Blood Games

TEXT OF A LETTER FROM ATTA OLIVIA CLEMENS IN ROME TO RAGOCZY SAINT-GERMAIN FRANCISCUS IN PANTICAPAEUM ON THE PALUS MAEOTIS.

To my dearest Saint-Germain, greetings:

As you can see, I am once again in Rome. How little and yet how much has changed! The Flavian Circus is quite complete, and puts the Circus Maximus to shame. They have much worse crowding in the Flavian Circus. There are Games held much oftener than when you lived here, and the costs are simply tremendous. There's not the skill there used to be; butchery is what is wanted and what is given. The gladiators, if you can call them that, are worse than anything you have ever seen. I was aghast to see how sloppily they fight now, though it is hardly worth the investment to train them to fight any better. The bestiarii are the new heroes, if they can train their animals to be clever in their killing. There is one man with four killer elephants, and they all have learned to impale the men they fight on their tusks. The people love it, but I found it disgusting.

Your lands are in good heart, and I will take advantage of your offer to live at Villa Ragoczy while I remain here. It has been kept very well, though some of the rarer plants in the garden have died because they lacked the proper care. Otherwise, there is a fourth slaves' barracks by the exercise ring, very nicely made, just as you would like.

I had occasion to see my nephew the other day. Imagine, he is a stolid man of almost fifty years. He was gallant enough to say that he was reminded of his mother when he saw me. How strange it felt to look at this man who is my sister's son, and know that he saw me as much younger than he. As you promised me, it is a disquieting experience.

The Emperor, Marcus Ulpius Traianus, is on a building spree. He is determined to leave his mark in Rome if he has to rebuild the city to do it. He would seem to be fairly well-liked, and except for this building mania is as sensible an Emperor as most are. He has been using what little is left of Nero's Golden House to build baths and arches from one end of the city to the other. Oh, Saint-Germain, do you remember that night long ago when we met in Nero's gardens? Where the lake was, the Flavian Circus now stands, and all that is left of the Golden House is part of the transitoria and the vestibule. How sad that extravagant dream is gone.

There are times when I walk Roman streets that I cannot believe I have been gone for thirty years. The swine market is the same, the vendors are as aggressive as ever, the prices for housing are ridiculous, as they have always been. At those moments it seems I have never left. Then I come to a new building or I hear the music they're playing today, and I know that Rome is not quite the city I was born in. One of the changes that most astounds me is the increase in Nazarene Jews, the ones who call themselves Christians. Half the freedmen clerks you meet are members of that faith. You'd think they were trying to conquer the empire by taking over the bureaucracy.

I have found two young men and a lovely and accomplished young woman to share my bed upon occasion. It pleases me very much to give them love and pleasure. You were right, I think, when you told me I had been gone from Rome too long.

But I miss you, Saint-Germain. I miss your thoughts and your kindness and your wisdom and your love. One day we shall be together again, and you can tell me of all your journeys through the world. Does the travel help? I wonder. Or does it make your loneliness worse? Yes, I know how much you want to find someone to come to you freely and willingly, without reservation or qualification. Who does not want that kind of love? Yet, if you had insisted that you have only that sort of love, you and I would never have met, and I would have died of despair more than forty years ago. Your generosity saved me then, as it has aided me these last thirty years. I would be less than honest, less than grateful if I did not value above all other things the great gift you gave me when you made me like yourself.

Oh, this may amuse you: there is a new book that's very popular in Rome just now, that the author hints is based on actual circumstances, about a very corrupt and malicious Senator who disgraced his own wife, plotted against the Senate, made fraudulent complaints against others, forced his slaves to manufacture evidence, and was driven to suicide. It's set in Republican days, but the older Senators are shaking their heads and muttering about the story, and a few of them have said the publisher ought to apologize, though no one knows to whom. Justus would be furious if he knew what had been made of him. There, you see? I can write his name and hear him spoken of now within fury or hatred or fear. No, I haven't forgot what he did and possibly never will, but never, as you have told me before, is a long time and it may happen in a century or two that he will be like the names on the tombs of the Via Appia, simple curiosities with a slightly unwholesome reputation.

I visited my tomb, by the way, the one you pulled me out of so many years ago. It has not been repaired and there are thistles growing around it. Quite a number of the people living on the south side of the city have insisted that the place is haunted and that the ghost of the tomb appears there, trailing a bloody shroud and cursing the husband who betrayed her. Splendid stuff, I promise you. I wanted to laugh, in a way, but also I felt a kind of vertigo, as if I stood at the top of a high promontory and saw below in the distance one little speck of light glowing.

Rogerian has been good enough to send me a record of where you plan to be for the next several years. I did not know you had so many estates in Persia. Are you taking that religious dancer with you, or are you hoping to find other interests in Persia? I've grown too used to living with you, and I must remind myself that I can't walk across the courtyard when I want to talk with you. Knowing where you will be is helpful, though Isis only knows how long the letters will take to reach you. Or how long yours will take to reach me. And that, my dearest, dearest friend, is an order. I will have letters from you or I will pack a few chests full of good Roman earth and set out over the world to find you.

The one thing I regret about coming to your life is that the change put an end to our physical intimacy. How sad that we are not able to take sustenance from our own kind. To this moment I can remember the last time you gave me that special rapture-in that horrible cell under the Circus Maximus. It did not seem possible that there would be enough love from those times to last for as long as there is your life in me, but it is true. And, as you have said, there are compensations.

I must leave. There is a state funeral this afternoon and the entire world goes to it. The honored dead was once Master of the Bestiarii at the Circus Maximus. He became a crony of Titus Flavius Domitianus when he was Caesar, was given three estates, took to raising horses and died surrounded by his family. Domitianus married him to one of his cousins, so old Necredes did very well for himself in his seventy-one years. To hear the gossip, Necredes single-handedly contained a gladiatorial rebellion more than thirty years ago, and if he hadn't, Rome would have been sacked by arena slaves. I promise you I will not laugh too loudly.

By my own hand on the seventeenth day of April in the 855th Year of the City, though it hardly seems possible.

Olivia