The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (50 page)

Tarchon stood beside her. Since the Feast of Fufluns, the youth had made excuses for Artile, saying that Divine Milk was offered to everybody, that the priest had thought she wished to see Fufluns, too.

‘The elixir’s power comes from those red-spotted mushrooms. Reindeers eat them and their milk dilutes the magic so that mortals may safely drink it.’

Caecilia was not so quick to believe the priest’s innocence. Resentment now tinged all her dealings with him. She steadfastly refused to return to his control, swearing she would not drink another potion—ever. ‘You shouldn’t trust Artile. His predictions are false and cruel. Believing in his powers has only led me to heartache.’

‘You judge him too harshly. After all, he is a mere man and not infallible. You are wrong to question his practices and beliefs. There are only two things that Artile lives for—serving the gods and loving me.’

Caecilia grimaced. ‘Then if he cares for you so much he should let you take a wife and avoid being shunned.’

The youth grunted. ‘You think it is so easy? How can I sire children when I do not desire women? Growing stubble on my chin won’t stop me being his.’

‘Maybe so, but you should still renounce him. After all, you have other lovers. Ones who are not freeborn. There is the slave boy with the green eyes and now the Carthaginian freedman.’ Caecilia reached over to touch yet another bruise that shadowed his face. Punishment, no doubt, for infidelity beneath the Divine Milk’s spell. ‘Why swear allegiance to the priest when it can only do you harm?’

Tarchon shook his head. ‘I can’t leave him, Caecilia, even though there have been bruises and squabbles over time. Sometimes I want to be free of him, to be what Mastarna wants me to be, to shout at him that I am not a child. I flaunt slave boys in front of him because I want him to understand he doesn’t own me, but in the end I still love him.’

Once again Caecilia thought it a strange word for a man to use for another man. Had her husband felt the same emotion for his mentor?

The girl took a deep breath. ‘Just like Ulthes and Mastarna.’

Tarchon frowned
,
his voice becoming sharp, his defence of his father surprising. ‘Ulthes broke no rules. Don’t ever compare him to Artile or Mastarna to me.’

‘Why not? You’re all freeborn.’

His irritation was deepening. ‘It’s the way of our people. Larthia had lost her husband and needed to raise her son to be a man. To be chosen as a mentor is not easy. Ulthes had to follow the rules of courtship. The first offer must be rejected while the parents judge whether the nobleman is prestigious. After that there is capitulation, the settling of terms, the confirmation of rules.’

Caecilia swallowed her distaste, disappointed that Larthia could play such a role. All had failed her here—everyone.

Tarchon pointed to the eagle as it soared into the stillness. ‘An eagle brought a sign to Tanaquil that her husband would be King of Rome.’

Caecilia refused to look at the bird, not wanting to hear another of Tarchon’s tales, especially about an Etruscan woman who became a Roman queen.

‘You forget how closely we are linked, Caecilia, how our memories are forged from the same past. You speak with pride of your plebeian ancestry but you forget Mastarna was descended from Servius Tullius who was once a slave. Tanaquil chose him to replace the dead king and thereafter he became your city’s greatest ruler. Servius was murdered by the founding fathers for giving away patrician land. Don’t you think your father would have lauded him?’

‘I know Rome’s history,’ she said, not wanting to be drawn.

‘Then consider this. Just like his ancestor, Vel Mastarna is a great man. He married you, a Roman half-caste, to cement a treaty with an enemy who killed his father. He was decried for such rashness and condemned by many of his clan. He sought peace. He fought tyranny until betrayed. He is a valiant warrior. The youngest zilath to hold office. A just master to his slaves and tenants. A good son to Larthia and father to me.’

Caecilia was quiet, ensuring the silence became heavier and more uncomfortable, not wishing to acknowledge that the Roman heritage of her husband could be as noble as the Aemilians’.

Tarchon refused to be ignored. ‘He was a loving husband also to Seianta. Is a loving husband to you. He has chosen to bow his head to Tulumnes rather than see you harmed. Would he be considered worthy to be a Roman, do you think, under your customs and laws?’

