The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (7 page)

To her surprise, Mastarna rose and stood beside her at the fire. So near to her, she once again noticed his scent. His face was shaven but she could already see the soft shading of new beard stippling his skin. It was an ugly face but not an ugly voice. If she had not resolved to hate him, she knew the timbre and cadence of his speech could easily beguile her.

‘Do these rituals we need to complete,’ he asked, ‘involve this friendly fellow here?’ He pointed to the statue of Mutunus Tutunus.

The statue of the ancient fertility god sat beside the Roman girl. The god’s phallus was large and bulbous, and Caecilia shivered at the thought that long ago, a bride, helped by her husband, would sit upon the effigy’s lap and suffer the cold stone entering her. Thinking so, she glanced at Mastarna, wondering if his penis would be any easier a prospect.

He had placed his hand upon the statue. ‘Or is this a tradition your people no longer practise?’

Realising he was teasing, she tensed.

‘Do not fear, Caecilia,’ he continued in a similar tone, ‘no stone idol will pierce your hymen, although I wager you’ll be disappointed with my proportions after pondering the size of a god’s.’

Her stomach lurching at his lewdness, she quickly turned to watch the fire, letting the heat burn her cheeks to hide her blush. ‘There are other rituals,’ she repeated firmly. ‘And we are surrounded by spirits.’

Again he sighed. ‘Very well.’

‘You must offer me the fire and water from your hearth.’

‘This is not my hearth. But I will do so when we are in Veii.’

She hesitated, trying not to think about his home, his ways. Not knowing, either, what to do.

Mastarna gently clasped the back of her hand. ‘Perhaps this will suffice,’ he said, and guided it over the fire while she prayed silently to Juno, just as her aunt had bid her.

‘Now the water.’

Handing him a libation dish, Caecilia closed her eyes, finally accepting that the ceremony was complete as the drops splashed upon her. All prayers and imprecations, all offerings and actions to seal the marriage had been made. All actions except one.

*

When she knelt to wash his feet, he seemed surprised. Yet was it not right for a wife to do what was expected? After all, she had bathed her father’s feet and her uncle’s, even Marcus’. It was a role that was not burdensome provided the water was warm and the oil sweet smelling.

Yet it did cross her mind that, although it may be right for a wife to kneel before a man with ewer and jug, it might be wrong that Rome should bend to Veii.

Fatigue had taken the edge off her fear. It was as if she had been forced to eat bowl after bowl of some noxious brew all day and no longer cared if it killed or cured her.

The intimacy of rubbing his feet free of grime was uncomfortable as her fingers touched the calluses upon his toes and heels. And there was the strange smoothness, too, of the shaven skin of his muscled calves. Soon, however, the familiarity of the routine calmed her, the silence between them the first lull in nerves all day, a quietness that was not strained. Her head was bowed but she glanced up occasionally. He was not regarding her, instead staring at the flames. Dark circles under his eyes. Distant. Far more than a whispered word from her away.

She sat back upon her heels, the movement distracting him. This time he did study her. Instinctively, she covered her birthmark.

‘My servants will do this for me in Veii,’ he said.

Her surprise at the thought of forever being relieved of such a duty increased when he took both her hands. ‘But you have a pleasant touch, wife, broad-palmed and long-fingered.’

She remembered the brief comfort of the pressure of his fingers at the wedding. For a moment she wondered if, as a woman, she should be insulted that he thought lying with her was a matter of state.

‘Mannish hands.’

He frowned. ‘No, Caecilia, there is nothing mannish about you.’

Rising quickly, she carried the pitcher and basin to the well, unsure why she should be pleased with him, surprised, too, that he would compliment her fleshy fingertips embedded with the sad little semi-circles of chewed nail.

*

Standing either side of the bed, Caecilia turned her back, not wanting to remind him that he’d not yet untied the knot of Herculeus. She clutched a tiny wooden figure of her guardian spirit in her hand. It was a symbol of her essence, her moral guide. A Roman girl called such an effigy her little juno. Caecilia prayed that both her small protector and the mighty goddess would keep her safe tonight.

Tentatively, she lay between the sheets, still fully clothed, her hair braided, only the bridal wreath and her shoes removed. The bed creaked as he slid in beside her. If he thought it strange she had not undressed, he said nothing. Not even jokingly.

‘Sleep well, wife,’ he said softly and, as far as she could tell, promptly fell asleep.

Barely breathing, body rigid, she stared through the atrium’s roof opening. No stars tonight. Only clouds. Every nerve within her was conscious of his presence, mere inches away. How was it that she found herself lying beside a stranger who, with one restless move, could embrace her with impunity? How could it be, when yesterday she had been protected from men and distanced from their touch?

Her worries were not lessened by the realisation that Mastarna had stripped. When she raised the sheet slightly, the hard contours of his flanks and buttocks boasted no loincloth. His broad muscular back was smooth, the skin dark. He was hairless and beardless but he was no boy. She had never seen a man totally unclad. And though she knew what the masculine form looked like when carved in stone or wood, to see it in the flesh was yet another shock to add to the day’s surfeit. Hiding behind her fear, though, was curiosity. Not only could she study his nakedness undetected but, if she dared, she could brush against bare skin.

Sleep would not come. Fear overtaking her once more, she clung to the edge of the bed, ensuring that as deep a channel as possible divided them. But there would never be enough distance to make her safe.

In the shifting shadows and light from the fire, she stared at her husband’s back. His breath was sonorous and even.

He had spared her tonight, but tomorrow she would find out.

Tomorrow there would be no more mystery.

