The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (42 page)

Gone was the determined head of the house. Gone was the angry and shaken man of Ati’s tomb. In the dimness, shoulders slumped; an accumulation of grief pulled him earthwards. He stared into nothingness, perhaps toting up the numbers of his family, those left living and those dead: father, mother, wife and children—a dynasty lost.

Noticing her, he asked her quietly to join him, then leaned his back against the wall, staring ahead to the columns and the threaded vines.

Caecilia had worn no cloak, thinking she would only stay outside for a moment. ‘It’s cold here. Don’t you want to go inside?’

Mastarna unwound his heavy winter tebenna and placed it around her shoulders. ‘How frightened you must be to follow Artile so devoutly. I have neglected you.’

‘That’s not true, but you dismissed my fears while Artile offered me salvation.’

‘Don’t you believe that I’d never let Tulumnes harm you?’

‘You make a pledge only a god can fulfil.’

‘Then I am no different than Artile.’

Caecilia pulled the cloak tight around her, her voice low and weary. ‘Don’t you understand? I am always afraid. I have felt fear or worry of some kind almost every day since I came here. I am a foreigner in a foreign land, cut off from my people and unable to give succour to my dead parents. But Larthia showed me that there could be hope if I believed in Aita.’

Mastarna turned and hooked loose strands of hair behind her ear. ‘Then I have failed you. I thought you believed I called you Bellatrix for a reason. I thought I’d convinced you that you were brave.’

‘I will never have courage enough to stomach what I saw today.’ She pointed along the passageway to where Arruns stood sentinel. ‘How can you bear him to be your servant?’

Frowning, Mastarna glanced at his guard. ‘Don’t you realise that Arruns would die for you?’

The girl shuddered even as she remembered that the man had once saved her.

‘Do not judge him too harshly. He came to Veii after being enslaved as a prisoner of war. I saw him as a warrior and so gave him the choice of wearing the hood of a condemned criminal or gaining freedom by donning the sacred mask. What would you have chosen?’

The thought of Mastarna dispensing mercy among the merciless gave her pause. ‘How was it that you could let Arruns choose?’

‘I was the zilath.’

‘But you do not believe in the Calu Cult.’

‘I did then. As did Seianta.’

Hearing him speak the name was both a shock and a relief. At last Mastarna might shade in the outline of a woman consisting of splinters of other people’s memories, small mosaic tiles that had yet to form a picture.

Hunching his shoulders, he slouched back against the wall. ‘After she died I wanted to believe in the promise of rebirth. But no amount of expiation could appease the gods for what I did.’

Caecilia was stunned. ‘Why? What did you do?’

He remained silent for a time, making her doubt he saw anything around him. ‘She loved the sea,’ he said presently, almost as though talking to himself. ‘She was a child when I met her, precocious, spoilt. Her father, Aule Porsenna, sought our services to protect his cargoes. He would let his daughter walk along the wharves among the fishermen or climb the coiled ropes and amphorae which stood, as tall as men, crowding the docks.

‘For years I sailed with Porsenna’s fleet for I would have grown fat and lazy in Veii, learning the theory of war but never practising it. As a mercenary I was schooled and hardened into a man, by Ulthes and by the pirates whom I killed.

‘When Seianta turned fourteen she gained my attention for other than her childish pranks. Barefoot, she’d walk along the shore and bathe naked in the sea so that soon she collected both shells and my admiration.

‘All here liked her for her easy manner and wit, although Ati would sometimes frown at the wicked way her new daughter used a sharp tongue to deride others. I did not think her spiteful, though, only young and thoughtless. She made me laugh.’ He bent forward, his hands on both knees, staring at the ground. ‘I loved her.’

Sitting motionless beside him, a part of Caecilia wanted to flee, to close her ears and eyes and ignore that what he said was hurtful. Wishing he would look at her as he had at Seianta when the girl danced upon the grey sand before the glassy Tyrrhenian Sea.

‘I saw her today upon her coffin. Isn’t it a comfort that you at least hold her there?’

