The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (55 page)

Marcus turned to her, a glimpse of the uncertain youth returning. ‘On the day of the battle I studied the enemy’s crested helmets as they stood upon the ramparts and wondered whether their hands were shaking as much as mine.’

‘How frightened you must have been.’

His expression changed to one of bravado. ‘I had no time to be afraid, Cilla, I only saw the Volscians as one monster wanting to slay me.’ He was absorbed in his story now. ‘After a time I did not think about killing. Blood streamed down my face, running into my eyes, the face-piece of my helmet digging into my flesh. My arm was slashed as well. Then I saw Drusus. The tendon of his calf was cut and his shoulder torn. He was vainly trying to fend off the foe. So I raised him onto my back and carried him to safety, then returned to fight.’

Caecilia covered both of his hands with hers, feeling the rough crusts of scabs upon his fingers. The cold manner in which he spoke of killing surprised her. She wanted the soft-hearted boy who’d once confided in her to express some regret. ‘Did you truly feel nothing when you slew a man?’

‘That’s a strange thing to ask.’

‘You would have told me had I asked you the same question a year ago.’

‘I don’t know what you want me to say, Cilla. I will never forget the eyes of the first one I killed as he stared through the slits of his helmet. It was the look of a man dying for his land—land that has now become Rome’s.’

His answer told her that Camillus had stolen his heart and stirred him more than his father ever could. She shivered, realising that Veii would be shown no mercy should it fall.

Until now she’d lived in trepidation that her Roman family was in danger, imagining the walls of her city crumbling, the temple of the Great and Mighty Jupiter being burned. She’d seen her city as the weakling, starved and sick. Deprived of the view of the Forum and Curia, she’d forgotten what it was like to be among the men of Rome: lean, cruel and always hungry.

The Veientanes were overconfident, believing their citadel impregnable, believing in their invincibility and yet unused to battle. For the first time Caecilia wondered if their defences could be breached after all. Rome was inexorable and Camillus was too lean a wolf, the leanest she had seen.

Did she want brutal sharp-edged justice to be meted out? It was too awful to imagine tenants, craftsmen and slaves slaughtered, their wives and daughters raped, their babies skewered, their houses destroyed. And how could she bear to see the city razed? Its gaudy decorated houses, bustling marketplaces and inns, and the walls of the Arx themselves, upon which she’d surveyed the world at the level of an eagle. And what of Tarchon? Cytheris? Aricia?

What of Mastarna?

Her world might have become muddy, crowded and distorted, but one thing was clear—she did not want Veii to be destroyed, she did not want loved ones to die.

‘I don’t understand why Rome is now able to fight. Before I left plebeian soldiers had been refused a salary and another warfront needed to be avoided. Why are the reasons for extending peace last summer forgotten?’

His expression reminded her of the day she’d tried to talk of politics with him and Drusus, cautioning her that she’d trespassed onto male territory.

‘Please. Surely I’m entitled to know.’

Marcus hesitated but then relented. ‘The people’s tribunes poisoned the plebeians against fighting, claiming the patricians only wanted war to stop the people having time to rebel against them, warning them that the League of the Twelve would join forces against us. But when Anxur fell everyone rushed to the Servian Walls to watch our victorious army martial in the Campus Martius. Campfires burned bright that night and songs of triumph were heard; hunger pangs and fevers were forgotten. Plunder was stacked high, higher than the funeral pyres: bronze and silver and gold. And for the first time it was given to the common soldiers, not just the nobles.

‘Then, when the patricians also sent wagons stacked high with bronze into the Forum as their contribution to a salary tax, the people’s tribunes knew they were beaten. They could no longer grumble that the plebeians alone would bear the burden. After that, men from all classes came forward to add what they could to the pile so our warriors could be paid to march upon any enemy that rose against us.’

Caecilia rubbed her fingers along the selvedge of the tent flap, wondering what Tata would have thought. Remembering how he had spoken often of the spirit of their people. Whether velite or hoplite, slinger or archer, all Romans wanted to fight, all wanted land, all wanted glory.

