The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (3 page)

And yet instead of approval, Tata fell silent, his hesitation mirrored in the tapping of his cane. ‘The idea has merit,’ he finally said. ‘But why come to me? It’s your patrician friends you should be approaching.’

‘I already have support from those who do not shrink from conflict. But we can do nothing if one of the people’s tribunes block the bill. All I ask is that you speak to your colleagues. Convince them that this would be in all our interests.’

Again Tata hesitated. ‘But will the treasury fund it?’

Camillus shifted in his seat. ‘No, there would have to be a tax. The people would have to be reasonable and pay their share.’

It was Tata’s turn to pace, rapping the bookshelves and the table with his cane to punctuate his words. ‘A tax? Don’t waste my time! If you promised booty or land as well it might be different, or if the patricians said they’d pay the lion’s share. I can hear the tribunes now, standing in the Forum, faces flushed with fervour. They’d choose some grizzled veteran in the crowd and make him display his scars. They’d shout, ‘Tell us, can this soldier afford to shed any more blood? Lose any more flesh? Does he have anything left to meet a tax to pay himself!’’

‘Ah, Lucius,’ said Camillus, smiling. ‘I’ve missed your orations.’

Tata eased back into his chair, rubbing his knuckles, his voice low. ‘You know I am no longer welcomed by the Assembly. The people will surely claim I am still a patrician’s puppet. There is no way they will listen to me.’

‘You have more support than you imagine. All you need do is return to Rome and stand up for what you believe.’ Camillus leaned over and touched the other’s sleeve. ‘You never acted dishonourably, only reasonably, unlike the current tribunes who take every chance to veto a levy of troops. Just one of them can hinder us proclaiming war. It is they who misuse their power whereas you always exercised good judgment.’

Tata continued to massage his crooked fingers. ‘You mean I never opposed Aemilius and his friends. You mean I was “reasonable” enough not to veto laws that the patricians wanted passed.’

Camillus casually rearranged his robes. ‘You are too harsh upon yourself,’ he said. ‘You’ve kept your promises to Aemilius, but has he? You funded his elections from your bulging purse yet here you are in this backwater, not one step closer to being consul than when you first met him. Since the censors have been consecrated to light the sacred flame for plebeians, there have been others given the opportunity to step into magisterial shoes. What has Aemilius actually done besides let you lie with his sister and father a half-caste child?’

In her hiding place, Caecilia flinched at hearing such truths, not wanting to believe them.

Her father’s chair scraped along the floor. ‘I think you should leave,’ he said softly, firmly. ‘What you say may be true but, for better or worse, I am tied to Aemilius. I will not break my word.’

Trembling, the girl chanced one more peek into the room. Camillus stood with open palms.

‘Come, Lucius, don’t be angry. We are both hawks, my friend, and well suited. And so I offer you this last chance. You can still attain your dreams if you are loyal to me. All I ask is that you campaign for a veteran’s salary and war with Veii. In return I’ll help you stand beside me as a consular general. Think of it, Lucius Caecilius, imagine! You could be the first plebeian in the city to share supreme office in Rome.’

Holding her breath, Caecilia waited for Tata’s reply, thinking he would be elated. Instead his voice sounded despairing.

‘I am afraid you are too late,’ he finally said as he stretched out his twisted feeble hands. ‘Look at them! Look at them! Do you really think I could command either state or army? I have no more power to sway my people than I have strength to hold a sword.’

*

Lucius knew his daughter well. After Camillus had gone in a whirl of arrogance and disappointment, Tata called her to him, his words squeezed out in the gaps between his wheezing. ‘How much did you overhear?’

Caecilia was shaking as much from the betrayal as from summoning courage to confront the man who owned her. ‘Was I always the residue, not the essence of your vision, Tata? Am I just the tailings left after you had mined my mother’s family for their value?’

Lucius slumped against the doorjamb in another fit of coughing. Despite her anger, Caecilia rushed to lead him to his chair.