He shook his head. ‘It merely reminds me that she was once my bride; radiant and content before grief turned her pliant curves to bony angles.’

His bitter tone surprised her after the sweet story of their courtship.

‘Her hair was brittle when she died, smelling of myrrh and stale smoke. Two grooves had formed on either side of her mouth from repeating the same words over and over, ruts of ritual and tiredness and sorrow. Laughter had been chased from her eyes, first by fervour and then by the burden of keeping the gods satisfied.’

He leaned back again, sighing. ‘I was not blameless. I wanted an heir. And it was prophesied that I would beget a son who would beget a son.’ He paused, turning to her, ‘but only after great anguish.’

This time his hesitation filled her with relief but she didn’t touch him in case she distracted him from his story. She nodded slightly. ‘Tell me.’

‘Seianta, too, was predicted to be a mother. But only the second part of my prophecy came true. Time after time our babies died.’ Mastarna closed his eyes briefly as though in pain. ‘But we never gave up hope that one day our promised son would be born.’

Caecilia shivered. Artile’s vision of her future was nearly the same as Mastarna’s. Seianta thought her prophecy matched her husband’s as well. Her mistake was believing she’d be the mother of living children.

Thinking she was growing too cold, Mastarna paused to draw the tebenna close around her, the thick woollen weave soft against her face.

‘We thought we were blessed when Seianta’s belly grew smooth and taut and heavy with Velia. And beneath a mere layer of skin and flesh and muscle I felt our baby brush against my fingers, like the tiny wings of a fledgling.

‘But our daughter was not like other children. Born one moon too early, she always lagged behind. By one year, when others were pulling themselves up to totter on unsteady feet, she was no bigger than a babe, her breath laboured and her heartbeat frenetic.

‘Seianta fretted, constantly comparing Velia with other infants, believing it was she who was to blame for such imperfection. Tormented, always tormented by the thoughts of her failure to bear a healthy child.’

Caecilia listened, not knowing what to say. She wished she could reach inside herself and draw a mantle of comfort about him. Instead she sat silent, her hands in her lap, realising that Seianta possessed more fortitude than she did.

‘All suspected our little girl would die before the priest hammered the nail into Nortia’s temple. All suspected but none would speak of it to Seianta. All except Artile.’ Mastarna’s tone was harsh. ‘He fed upon her weakness, persuading her to observe the rituals of the Book of Fate; telling her that if she was devout enough she could defer our daughter’s death for seven years.’

A spasm gripped Caecilia’s bowels that hurt so much she clenched her teeth until it passed. So far Uni had not thrown her lighting bolt. Every day the goddess denied her a sign of success, the danger of conceiving a disfigured child remained. And every day she woke with guilt as she found herself loving Mastarna, wishing that there was a guarantee that no monsters would be born.

‘What happened to Velia?’

Mastarna massaged his brow, struggling to speak of it after all this time. ‘As she grew older she did little other than cry, a thin piercing whine that broke you asunder. Listless, struggling to breathe, she was unable to suckle so that she, who was tiny, grew even smaller. I could tell that Nortia meant her to die young. And so, when after months no miracle occurred, when no lightning struck from the correct sector, when no sign was given that my wife’s prayers had been answered, I forbade her to perform the rituals, thinking them futile.’

Mastarna twisted the gold and onyx ring around his finger, head bowed, a catch in his voice. ‘I told her I did it because I loved her, but she would not believe me. She beat and scratched me, claiming I was condemning our daughter to an early death.’ His body sagged with grief. ‘And perhaps she was right because Nortia claimed Velia a few days later.’

Again words failed Caecilia. Again she wished she could truly understand the nature of his sorrow—what it was like to lose a child; praying also that she would never experience the anguish of Seianta.

Their babies had been cherished enough to be kept in a funeral urn decorated with dancing children. In Rome they would have been burned, their ashes scattered across the family hearth, lost forever after the fireplace was scraped clean and then stoked with wood to cook meals and warm the family. At least Caecilia knew now that she would not have to give any baby such a Roman ending; that any child of theirs would be more than a forgotten unformed soul.

