The Voice in the Lamplight

The bedchamber was quiet. In the corner the water clock dripped, and now and then the oil lamp hissed on its stand. Between the two ran Sam’s voice.

“…where the spring comes cold out of the rock, and the alders lean above it, and no axe has ever rung…”

Not many days after Jack had caught her talking to his myrtle, the reading became the habit of every night.

Each evening Gaius brought in a small tray, with a handful of olives, a wedge of coarse bread and a cup of watered wine. Jack would eat without hurry, and afterwards stretch himself on the wide cedar bed with his weight on one elbow. Then he would nod at whatever lay on the low table.

“Read.”

It was always something light: Greek verse he claimed to follow only in part, Horace’s satires. Nothing in it asked much of the listener, and it filled the quiet. Sam would take up the scroll and sit on the low stool at the foot of the bed, and read by the single lamp that burned between them.

Tonight it was a roll of country verses whose tag had long since fallen away, and in them the noon lay still on the hills and the springs ran cold under the trees.

“…the thyme upon the hill gives up its scent to the wind, and the shepherd lays his crook down in the grass, and sleeps to the sound of water on its stones.”

On the last words her voice sank lower, and then there was only the water clock. Sam’s eyes had not left the scroll, but the spring in the poem had run north while she read, into the river below the longhouse, brown with snowmelt and loud over its stones, and somewhere under the noise of it was her father’s voice. The lamplight caught on something wet at the edge of her lashes.

Jack watched her from the bed with an olive forgotten between his fingers, and did not tell her to go on. It was a long while before he spoke. He kept his voice low.

“Miss home?”

Sam gave a start, and the scroll slid on her knees before she caught it.

“I’m sorry, Sir. I didn’t mean to…”

Jack waved a hand. “I spent years on the Rhine. I like the river too.” He shook his head a little. “Not the forests, though. Too many shadows.”

At the name of the river, Sam’s eyes went down to the scroll in her lap. She did not speak.

Jack went on. “I’ve always liked water better than mountains. A river goes somewhere. A mountain just sits there.” He paused. “I have a cabin in the Sabine hills. Small. Simple. It looks out on a pond. You can hear the frogs all night, and smell the olive wood burning.” He was looking past her now. “And the sea. I like the sea. The salt in the air, and the noise of it that never stops. It’ll smash a ship to kindling. If you’re lucky, it gets you home.”

Sam had never seen the sea. She knew it only from her father’s Homer, grey and wine-dark and full of gods, the road Odysseus had taken home. It was no nearer to her now than Troy. She would never stand on its shore, for she would never pass beyond these walls, and the sea might as well have lain in the country of the dead.

She let out a breath so small that the lamp flame barely stirred, and did not see that she was watched.

From the cedar bed Jack could not take his eyes from her. The lamplight found the line of her cheek and the fine down along it, and lost itself in her hair. Her head had tipped to one side, and her eyes were still wide and fixed on some sea of her own, while her lower lip had pushed out a little, though she did not know it. He looked at her mouth longer than he meant to. He cleared his throat. “Pick something else. Whatever you like.” He settled back on his elbow. “Read on.”

Sam’s fingers tightened on the scroll. She laid the country verses aside and went into the small room off his chamber where he kept his scrolls. They lay in their pigeonholes along the wall with their tags hanging out, and she stood before them a moment with her hands at her sides before she reached up and began to turn the tags over one by one. Most of the ink had faded to brown. One tag was still black, and newer than the rest.

Ovidius Naso.

Her father had spoken of him once, years ago, by the hearth in the longhouse. “A clever one, that Ovidius,” he had said, with the crooked smile he kept for Roman things. “In his verses the gods turn men and women into trees and beasts, and the world changes its shape whenever a heart asks it to.” She had been small then, curled against his side, and she had asked him whether he had ever seen a copy in Oppidum Ubiorum, and whether he might bring one home. Her father had coughed into his fist. The Latin, he said, might be a little hard for her yet.

Her Latin was good enough now. Sam drew the roll from its pigeonhole and carried it back to the lamp, and when she had settled again on the low stool at the foot of the bed, she unrolled the papyrus. “Ovidius Naso.” She looked up at Jack, and the smile she gave him was a shy one.

