PERSIAN EYES

Tanith Lee

I

THE Roman stood looking at his slave. She was one of many, in the fine house on Palace Hill. They came and went barely noticed, across his vision, like shifting columns of sunlight, or the diurnal shadows that changed shape over the floors. But something, now, had made him see this one.

“Come here,” he called. Not harshly, he was not a cruel man to his slaves, did not believe in it unless it were needed—and then a sound beating usually settled the offender. The female slaves especially he did not like to chastise unduly. Like flowers, or animals, they looked better, and were a nicer ornament to his house, if well kept.

The slave came across the garden toward him. It was the fifth hour, (editors note: about 11am) late in the morning, and the sun gilded the little fountain, and the marble statue of Apollo with his lion. The slave, too, was polished a moment with light gold. And then she was in front of Livius, her head lowered.

She had black hair, plaited back and held with a thong. She wore the coarse linen tunic of her status, but of a pleasant soft cream in color. It made her honey skin look darker. She was about sixteen years old, or probably younger, for like most slaves, she would tend to appear older than her years.

Livius regarded the slave carefully. Had his wife said something about this girl? He thought so—what had it been? That she, his wife, had bought her privately, a favor to some rich friend— Claudia Metella perhaps, or Terentia… . Why as a favor?

There was nothing wrong with the girl that he could see. And if there had been, his fastidious Fulvia would hardly have wanted her, nor would he.

“Look up,” he said.

The slave looked up. For a second, a flash of her face, small and Eastern, triangular in form, the nose long and lips full. The eyes—

She had glanced down again.

“No, I told you to look up.”

A slightly longer flash of face then, but not much. Obviously, she was frightened of him, the Master, thought she had done something wrong and would be punished. Maybe she had been badly treated elsewhere.

“I’m not angry. Where were you going?” This was the voice he used for a young nervous horse.

She whispered some words, his slave, which did not sound like the Imperial Tongue. Not even like the argot of the lower orders. Some Eastern muttering. But she had known enough Latin, of course, to understand his orders, if not to reply to them.

“All right. Go along, then.”

She dipped her body before him, graceful, mindless, then turned and walked away across the garden.

A strange creature. Like having a tamed but shackled leopard in the house.

Livius smiled at his idea, and returned into the cool of his library.

“She has strange eyes, that slave,” said Livilla to her mother.

Fulvia took no notice.

They had been having their hair dressed in the summer courtyard that opened from Fulvia’s summer bedroom. Fulvia’s hair, bleached by quince juice, was ornately curled and crimpled; Livilla’s dark hair had been dressed more simply, as became a maiden. The slaves who had seen to this were now gone, and none of them had been the slave to whom Livilla referred.

She tried again, “Mother, that new slave—where did she come from?”

“Which slave? What? What are you talking about? Why should slaves interest you?”

“They don’t. Or only this one. The one with green eyes.”

“Yes,” said Fulvia. She sipped her wine, mixed with the liquified pulp of roses. She looked thoughtful, considering. But said nothing else.

Livilla would not be put off.

“Mother, the other slaves dislike her. You know it can cause trouble when they get upset. They get careless. Look at how Lodia nearly burned you with the tongs—”

“Yes, yes. But I hit her with the mirror. She won’t do it again.”

“She was nervous, Mother. Unsettled.”

“Livilla, that shade of yellow doesn’t suit you. I’ve thought so for a long while.”

Diverted, disconcerted, Livilla looked down in outrage at her yellow stola, figured with anemones. And forgot to say any more about slaves.

Fulvia, bored with the Livillan torrent of insecurities now released, in the matter of dress, hair, and skin, sat with apparent patience, offering calming words. Fulvia was used to being bored. It was her life.

Of course, she wanted for nothing, and she did not wish to change this. She did not really wish for anything.

Birds sang. She thought about the slave.

It had only been ten days ago that Terentia Austus had sought Fulvia out, arriving in person that morning, sitting frowning and hard among Fulvia’s pretty things.

“I want,” Terentia had finally announced, “you to take a creature off my hands.”

Fulvia had raised her brows. Terentia was several years older, and looked it, her makeup much too heavy and her gray hair covered by an auburn wig, of a color known as Flame. Terentia was also powerful, the wife of an electoral candidate sure to do well, a rich woman securely fastened in a prestigious marriage. What did she want? One could doubtless not say No, whatever it was. “A creature, dear Terentia. What kind of creature?” The Austus family kept a menagerie, as Fulvia knew. She suspected a snappish wolf or porcupine was about to be unloaded on her.

“A slave,” had said Terentia. Fulvia was almost relieved. “A slave. I see.”

“There’s nothing unsuitable about her. She’s biddable and not work-shy. I’ll be frank with you, Fulvia. My husband pays her too much attention.”

Fulvia waited behind her polite mask. She thought that if every married woman worried about her husband’s activities with slaves, the gods knew what would become of them all.

