“No, Domina. Only senators wear them now. They’re made by house slaves.”
“Can you figure out how to drape the cloth?”
“I think so. I know it’s semi-circular, probably two and a half cubits long and about half that width. I have a friend in Senator Maximin’s household. She’ll help me.”
“Fine.” Arcadia glanced around at the sculptures, all of men. “There are no females here. If we went out to the old Roman necropolis along the Via Armini, perhaps we could find a woman’s figure on some tomb statuary.”
Leaving the senate house, the two walked east along the Via Caesar to the Via Muri Antiqui, a street that followed the ancient walls that Honorius had ordered torn down after he made Ravenna the Western capital of the empire. They turned right at the Armini, an arrow-straight road that was a paved-over canal that had once connected the city with a branch of the Padus River, to the north. The Armini led to a naval base at Classis, some two miles south, then on to connect with the Via Aemilia along the Adriatic coast.
“Your friend is fortunate to be in the senator’s house,” Arcadia commented. “I understand Maximin is very wealthy.”
“Fortunate?” Veneranda retorted in surprise. “She’s a slave, Domina. I’m a freewoman.”
Arcadia was immediately sorry she had initiated a conversation about unbridgeable social differences. “Perhaps your friend could buy her freedom,” she suggested lamely.
“The senator doesn’t need money. Bassa told me he once spent a quarter million gold coins in sponsoring his son’s games at Rome.”
“A quarter million solidi? Unbelievable.” Including fish and other foodstuffs that Getorius receives as payment, he barely earns one hundred solidi a year. That’s about five times what a skilled artisan makes, but Senator Maximin probably spends that much on wine every week.
Arcadia led the way along the sidewalk of the busy roadway, past three blocks of apartments and shops which gave way to the wooden palisade of the garrison camp that Getorius had criticized. It was true that the men were largely Goths. Roman field armies were in Gaul, under Flavius Aetius, fighting a revolt and trying to resolve differences between local tribes. The barbarians served under their own officers and had proven to be generally loyal, despite fears of rebellion—never far from a Roman official’s mind.
At the new Laurence Gate, workers were completing the south wall by extending it to the sea. A short distance beyond the entrance, the burial vaults and monuments of the old pagan cemetery began to line the roadway. Many of the stones were toppled, or inundated by the encroaching marshes that surrounded Ravenna.
At the first cluster of tombs, on high ground, Veneranda brushed snow off weathered stones until she uncovered a sculpted figure dressed in an appropriate garment. The woman, who looked to be about Arcadia’s age, wore a flowing tunic that had sleeves reaching to her elbow. It was belted into folds beneath her breasts, and more loosely at the waist. A rectangular palla, a shawl like the ones Arcadia already owned, covered the woman’s head and wrapped around her throat.
“Veneranda, I like it,” Arcadia said. “Will it be difficult to make?”
“A simple design, Domina. I can have a first fitting in two days.”
“Wonderful. Now all I need to find is a hair style of the period.”
Since Getorius had been brought to Ravenna as an infant, he had no busts of ancestors, male or female, in his house. Arcadia’s father, Petronius Valerianus, was at his villa near Rome for the winter, but she could still go to his house near the Theodosius Gate, to look at portrait sculptures of the women who had married or been born into the family over many generations. One of them was bound to have a hairdo from the republican era.
Only a small staff was retained in winter and the rooms were cold. Arcadia wandered along the garden portico, looking for an ancestral figure with a simple style that would not compete with the way the Gothic Queen might arrange her hair.
She found one at the beginning of the collection. For her stone portrait the unnamed woman had brushed her hair to each side, then woven small braids in the back. A thicker, central plait ran from her forehead, back over the top of the head, and down the back. It was a Germanic style that Arcadia surmised was a fashion novelty at the time. She decided to bring Silvia on the morning of the dinner, and let her work from the statue.
Even though she felt chilled, Arcadia lingered among the portraits, realizing again how fortunate she was that Getorius had agreed to let her study medicine with him. Like Archdeacon Renatus, most men assumed that women only wanted to marry and bear children, therefore few wives had the option of entering a profession. They might supervise a small industry from their homes, such as weaving, but were usually restricted to running the household, while their husbands were out conducting business affairs.
That had not been enough for Arcadia. Her mother had died giving birth to her. While her father had showed no outward resentment, he had left his daughter’s upbringing to servants and a governess. Their benign neglect had made Arcadia independent—to some people, irritatingly rebellious—when it came to what was expected of a young Roman woman.
Being in her father’s house brought back memories. As a child Arcadia had loved animals, always hoping to find an injured one that she could nurse back to health. She recalled once chasing away a cat that was toying with a young sparrow it had caught. The terrorized bird had a raw wound in its breast, and she had sponged it with olive oil in the hope that the injury would heal. But the sparrow had died in Arcadia’s small, cupped hands, its beak open in a gasp as the fright-filled black eyes fluttered shut. She had buried it in the garden, inside her
