The Insula Tiberina, Roma Mater
"Hello, Helena."
Late-spring rains had come to Rome, washing the marble and plaster buildings clean. The ash and grit drifting down out of the sky were gone. For the first time in months the air seemed clean and clear, and a spring sun shone down, making the temples on the Capitoline Hill glow with a blaze of color. Even the Tiber, that notorious muddy stream choked with the city's filth and the outwash of a hundred Latin farms, was running high and swift against its banks. With another week of rains like this, it might even begin to flow clear.
"Hello, Anastasia. May I sit?"
At the center of the river, on the Tiber Island, there was a verdant garden on the grounds of the Temple of Asklepius. From its benches, under graceful willows, one could sit and watch the parade of humanity surging back and forth across the Pons Aemillius, the oldest stone bridge in the city. Today, there were flocks of ducks under the bridge and a funeral procession crossing it. The rattle of drums and the wailing of the professional mourners carried across the water. Despite the tumult, in the garden there was a sense of peace and tranquility. The priests of the temple lavished care upon the plantings, for the masters of their order held that the sound of running water and the smell of fresh and growing things were the best care that could be provided.
Helena sat brushing away a few narrow leaves fallen from the willows shrouding the bench. As befitted a lady of the city, she was wearing a conservative dress and tunic, with a light lace scarf covering the sleek line of her hair. In defiance of usual fashion, her hair fell only to her shoulders. Like many in the city, she wore somber colors and very little jewelry. The extent of the devastation in the south, where ancient Vesuvius had erupted only months before, had touched everyone. Of course, with the resources at her command, the bracelets on her left arm had come from distant Taprobane and blazed with rubies set in electrum. Sitting, she sighed gently, leaning on one hand.
A breeze sighed through the willows and quaking aspen that filled the garden behind them. It was a beautiful sound, like falling water, and it moved Helena's heart to thoughts of peace. This was a rare thing, for she was a woman of considerable and vehement conviction. Her husband often marveled at her restlessness, when he had time to notice it. Emperors tended to be distracted.
Her companion was silent, her head bowed, her face obscured by a dark, soot-colored cloth. Helena could barely make out a pair of folded hands in the woman's lap. Her bare fingertips peeked forth from heavy sleeves. Helena frowned, her fine white forehead creasing in vexation. Anastasia's fingernails were unpainted and in dreadful need of a manicure.
"Anastasia, you are not well."
The dark shape on the bench gave a choked snort, which Helena took to be the beginnings of a laugh. Helena waited, wondering if her old friend would say anything, but a turn of the glass passed and there was only silence between them.
"I wonder," said Helena at last, picking restlessly at the edge of her shawl, "if you would care to have dinner with us in our apartments. Just the three of us. Perhaps tomorrow? If, of course, your social schedule is not too full."
Anastasia did not reply for some time and Helena was beginning to grow angry when the woman in the dark cloth said, "You must have something new to show me. A wig of black Indian hair? A tiger pup? A brace of pygmies? Some new contraption of Aurelian's?"
The voice of the other woman was old and bitter and cold. Helena swallowed the heated words that had been close to flying from her mouth. She turned, fully facing her companion, and reached out with a gentle hand. Anastasia did not resist the touch and Helena carefully drew aside the veil that shrouded the older woman's head.
"Oh, my friend…" Helena's voice trailed off. She laid aside the cowl, draping it on Anastasia's shoulders. "You, my dear," she continued in a stronger voice, "must entertain my hairdresser. Whoever has charge of your hair now is addled!"
Anastasia still did not smile, though there was a faint wrinkling around her eyes. Seeing her friend for the first time in weeks, Helena despaired. Rumors were rife, amongst the ministers and notables of the city, that the notorious Duchess of Parma, Anastasia de'Orelio, the wealthiest woman in the Western Empire, had at last laid aside her interest in the world.
Can it be? they whispered in the baths, while they thought no one could hear. Can the violet-eyed goddess have turned her back on us at last? Will the glorious Villa of Swans lie empty and cold? Where will the grand parties be, the decadent bacchanals? The social season is ruined!
Helena had sat these past weeks, holding court in her own salon, worrying. The patrician wives of Rome were in an uproar as no one knew what the truth of the matter was.
Is she abroad? Some of the women were sure that the Duchess had taken some barbarian king for her lover and lay in his dusky arms in far Hesperidia. Is she, praise Caesar, dead? Others, who had felt the whip of her tongue and the dagger of her intellect, prayed that she might have fallen among the dead of Vesuvius, asphyxiated on the docks of Herculaneum with half of the idlers in Rome. Who, lamented a few, will tweak the noses of the corrupt, self-serving men who clog the Senate chambers like so many pigs in the trough?
Helena worried for her friend, who had vanished from the public stage, and for the Empire. Helena was one of the few people in her husband's confidence who knew the full scope of the Duchess' influence and power. The common herd of senators and tribunes knew her only as a scandalous society matron. Anastasia, a young widow, had inherited more than her husband's estates and title upon his untimely death. For the last seven years she had been the Emperor's spymaster as well. The old Duke had chosen well, taking her as his wife. He had been a canny old goat, keeping his head and fortune in the midst of the War of the Three Pretenders. Helena had never met him, but she could see the memory of him living on in Anastasia.
