never before thought possible.
His newfound peace was due to one man: the Teacher.
What had his life been like before he met the Teacher? Lucius recalled his frequent visits to the house of Epaphroditus over the years. Friendship had been the main reason for those visits, but he had also been seeking wisdom. But after the death of Cornelia, Martial’s wit no longer amused him, and Lucius found the poet’s ties to the emperor intolerable. The philosophy of Epictetus seemed bland and insubstantial. Nor did the letters Lucius received from Dio convey any sense of enlightenment. Lucius’s visits to the house of Epaphroditus grew less and less frequent. The unanswered letters from Dio piled up on the table in his study.
Yet, even at the deepest point of his despair, Lucius had continued to seek comfort and enlightenment. Turning away from his circle of friends, for a while he had studied the more esoteric modes of belief available to a curious man in Roma. Of these, there were a great many; every cult in the empire eventually found adherents and proselytizers in Roma. As Epaphroditus had once told him, people were capable of believing anything; the startling array of religions practised in the city was proof of that. Lucius even investigated the much-despised cult of the Christians, of which his uncle Kaeso had been a member, but found it no more interesting than any of the other cults.
He had also made a study of astrology, since so many people held such store by it. But the fatalistic nature of it had only made him more despondent. The astrologers taught that every aspect of a man’s life was determined in advance by powers unimaginably larger than himself; within that predestined fate a man had very little leeway to affect the course of his life. What was the point of knowing that a certain day was ill-omened if one could do nothing to reverse the tide of events? A man could hope to propitiate a temperamental god, but nothing could be done to alter the influence of the stars – if indeed such an influence existed. For although wiser men than himself considered astrology a science and devoted great study to it, Lucius was unimpressed by all the charts derived from ancient texts and the endless tables full of esoteric symbols. He had a uneasy suspicion that astrology was a fraud. Certainly, astrologers had carefully observed the heavens and had learned to predict the movements of the celestial bodies with considerable accuracy, but the rest of the so-called science – determining precisely how those celestial bodies affected human existence – seemed a mere invention to Lucius, a compendium of nonsense contrived by men who understood no more about the secret workings of the universe than did anyone else.
Philosophy, exotic religions, astrology – Lucius had been open to them all, but none had provided him with any sense of purpose or enlightenment. None had relieved the emptiness he felt at the core of his being.
Then, he met the Teacher, and everything changed.
It happened on the first anniversary of the day Cornelia was buried alive.
For a long time Lucius had been dreading that day, knowing that when it arrived he would be able to think of nothing else. That morning he woke early. He had no appetite. He put on a plain tunic and left his house. For hours he walked aimlessly all over the city, lost in memories. Eventually he found himself standing before the house on the Esquiline where he had met with Cornelia so many times over the years. He had sold the house, quickly and for less than its value, only a few days after her interment, thinking that he would never want to step inside it again. Now he stood before it in the street, longing to go in, to stand in the vestibule and remember the sight of her face across the room, to smell again the jasmine in the small garden where they had made love.
The door of the house opened. A mother and her young daughter stepped out, followed by a slave carrying a basket for a trip to the markets. The spell was broken, and Lucius moved on.
Inevitably, he found himself at the Colline Gate, standing exactly where he had stood when he saw her last, before the entrance to the sealed underground chamber. In his hand he held a single rose, the symbol of love, and also of secrecy. He could not remember where he had gotten it; he must have bought it from a vendor. He clutched it so carelessly that a thorn had pricked his palm; he did not feel the wound, but saw a trickle of blood run down his fingers.
The moment felt unreal, dream-like. He found himself kneeling at the very spot where the stone had been covered over. As one might place a garland on a sepulchre, he placed the rose on the beaten earth. Blood dripped from his fingers.
A shadow fell across him. He imagined that he had been observed by some disapproving magistrate and that a lictor stood over him. But the outline of the shadow was not that of a soldier. He looked up to see a small man with a long white beard. The sun was directly behind the man’s head, making his unruly hair into a wispy halo. His features were surprisingly youthful for a man with snow-white hair, and deeply tanned – the sunburned face of a traveller, or a man without a home. His eyes were bright blue and appeared to sparkle; later, Lucius would realized this was impossible, since the sun was behind the man’s head and his face was in shadow. From whence came the