However, “Yes, it sounds absurd,” said Terentia, seeming even more aggravated. “Why should I care? I have my sons, and besides Austus is still most attentive to me. I’ve no complaints. Also he keeps a woman near the Circus Gorbus. I’ve never had any concerns about her.”

“Then …” prompted Fulvia, sensing a prompt was expected.

“This slave came to me from my sister Junia’s household. She begged me to take her, wouldn’t say why, or only some rubbish about the slave’s being disruptive. And of course, her husband’s a drunk, so one never knows.”

“No.”

“Then I take the wretch into our house. She does her work perfectly adequately. And then Austus—becomes obsessed with her.”

“Obsessed—”

“Yes. I choose the word with care. Perhaps it’s his disappointment last year in the election—”

“Oh, but, this year—”

“Exactly. And he must concentrate on that. So she goes. Will you accept her? A gift. I won’t ask a sesterce for her. It would be unlucky.”

“Well, but, Terentia—couldn’t you merely—”

“No. I can’t explain. Are you willing, that’s all I’m waiting to hear.” Terentia had risen abruptly from her seat in a flare of costly garments and clash of pearls. The severing of valuable connections twanged in the air. Fulvia did what she must. Terentia nodded. “I’ll send her to you before the dinner hour.”

And so the slave arrived. Looking her over, Fulvia thought her nothing much, simply an inferior from an Eastern country, which Terentia had actually said was most likely Persis. She had wondered, too, what Terentia would say to the obsessive husband, and if he would presently storm across Palace Hill after his property. This did not happen.

The girl seemed to sink into the household with very few ripples. The slaves were not notably antipathetic to her. In Fulvia’s experience, they often took a dislike to newcomers, particularly females.

Her eyes were a little odd. That glassy gray-green, unusually clear in the dark skin, between the black lashes. But there.

(Livilla had stopped lamenting, and was instead admiring herself in the silver mirror.)

Fulvia had mentioned the new slave to Livius, naturally. He had been quite uninterested, as one would predict.

They ate the evening meal in the garden, then lingered there. From beyond the house came the low rumble of heavy-wheeled traffic on cobbles, the occasional shouts of some party or other revel. Above, the sky deepened until, undimmed by the uncountable lamps of Rome, the stars were put on. “The snails were good,” said Jovus.

“No, too sticky. Cibo still doesn’t know how to cook them,” added Parvus, the connoisseur.

Livius listened to his two sons, neither yet a full-grown man. He had been reading, and had fallen asleep in the thick heat of afternoon, like some old grandfather. Now, leaning here, he felt curiously alert, as if expecting something. But nothing, nothing at all was expected.

A girl had brought more wine and was pouring it into his cup. Her.

He wanted to say again, Look up. But the eyes were downcast, she might not have had any eyes—

Outside a wild raw shout blew up. Palace Hill was a select area, but it got noisier by the night. Perhaps he should buy a farm, move out into the country among the olives and vineyards, vegetate… . But there was Jovus, the eldest, to secure first in a worthy career. And Livilla to marry suitably, to someone or other.

None of this, his duties, caught his attention greatly tonight. But there, the lamp was being lit by Apollo, and she was standing straight again, and the flame splintered in her eyes. How green they were. Fig-leaf green, yet cooling, like marble.

He glanced at Fulvia. She had been watching him.

“Did you like the pork liver?” she asked, solicitous, as a good wife should be. And he sensed her boredom, both with ordering the liver and its cooking, and now asking. His answer, his approval, also bored with those, as he was with all of it, including his children, his house, the noises of the city, the city, the night… .

“Delicious, Fulvia. How clever you were to think of it. Aren’t the stars fine?”

Fulvia lay sleepless on her bed. It had been made in Egypt, and sloped a little, keeping her head higher than her feet, and tonight this gave her a peculiar feeling of weightless drifting, as if she might float up and out of the door, and over the high walls into the city.

What would she see? The lit porches of festive houses not her own, hung with garlands. The seven arched spines of Rome, crowded with their temples, gardens, mansions, and the dark valleys between, where the markets, dens, brothels, and slums lay twitching and surging, also sleeplessly.

Fulvia turned on to her side. At this ninth hour of the night, (about 3am) it was very quiet on Palace Hill. There was only the faint stir of the plane tree in her private courtyard beyond the curtain. It sounded like the moving coils of a snake.

She had thought her husband might sleep with her here tonight. Generally she knew the signs—little attentions, a kind of heat which came from his body. She had been anticipating the visit, had taken down her hair and freshened her perfume. She no longer thrilled to his sexual attentions—all that had left her with the birth of Jovus, the first son. As if sexual pleasure (as she had) had done its duty, and so now she need no longer experience any. She had been sorry at first, then philosophical. These things happened. And she still enjoyed his arousal. The manifestation of his continuing desire, however infrequent, was a compliment.

