The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (9 page)

Apercu, Vipinas and Pesna did not seem affronted by the presence of a woman. Their indifference was confusing.

‘Your cries warned us just in time,’ said Mastarna. ‘We are most thankful.’

Apercu bowed to her briefly. Vipinas even smiled, and she was surprised to see his front teeth were made of ivory held fast by a band of gold. Pesna, however, with his straight mouth that never smiled, was clearly resentful that he’d risked his life for a Roman and had been wounded for his troubles.

He was not alone in his predicament. She, too, had not expected to be rescued by Etruscans, the very people from whom she wished to be saved.

Fat from the roasting hare spat and sizzled, the flames flaring white with each aberrant drop. Caecilia watched silently as her husband joked with his companions.

Throughout the day she had noticed how the others either ignored or goaded him. She was unsure whether it was because it had always been that way or because of the marriage. Now their hostility had disappeared. They were ready to celebrate an escape from death together.

 They played with a set of golden dice that Mastarna shook from a small gilded box. There were strange letters on the side, not dots. Golden toys. A rich man’s playthings. It was a shock, this gambling, this teasing of Fate. Roman men only wagered at the Saturnalia holiday once a year.

After a time Apercu broke off from his betting. Caecilia was relieved to see him take a salver of wine and place an offering of figs and blackberries before the fire. Pesna and Vipinas joined him in prayer and she made her own thanksgiving to the goddess Juno. Unexpectedly, their prayers were long and earnest. Pious, indeed, for a people she doubted even worshipped.

‘They thank the god Laran. You know him by the name Mars,’ said Mastarna. Astonished, she stared at the men as they chanted.

Her husband did not join them.

The perils of the day now translated to an unease. Just as she had the night before, she wondered what kind of man could neglect the rituals of his people.

‘Why do you not join in prayer?’

Mastarna scrutinised the three principes. ‘When I slew those robbers, Caecilia, I gave thanks to Nortia, the blind goddess of chance who is fickle and inconstant.’ He kissed each golden die in his hand, his face settling for a moment back into the gloomy lines of yesterday. ‘As usual, she spared me.’

Caecilia frowned, her qualms at his impiety growing, puzzled, too, why Mastarna should rue Fate’s favour.

‘As for a thanksgiving,’ he continued, watching her tip a libation on the flames, ‘your piety will suffice for both of us.’

Arruns stood before her offering to pour her a drink from a jug of wine. She hastily covered her cup with her hand. ‘Patrician women do not drink wine. It is forbidden.’

Mastarna snapped at the servant to fill her beaker with water.

‘I have never seen such a man,’ she said, shivering as she recalled how Arruns had sliced through the boy, pulling his blade clear as though sharpening a knife upon a whetstone. ‘Those markings on his face, is that a Veientane fashion?’

‘Arruns was once the Phersu. Phoenicia is his birth place, although I doubt he would even recognise his mother now, nor she him. He was tattooed by his master and given an Etruscan name.’

‘Phersu?’

‘The masked one. A man who makes sacrifice at funeral games.’

‘Is he a priest?’

‘No, he acted on behalf of the zilath, the chief magistrate and high priest of Veii. Now I retain him to protect me—and my family.’

Draining his cup, Mastarna called for another, making it clear he was not interested in telling her more. The principes were drinking steadily, too, their laughter raucous and drunken. Their slap-on-the-back joviality made her uncomfortable, even a little frightened, their voices growing louder as they embellished their brave deeds. When Apercu stood up and urinated in front of her, the long, steady stream of piss hit the fire sending a chimney of smoke billowing into the air. Turning her head, she wished perversely that she could be as she was usually in Rome: unseen and unheard and forgotten.

Mastarna kept steady pace with the other’s drinking, but after Apercu’s crassness he became pensive, turning his back on the others and attending to her instead.

‘Who were those men today?’ she asked.

‘Gauls. We have traded with them for centuries, but now some want to do more than barter. I have not seen raiders like them so far south before.’

‘I have never heard of such a race. Perhaps Veii alone fears such marauders.’

‘Not just Veii, Caecilia, but all the Rasenna. My people. Those you call Etruscans and the Greeks Tyrrhenians. The land of Etruria stretches from the far north where those clay-streaked thieves live to the curves of the western coastline and the borders to the south. My people, Caecilia. Who created an empire long before Rome had even thought to build mud huts. Who ruled your city for centuries and founded its institutions.’

‘Yes, I know your people,’ she said, icily, remembering her husband’s lineage. ‘We threw out your tyrants long ago.’

‘Yet there are still patrician families in Rome who are descended from those kings.’

‘And they have strived for more than a hundred years to overcome their past.’

Mastarna sighed. ‘Yes. Our ancestors have much to fester over. But luckily men like your uncle are wise to extend this treaty instead of letting us spiral once again into revenge and retribution.’

Caecilia recalled Tata’s hatred for the Veientanes and how his brothers had died at Fidenae. ‘They have let an enemy put a foot over its threshold without having to force the door.’

Mastarna looked her up and down. ‘You are as warlike as a hoplite, wife—and as single-minded. Rome never lacks enemies. Not when it’s so proud of squabbling with its neighbours.’

‘Rome only wages just wars,’ she declared, resentful that he should make her question what always was and what always should be. ‘Our city must be defended and if defence means attack, then so be it.’

‘So you do not believe in forgiveness, Caecilia?’

‘Not if honour is to be denied. Not if we must bury our dead and then forget them.’

He paused to throw a log upon the flames, sending a spray of sparks swirling, and she noticed how the fire loved his face, its harsh angles trying to deny the light purchase.

