The Uncertain Hour by Jesse Browner

Author:Jesse Browner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2011-01-14T16:00:00+00:00

WHEN HE RECEIVED confirmation that the ninth cohort had marched for the eastern frontier, Petronius dispatched his own lictors to Prusa with a letter and orders to escort Melissa to Nicomedia. In the letter, he excitedly described the tasteful little townhouse he’d purchased for her in a quiet residential district near the palace; the domestic slaves he would place at her disposal; the generous allowance she would enjoy to decorate her new home and clothe herself presentably; the privacy and freedom that would soon be theirs for the first time. He also sought to anticipate her objections. “Please understand,” he’d written, “I am trying neither to buy your loyalty nor to entice you into a gilded cage. The deed to the house is in your name and will remain so regardless of your decision.”

Petronius was not terribly surprised when the lictors returned from Prusa with nothing but a written response. “Governor,” it read, “I wish you had consulted me before going to such great effort and expense on my behalf. Now please understand me: It is precisely because I have been entrapped and unhappy for so long that I am in no hurry to exchange one situation of dependency for another. I know you think it unfair of me to compare you, patriarch of the Petronii and Proconsul of Bithynia, to a lowly centurion, but I have spent half my adult life regretting one decision and have no intention of spending the other half regretting another.”

As he galloped that afternoon for Prusa, Petronius was forced to ask himself a question he had hitherto managed to evade: Could she be playing him for a fool? Was it possible that she—about whom, after all, he knew so very little—was simply raising the stakes to a point at which Petronius would offer her anything, even her own independent fortune, to secure her commitment? He considered it highly unlikely, though not impossible, yet decided that it made no difference to him whatsoever. So long as he could have her, and keep her, and not have to share her, he was prepared to go to any lengths necessary. If that was what she wanted, that was what she should have. Yet, as he approached the city gates, his confidence began to waver as he recalled that he really had no idea what she wanted from him, and never had, and perhaps never could, because he was so obtuse and ridiculous, and because she refused to explain herself. It was not a question of throwing offers at her, any one of which was likely to offend her, but of throwing himself upon her mercy, and promising to do whatever it was she wanted him to do, if only she would condescend once and for all simply to tell him how to please her.

The camp was all but deserted, with the exception of a few officers’ wives and a handful of sentries too old or feeble to make the march eastward. Petronius was carelessly, perhaps foolhardily indifferent

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