“Yes, absolutely. I…I didn’t remember the story.” She thought Maximin might invite the two actors to the table, but they turned and went back through the curtain.
It was totally dark outside now; only a few lights gleamed in the windows of a building on the perimeter of the chicken yard. Maximin picked up a honeyed date with his fingers, ate it, then yawned and stood up.
“Well. I have early business. Arcadia, perhaps you and Prisca will find womanly things to talk about.”
“Publius, I have business too,” Prisca told him in a cold tone.
“No, no,” Arcadia offered quickly, “I’ll read in my room. I brought a copy of Soranus on gynecology.”
“Fine. Then, may you both sleep well.” Maximin left the room without further words.
Prisca pushed back her chair and stood. “I’ll have Melisias take you back to your room. She’ll call you for breakfast.”
“No, I can find it. Ah…Domina?”
“Yes?”
“Nothing.” Arcadia blushed. “We…we can talk in the morning. Good night.”
When Arcadia returned to her room, she found a twin-spouted oil lamp providing the space with a warm glow. Her travel bag was in the wardrobe, and in its place on the stand were a water pitcher, basin, and towels. The room’s door did not have a key lock, but could be secured from the inside by a wooden bar that slid into a bracket.
She changed into a wool night tunic. After washing her face, she tried to arrange her hair into a braid for the night, but gave up quickly.
“I should have brought Silvia for that, at least,” she muttered as she rubbed a rose-scented lotion on her face and arms. After crawling under the bedding, Arcadia settled down to read Soranus.
The villa was strangely quiet. Even the distant barking of hounds in farmhouses outside the walls was muffled. Arcadia guessed that watchdogs at the villa might have harassed the chickens, and were not kept there. In any case, Maximin had his own private army guarding the place.
Before she put the book down so she could get some sleep, Arcadia thought she heard the faint crowing of a rooster in a room somewhere, but it sounded unnatural, in some way mechanical, and dawn was still far off.
At the first early glow of light, a cacophony of live roosters crowing outside the window awakened Arcadia. Groggy from a somewhat restless night in a strange bed, she sat up and looked toward the door. The locking beam was still in place.
“Blessed Cosmas, toward morning I slept like a hibernating bear. Anyone might have…” Arcadia shuddered without finishing the thought aloud. An intruder could have entered, as the bandit at Classis did, and she would not have noticed.
After splashing water on her face and rinsing her mouth, Arcadia dressed in a tan, ankle-length tunic and sat down to comb her hair.
Afterward, she was reading a section in Book III of Soranus, about conditions peculiar to women, when Melisias called to tell her that breakfast was ready.
A cerulean sky visible through the dining room windows hinted at the possibility of the muddy fields drying out at least partly by afternoon. Prisca was seated alone, watching Andros arrange a basket of bread and dishes of olive oil and honey on the table. She glanced up when Arcadia entered.
“You slept well?”
“Quite well. Doesn’t the senator eat breakfast?”
“The senator is probably at the harbor.” Prisca selected a roll from the basket Andros offered. “He imports pepper and Macedonian wine…eastern merchandise.”
Good, Prisca seems more talkative without her husband here, Arcadia thought, as the steward pulled back a chair for her.
“Publius wanted me to schedule a rooster fight as entertainment,” Prisca said with a throaty chuckle. “I declined for you.”
“I’m grateful. Domina, I—”
“You may call me Prisca.”
“Prisca. Last night I started to tell you—”
“That you had no interest in sharing my husband’s bed?”
“Why…yes.” The woman’s perception and honesty surprised Arcadia.
Prisca pushed the dish of honey toward her. “I know your father. Petronius Valerianus is one of the few honorable men we have left in the cesspool that Ravenna is becoming. His daughter could be no less respectable.”
“Thank you. But…you seemed so cold at supper.”
“Keeps the senator off balance.” The deep chuckle again. “Actually, I would have gone to Caprea in October, but the Vandals made that too dangerous.” Prisca sopped up oil with her bread, then asked, “Did the senator seem nervous to you? He kept fussing with that new ring of his.”
“New?” A chill rippled down Arcadia’s back. Could it have belonged to Behan after all? “Wh…where did he get it?”
“Publius said he commissioned the ring from a Syrian craftsman on the docks. Perhaps he was nervous about bringing you here. Why did he?”
“He thought I needed a diversion while my husband is under arrest. He also came to see me about something.”
“Something?” Prisca’s eyebrows rose quizzically.
Why did I blurt that out? How much can I tell her? “He asked about two recently discovered papyri,” Arcadia replied, and cursed her quick tongue. She had meant to say documents. “Do you know anything about them?”
“Perhaps something to add to his boring library.” Prisca looked out the window.
“The weather’s cleared. I thought we could relax in the tepidarium after breakfast. Do you ride horseback?”
“Not very well.”
“I have a gentle mare for you. We could go out this afternoon—beyond the smell of those infernal fowl—and explore the pinewoods. I love it there—the solitude.”
“I’d like that.” Arcadia had a brief vision of her bones rotting in the forest of a senatorial estate until the General Resurrection, but agreed, “Yes, a ride in the woods would be very nice.”
Arcadia was surprised that during her remaining days at the villa Maximin never appeared again. She came to like Prisca, determining that the woman was alone much of the time when the senator was away on personal or state business. It was obvious that men would be attracted to her, but rumors of a liaison with Valentinian never came up. Prisca did not ask about the papyrus documents again, nor
