Reincarnations

Thracius Several nights pass. Then several more. A week. Two -- and then one unremarkable afternoon, there is a messenger at Vita's door. He is plainly dressed and disinterested, a hired courier with a knapsack full of messages. He hammers impatiently on the door; when at last a slave answers, he rummages through his bag and withdraws a scrap of parchment too small and poor of quality for anyone to even bother with a scroll. It is, however, folded over once and sealed for privacy. The wax looks like it may have dripped from any old tallow candle, off white and rancid. There is no seal. "For the domina ," the messenger says, already looking down the road toward the city. "Payment upon delivery. Two sesterces, please." Vita Vita waits til after nightfall the day that Thracius leaves and brings her little mice together, giving them their precious coins, putting a finger to her lips. They nod, bright-eyed and eager, the coins visible and then gone. Her m...

Vita It is the height of summer, and a lurid heat weighs over the vineyards. Slaves work up and down the rows of grapes, harvesting enormous baskets of deep purple fruits, overseen by more experienced slaves who know which bunches to leave to more fully ripen. Full baskets are carried to slaves who pluck each grape from its stem, their reddened fingertips flying. In large basins, others stomp and crush the fruit with their feet, but all of this is happening some distance away, closer to the villa near the river. In the city, Vita sits in her atrium, listening to the gurgle of fountains more than she listens to the slave standing with a slate near her perch, recounting the debt owed by the merchant standing before her. Her tunic is tied around her torso, beneath breasts and over waist, with intertwining cords that stand brightly against the deep, rich color of the long garment. Her hair is braided and looped and pinned upward, a breeze cooling the back of her neck. She is sipping ...