The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (11 page)

‘You must miss your mother.’

‘Yes,’ said Tarchon, ‘and my father.’

Caecilia looked across to Mastarna in confusion.

‘I adopted Tarchon eight years ago.’ There was an edge to his voice. ‘His father was my cousin and most honoured. Unfortunately my adopted son needs to heed the example of his parents.’

Tarchon coloured, but Mastarna’s rebuff did not stop his teasing. ‘I am glad to have such a young and gracious mother,’ he said wryly, and suddenly she was reminded of Marcus who would always try to make her feel at ease.

Artile interrupted, his tone impatient, making Tarchon blush again and fall silent, subservient to the two men. Caecilia was both intrigued and irritated that she could not follow their discourse. Finally Larthia interrupted and the brothers grew quiet.

‘Artile will perform the expiation rites,’ said Mastarna, ‘to expel any evil spirits you, as a stranger, may bring into this house.’

Caecilia glanced at her brother-in-law. It rightly should have been her husband, as head of the house, who performed this ceremony.

‘Artile is Chief Haruspex of the Temple of Uni,’ said Tarchon, ‘the goddess you Romans call Juno.’ There was pride in his voice. ‘He is a priest skilled in prophecy. Our family is fortunate to have him perform domestic rites.’

Artile began his chanting while she stared and stared. This man was a priest? With his outlandish clothes and compelling eyes?

And Juno lived here under another name?

Mastarna distracted her from her scrutiny of Artile. ‘Perhaps you could give my mother your gift?’

Caecilia hesitated. The palla she offered was simple and uncostly. Larthia was arrayed in rich silks and bedecked with precious jewellery. The possibility of humiliation threatened as much as criticism. The shawl befitted a Roman matron, not an Etruscan one.

Her fears were unwarranted. The Veientane woman arranged the shawl around her shoulders, stroking the soft white wool and tracing the acanthus leaves decorating its edges.

‘It is very fine, and doubly worthy because you have shown that you display wifely skills. I have a gift for you, too.’

A delicate mirror of gold was pressed into Caecilia’s hand, the valuable metal and the fineness of the engraving emphasising the paltriness of her gift
.
The figure of a naked woman was etched upon it who sat idly gazing at her own reflection. A girl with high arched wings stood behind her, dabbing perfume upon her from a jar.

‘This is Turan. Your people call her Venus, goddess of love and beauty. Her handmaiden, Alpan, tends to her.’

Caecilia ran her fingers over the looking glass. Even her wealthy father had not lavished such extravagance upon her. However, the mirror’s value was not what delighted her most. In her hand a divinity was depicted as real as any woman attending to her grooming. Caecilia had said prayers to Venus many times. Did the Roman goddess truly look this beautiful?

The woman paused, watching Caecilia. ‘I sense you are a woman of religion, as am I. Know that you are now one of this family. Together we shall appease, placate and praise the gods that rule us whether they live in Veii or Rome.’

Confused, Caecilia glanced at Mastarna, but he was busy talking to his brother. Again she stroked the cold polished surface, raising it to see her reflection, not surprised at all to see puzzlement upon it.

*

Aemilius’ house had one dining room, as did Tata’s. Until now Caecilia thought this was all that was needed.

Mastarna’s house had two. The smaller one was startling, with its doorway framed by a heavy wooden lintel and exposed doorjambs. Three lines of red, blue and black were painted parallel to the floor as gaudily as those upon the coloured borders of Tarchon’s robes.

Murals covered the walls, where hunters with dark skins, their bows drawn taut, waited for beaters to flush a flock of ducks from the rushes, death as quick as the flick of a bowstring. Indeed, the birds were so plump and real Caecilia wondered if she should seize them from the sky and pluck them for dinner.

