Caesar's Women by Colleen McCullough Page B

Crassus had succumbed to a generous impulse, sold Caesar very cheaply sufficient mosaic flooring to cover the two rooms Caesar himself used. When he had bought the house of Marcus Livius Drusus, Crassus had rather despised the floor's antiquity; but Caesar's taste was unerring, he knew nothing so good had been produced in fifty years. Similarly, Crassus had been pleased to use Caesar's apartment as practice for the squads of unskilled slaves he (very profitably) trained in prized and costly trades like plastering walls, picking out moldings and pilasters with gilt, and painting frescoes.
    Thus when Caesar entered this apartment he heaved a sigh of sheer satisfaction as he gazed around the perfections of study-cum-reception-room and bedroom. Good, good! Lucius Decumius had followed his instructions to the letter and arranged several new items of furniture exactly where Caesar had wanted. They had been found in Further Spain and shipped to Rome ahead of time: a glossy console table carved out of reddish marble with lion's feet legs, a gilded couch covered in Tyrian purple tapestry, two splendid chairs. There, he noted with amusement, was the new bed Lucius Decumius had mentioned, a commodious structure in ebony and gilt with a Tyrian purple spread. Who could guess, looking at Lucius Decumius, that his taste was quite up there with Caesar's?
    The owner of this establishment didn't bother checking the third room, which was really a section of the balcony rimming the interior light well. Either end of it had been walled off for privacy from the neighbors, and the light well itself was heavily shuttered, allowing air but forbidding prying eyes any sight of its interior. Herein the service arrangements were located, from a man-sized bronze bath to a cistern storing water to a chamber pot. There were no cooking facilities and Caesar did not employ a servant who lived in the apartment. Cleaning was in the care of Aurelia's servants, whom Eutychus sent down regularly to empty the bath water and keep the cistern filled, the chamber pot sweet, the linen washed, the floors swept, and every other surface dusted.
    Lucius Decumius was already there, perched on the couch, his legs swinging clear of the exquisitely colored merman on the floor, his eyes upon a scroll he held between his hands.
    “Making sure the College accounts are in order for the urban praetor's audit?” asked Caesar, closing the door.
    “Something like that,” Lucius Decumius answered, letting the scroll fly shut with a snap.
    Caesar crossed to consult the cylinder of a water clock. “According to this little beast, it's time to go downstairs, dad. Perhaps she won't be punctual, especially if Silanus has no love of chronometers, but somehow the lady didn't strike me as a person who ignores the passage of time.”
    “You won't want me here, Pavo, so I'll just shove her in the door and go home,” said Lucius Decumius, exiting promptly.
    Caesar seated himself at his desk to write a letter to Queen Oradaltis in Bithynia, but though he wrote as expeditiously as he did everything else, he had not done more than put paper in front of him when the door opened and Servilia entered. His assessment was right: she was not a lady who ignored time.
    Rising, he went round the desk to greet her, intrigued when she extended her hand the way a man would. He shook it with exactly the courteous pressure such small bones demanded, but as he would have shaken a man's hand. There was a chair ready at his desk, though before she arrived he had not been sure whether to conduct this interview across a desk or more cozily ensconced in closer proximity. His mother had been right: Servilia was not easy to read. So he ushered her to the chair opposite, then returned to his own. Hands clasped loosely on the desk in front of him, he looked at her solemnly.
    Well preserved if she was nearing thirty-seven years of age, he decided, and elegantly dressed in a vermilion robe whose color skated perilously