The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (34 page)

At the gaming tables he heaped those strange gold coins before her, so different to the bronze weights Romans used. And then she joined him in throwing the tesserae or knucklebones, intent on good fortune, ignoring the moans and cries and laughter from those reclining on the feasting couches behind them.

Her betting was timid, but Mastarna’s wagers, of course, were reckless. At other banquets he would play until dawn or until the host politely told them to leave, proving that his gambling was indeed a sickness.

That night he was quiet, concentrating, calculating loss and gain, making the stakes higher and higher so that she wondered if he thought there was anything too valuable to lose.

In the light of the candelabras, hemmed in by guests craning to see the result of the throw, she found herself sharing the expectation and excitement. But just when she thought she understood his thrill at winning and his obstinacy to recoup a loss, he took her hand before throwing the dice. ‘Did you know, Bellatrix? The thought that ruin hovers above the twist of a wrist is as heady as when two people fall in love.’

She stared blankly at him as he resumed his gambling, remembering the vague stirring she’d felt when she first spied Drusus, certain it was nothing like the startling pulse Veientane wickedness engendered. No longer able to deny she’d feel this way if her husband told her that he loved her.

*

Mastarna was hosting a tournament for the Winter Feast, an entertainment of lavish proportions with only the best Greek and Etruscan boxers and wrestlers. A private affair for those principes he knew were loyal and those he hoped to persuade to the Zilath’s cause.

Arnth Ulthes would be present, too, not as magistrate but as candidate, vulnerable despite currently being entitled to wield the eagle sceptre and wear purple robes.

Travelling to the country posed a problem. Continued devotion to the Calu Cult and the rituals of the Book of Fate would not be easy.

There was also the ever-present knowledge that, unless Uni sent her sign, she was playing a different type of dice game—the risk that a child could be planted within her, maybe had already begun growing. A child Mastarna alone had chosen to conceive.

Caecilia knew there was also a price to be paid if Artile thought she was wanting. When the priest refused her the potion he let her understand that the pounding in her head, pains in her stomach and trembling of her hands were the result of her failure, of disappointing him.

She was disappointing him even now. He did not want her to travel to the family estate. He was as jealous as a Roman husband, jealous of her faithlessness in neglecting her devotions, possessive of each prayer she uttered, each chant made, each offering she laid before the altar.

Every vow she spoke, every drop of Zeri she drank bound her to him. Yet she wished to follow Mastarna to the country. To act as hostess and dutiful wife. He would wonder at her reluctance if she did not. And so, cursing the haruspex for refusing to supply her, she would have to eke out her reserves of Zeri a little each day, staving off wretchedness and thirst.

The elixir did not keep Tuchulcha from her dreams, though. On the eve of the tournament the night demon, as always, settled heavily upon her chest. She struggled in her sleep to cry out, the sound strangled, muted, until emerging to wakening she pushed the monster from her breast, her scream escaping as does water surging forth from a breeched dam wall.

Eyes open, darkness smothered her. In the chillness of the dead hours of the winter morning she shivered beneath the bedclothes and hoped that dawn was not far away.

Startled from his sleep, Mastarna called to her. ‘Caecilia? Why do you cry out?’

‘Tuchulcha,’ she whispered.

He was quiet for a moment and she expected him to turn over, dismissing this fear as he had done with all her others. Instead he reached over and drew her to him. ‘Why, you are like ice.’ Then he did what he’d never done before except in lovemaking. He wrapped his arms around her. ‘You have been spending too much time with Ati and her gloomy religion. Think instead about the leopard, the guide to Fufluns’ realm. Remember the leopard when Tuchulcha visits you. He and I will guard you.’

The heat of his flesh against hers was like a balm, spreading through her lazily, making her legs unfurl and body cease huddling. Head upon his chest, she heard the heartbeat beneath. His breath ruffled her hair gently. She pressed her body along his and tentatively stretched her arm across his belly, brushing the soft ridge of scar. He covered her hand with his. In the darkness, seeing nothing, she lay cocooned, surrounded by the scent of his freshly washed skin, listening to her own breathing, feeling the soft wool of the covers against her face, hooking her leg over his.