Why had he not come in, then ?

Perhaps he was tired. He had eaten a large meal, and taken a little too much wine. And it was, though the summer was so young, a hot night.

I must sleep, Fulvia commanded herself. She listened to the tree rustling, and glimpsed inside her mind a silvery snake winding through leaves, in the instant before she fell from consciousness.

Livius woke with a start.

What had disturbed him? (He listened, hearing nothing, even the noisy neighbors were silent now.) And—where was he?

Ruffled, he got to his feet. He had come back to the library and stretched out on the couch here to read for an hour before going to Fulvia. She would have realized, and he always gave her time to prepare. But again—he had slept. Now he could tell from the feel of the house, it was only an hour or so from sunrise.

Far too late to disrupt Fulvia’s slumbers. He was a considerate man. It had been different, of course, when they were young. They had shared a bed every night, and kept busy.

The lamp was guttering on the desk. He trimmed the wick and took the lamp with him along the corridor. When he reached his garden, he paused between the pillars. The stars were dull now. The garden was moonless, ghostly, and the fountain shivered like a piece of silk.

As he turned into his own room, the light of the small lamp flared fierce as a torch against furniture and hangings. Livius winced at the heavy gold, the bright inlay of ivory, the blast of scarlet curtain. How much had he drunk? Too much, it seemed. He blew out the lamp and undressed in blackness.

I’m not old, he thought, lying there. His vision seemed a little disturbed, and in the blackness, weird faces leered and smoked at him from near the ceiling. The wine, or even the pork—I wish the gods would make me young again, he resentfully mused. Even five years younger.

He thought of fig trees—he did not know why—their shade, the glow of their leaves filtering the summer sun.

We should be like that. Sleep for a while in winter, and then grow strong and new again, like leaves.

Livius smiled now at his own foolishness. He slept.

The slaves of Livius curled in their tiny cubicles tucked deep and windowless within the house. Most had a bed; that was their Master’s kindness. Now and then one would creep to the privy, a dirty, stinking place, without the fitments of the rich man’s easements, let alone of the lavish thermal bathroom with its sheltered terrace facing south.

Cibo met Lodia in the dark, between the privy and her cubicle. As the house cook, he had somewhat better quarters behind the kitchen, and also some power in the slave-world.

“Well, Lodia. Like a moment with me tonight?”

Lodia grinned. It was her way of saying she knew she had no choice.

Cibo guided her, and when they reached the corridor with the lamp burning, he saw the bruise on her arm. The Mistress had struck her today with the polished silver hand mirror, for carelessness. Now he joked about it, telling Lodia she was an idiot and had better watch out, or Master would sell her off to the mines.

Lodia was used to his foreplay. She said nothing. Cibo led her into the kitchen, past the man-tall pots and burned-charcoal smelling oven. He gave her a piece of bread, a leftover, smeared with pork fat. In a corner, his two assistants lay on the stone floor, snoring.

Cibo took Lodia against the wall, in a hot rush and snuffling almost-silence. He finished quickly, scowling. “All right, you can be off now. You’re not so juicy as you were. Next time I’ll take that new girl. The Persian.”

Lodia said, “If you do, don’t look in her eyes.” “Eh? What does that mean? Lodia was once more dumb. Cibo said, “It’s not her eyes that would fascinate me, Lodia. Go on back to your pit.”

Jovus dreamed he was a man, and wore the Man’s Toga. An augur had been taken and it foretold great things for him— though what, he was unsure. Even so, he was making a speech in the Forum, and older men nodded, and the crowd was all applause. Then a girl walked through the crowd. She moved like a breeze through a cornfield, and the human figures swayed away from her, and back again when she had passed, but took no notice of her otherwise.

Jovus, however, lost the thread of his oration. He stopped speaking entirely, and an enormous quiet filled the Forum, and in the blue-scorched sky, another color came, as if an awning had been erected, as they did it at the circuses.

Beyond the wall, Parvus, nine years old, dreamed he was swimming in a deep green pool. He was rather anxious, for he knew that he was tiring, and the sides looked sheer.

Livilla, on her own bed across the corridor, was sobbing in her dream because she could not bear the saffron color of her stolas, and they were all like that, every one, even those she was brought that began as pink woven-air muslin, or delicate white silk—and none of them therefore suited her. She looked blotchy and too fat, unmarriageable, so she wept.

II

As he gazed about him, the Artifex ludo was puzzled. But then, his clients often puzzled him with their requests—a perfectly serviceable pillar to be removed and replaced by a carved prop that made the room into a stage set; a wall with charming nymphs changed to a bacchanal of the wine god, lewd female companions, and goats.

This, though. This did intrigue him slightly.

