After we returned from Rome, Passia was a different person toward me. Much to my delight, she would often appear in the kitchen with Apicata in the late morning when all was quiet. We would tell Apicata stories and sometimes take walks with her in the garden. We talked only a little to each other at first, with most of our conversation centered on Apicata.
Over the months that followed, the walks began to include longer conversations. Six-year-old Apicata would run ahead and Passia and I would sit on a bench and talk. I longed to touch her, to reach out my hand and place it against hers, but I did not. Instead we let our words touch and entwine. We talked about what life would be like if we were not slaves. We shared house gossip, gave each other advice on how to handle Apicius, and discussed Aelia’s sadness.
“I try to keep Apicata from Aelia when the darkness consumes her,” Passia said to me one day, almost a year after the night in my cubiculum. I was pulling radishes up from the garden and she was helping me by wiping off the dirt and placing them in a basket. Apicata was drawing in the dust with a stick at the other end of the garden. One of the house cats was batting at the stick in play.
“It’s not good for her to see her mother so depressed,” she continued. “It fills her with sadness and no little girl should feel that way.” It sounded like she was remembering her own childhood.
“She should have more children her age to play with,” I said, pulling hard on one of the radishes. “Apicius should not be so narrow-minded. He should let her play with the slave children.”
“I asked Sotas to help me convince Apicius to let one of the girls be a little handmaiden to her but Dominus refused. He did not see the need for her to have two slaves at her age.”
Rúan appeared at the end of the row of radishes. “Popilla is looking for Apicata,” he said, waving at Passia. “She wants to have lunch with her.”
“May Pluto take that old goat,” Passia muttered.
We watched her take Apicata by the hand and pull her away. “Pluto won’t help her,” Rúan said as they disappeared into the house.
“You’re always so certain that our gods are worthless,” I teased, but only half-heartedly. In the three years I’d known him he had often been dismissive of the gods. I had never understood. “How can you be so sure? We don’t scoff at your Tuatha Dé Danann. We even have temples to your own goddess Epona.”
Rúan sniffed with disdain. “In this the Romans are stupid. They would rather believe in everything than make a choice.”
“But who are we to say what gods may decide our fate?”
Rúan picked up the basket. “Men decide their own fate.”
“I don’t know if that’s true. I think that the gods step in and change our fate. We can ask them to help us.”
“Believe what you will, but no god has ever helped me get what I want. If they did I wouldn’t be standing here watching you sit in the dirt pulling up radishes.”
When he left, I thought about his words. I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t. I had to hold on to hope that Venus would bring me Passia and that Fortuna would bring fame to Apicius and in turn to my food and my kitchens. Otherwise I had no purpose, I would be just like so many other nameless slaves, worked to the bone until they died, alone and with no stone to be remembered by.
? ? ?
That evening, Apicius intended to hold a small cena. I had planned an ocean theme, with a wide variety of morsels fresh from the morning’s catch.
When my dominus found me, I had just finished filling a basket of snails plucked from the cochlea where they had grown fat on a specially mixed milky porridge, then boiled and cooled. The snails, nearly as round as a baby’s fist, were ready to be fried and served with salt, oil, pepper, cumin, and a bit of silphium.
“There you are!” Apicius’s voice rose over the din of the kitchen. He wasn’t yet dressed for dinner and wore a red tunic that appeared to be simple at first glance. But as he came close, the intricate border of the tunic became apparent, a thin patterned line of gold along its edges. I could not help but grin. Opulence should have been Apicius’s cognomen. Sotas crossed the kitchen with his master but moved beyond to stand against the wall where he could easily survey the kitchen. He smirked at me.
“Snails, I see!” Apicius said. His voice was bright and his enthusiasm was infectious. When his mood was high my world always felt a little lighter.
“Part of the gustatio.” I was pleased he approved.
I set the basket of snails down on the table next to Vatia. “Shell these, please. You can use the pick in my knife box.”
Apicius picked up one of the snails. “What else is on the menu?”
“I was thinking of an oceanic theme. Sprats in white wine, salt fish balls, stewed eels, oysters, mussels . . . perhaps a patina of sea nettles.”
Apicius frowned. “These snails aren’t from the sea.”
“I know.” I chuckled, moving out of Vatia’s way so she could slip by and get the shell pick out of my personal box of knives, which I kept in the area of the kitchen designated as my work space. “But they seem as though they should be from the sea, do they not?”
“I suppose they do.” Apicius laughed. “Now tell me . . .”
Apicius was cut off by Vatia’s scream, a piercing cry that stopped everyone in the kitchen.
I turned from Apicius to see Vatia swinging her arm hysterically. A small snake hung from her hand.
Another cry rose from the table next to where I stood with Apicius.
“No!”
It was Pallas, the slave who’d broken the glasses on my first day in the household. I had moved him from the kitchen and now his job was mostly in the laundry, washing the napkins, the seat cushions, and the costumes the serving boys wore. His scream mixed with Vatia’s shrieks of fear and pain. Pallas stood there, a look of horror on his face.
Vatia slammed the snake against the table. She snatched up a nearby knife and slashed at the snake, missing and cutting deep across her wrist. Blood poured from the wound and across the head of the viper. Eventually, it relaxed its hold and thudded against the tiles. It had happened so fast that most of the kitchen was too stunned to move. The snake lay there for a second before slithering along the floor toward Apicius.
The blood-spattered serpent was marked with shades of dull red and two dark stripes that began at the eyes and extended down the body. A white wavy pattern crisscrossed its scales. When it was three foot lengths from Apicius it paused and began to make a terrible rasping noise. The whole kitchen knew that sound, the snake was a deadly asp.
“Jupiter, protect me,” Apicius whispered.
“Don’t move!” I yelled to him, although it was clear my dominus was too scared to do anything but stand there, frozen.
Keeping my eye on the viper, I reached back to the table next to me, feeling for the basket Vatia had emptied of the snails. I began to lift it off the table, trying to keep my movements slow and steady.