Thinking this she glanced back through the doorway to the hearth fire. No kettle or pot or spit or grill hung beside it. Somewhere in this mansion there was a kitchen where servants were cooking. Mastarna’s atrium was not the heart of the home—a kitchen, chapel and workroom, shared by master and servants alike. Instead, the large hearth fire was for worship only, to be tended and ceremoniously rekindled once a year.

Her attention was distracted by servants piling repository tables high with salvers of fruit and meats. This seemed odd. She only needed to slake her thirst after her journey. A humble drink of water or cordial would have sufficed. Instead she realised that a midday meal was to be served.

‘We dine twice daily here,’ said Mastarna, leading her to a dining couch.

‘Are there no chairs?’

‘Women eat with their men here—upon divans.’

Hearing him made her realise that the communal meal in the forest had not been due to circumstance but custom, and unlike the single meal she ate with Aurelia in the late afternoon, here she was also to dine with men every day.

After perching gingerly on the edge of the cushioned couch, she finally pulled her legs up and lay upon one side, resting on her elbow. She was uncertain about dining at the same level as the men, but seeing Larthia reclining on her own couch encouraged her to be bold. After a time, though, the novelty wore thin, and her arm soon was numbed despite the softness of the pillows. She wondered, too, how men lasted through a banquet without getting indigestion.

The food was too rich—pork liver and quails eggs. Not wanting to seem rude, she ate a little but was content to sip her water quietly, wishing her stomach did not ache so much from having to digest both the food and the surroundings. Her head throbbed, too, when she realised she would encounter this every day, that this was what would become familiar, that this would be her home.

When she was a child she had once eaten an entire bowl of honeyed plums. Coated in a sticky glaze that made the dark skin shiny, she thought there could be nothing more beautiful or delicious. The surfeit gave her a bellyache all afternoon. It also made her cautious of anything that smelled, tasted or looked too sweet.

She gazed around her at the excess of colour and design, the glut of ornaments and utensils, the extravagance of space and the abundance of food and drink, and was reminded of those plums. Was she supposed to embrace all this garishness and luxury? Was she expected to forget frugality, abandon simplicity?

Jittery, uncertain what to do or say, she prayed she would be allowed to retire soon, to find some small corner of silence within this strange new home. There she might remedy the night demon’s theft of her sleep and stop her mind racing.

Occasionally stealing glances at Tarchon, she found herself comparing him to Marcus. With his long hair and beard, the Roman was like a scruffy hound to this sleek cat of an Etruscan. There was laziness to the Veientane’s beauty, too, an expectation of being admired without the need to woo the admirer. To Caecilia, such good looks were disconcerting, emphasising her own imperfections and yet awakening a wish for him to consider her worthy of attention.

As though reading her thoughts, Tarchon glanced towards her and smiled, making her wish it was Marcus who was offering her comfort instead of this stranger, that her cousin was there to stretch across and whisper some nonsense in her ear to make her laugh.

Unexpectedly, the notes of a double flute and lyre wound their way through the soft sibilance of the Etruscans’ conversation, replacing anxiety with amazement. Was her arrival such a great occasion that it warranted entertainment? Listening to the trills and sweeping chords, Caecilia was calmed. Found, too, that the deep resonant tones of Mastarna’s voice lulled her nerves.

‘The wedding feast will be held this evening,’ said Larthia, breaking through Caecilia’s reverie. ‘You will be introduced to the nobility of Veii. But, more importantly, the Zilath is attending, so make sure you are well rested and that you wear your finest robes.’

Mastarna gestured to a stout servant girl to approach. ‘Cytheris will tend to you. She speaks your language and is honest enough. Go now and bathe. Rid yourself of the grime of yesterday.’

‘I am to have my own servant?’

Her husband smiled. ‘Bellatrix, you command a household of them.’

*

Perspiration trickled down Caecilia’s nose into the hot, deep, blessed water of the bath. She gazed up at the ceiling to survey the mural of a chase. A footrace was depicted. A woman was bending to pick up a golden apple while behind her a man sprinted to overtake her.

