A Voice in the Wind (21 page)

Octavia was the first to embrace Julia after the ceremony as guests surrounded the couple, congratulating them. Their voices mingled and rose in the holy chamber, echoing. The priests approached Decimus, who paid them and took the document declaring the marriage verified. Phoebe pressed several more coins into their hands, quietly asking them to burn incense and make sacrifices to bless the marriage. Decimus had been generous, and they promised to do so. They went on their way, coins jingling in their pouches.

Decimus watched with a twinge of pain as his beautiful young daughter accepted the congratulations and good wishes of their guests. Claudius would take Julia for a brief trip after the feasting tonight. After a few weeks, he planned to take her to his country estate near Capua, where they would live. Of course, Decimus approved, knowing it was best for her. Ensconced there, Julia would be far from the destructive influences of young women like Octavia and Arria with their modern ideas of independence and immorality. She would be far from Marcus.

But, oh, how he would miss her, his only daughter.

“So, it’s done,” Phoebe said quietly, smiling up at him through her tears. “All the battles are over and the war is finally won. I think they’ll prosper, Decimus. You’ve done well for her. Someday she’ll thank you.”

They joined their guests and went outside into the sunlight. Claudius was assisting Julia onto the flower-covered sedan chair. Decimus knew Claudius would be an attentive and patient husband. He watched Claudius join Julia and take her hand. That he adored her was obvious, yet she looked so young, so vulnerable.

As their procession moved slowly through the thronging streets of Rome, people called out to the newly married couple. Some uncouth youths shouted ribald remarks that brought stinging color to Phoebe’s cheeks as she reclined beside Decimus. Cosseted behind the high walls of their home, she was protected from much of the licentious and ill-mannered behavior of the citizenry.

Decimus longed for the quiet of the country. He longed for the clean blue waters of the Aegean Sea. He longed for the hills of his homeland. He was weary of Rome.

Phoebe sat beside him beneath the canopy, her hip against his. All these years together and he still felt strong desire for his wife, even though thoughts of death depressed him, and the pain that had come intermittently in the beginning was now a constant companion. He took her hand, weaving his fingers through hers. She smiled up at him. Did she suspect what he knew—that his illness was getting worse?

The guests gathered in the triclinium for the celebration feast. Decimus had kept the number small; no less than the Graces, nor more than the Muses. Phoebe had seen to decorating the room with a profusion of colorful aromatic flowers. Decimus held no confidence in her belief that the sweet scent of the blossoms would neutralize the fumes of the lamps—nor the effects of the wine, which would pour freely this evening. He was tired, the ever-present pain sapping him of his strength. The cloying scent of the flowers nauseated him.

Claudius and Julia removed their shoes and reclined on the first couch, while the others took their places on couches around them. Leaning close, Claudius spoke to her softly. She blushed. With the marriage ceremony behind her, Julia seemed in better spirits.

Decimus hoped Claudius would get her with child quickly. With a child at her breast, Julia would settle more easily into being a proper Roman wife. She would see to her hearth fire and run her home as Phoebe had trained her to do. Her mind would be occupied with the early education of her children and caring for her family rather than on the games and lewd gossip.

Enoch stood at the doorway. Decimus nodded for him to have the servants bring in the
gustus
, the hors d’oeuvres.

In the kitchen, Hadassah watched Sejanus arrange the lavish appetizers on silver platters. The aroma of exotic and delicious foods filled the hot room and made her mouth water. The cook carefully placed each sow udder until there was a starburst pattern, adding generous dollops of jellyfish and roe and sprigs of herbs to expand the design. Another platter displayed a goose-liver sculpture of a nesting bird, and wedges of eggs were arranged to look like white feathers. Hadassah had never seen such food before, nor inhaled such heavenly aromas. The servants chattered about the marriage between Claudius and Julia.

“The master is probably giving a sigh of relief to have her married off.”

“Flaccus will have his hands full.”

“She can be a delight when she’s not in one of her moods.”

The conversation went on around Hadassah. Most of the servants hoped that Julia would be unhappy, for they disliked her arrogant manners and outbursts of temper. Hadassah took no part in the gossip. She watched in fascination as Sejanus worked.

