We burst triumphantly – well, Aisopos and I were triumphant – into the portico of the palace, and the doors opened for us. We crossed the courtyard and I went into the Empress’s apartments. I heard Geta’s voice from outside and hesitated.
“But, Mother, I have no idea how to answer this peasant,” he was saying, petulantly. “Does an emperor worry about who owns some miserable strip of land not even fit for farming? Why should I waste my time on this?”
“Because, my son, this is the business of governing the Empire,” the Empress said patiently. “One day, you and your brother will do this together.”
Geta’s snort was audible through the panels of the door, and I stepped back hastily. “Together! I will do nothing together with that man. I know that he has been taken off to the North because the soldiers prefer me – to try and make him look like a soldier when we all know he’s nothing but a murderer who cannot control his passions.”
“Geta!” The Empress’s voice was sharp. Halfway through her next sentence Geta yanked the door open and strode out. I was glad I had moved aside. He stormed off and I dared to lead Avitoria inside.
Luckily, she was as good as she had promised. Her fingers flew through the Empress’s hair as skilfully as a woman weaving a patterned cloth, and the frown on the Empress’s face softened, line by line erasing as the waves were smoothed out and plumped up and curled. When the glittering crown of hairpins was finally perfect, she stood up with a smile.
“You may tell your mistress you will serve me from now on,” she told the slave girl. “Every day, be here before daybreak.”
Avitoria bowed in acknowledgement. Our eyes met and I smiled at her, thrilled to have succeeded in the task for the Empress, but she just looked back at me without returning the smile, her eyes flat, as if long ago a veil had dropped over them that she had decided never to raise again.
“Why did you smile at her? She was just a slave,” you say.
It shocks me a little. We have two slaves on the farm, Caledonians born into slavery. I think we treat our slaves well – we feed them the same food we eat, we free them when we can and they are never beaten. They can live together, have possessions, have children. Almost every slave we have freed has chosen to stay here, to farm the pieces of land we have given them. My father always taught me that to free a slave without giving them a means of feeding themselves is just a slow way of murdering them.
But enslaved is still enslaved.
“I suppose I was lonely,” I say. “There was no one else of my age around, and. . .” I tail off.
“It doesn’t matter,” you say, bored already. “What happened next?”
I look down the hill. Avitoria was a Caledonian. But she had not been born into slavery. She knew what it was like to live free.
I take a deep breath and go on with the story.
15.
The Hairdressers on the Top Floor
Yes, it was stupid, but I tried to be friends with Avitoria.
At home, you see, I had grown up alongside the children of trusted slaves who knew they would be freed in due course. But now I was living at the court of the most powerful and sophisticated and cruel people in the Empire. I had lost my home, my mother, given my childhood doll to the gods. My father might never come back. I was a toy for Julia Domna – I amused her by reading to her, by holding her wool while she wove, by taking dictation of her less important notes, by listening for hours on end to her telling me about the life of mystics of the East. She believed in magic and ate up stories of miracles hungrily. Every day she worshipped Heliogabalus, the sun god of the mountains, whose priestess she was. Geta too joined in these rites. Myself, I longed for our own household gods. I did my devotions to the household gods of the Emperor, but it was not the same.
Over the months that passed, letters came often from my father, written on sheets of wood. That was strange to me; I had expected them on wax tablets. The Empress’s censors read them first, as usual, but then passed them on to me. They would not have found them disturbing. My father wrote kindly, with lots of Stoic morals and recommended reading, and I wrote back reassuringly, and nothing was said or asked about how the campaign in the North was progressing. In the Empress’s household, I was supposed to be safe and looked after – and I was in a way; I lacked for nothing, not food or drink or clothes. But I was often forgotten completely, like a pet that does not really belong to anyone. One day, it was my birthday, and no one noticed.
“Avitoria!” I called her as she came out of the Empress’s room. She looked at me, startled.
“Today is my birthday,” I told her. “Will you share some honey cakes with me after you finish dressing the Empress’s hair? It will be fun!” I hesitated as I saw she did not seem pleased or excited. If anything, she looked frightened and worried.
“Do you fear your mistress?” I asked kindly. “I will come back with you if you like,
