The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (44 page)

Caecilia shivered, her feet turning blue within her red leather boots, nausea rising within her. He was frightening her, drawing her back to dread and endless prayers under the guidance of a priest who saw her only as a pawn. ‘I can’t kneel to Aita. Not when such worship means the taking of a life. Please give me the Zeri.’

‘No.’ His vehemence was unnerving. ‘I won’t watch you die as Seianta did.’

‘I heard that she suffered most when she stopped the drug.’

‘You will suffer just as much if you take it for too long.’

Caecilia surveyed the horizon where grey sky pressed upon bruised purple hills. Many sights in Veii had sickened her—the Phersu’s dog and his prey, the rutting wine-sodden guests—but this was different. He was forcing her to admit that this vice was hers alone.

‘He would never forgive me if he found out.’

The youth shook his head. ‘You are wrong. I have seen how it is between you. He would be angry but he’d still love you. Besides, I will help you give it up. Mastarna need never know you were possessed by its spell.’

Unable to find courage, Caecilia crouched beside him, her fingers digging into his arm. ‘Please. Give me just a little. It helps me see visions of my home.’

The youth scrabbled to his feet, roughly pulling her to stand, then swept his arm in an arc across the landscape, shafts of sun piercing the curtains of cloud. ‘There is your home.’

‘I can’t see Rome from here.’

‘It is not of Rome I speak. All roads circle our city. All roads lead here. This is your home.’

‘I only want to see my family.’

Grasping both her arms, Tarchon shook her. ‘Who is your family? You hanker for Marcus, but in all your time here you’ve received no letters from him.’

‘How can you say that? He could be dead!’

‘Perhaps, but even before the fall of Verrugo you heard nothing from him. No, I think your cousin spoke of his affection, but in truth he forgot you as soon as you left.’

‘Please, Tarchon, don’t say such things.’

‘Did anyone truly love you there, Caecilia? Love you as Mastarna does? Love you as Larthia did? As I do? You are so quick to condemn us and yet we have done nothing but accept and care for you.’ He released her. ‘We are your family now.’

Caecilia wanted to dispute him but could not. She’d always thought her cousin to be her best friend, her only friend. Now she realised she was wrong.

In the distance, the sky was darkening. The wind was edged with ice, slicing through their clothes.

‘Come. The storm is nearly here.’

Caecilia ignored him, studying the approaching shrouds of rain, wanting to endure the cold, to blot out her need for the soft warm reverie of the Zeri’s peace.

Thunder grumbled as clouds thickened upon the horizon. The lightning that followed was no flicker, no long streak with frayed edges; instead a curtain of light that lit a distant expanse of forest twisted with bare branches of muted green and brown.

High on the citadel, Caecilia did not miss its flare. The lightning had come from the northeast.

The sector of greatest good fortune—Uni’s realm.

As she watched, Caecilia thought she should be giddy with excitement, knowing that, after all these months, after all the sacrifice and prayers and blood, Uni had at last granted a sign. Instead, it was as though she had taken a false step and, tripping and stumbling, landed face down upon the ground.

The lightning declared she would have no child with Mastarna for seven years. She turned and slid down the stonework to sit upon the ground.

Tarchon tugged at her to rise as rain started to slash across them. ‘Come on,’ he said, but she shook her head, refusing to move. He knelt beside her. ‘What’s the matter?’

She stared at the raindrops bouncing off his cheeks and hair. She was a child again, badgering her father for new shoes only to find they pinched her feet, knowing she’d made the wrong choice but must wear them and be grateful.

When she told him about her worship of the Book of Fate, he sat down next to her, oblivious of the pelting rain, his silence lasting only the time between claps of thunder. ‘For this, he will never forgive you.’

For a time they stayed quietly, water streaming off them, cloaks drenched, rain dripping from their chins, their fingers, their hair. Her tears were warm compared to the freezing rain.

‘You may be lucky. Only a haruspex can tell us if the lightning is proroguing or that indeed it was Uni who sent her bolt. Many gods reside in the northeast sector.’

Caecilia scanned the horizon where lightning still flashed intermittently across the valley, as always amazed that the brilliant flashes were like words of a celestial language expressing divine moods.

She would not dare approach Artile to find the meaning, though. She did not want to know now. Perversely, she only hoped that her prayers had not been answered.

Tarchon was watching her, his fair face dark with disgust. ‘Why did you do it?’

Caecilia found she could only whisper. ‘Artile told me I would give birth to Mastarna’s monsters. I was frightened, Tarchon, so very frightened. Please understand.’

‘Monsters?’

‘Like Seianta’s.’

He frowned, a look of confusion passing across his features, a hint of doubt about his lover. ‘It was she who was cursed, Caecilia. The gods had forsaken her not Mastarna.’

‘Please, please do not tell him.’

Tarchon’s tone was sombre and severe. ‘Trust me, I will keep your secret. Mastarna must never know.’

Slipping on the cobblestones, they skidded to where Cytheris was waiting. Draping her mistress in a dry cloak she glared at the youth for his neglect, disturbed to see the girl’s distress.

Tarchon leaned into the carriage as Caecilia settled inside, his contempt building into anger, his voice scathing. ‘You think us vile and corrupt, but ask yourself this question. If you could return to Rome tomorrow what would make you stay?’

*

It had been raining steadily when she arrived at the country villa. Climbing down from the carriage she sank into knee-high mud and struggled to the front door.

After a few days, though, the smell of the rich mud was pleasant compared to the stink of her room: vomit and pee, sweat and ordure rising in a miasma, saturating sheets and robes.

They bound her hands in bandages. She joked at first but afterwards cursed them. Her fingernails were short but they could scratch, scratch the insects that crawled beneath her skin.

