Call to Juno (A Tale of Ancient Rome #3) (45 page)

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Pinna, Rome, Summer, 396 BC

It was midday. The triumphal parade had not yet reached the Sacred Way. The sky was overcast yet the sun beat down when it broke through the clouds.

At least a thousand were crammed around Pinna in the Forum,
straining their necks to catch sight of the dictator. Some had lined up since daybreak to gain the best position. The mood was buoyant. For once they had plenty of money.

Pinna arranged her palla again over her head and around her body. Thia lay hidden in a sling against her, slumbering after being given a draught.

Others had chosen to view the religious ceremony at dawn near the Circus Maximus. A dais had been erected where senators, magistrates, and knights sat on ivory chairs. An array of soldiers had then borne testimony as to the exploits of the vir triumphalis. She wondered if Marcus’s words of praise stuck in his throat now he saw his hero as vain and vindictive
.
She knew he had qualms about being awarded the mural crown.

In the distance she could hear roars, the sound rolling toward them, as the pomp traveled from the Aventine. The three-beat rhythm of the drums grew louder.

She spied Prince Tarchon. Even though chained, he held himself with dignity, staring ahead, chin raised, shoulders back. He didn’t flinch as the crowd jeered and pelted him with cabbages and onions.

General Lusinies was less composed. His head was bent, his shoulders defeated as refuse rained down on him. His journey would end when he reached the Carcer. The executioners awaited him in the Tullanium, ligatures at the ready.

The slaughter in Veii had deprived Rome of the sight of imprisoned Veientane warriors. The shortfall in military captives was compensated by hundreds of wagons bearing their armor and the rest of Camillus’s treasure. The oohs of the crowd revealed their astonishment. They had scavenged the pickings. Here was the main.

Artile came next. He was beaming, enjoying the adulation of a crowd who no longer saw him as a dangerous false prophet. Pinna touched her fascinum, averting her head. Even though surrounded, she feared those hypnotic eyes would seek her out.

The two garlanded white cows were docile as Medullinus and Spurius led them. The Furian brothers were smiling at sharing in their brother’s glory. Scipio, as Master of the Horse, rode on his stallion beside them. Senators and magistrates followed, as well as Camillus’s two sons on horseback.

Twenty-four lictors bearing fasces appeared. Women threw handfuls of rose petals, the blossoms floating, their scent rich, creating a floral carpet for the approaching hero.

There were gasps as Camillus came into view. It was as though Jupiter rode in front of them. The four white stallions pranced as they pulled the golden quadriga onto the Sacred Way. Pinna thought of Apollo, the other god who was entitled to drive such a conveyance. The deity had aided the dictator to victory. Now Rome must fear divine retribution for forgetting him.

Camillus’s face was painted with vermillion, his hair crowned with a laurel wreath. His feet were shod with red shoes with gold crescent buckles. The purple-embroidered robes were draped elegantly. Some other woman had finished her needlework.

The creases around his eyes and mouth were deep with the broadness of his smile. He wore a bulla to protect him from the envy of men and gods. A triumphing general was the only adult male who could wear one. Similar charms decorated the harnesses of his steeds and vehicle, double protection against evil and malice.

She partly covered her face with her shawl, not willing to risk him recognizing her, but she need not have worried. He avoided eye contact with the people, keeping his gaze focused above their heads as he waved.

The chariot passed by. Pinna realized it was the last time she would ever see him. And there was sadness underneath her sense of freedom. She wondered how long this faint yearning would last, or whether she could ever forgive him for changing. For no longer being her Wolf.

The legions of Rome followed, dressed in their tunics and togas, led by their officers. Genucius had trimmed his bushy beard and combed his unruly hair. He may have been a knight but true power was denied to him. Would he cause trouble for Camillus after all? She saw Marcus, his face grim beneath the gold mural crown with its turret decorations. Her heart ached for him, knowing the gruesome role he must play this day.

The common soldiers were smiling, joyous to enter the city and greet their families. Proud of their victory. Content with their loot. Pinna despised them for the murder they’d committed. Following tradition, they called out praise to Camillus as well as ribaldry at his expense. She knew joking would turn to anger when they discovered the general who’d championed them had also betrayed them.

The parade wended its way up the Clivus Capitolinus to assemble in the sanctuary precinct. In its wake, the gossip started. Their disapproval of Camillus’s golden chariot and four white horses. How the dictator had rivaled the king of the gods. Did he now wish to be Rome’s monarch?