Mastarna rose and moved to a column, gripping one vine with his hand as he stared at the wintry garden. ‘Seianta keened when Velia died. She would not stop, could not stop. Rocking the little body in her arms, not letting her go. I tried to stroke her hair, to hold her near, but it was as if my touch was acid. Only Zeri gave her respite.’

Caecilia’s heart beat faster. She struggled to keep her voice level. ‘Zeri?’

‘It let her escape from pain, but in the end it made her sick.’

‘She grew ill?’

‘Yes. I discovered that Artile had been wrongly giving it to her for a long time as a sacrament. By the time our little girl died, she was enslaved by the elixir.’

The stone bench had suddenly grown harder and colder. Caecilia sat upon her hands to hide how they were shaking. She had grown uncomfortable, too, with awareness. Did Artile wish to own her, own her thoughts? Had she been wrong all along to believe the priest was not serving up malice when he doled out the elixir? There were only so many times she could deny that her story and Seianta’s were overlapping: their hungers, their fears, their wants, their weaknesses. Only so many times she could disregard Mastarna’s suspicions about his brother.

Mastarna pushed his fingers through his short-cropped hair. ‘And so Artile was able to console Seianta when she would not let me near her. I had neglected her, you see. Preoccupied with treasuring the office of the zilath, I was blinded to her plight. And, to be honest, I was not about to be drawn into her grief lest it force me to examine my own. I told myself it must be sorrow alone that was burdening her rather than Zeri sickness. It was only when I caught her licking the lid of the vial rather than lose one drop of euphoria that I fully understood.’

A stab of pain crossed Caecilia’s belly again, recognising that she, too, was treading more than the edges of addiction. Her insides were already hardening and her hunger was satisfied by the smallest portions of food. Soon she would be as thin as when she first arrived in Veii. She had thought her symptoms only fatigue, had never imagined there was evil to bliss. How could she be so naïve when Veii always balanced up goodness with vice, any pleasure with pain?

‘I begged her to stop drinking it,’ continued Mastarna, ‘but she refused to cease bowing to Artile as he placed a yoke around her neck. In the end it did not matter what I said because she had already begun to hate me. For certain she had not forgiven me. I grieved for the touch of her hands upon me in love or passion, but she tolerated me in bed for only one reason. She wanted another child.

‘And with her obsession came a terrible urgency to conceive and carry and bear a baby. An anxiety for a son to greet daylight and be blessed quickly by the gods lest they change their minds. And so she lay beneath me with closed eyes and mouth pressed into a thin line waiting for me to finish.’

He crouched before her. ‘As you did on our wedding night.’

Caecilia stared at him. That night had been left behind them long ago. How strange to find it was Seianta’s hatred for Mastarna that she had envied. Little wonder the Tarquinian girl still haunted her husband.

Sitting down beside her, Mastarna stroked her cheek with his calloused thumb. ‘And that is why I couldn’t bear that it would always be like that between us. That’s why I gave you the Alpan. So that your worry would dissolve and you would not hate lying with me in our bed.’

Alpan. The need for the mild love potion seemed a distant memory.

Shame flooded through her. The secrets he revealed were of past hurts. Those she kept were only of betrayal. Still she kept silent, too frightened to confess what she knew could not be forgiven. Too frightened to lose him.

Perspiration pricked her hairline. The thought of being denied the Zeri was as agonising as any of the pains that gripped her insides. She did not think she was strong enough to forgo it.

When she did not reply, Mastarna began pacing. ‘While I neglected her, Artile bound Seianta to him, taunting her that Velia was still not one of the Blessed, urging her to be faithful only to him
.
It was a bitter thing to watch her gaze at him with gratitude and trust.

‘To our relief she fell with child quickly. Planting a seed was never a difficult task for us. Being able to nurture one was our burden. But as the child grew steadily within her, Seianta reclined most of the day under the elixir’s spell, vomiting and sweating, wetting our bed when she had no energy to rise. Craving the Zeri more and more.