“Yes, sir. Certainly it can be done. I have a new color that has come from the Libanus region. They call it Sea-Wave. Or, then, from Egypt—”

Livius said, “The color of this perfume pot, like this.”

ludo accepted the pot with its hint of nard. One of the lady wife Fulvia’s, probably. It was a deep, nacreous green. He thought perhaps he would not be able to match it at all. Green was a color which so often turned, like milk. One painted it on, and as it dried, something in the plaster made it too shallow, or too strong. Which normally might not matter. But now, with this insistent instruction—

“And the subject? As I have it here?”

“Trees,” said Livius absently. “Leaves. Pools. Green things.”

Of course, more unusual than all the rest, (than the commission for the artifex and his assistants to paint the two dining rooms, the library, and the rich man’s bedroom, all in greens and variations of green) was the straw hat, such as a farmer might put on, clamped down on Livius’ noble head, even here in the shade. And beneath the hat, a band of thin cotton, itself dullish green in color, perhaps to catch sweat from the forehead?

Livius’ eyes were watering in the sun. They looked inflamed.

ludo had noticed the elder of the two young sons also had this problem with his eyes, although not so badly, nor had he put on a hat against the sun.

The boy was there, now, out in the garden court, sitting on a bench, brooding the way they did at that age, whether patrician or citizenry. (Supposedly the plebian poor, in their sties, did not have time to brood in youth. They were already out pimping, whoring, stealing, cutting throats, or training in the gladiator schools. Or at the very least, standing in line for the free food the city offered.)

“Well, then. You may do it.”

“Thank you, sir. We shall try our best.”

“Begin today.”

“Ah—very well. That may be somewhat—”

“Take this.” The bag clanked heavy as a legionary’s full campaign armor.

Livius sighed. He hooded his lids.

ludo, hurrying off to organize his men and paint, did not see the rich man pull the green cloth right down over his eyes.

In the garden, Jovus did see this.

He stood up, nervous, his inner, nonphysical body attenuated, like the eyes of a slug standing on stalks.

Jovus picked a way across the sunny court, as if avoiding invisible obstacles, between the beds of roses and late iris, whose reds and purples seemed to be on fire.

“Father?”

Livius did not answer.

Was he asleep again? He had fallen asleep at dinner yesterday.

“Father,” said Jovus, more loudly, and then his father’s face turned toward him, and Jovus saw his father’s open black eyes staring at him through the band of thin Egyptian cotton.

For some reason—every reason—this frightened Jovus. He was fifteen, almost a man, but he was afraid.

“Sir—”

“What is it?” The voice was weary, dismissive. Jovus knew that really all his father ever was to him now, at best, was courteous. The happy man who had played with him as a child, the grieved man who beat him when he skimped his lessons, who took pride in every achievement—that man was gone. But where? “Which rooms are to be painted?” Weary, short, Livius told him.

Jovus went away and slouched through the house into his own rich boy’s bedroom, with its carved garment chest and bed of ebony and pine. The crimson panels painted on the walls offended him, but he stared at them until his eyes ached. Past the doorway, then, she went.

It was just like that. As if there were no other in the house, it was all vacant but for himself, and then for her. Jovus watched her.

She slid along the corridor, vanishing suddenly at the turn, as if merely to turn a corner were supernatural.

He had seen his sister Livilla earlier throw a cut piece of her own hair into the flame before the household guardians in the larger dining room. But then, too, he had heard her whining about wanting to make an offering to Juno Viriplaca, to ensure her marriage.

Jovus thought the gods would not be concerned with this. They never offered help, even his family ancestors did not. Rather like Livius, they had lost—in their case with immortality or death— all involvement in the human world, save where they could be harsh in it.

The house of Junia Lallia, Terentia Austus’ sister, stood behind the Gardens of Fortuna, screened by the massive poplars and ilexes. Fulvia approached uneasily and in full panoply, in the closed litter with curtains of Indian silk, with her bodyguard and two attendants.

At first, sitting in the vestibule, on a hard, gold-adorned seat, Fulvia thought that perhaps Junia might not see her, despite the delivered gifts of goose offal in honey, early-ripened peaches from the coast, and spikenard.

But then one of the house slaves conducted Fulvia into Junia’s private sitting room, which opened on a courtyard garden depressing in its glory of trees, a terraced water course, tame doves, monkeys, and a peacock marred only by its rusty shrieks.

Junia was a youngish woman who scorned to bleach her hair. Her clothes and jewelry said all there was to say on such matters.

“It’s most kind of you to see me,” murmured Fulvia.

“Such lovely presents,” replied Junia coldly. “Is this about the elections?”

“No—no, dear Junia Lallia—I wouldn’t think of bothering you, but—”

“Then it is,” said Junia, staring now into space, “the slave.”

“Oh,” said Fulvia.