The scene in the palace returned. How he’d stumbled while invoking the gods. He’d claimed he’d suffered a minor fall in place of a greater calamity for Rome. She doubted he’d averted disaster
.
The people would be furious over the tithe no matter how many horse races, games, and feasts Camillus provided. The city would once again be riven by internal divisions. Civil war might even ensue.

A roar distracted the crowd from their rumormongering. Pinna looked up. Lusinies’s corpse had been thrown onto the steps leading from the Carcer to the Arx.

The roar turned to hateful howling and fist shaking. Calls of “traitor” and “bitch” and worse. A lump formed in Pinna’s throat as she spied the frail figure of Amelia Caeciliana. Despite filth caulking her clothes, lank hair, and hollow eyes, the queen retained her dignity. Pinna both pitied and admired her. She wished Caecilia did not have to become a desolate spirit unable to merge with the Good Ones. She vowed to placate the specter by offering her violets and roses each year.

Thia stirred, fidgeting in the sling. It was time to go. The baby was too young to absorb this tragedy, but Pinna did not want to acquire the memory of Caecilia’s final moments.

She began threading her way through the crowd. Clouds were darkening over the Senate House. Rain threatened to dampen the celebrations.

She didn’t relish venturing onto the Esquiline. As a tomb whore, she’d become inured to traipsing past the rotting corpses of criminals and paupers. But she’d never grown used to the mewling of abandoned children. Or their ultimate silence. Their deaths always tore at her. More so because she was impotent to save them. She could not breastfeed them. And she and Mama never had food to spare. Pinna hoped Mater Matuta would bless her today for being able to rescue a child at last. It would take all her nerve, though, to search for a replacement matching Thia’s size. She’d already steeped swaddling clothes in perfume in the hope it would disguise the smell of any decay. She prayed Aemilius’s inspection would be as perfunctory as Marcus predicted.

Struggling to break free of the crowd, she finally retreated into a side street. She was perspiring beneath the weight of the tunic, stola, and palla. How strange that she wore the clothes of a respectable matron. From now on she would masquerade as the widow of a veteran who’d lost his life at Nepete. And she planned to enter Mater Matuta’s temple in Satricum, believing the goddess would forgive a whore when protecting another mother’s child. The deity always encouraged sisters to embrace their nephews and nieces as closely as their own children.

With Marcus’s patronage she could live comfortably. She would slide into obscurity. Thia’s identity as a Veientane princess had to remain hidden although the child’s features might betray her race. At least the Latins did not hate the Etruscans.

There would be no more men. Nor did she want one. She knew she could not replace him, no matter how much she scoured away the vestiges of feeling for him.

Behind her, the shouts peaked into frenzied anticipation of the final push from the rock. She said a prayer for Caecilia, her heart saddened. She kissed Thia’s head, settling her into the sling. The seed of love for this babe had already flowered. A new life lay ahead of them. Neither of them would be alone or unloved. The night moth’s soul was free. She had a daughter.

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Caecilia, Rome, Summer, 396 BC

The light was blinding. Caecilia blinked; flashes of color disoriented her as she emerged on the threshold of the Carcer. The baying of the crowd rang in her ears, a city frenzied with rage. A venting of ten years of war, plague, and famine centered on her.

Shaking, she raised her shackled hands to cover her eyes as she was pushed onto the steps leading to the Arx. She stumbled, then righted herself, her eyes adjusting to the sunlight. She closed them again as she skirted Lusinies’s body, murmuring a prayer for him, the horror of his strangled death throes in the Tullanium still vivid. The soldier assigned to accompany her gave her a nudge.

Her tread was heavy. She wondered how many others had made this climb. The stone steps must be impregnated with the sighs of the condemned. She clenched her teeth, determined not to reveal her despair.

There were more guards at the top of the stairs. They cordoned her off from the mob that flanked the road leading to the Capitoline sanctuary. Despite the escort, some people managed to lob rotten fruit. She winced at the blows, crooking her arm to protect her face. At least they were not stones.

A trickle of sweat slid between her breasts, a sheen coating her brow. As she approached the precinct, her gaze was drawn to the graceful lines of Jupiter’s temple which nearly rivaled Queen Uni’s. Now the traitor goddess was biding her time until her new home was built. Caecilia wondered if the Veientane divinity regretted taking a footstep across the Tiber. She would reside in a sanctuary lesser in grandeur than her temple in Veii. Camillus had dubbed her Juno Regina, but the deity was now merely Jupiter’s consort. She would be relegated to the Aventine instead of residing in resplendence with him. Or would the divine Roman king feel threatened that the foreign goddess might usurp him?