‘You seem very sure of our strength.’

‘Two thousand soldiers and six hundred horsemen have been added to the legions. And there are two extra consular generals to lead them.’

The Roman girl sighed, tired of the boasting of men and their desire for conflict. ‘I just want peace. I don’t want the treaty to fail.’

The youth put his hand on her shoulder, his expression earnest. ‘Then pray Tulumnes will not try to fight now the Twelve doesn’t support him.’

As he spoke, he bumped the tent flap, sending a shower of water splashing onto him. Surveying his dripping tunic Caecilia no longer saw the soldier but the boy, and just as she would have done a year before, she giggled, forgetting all the sombre talk.

Marcus was cross but, hearing her laughter, he smiled, wiping himself with his cloak. ‘I’ve missed you, Cilla. As have my father and mother.’

‘Aurelia has missed me?’

He nodded. ‘Of course. She had no one left to bully.’

Caecilia laughed as she helped to dry him. Suddenly she felt safe because, for all his seriousness and fervour, this youth was still her Marcus. He would love her always.

*

The candle was nearing the end of its life, a stub of pig’s fat producing more smoke than light. Caecilia was loath to snuff it out, though, fearing utter darkness. It stood on an up-ended bucket, her little juno beside it. In Veii, Caecilia had neglected the tiny guardian and relied instead on angels both divine and mortal. Now she would have to call upon inner strength and hold the talisman close.

Sitting on the lumpy straw pallet that was to be her bed, Caecilia pulled the pins from her hair, forming a pile of the plain bone clasps. With her hair plaited loosely and still fully dressed, she lay down to sleep. Outside, the soldiers were still carousing, and she did not relish being unclad should any defy orders and approach her tent.

When she heard someone at the opening, she drew her shawl tightly around her hoping it was only Marcus. But it was not her cousin who urged her to let him enter.

It was his friend.

She scrambled to her feet, aware that her hair was loose and that she was barefooted. Aware, too, that she was alone with a Roman man who was not from her family and who had wanted her to be his wife.

A year ago she would have run to him, joyful to finally feel his arms around her, but all she saw before her was a besotted youth whose innocence had been beaten away by enemy shield and sword. Instead they stood awkwardly apart as she wondered what he’d seen and suffered at Anxur and how he came to be wounded. Yet although his struggle must have been real enough he was but freshly scarred compared to a grizzled warrior such as Mastarna. His cuts reminded her of a child with grazed knees and scraped knuckles. Mastarna’s bruises were as much a part of him as his stubble or his scars, a constant reminder of his tug-of-war with risk.

‘My father has died. I have no uncles. I am the master of my house.’

She nodded, wondering if she should applaud one so young bearing such an onus, then remembered the type of master Mastarna had become after Ulthes taught him to shoulder such responsibility from the age of fifteen. ‘Then you have a heavy duty.’

‘I am no longer a boy,’ he persisted, ‘being told what I can and cannot do.’

She lowered her voice. ‘And what is it that you want to do?’

A year ago he’d been circumspect, nervous of offending a virgin and venturing only to steal a kiss. Now his eyes roamed over her. ‘You have changed, Caecilia.’

The girl remained silent at the refrain.

‘You wear a stola and palla, but not like any other wife I’ve seen.’

‘How, then, do I wear them?’

‘Like bonds restraining you.’

The boldness of his statement surprised her. Would he dare to speak such words to any other woman? Caecilia didn’t know whether he’d enjoyed the favours of a slave girl or a whore, but it was clear the humble ardour that had made him stammer her name last spring had formed into something other than calf love.

She slowly straightened the sides of her gown, wondering what would interest him more—an admission that she’d transgressed or a virtuous denial. ‘You risk a whipping in visiting me. Or do you think I am so stained no one would defend my honour?’

Drusus stepped back, knocking over a stack of shovels, his face losing its lust.

