6
The Professor
I smelled her before I saw her. Oils and sweet unguents and rose water and maybe some powder. Either that, or Rome’s Gladiatorial Training School kept a perfumery on the premises.
I’d stopped struggling two floors below; it would help nobody if I got myself killed or injured. Now the legionaries and I stood outside an open doorway with daylight and all those sweet aromas spilling out of it, so when the soldiers let me go, I smoothed down the ruffled clothes that I’d slept and hiked twenty miles in, in the vain hope of making myself a tiny bit presentable.
Then came a brisk command from inside the room in a low alto voice that was obviously used to being obeyed immediately. And, immediately, they marched me in.
To my right was a big open window that overlooked the circular courtyard in the center of the Ludus Magnus. There, a dozen groups of men battled with sword and shield, trident and net, whips, spears, and various other weapons. It looked like a giant brawl, but amid the grunts and the clamor of steel meeting steel, the voices that wafted up here to the third-floor overlook were focused, businesslike, even cheerful. This was not battle. This was practice.
But much as I wanted to look at the living history exhibit out in the training arena, I wanted to look at the noblewoman to my left even more.
The Romans I had seen so far had the olive skin common to many Italians. This woman’s skin was two shades darker than that. Her hair was auburn, shoulder-length but coiffed into tight curls that hugged her head and looked as if they’d been arranged strand by strand. Perhaps they had; she was obviously rich enough to be able to spare the time.
Her eyes were large, penetrating, and rimmed with kohl. Her face was angular but beautiful. She looked commanding and confident, but I also saw something else in those eyes: an intense intelligence and curiosity. She looked about thirty years old.
I was willing to bet that the essences and fragrances her slaves had artfully applied to her hair and body today cost more than my whole team earned in a year. Do I need to add that she was dressed magnificently, in fine white linens hemmed with gold and silver threads, ornamented with what might have been gems?
I tore my eyes away. I was staring. And so I missed the gesture she must have made to the legionaries, because they saluted and withdrew, leaving us alone together.
Well, that was unexpected.
Under her stern gaze I did what anyone would have done, which was to drop my eyes, bow, and say a polite, “Good afternoon,” to her in Latin.
She half-smiled, half-cringed, perhaps at my pronunciation. “Huh. So you are …”
And, just like that, she addressed me by name. My real name, not just Professor, which is what everyone calls me.
My mouth dropped open. No one on my team calls me by my real name. Hell, most of them don’t even know it. She couldn’t have heard it from any of the boys, even if she’d been with us.
My heart was hammering, fit to burst by now, but I tried to stay calm and merely nodded. “The same, ma’am.” Then realized I’d stupidly said that in English, and in Latin repeated the sentiment: “Yes. That is my name.”
Again, she cringed, but hey, she had a hell of an accent of her own. Far from schoolbook or church Latin, that was sure.
I bowed again. “And, please, what is yours?”
There must have been politer ways of asking, but I was lucky I could drag any Latin at all to mind at this precise moment.
“I am Domna,” she said simply.
In Latin, Domna just means “Lady,” so that was far from helpful. But I looked again and thought about it a trifle longer, and then said: “Julia Domna?”
Domna looked shocked, though whether at my knowledge or my over-familiarity wasn’t clear. Then she inclined her head.
I smiled at her, and she shook her head slightly in amazement. I expect the people around her were trained not to meet her eye. I was not well-trained. “And, if you’ll forgive me: how is your husband Septimius? And your sons?”
Now her face hardened and she looked as if she wanted to kill me. I backed off, literally; I stepped away three paces and lowered my gaze. “My apologies. Many apologies, Domna. I did not know. Severus is fallen?”
“He is,” she said curtly and, turning her back, walked away from me.
Well. I hoped my clumsiness hadn’t broken anything. But at least I now knew where—or when—we were.
The Colosseum was built and complete by 80 AD, so I’d known we were later than that. Styles of Roman dress had started changing in the fourth and fifth centuries, but that still gave me a wide window.
But if this was Julia Domna, and her husband Septimius Severus had died recently enough for her to be shocked at the mere mention of it, then this was 211 AD, or perhaps 212.
I fervently hoped it was 211. After old Septimius struck out, the next Emperor up to bat would be Caracalla, who was almost as nutty and violent as Caligula. If he was anywhere around here, we’d all have to be very careful indeed.
But then I remembered I had a much more bizarre problem at hand, because Julia Domna knew who I was.
“So it was you,” I said to her back. “Julia Domna? You brought us here. Picked us up right out of time. Out of the years. To your year. To your place. To Rome.”
It was the only way I could think to put it in Latin. But Domna did not respond, and so I stepped to the window and looked out at the gladiatorial practice. Trying to match her calmness, maintain some initiative.
Trying not to be desperately afraid that we would all end up down there or across the road in the Colosseum, me and Quentin and Walter and Enos and Jake and all the guys, with swords in our hands, swinging them like bats because that was what we knew, while brawny and utterly ruthless brutes like those in the courtyard below me rushed at us and hacked our lives away.