“Yes,” said Junia. “The Persian woman,” she added. “Her name—did anyone tell you? Roxara. Or so they called her in the market at Ostia—or again, so I understand.” She paused. Then she clapped her hands. A girl came in with wine and cinnamon-water and little cakes. After the girl had served these and gone, Junia said, “It had to be faced. Of course you would come here. Terentia told me what she did. But I think she didn’t tell you what I had done, or why.”

Fulvia gave over caution. “Tell me.” Junia lifted her brows, that was all. Then she told. “My eldest son, who as you know lived here in my husband’s house when not away in Gaul, bought this slave, as men do, on a whim. He presented her to his wife, a poor virtuous little ninny with the wits of a pigeon. I suppose he liked the looks of the slave, and meant to sample her, and the poor little ninny wouldn’t even have noticed, very likely. However. My son didn’t sample the slave called Roxara. Instead, Fulvia, he went mad.”

Fulvia felt herself whiten. She felt the blanched and rosy makeup standing out on her skin like a separate skin, and herself, all horror, glaring through.

Junia Lallia said frigidly, her eyes on nothing at all, “Firstly he wouldn’t return to Gaul. My husband covered this up by saying our son was ill. All sorts of devices then had to be resorted to, in order to avoid disgrace. I won’t tax you with those. Meanwhile physicians came and went. And my son—my beautiful son—” shocking Fulvia once more, this abrupt break into emotion, as swiftly mastered, “—lay raving in a darkened room, unable to bear the light, or any bright color, wanting the girl—not for any proper reason, but simply to look at her.” “To—look at her?”

“He couldn’t keep his eyes from her. She had to sit in the room with him. I witnessed it day after day. She sat and looked at the ground, and then he would go to her—groveling along the floor like a dog—staring up into her face—” All at once, Junia sneezed. Having done this, she made a sign against the bad omen. She said, “We tried to keep her from him. He would cry for her. I mean he Would scream for her as if he were in agony. Oh, then, I called priests to the house, from various temples, and other persons. Because it was sorcery, what else?”

“What else,” gasped Fulvia, shuddering.

“They had some effect—mostly through drugging him to insensibility. But then they told us we must send the woman away.”

“But surely—if she’s a sorceress—you should have killed her—your husband, excuse me, but really, he should have killed her at once.”

“He didn’t dare to,” said Junia. “Another strong man brought to his knees. We were afraid … And so—I sent Roxara to my sister, a very reasonable and sensible woman, who assured me it was all nonsense, and she would put all to rights. But, as you know, in the end my sensible sister, who fears nothing, and will walk through a cemetery on nights when the ghosts hover in the moonlight, she, too, became fearful, and she sent this evil being away to you. Forgive us, Fulvia. We are in your debt forever.”

Fulvia thought, So you are, but how will that help now?

She, too, controlled herself. She said, “And your son?”

Junia turned her head, but not before Fulvia saw why she had sneezed—her eyes were bursting with tears she did not permit to fall. Junia said, “He’s gone.”

“To … Gaul?”

“No, not to Gaul.”

“Then—can he be dead?”

“I don’t know if he is dead.”

Fulvia blurted “But you must know—”

“He vanished. My son vanished. When Terentia’s slaves came to fetch Roxara, he was already gone, and we knew nothing. Each of us thought he had wandered to some other part of the house. Then that he was in the city. Searches were made. It was discreet. Then less so. He hasn’t been found. If you have heard no rumors, that is due to my husband’s connection to the Flavians.”

Among the forgotten cakes, Fulvia was panting, but Junia now sat icy, stone still.

“Perhaps he will come back,” Fulvia faltered at last.

“Do you think so? Now you sound like his dolt of a little wifelet. Of course he can never come back. She cast a spell on him, and it took him somewhere he can never escape and never be found, out of this world.”

Junia rose.

Fulvia staggered to her feet.

“I’m in your debt,” said Junia. “If I can assist in any way at all, I will do so. What will you do?”

Fulvia drew in her lips. She said, “There’s only one way.”

“Yes, perhaps. If you’re brave enough.”

The litter raced over the hills, the bearers running, the bodyguard thrusting lower citizens from its path.

At the portico of Livius’ house, they came to a halt. The door was knocked upon. The doorkeeper opened it.

Fulvia got out of the litter. She was trembling, it was true, but she had crossed this threshold many hundreds of times, only once carried over it as a bride. Now, as she moved forward into the familiar house, her foot caught in the tile of a second step, which was not there. She felt herself falling and watched surprised as she flew out on to the mosaic floor. She heard the crack of her head against its ungiving surface, from some way off. And then nothing.

It was the Greeks and Egyptians who had thought everyone but themselves to be barbarians, as alike in their limitation as sheep. Romans, though, were also inclined to this idea—the barbarity of other races … the Egyptians and Greeks by now not always unincluded.

