“A young patrician widow of Roman ancestry from Britain,” he answered serenely. “She is most charming, Verina, and she loves Aspar. If you saw them together, you would assume them to be a happily married couple.”
“How did this woman arrive in Byzantium, my brother? A widow, you say? Was her husband a Byzantine? Does she have children? Come now, Basilicus, you are not telling me everything you know.” The empress looked sharply at her brother.
“Her husband was a Saxon, I am told. Their child was lost to them. I have absolutely no idea how she came to Byzantium. Really, Verina, it was embarrassing enough cross-examining Aspar for you simply to satisfy your childish curiosity. I have done my best and will do no more!” he huffed.
“How old is Aspar’s little mistress, and what is her name?” the empress pressed him. “Certainly you know that much.”
“The girl is nineteen, and her name is Cailin,” Basilicus answered.
“Nineteen?” Verina winced. “Poor Flacilla!”
“Flacilla deserves whatever she gets,” snapped Basilicus, eager to escape his sister’s questioning before he told her something he should not tell her. For some reason, Verina was making him very anxious. She knew something, but he did not know what she knew. He shifted nervously.
Verina saw her brother’s discomfort. “I had a visitor this morning, brother dear,” she said sweetly. Too sweetly. “I probably should not confide this to you. Men are so foolish about these things, but since you are obviously holding something back from me, I must tell you so that you will speak freely to me. You know that Leo rarely visits my bed any longer. He listens to his clerics who declare women unclean, a necessary evil for reproduction who should otherwise be avoided. I do not know how he thinks we will get a son unless we couple. It is all very well for the priests to tell him to pray for an heir, but there is more to getting a child than just prayer!” The empress flushed irritably, but then she continued smoothly.
“I dare not take a lover yet to satisfy my own needs. The church considers a woman’s natural urges evil. I have no real privacy, and I am constantly watched, as you know. I have thought about it for some time, and it finally came to me! If I am to entice my husband back to my bed, I must take drastic action! I realize I am not supposed to know of things like this, but we have, I am told, several very fine brothels in Constantinople. I decided to engage a courtesan to teach me the erotic arts so that I might lure Leo into doing his duty by us both.”
“You did what?” Basilicus gasped, totally stunned by his sister’s revelation. A good Byzantine wife was not supposed to be aware of such things. He did not know whether to be shocked or amused by what she had done.
“I hired a courtesan to help me become more sensual,” Verina repeated. “Flacilla helped me. She sometimes visits a place called Villa Maxima. It has wonderful entertainments, and marvelous young men for hire as lovers, she tells me. Do you know it, Basilicus?” And while he gaped at her in wonder, she answered her own question, “Of course you know Villa Maxima, brother dear. You are one of its distinguished patrons on occasion.
“One of those occasions was several months ago when you visited the place in the company of our good general. There was a particularly notorious and most lewd entertainment being performed twice weekly that had the entire city talking of its perversity. Flacilla says it was wonderful! I wish that I had been able to see it, but how could I go to such a place, even in disguise? Someone would be certain to recognize me.”
He nodded. “It would be unwise, indeed, Verina,” he told her.
She smiled at him, and then took up the thread of her story. “The courtesan sent to me is a lovely creature named Casia. It is she who told me that Aspar had purchased from the owners of the brothel the female member of that depraved entertainment. A young patrician widow of Roman ancestry from Britain? Really, Basilicus!”
“She is precisely as I have described her to you, Verina. I did not think it necessary to reveal her unhappy months in slavery, a condition that came about through nothing of her making. Aspar freed her immediately after he purchased her. He recognized her patrician blood and felt sorry for her. Now he is in love with Cailin!”
“I cannot believe that you would lie to me, brother,” the empress pouted.
“I did not lie to you, Verina,” the prince said irritably.
“You did not tell me all that you had learned. I cannot forgive you for it.”
“I did not tell you because I did not want to embarrass Cailin, Verina. Aspar would not have told me but that I recognized her. It is an episode that both of them would like to put behind them,” Basilicus said. “All they desire is to live quietly together at Villa Mare.” Then he grew serious. “Leo will never be so safe that you do not need Aspar, sister mine. Offend Aspar, and God knows what might happen to you, and your family. The empire is relatively stable right now, but one never knows when something may set the masses to rebellion and discontent.
“I will tell Aspar that you know his secret, and how you learned it. You will keep that secret, and by doing so our general will be deeply in your debt, Verina. That is far more valuable to you than any momentary satisfaction you might gain by revealing all this to Flacilla Strabo.”
The empress considered her brother’s words, and then she nodded. “Yes, you are correct, Basilicus. Aspar’s goodwill is far more important to us than that of his whorish wife. She has a new lover now, you know, and this time she has chosen a man from among our own class.”
“Did she tell you that?” Basilicus asked. “Who is it, Verina?”
“Justin Gabras! Scion of the great patrician family in Trebizond,” the empress responded. “He is twenty-five, and said to be very handsome.”
“What is he doing in Constantinople, and how has Flacilla intrigued him into a carnal liaison?” Basilicus wondered aloud, but seeing the sparkle in his sister’s eye, he knew she would tell him everything.
“It is whispered,” Verina began, “that Justin Gabras has a very quick temper. He has killed several people whom he believed offended him. His last victim, however, was a cousin of the bishop of Trebizond. It was necessary, I am told, to remove the murderer as quickly as possible from the scene. They say that the Gabras family was forced to pay the bishop’s family a huge bounty for their relative’s life. Justin Gabras was expelled from Trebizond for a period of five years.
“Already his reputation in Constantinople grows for its wickedness. He has bought an enormous mansion overlooking the Golden Horn, and an estate in the country. They say his parties and his entertainments rival those at the city’s best brothels, Basilicus. Are you surprised that Flacilla should find him?”
“I am surprised that the church does not interfere,” the prince said.
“His generosity to the patriarch’s favorite causes has earned him a blind eye in that quarter,” the empress told her brother knowledgeably.
“If this Justin Gabras is all you say he is, I think perhaps Flacilla has gotten in over her head this time,” Basilicus noted.
“If she has, it might solve many problems,” the empress observed wisely. “The Strabo family would no longer have to worry about Flacilla’s behavior, nor would Aspar have to be burdened with her.”