The Passion of Mary Magdalen. Elizabeth Cunningham

want her to trust me. I didn’t want to be anything more to her than a mirror she could pick up, put down, or toss away. “My father caught her in bed with some equestrian. I think my father had him killed. My mother was sent into exile. I think,” she lowered her voice, “My father would have killed her, too, but her family rescued her. They took her away. Far away.”

      “Did you ever see her again?”

      “No. She died of a fever a few years later.”

      “How old were you when she went away?”

      “Four. I can’t remember her.”

      Her voice was a monotone.

      “Then my sister,” she went on in the same flat voice, unstoppable now, “my oldest sister, less than a year after she was married, she committed adultery with a senator’s son. I thought that would be better than with a slave. I was still a child; I didn’t understand. I was glad when I heard she was coming home, but then my father killed her. He strangled her.”

      My hands started to shake so I couldn’t hold the brush. My stomach heaved into my throat. I got to the slop bucket just in time. My body knew before I did: The guilt-wracked man who had come to me at the Vine and Fig Tree had told me the same story; I had acted as confessor and priestess to her dead sister’s lover. I had also serviced her hateful father. It was unbearable, I had to throw up, get it out of me, this knowledge, this contamination.

      Paulina just sat there not moving, not speaking.

      “Did I give you permission to stop brushing?” she demanded when I was done.

      “Would you rather I had vomited into your hair?”

      “You people have so little self control. It’s disgusting. Now pick up the brush and get on with it. By Juno, it wasn’t your sister.”

      My hands were still shaking as I went back to my task. I needed the soothing rhythm of the brush strokes more than she did now.

      “My second sister—”

      “I’m sorry I asked. Don’t tell me any more.”

      “She died in childbirth,” Paulina went on impervious. “She was a virtuous wife. My father adopted her son.”

      Someone should strangle Publius Paulus before he harmed another generation.

      “He didn’t want me to be married at all. There was an opening for a new vestal virgin. I was still young enough. Our family is ancient and distinguished. I had a good dowry. They should have taken me, but they chose someone else, someone from an upstart family. That was around the time my sister got caught with the senator’s son. Those old virgin bitches probably sat around congratulating themselves on not choosing me. That’s when the rumors started. The rumors of a family curse. Poor Pater. It wasn’t his fault. All the bad blood comes from my mother’s side.”

      I opened my mouth to loose a stream of invective against poor Pater the filiacide, but realized she could not and would not hear any criticism of her father. It was not the story she was wanted to tell herself.

      “So even though I had a good dowry, I didn’t get any marriage offers.”

      “What about Appius Claudius?”

      “I’m not sure, but I think my father knows things about him that Claudius doesn’t want anyone to know, things that could ruin him, maybe even get him thrown out of the Senate.”

      “So, let me get this straight.” I couldn’t hold back anymore. “Your noble Pater, of the ancient and distinguished family, is blackmailing that kinky sleaze ball into being your jailer.”

      I could not see her face but as I brushed her hair, I could feel the muscles of her face pulling her scalp forward as she frowned.

      “You must not speak disrespectfully of Pater,” she stated, though I thought I detected just the slightest interrogative tilt in her tone. “I will not allow it.”

      “Fine,” I said. “He’s your father, not mine.”

      Thank the gods. Mine was at the bottom of the sea, at the back of my mind, at the treacherous shifting edges of memory. Not that Paulina had asked.

      “Pater knows what is best for me,” she droned on. “I may not love Claudius…”

      Love? I’d never seen her so much as have a conversation with him.

      “…but at least I have a place in society. I am a respectable Roman matron. I am restoring the honor of my family.”

      She was clearly speaking by rote, repeating what she had been taught, renewing her will to believe it. I said nothing; there was nothing I could say that would not be disrespectful of Pater. Then, without warning, Paulina’s mood shifted again, and she buried her face in her hands.

      I stood there, the brush suspended, my life suspended. How I longed for a sea wind, raw and bracing, how I longed for sky and the piercing cry of wild birds. Instead here I was in a place thick with human secrets and secretions.

      “Red,” she whispered, “I need someone to, someone—”

      To love you, I finished silently. But I can’t. I can’t.

      “—to be on my side. Someone who won’t betray me. Someone I can trust.”

      There was that request again, the one she had made of me in the storeroom when I sat naked with my wounds exposed. I understood it better now, but I still didn’t know how to answer her. Everyone is working for someone, Reginus had said. I could say, “Yes, trust me, Paulina,” and get the goods on her easily. I could become an information broker. Who would buy her secrets? Some lackey of Pater’s? Or Claudius’s? Or that walking erection Decius Mundus? There would probably be plenty of takers.

      “Red, I’m talking to you, Red. Can I trust you or not?”

      “Trusting someone is always a risk,” I said. “I don’t know that I would trust a slave I’d bought through bullying and blackmail, one I had publicly beaten. I mean, think about it, Paulina. Why wouldn’t I have every reason to spy on you and betray you?”

      She was so nonplussed she didn’t even notice that I called her Paulina.

      “But you’re mine,” she almost whimpered. “I can kill you if I want to. I can make your life so miserable you’ll wish you were dead.”

      “You can threaten me all you like. It makes no difference. I’m already miserable. I already wish I were dead. Listen, Paulina, I may be your pedisequa, but you can’t buy or force loyalty. Why should anyone be on your side when you can order them beaten or killed or lop off a body part in a fit of pique? When you regularly throw tantrums and break mirrors, threaten to tattle to your precious Pater, and in every way behave like a petty tyrant and a spoiled brat? What do you expect? What are you thinking?”

      Paulina began making loud gasping noises, as if she couldn’t get enough air in her pipes. I wondered if she were going to faint or have a fit. But instead she stood up, white-faced and blue-lipped, and turned to face me.

      “How dare you, how dare you speak to me as if,” she sputtered, “as if—”

      “As if I were your equal? Because I am.”

      “What,” she managed after a moment, “what on earth can you possibly mean?”

      “Honey,” I said, “we’re both prisoners.”

      Before Paulina could figure out what to say or do next, we heard voices in the courtyard below, and then the sound of feet on the staircase.

      The guard had returned.