So, she was a barbarian then, from Persis, that land Great Alexander had subdued, a country of crags and brown dust and lions, of green gardens mysterious under an alien moon …

Livius looked about him slowly. The walls of the library were pale and painted over by green, green fruits, green leaves, green figures that danced or swam in a distance of green waves and green dolphins. The artifex and his men had worked swiftly, perhaps with not as much agility as speed. A curtain, (green) hung at the yard door. The summer sun was always too bright. He found lamps were better. And sometimes he shut one eye and looked, through the spyglass of flawed emerald, at their green flames.

This amused him. But he was waiting. He knew that he was.

Once, a child, a boy, had come to the inner doorway.

“Father—the physician says—”

Something unimportant.

Who was this child, addressing him as Father? One of the slaves? Perhaps. In certain patrician homes, the Master was called Father.

This child-slave had been distressed, wet-eyed, and snotty. Parvus, he was called. A nickname.

Someone had told Livius his wife Fulvia (he thought they called her Fulvia) had hurt herself. He had gone to see, starting at the loud colors—raucous red, orange—in her room. He did not recognize the woman stretched out on the bed, over whom the physician bent. The smell of medicinal resins turned Livius’ stomach. He did not stay there long, thinking maybe he had made a mistake, and come to look at the wrong woman.

The door curtain moved. Who would it be now?

It was her, of course, the barbarian Persian. She came in with a wine jug. She was pouring the wine. Seen through the emerald, the wine was black-green.

Livius waited for the Persian girl to raise her eyes so that he could look into them. But she would not do it.

“Sit,” he said, “sit over there.” She moved so adeptly, as if alive. But really he did not think she was. None of them were, nor he himself. This girl, however, although unliving, was moved by something live within her.

She sat down on the couch.

“Look up.”

She raised her eyes, lowered them.

How could he ever have thought her afraid or nervous? She had no feelings or emotions, and probably no brain inside her skull, under its covering of amber skin and coarse rich hair. “No, let me see your eyes.” A look. Gone.

He wondered if he should have her whipped for insolence. If that happened, or if he cut her with the little knife he kept here, for breaking the edges of wax seals, would she bleed green, like the sap of a plant?

Livius got up and went over and sat on the stool, gazing up into her face, and so into the lowered, half-obscured depths of her eyes.

The flames of the lamps were there in the green irises. It was like looking into a hall under the sea, lit by torches.

“Where do you come from? From Ocean? Or out of a tree—a tree nymph or a water nymph?” Her lids drooped lower. “Don’t close your eyes. Obey me.”

Her face—expressionless, mindless. All slaves were of this kind, unless singled out and made pets of. Would she change now, since he favored her? Livius thought she would not.

He did not want to touch her, let alone take her to him in the sexual act. He found it restful—and yet curiously exciting— simply to sit here like a boy, and stare up at her, trying to see in at the tiny glinting cracks between her eyelids.

When Fulvia opened her eyes, the room was a rippling dimness smeared by lights.

She said, alarmed yet imperious, “I can’t see—”

“It will pass, madam. An effect of the drug I’ve had to give you. You banged your head when you fell. Your cranium is bruised but whole. And I’ve bled you. All’s well.”

“Did I fall? Where? I don’t remember …”

“At the house door. You entered in a hurry.”

“Did I? I don’t remember …”

“You’d been visiting the lady Junia Lallia.” (The physician—a know-all.)

“I don’t remember …”

Livilla had appeared, white and terrified. She ran to the bed and made a grab for Fulvia’s hand. “Mother—Mother—”

“Gently, child,” barked the physician, annoyed at seeing his handiwork disarranged.

But Fulvia said quietly, “Where is Livius?”

The physician turned and busied himself at a table loaded with his salves and infusions. The air smelled of burned beetles, mint, and Greek incense.

“This doctor is Idas,” said Livilla, trying to be adult, “he is the doctor Claudia Metella recommends for all things to do with the head—”

“Yes. Where is your father?”

“In his library,” said Livilla. “He came in once. Then he went away.”

“He mustn’t be troubled,” said Fulvia. She felt bitter at his lack of care for her, and resigned, because this was only what she would anticipate. Virtuously and grimly, she put him first, and did not know how thin her lips had become. But she was also sleepy from the bleeding, and the potions. “Make sure,” she said to Livilla, “your father eats a good dinner.”

As she slipped back into sleep, Fulvia thought, This isn’t right. I should get up and go and see to something. I know it was to be done—that was why I was in such a hurry coming in, and so I fell. But her head ached. She thought of the thing she could not remember. Never mind it.

Parvus was standing behind Jovus just outside.

“Don’t go in,” instructed Livilla. “She’s asleep.”

“She’s slept for days,” said Jovus.

“I know,” said Livilla. “But Idas says she’s in no danger, and must rest.”

“He’s a Greek,” said Parvus, a red-eyed racist, “and he may be useless, too.”

Jovus put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Hush. The Metellas sent him. He’s all right.”

