The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (35 page)

‘I see you have progressed to being at least three quarters a woman,’ said the Cretan, pointing at Caecilia’s clothes.

Having discarded, layer by layer, her dreary tunic, stola and palla, Caecilia had thought her fall complete. Her homespun clothing was crammed at the bottom of a large chest under tiers of coloured robes—proof of her steady seduction by the Veientanes. In fact it was a little frightening how quickly she let the luxury of silk and linen, fine wool and cotton slide over her body, cinched in by bright sashes and girdles. Today she wore a pale yellow skirt with a bodice embroidered with hundreds of white flowers, such needlework a whimsy after using thread only for straight seams and mending. She had succumbed to more than a pretty wardrobe, though. One thing after another she had compromised: wine and jewels, potions and pleasure.

Each time she gave in to temptation another dimension was added to her guilt.

There was a levy on falling from grace, irking her that she could not truly enjoy all that might otherwise delight her. There was always an aftertaste. A confusion. There was always a voice that whispered, ‘You have forgotten Rome.’

Around Erene, though, Caecilia sensed her Roman reserve: shoulders held a little too straight, her neck too tense, her walk too brisk.

The Cretan’s smile retained the condescension of their prior meeting. ‘Stop playing at being a Veientane and start being one,’ she said. ‘Half-heartedness can be painful.’

Caecilia rubbed her hands along the sides of her dress nervously, uncertain whether to walk away, irritated also that Erene was right. For in not totally abandoning seemliness she’d placed herself where she could neither argue its merits nor denigrate its counterpart. She was, as the courtesan said, not quite Rasennan and no longer completely Roman.

Perhaps the Cretan woman thought that teasing Caecilia was far too easy a sport because, to the girl’s relief, Erene turned to leave. At that moment, however, the servants of the team of Greek wrestlers and boxers arrived. Both women watched the slaves carry their masters’ belongings through to their rooms. These athletes were aristocrats, not common actors or acrobats to be sent to the servant’s quarters for lodging.

‘I see that the champions of Olympia are arriving,’ said Erene.

‘Olympia?’

‘All the states of my country compete at that city’s games, declaring peace for such time as the contest runs. To attain the victor’s wreath is to become a hero and win a fortune. There is rumour that Amyntor will be fighting here. An honour indeed. I have never seen a champion of the pankration.’

Caecilia held her tongue, not wishing to weather scorn for her ignorance, but Erene was prepared to be gracious.

‘Pankration is the contest of all contests. A test of all powers, cruel and valiant, where men fight each other by whatever means, through boxing, wrestling and kicking.’

‘You sound as though you have seen such a challenge.’

‘Not at Olympia. Unlike the Veientanes no Greek woman attends the games. But my patron held a competition like this at a symposium once. I saw the bout along with the other hetaerae.’

Caecilia turned to the woman, no longer intrigued about a wrestling match but about Erene herself. The courtesan met her gaze.

‘Come,’ she said, ‘I will tell you my story. It is only fair, I suppose, since I know so much of yours.’

‘You know nothing of me!’

Erene laughed. ‘All matrons of Athens and Rome have the same lives, dull and dutiful. It is only what you might become here in Veii that will make you interesting.’

Suddenly Caecilia wished Cytheris was beside her rather than assisting others to prepare for the feast. She was sure that her maid would have bundled her away with some excuse. But, as usual, Caecilia felt a terrible attraction towards Erene and her life. And so, instead of upbraiding Ulthes’ mistress for insolence, she gestured her towards the warmth of an inner chamber away from the bustle and chill air.

*

‘I am no whore, as you may think, but I am the daughter of one. My mother, Euterpe, was a flute girl who delighted men by standing naked before them with only a thigh band and necklace adorning her. But being fair of face and able to play a double flute as sweetly as Pan did not save her from poverty. She lost her living when I, still tiny within her womb, thwarted the potion she drank to purge me from her. Men, you see, do not want to see stretched bellies and breasts at their symposiums.

