“It’s not about love!” Amara shouts, unable to contain herself. “Do you think I ever gave a shit about that?” She stands up, and Felix scrapes back his own chair, mirroring her movement so they are facing each other across the desk. Amara leans over it, her palms pressed flat to its surface. “I could have made us rich,” she says. “I could still make us rich.”

Amara’s arms tremble from the pressure of so much pent-up hatred. Felix reaches for her, but she pushes him away. “No,” she says, stepping back. “I’m not a slave anymore. Earn it.”

He is cold in his anger. “You think I won’t just take it?”

She holds up her hands, turning them, her fingers playing over the rings Rufus has given her. The symbol of her patron’s ownership and his power. Amara smiles at her old master, enjoying his impotence. “I think you wouldn’t dare.”

17

“It’s because they’re smitten by our looks that our lovers worship us; when our looks have faded they take their fancy elsewhere; if we haven’t made some provision in the meantime, we find ourselves abandoned.”

—Bacchis speaking in Terence’s play The Self-Tormentor

The weight of the hair being pinned to Drusilla’s head must make her neck ache, but she gives no sign of discomfort. Thalia, her maid, is winding plaits into an intricate design, pausing now and then to fix them in place. Drusilla stares calmly ahead, facing the window to her garden. It is late afternoon and a shaft of sunlight cuts through the room, catching the dust motes as they dance.

Amara’s hair has already been dressed, pins digging painfully into her scalp to keep the false tresses in place. It had been Rufus who suggested that she allow Drusilla to dress her, anxious that she make the right impression at the Floralia which is also her public appearance as his lover. Rufus also wanted the afternoon’s events to be a surprise for her, telling her nothing of what would be happening in the planned procession, but Drusilla, fortunately, believes surprises are only for children.

“You’ve seen the carriage?” Amara asks.

“I’ve ridden in it once before,” Drusilla replies. “Last year. It belongs to Quintus’s family. Did you not see the procession?”

Amara shakes her head. Last year, she was performing at Cornelius’s house with Dido, the same place she has sent Victoria and the flautists to perform tonight. Victoria had been disappointed to miss the theater, but Amara is secretly relieved. She is not sure how Victoria might have reacted to the sight of her carried in triumph through the streets. “I’ve never ridden in a carriage,” she says. “I can’t imagine it.”