“I’ve never seen food like this,” she said, awed by the creations he made.

“Not like the palace cooks, but the best I can do.” He glanced up as Enoch came in. He dabbed the perspiration from his brow and looked over the platters with a critical eye, making a few last minor changes.

“Everything smells and looks so wonderful, Sejanus,” Hadassah said, feeling privileged to have watched him make the final preparations.

Pleased, he was generous. “You can taste whatever they leave.”

“She’ll touch none of it,” Enoch said tersely. “Pig udders, lampreys, sea urchins, fish eggs, calf boiled in its mother’s milk,” he said, and shuddered with distaste as he looked over the elegant display. “Our law forbids us to eat anything unclean.”

“Unclean!” Sejanus said, insulted. “Your Jewish god would suck the pleasure from the poorest orphan’s mouth. Bitter herbs and bread without leaven! That’s what Jews eat.”

Enoch ignored Sejanus and signaled to several slaves to take platters. He looked down at Hadassah with an air of paternal sternness. “You’ll have to cleanse yourself after serving this evening.”

Cringing inwardly at such an insensitive remark regarding Sejanus’ culinary perfection, she gave Sejanus an apologetic look. His face was mottled red in anger.

“Take that one,” Enoch commanded, pointing with distaste to the pig’s udders. “Try not to touch any of it.” She lifted the platter and followed Enoch from the kitchen.

As Hadassah set the platter before her, Julia was laughing with Octavia. Waving Hadassah away, she dipped her fingers into the jellyfish and roe while Claudius took a sow’s udder stuffed with shellfish. Enoch poured the honeyed wine into silver goblets while several musicians played softly on pan flute and lyres.

Hadassah moved back against the wall. She was relieved to see Julia laughing and talking again, though she suspected it was more to impress her friends rather than with any real joy. For all her brightness and gaiety, there was an emptiness in Julia that hurt Hadassah. She could soothe her. She could serve her. She could love her. But she could not fill that emptiness.

God, she needs you! She thinks all the stories I tell her are only for her amusement. She hears nothing. Lord, I am so useless
. Hadassah felt such a tenderness toward Julia, a tenderness akin to what she had felt for Leah.

Hadassah soaked in the beauty of the evening as she served silently. The sound of pan flute and lyres drifted sweetly in the room as the musicians played quietly in the corner. Everything was so beautiful, the people in their togas and jewels, the flower-decorated room, the colorful pillows, the food. Yet, Hadassah knew, for all the celebration and lavishness of this evening, there was little joy in the room.

Decimus Valerian looked drawn and pale. Phoebe Valerian was clearly concerned about him, but trying not to annoy him with any inquiries. Octavia flirted boldly with Marcus, who looked bored with her advances, not to mention the gathering itself. There was an edge of overbrightness to Julia’s laughter, as though she was determined to look happy for the sake of appearances, more for Octavia’s benefit than her own family. No one but Claudius was fooled, and he was in love, oblivious of everything but the beauty of his youthful bride.

Hadassah had grown to care deeply for this family she served. She prayed for each of them unceasingly. In this gathering, they looked so close, and yet they were pulled in opposing directions, each struggling with one another as well as with themselves. Was it in the Roman nature to be constantly at war? Decimus, a self-made man who had built his wealth, strove now to right what his own affluence had wrought upon his children. Phoebe, ever loyal and constantly loving, sought solace and blessing from her stone idols.

Hadassah prayed for Julia more than all the others combined, for God had given her Julia to serve, and Julia lay victim to the strongest character traits of all. She was possessor of a will equal to her father’s, a loyalty fiercer though less selective than her mother’s, and passion as hot as Marcus was reputed to have.

Reclined on the couch with Octavia, Marcus suffered her flirtation. She moved and brushed her hip against his. He smiled sardonically and took a wedge of egg, dipping it into goose liver. She had all the subtlety of a yowling she-cat.

He wondered what Arria was doing to while away the evening. She’d been angry when he informed her his father refused to invite her to the wedding or to the festivities afterward. She’d been even more furious when she learned Drusus and Octavia would be attending. She thought Drusus nothing more than a plebeian blessed by Fortuna. Like Marcus’ father, Drusus had bought his Roman citizenship and respectability.

