The Golden Dice - A Tale of Ancient Rome (13 page)

“
Soldiers of Rome, do you trust the Veientanes?”

Murmurs spread.

The general stared into the eyes of each of the citizens in front of him, then raised his gaze to slowly scan row after row until he reached the rim. Then upwards to survey the people sitting atop shops and temples. It was as though he was looking directly at her. Pinna felt as important as the veterans and citizens in front of her.

“
For twenty years the treaty with Veii was skewered to this platform until Aemilia Caeciliana betrayed our people.”

Pinna felt all eyes swivel to Aemilius. The older man tensed and hoisted his cloak over his shoulder yet again. Being the adopted father and uncle of a traitoress was a dangerous thing. Yet despite the scandal, he had prevailed. He’d already led two assaults against Veii. No one could question Aemilius’ loyalty to Rome. No one would dare.

“
For twenty years we were at peace,” Camillus repeated, drawing attention back to him. “Don’t forget, however, that before this our cities fought many wars. And why? Because the Veientanes cannot be trusted! They have long coveted our salt mines and raided our farmlands. One of their kings treacherously murdered our envoys. And now they wish to plunder our land, rape our women and kill our children.”

His voice was growing louder, his words falling into a rhythm, stirring her and all around her. The name of the traitoress was whispered also, making Pinna wonder again how this woman could have forsaken her people, sacrificed her virtue and surrendered her birthright.

“
If we don’t act quickly Veii will convince the Etruscan League to rise against us. It gives our enemy comfort to hear us bickering. It’s time for noblemen and commoners to unite!”

As the general strode the platform Pinna noticed that he limped slightly. Suddenly he crouched down, hailing those he knew, naming them as only a commander who loved his men could know them, praising each one for past valor, urging them to be brave again. “I have fought with you and seen your daring. Do not tell me now that you fear the cold. Do not cry that you wish to be home instead of fighting.”

He stood and swept his arm in an arc. “You hunt in winter eager to bring down boar or buck. It is time to hunt Veientanes instead! It’s time to show them that we can endure! Raise the siege and do so all year round. Trap them and, in time, thirst and hunger will stalk them and defeat them. Our enemies must learn that Rome fights its wars until it gains victory.”

His eyes remained on the throng. “Remember, if we don’t show Veii what kind of men we are, all Etruria will ensnare us and force us to defend our city walls. And then there will be no need to cry that we cannot plow our land—because we will have no land to plow!”

He thrust his fist skywards. “So forget winter cold and weariness, forget summer heat and homesickness, but never forget that you fight for the glory of Rome!”

Cheering erupted. Camillus had asked them to ignore the cold. In the heat of his speech, she had indeed forgotten the winter chill. Now she understood why Drusus and Marcus had spoken of him with admiration at the cemetery that night. Now she understood why they wanted to follow him.

The general slid his arm around Calvus’ shoulders, drawing him forward to face the group of senators who were gathered on the Curia Senate House steps, a solid block of purple and white. He waited for the welter of spectators to calm, and the assembly once again settled into a still expanse of citizens clad in homespun. “The time has also come for Romans to accept that a man of the people must be given the chance to be elected one of the six consular generals. It’s time a plebeian led the siege to the gates of Veii!”

Pinna smiled. It would seem that she was not the only one to recognize an opportunity. Camillus was as wily as he was eloquent. If Calvus was elected he would hardly encourage any of his fellow tribunes to veto a levy that he himself might command.

“
Remember also,” the general continued, “it is no use coveting Veientane land. Let’s take it so that it might be shared by all—both commoner and nobleman.”

Enveloped in noise, Pinna felt as though she had gone deaf and that her ears would ring for hours once the racket stopped. She studied the stunned faces of the patricians around the forum. One of their own was supporting the election of a commoner for the first time in the history of Rome. One of their own was daring to offer these veterans land acquired in war.

Calvus stood speechless as Camillus clapped him on the back. Aemilius’ shock was no less palpable. The two patrician candidates looked horrified. Sergius had forgotten to remain aloof from his rival, instead whispering in Verginius’ ear, both men’s glares fixed on Camillus. Neither man wanted to be among the first patricians to share the military tribunate with a plebeian.

Pinna knew she should be wary. After all, Camillus was still asking the soldiers of Rome to suffer. He was still expecting them to risk bondage. And yet she could feel the fervor rise within her as the veterans around her surged with blood desire to conquer Veii and claim the spoils.

She climbed back down to the ground. For one foolish minute she felt she was a citizen. An urge to squeeze through the crowd rushed through her. She wanted to touch the general, to see his features clearly. Then she checked herself, knowing she risked being kicked and hit for being a prostitute. Instead, with her back pressed against a shop’s wall, she made do with a glimpse of him as he was borne aloft on the shoulders of his admirers as they flowed into the forum shouting again and again, “Camillus! Camillus! Camillus!”

Glossary

Cast

The sun was setting. The crowd had dispersed as well as the politicians. As the street vendors closed their stalls Pinna hastened back to the Esquiline, anxious to be home.

As she moved closer to the city wall she saw streetwalkers emerging from their haunts to loiter beside temple walls or shadowy arches. These women stayed awake all night. Night moths, unregistered whores who serviced their customers amid rat droppings and the stench from the great public drain. The harlots had marked their territories, keeping a working distance between them as men furtively approached, seeking hand or mouth, ass or cunni for a sum.

She called to the harlots, watching in amusement how many did not recognize her with her clean face, unstained clothes and anointed hair. Some wished her well, others ignored her. Either way, she had left their world behind.