Caecilia walked past the long line of wagons containing treasure to be consecrated to the great and mighty god. She swallowed hard, seeing the heaped panoplies of the Rasennan warriors who’d been felled by a stealthy attack.

And then she saw Tarchon. He stood up in the tray of a cart, raising his chained wrists to wave to her. She could see his mouth moving but couldn’t hear him above the yells of abuse. His eye was blackened. Artile was already punishing him. She shouted that she loved him. Told him to remain strong. The words were engulfed by the tumult.

One guard shoved her, not prepared to let her dally. Her eyes widened as she spied the gold quadriga and four white stallions next to the temple steps. And there on the portico Camillus sat in his curule chair, flanked by a group of politicians.

Seeing his red-painted face and purple robes sent a shiver through her. Apart from the laurel wreath, it could have been a Rasennan king. Tears welled as she thought of how Vel hated the vermilion, and how little fingers could make a mess with the dye.

She scanned the men around him. Scipio. Genucius. Aemilius. The Furian brothers. Marcus also, wearing the mural crown. He glanced away when he saw her scrutiny. In broad daylight he wasn’t as brave as he had been in the darkness of a jail.

Her gaze returned to Camillus and the man on his right-hand side. Not a soldier or senator but a soothsayer. Loathing rose in her to see Artile’s smugness.

She took a deep breath, trying to calm her trembling, then drew her shoulders erect, imagining herself in her favorite chiton of yellow with fine leather boots and decked in jewels.

At the dictator’s signal, a trumpet sounded. Camillus stood, lifting his arms to command quiet. Silence rippled across the crowd.

His eyes raked over her. “Did you see the fate of Lusinies, Aemilia Caeciliana? It’s a shame I can’t display your husband’s body. The true enemy commander in chief.”

“He’s safe from your reach. He’s been spared dishonor. And Lusinies died knowing he was subdued by an enemy who feared facing him in battle.”

Camillus sat down and leaned his weight on one arm of his backless ivory chair. “No matter how many times you accuse me of cowardice, one thing is certain. The gods chose us. And I have the satisfaction of seeing Veii’s queen executed, even if I was denied the chance to strangle its king.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the quadriga, her cuffs clanking as she gestured toward Camillus’s head. “Do you plan to replace the laurel wreath with a crown? After all, you emulate Mighty Jupiter himself.”

He flinched. “I have no wish to be a monarch.”

From the corner of her eye, she could see the patricians stiffen or murmur into another’s ear.

“I thought a stint in the Tullanium would have taught you some humility, Caecilia.”

Her stubbornness emerged. Anger also quelled some of her nerves. She turned to Aemilius, the man who’d washed his hands of her so he could grasp power. “You’ve grown long in the tooth, Uncle. Do you still consider yourself a warrior? How does it feel to murder a kinswoman?”

“I disowned you long ago.”

“Yet you’ve enjoyed my inheritance ever since. My father was a wealthy man.”

Her scorn dented his composure. “And he’d be ashamed of you. Today you’ll get what you deserve. You sullied both the Caecilian and Aemilian names. Your lust has brought catastrophe upon you and all whom you loved. You should have heeded the lessons learned as a child. Divine law preserves Rome. Even Veii’s goddess has confirmed that. At least go to your death showing contrition for your treachery.”

Caecilia scanned the self-righteous faces in front of her. Aemilius’s taunt about her father stung but she had no remorse. She would not apologize. “It’s the priest who is the traitor here. The blood of a multitude is on his hands. And you would be fools to trust him.”

Artile smiled, then said in Etruscan, “On the contrary, the deaths of thousands are on your head. You defied Nortia. Rome was always your destiny. You angered Uni and so caused Veii’s destruction. I will enjoy watching you die, Sister.”

His gibe struck home but she pushed it away. “Chains will not make Tarchon love you, Artile. All you’ll ever know is his hatred. And you can never have Tas. He is safe. Remember that when I haunt you.”

Camillus held up his hand, impatient with the exchange in a foreign tongue. “Enough,” he barked. “Aemilia Caeciliana, I sentence you to death for sedition.” He turned to Marcus. “Take her to the cliff and throw her off.”