This time her silence was from inability to find words, hating him for twisting what she believed in.

‘And if you think that honourable enough, consider this. Who taught Mastarna to be such a man—after his father died and before he grew a beard?’

Caecilia turned to the horizon again, hoping to catch sight of the eagle. To admire its beauty; to have a reason to be distracted so she did not have to acknowledge the truth in Tarchon’s words. But the great bird had gone, it alone knowing where the hidden thermals lay, where it could spread its wings and hover, as though standing still.

Tarchon was studying the sky, too, brooding. ‘I don’t understand you,’ he said. ‘You have accepted me for being Artile’s beloved. Why can’t you do so for Mastarna?

‘Because he is my husband! Because he is a great leader! Don’t you see that I must condemn him for the very reasons you praise him? In Rome, despite his achievements, he would always be seen as Ulthes’ bride. At worst, as a soldier, he would face execution. As a politician, he would be ridiculed and despised. And under the eyes of my people I am now stained because I have lain with him and loved him.’

‘Still love him,’ Tarchon said, quietly. ‘Besides, this is Veii. No one believes what you do. No one will care.’

Caecilia clenched her fingers and tapped her breast. ‘But I will. I care.’

‘This is only Roman stubbornness,’ he said in exasperation.

Caecilia turned on him, tired of his criticisms. ‘Have you ever thought what it would be like to step into my shoes?’ She spoke in Latin, greeting her own language like an old friend, a language that held no ambiguity for her and in which she still dreamed. ‘To be sniggered at for your beliefs and snubbed by Veientane women? If you were taken from here and forced to live in Rome, would you be any less Rasennan even though you bowed to Roman customs? Would you embrace all their ways and be content to forsake the Calu Cult and so lose your chance of salvation?’

Her anger was swelling, frustrated that she was misunderstood; that he did not want to understand. She took his hand and placed it on her birthmark. ‘I was born a Roman. Until this year I had lived there all my life. The customs and laws and beliefs of my father’s people are ingrained in me as permanently as this blemish. In my city the innocent is the one who is blood tainted. Like Lucretia, who was raped by an Etruscan? Like Verginia, whose father slew her rather than let her become a patrician’s mistress. It is not a question of love. It is a question of honour.’

Tarchon’s hand slipped from her throat. ‘Listen to yourself, Caecilia! This is Mastarna you are talking about. Mastarna! The man who loves you.’

She gazed out again to a day that was hot and blue and perfect. It should have been dark and oppressive to match the grimness of her mood. ‘Did he truly? Or have I always been a pale third behind Seianta and Ulthes?’

‘What are you talking about?’ His patience had been stretched too far.

‘I saw how it was between them. Ulthes was Mastarna’s lover until the day he died.’

Tarchon’s beautiful eyes hardened. ‘I didn’t think even a Roman could be so stupid,’ he said, as he strode away.

Abandoned, Caecilia listened to the wind whistling through chinks in the masonry, filling in the silence, a hollow sound to accompany the emptiness inside her.

*

In her isolation, Tulumnes’ lictors became surrogate Aurelias, watching her spinning and weaving or directing slaves to cook and clean. Strangely enough, Caecilia found a perverse enjoyment in enduring what she disliked most about being a Roman woman, telling herself that if she’d been content all along to spin wool and thread it across a loom she’d not have been tempted by Mastarna and his city.

Attempting to weave virtues of honesty and modesty once again into her soul did not help her loneliness. Tarchon’s exclusion of her trapped her in misery, doubts still perversely assailing her, unable to accept his assurance about Mastarna, choosing to pick at any scabs that could heal the wound.

There were others in the city who were trapped also.

One day at the Great Temple, she knelt praying before the statue of Uni. Nearby an artisan was repairing the terracotta cladding on some of the columns. Caecilia recognised him as one of the craftsmen who worked in Larthia’s workshop.

The lictors were outside. Their pickled onion malice distracted by ogling the townswomen who’d gathered around the Arx well. Their absence gave her a chance to ask for news.