‘Cilla, you must never think that! Never! My dream was always to unite the classes, but there will never be concord unless the plebeians share power. And so my marriage to your mother served another purpose. It was supposed to help me walk upon the Honoured Way—step by step up the political ladder to the governorship of Rome.’

‘Yes,’ she said, voice trembling at defying him, ‘through the currency of bronze weights and collusion!’

Tata leaned back, exhausted, face ashen, voice quiet. ‘There was honour in my dream.’

‘But you heard Camillus! I am just a half-caste to them. While you see me as half of what could make Rome great my mother’s people see me as half of what would destroy it. The patricians will never let go their rule.’

‘I can’t believe that. You are the future.’

She sank to her knees beside him. ‘Is that all you see in me?’

Labouring for breath, Lucius put his hand upon her head and stroked her hair. ‘How can you doubt I love you? Haven’t you wondered why you are nearly eighteen and still unwed? I could have given you to a patrician groom by now but I could not bear to be without you.’

Bending down, he swept her plait from her neck to reveal a purplish blemish. ‘This birthmark is a sign of changing fortune, Cilla, ups and downs. The gods have signalled your life will not be easy. But you must believe me when I say that you and your children will make a difference to Rome, even if I have failed you.’

*

The cold of that winter’s day extended into weeks of ice and months of snow. Tata, lungs choked, hacking and hawking green phlegm, ribs cracked from coughing, retreated to his bed nursing his humiliation.

Caecilia tended him with devotion, forgiving his corruption and complicity, reluctant to forgo the touch of the only one who’d loved her. And the revelation had some benefit, for she at last understood why Tata hated Aemilius, and why, in turn, her mother hated her.

‘Stay with me,’ rasped Lucius, too weak to grasp his daughter’s hand. ‘Catch my last breath.’

When he died, Caecilia placed her mouth upon his still-warm lips, inhaling his soul, proud to possess part of him forever and glad that no brother existed to claim that right instead of her.

There was no need to hire mourners. Abandoned and alone, she grieved and sorrowed, rent her clothes, tore her hair.

His bier was plain, adorned by garlands. It bore the insignia of a people’s tribune, the highest office he had held. Washed and anointed, he lay within his atrium, feet pointed towards the door. Outside, an evergreen bough was hung to announce to passers-by that death had already visited.

He had been cremated at night so that his daughter’s farewell, spoken three times, was uttered through the choking taste and smell of burning flesh and cypress. The shock of watching him consumed upon his pyre raised the hairs on Caecilia’s skin and summoned a night demon to her dreams. Every time she fell asleep, it sat upon her chest, weighing the same as a small dog, with snakes growing like horns from its head and wings sprouting from its back. Its eyes black slits in yellow.

And no matter how loud she screamed, nobody heard her cries.

*

It was spring when Caecilia left her home.

At the Liberalia festival people drank from the paltry vintage, singing and praying that the earth’s new growth would burgeon instead of wither.

Before she left, the hearth fire was extinguished and not relit. There was no master to perform the rites to reignite it. The flames were quenched with sand, a silent smothering, leaving her with only the memory of a blackened hearthstone in a cheerless room.

It was March, the month of her birthday. The start of a new year.

It was also the month of Mars, the warrior god.

And so, as the girl began her journey, Rome prepared once again to go to war.

Glossary

Cast of Characters

Leaving the vineyards and olive trees of the farm behind her, Caecilia farewelled the sights and sounds and smells of the country, the bleating of goats, the wind in the pine trees and the faint scent of
lemons from nearby orchards. Arriving in Rome, the city enveloped her with clamour and stridency and smoke, which seeped through the walls of her uncle’s Palatine house together with the stench from the great public drain.

Her uncle Aemilius greeted her coolly. Even from the grave Lucius had not let the Aemilians forget him. Against custom, he’d appointed Aemilius as his daughter’s guardian, a responsibility that would prove a constant reminder to her uncle of his betrayal of his sister Aemilia many years before.

