The Passion of Mary Magdalen. Elizabeth Cunningham
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at the Vine and Fig Tree with the whores trading friendly insults, the old women cackling over lewd jokes, the little girls competing to help and getting in the way.
At last Paulina’s face and hair were done. The ornatrix and the tontrix stepped back, and Paulina again examined herself from every possible angle. There was a collective holding of breath as everyone waited for the verdict.
“Stola!” She snapped her fingers.
A colorless little woman who’d been standing on the sidelines now stepped forward with a dull looking garment the color of an old bruise. To call it aubergine would have been a stretch. The woman’s hands shook as she held it up.
“Not that one, stulta!”
The woman nimbly skipped just out of range of Paulina’s raised hand.
“But, domina, I thought—”
“No one has my permission to think anything unless I say so. Put it back.” She sighed as if she were a patient long-suffering adult surrounded by backward children. “I told you before. I will have the red.”
“Domina, honey.” I recognized the voice of the man who had called out to me before. He had been standing, almost leaning against the far wall, plainly bored. Now he took a step towards her. “May I remind you that your esteemed pater, the honorable senator Publius Paulus, is calling today and plans to dine.”
“I know my father’s name,” she snapped. “And no, you may not remind me. I’ll do the reminding. You are in charge of my chamber, not my life, Reginus. Just because you belong to my father, and I can’t discipline you myself, doesn’t mean he won’t do worse than I could ever dream of doing if I tell him of your insolence.”
The man made an obscene gesture with his hands, which were hidden behind his back even as he bowed to her, saying. “Yes, domina, delight of my eyes.” He couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
“As for the rest of you—” Paulina stopped mid-sentence. If she had been a dog her ears and nose would have been quivering; she might have whined softly in anticipation as the voice she strained to hear came closer.
“Quick,” she hissed to her attendants.
For someone who’d taken almost two hours with hair and make-up alone, Paulina jumped into the stola in record time. She could barely stand still as the ornatrix fastened it with a brooch at the shoulder and tried to drape the folds as modestly as possible, which was difficult as the fine, soft-spun wool had a tendency to cling to her curves.
“You,” Paulina shoved the ornatrix aside and pointed to me, “fix my breasts!”
“What?” Her breasts needed no improvement as far as I could see.
“Tie the girdle under them. Push them up. You’re a whore. You know!”
I decided it was useless to point out that when I was a whore I’d had my own ornatrix and a veste. I knew the effect she was after.
“You,” she said to the ornatrix. “Get the garnets.”
I arranged her breasts as if they were roasted twin birds on a platter while the ornatrix fastened the necklace of dark garnets that would draw every eye to the depths of her cleavage. Then she hurtled across the room to the door. As soon as she crossed the threshold, her entire bearing changed. She moved languorously to the balustrade, stretched as if she had just woken up, and then leaned over it, resting her chin in one hand. Those of us inside the chamber could hear the sound of one male voice below.
“Why Decius Mundus,” she cooed, yes cooed. “My favorite equestrian. What a surprise. I didn’t know you were back.”
There were a few soft snorts from the chamber slaves and a great deal of eye rolling.
“Ah, my dear domina. What a vision you are. Like a goddess calling from on high to a mere mortal.”
The slaves were now in an agony to keep from exploding with laughter. I might have bonded with them then, I suppose, but no one caught my eye, and I felt a new and unwelcome wariness. How could I know who was trustworthy? How could you trust anyone in a place as miserable as this one, where body parts could be lopped off on a whim?
“Are you in Rome for long this time?”
“I’ve been posted here for the winter, domina.”
“Then I shall expect you to dine with us today, Decius.”
“It will be my great pleasure, domina. Until then!”
Paulina turned from the balustrade, her enticing smile still in place for an instant. Then she discarded it—that’s how it seemed—and the petulant expression was back.
“Get me the other stola,” she said wearily.
Wisely no one questioned her. Everyone welcomed the brooding silence into which she had fallen. She was tractable as a doll as the a veste removed the red tunic and dressed her again in the somber one.
“You.” She roused herself and focused on me again. “Can you spin and weave?”
“Not very well.” My mothers had been so busy teaching me things like how to cast a spear from a moving chariot that they’d neglected the traditional female arts.
“Neither can I,” she sighed. “But I have to pretend I can every damn morning while the clients line up to see Claudius.”
“Why?” I asked sincerely puzzled. Wasn’t that the point of having slaves? To do the work for you?
“Don’t you know, honey?” the male slave jumped in. “The virtuous wife of Old Republican Stock, like our lovely domina here, is industrious.” The man seemed incapable of getting his tongue out of his cheek. “She clothes her household. Why, the great Emperor Augustus himself only wore garments made by his womenfolk—”
“Shut up, Reginus!” snapped Paulina; clearly if it was up to her, he would have been as tongueless as Boca. “Nobody asked you, and nobody is to answer her questions anyway, which she has no right to ask.
“Now hear this, all chamber slaves: Red is my slave. Mine! I bought her. I beat her. I’m training her as my pedisequa. She is to attend me whenever I want her and to do whatever I tell her to do. Right now I’m taking her with me to the textile room. If anyone has any complaints about her or notices any disrespect or shirking in her, you are to come directly to me. Not my husband. Not my father. Is that understood?”
There was a hearty chorus of “Yes, domina!”
She could hardly have isolated me more, if she told everyone I was her personal leper.
“Come!” she snapped her fingers.
I had a momentary vision of simply lying down and forcing her to drag me—to my death no doubt, which would be the honorable course to choose. I glanced around the room to see if there was a shard of glass. Then I could cut her throat or mine. Where was a sword when you needed to fall on one? Or a vial of poison or a basket full of asps?
“Red!”
I shrugged and followed her out of the chamber with the eyes of other slaves lodged in my back like knives.
The only thing that kept my first day from being as tedious as countless days to