In Bed With Lord Byron

hunting down pretty slave girls?’
    ‘Your place is in the home,’ said Ovid, but he sounded slightly nervous.
    Well, fancy that!
I thought, a smile breaking over my face. Old chauvinist-piggy Ovid is a hen-pecked husband! I’d thought wives were meant to be under male thumbs in Roman times.
I’d read, for example, that they weren’t allowed to drink; if a husband smelt even a whiff on his wife’s breath, she would be beaten. But perhaps that was just for public show;
after all, social conventions can dampen or distort human nature, but it always springs back to its true state in the end; and Adrasteia was clearly never going to be the sort of woman who was seen
and not heard, however hard he tried.
    Suddenly I saw the other slave girl, Tiryns, approaching. I flushed, waiting for her to reprimand me. But to my surprise, she stopped and listened too, whispering, ‘They’re such a
pair, aren’t they?’
    I giggled and then stopped short as she put a finger to my lips. We both stood there, enjoying the row.
    ‘I suppose you’ve been off writing your silly poetry again?’
    Oh God. I nearly stuffed my fingers into my mouth.
    ‘I will write some this evening – I’m working on
Metamorphoses
.’
    ‘
Metamorphoses
? Oh, sure. I expect it’s more of your
smut
. Well, I hope you can manage to keep your verse under control after
Ars Amatoria.
I hear the rumours
daily now at how displeased the Emperor is.’
    ‘The poem is a celebration of love. It was inspired by my wife!’
    ‘Oh, spare me, please.’
    The bedroom door suddenly flew open.
    ‘Lesbia,’ said Adrasteia, looking weary, and for a moment, I felt quite sorry for her. ‘You may work here as a slave. You will begin tomorrow in the kitchens preparing
breakfast. Then Tiryns will bring you to my chamber to dress me. Thank you.’
    Behind his wife, I saw Ovid gaze across and give me a challenging stare. I looked away, though for the rest of the night that stare seemed to echo in my retinas, twinkling and fizzing and
whispering excitement.
    iv) The games
    But I didn’t want to have an affair.
    The idea held no excitement or glamour for me. I had seen my father’s affair destroy my mother, ageing her by ten years overnight. I had seen the damage Anthony’s parents had done
with their infidelities. Ovid didn’t have any children, mind you, and Adrasteia was hardly a dream wife, but even so, I wasn’t prepared to inflict that pain on her.
    And yet. Ovid flirted with me outrageously; and I didn’t go back to the time machine.
    Had it been 2005, he would definitely have ended up in one of those sexual harassment cases worth millions splashed across the papers. But this was 1 B.C. and he regularly brushed against me
when I passed him in the corridor, or ran his eyes over me as though undressing me. At first I was huffy with him, convinced he was a sleaze who tried it on with any slave that came his way. But
then I saw how coolly he acted around Tiryns; he would barely utter a monosyllable for her. And I felt a little flush of happiness inside: I was special to him.
    The work was horribly hard. I realised I was never,
ever
going to complain again about shit office jobs. Office jobs involved comfy chairs and tea breaks and internet-surfing. They
didn’t involve the endless dawn-to-dusk washing of togas, cooking of meals on the smoking fire in the kitchens, sewing, cleaning, gardening. And worse,
we had to cut up food for Ovid and
his wife using a spoon.
There were no knives and forks about, so they ate with their fingers. And Adrasteia took as much advantage as she could of me.
    ‘Lesbia, I need my food to be cut into bite-sized pieces. Take this back to the kitchen.’
    ‘Oh, Lesbia, now you’ve brought it back, it seems a bit cold. Cook something else, will you?’
    ‘Lesbia, I need a cloth.’
    Tiryns warned me that when Adrasteia was in a particularly cruel mood, she would wipe her greasy fingers in her slave’s hair.
    ‘God, if she ever tries that with me, she’ll be in trouble!’ I cried.
    Tiryns gave me a curious warning look and I quickly laughed, pretending it was a joke. I was beginning to feel sympathy for the immigrants who come to England with PhDs and end up cleaning
toilets in stations. I kept wanting to turn around to someone and just yell, ‘I have a degree, you know, and I’ve read the works of Chaucer
and
Shakespeare, so please wipe that
patronising look off your face.’
    I struck up a lukewarm friendship