Whispers in the Bath

Even in the afternoon the exedra needed a lamp. Its only light came through the door from the tablinum. A tall bronze lamp stand rose beside Sam’s table on its narrow base, and Philemon’s tablets were propped open in front of her. The table itself had been carried in at the Dominus’s word in the same week the copying and the tallies passed to her. It was hardly wider than two sheets laid side by side, and it stood just inside the narrow doorway that divided her room from the tablinum. The letter was to the legate on the Rhine. Philemon had drafted it from the Dominus’s notes, and by morning it would be sealed and in a courier’s satchel on the road north.

Philemon’s hand ran small and cramped across the wax, with new words written over old wherever he had changed his mind, and Sam often had to turn the tablet to the lamp to make it out. She dipped the reed and wrote carefully. One blot would spoil the whole sheet, and papyrus was dear. Halfway down the second tablet she came on the Lupia, a name she had heard all her life from the other bank, and her pen stopped a moment before it went on.

On the day Philemon learned that someone was to share his burden, he brought over more than a dozen tablets at once. He was a middle-aged Greek whose hair had begun to retreat from his forehead, and he seemed to keep a sigh ready for every occasion. He had set the tablets down, sat, and sighed before he showed her anything. Only when the work was laid out did he promise to teach her to draft as well, as soon as he had a free hour.

“Though there are no free hours in this house,” he had added, rubbing his inky fingers across his brow. “There is Caesar’s house, and the senators, and the clients, and the Dominus’s friends in every province of the empire, and each of them wants his answer before the ink on his own letter is dry.”

Her pen had just reached the closing greeting when footsteps crossed the floor of the tablinum.

“Domine.”

It was Cato’s voice. Sam drew back on her stool, out of the strip of light the doorway threw across her table, into the dark of the little room.

“Gaius will be no use to you for some days, Domine. I sent him down to the Argiletum to fetch the scroll you ordered from the booksellers, and on the way back the boy walked straight under an upper window just as someone was emptying a chamber pot out of it.”

From the tablinum came the Dominus’s laugh. “Then a bath should put him right.”

“The pot came down after the contents, Domine. It caught him on the shoulder. The boy did not even duck.” Cato’s tone made it plain whose fault he thought that was.

“Did he see which window?”

“He did not stop to look. He ran all the way back, and I need hardly say I did not let him in at the front door.” Cato paused. “I went down to the street myself just now and found the room. The man who rents it will pay double for the boy’s doctoring and the days of work he has cost you, and for the scroll as well, as the praetor’s edict requires, or he will answer for it before the praetor.”

“Hm,” was all the Dominus said.

Sam waited until the last of Cato’s steps had faded. Then she took up the letter she had just finished, and carried it through into the tablinum.

“Sir, the letter to the legate on the Rhine. It is ready for your seal.”

“Put it here.” He did not look up.

Sam laid the letter at the edge of the desk and turned to go.

“Wait.”

She turned back. The Dominus was still bent over his reading. “Gaius is laid up. Tonight you attend me at the bath.”

Sam’s eyes went wide. “Y-yes, Sir.” He said nothing more, and she went back into the exedra.

Back at her table she took up the reed and did not dip it. Since the night of the Ovid she had gone through every day listening for her name through the curtain, and now he wanted her to bathe him. Gods.

At last she dipped the reed and held it over a fresh sheet. Her eyes were on the next tablet lying open before her, though she read none of it. A single drop fell from the point, and on the papyrus the dark spot spread slowly, wider and wider.

---

The afternoon passed in spoiled sheets. When the lamps were lit, Sam went down to the bath.

The steam met her at the door. Lamplight shone on marble veined with green and running wet, and at the far end the tub stood full almost to its polished lip, and the steam off it smelt of pine. The slaves who had filled it went out past her without a word. The door closed heavily at her back, and after that there was no sound but the drip of water from the vault and now and then the hiss of the lamps.

The Dominus was there before her. His tunic lay on the floor, and he sat on the marble bench along the wall, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his head bowed. Sam stood by the door and did not take a step.

