It was a quiet home. No children. No pets. No braziers against the winter coolness. Apparently almost unlived in. Nothing much going on today.
Then I caught a low murmur of female voices. Following the sound, I came to a colonnade of grey stone pillars forming an enclosed peristyle garden, so sheltered that the rampaging rose-bushes still bore occasional flowers even though it was December. Four rather dusty laurels marked the corners and a huge stone fountain bowl stood silent in the center space.
Strolling out into the garden casually I cam upon Helena Justina with another woman. I knew who she was; I had seen her before. She was just a freed slave, an ex-secretary from the Palace-yet potentially the most influential woman in the Empire today. I straightened up. If the rumours about how she used her position were true, then more power might be wielded on the sly in this isolated villa than in any other private house in Rome.
3
THEY HAD BEEN laughing quietly, two straight-backed civilized, unselfconscious women braving the weather as they discussed how the world worked. Helena had the animated look that meant she was truly enjoying herself. That was rare; she tended to be unsociable except with people she knew well.
Her companion was twice her age, an undeniably elderly woman with a slightly drawn expression. Her name was Antonia Caenis. Though a freedwoman, she was one of grand status: she had once worked for the mother of the Emperor Claudius. That had given her long and close connections with the old discredited imperial family and now she possessed even more intimate links with the new one: she was the long-time mistress of Vespasian. As an ex-slave she could never marry him, but after his wife died they had lived openly together. Everyone had assumed that upon becoming Emperor he would shed her discreetly, but he took her with him to the Palace. At their age it was hardly a scandal. This villa presumably belonged to Caenis herself; if she still came here, it must be to transact business of an unofficial kind.