Stephen Baxter - Coalescent

Amator seemed to be doing better than the average, though. His home, set in an upper level of the complex, turned out to be a grand apartment fronted by a bakery. The shop was a busy place, and enticing smells issued from its big stone ovens.

A retainer came through the shop and led them into the house behind. The retainer was a boy of sixteen or seventeen, with plump, effeminate features. When he walked ahead of them there was a faint whiff of perfume.

At the heart of the home, a series of rooms crowded around a small tiled atrium, illuminated by a light well cut into the roof above. At the far side of the atrium a narrow passageway led them between larger rooms — an office, and a large, sumptuous-looking dining room — and out to a garden, surrounded on three sides by slender columns, and with a view to the south overlooking the city. The house itself was not large by the standards of Regina’s villa — but then this was Rome, and she understood how much more expensive space was here.

The garden, called a peristylium , despite a small fountain with a statue of some aquatic goddess, was not terribly impressive in itself. But what made it remarkable was that it had been entirely built on the roof of the apartment below. Brica poked at the grass with one sandaled toe, trying to find the concrete base beneath.

Amator met them in the little garden. “Welcome, Regina …” His voice was as deep and rich as she remembered, and she felt a deep and unwelcome flush work through her belly, as if her body kept its own memories. But she was shocked at the sight of him.

A few years older than her, he was now in his middle fifties. His thin frame was swathed in a purple- edged toga, no doubt worn to impress her, she thought. But he had grown gaunt. His face had lost its fullness, and his cheeks and chin showed sharp bones. And his head was now completely bald — in fact, she saw with surprise, his eyebrows were gone, too, though two lines of livid flesh showed where they had been.

His retainer, the perfumed boy, hovered at his elbow, looking uncertain and nervous.

Regina gave Amator her hand, and he buffed his lips against it. “I am glad to see you are prospering,” she said. “But you have changed.”

He pursed his lips, and she saw that his eyes were as black and deep as ever. “You’re talking about my hair? I can tell you’ve only just arrived,” he said dryly. “You sound so provincial! Whole-body depilation is quite the fashion now. Of course you can’t find a barber to do the job well these days. But Sulla here is an expert with his poultices of wax, if a little heavy-handed with the tweezers.”

“And perhaps you enjoy the little pains, do you?”

He arched his head, and a smile tugged at the corners of his small mouth. “You’ve lost none of your sharpness, little chicken.”

The retainer’s reaction to this exchange was complex. He had flushed when Amator referred to him personally, but now he was watching Regina with alarmed calculation.

They are lovers, Regina realized suddenly. And this wretched boy of Amator’s is trying to work out if I am any threat to his position. She eyed the boy without pity. The boy wore a gold bulla around his neck. Like a little pouch, this was a symbol of his free birth, and would normally be worn from infancy to manhood. He looked too old to be wearing such a childish token, and she wondered if Amator preferred to keep his companion young.

If Amator had chosen men over women, something of his old hunger showed in his eyes as he turned his intense gaze on Brica. Regina felt proud as Brica returned his lascivious stare with contempt.

“Your companion is lovely,” said Amator smoothly. “Her paleness gives her an exotic look in these warmer climes—”

“Her name is Brica,” said Regina. “She is my daughter. And yours, Amator.” She heard a gasp from Brica; Regina had not warned her about this. “Although truthfully I cannot be sure if it was you or Athaulf whose restless cock impregnated me that night.”

Amator’s gaze clouded. But he smiled again at Brica, though with more levels of complexity than before. “Wine, Sulla,” he murmured.

The boy now stared with open hostility at Regina and Brica, these relics of his master’s complicated past. But he went to get the wine.

Amator waved his guests to the low couches set out around the fountain. Sulla returned with jugs of wine and water, three fine blue glasses, and plates of figs, olives, and apples. Despite her hunger Regina only sipped a little wine. But Brica, without inhibition and despite the news she had just received, wolfed down the apples; Amator seemed startled by her animal directness.

Wary, calculating, clearly wondering what she wanted from him, Amator told Regina a little about himself. He had come to Rome in partnership with Athaulf. The German had long since vanished from his life; Regina wondered if their relationship had been deeper than she had suspected on that night when they had used her. Still, they had stayed together long enough to found a successful grain-shipping business.

“Rome is a relentlessly hungry city, Regina,” he said. “It has been unable to feed itself since the days of Julius Caesar, and it was Augustus who introduced the annona .” This was a dole of free grain, distributed to poorer citizens.

“We saw the port — the grain fleet.”

“Yes. And with such mighty flows of goods, there are plenty of opportunities for a man of intelligence and charm to make a living for himself, even in these complicated times.”

“And you always had those attributes in plenty.”

“I’ve done well for the son of a servant from the provinces — don’t you think? I’ve come a long way from there, to this .”

Brica leaned forward, and spoke around a mouthful of fruit. “Why do you have a purple stripe on your cloak? It looks ridiculous.” It was the first thing she had said to him.

“I belong to the equestrian order,” he said smoothly. He displayed a big, gaudy gold ring. “It is an ancient order, dating from the times before the wars with Carthage, when the richest citizens were required to fund the cavalry in defense of the Republic. Today it is open to all adult citizens — provided you have enough money, of course — do you know, the Emperor provides me with a horse! But I don’t ride; I keep the beast in a stable in my house in the country. I have various civic responsibilities, and—”

“You are also a member of three guilds,” said Regina. “You have several patrons, including a senator called Titus Nerva.”

“You seem to know a great deal about me,” Amator cut in, eyeing her.

“Before he died, your father Carausias was very informative. Even though you rarely wrote to him unless you needed money or some other favor, he told me enough to follow your career.”

Amator leaned forward. “So you know me, as one old lover knows another.”

“Or as a hunter knows her quarry.”

“Well, you have me at a disadvantage,” he said. “You know my biography, but I have heard nothing of you since that long-ago night of exuberance and foolishness, which I had all but forgotten.”

“ I haven’t forgotten. After that ‘night of exuberance,’ you left me pregnant. You or your German boyfriend. Verulamium fell. Because of the money you stole from your father we couldn’t escape to Armorica. I was forced to trek, pregnant, across the country. I gave birth in an abandoned roundhouse of the Celtae. I was seventeen years old.

“I spent twenty years trying to make a farmstead work, scraping my food from the ground. But I raised your daughter, as you can see. Later we were overrun by the forces of a warlord called Artorius. Perhaps you have heard of him; he is ambitious. I saved my life and your daughter’s by sleeping with him. Again I survived.”