Allyn Allyn: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. Vol. 135, No. 1. Whole No. 821, January 2010

In the end, of course, Father’s vigorous strength overrode her pallid weakness and at the age of four I was given tutors of my own and taught all that any boy would learn save military strategy and oratory.

In this, my father’s latent conservatism revealed itself, for he said, “While it is highly unlikely that a girl as willful as you, daughter, will hold her tongue in public, I am not obliged to encourage impropriety by training that tongue.”

With an invalid’s persistence, my mother seized upon this exception and coopted the time that would have been spent upon oratory for training me in more domestic arts. The whippings she gave me for stupidly-done assignments were more numerous than from all my tutors combined; and when she announced her intent to accompany my father to the underworld, I am ashamed to confess that my first involuntary thought was, Now I shall never have to touch a spindle again!

At that, I burst into tears, and Mother was moved.

“Do you then love me after all?” she asked, curious.

I implored her not to abandon me, but the fear that had gripped her during the past weeks had sapped her frail energy.

“I am too tired, child,” she said sadly. “My duty is with your father still. He has provided for your safety. Quintus Porcius will take you into his household until you are wed.”

Her own tears flowed then, for long ago she had woven my flame-colored bridal veil and had spoken fondly of the day when she would dress me for my marriage. Yet, even for that she would not stay, but disentangled her hands from mine and followed my father into their death chamber and closed the door upon me...

With my brother somewhere in Britannia, on the far edge of the empire, the stain upon my father’s honor, and the approach of Saturnalia, the funeral rites for my parents were somewhat curtailed. Nevertheless, my mother’s sister was a well-respected vestal and arranged that all was done with fitting dignity.

And so it was that at the age of eleven, I passed into the household of Quintus Porcius Cassius and his wife Prisca Publius, parents of the youth for whom I was intended. Because of my tender years, my Greek nurse and two of my personal servants were allowed to come with me. Those servants that had not been manumitted or otherwise disposed of by my father’s will were, of course, sold, and loud were their complaints at missing his generous gifts that this season had always brought them.

When the bearers set my chair down inside the domus and threw back the curtain, it took all my courage to step out and face my new family. I missed my mother more intensely than I could have dreamed possible. It was as if I had been sheltered all my life by an enormous oak and now that tree had fallen and I was exposed to a merciless sun. My small fingers tightened upon the golden bulla she had tied around my neck the day I was born, a walnut-sized amulet against evil that all girls wear until their wedding day. On the day of her death, she had opened mine and added a hair from one of her ancestors, then resealed the two hollow halves with wax. “He will keep you safe against the coming dangers,” she promised.

Silently, I prayed for his help as my nurse removed the thick shawl I had worn against the dank winter evening. Prisca Publius and Quintus Porcius came forward to welcome me with kisses. Behind them stood their only child.

Marcus Porcius Cassius! How tall he had grown. And handsome. Although his own bulla shone against his boyish long-sleeved tunic and his black curls were still worn long, the beginning of a beard darkened his chin.

In my mind’s eye I yet can see his friendly smile of welcome. We stared at each other in frank curiosity, having seen each other but seldom, for my mother had kept me close and he had accompanied his father to our home no more than twice or three times. In two years, we would be married, but at that moment, I was very conscious of being still a child when his beautiful dark eyes swept over me and lingered on my chest. On my flat chest, be it said, because I had not begun to bud.

Amusement broadened his smile and in a voice as deep as any man’s, he said, “Gaia?”

Until then I had felt very small and bereft, but now I lifted my chin and met his eyes. “And you are Gaius,” I said boldly.

Everyone around us, even the servants, laughed approvingly at our teasing reference to the vow I would one day speak: When and where you are Gaius, then and there am I Gaia .

I was given one of the choicest rooms along the peristyle, a room that would be flooded each morning by the sun, which was very welcome these chilly winter days. It had belonged to Quintus Porcius’s father, a wise and elderly patrician who had choked on a pigeon bone a few months earlier. Although Prisca spoke of him with respect so that I might fully appreciate the honor she did me in giving me his room, my nurse Marilla soon brought me the servants’ gossip and it was much less flattering. “Wise he might have been, but he swilled his food like a swineherd and a wonder it was that he had not choked long before.”

His death had occurred the same month Marcus was to have assumed the toga of manhood and it would have been unlucky to hold the ceremony in the fall. Instead he would wait until a more propitious day in the spring, even though he had already passed his sixteenth birthday. Marilla also told me that Marcus had thought to have this room once he was a man, but it was considered fitting that I sleep here now, with my nurse and maidservants on pallets beside me.

I quickly learned that Prisca managed her household less efficiently than my mother. The house swarmed with servants, yet the rooms were not swept every day, the brasses did not shine, and even the ancestral busts and masks that hung in the tablinum were not properly dusted. Nor did the servants hold their tongues when she spoke, but seemed to feel at liberty to interrupt with a boldness that would have earned them a whipping from my mother.

Indeed, Prisca was kindhearted and wastefully generous. My bed was softer and had twice the covers I had known before, and a heavy curtain over the doorway kept out the wind. As the winter days shortened and darkened, I was even given a brazier to warm the chamber and pure white candles to light my way to bed, indulgences my mother never allowed.

I slipped into their household like an eel into the fishpond in the middle of the garden, a transition made easier with the approach of Saturnalia. Any other time of the year and I would have been subjected to the most intense scrutiny from the lowest gardener’s boy to the head steward who attended Quintus Porcius at his morning visitations, but preparations for the “best of days” were well in hand when I arrived and excitement filled the domus. Cries of “Io, Saturnalia!” echoed through every room and each day brought fresh supplies from their country estates. Noisy geese and ducks and all manner of game birds arrived in crates for the feasting to come, along with flour, olives, cheeses, and a huge supply of candles that would be given as gifts to all of Quintus Porcius’s clients.

Boughs of fresh, red-berried holly decorated the walls, and my own servants turned their hands to making wreaths of yew and cedar. On the eve of Saturnalia, Prisca let me help her attach silver rings, candles, and sweetmeats to the wreaths that would be distributed to her lesser friends. Her greater friends would receive wreaths adorned with gold earrings and cameos carved in the likeness of various goddesses.

I had assumed my father’s wealth matched, if not surpassed, that of his old friend, yet my mother had never given such gifts as these.

“Oh!” I said when her maidservant handed Prisca a particularly lovely pendant. A large lustrous pearl glowed in the middle of golden flames and smaller pearls glistened around the rim.