Stitches and Secrets

The domus kept its midday rhythm: low voices in the garden, the far clatter of pots from the kitchen, slaves passing along the colonnade about their work.

Sam stood before Janet’s door with Jack’s toga bundled against her, the heavy white wool spilling over her forearm and dragging at her wrists. She had found the torn edge at the hem, where some snag had pulled the weave open. Of all the things her father had taught her, none had needed a needle.

Through the open door Sam could see Janet on a stool just inside, a piece of mending across her knees and a basket of linens at her feet. Her five-year-old daughter Cassandra knelt on the floor nearby, setting wooden spools one upon another until the tower leaned.

“Janet.” Sam came in over the threshold and lifted the heavy folds towards her. “Could you… show me how to mend this? I found a tear in it this morning.”

Janet set her own mending aside and took the toga, running her thumb along the torn hem. She drew a second stool close beside her own for Sam, and by the time Sam had sat down the needle was threaded. “Watch.” She put in a few neat stitches. “Like this. Small and even. Pull it tight, but not too tight.”

Sam nodded and took the needle. She bent close over the hem and worked slowly, drawing each stitch through with her breath held. Janet watched the first few go in, and her eyes widened. Before the next one was pulled tight, she had snatched the toga back.

“No, child.” She was already picking out Sam’s stitches with the point of the needle. “Don’t put a needle to cloth again. Ever. Tunics, cloaks, anything that needs mending, you bring it to me. I’ll do it.”

Sam’s hands were still lifted. “But I…”

Janet shook her head. The last of Sam’s stitches came free under the needle, and she began to set her own in their place. “The Dominus needs it for the Curia. If Cato saw this… gods, he’d skin you alive. It looks as though a drunk spider danced across the cloth.”

Heat rose into Sam’s face. She had long known herself clumsy at the work of a household, but she had not known, until now, that she was hopeless at it.

Janet worked on without a word, and there was no sound in the room but the thread drawn through the wool.

Sam twisted her fingers together in her lap. It was not only for the needle that she had come, but Cassandra was still at her spools, so she held her tongue.

Janet glanced up, and only the corner of her mouth moved. “Cassie, love, go and fetch Mamma’s thimble from the basket in the corridor.”

Cassandra scampered off.

When the child’s footsteps had faded down the corridor, Janet met Sam’s eyes. “Out with it.”

Sam swallowed. “The Dominus… he hasn’t. Not once.” She looked down at her hands. “He has been kind to me. Every night I lie in the alcove, afraid that he will call me, and he never does.”

Janet kept her eyes on the hem and let nothing come into her face. It was never wise to speak of the Dominus.

But Sam pressed on. “I dread the night he finally does. I’ve never…” She broke off, and her voice dropped lower. “Downstairs, I heard the women talk.” She could not look at Janet. “You’ve been here longer. Has he… with you…?”

Janet laid the needle down across the toga. For a long while she said nothing, her eyes on the bar of light the doorway threw across the floor, and then a laugh escaped her, so quiet that it was hardly more than a breath.

Sam drew back a little on her stool. She had not expected Janet to laugh about it as Nefert and Doris had.

Janet’s eyes came to rest on her, and she shook her head. “Not what you think, girl.” She leaned back against the wall and folded her hands in her lap. “I was born in this house,” she began, keeping her voice low. “Six years after the Dominus. We grew up together, in a way. Him the young master learning his letters, me a house-born slave learning mine. Children see each other differently from the way grown folk do. I was fierce even then. Sharp tongue, quick temper, never one to back down. The old atriensis used to scold me for it. And the Dominus, he’d chase me through the garden when we were small, and half the time I’d turn the game round and have him running instead.”

Her smile was for something long ago. “He’d laugh when he was in a good mood. Pretend to be terrified of me. Said I had a glare that could curdle milk.”

Sam tried to see it. Janet as a scowling girl among the box hedges came easily enough, but the Dominus as a boy, running from her through the garden, she could not picture at all.

“He did call me,” Janet went on, more softly. “When I was fifteen, he summoned me to his chamber. I knew what it meant. Everyone did. So I went, and stood there while he looked at me like I was… something new.” She cleared her throat and smoothed a fold of the toga that did not need it. “He started to kiss me. And I… laughed. Couldn’t help it. He pulled back like he’d been burned, face red as a legionary’s cloak, and muttered something about it feeling wrong, like kissing a sister. After that neither of us knew what to say, so we played tabula instead. He let me win two games out of three.” The smile stayed a little after the words had gone. “Later, when I was older, he was kind enough to let me choose a man from among the slaves. A good one, Cassie’s father. We had a few happy years before the fever took him, two winters ago.”

She met Sam’s eyes. “All I can tell you, child, is that the Dominus is not a cruel man.” She gave a small shrug, took up the needle, and bent to the toga again.

Sam watched the needle dart in and out of the white wool. “But among my people,” she said at last, “a woman lies with no man but her husband. One who does…” She stopped. “No man will take her after that. Her own kin will not look at her.”

Janet’s needle stopped. When she looked up, the ease Sam had seen in her face a moment before was gone. “Husband. There is no husband for us, girl. There is no marriage. What I had with Cassie’s father, I had because the Dominus allowed it, and the Dominus could have taken it back.” She bent to the hem again and did not look at Sam any more.

Cassie came running back, the bronze thimble clutched in one small fist. “Found it, Mamma!” She held it up, then caught sight of the toga and bounced closer. “Is that Tata Jack’s big cloak? Can I help sew?”

The hardness went out of Janet’s face, and she drew the child into her lap. “Not this one, love. It’s too important. But you can help me with the linens later.”

Cassie beamed and was soon down among the spools again, building a new tower and humming a tune of her own making.

Sam watched her play. The child had never known any house but this one. But Sam had known another life, and it was no longer hers.