After a time she realised he was asleep. Listening to the rise and fall of his breath, traces of the nightmare disappeared.

Held close by him, she understood what Erene meant. Knew, too, why Seianta would not let him go. Understood that passion was not enough. Wanted this every night. Was filled with envy.

*

Winter had stripped the grapevines, reefing their dense green and red foliage from them, only a few stubborn yellow leaves left fluttering upon their branches. Sinewy, gnarled arms wrapped around each other’s hunched shoulders, surefooted within dark soil, wooden hoplites.

Caecilia travelled through field after field of vines. And field after field of ploughed earth, dormant with barley and rye, guarded at a distance by low, brooding grey hills. She was venturing past the looming, impregnable Arx of Veii to travel along the narrow neck of land that was the city’s only exit to an estate vast and fertile, belonging to Mastarna, richest man in Veii.

The city mansion paled beside the villa. With so many rooms it was almost a maze. Arches of tufa stone revealed hidden courtyards with enormous urns holding fruit trees, almonds and pears, denuded but aching to bud and bloom, their scent imprisoned until spring. Carved hedges of yew lined the garden walls and stepping stones led outside to a grove of exotic date palms. Fountains still flowed, defying the cold, and in sunny alcoves birds chirped and hopped within wicker cages.

Ulthes had travelled to Mastarna’s estate for the tournament, bringing good weather with him even if his heart was in turmoil, the early winter sun spreading a soft light upon them and the icy wind that hinted at snowfall dropping away.

On the morning after their arrival, Caecilia discovered a courtyard with a mosaic floor brimming with the denizens of the ocean: octopus, squid and dolphin. Her soft calfskin boots trod tiny turquoise and red fish while a monster with a snake’s body, dragon’s head and fish scales threatened her. Caecilia, who had never seen or smelled or touched the sea, wondered if such a creature was real or merely a tale conjured from the lips of sailors. Crouching to stroke the small tiles that formed the creature, she realised Ulthes was watching her, two of his lictors standing to the side.

‘Careful, it bites.’

She straightened, brushing dust from her skirt.

‘You look as though you were collecting shells,’ he said.

‘Shells?’

Ulthes pointed to another part of the mosaic. ‘Small sea creatures live in them. The shells are their armour.’

The shapes were intriguing, the creams and pinks pretty. ‘I have never seen the sea.’

‘No, I suppose you haven’t.’

‘Until Veii, I had never passed beyond the seven hills.’

It was not difficult to like him. He reminded her of her father, even though there was no physical resemblance. Perhaps instead it was his trust of her, the daughter of his enemy, and the way he saw her as more than a symbol of tenuous peace.

‘Then I must make sure that Mastarna takes you to the coast one day. No one should die without striding the wharves of a port or watching slackened yellow sails swell and strain with the wind.’

She stared at him. Veii was not his only passion.

Ulthes laughed. ‘I am sorry for my zeal. I miss the sea. My youth is entwined with it. As is Mastarna’s.’

‘When you went to find war?’ Her tone was a little eager, realising there was a chance she might learn something of her husband.

Ulthes studied her for a time and she sensed he was weighing up whether to reveal what Mastarna may not want known. But it was Ulthes’ history, too. It was his story to tell.

As he spoke he was unable to hide what he thought of his friend, his voice warm, his memories affectionate. ‘After his father died Mastarna was young and eager to become a warrior. And so I took him to Tarquinia where Larthia’s people dwelt. There we helped protect its ships against pirates and fought its wars by serving ’s Tarchna’s zilath, Aule Porsenna. We did so for many years, sailing to Sardinia and Phoenicia and many places in between.’

‘I hear that it is the Rasenna who are the pirates,’ she said, forgetting to whom she was speaking.

