Nicias had designed the rooms to be ranged beyond the atrium, rather than around it. The villa’s main entrance was located off the Caesar, near the carriage gate, where a side door led from a courtyard into the house. Beyond the stable and the quarters for Brisios, the gatekeeper and gardener, were a small apple orchard and plots where herbs were grown. A walled garden of trees, flowers, and a fountain at the west end of the house provided a cool haven from the summer heat.
The unique feature of the building was a separate bathhouse with the same sequence of tepid, hot, and cold baths as the public one. Arcadia looked forward to the water’s comfort. After the unsettling experience of examining the monk’s body and the long, bone-jarring ride, it would be good to relax with a long soak in the warm pool—and perhaps entice her husband into some slow love-making.
Optila reined in the mare for the turn into the Via Caesar. The gatekeeper, Brisios, had been watching for him and opened the courtyard portals. He grasped the horse’s bridle as the cart rolled through the opening.
Getorius helped Arcadia down, gave Optila a gold tremissis, and watched the Hun walk across the street toward the palace barracks, before the gatekeeper closed the portals again.
“Brisios,” he ordered, “store that desk and chest in the stable. We may have to keep them until someone arrives from Gaul. Take the books to my study.”
“I will, Master.”
“I’ll take these three scrolls myself,” Getorius told his wife, “but I’m too tired to do anything with them right now.”
“I wonder if we’ve had patients today. Childibert will know.”
The end of the atrium facing the villa’s rooms was curtained off from the cold. Childibert, their Frankish house steward, had evidently heard them arrive. He pushed aside the drape and held up a letter.
“You must read now,” he said in a Latin corrupted by his guttural Germanic accent.
“Who is it from, another creditor?” Getorius quipped, taking the white vellum note.
His question was answered when he turned it over and saw the flap sealed by a blue wax lump stamped with the signet of Galla Placidia. Underneath, Valentinian III had traced his monogram through a template. Arcadia glanced at the twin imperial signatures.
“Take the letter to our bedroom, Childibert,” she ordered. “Good news or not, we’re going to wait until morning to open it.”
“What?” Getorius objected. “It…it’s from the Augustus and his mother. We can’t wait.”
“Ask Silvia to bring towels to the bathhouse,” Arcadia added, ignoring her husband’s comment. “Tell her no one is to disturb us. We may eat something later on.”
“Are you insane, woman?” Getorius persisted. “Placidia is my patroness. Her son is emperor.”
Arcadia waited until Childibert was gone, then confronted Getorius. “I notice you didn’t say ‘they are my patrons’ and you’re right. Galla Placidia, not her son, still runs the palace. Patroness? Were you made palace physician after Nicias died?”
“I was still young.”
Arcadia turned away to open a clothes storage cupboard. “I’m changing into my night tunic. I need a soak in the tepidarium, Husband, and so do you.”
When Silvia brought the towels to the bathhouse, she also lit three lamps and a silver censer that gave off aromatic smoke. Her eight-year-old son, Primus, carried in a pitcher of warm wine mulled with honey and mastic, spilling some as he poured two wide-mouthed cups too full.
Arcadia sighed. “That’s fine, Primus. Leave the cups near the edge of the pool.”
After the boy and his mother had gone, Arcadia dropped her tunic on the tiled floor, knelt to swallow a gulp of wine, and then slid into the warm water. Getorius followed her.
While he clung to the rim of the small pool, she massaged his shoulder muscles, then came around to sponge his face and touch at the gray hairs that interlaced with his black ones. She thought he looked tired, and rubbed at the creases in his forehead, wondering how much of his Celtic ancestry was reflected in his features.
Nicias had said that Getorius’s father was born at Treveri, in northern Gaul, yet had not spoken much of his mother, other than saying that Blandina had also had Celtic ancestors. The name Getorius was a Latinized form of that of an ancient Treveri chieftain, Cingetorix, and a diminutive of Getorius’ grandfather’s name, Cingetorius.
Arcadia’s ancestry was Roman, going back to Campania. Her father told her that adventurous forebears had emigrated from there to Ravenna, to serve in Augustus Caesar’s new fleet. She wondered what a child of theirs would look like, and recalled that she had not inserted the acacia juice pessary she used as a contraceptive.
The tepid water was relaxing. Reaching for the wine, Arcadia took a sip and passed the spicy drink from her mouth to her husband’s as she clung to him. When she felt him harden against her thigh, she brought her legs up around his waist and eased him inside herself. Eyes closed, holding onto his neck with both arms, she began a gentle thrusting motion that sent wavelets lapping over the pool’s edge and soaked their tunics. Arcadia quickened her rhythm to match the rate of Getorius’s breathing, then paused to let the pleasurable sensation ripple through her own body and isolate them from the world outside, to concentrate on the warm island their bodies had become.
After she began thrusting again her own quickened breathing matched her husband’s. When she heard his sharp intake of breath and felt his body stiffen, she pushed harder until her own rush of pleasure melded with his. As her orgasm slowly subsided, Arcadia clung tightly to Getorius, keeping her eyes shut tight, to block out the world beyond the pool. There would be time enough in the morning for the sick patients who crowded into the clinic waiting rooms. For now she only wanted the safe world of the water and their joined
