Seduced By Her Rebel Warrior. Greta Gilbert

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СКАЧАТЬ are making me look bad,’ said Atia, tipping a single drop of the poppy tears into Lydia’s goblet, then a third into her own. She swirled the liquid inside her glass and thought of the moment that afternoon when she realised Rab had been lying to her. The tears will wash away the pain, she told herself.

      It was a long-practised refrain—a phrase she had invented in the days after her first marriage, almost eighteen years ago now. She had been only twelve years old at the time—a full two years younger than the proper age for a Roman marriage.

      It had been a trying time. After her mother’s death, her father had been eager to rid his doma of his three daughters. Her eldest sister had refused to marry, so he had sent her to serve at a temple in distant Crete. He had rewarded a military ally with the hand of Atia’s second-eldest sister, who had inherited the beauty of their mother.

      He had had more difficulty finding a husband for Atia. ‘Your nose is a problem,’ he had told her. ‘No man wishes to pass such a thing along to his children.’ Eventually, however, her father had found a beneficial match in the person of an elderly Senator—a political ally with a taste for young girls.

      The tears will wash away the pain, Atia would always tell herself when she heard the heavy treading of the Senator’s sandals on the marble floor outside her bedchamber. She would quickly tip the vial to her lips and, when he turned her over and laid his wrinkled stomach across her back, she would close her eyes and find peace.

      ‘Come, Atia,’ urged Lydia. ‘Before we are missed.’ Atia tipped one last teardrop into her goblet and the two women slipped back into the courtyard. They followed a crowded walkway to the dining room, where they stretched out at opposite ends of a lounging couch surrounded by tables full of delicacies.

      Lydia raised her goblet. ‘To Arabia Petraea.’

      ‘To Arabia Petraea,’ Atia repeated, then took another long sip of her wine.

      It was a sly joke the two women shared, for neither had wished to come to Rome’s easternmost province. Lydia had followed her husband here three years ago. A lesser tribune in Trajan’s Second Legion, the womanising commander had survived the change of administration from Trajan to Hadrian thanks in no small part to the wise counsel of his wife.

      ‘What troubles you, Atia?’ Lydia asked now, casting a wary eye on her husband. The old lecher had cornered a young Greek woman and was shamelessly caressing her cheek.

      ‘Nothing at all, my darling,’ Atia said, because her troubles seemed insignificant in comparison to the humiliation Lydia currently suffered.

      ‘Come now, I can see that something worries you,’ Lydia prodded. She reached for a fig. ‘Beyond the usual worries, of course.’

      Atia sifted through her catalogue of worries to find one suitable to discuss publicly. Her stomach twisted as she envisioned burning ghutrahs and starving prisoners and innocent Nabataeans doomed to die. She wondered if her own death would come before all of them.

      ‘You are familiar with the science of astrology?’ she asked her friend.

      ‘Of course, my dear,’ replied Lydia. ‘We recently hosted Dorotheus of Sidon at our villa in Gadara. A wretched man, but his astrological treatise is quite famous.’

      ‘Did I ever tell you that an astrologer once predicted the day of my death?’

      ‘Really? But you must know that such predictions are impossible. Astrology is a general science.’

      ‘Of course,’ said Atia. She plucked an olive from a plate and gazed at it.

      There was a long silence. ‘Now you have made me curious,’ asked Lydia, also gazing at the olive. ‘What day did he give you?’

      ‘It was a she, not a he—a very old woman in the Subura slum,’ said Atia.

      ‘And?’

      ‘I cannot recall the exact date she gave,’ Atia lied. In forty days. Atia popped the olive into her mouth and swallowed it whole. ‘She only said it would take place in my thirtieth year.’

      ‘How perfectly morbid! And how old are you now?’

      Atia raised a brow.

      Lydia laughed. ‘Come now, Atia. You do not really believe it, do you?’

      Atia shook her head dismissively. She did not need to tell her friend that not only did Atia believe it, she had been looking forward to the date.

      ‘If the reading took place in the Subura, she was likely a charlatan,’ Lydia added. ‘Besides, old women will say anything to amuse themselves.’

      ‘We most certainly will,’ said Atia, sending Lydia a playful grin. A pair of centurions’ wives had taken up residence on the couch near them and a pair of young lovers were seating themselves upon the third of their trio of couches. Even in the furthest reaches of the Empire, it seemed, Atia could not escape the risk of gossip. ‘My real worry is the heat,’ said Atia, turning the conversation to a safe subject. ‘I fear it has begun to vex my nerves.’

      ‘It is a brutal time of year,’ replied Lydia. ‘Though not without its charms.’

      ‘Charms?’

      ‘I am speaking of the nights.’

      ‘Ah, the nights,’ said Atia, as if that explained everything. She shot Lydia a confounded look.

      ‘The nights being the only respite from the heat, of course,’ Lydia said with a wink.

      ‘Of course,’ said Atia. Her friend might have been speaking Latin, but she sensed another language at play.

      ‘To enjoy the nights more, I have begun to sleep on the roof of our villa.’

      ‘Have you indeed?’ said Atia. Her head swirled. She was beginning to feel the effects of the poppy.

      ‘I sleep on the roof of our villa because there is a wonderful view of the night sky.’ Lydia continued. Atia frowned. Why was Lydia repeating herself?

      ‘You sing of the night sky like a Grecian choir boy,’ Atia teased.

      Lydia rolled her eyes and leaned forward, and the two women met in the middle of the couch. ‘I have taken a lover,’ Lydia whispered. ‘Is it not obvious?’

      Atia sat back, mildly stunned. No, it wasn’t obvious, though now that she considered it, she did notice something of a lightness to her friend’s mood. She raised her glass in honour of Lydia. ‘Have you found it as satisfying as you had hoped?’ Atia asked in her public voice. ‘Viewing the night sky, I mean.’

      ‘It is utterly spectacular, my dear,’ said Lydia. She shot a glance at her husband, who had now begun to caress the Greek woman’s arm. ‘I highly recommend viewing it yourself.’

      Atia tossed her friend a scolding grin. ‘You know my father would never allow me to...ah...sleep on the roof.’

      ‘But you are a grown woman, are you not?’

      ‘A Governor’s daughter does not sleep on the roof at all,’ Atia said. СКАЧАТЬ