The corner of Jack’s mouth twitched, but he said nothing.

Sam read of the world’s making and the flood that drowned it before Apollo came into the poem, proud of his bow. Then came Cupid, who sent a golden arrow into the sun god and a leaden one into Daphne, daughter of the river Peneus. Sam’s voice quickened with pleasure. Then the chase began.

…So burns the god, consuming in desire,

And feeding in his breast the fruitless fire:

Her well-turned neck he viewed, her neck was bare,

And on her shoulders her dishevelled hair:

Oh were it combed, said he, with what a grace

Would every waving curl become her face!

He viewed her eyes, like heavenly lamps that shone;

He viewed her lips, too sweet to view alone;

Her taper fingers, and her panting breast:

He praises all he sees; and for the rest,

Believes the beauties yet unseen are best…

Her voice faltered, and the heat climbed into her face until she could feel it in her ears. She kept her eyes on the papyrus. No wonder her father had coughed into his fist. She had thought it was the Latin.

Jack had sat up on the bed. The tremor in her hands, the flush creeping down her throat, her lips still shaping every syllable though her voice had almost gone: he missed none of it.

Sam pressed on, in what little voice was left to her.

…so furiously she flies,

And on her ear the imperfect accent dies.

Fear gave her wings; and as she fled, the wind

Increasing spread her flowing hair behind;

And left her legs and thighs exposed to view,

Which made the god more eager to pursue.

The god was young, and was too hotly bent

To lose his time in empty compliment;

But led by love, and fired by such a sight,

Impetuously pursued his near delight…

Her voice cracked on the last word, and she swallowed. The water clock dripped on in its corner, and Sam read on towards the river, where the nymph would have nowhere left to run.

…Because thou canst not be

My wife, yet I espouse thee for my tree:

Be thou, my laurel, prize of high renown;

The deathless poet, and the poem, crown.

Thou shalt the Roman festivals adorn,

And, after poets, be by victors worn.

The grateful Tree was pleased with what he said,

And shook the shady honours of her head.

Then there was nothing more to read. Sam let the roll curl shut in her lap and held herself still, though she could not stop the shaking in her hands. At last, very slowly, she lifted her eyes. The man on the bed was not the one who had pushed bread across his desk to her and told her to eat. His eyes were no longer on her face. They had gone to her mouth, her throat, her arms bare to the shoulder. Just like them. The men in the Forum, below the platform, who had looked her over and never once into her eyes.

Then he spoke, very quietly. “You may go now.” His eyes had gone to the lamp.

For a moment she thought she had misheard, but he said nothing more. Sam rose so fast that the stool scraped across the mosaic, and the scroll slid from her lap to the floor. She left it where it lay. Her legs were not steady under her, but they carried her the few steps to her alcove, and she let the curtain fall behind her.

On the cedar bed Jack did not move. He was looking at the empty stool, and the fallen scroll, and the place where she had been.

He sank back on the pillows, and the cedar frame creaked under him. Her voice was still in his ears.

He viewed her eyes, like heavenly lamps that shone;

He viewed her lips, too sweet to view alone;

Her taper fingers, and her panting breast:

He praises all he sees; and for the rest,

Believes the beauties yet unseen are best.

He closed his eyes, and there she was. Her taper fingers had tightened on the scroll until the papyrus creased. The lamplight lay along her arms where the tunic left them bare, and under the linen her breast rose and fell with the care she was taking to breathe evenly. All of her shook, and still her lips went on shaping the god’s words. He found that he wanted, of all things, to kiss those lips.

He sat up again and looked towards the alcove, where the curtain still hung a little crooked from her passing. Behind it he could hear her breathing, too quick for sleep. Of course she was not asleep. He had only to say her name, and she would come, because she must. It was nearly two months since he had paid eight thousand sesterces for her, and for weeks now she had slept in this very chamber, with nothing between them but a hanging of wool. What he was waiting for, he could not have said. Perhaps it was that in the tablinum, when he pushed bread across the desk to her, she would look up at him with that small, shy smile. And every night, when the reading was done, she went to her alcove like a hind that hears the hunt.

Jack lay back again and drew long breaths, until his blood ran quieter. The lamp guttered a last time and went out. He lay listening. Beyond the curtain, in the dark, she was still awake.