“Your father doesn’t think I’m good enough for you, does he?” Arria had said yesterday as they were together after attending the games.

“He thinks most young women these days are too free-spirited.”

“A polite way of saying he considers me little better than a common harlot. Does he think / corrupted
you
, Marcus? Could he not guess it was the other way around?”

Marcus laughed. “Your reputation far preceded mine. It was one of the reasons I pursued you so madly, to find out what all the talk was about!” He kissed her lingeringly.

She wouldn’t drop the subject, however. “What does Julia have to say to all these arrangements?”

Marcus sighed impatiently. “She has accepted the inevitable,” he said, trying to keep the grimness from his voice.

“Poor girl. I pity her.” There was a tinge of mockery in her tone that grated on Marcus. “She’ll be little better than a chattel once the vows are declared and
far
wafers exchanged before the priests. She’ll have no rights whatsoever.”

“Claudius won’t abuse her.”

“Nor excite her.”

Marcus watched Claudius and his sister on the first couch. It was obvious Claudius was enthralled. He studied everything Julia did with a raptness that announced to everyone present he was in love. Julia was giddy, not because she was happy over her marriage, but because Enoch was keeping her goblet filled with honeyed wine. Drunk, she’d feel no pain—nor pleasure.

Hadassah stood nearby as she always did, serenity amidst chaos. Her gaze traveled over the family and guests. Watching her, Marcus guessed at her feelings for each—concern for his father, admiration for his mother, tenderness for Julia, curiosity about Claudius.

What did she feel for him?

He hadn’t spoken with her since the evening he had watched her pray, although wherever Julia was, Hadassah was there, too. He never heard her speaking more than a word or two, yet Julia said Hadassah frequently told amusing stories about her people. She related a story of a slave’s baby who was left in the bulrushes of the Nile, then found and reared by a royal princess. Another tale centered on a Jewess who became queen of Persia and saved her people from annihilation, and yet another told of a man of God who was cast into a den of lions, yet survived an entire night unharmed. Marcus considered the girl’s tales nothing more than simple stories to while away a long, dull afternoon. Yet, as he watched her, he almost wished he could escape this celebration and go into the garden with her to hear her stories himself. Would she tell him one, or would she sit in the moonlight trembling in fear of him as she had the last time they had been there?

She felt his gaze and glanced his way, her dark eyes brushing his briefly in question. He lifted his hand slightly and she came to him immediately. “Yes, my lord?”

Her voice was soft and sweet. She wore her slave expression, dutiful, emotionless. He was unaccountably irritated. “Do you still pray at night in the garden?” he said, forgetting Octavia’s presence beside him on the couch.

“Jews pray everywhere,” Octavia said derisively. “Little good that it does them.”

Marcus’ mouth tightened when Hadassah’s expression became even more veiled. He wished he hadn’t asked anything so personal, at least not within the hearing of another. Octavia went on with her derision of Jews. He paid no heed. “What is on the
cena
menu, Hadassah?” he said as though that had been his sole interest in beckoning her. Why had he?

She spoke without inflection, reciting the items that would be brought out for the main course. “Roasted fallow deer, lamprey from the Straits of Sicily, turtle dove stuffed with pork and pine kernels, truffles, Jericho dates, raisins, and apples boiled in honey, my lord.” It was the same tone Bithia used when speaking to him in front of his mother. When they were alone, though, Bithia’s voice was far richer and deeper.

He looked at the fine shape of Hadassah’s mouth, the slender column of her throat where her pulse beat wildly, and then into her eyes again. She didn’t move, but he felt her withdraw. Did she see him as a lion and she the prey? He didn’t want her to be afraid of him. “You’ll be accompanying Julia to Capua?”

“Yes, my lord.”

He felt a sense of loss and it annoyed him. He lifted his hand slightly, dismissing her.

“She’s very homely. Whyever did your mother buy her for Julia?”

Homely? Marcus looked at Hadassah again as she took her place at the wall. Plain, perhaps. Quiet, certainly. Yet, there was a loveliness about Hadassah he couldn’t define. Something that transcended the physical. “She’s totally without conceit.”