‘And I hear that Romans eat their babies,’ countered Ulthes with a laugh. ‘Come, Aemilia Caeciliana, why are you so ready to condemn us?’

She smiled. ‘Then did you catch many brigands?’

‘I profess to thousands, but your husband is more modest. We both agree, though, that only one ship we protected lost its cargo—and that left its mark on both of us.’ He held up his mutilated hand.

Caecilia had often studied Mastarna’s scar. Whenever she touched it she found it silkily irresistible, a ridge of softness traversing muscle. Yet as tempting as it was to explore its contours it was doubly so to find out how it came to be there, how the once smooth flesh was slashed and then puckered into a cicatrice and memory.

‘It was the last voyage we made. Mastarna had become an equal instead of a pupil. It was a bad way, too, to end what had been our adventure.’

The story was simple when he told it. None of Tarchon’s drama in the telling. No emotion other than concern that Mastarna had nearly died. No sense of the terror of the fight or the screams of the slain. They had woken to the sound of the Syracusan pirates boarding the ship in the dark. In the confusion, Mastarna hauled himself onto the deck without wearing even a linen corselet. The thieves meant to flay him but Ulthes denied them.

Afterwards, he insisted his former pupil’s wound be tended to first, ordering the cut to be bathed in seawater before salving it with honey; relieved to see it was not deep enough to pierce Mastarna’s insides.

‘Mastarna says it is the sting of salt on the gash that remains with him not the slice of the sword, but I think he makes little of what looks much.’

‘And you? You must have suffered.’

In response, the Zilath straightened out his hand, examining his injury, then shrugged. ‘We gained a few more scars when we got back to Port Graviscae. Too much wine, I’m afraid. Mastarna did not stop gambling for days, so relieved was he to see dry land. The only trouble was that he was too lucky with the dice. A disgruntled loser slashed open the skin above his lip while I cracked my teeth in a brawl. Luckily Aule Porsenna dragged us to his house before we could suffer further harm.’

 ‘Seianta’s father?’

He nodded. ‘When Mastarna saw her there was no question of returning to sea. He courted her at the same time as seeking Porsenna’s approval. A prior betrothal was broken. It is not often a father is persuaded to consent to such a match. Vel’s wealth was no obstacle either, especially when news came that his grandfather had died.’

‘And you, did you remain?’

‘No, I returned to Veii as well. To my family.’

The conversation ended. Caecilia sensed that Seianta’s name evoked a sadness in Ulthes not related to her death. Mastarna’s marriage meant the end of the Zilath’s time on the sea, the end of his time with his friend. It meant returning to his wife whom he had married for duty, as was proper.

Caecilia scanned the walls of this newly found courtyard. Until then she’d thought it was Larthia who’d decorated it. After all, Ati came from near the coast. But she was wrong. The floors and the hallway were all adorned with living things from the sea, all created for her, for Seianta, the Tarchnan, to remind her of her home.

Ulthes was surveying the room also, and for a moment Caecilia wanted him to know she understood that Mastarna’s first wife had changed his world as surely as she now haunted hers.

*

Ulthes’ retinue was small but he had not forgotten to bring his mistress. Many of the other nobles had also left their wives behind in snug city dwellings, instead bringing their own comfort in the form of courtesans and slave boys.

Erene wore winter clothes, but this protection from the cold made her no less provocative. She wore a tebenna—a man’s cloak. She did so with an easy stylishness that banished any hint of masculinity, instead emphasising how awkwardly Caecilia stood and how plain and tall she was.

The tebenna was a deep blue. For a moment Caecilia thought of her uncle, struggling with his senatorial toga, always rumpled in appearance. In Rome, prostitutes wore men’s mantles also. She was certain her uncle would be disgusted at his niece for admiring the elegance of a courtesan wearing male robes.

Caecilia had not spoken to Erene since the temple, even though she’d acknowledged her at the many banquets to which Mastarna was invited. Once again she was torn whether to indulge in conversation when their last one had caused such trouble.