When she first sat in audience, Mastarna’s tenants had greeted her warily. But as she’d slowly charmed them, learning their names and those of their wives and children, their respect for her had grown. Now that they were denied Mastarna’s protection, it worried her that she could do nothing for them.

‘Are you and your family well? What of the other potters at the workshop?’

The man scanned the temple chamber before speaking.

‘Times are not good for anyone under the patronage of the House of Mastarna, my lady. But it is worse for those tenants in the country. Pesna has begun a campaign of violence against the tribes of Mastarna, Vipinas and Ulthes.’

Caecilia murmured a prayer. Tarchon had told her that Tulumnes’ crony had been left behind to rule while the court was at the sanctuary at Volsinii. And the princip savoured this power, straightening his thin shoulders and puffing out his chest in the Lucumo’s wake.

The man swallowed nervously. ‘Pesna has sent the King’s bailiffs to collect taxes. Not just for the city treasury but for his own private levy as well. Farms have been stripped of most crops so that the people struggle to feed their families with what remains. Those who resist are killed and their fields set afire. Wives and children are raped and beaten.’

Suddenly a cepen walked across the temple portico, causing the potter to cut short his tale. The man hastily moved out of range of further conversation. Caecilia wished she had some words of comfort to give him; some way of making things right.

Sitting back on her haunches she wiped away a tear, grappling with images of a countryside resounding with the wailing of women as they stood upon charred ground, smoke drifting around them as they mourned their dead and wept over their own rapine.

*

Deprived of visitors, it was a surprise when the lictors allowed one in particular to call. The hetaera, Erene, had survived after all. Caecilia never thought to see her again.

The courtesan’s golden locks had been drowned in black dye, making her skin sallow. There was a fragile web of lines at the corners of her eyes and a crease between her brows. And the lines between mouth and nose had deepened as though she’d borrowed the sombre mask of a tragedian.

Caecilia realised the woman was older than she’d thought. Closer to her thirtieth summer than her twentieth. How Erene must weep when she saw herself in the mirror. Paint and powder no longer hid time and worry upon her face. There could be grey, too, creeping into that cropped hair, but the dye would disguise it. What would become of one such as Erene as beauty faded?

The courtesan’s lips curled upwards briefly when she saw Caecilia’s tunic and stola, but her tone was tired rather than patronising. ‘You have regressed, I see, into a Roman.’

Caecilia frowned, noticing that the hem of the hetaera’s gown was grubby and her shoes mismatched, making the Cretan blush at the Roman’s scrutiny. ‘I have not slept much since he died,’ she said.

Caecilia understood. Sleep had been reluctant to tarry more than a couple of hours with her as well. The night demon appeared most nights.

 ‘How is it you have been released?’

‘Tulumnes was prepared to be merciful.’

Caecilia knew it was unlikely the Lucumo would be compassionate without demanding something in return. ‘What was his price?’

Erene’s eyes narrowed in disgust. ‘Before he left for Volsinii he held a symposium with all his court there. I was made to perform; to sing and recite and play the lyre just as I would have done for Ulthes and his friends. Only this time I was expected to grant favour to every nobleman and servant present as if I were a common flute girl.’

Caecilia was stunned. How often had she thought this woman to be an expensive whore? She felt ashamed to have done so. Tulumnes’ humiliation of Erene sullied Ulthes’ memory, too. And reminded her of what her fate could be if the Lucumo made good his threat of letting his lictors take her.

The companion smoothed her palms along the sides of her gown, wiping away Caecilia’s silent sympathy. ‘I am returning to Crete, although I wish it were Athens. But the Spartans hold sway over that city and they are as sanctimonious as Romans. Besides, there is too much competition there for one as old as I am. In a backwater like Heraklion a fat official would be grateful for a hetaera of my class.’

Watching the courtesan pull her robes down to hide her odd shoes, Caecilia knew that Erene’s future was gloomy. She would be leaving behind all she knew and had come to love. Without a patron, the promise of destitution and prostitution beckoned.