“It is more than fair,” Cailin said, relief sweeping over her.
When she awoke in the morning, Aspar was gone from their bed.
“He has gone to the city,” Zeno said, smiling. “He says to tell you that he will return in several days’ time, my lady. He has also told me that you are to be considered mistress here, and we will obey you.”
“My lord Aspar is a generous man,” Cailin said quietly. “I must rely upon you, Zeno, to help me do what is proper and correct.”
“My lady’s wisdom is only excelled by her great beauty,” the elderly majordomo replied, pleased by her tactful response and the certainty that everything would remain the same.
Aspar returned a few days later from Constantinople. Within a short time it was obvious to his servants that he intended to make Villa Mare his primary residence. He left only to attend to court business and oversee his duties as general of the Eastern Armies. He was rarely away overnight. He and Cailin had settled down to a very quiet domestic existence.
Cailin was surprised to learn that Aspar owned all the farmland about the villa for several miles. There were vineyards, olive groves, and wheat fields, all contributing to the general’s wealth. He thought nothing of helping out in the fields, or working to harvest the grapes. She rather suspected he enjoyed it.
• • •
In the city, Aspar’s absence from his elegant palace was not noticed at first, but the empress Verina, a clever woman, kept her ear to the ground in all quarters. She and her husband had not the advantage of inheritance to keep their thrones safe. Aspar was important to them. Although an excellent public servant, Leo was not a master of intrigue at this early point in his reign; but his wife, raised in Byzantium, knew that the more one knew, the safer one was. A servant’s idle gossip caught her ear at first, and then she heard it again, this time from a minor official. The empress invited her brother Basilicus to come and visit her.
They sat on a terrace overlooking the Propontis, called by some the Marmara, one afternoon in late autumn, sipping the first of the new wine. Verina was a beautiful woman with ivory skin and long, black hair which she wore in an elaborate coiffure of braids that were fastened with jeweled pins. Her red and gold stola was of rich materials, and the low neckline showed her fine bosom to its best advantage. Her slippers were bejeweled, and she wore several ropes of pearls so translucent they seemed to shimmer against her skin and gown. She smiled at her brother.
“What is this I hear about Aspar?” she purred.
“What is it you have heard about Aspar, my pet?” he countered.
“It is said that he has closed up his palace and now lives in the countryside outside the city,” the empress said. “Is it true?”
“I would not know, sister dear,” Basilicus replied. “I have not seen Aspar socially for months now. I see him only when we have mutual court business to attend to, which is infrequently. Why would you care where Aspar lives, Verina? Although he is responsible for Leo’s ascent, you have never cared particularly for him. I know for a fact that his presence irritates you for it only serves to remind you that he is responsible for your good fortune.”
“It is said there is a woman living with him, Basilicus,” the empress said, ignoring her brother’s astute observation. “You know that Aspar’s wife, Flacilla, is my friend. I would be very distressed to have Flacilla embarrassed by her husband’s peccadillos.”
“Nonsense, sister, you are simply consumed by curiosity,” Basilicus replied. “If indeed Aspar is living with some mistress, nothing, I suspect, would please you more than to drop a hint in Flacilla’s shell-like ear, thereby enraging her. You know that Aspar agreed to marry her only if she would remain discreet in her little adventures and not embarrass her family again. Aspar is not a man to install a mistress in his house, but if indeed he has, then by living in the country he is making an attempt to be circumspect in his affair. Besides, there is nothing wrong with a man taking a mistress, Verina. It is my opinion that our good general deserves a modicum of pleasure in his life. He will never obtain it from your dear friend Flacilla, who takes lovers like some women gather flowers in a field, and with less discretion, I might add.”
“Flacilla is young yet. She is many years her husband’s junior,” the empress said. “Aspar could not keep up with her, I assure you.”
“She could not keep up with him,” Basilicus said with a laugh. “Aspar is known to be a prodigious lover, my dear sister. An eighteen-year-old could not keep up with him, I am told by most reliable sources. Besides, Flacilla has two grown daughters. She is hardly in the first bloom of youth herself.”
“She had her children when she was fifteen and sixteen,” Verina said in defense of the lady. “They were fifteen and sixteen when she married them off last year. That only makes her thirty-two. Aspar is at least twenty years her senior. If he has taken a mistress, it will make my poor Flacilla the laughingstock of all of Constantinople. You must find out!”
“Me?” Basilicus looked horrified. “How could I find out?”
“You must go to visit Aspar in the country, Basilicus. Perhaps these rumors are nothing more than that, rumors, but if they are true, then I must inform Flacilla before she is shamed before the court.”
“Go to the country? Verina, I detest the country! I haven’t left the city in several years. There is nothing to do in the country. Besides, Flacilla should be delighted if Aspar has taken a mistress. It will keep him occupied, amused, and uninterested in her affairs. She almost caused a dreadful scandal again last week when the young gladiator she had been amusing herself with decided he was in love with her after she attempted to discard him.”
“I didn’t hear that,” the empress said, annoyed and curious as to why her network of spies had not reported this rather interesting tidbit to her. “What happened, Basilicus? I can see you know every delicious detail. Tell me at once, or I shall have you blinded!”
He chuckled and, pouring himself another goblet of wine, began, “Well, my dear sister, your friend Flacilla had taken a young gladiator to her bed whom she had first seen at the spring games. A Thracian named Nichophorus; rather beefy I thought, but those muscular thighs of his were irresistible, I suspect. As is usual with Flacilla after a few months’ time, familiarity began to breed contempt. She grew tired of her muscular Adonis and, besides, her eye had lit upon Michael Valens, the young actor. Our Flacilla was struck anew by Cupid’s dart.”
“What happened to the gladiator?” Verina demanded.
“He caught them at the very same trysting place Flacilla had once shared with him,” Basilicus replied. “She is not a woman of great imagination, is she, sister? You would have thought she would have chosen another site to carry on her little passion, but no, ‘twas the very same spot. Nichophorus, informed by some mischief maker, found them there. He howled and raged, beating upon the door of the chamber in which your friend and her lover were cowering. Finally he broke the door down.
“Michael Valens, no hero, fearful that his beautiful face would be destroyed, escaped through a window naked as the day his mother had birthed him, I’m told, leaving a semi-garbed Flacilla to contend with the outraged gladiator. He railed loudly against her, cursing her and naming her a whore to all who would listen. The innkeeper finally called out the guard, who chased after Nichophorus as he ran screaming after Flacilla’s litter, which was making its way down the streets of the city at an unusually great rate of speed.” Basilicus laughed. “The captain of the guard and his men were, of course, bought off by the patriarch. The scandal was hushed up. Nichophorus was sent to Cyprus. It is a very good thing Aspar was not in the city when it happened. He warned Flacilla when they married that if she caused any public scandal, he would send her to St. Barbara’s Convent for the rest of her life.”