Galen Atreus was a good emperor and a good husband, but he did not have the passion for intrigue which could make him a great emperor. In this respect, as Helena was fond of reminding her dear husband when he grumbled and muttered about "women of power" and "that damned, know-it-all Duchess," she made a perfect match. Galen was an exceptional administrator, daring general, notably honest and beloved of the Legions. Anastasia filled in the sly and devious and underhanded traits he lacked.
But the former Anastasia was elegant, refined and impeccably dressed. Helena had learned nearly everything that she knew of the art of public appearance-the use of artful paints, of proper clothing and jewelry, the wry remark, the cutting rejoinder-from the Duchess. Anastasia had been the most well-presented woman Helena had ever known.
The Anastasia she now beheld, draped in stained linen and this grimy stole, had left her rose chalk and white lead behind. The haggard eyes were not disguised, her once glorious hair a tangled, snarled, tar-colored mess. The unkempt fingernails were only the beginning. The Duchess' skin, once the marvel of the baths, was dry and patchy, her voluptuous figure well hidden by baggy cloth. There was even a slight smell around her. Helena repressed a shudder and swallowed.
"Dear… what afflicts you? Whom do you mourn?"
Anastasia shook her head minutely, but the burst of pain was so clear in her eyes that Helena knew she had come upon just a thread of the truth. The Empress took her friend's hand, surprised by the chill touch. It seemed the claw of some dead thing, some bog creature crept out to take the form of the living. Unthinking, she took the hand in both of hers.
"It was the eruption?"
There was a minute flicker in the dead eyes. Helena took a breath and decided to press the issue. Her husband needed help-the little men in the offices and ministries were beginning to encroach on the privileges and authorities that the Duchess had once held. Soon all of the power Anastasia and her husband had built up, all of the networks of contacts, the favors, the closely held secrets, would fade away. Men without her personal honor, her sense of responsibility to the state, her loyalty to Emperor Galen, would flow into those places. Those men, Helena did not trust to advise her husband. So, she must trespass in the personal affairs of a friend.
"Do you know they are dead? Have their bodies been exhumed from the ash?"
Anastasia's eyes flickered open and her pale lips twisted in a grimace.
"No…"
"Then there is some hope, however small, they may still live." Helena pressed the Duchess' hand tight, willing some of her warmth, some echo of the glorious day, into the cold flesh.
"No. They are all dead." Anastasia's eyes dropped.
"How can you say this?" Helena snapped, notoriously short temper struggling with concern for Anastasia. "Surely they were in Baiae, or Oplontis, where many have survived, but are lost in the vast crowd of refugees thrown out of house and home."
Now Anastasia did laugh, a sound filled with despair.
"Dear Helena," she said, her voice hoarse from disuse. "I know that you mean well, but those that I mourn were at the very crown of the mountain. I am sure of it. By all accounts a full mile of the peak is gone, torn away by the anger of the gods."
Helena made a sour face. If this were true, then there was no hope. She straightened her spine, brushed her hair back and met the Duchess' eyes once more.
"Then," she said stiffly, "you must leave off this malingering and return to decent public life. More, you must resume your accustomed duties in the Imperial service."
Anastasia managed a crooked half-grin. "You sound like one of those letters of yours, when you're trying to convince me to give up my debauched lifestyle."
Helena smiled back, pleased that she had roused her friend to some semblance of life.
"But," said Anastasia, the momentary spark fading, "I cannot be your husband's spymaster. I have lost my taste for that game. He will find another-there are always men eager to work in secret, in the name of the Emperor." She made a dismissive motion with her hand, but even that was obviously an effort.
"No!" blurted Helena, squeezing the Duchess' hand. "He needs you, not one of these lackwits that infest the halls of the Palatine, maundering on about conspiracies and informers! It would take someone years to rebuild your organization-Galen has too many enemies to take such a risk."
Anastasia stood, brushing a hanging branch of silver willow away from her head. A servant, a young blond girl, appeared as if from thin air. Helena was taken aback for a moment. She had not noticed the slave at all. The girl was dressed in mournful brown and black as well, matching her mistress.
"Good-bye, Helena. Tell Galen that I appreciate his concern, but I will leave the city soon. There are only dead memories here."
With that, while Helena grasped for something to say, the two women departed, their steps slow. For a moment, Helena could see them, the girl helping the older woman, two stooped crows with blown wings, and then they passed into the trees and were gone.
Hades take this despair that grips us all! Helena was enraged by the passivity suffocating the populace. The eruption of Vesuvius was a calamity and a disaster, true, but half the people in Rome, even in the Imperial government, even her husband, seemed to think it was the end of the world. It was past her comprehension. Many people seemed lifeless, or directionless, now that the first frantic burst of activity had passed. Bread and olives and salted meat went south in wagons, people with little more than the clothes on their back came north. Crowds of refugees gathered in the public forums, listless, barely capable of feeding themselves.
Even Galen and his younger brother Aurelian were gripped by the same malaise.
"We will see about that," she snorted, rising and gathering up her skirts so that the mud in the garden did not soil the edges. "If everyone is going to droop about like ugly boys at the feast-day dance, then I shall have to see about it myself."