A pain shot through her chest as she stared at the tribune. “You? You are to kill me?”

“I’ve been so commanded,” he rasped. His soft brown eyes were those of the youth of the past.

“Marcus Aemilius shouldn’t have shown mercy to your husband,” said Camillus. “And so he’ll now show his loyalty to me and Rome”—he gestured to Aemilius—“and to his father, family, and clan.”

Suddenly Caecilia did feel regret. After all he’d done, her cousin did not deserve this. It should’ve been one of the practiced guards who did the deed.

Camillus motioned to Aemilius and Artile. “Let members of both Roman and Etruscan families witness her death.”

The dictator walked down the steps into the precinct followed by the priest and senator. The rest of the nobles remained on the portico. In the sanctuary, people began chanting Caecilia’s name.

Quaking, she realized her life was now measured by the number of steps she’d take to the edge. Marcus fell in beside her as they followed Camillus.

The air was thick with incense from huge cauldrons in the precinct. It would be a scent that clung to her as she died. As they exited through the gates of the sanctuary, they passed the flawless, white cows that were tethered to a post next to the altar.

The Forum stretched before her. The Comitium, Temple of Vesta, and Curia surrounded by the seven hills. Viewing them made her realize how small Rome was compared to the world she’d lived in for a decade. The memory of her first sight of Veii as she sat in the hooped cart on the Via Veientana flashed into her mind. The majestic city on the plateau rising above the wooded ravines.

Camillus crossed his arms. “Take her to the edge, Marcus. You’ll be absolved of murder. You act for the State.”

Aemilius placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. “This is for the honor of our family. Justice is required.”

Artile said nothing, too busy studying the sky. The clouds were darkening as though sympathetic to Caecilia’s plight. They hovered blackest over the Senate House.

Marcus clasped her arm. “Come, Cilla.”

Again, the soft diminutive. “Why didn’t you tell me last night you were to be my killer?”

He glanced over his shoulder, checking he was out of earshot. “I didn’t have the courage. But I’ll make up for it now. I’m not going to let you become a ghost. You will join the Good Ones, Cilla. I’ll ensure your body is bathed and shrouded. I’ll cremate you. Say funeral rites. Your ashes will be kept in secret. And I’ll give libation to you every year. No one will ever know.”

Her knees buckled. He steadied her. “How? They’ll throw my corpse on the Esquiline to rot. You’ll be punished if caught.”

He grimaced. “Bribery. Penniless cemetery workers can be paid off. I’m determined despite the consequences.”

She clung to him, grateful. “Thank you. But why?”

“Why? Because I love you, Cilla. As does Tarchon. He bid me tell you that. It seems you have been surrounded by love for a long time now. I see now why you chose Veii.”

Caecilia sighed in relief. She hadn’t angered Nortia after all. She now understood the reason the goddess brought her back to Vel. For without defying Fortuna, she would never have found love. Never borne her children. And never been given the chance to live with them forever.

Camillus shouted. “Marcus Aemilius! Do it!”

Her heartbeat quickened. Marcus clasped her arm, his hand trembling. “I’m sorry I am the one to push you.”

A flicker of light caught her attention as a single streak of lightning exploded on the Curia’s roof. A thunderclap boomed. Tiles shattered and were sent flying.

Caecilia glanced back. Camillus was transfixed on the blackened furrow in the Senate House. Artile’s face was ashen. Only one god in Rome had the power to throw a lightning bolt—Jupiter—Tinia. Had Antar delivered Vel’s message?

Screaming erupted as people huddled together. Lightning meant one of two things: that a travesty had been righted or disaster would strike. Caecilia hoped it was a sign of both. There would be retribution for the devastation of Veii. And one day Rome might be conquered.

She was calm now. “Let me go, Marcus. I’ll do this without you.” She squeezed his fingers. “I love you also. I’m glad we are no longer enemies.”

He was shaking. “Farewell, Cilla. I will not fail you.” Then he released her and stepped back.

The precipice loomed only feet away. Her legs were unsteady, her pulse too fast. She thought of Tas and sweet Larce and Arnth, hoping they would be warriors, or old men, when she met them again in the Beyond. She also welcomed the thought of seeing Thia and how many grandchildren she had borne.

She closed her eyes, fearful if she looked down she would falter. Then she pushed off on one heel. She could not tarry. Vel would be waiting.