Livilla said, “I have to go and see to the kitchen, since Mother can’t.”

When she had stalked off, dismayed at her (temporary) position, Parvus said, “What’s Father doing?”

“What he was doing before.”

They had seen him. Both had peered around the edge of the green curtain. Seen Livius, their father, a man, sitting at the feet of the Persian woman in the green darkness.

“Is she a witch?” whispered Parvus, “like the sorceress Medea?”

“It’s nothing to worry about,” said Jovus. He lied, wanting to be alone. “A man—does these things with his house-women. It’s just some fancy of his.”

Livilla entered the kitchen, and saw that it was empty, and although the day was advancing, nothing much had been done toward the main meal. Oil, onions, and herbs lay about, and some fish—one of which the cat had got hold of, dragged under a bench, and was now eating.

The girl clapped her hands, and no one came, and Livilla had a strange horrible sudden fear that all the house was as empty as the kitchen seemed to be, but for herself and the cat. Everyone was gone, the slaves, her brothers, her father, and Fulvia, too, borne off into the air.

The urge to cry ripped through Livilla, but she tried not to, for she would soon be a woman and married, and she must not let go of her dignity.

Then Lodia crept in.

Her slave’s face was pale and deranged, an almost exact match for Livilla’s own.

“Cibo choked,” said Lodia. “What—do you mean?”

“The cook—he choked on something. Look—he’s there, by the ovens.”

Livilla turned and saw Cibo’s fat, impossible-to-miss body sprawled in a shadow that had somehow hidden him, and now did not. His face was turned away, and Livilla was glad.

Lodia stood swaying, holding herself in her arms. In a sort of chant she announced, “He must have tried to have her. He must have tried to.” Then she sank to her knees and cowered, wondering if one of her masters would come to kill her.

But when Lodia looked up again, the Mistress-daughter had run away.

I was glad to leave that house,” said Idas the Greek. (Rather as ludo the artifex had felt, if Idas had only known.) “Something goes on there. A great house, and full of people and slaves, and workmen, and so silent. And you know how now and then I see things other men are unaware of.” His acquaintances in the tavern, attracted by the wine he had bought them, nodded. “Well, then, in the walls of that place—oh, at first it was aswarm with artisans painting everything green, yes, even panels in the tables and chests—I never saw the like, such a dingy, leaden color. But then, as I came from the sick lady’s chamber and was passing one of these rooms, now all green-painted—and so badly—” the acquaintances waited, to see what the old romancer would bring out now, “—I saw faces in the walls, among the painted leaves. They watched me. Oh, not painted faces—they moved—not human faces either. The gods know what they were. Not animals—not quite that—perhaps like the faces one sees in the trunks of trees, or leaves clustered together, or in weeds under a pond …”

The greened house lay silent about its green courtyards. Green shadows dappled Apollo with the panther-skin of Bacchus.

No one went out. And yet it was as if they had all gone out. Even if you glimpsed them move there, in the rooms, along the corridors, shifting the sunlight and the hangings, even then, it was as if they were not really there. But if they were not, what was?

For a kind of energy filled all the cells. Time had passed. Some tens of days, thirty, forty. And no one called, not a single trader, and no visitors. Behind the door, in his alcove, the door-slave slept. Yet it was as if he were not there. It was as if the house were no longer there, merged into a green shade or green wave. Become one more grove or fountain of the decorated city.

People on Palace Hill, going by the blind outer walls, failed to glance at them, as if—the house of the patrician Livius had vanished.

III

At noon, Jovus went to the kitchen and took some of the olives and figs that lay on the table, and some of the stale bread. A slave—he had forgotten the man’s name—had slunk out when Jovus came in, rather as the cat had been used to do, before it ran away. The slave had also scrounged some of the leftover food. Although it spoiled, there still seemed to be enough. And somehow Jovus did not think about when it would all be gone. (He had noted the body of Cibo was no longer there. Someone must have dragged it away. He did not like to think of this.)

But the house had no Master, so what could you expect of it? Or, it had one, but a Master who stayed in his library and did not move, no, not even to seek the privy or the bath. And the house had a fragile Mistress, who had been sick from a fall, and walked only a short way from her room, and back again.

The hotter colors faded from Jovus’ bedroom walls, he thought, as they had faded from the flowers in the garden. Livilla’s saffron stolas were now the color of soured cream.

Jovus ate the figs and bread standing in the garden, and he looked up at the sky, which he did not think was blue, not truly, or else something came between him and the sky.

The city was deeply quiet. Occasionally he thought he heard traffic on the roads, or vague cries, but it was perhaps only the rustle of blood behind his own ears.

Moss grew in the mane of Apollo’s lion. Jovus was examining this, when he heard his mother’s voice from the colonnade.

“Where is your father?”

Fulvia had asked this a great deal, but then she had stopped asking, as the answer was always identical.

