Elodie Harper - The Wolf Den

She tries to meet her friends at The Sparrow as before, but apart from Dido, conversation is strained. Victoria has barely spoken to her since their row over Britannica. Returning to the brothel to work, she finds the Briton’s resistance has permanently changed the atmosphere. Everyone is on edge, trying to shield her from customers, for their own sake as much as hers. The rare times anyone shares a joke, Amara no longer feels part of the banter. On the evening she and Dido are sent to entertain at Cornelius’s house, Amara is so happy to see Egnatius, with his absurd compliments and eternal good temper, she almost kisses him.

And then there is Rufus. He has not called for her quite as often as she would have hoped – no more than twice a week – but every time she sees him, she feels a little more confident in his attachment. Her own feelings are growing like bindweed, tangling her thoughts, threatening to choke her scheming. He makes such an effort to be charming, his manner is so gentle, it is hard not to care too much. But she is always aware of the imbalance in power, and fear is her affection’s shadow. She lives with the knowledge that he could tear her life apart on a whim, while she could do him no more damage than a pebble dropped in a pond.

It is her third week living above the brothel when Rufus’s slave Philos calls round on the Thursday morning, warning her to be ready for his master in the evening. She hears Felix take the message – and the money – then the creak of his footsteps as he approaches the storeroom. Amara scrambles to her feet, dusting off her toga.

“I take it you heard that?” Felix says, sticking his head around the door. “You can at least make yourself useful until then.”

“Of course,” she replies, following him out into the corridor and walking to his study.

This is the strangest part of her new life, all the hours she spends with her master. She takes her customary seat near the doorway, tucked in beside a small table. Felix has never asked her to share his bed again, but eventually, he relented and let her help with his accounts. It started with Terentia’s loan, when he got her to draw up the contract and write the records. Now he has her working on a number of files. She wonders how he ever managed to do it all himself.

Amara has always thought of her master as a thug, but she is forced to acknowledge the charm, as well as the threats, he deploys in his money lending. Clients visit, not noticing the small bent figure in the corner recording their conversations, and Felix treats the men to wine, using jokes and flattery, drawing out their hopes and their secrets. “There’s no such thing as useless information,” he tells her, after one client leaves having lamented about his mother-in-law for half an hour.

He is meticulous with his accounts, all the prostitution money gets ploughed into the loan-sharking, and he takes very little out for pleasure. In fact, pleasure seems to rank low in his life altogether. He hangs out with cronies in bars some evenings, probably the same men she saw that day at the Palaestra, but she is unsure how much he likes anyone, or if he has any real friends.

She tries to let go of her hatred for a while, to study him the way she has watched him study other people. If he were a stranger what would she notice? His love of money, his determination, his cruelty, his surprising fascination with the thoughts and feelings of others. His total lack of compassion. The last, she almost cannot admit to herself: his loneliness.

She is trying to work out the interest payments on a loan, setting it against the information Felix has gleaned about the debtor’s assets, when she realizes he is looking at her.

“Have you still not fucked the posh boy yet?”

“No.”

“Cold-hearted bitch.” There is laughter in his voice, and she knows the insult is meant as a compliment. “I wouldn’t leave it too long. The novelty of rejection wears off after a while. And you’re a whore, not a wife.”

He has read her own anxieties as if they were branded on her body. “I’m afraid of him,” Amara lies. “I think he might enjoy violence.”

“You’ll manage,” Felix says, going back to his accounts. “Not like you haven’t had plenty of practise. And I can charge more if it’s anything extreme, so make sure you tell me.”

“Now who’s cold-hearted?” Amara asks, raising her eyebrows. “What if he killed me?”

“I’d be sorry to lose such a valuable whore.”

“How sorry?”

“Don’t beg for crumbs,” he says with a look of distaste. “It doesn’t suit you.”

His words bring back painful memories of Pliny, of her abject pleading with him to buy her. That has surely cured her of ever being tempted to beg again. She steals a look at Felix’s desk. The scroll of Herophilos is still sitting on it, no doubt left there deliberately to torment her. She has never given him the satisfaction of asking if she can read it.

“I think you could charge this one a little more,” she says, referring to the account she’s been looking over. “When you think about his business, Manlius definitely has other assets he could draw on. You’ve noted here that the brooch on his cloak was bronze.”

“It’s his third loan,” Felix says. “And he’s never late. He’s too safe a bet to squeeze too hard. Only go for blood if you think they can’t afford to come back again.”

Amara thinks of Marcella, wonders if he has sold her cameo yet. She remembers the other woman’s finger, the pale circle where her mother’s ring had sat, the way Marcella struggled to get it off. “I ought to go to the baths today,” she says. “You’re right, I can’t keep Rufus waiting forever. Would you allow me the money to get my hair done? I could do with it being styled.”

Felix squints, looking at her hair, clearly debating whether it’s a necessary expense. Then he takes some coins from a drawer. “You can go in a couple of hours,” he says. “After you’ve been through the rest of those files.”

Amara steps onto the street, relieved to have some space from Felix. His clients’ accounts make her wonder what notes he might have made on his women, what observations he has stored away about her. She hesitates as she walks past the back door of the brothel, torn between the desire to see if Dido is in, to ask her to come too, and worry that it will look like she’s lording it over everyone by getting her hair done. Gallus is on the front door.

“Is anyone in?” she asks him.

“Just Victoria,” he says. “Can’t you hear?” Amara realizes she can indeed hear Victoria’s voice, talking to a customer, cooing over his virility. “The others are out fishing. Apart from the savage.”

“Thanks. Give Beronice my love.”

“I’m not some girls’ fucking messenger slave.” Gallus scowls. “Tell her yourself.”

Going to the baths by herself is another new experience since she moved upstairs. Amara stores her cheap toga in one of the cubby holes in the changing room, pressing past a couple of gossiping friends who are still loitering after packing their own clothes away. The stone walls echo to the chatter of women’s voices and the shriek and splash of some bathers cooling off in the small plunge pool in the corner. She finds a beauty attendant touting for business and goes through to the hot room, strapping on wooden clogs to protect her feet from the scalding floor.

The attendant is Greek but seems in no mood to swap tales of the home country. She is brisk with Amara’s body, tweezering out the hair under her arms, slathering her legs with waxy resin then scraping them until they are smooth. Amara winces at the pain. All around her, other women are being similarly pruned and primped, though some have opted for the relaxation of a massage instead, and she can hear the slap of hands on bare skin. Her attendant fetches a small tub of water, and Amara cleans herself, washing away the last of the resin and the dirt of the storeroom. She feels scoured from the heat and all the scraping.