At last he lifted his head. “Do you mean to bathe me from over there?”

Only then did Sam cross the floor and take up the flask of oil. It shook in her hands. She poured it first across his shoulders and down the length of his spine, then worked it in with her palms. Under them his back was broad and hard, and here and there an old scar ran white through the skin. When she had finished, he sat back against the wall and closed his eyes.

She worked his arms and his chest, then knelt on the wet marble to oil his legs. One place was left. Sam poured the oil into her palm, closed her eyes, wrapped her hand round him, and drew it away again as fast as she could.

Her breath came through her mouth, short and quick, and for a moment the floor did not seem steady under her knees. Still kneeling, Sam moved aside to set down the flask and take up the strigil. The eyes she had thought closed had opened behind her. When she rose and turned back to him with the bronze in her hand, they were closed again.

She began again at his back and worked down in careful strokes, wiping the bronze on a cloth as the oil came away grey with the day’s dust, and went on to his arms and chest. Kneeling, she guided his left foot onto a low stool. The calf was easy. Above the knee the strokes grew shorter, and Sam kept her eyes on the wet floor, on the rim of the tub, on the lamp, until there was nowhere left in the room for them to go. The heat in her face had nothing to do with the steam.

Jack watched her from under lowered lids. The colour had crept down her throat to the neck of her tunic, and her breath came quick and shallow against his thigh.

When the other leg was done, Sam rose and murmured something about his night tunic. She was through the door before he could answer, and she had not waited for his leave.

Jack opened his eyes on an empty room. She had not rinsed him. He got up from the bench and stopped at the edge of the hot tub, then turned instead to the stone basin of cold water by the wall, filled the bronze dipper and emptied it over his chest.

It did nothing for him. He could still feel where her palms had gone, the oil warm under them, and the brief, reluctant grip of her fingers before she snatched them away. He leaned back against the wall. The steam smelt of pine, and somewhere under the pine was the smell of her hair, from the loose strand that had brushed his shoulder when she bent over his back. He took himself in hand, and it was her hand he thought of, and it was soon over. Afterwards he stood with his shoulders against the wet marble and cursed himself for a fool, and he was no easier than before.

---

At dusk on the following day, Sam stood before the door of the bath. That morning she had found Gaius in the little court, weeding the herb beds one-handed with his other arm bound up in a sling against his chest. He would plainly not be lifting a flask or a strigil by evening, and so here she was again.

When she pushed the door open, the Dominus was drawing his tunic over his head. As on the night before, he sat down on the bench and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. Sam edged towards him and took up the flask. She worked the oil into his back first, and into his arms and chest once he had settled against the wall.

“You will rinse me tonight, after the strigil.” He did not trouble to open his eyes.

Sam’s hands stopped. “Yes, Sir. I am sorry, Sir, I…”

He lifted a hand and let it fall. Sam bent her head and knelt to his legs. She oiled the left calf, then the right, then went back to the left, where her palm crept no higher than a little above the knee.

“I still mean to dine tonight,” the Dominus said.

Sam did not dare lift her eyes. She tipped a little oil into her palm, turned her face towards the door, and reached for him. But the flask was snatched out of her other hand.

Her head snapped round. The Dominus was seeing to his thighs and the rest himself, with a few brisk strokes, and then he set the flask down on the bench beside him.

“Strigil,” he said.

For a moment Sam stayed on her knees, with the oil pooling in her open palm. Then she wiped it on the cloth at her girdle, and let out a breath she had been holding since the door, and took up the strigil.

This time the strokes went long and even down his torso, and when they were done she filled the dipper at the tub without waiting to be told. Before she let it run over his shoulders, she held her wrist under the first of it to feel the heat. When at last he stood dried and in his night tunic, with his sandals fastened, he gave her a nod and went out.

Sam stood in the doorway of the bath and watched his back go away across the dim court. Why he had spared her she could only guess, and she did not let the guessing go far. She took up the flask from the bench where he had set it down and pushed the stopper home. Her hands were steady now.