‘Our master was prepared to keep her to entertain men in his brothel where no music was needed to gain their attention. He was kind enough also to let Euterpe keep me, keen for me to grow to learn the skills of the pornai who lifted their skirts and spread their legs for his profit.

‘My mother had a higher aim for me. I was a pretty child. Customers clamoured to be the first to taste my loveliness and youth, but Euterpe shielded me, wanting me to become a rich man’s mistress, telling the master that it would be to his benefit to auction the firm breasts and tight loins of a virgin to the highest bidder. And having watched my mother suffer the tedious rhythm of men’s rutting, then wipe their smeared seed from her thighs before taking another, I, too, prayed I would never live through such soulless drudgery nor have to bathe and salve the cuts and bruises of flesh and spirit.’

Stunned, Caecilia stared at the woman. She was fluent now in Rasennan but the courtesan was speaking the language of degradation, her words not only hard to understand because of her accent but because, to Caecilia, she was describing the indescribable. Caecilia rubbed her hands along the sides of her robes yet again, discomfort prickling her scalp. Still leaning in slightly to listen, though. Unable to leave.

‘To my good fortune an Athenian named Telamon visited our town in Crete. He succeeded in purchasing the right to hear my melodies in bed for a hefty price. My mother did not cry when he took me away, telling me as she painted my lips and cheeks to make them rosier, “He’s agreed to make you a hetaera, a companion, not a mere slave. Here is your chance to never be pornai or flute girl. Do not fail me.” ’

Erene took a deep breath, then primped her short, shiny golden hair, and played with the tips of the scarf that was tied across her brow and flowed down her back in a streak of blue. ‘Telamon brought me to a house off the Agora replete with soft beds and a full larder. A woman who had once been a hetaera lived there who bore the residue of loveliness and poise in the tilt of her head and the upturned corners of her mouth. She taught me what my mother could not—grace in movements and elegance in dress that denied the robust nudity of the flute girl.

‘And there I became a companion, groomed to be witty and artistic and educated, to keep men amused discussing politics and philosophy at their symposiums, to entertain with song and flute and lyre, and be a symbol of a man’s status, a symbol of the beauty and talent he could hire. I also acquired those skills that madden men with wanting, just as sweet sounds are teased from a lyre.’

The Roman girl raised her eyebrows. ‘So you don’t deny it was not just music, art and oration with which you amused men. You just said so yourself.’

The hetaera’s reply was spiced with irritation. ‘You think I’m just a costly whore but I am more than that. You have only recently learned a language other than your own yet I know many and was taught to craft the Athenian tongue into the language of persuasion.’

Caecilia tensed, not ready for her own accomplishments to be questioned. ‘I would not be prepared to pay the price for such instruction.’

Erene shrugged her shoulders. ‘Telamon was proud of me, showering gifts upon me, giving me rooms that were proof to his peers that he valued me as a jewel to be marvelled at and admired. When I lived with Euterpe, men’s gazes fell heavy upon me, their stares like fingerprints upon my skin, but in Athens the lusts of men were tempered. They could desire my beauty or cleverness but their hunger had to be requited by flute girls instead—or their own companions. Telamon alone enjoyed my favours.

‘My house became a place to meet and talk and be entertained. Not a brothel, as I can see you are thinking. There were gifts, though. In exchange for my company men would show appreciation, be it rings upon my fingers or priceless art in my home.’

Caecilia shook her head in confusion making Erene laugh.

‘Don’t you see that I enjoy the same freedoms as a Veientane wife? And I wouldn’t want to be a good Athenian woman anyway, shut away in women’s quarters and only expected to breed fine citizens.’

The companion did not wait for the Roman to comment.

‘Of course, bearing a child is something a hetaera would be foolish to covet. My mother taught me that lesson. Besides, I no longer need worry about making such a choice. I’m barren from too often scouring my womb of children.’ The Cretan sounded sanguine about such sorrowful acts, but there was a hint of sadness in the way she spoke in a rush of sentences.