The colours were brilliant, the characters almost alive. The billowing robes of the man were so real that she swore she could reach up and grab his hem. How was it that no Roman walls were so adorned? Were the Rasenna the first to learn how to decant beauty into paint?

Relaxing in this marble bath she’d been seduced by the intensity from the light well that flooded over her. She was at peace, letting her mind rest, feeling only sensations, the silence punctuated by the occasional drips from the ceiling or the swishing sound that accompanied tiny movements of her limbs.

Where was the dark, dank cupboard of a room that housed her uncle’s bath? The murky, unfiltered water? The cockroaches that scuttled in dim corners? An ordeal she had tried to suffer only once a week.

Next to her, the maid named Cytheris stood occasionally sprinkling rose petals and orange blossom into the water. Caecilia pointed to the naked woman above her, only a swirl of cloth flying around her waist.

‘Who is she?’

‘Oh, that is Atlenta. Have you not heard of her?’

Caecilia shook her head.

‘A woman of great beauty, a huntress as fearless as any warrior. Fleeter, too.’

‘Why is she stooping to collect an apple?’

‘Her suitor tricked her. He dropped three golden apples to distract her and win the race to claim her as his bride.’

The water was cooling and yet Caecilia lingered.

‘And her father let this happen?’

‘It is a sad story, mistress. Her father first abandoned her when she was born, then made her a prize to be claimed by any man who could beat her in a footrace. This was cruel, too, you see, because there was a prophecy that, should she marry, a terrible fate awaited her.’

The Roman stared at the painting again, feeling for this Atlenta. ‘And what was her future?’

Cytheris extended a sheet to dry her mistress, making it clear she wished Caecilia to finish her bath, but the Roman hesitated to step out, naked, in front of the girl, unused to being undressed in front of other women. She quickly wrapped the cloth around her.

‘They displeased the goddess of love, I’m afraid, when they wandered into a sacred grove. Their punishment was to be eaten by lions.’

Wringing the water from her hair, Caecilia felt uneasy. Atlenta’s story had hints of her own. She prayed she would not have so sad a fate.

*

The bed was wide.

Large enough for three people to sleep soundly. Large enough, she hoped, for her to avoid touching him by accident. Not wide enough, though, to escape.

The bed was high. It would need a footstool to clamber onto it. There was a linen cover stretched over the deep soft mattress decorated with a strange crisscross pattern of red, blue and green. Cushions of silk were piled high against a headboard fashioned from beech. If she could use the bed merely for sleep, she would have thought it a divine gift.

A heavy red curtain extended the full length of the bedchamber, thinly separating it from the loveliness of light, water and warmth as well as noise and bustle and intrusion. Looking out, she could view the garden arcade where grape vines with plump, purple grapes were entwined around the columns. Caecilia weighed up the agreeable prospect of greeting the sun while lying in her bed with the discomfort of being seen doing so by all in the household.

On one wall of the room there was yet another mural. A leopard rampant, outlined heavily in red and painted yellow, who displayed black spots numerous and distinctive. He stood in a grove of laurels with a flight of swallows flitting above his head. His gaze was peaceful, his eyes entrancing. She liked him immediately.

How different to her small, gloomy bedroom situated off the atrium in Aemilius’ house with the noise of the street piercing its walls. And yet, while it bore no comparison to her new sleeping place, at least she did not need to share it.

Even in this empty chamber Mastarna’s existence could not be ignored. His panoply hung upon the wall along with baskets and hooks. Polished, cold and menacing, the armour revealed not only his wealth but his potential as a foe: the round hoplite shield, the moulded greaves and the sculpted cuirass. And, most daunting of all, the heavy crested helmet with its hinged cheek pieces stared at her from empty sockets; a warning that, from the time she rubbed slumber from her eyes to when she blew out the lamp, she was a hostage, and that when she lay upon the bed she would be denied any protection.

Drawing the coverlet over herself, she closed her eyes and tried to rest.