At first she thought they were small and few enough to squash. In the end she felt as though spiders were hatching eggs within her and ants marching through her veins. Tarchon could not see them nor Cytheris feel them, but they believed her cries and bathed her grazes when bandages were rubbed hard enough to grate skin.

She lay in a room with a dancer painted upon its ceiling. Stepping and stamping in celebration of life he mocked her from above, laughing at her anguish. She wished she could catch the click of his castanets or hear the swish of his particoloured kilt but there were no sounds other than her own.

Sometimes the dancer would play cruel pranks, mimicking the contortions of her muscles or playing hide and seek with her as vision glided from near to far, blurred and sharp in turns.

Only Tarchon and Cytheris were allowed within the room, discreet in their knowledge of her malady, telling the servants that the mistress suffered from a contagious fever.

Caecilia grew used to being naked in front of Tarchon. Modesty fell away. Her body ceased to be her own. After her failings no dignity remained that could be lost.

They made her eat broth, which she could not keep down, drawing her knees to her belly with cramps. Whereas before she had strained above the privy, her bowels voided in a steady stream. Cytheris would bathe her face and neck and arms, but rosewater was soon usurped by sweat, malodorous and fulsome, while the air smelled faintly of faeces even when they had scraped and wiped her clean.

She could sleep only briefly, living in Tuchulcha’s world even when awake. She begged for the Zeri. Just a little taste. She thought she would die without it. Wished she could.

*

Mastarna’s bewilderment was amiss on a face that rarely registered confusion. His silence was short-lived. His roar made even the dancer miss a step. Cytheris scuttled from the room at his command, and Caecilia could hear him shouting at his son and Tarchon shouting back.

He did not raise his voice to her, though. Instead his arms encircled her as she shook. Stroking her sodden hair, he drew the sheet gently over her and pressed his cheek against hers. It was cool, retaining a slice of winter. ‘When I heard you were ill, I could not stay away. You should have told me.’

‘I was afraid.’

His sigh was full of hurt. A spasm shivered through her. Mastarna took her hand and inspected the bandage, specks of blood upon it, carefully caressing the sore broken skin of her arm.

His touch made the insects start their exploration. They swarmed over her feet, burrowing in deep. Frantically, she reached down to scrape them from between her toes. When he tried to stop her, she pushed him away. He had seen this all before. He was patient. When the insects slithered away, he held her.

When he finally took her home, chamomile laced the fields, and posies of verbena and forget-me-nots adorned the crossroad shrines. Flowers on the edge of spring. Floral scents that reminded her evermore that she had one more secret to hide—one that he would not forgive.

*

Mastarna had returned early from a meeting with the Zilath, his mood buoyant, unable to restrain excitement. ‘Good news! Vipinas will support Ulthes!’ He was shouting, sweeping Caecilia off her feet in a bear hug.

Her eyes opened wide in surprise as he twirled her around. It seemed so easy to be happy. To have a future. To imagine living in peace.

Suddenly, Caecilia was filled with gratitude for the lean man with the gold and ivory teeth who’d finally been persuaded to Ulthes’ cause. For with Vipinas’ tribal influence and with Apercu already an ally, Tulumnes could only rely on Pesna’s votes. Victory was guaranteed.

Setting his wife down on the floor again, Mastarna called for some wine. ‘We have more than this news to celebrate,’ he said, handing her a small leather pouch. ‘It’s for your birthday. Although I’m always careful to say that a woman grows a year wiser. Saying they are a year older tends to make them frown.’

Caecilia laughed, pulling open the drawstring.

‘It’s the same design as the wolf fibula I gave you when you first came here,’ he said, not waiting for her to remove the gift. ‘You seem to have lost it.’

Caecilia kissed him a thank you. ‘It’s even more beautiful than the first one.’ Fingering the engraving of the mother wolf suckling her cubs, Caecilia remembered how she’d sacrificed the other clasp to Uni on the day the lightning struck the palace. Mastarna had given it to her to ward off homesickness. She no longer needed such a keepsake.

‘And when the election is over I will give you another present. We will visit Rome.’

Goosebumps formed on her skin. ‘Rome?’

He nodded.

She covered his face with kisses, glad that she would see the seven hills again and walk around Tata’s farm. ‘But you said I couldn’t return unless the treaty failed.’

‘True, but now that Tulumnes will be defeated I feel differently.’

‘And if I am with child?’

His face—his battered, scarred, ugly face—transformed with delight. Caecilia realised he’d mistaken her question for a confession, that she had already conceived, that she was not barren after all and that his unspoken fears could be discarded.

It was cruel to watch him wilt as she shook her head at his silent query. ‘But I pray I will carry our son soon,’ she said, encircling his neck with her arms, touching her forehead to his.

Mastarna smiled. ‘Then I will take you back to show him to your family.’

‘But that is not what you said before!’

‘Because now I don’t think you’d take our son away.’ He held her hands. ‘Nor do I think you would leave me.’

It was strange to hear him say the words. To achieve the goal that she’d knelt and prayed and begged for only to find that it was hers after all just by loving him.

 As she hugged him, he grinned. ‘We must give him brothers, too,’ she said.

‘You only want boys then?’

‘No, of course not.’

As he spoke she inwardly entreated Nortia not to spitefully make her wait and wait and wait in punishment for her foolishness. And she prayed that Uni had not already sent her sign.

*

Caecilia could not tell if she was perspiring from the heat of the bath or from their lovemaking. She slid beneath the water then emerged, sweeping water from her hair and cheek and brow, enjoying the warmth of the sunlight streaming into the chamber. Mastarna lay beside her, eyes closed, his breathing returning to normal. As she began to rise he stopped her, his hand lazily resting on her thigh. ‘Stay.’