Caecilia, uncomfortable in discussing the choice of whether to curtail an infant’s life or avoid bearing one, quickly changed the subject. ‘How did you come to Veii?’

‘Telamon was a collector who possessed a trove of fine wine from Carthage as well as Tyrrhenian terracottas. He admired the pottery of the Veientanes most of all and, wishing to visit the craftsmen here, brought me with him.’

Caecilia found herself edging forward on her chair as Erene’s tale crept closer to her own. ‘And it is here you met Ulthes?’

The Cretan woman nodded. ‘And your husband.’

Caecilia felt the familiar tug at her sleeve, the inward reminder that her nosiness would take her to uncomfortable depths if she did not heed such a warning. There was queasiness, too, that she had so often known when as a child she crammed her mouth full of honeycomb, tempted even though it would make her sick. This courtesan was about to tell her what she did not want to hear but wished to know.

Erene did not appear to be concerned that Caecilia would suffer embarrassment at being told that her husband sought companionship. Even Romans were known to go whoring or keep servant girls as concubines, but a clandestine visit to a brothel was one thing; parading a courtesan at a drinking party or giving her a house was quite another.

‘Ulthes was gripped with grief. From two sons dead from plague, two heirs taken from him before he could reacquaint himself with other than their names and forms. When he left they were still clambering upon his knee or clinging to his footsteps like early morning shadows. On his return he expected to find gawky, pimple-faced youths whom he could teach to be the kind of men he wanted them to be. Instead, he arrived to find them sick with fever. They died before he could show them how to heft a sword or draw a bowstring.

‘They say his wife cradled their cold stiff bodies for two days as time made them supple and the smell of decay oozed from their skin. Then she retreated into the inner rooms of her house, shunning even other women and cursing Ulthes as though his return had brought the disease. As secluded as an Athenian wife, even though her husband did not bid her to be so.

‘My patron let me entertain the grieving princip. I made Ulthes cry as I played the lyre and recited sweet poetry. I made him smile, too, as I mimicked the antics of his fellow nobles in their cups: Apercu with his bulbous nose and throaty giggle, Tulumnes’ brooding barbs, and Mastarna’s gruffness which could be cajoled into laughter.’

Caecilia was disbelieving. ‘I have never seen my husband drunk with mirth.’

The hetaera smoothed her hair, releasing the fragrance of the soft wax with which she had dressed it. ‘And perhaps you never will.’

Caecilia glanced away. The tale was edging closer to Seianta also.

‘When Telamon finally decided to return home, he granted me my freedom with his farewell.’

‘Why didn’t you return to Athens?’

‘It would have been hard to re-establish rooms,’ she said, frowning. ‘I needed to find another benefactor. But luckily Fate was kind. Ulthes, a man with a wife but no wife, took pity on me. He gave me a house and I tended to him in his loneliness, a loneliness that came as much from the loss of his family as from the theft of Mastarna.’

Theft was a harsh word to use.

‘What was Seianta like?’

The companion paused as if deciding which version of the Tarchnan she should disclose. ‘When I met her they’d been married for a year, but Mastarna doted on her as if she were still his bride. There was a dimpled prettiness about her, but I thought she was like one of those fruits whose tartness either appeals to one or doesn’t. She pleased Mastarna with her jokes and stories, making light of his brusqueness. She pleased the principes and their wives, too. In truth, the TarquinianSeianta would have made a fine hetaera with a little training, for she had wit and style and an ability to charm.’ The Cretan smiled wickedly, ‘although no doubt Mastarna was teaching her some skills. He was not a man to be satisfied with the talents of a girl of fifteen.’

Caecilia quickly glanced away. What then did he think of an eighteen year old?

The courtesan fiddled with the peculiar gold half-circles of her necklace. ‘Don’t worry, you may be an old bride but you are still young enough. And I am sure you are as apt a student as Seianta, or has Mastarna finished your lessons?’

Caecilia faced Erene again. She was becoming accustomed to the Cretan. The companion might be prepared to reveal her life, but she was not about to share her own secrets. ‘Tell me more,’ she said curtly.