“Why aren’t you eating anything yourself?” I asked finally.
“I have prepared the food,” she said mockingly. “I’m not your cupbearer. And I’ve no cause to share my bread and salt with you, Minutus Manilianus. I know you.”
“How can you know me when I don’t know you?” I protested.
Flavia Sabina stretched out her slim forefinger without ceremony and felt my left eye.
“Oh well, then I didn’t do your eye any harm after all,” she said. “Had I been more experienced, I’d have put my thumb in it. I hope you got a black eye from my fist, anyhow.”
“Did you fight as children then?” asked Titus, who had been listening in amazement.
“No, I lived in Antioch when I was a child,” I answered absently.
Hut suddenly a memory glimmered which made me burn with shame.
Sabina looked straight at me, enjoying my confusion.
“Aha, so you remember then,” she cried. “You were drunk and quite mad, together with a crowd of slaves and rogues. It was in the middle of the night and you were fooling about in the streets. We found out who you were and Father didn’t want to bring you to court for reasons you yourself. know only too well.”
I remembered only too well. Some time in the autumn, on one of Nero’s night escapades, I had tried to catch a girl coming toward me, but had received such a blow in my eye from her little fist that I had fallen over backwards. My eye had been black-and-blue for a week. Her companion had attacked us and Otho had received burns in the face from a lighted torch. I was so drunk at the time that I had not been able to remember much afterwards.
“I didn’t hurt you,” I said, trying to excuse myself. “I only clung to you when we collided in the dark. If I’d known who you were, naturally I’d have at once hurried to apologize to you the next day.”
“You’re lying,” she said. “And don’t try clinging to me again. It might be worse for you next time.”
“I’d* never dare,” I said, trying to make light of it all. “From now on I’ll take to my heels whenever I see you. You treated me roughly.”
Yet I did not take to my heels, but in fact accompanied Sabina back to the Prefect’s house. Her greenish eyes were full of laughter and her bare arm was as smooth as marble. A week later, my father and his following of two hundred clients and slaves were taken to Flavius Sabinus’ house to present my proposal.
243
Tullia and Aunt Laelia had other ideas in mind, but this betrothal was by no means a bad one. The Flavius family was poor, but my father’s fortune balanced this.
At Sabina’s request, we were married according to the longer form, although I had no intention of entering a College of any kind. But Sabina said she wanted to be married for life and did not want a divorce, and naturally I did as she wished. We had not been married all that long before I noticed that I let her have her own way in many more ways than that.
But our wedding feast was a fine one. At my father’s expense and in the name of the City Prefect, all the people were invited to a free meal, not only the Senate and the knights. Nero came to the feast himself and appeared in the wedding procession as well as singing an indecent wedding hymn he himself had composed to the music of a flute.
Finally he politely turned his torch upside down and left without fuss.
I took the scarlet veil from Sabina’s head and lifted the yellow mantle from her shoulders. But when I wanted to untie the two hard knots in her linen girdle, she sat down, her green eyes flashing, and cried, “I am a Sabine woman. Take me as the Sabine women were taken.”
But I did not even have a horse, nor was I good at the kind of plun-dering she wished for. I did not even understand what she wanted, for in my love for Claudia, I had become used to tenderness and mutual concessions.
Sabina was disappointed, but she closed her eyes and clenched her fists and let me do what I wanted and what the red veil obliged me to do. Finally she flung her strong arms around my neck, gave me a swift kiss and turned her back on me to go to sleep. I persuaded myself that we were both as happy as two wedding-tired people can be and fell asleep with a sigh of contentment.
Not until much later did I discover what Sabina had hoped for in physical love. The scars on my face had made her think I was quite different from what I am. Our first meeting in the street at night had made her dream that I could do to her what she wanted, but in that she was mistaken.
I bear her no grudge. She became even more disappointed in me than I in her. How and why she became what she did, I cannot explain. Venus is a capricious and often cruel goddess. Juno is more trustworthy from a family point of view, but in other matters of marriage, dull in the long run.
244
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270