Reaching home, Pinna knelt beside Fusca, who still lay upon the pallet. “Mama, I’m sorry I’m so late.”

As she lit a candle she noticed how her mother’s pupils were wide despite the sudden flare of light. The woman’s eyes moved hectically in her partly frozen face while her head bobbed in agitation as she shied away from her daughter, shrieking, “Ghoul! Ghoul!”

The girl tried to place a hand on Fusca’s shoulder but this only caused her to scream louder. Pinna gripped her mother’s wrist to stop her from attacking her.

“
Hush, Mama, hush. It’s me. I’ve brought you a treat.”

Pinna held out the honeycomb. Fusca stared at it, her breathing slowing, her shoulders relaxing. As she let the girl drip the sweetness onto her tongue, she awkwardly held it with her one good hand, sucking at it like a babe at the breast.

The smell of fresh urine lingered over the usual staleness within the room. Pinna had left her for too long. Stripping and wiping her clean, she was sorry to hear her whimpering from her aching joints.

“
Soon,” Pinna unwrapped her toga and wound it around Fusca instead, “we shall have a hearth, which Vesta will make burn bright. You’ll see, Mama. We’ll have a true home where Janus will guard our door.”

Stroking her mother’s cheek, Pinna avoided touching the pustules on the woman’s face.

Combing her hair was fruitless. It was so matted Pinna would have to shave it. She sighed to remember how, before her mother’s hair turned gray from ash and sadness, it was shiny and black just as her name described.

Fusca had always been the strong one. A small woman, she’d never seemed diminished before the taller or the greater. She was stronger than Pinna’s father, withstanding his moods and shouldering his burdens. When he bellowed, Pinna always scurried for safety but Fusca would stand silent, waiting for the abuse to subside before obeying him as a good wife must. Sometimes he would forget the law and beat her anyway, but at other times such acquiescence made him grumpily accede to her, somehow uncomfortable that his unreasonableness had been heeded.

When her husband was made a bondsman, Fusca sold his land and animals, weapons and tools, but it had not been enough. Lollius’ patron and protector was now his owner. He had become a citizen without rights, a man without a soul, his life and labor forfeited until the debt was paid. But there was no means left to do so.

Desperate, wretched and starving, Fusca found that men who had once paid her respect as Lollius’ wife instead paid to poke her, taking her secretly in the byways and lanes around the farmland that had once been hers.

The Great City was enormous, noisy and fearsome, but there Fusca found men who were prepared to pay a higher fee. Men whose lives weren’t linked to the rhythm of the land, who weren’t qualified to serve. Men who did not know her name as they grunted and grasped her.

Pinna would wait for her in one of the dank caves outside the wall of the Esquiline Hill where they first lived, too terrified to venture out amid the rotting corpses of criminals, slaves and babies, and of being haunted by any lemures spirits trapped between the world of the living and the dead.

And it had taken more than Pinna being a cutpurse or keening for dead men for the pair to escape from the caves to the slums. She, too, had needed to become a night moth, although Fusca wept as though she would never stop at asking her daughter to join her.

“
Father has cursed me,” Fusca said, when her womb and joints began to ache. “He has cursed me for failing him,” she whispered, when she realized she could not escape the pox. Pinna soothed her, not believing her, telling her that it was not true—until the day Fusca accused her of being a demon and word was sent that Lollius had died.

At least tonight Fusca was smiling as she crunched the sticky sweet, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, the honey smeared across grubby skin.

Pinna stared at the woman with her swollen limbs, and covered with lesions. She felt as alone as when she’d lain with her first customer, praying that he would not hurt her. She needed her mother to guide her, to protect her as she once had, to love her again and stand beside her as she started their new life. She tenderly wiped the nectar from the woman’s chin. “It tastes good, doesn’t it?”

Fusca paused in devouring the honeycomb and peered at her daughter. “Is that you, Mother?” Her words were slurred.

“
No. I’m not Grandma,” said Pinna, her voice catching. “I’m Feather, your Little Wing.”

Fusca did not heed her. She clasped Pinna’s hand, her cry plangent: “Mother! Mother! I need you so.”

Glossary

Cast

At times Semni felt as though she was no more than a kiln, a furnace to form the infant inside her with her body’s heat.

Wiping sweat from her forehead, she waited for one of the slaves to heave aside the stone cover of the enormous oven. It was not just the force of the fire that made her perspire. She was always hot now. Hot and weary. Her fecund body a burden. Once again the baby gained her attention, pressing its limbs against the walls of her womb. Sliding her hand beneath her heavy leather apron she rubbed her belly, the navel protruding, and cursed the small being within.

Heat blasted the air as the door was opened. Semni shielded her face from the roaring fierceness. The slave slid the tray of dried pots onto the shelf inside. The door was slammed shut. The firing began.

She had worked all morning on the pieces. Bucchero wine jugs. Not coiled but fashioned on the wheel. Stamps of maenads and satyrs dancing on their sides. Expensive. Destined to grace rich men’s tables.

Semni sat down once again to her work. Her hands were caked. Using the back of her wrist, she pushed away strands escaping from the tenuous knot that held back her thick hair. She liked the steady pace to creation, the kick to start the flywheel, the stone blurring with speed as she centered the clay, slurry coating hands and splashing forearms as she hollowed the lump and raised it, contours swelling and tapering in the spinning. Later she would burnish the surface, rubbing a polished stone across the texture, friction forming smoothness, her arms strong from practice. Finally applying the coating of moist slip, which would give the pottery its color.