“In his library,” said Jovus, as always. “Mother, would you like this fig—look, there are raisins, too.”

“Never mind,” said Fulvia.

She turned, and then she turned back. She said, her voice like pearls which had been crushed, “He isn’t there. I looked. He isn’t anywhere in this house.”

Jovus felt panic spring in him like a tiger.

Fulvia wore no makeup. This made her seem both younger and quite old. Either way she would be no help.

Nevertheless, together they went again through the house, through room after room, into each of the courtyards. They pulled aside drapes and let sunlight into the spaces—was sunlight green? They walked through the three rooms of the bath, steam-less and unheated. They searched the cubicles of the slaves. Sometimes they met these slaves, who shied, but seemed deaf and dumb, or who bolted, and this made Fulvia irritated, and so more like her previous self, a remote and pragmatic woman, offering calm words that snapped with repressed rage.

At some point, too, Livilla joined them, crying a little, but stupidly, like a small child who had mislaid what it was upset about. Parvus also appeared. He was quite naked, and very dirty, but none of them reproached him, though Fulvia clicked her tongue.

They did not find Livius.

At last, they were back in the library, where, in the curtain-dusk, the scrolls and wax tablets shone dull in their cubbyholes, like ranks of peculiar skulls.

Fulvia stood there at the room’s center. She glanced now and then demandingly at the couch, the chair, then at the stool, which had fallen over. She seemed to think she might still find her husband. She tapped her fingers on her gold bracelet. (The gold was discolored.)

“It’s what she told me,” said Fulvia, frowning, concentrating. “I remember now. Her son. They disappear. And now Livius has done it.”

Livilla sniveled. Parvus picked at a scab on his knee, embarrassed.

Jovus thought, I don’t know them, these people. Who are they?

Fulvia thought she heard her elder son thinking this, but she did not care. She hated him really, her son Jovus, who had, with his birth, robbed her of sexual pleasure. Even the wretched, time-consuming Livilla had not done that. As for Parvus, what was he, some spawned thing, like a frog—

But there had been something Fulvia meant to do. That was it. This thing had been the reason why she had rushed home from the woman’s house—which woman? It did not matter—the one who told her about a son who disappeared, as now Livius had.

What was it Fulvia had meant to do, been so concerned with that she had tripped over an unreal tile loose in a stair that was not there under her feet? Fulvia turned to Jovus. “Where is she?”

Fulvia wondered if she should go back to her husband’s bedroom. She had not looked beneath the bed. Livius would not be there, but she might.

“Who?” quavered Jovus, but Fulvia saw the tiger of panic smoldering under his skin.

“The Persian—what was her name—Roxara.” The name sounded in the room incredibly, as though it was actual, and the only thing that could be so.

And after it there followed the most subtle, silky feather of sound, the noise something might make, uncoiling over a bough heavy with leaves.

“Ah,” said Fulvia. She moved quite quickly, and pulled the curtain right down from the courtyard door, and then she put her hand on Livius’ desk. She took up the little knife he had always kept there. It was only a small knife, but a young woman’s neck was usually slender, and the vital vein unmissable.

Yet now Jovus was in her way. Fulvia did not care enough about her son to wish to kill him, and so she only said, “Stand aside from her.” Not using his name either since she had forgotten it.

But Jovus went on lumpenly standing there, between Fulvia and the slave called Roxara, who all that while had been, presumably, sitting motionless and invisible in the room’s other chair.

Then Fulvia lost patience. She struck the boy across his shoulders, and thrust him aside.

Fulvia herself stood then only inches from the Persian Creature. Fulvia could smell her. She did not smell human, but spicy, like mummia. Her head was not bowed. She was looking back at Fulvia with her opaque serpent-scale eyes, and Fulvia lifted the knife in a steady hand, because this Roxara’s snake-neck was very slim, and the vein was plainly to be seen there.

And Jovus screamed, “No—no—Mother!” And punched her hand away. And he was strong after all, it felt as if he had broken Fulvia’s wrist, there under her green-gold bangle.

“Leave me alone, you fool!” she cried. She was exasperated.

“No—no—” shrieked Jovus. “No—Mother—you can’t kill her—you mustn’t kill her. Mother—no—look in her eyes!”

Fulvia snarled like a wild beast. But even so, with the Creature’s face so near to her, almost inadvertently, she did what he said.

Then she saw the eyes’ real greenness, and then she saw through, to within their green. She stared. She stared into a limitless hall built of glaucous nothingness, like the depths of a sea. Here and there currents moved in it, like liquid winds, and faint glimmerings, like drowned stars. And there, too, deep down and far away inside it, and in miniature, Livius was wandering—she made him out exactly, his every detail, even to his disheveled hair and filthy toga—her Livius, her husband. Beyond him, were some other smaller figures, farther off. She could not yet quite make them out, although they seemed, as he did, familiar to her.

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