‘Look at these men around you,’ he said presently. ‘Do you think they haven’t lost family, too? Apercu and Pesna both lost their brothers, and Vipinas’ only son was killed by Romans. Don’t you see? Each of us trail a line of dead men in our wake adding another body each time vengeance is wreaked, dragging us down until we are drowned. And that, wife, is why Veii and Rome must forget old hurts lest the list of both cities’ dead grows even longer.’

Mastarna spread some ashes across the ground, using a stick to draw a map. ‘See how Veii sits to the north on one side of the Tiber with Rome on the other. My people must cross at Fidenae to reach the trade route to Campania in the south. But Rome first took the salt beds at the mouth of the Tiber and then, not sated, took Fidenae so it could levy taxes upon our traffic of silver and tin and grain.’

‘Don’t act like you are merely humble traders minding your own business! Veii has tried to conquer Rome more than once.’

Excitement and indignation stirred within her, the freedom to dispute a man about war was exhilarating. Her voice rose enough for the three noblemen to look up. Mastarna gestured to her to speak more quietly but he did not silence her.

‘Ah, how true,’ he said. ‘Veii has long wanted Rome just as much as Rome wants Veii. It is a temptation, is it not? Twelve miles away, our cities lie a god’s footstep apart. They are lovers separated by the river in between.’

‘They are no lovers.’

‘Of course they are. They long to hold each other, to possess and control. To be as one. Only both vie to be the husband not the bride, the lover not the beloved.’

‘Then you think Veii is now the husband just as you are to me?’

‘Things are not so simple. We represent the joining of those contrary lovers for peace.’

They were distracted by Arruns pulling the hare from the spit. The aroma was delicious, prompting her appetite. She watched how the Phoenician sliced the meat. He was as dextrous with a carving knife as he was with his sword. Suddenly her brief hunger abated, remembering how the boy’s belly had been filled with iron.

‘Why did you volunteer to wed me, Mastarna?’

He leaned over and poured more water for her, the action protracted as though he was deciding if he would answer at all or merely tell her what was best she should hear.

‘I agreed,’ he finally said, ‘because I was asked to do so by a friend and because I was prepared to take the risk.’

‘Risk?’

‘Yes, Caecilia. My father was killed at the last battle of Fidenae by your ancestor, the great Mamercus Aemilius. I have dishonoured my family by marrying an Aemilian. I risk losing the respect of all my tribe.’

*

Arruns arranged some meat upon her plate and added figs and berries, but she could not eat, stunned as to why her husband did not want to avenge his father. If Tata had been slain by Mastarna’s kinsman she would have added vengeance to her duties, no matter how many ghosts would cling to her forever. And who was this friend who could convince Mastarna to deny retribution for his clan?

She tried a mouthful of the greasy meat but found it hard to swallow. In comparison Apercu noisily sucked the bones free of flesh and complained when there was too little to refill his plate.

Nibbling the blackberries, she noticed her palm was scored by dozens of tiny scrapes from gripping the tiny slivers of gravel. It was only when she fingered the grazes that she felt the pain, felt, too, that her wrist hurt from where the bandit had held her. There was a bruise forming in the shape of his fingers upon the skin, and her body ached from being wrenched and grabbed. Today her hurts had gone unnoticed, but with weariness they were revealed.

The shock of the menace and gore and death of the day returned. If she had not had the gravel in her hand, what would have happened? Her hands began shaking. She clasped them tightly in her lap, taking a deep breath, willing herself not to cry.

Mastarna was watching her, and when he spoke it was almost as though he’d read her thoughts. ‘I do not regret killing the bandits today, Caecilia. Or begrudge Arruns adding your raider to his list.’

‘Because they were Gauls?’

‘No, because they would have made you their bride before me.’

She stared at him, unsure what to reply. She was used to being a possession. Her father’s, her uncle’s and now his. She did not think of herself as anything other than something to be owned, but when he reminded her of his rights, the heady freedom of talking with these men beside a campfire faded. His words reminded her, too, that the bandit’s possession of her would have been brief and shared. The stink of the boy as he grasped her, a stink of fear as great as her own, returned. Would he have been first, or would the others, his elders, have only let him have the scraps?

She stood up, wanting to be alone. The mouthful of hare she’d eaten sat heavily within her, and for a moment surged again into her gullet. She forced it back down, not wanting him to see her vomit twice that day.

As he led her back to her tent she worried briefly that he might wish to claim her, but she was too weary to cope with such nerves. All the other perils of the day had swallowed up any room within her head.

He did not seek to follow her inside, though. ‘Orion is with us tonight,’ he said, pointing to the canopy of the sky, ‘and there is one of the wandering stars that aid sailors to navigate upon the seas.’

Caecilia peered into the night but she could only see a mass of stars, little pinpricks that were so dense they formed into a milky spill upon the black. ‘I can see only stars, not constellations.’

‘Believe me,’ he insisted. ‘In the middle of Orion is a small star, tiny but fierce. It is called Bellatrix in your language.’

Despite his guidance, she still could not make out one speck amid a thousand, and so, standing in front of her, he directed her to look along his arm to where he was pointing.

Aware of his nearness, unsure of his motives, Caecilia ignored the heavens and instead considered the strange man she’d married: the groom of yesterday with his reserve and condescension; a husband who talked politics with his wife, her hair pinned loosely before other men; and now a warrior who coldly slew robbers then calmly studied a crowded firmament.

Mastarna turned around to check she was paying attention. ‘That is you, Caecilia,’ he said. ‘Bellatrix, the warrioress. After today you deserve such a name.’

*

Caecilia lay restlessly on the rough pallet, her mind grappling with more than the memory of the Gaul’s touch and smell. For the sharing of the mysteries of a night sky and two cities’ fates was something rare after being denied anything other than the warp and weft of a woman’s life. Tonight Mastarna had woven threads of war and history and politics into the fabric, a fabric that usually only clothed a man.

When sleep did come it brought the night demon.