“What did you say to him?”
She smiled and it was a sad, wistful gesture. “I lied to him. I told him Mother had come to me in a dream. And that she was still with us, watching over him, wanting him to move on.”
I hugged her, then we walked to the kitchen to help Apicius make a dish of Parthian chicken.
PART X
28 C.E. to 29 C.E.
SAUCE FOR GRILLED MULLET
Pepper, lovage, rue, honey, pine nuts, vinegar, wine, liquamen, a little oil; warm it through and pour on.
—Book 10.1.11, The Fisherman
On Cookery, Apicius
CHAPTER 26
“Apicius is back! Apicius is back!” Fourteen-year-old Junius’s voice rang through the villa corridors. I looked at Passia and grabbed her hand. Together we followed our son to the front gate, where Apicius was being helped out of his litter.
In the last two years he’d traveled to various temples all over the Empire, praying to the gods to bring Aelia to him in a dream as she had “appeared” to his daughter. Neither Apicata nor I had the heart to tell him she had lied about the dream. Every once in a while we would receive a letter brought by a courier telling us of the cities he had visited. He also sent back scores of recipes, costly delicacies, and ideas to further grace Caesar’s table during his absence, which I executed, much to the delight of the diners on Caesar’s Roman couches.
Apicius was a little more rotund than when he had left and his skin was tanned a dark brown, which made the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth more pronounced.
Unlike his master, Sotas had grown even more muscular, likely from additional exercise on their travels. Plus, if he had to assist in carrying Apicius’s litter at all, it would have kept him strong. Like Apicius, he was in his late fifties, but you would not have known it from his appearance.
Apicius was jovial and glad to have returned. There was a light in his eyes that shone in a way I had not seen in years.
He gave us all hugs and a broad smile, but the biggest he reserved for Junius.
“By Jove! Who is this handsome young man? I daresay I know him not!” He winked at my son, clearly pleased to see him.
“I’ve grown a little, I know,” Junius said, smiling.
“A little? It is as though I’ve grown a statesman in my own house! Pretty soon you’ll be running off to the Senate for a vote, or taking to the Forum to argue a case. I can hear them now. ‘Junius Thrasius Gavius Apicius, the great orator, is ready to present his side of the story!’?”
Both Junius and I beamed with pride. Apicius put an arm around my son and started to walk toward the house, asking him a variety of questions about his studies. “Ready the triclinium for the cena tonight, Thrasius. I think I’d like to see a few old friends.”
I was only too happy to oblige.
? ? ?
“I am glad you are hosting cenae once more. We missed you and your wit!” Trio lifted his glass to toast Apicius. It was a warm May evening and we dined outside in the garden under the stars of Rome.
“You went far in your travels, Apicius. You must have seen some amazing places,” Celera said.
Apicius beamed. “I did.”
“Which was your favorite?”
“It is hard to say! Hera’s temple in Paestum is magnificent but it is hard to rival the home of Venus in Heliopolis.”
He had told me about the experience he had in Heliopolis, in which the goddess told him in a dream to go home and to “waste not fresh tears over old griefs.” I think his experience was more attributable to an opium pipe than anything else; Euripides first said that line several hundred years ago. Still, it was those words that brought him and Sotas home and for that I was grateful.
Apicius smiled as he plucked some grapes from the tray on the table in front of him. “I am glad to share this meal with you as well. It has been too long and Thrasius has become overconfident.” He winked at me.
“Oh, Apicius, we haven’t even talked about the big news! You must be pleased!”
“Pleased about what?”
Trio’s eyes widened. “About Junilla, of course!”
Apicius looked to me for an answer but I could only shrug. I hadn’t talked to Apicata in over a week. Junilla was seven—what news could there be?
“I haven’t had a chance to see her yet. She sent word that she could not come tonight, but she would see me soon.”
“Sejanus managed to convince poor, addled Claudius to engage his son to Junilla.”
I wondered at the news. Claudius was Tiberius’s nephew and not well liked. He was sickly and had a clubfoot that made him the butt of many Roman jokes.
Trio motioned his slave to him, then wiped the grease from his fingers in the boy’s long hair.
“Fetch him a napkin,” I said to Tycho, who waited in the shadows.
“No, no, that’s what Hector is here for.” Trio waved dismissively at his slave, who stepped back to his post along the triclinium wall.
“You must be proud,” Celera said. “Claudius’s son could be Caesar one day.”
“Indeed,” Apicius said.
The boy, Claudius Drusus, was thirteen. Because there were already several men of Imperial nobility named Drusus, he went by the nickname Albus, which was a nod to his very pale skin. I marveled that Sejanus was so desperate to hold power in Rome that he would look for such a long-reaching opportunity as to marry Junilla to the boy. What was he planning? Then again, if Albus became Caesar at a young age, Sejanus would be very powerful indeed.
“I admit, I do feel sorry for the girl, growing up knowing Claudius will be her father-in-law,” Trio said.
I had been thinking the same thing. Caesar’s nephew, Claudius, always seemed somewhat slow and deformed. “I hear he spends all his time locked away in his library, writing histories.”
“Yes, when he’s not shuffling through the palace playing oaf to young Caligula,” Celera agreed. “He lets the boy torment him.”
“And that wife of his!” Apicius leaned in conspiratorially. “She looks like a monster straight out of Virgil’s tales!”
Apicius laughed with his friends but I saw the glimpse of darkness in his eyes.
? ? ?
In the morning, Apicius had Sotas rouse me early. I didn’t need to ask why.
“Why didn’t she tell us the news in her message to me?” Apicius said once we were in the litter, with Tycho and Sotas walking alongside beyond the closed curtains. I had retired early the night before and missed any previous tirade.
“The note probably came from Sejanus. He rarely lets her out of his sight. He’s ambitious and we are of little consequence. He rarely speaks to me unless he requires me to attend a dinner. He has also kept you from Caesar for many years.”
“I am barely a dog to him,” Apicius muttered.
? ? ?
We rode in silence until we came to a sudden stop at our destination. The door slaves ushered us into the atrium, where Sejanus met us. He wore a blinding-white toga, so fresh and white I could still smell the chalk in its fibers from a few paces away.