Aunt Aurelia observed her new charge at arm’s length as she would a dead rat, declaring that once again Caecilia would wear dark blue for a year.

No more books. No more writing.

No more going barefoot in the summer and building scarecrows in the fields. Instead, baths once a week and combed hair. Spinning and weaving and washing and sewing. Preparing to become a wife. Women’s company at last but no companionship. And, apart from her cousin Marcus, no affection.

In her uncle’s house the emptiness did not leave her. Aurelia’s chiding and Aemilius’ patronising attempts at compassion did not lift her melancholy either, but Marcus understood her.

He was older than her by two years. A green soldier, unblooded and untested, destined to appear upon the family tree whose branches groaned with the names of magistrates, generals and consuls. His father expected much of him for there was no other son to bring fame to their line of the clan. Climbing the Honoured Way and gaining battle honours was his duty.

Dowdy in mourning clothes, Caecilia clutched at grief as if scared it would be snatched away as swiftly as death had seized her father. Marcus found her pacing the boundary of Aurelia’s little garden, hemmed in by wooden houses instead of oak woods, sad that in only a few strides Rome could define and contain her. He snapped a rose from its stem and offered it to her.

‘No more weeping, Cilla. Honour his memory with roses not tears. Ceasing to mourn will not banish him. He will always be with you.’

After this shared kindness the cousins became allies, for although Marcus enjoyed his mother’s attention he hated how she beat Caecilia. ‘You know I won’t let her hurt you,’ he would promise, but Caecilia knew better, glad that her sleeves hid the welts from Aurelia’s spiteful pinches. Marcus believed he was her champion, but once he was absent the matron would continue her mistreatment.

Caecilia concentrated instead on enjoying those fragments of time Marcus could spare.  For he trained every day, and every day he railed against the need to wield a wooden sword tipped with a leather button to ensure no accidents befell him. The army did not believe in killing green recruits at practice. There was time enough for the Volscians to do so.

One afternoon he settled beside her before the family shrine—face dirty, tunic torn, forearms and knees grazed—and stoked the cinders of the hearth fire while she took up the mortar and pestle. ‘Not elder leaves,’ he said, screwing up his nose. ‘The house stinks for days after you grind them.’

She laughed, then pointed to the bruises on his legs. ‘Aunt Aurelia thinks the plant is a cure-all.  She told me to make an ointment for you.’

‘Then I better not tell her I think I’ve sprained my wrist.’

She glared at him. ‘No, otherwise I’ll be pulling nettle stings out of my fingers for days after making a compress for you.’

‘But at least mother will be happy.’

Caecilia laughed again. It was true. The only time Aurelia seemed content was when concocting brews and ointments, salves and plasters; filling the air with smells of calendula and birch bark, or scents of mint or thyme, such plants giving up their bitter or sweet secrets to her.

‘As for your aches and pains,’ she said, ‘you’ll just have to be brave and bear them.’

Marcus grew serious, picking at the calluses upon the palm of one hand. ‘Father spoke to me today,’ he said. ‘I am to be posted to Verrugo in Volscian territory this summer.’

Caecilia’s smile faded. No longer could her cousin whinge that his weapon would not draw blood. His sword would be of iron and its tip and blade honed sharply. And with such thoughts came worry, the knowledge that a spear or sword could pierce him and he would be lost to her forever.

‘But this is good news,’ she said, trying to hide her concern. ‘It is an honour.’

Marcus tore a strip of dead skin from his palm, exposing tender pink flesh beneath. Quiet. Voice a murmur. ‘But what if I lack courage? What if I dishonour our family?’

Caecilia lay the mortar and pestle upon the floor, not sure what to say. There was no reason for Marcus to doubt himself. All his life he’d attained the goals his father had set him. He was, in every way, a golden child: intelligent, diplomatic, athletic—and brave. With his talents he would not fail to climb the ladder of ambition and nor would he fail in battle.