Tomorrow she would discover whether the servant girl’s moans were those of pain.

Glossary

Cast of Characters

She never thought she would feel other than despair as she journeyed from the world of always into the land of never before. Yet after last-time looks at the Servian Walls and the Campus Martius, curiosity beckoned her to bid farewell to the confines of the hills of Rome.

Passing through the north gate out onto the Via Salaria and through the farmlands of her people, she found that even the world she used to know had changed. The fields were even more arid and parched, the wheat brittle and stunted, and the cattle lay in dried-up water courses, dying from thirst.

At the crossroad that led to Tata’s farm she felt a dreadful yawning ache to leap from the cart and hide amid the olive groves as she had as a child, but soon the boundary stones and ploughed furrow that defined his land receded into the distance as the oxen pulled the two-wheeled cart further and further away. Peering around the side of the hooped and fringed covering that shaded her, Caecilia watched her past life disappear.

The sight of children holding out their hands to her distracted her from her own sadness. Horrified, she saw arms and faces crusted with sores, bellies bloated, limbs skeletal. Some were digging in the dirt with bony fingers for husks to give their fathers as paltry offerings to the gods. Seeing such misery made her understand better why Rome needed Veientane corn. Gave her confirmation, too, that her marriage might do some good.

Caecilia asked the driver to stop so that she could offer help, but he did not understand her and Mastarna was sitting astride his horse and could not hear her call. And so the Roman girl was forced to watch the children disappear from sight, saddened that they did not have the energy to chase a line of plodding oxen.

*

To avoid the landscape of barren fields and faces, Caecilia closed her eyes, thinking about her morning as she tried to shut out the braying of donkeys amid the chaotic traffic on the road.

There had been turmoil earlier. She’d been woken by Mastarna shaking her and was relieved to see he was clothed. He had been irritable, though, eager to be gone.

‘It takes a day to reach my home by bullock train. We are already late to start.’

Clambering out of bed, her clothes crumpled from a restless sleep and her hair even more tangled than the night before, she’d expected him to move away. Instead he quickly reached across and untied her girdle. In doing so he cut the knot of Herculeus, not for the purpose of lying with her but to allow her to change her garb.

After this there’d been hurried packing and the hectic herding of her dowry cattle as the Etruscan caravan proceeded through the hubbub and stink of the Forum. The Curia Senate House and Temple of Vesta stood grandly above the muddle of stalls and houses while the Mighty Jupiter rode his chariot upon the summit of the Capitoline Hill. To her surprise the people of Rome had lined the narrow streets sombrely nodding to the half-caste bride who was leaving her city for the sake of peace. A lump rose in her throat at their farewell.

Such thoughts were interrupted by the hectoring cries of hawkers calling out to the caravan. Opening her eyes she gasped at the sight of the river Anio flowing to meet its mother, the Tiber. Beyond it towered Fidenae, the ancient hill town that Rome fiercely and possessively cradled like a child, always mindful that her neighbour, Veii, could snatch it from its arms. Indeed she wondered what Mastarna and the other nobles were thinking as they passed through the territory they still coveted as their own.

For it was here on this plain that thousands of Romans died, their lives taken by the ancestors of the men who were escorting her this day. Men who were neither of valour nor of virtue. Bowing her head, Caecilia murmured a prayer, wishing she could halt and give thanks to fallen heroes; give thanks also to Mamercus Aemilius, her famous great-uncle, for liberating this town. For it was because of him that the fields around her were no longer sown with bones and the world was blue-skied and tranquil.

Today Fidenae, as ever, commanded a view of both rivers, but their waters had long borne away the cries and clamour of past conflicts. As she travelled past the fortress Caecilia could see Rome in the distance. To the northwest another citadel would soon appear upon the horizon. Veii would be the first foreign city she would enter.

Past and future see-sawed back and forth within her gaze.

Safety and danger. Known and unknown.

*

History lessons were forgotten when they reached the ford. With much splashing and bellowing, the oxen were driven into the water. Riding the ferry to the other side, Caecilia clung to the tilting vessel as the ferry man poled the raft across the narrows.

Finally stepping onto firm ground, she feared that she had crossed more than a river; that she had left civilisation behind. Yet the grassy banks and soil looked quite the same as that owned by Rome on the other side.

Soldiers had been patrolling the land around the ford along the Via Veientana. Their armour was as dull as the look in their eyes. Boredom made them slouch. Caecilia realised that these could be the last of her countrymen she would see for some time. It was disappointing to see such a lack of pride. Embarrassing, too. It was not as she imagined Roman soldiers should be.

They stood to attention, though, when they saw her. News had spread, but whether it was fame or notoriety that made them defer to her she could not tell. It was not often that a political bride would pass their way. She was tempted to speak to them, to cry out that she must return, but such weakness pricked her conscience and reminded her to keep her earlier resolve.

A few paces ahead of her, Mastarna reined in his impatient mount, both man and horse clearly wishing they could be galloping ahead, perhaps already be home, instead of marking time to the steady tread of the carriage oxen.

*

The caravan halted at a crossroads inn while Mastarna’s steward dealt with the toll master. This time there would be no taxes paid to Rome to pass through the trading routes, thanks to the treaty that was sealed by their marriage.

‘Stay close to Arruns,’ Mastarna ordered as he commandeered a table as far away as possible from the rowdiest patrons. Caecilia did not bridle at such a directive. The men who frequented the tavern were thirsty from their travel and looked as though they did not care if they reached their destinations quickly. Their interest in a noblewoman’s presence was obvious. Even when she turned her head from them, their scrutiny tapped her upon the shoulder.