With clumsy fingers he pulled some coloured cloth from beneath his breastplate. It was the patch of veil she’d asked Marcus to give him on her wedding day. It was stained, frayed around the edges. A few threads had run so there were gaps within the gauze and bright spots of colour where the weld dye had been retained. ‘I have kept it since that night. It has been my link to you.’

Reaching out to touch it, Caecilia found it greasy with grime and sweat, perhaps even blood. It had lain securely in the heat of battle between his tunic and cuirass, and then fingered and caressed at night when the world paused in conflict and men thought of home.

Drusus had been with her when she journeyed to Veii. For a time he’d lain in her bed between her and her husband. And she, it transpired, must have lain within his, too. But after a time she’d struggled to recall other than fragments: the colour of his eyes, the russet of his hair or the timbre of his voice, its hesitancy and lightness. The image of the youth before her was still fractured, his face and form instantly familiar but not the man within, a man who must have held her chastely in his heart as keenly as he lusted for her.

 ‘You know I would have married you but father wouldn’t let me.’

Fumbling, he reached for her hand, making clear he’d learned the mechanics of desire but not its artistry. And at that moment she knew that, should he ever hold her in his stilted embrace, he would plunge her into marital propriety under the cover of darkness, just as Cytheris had warned.

‘I’ve always honoured you, always loved you,’ he continued. ‘On your wedding night all I wanted to do was kill Aemilius for betraying you, kill my father for refusing to let me marry you and, most of all, kill Mastarna. And each night you were in his land I prayed for the time when he and his entire house and all his people would be destroyed.’

She disentangled her fingers, stunned at the fury of his emotion and at the thought that such hatred and pain existed because of her. How could there be such bitterness when Drusus did not even know Mastarna? How could there be such love for her when they were little more than strangers?

‘Why did you want to marry me, Drusus?’

‘Because you never mocked me. Never condemned my reckless tongue or impetuous ways. I did not care that you were half a noble. You were an Aemilian. Cousin to my best friend. I wanted to be part of his family.’

‘We hardly knew each other.’

‘More than most who are betrothed.’ He moved nearer but did not try to touch her. ‘I will marry you when you are free of that Veientane.’

Caecilia sat down upon the barrel, rubbing her temples to make her headache go; half wishing that when she looked up the youth would have disappeared. If there were any doubts before it was now certain she couldn’t love Drusus, just as she shouldn’t love Mastarna.

‘You do not know what I’ve become other than to sense I’m more an Etruscan than a Roman wife,’ she said quietly. ‘The matrons of Rome will not let their daughters sit beside a woman who was once wedded to a heathen. You might think I’ll be hailed in the Forum but the chatter of gossip in atriums will be deafening. Remember that you are now head of your house; in time you will want to be a senator and even a consul. To do that you need a wife who is untainted.’

‘I welcome being the husband of a woman as famous as Lucretia. And when I slay Mastarna on the battlefield, we will both be lauded.’

Caecilia scanned the earnest youth as would a mother humouring her child for boasting he’d slain an imaginary rival. How could she have been impressed with his bragging before? Neither of them knew what dangers really existed.

But she could not mock his fervour, no longer confused as to the shape and sound of the inner man. Drusus may be a callow youth infected by Camillus’ zeal, but she also recalled how his face had been bruised from his father’s blows, a hurt he had suffered for her.

There was amazement, too, in discovering that, like Lucretia’s husband, he was prepared to forgive her for being ruined by an Etruscan.

If these Roman men were prepared to forgive a blood taint, then shouldn’t she do the same for Mastarna?

And listening to him, she glimpsed hope that she could gain some shelter, perhaps salvage honour, by marrying him. For what other choices had she? To remain a univir, faithful to Mastarna after death even though he was a foe? Becoming a wife who was not a wife and, in time, a widow who was not a widow; all the while living cloistered within Aemilius’ domain, her inheritance administered by him and doled out in meagre parcels?