The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (8 page)

Arruns was Mastarna’s man. A protector. Frightening. If she thought Mastarna had strength and muscle enough, Arruns’ body was honed and sculpted for brawling. She was sure there was no softness within or without him. Worse, a tattoo covered half his swarthy face, a serpent head with fangs bared, its body coiled around his neck. His shaven head and broken teeth were so unsettling that she avoided his gaze whenever possible. Even though he was short, she imagined him picking up any man, whether taller, heavier or stronger, and hurling him like Jupiter would a thunderbolt. In this inn full of drunken, unruly men, she wondered if it were preferable to be ogled by them or watched over by Arruns.

Most of Mastarna’s wedding party had ridden ahead, their horses so elegant it was as though they were wrought in polished clay, their acclaim as widespread as the infamy of their masters.

Three noblemen remained behind: Apercu, an immense man who held his paunch with the same tenderness as a pregnant woman; Pesna, a lean fellow who looked like he consumed worries instead of meat; and Vipinas, whose face and hands were as though moulded from beeswax.

Unable to speak their language or they hers, they were confined to nodding or gesturing, but at least Apercu added smiles to their silent dialogue. She noticed, though, that Pesna treated Mastarna with the same disdain as he did her, making her ponder what welcome awaited her in his city—the glib smiles of Apercu or the sullen glares of his stoop-shouldered colleague?

*

In the mid afternoon, their journey was again interrupted when an ox fell lame. By this time pastures had changed to ravines through which the Cremera River flowed. Leaving behind the Tiber, the artery that sustained her city, was unnerving. Yet another foothold to her past removed.

Caecilia wandered down to a small clearing near the river. Shadows were lengthening, brightness sifted from the sunlight. The breeze that riffled the beech trees seemed to cause the dappled ground to shift. Throwing wet sand and gravel into the water, she watched the brief splashes, the speed of the current, the colour of the shallows and the deep. The walls of the ravine rose above her.
On the ridges, cypress cut spear points into the blue. Strangely enough the landscape did not threaten her with its looming cliffs. There was a beauty to the grey-and-yellow tufa stone covered with trailing ilex. For a moment she melted into sweet, yielding sleepiness and tried to rest.

The caravan lay less than fifty yards away. The ox herders’ voices were audible as she sat upon the bank. Mastarna and the three aristocratic principes were arguing, no doubt over her. Their anger jarred her, piercing the contentment she felt from standing under a rustic sun far from the clutter of the city house. Their strident tones sharpened the edges of her nerves as well, drawing her again into anxiety and worry and concern.

She sent a handful of wet sand skittering across the water, the splashes spaced mere seconds apart, almost as natural as a ruffle and tremor of wind upon the river. But as she took another handful, a different snatch of sound and motion caught her attention.

A group of men had laced their way through the trees along the riverbank towards the clearing. Their faces and long plaits were smeared with grey loam; their clothes were cobbled strips of animal fur and hide. All carried swords in leather scabbards strapped to their backs, all grasped sturdy pikestaffs.

They seemed as astounded as she was to find her there, but their leader’s surprise was short-lived. When one of his men made to grab her he held him back, ordering him in a furious whisper to obey. Even though she did not understand his tongue, his intent was clear. Pointing to the ox train, he commanded them to attack, leaving only one behind to deal with her.

The pit of her stomach was hollow and her heart clawed at her breast bones to let it escape as she tried to find her voice.

He was young. Younger than she. The smear of clay emphasised his pimply skin. He was frowning, his expression that of a junior asked to perform a task too great for him.

His indecision lessened her panic, and although her voice was squeaky it soon found certainty as she yelled for help.

Her screams startled him. He grabbed her wrist but showed his inexperience again when he chose to press a hand over her mouth not a blade across her throat. As he held her, his stench was overpowering, the rancid odour of fat and offal filling her nostrils. His hand was shaking, shaking as much as hers.

A heat surged through her, exploding in her chest, rising in her gorge, coursing through her limbs, and with a fierceness born of desperation she wrenched herself around, raising the river gravel in her hand and grinding it into his eyes, then dug her fingers into his sweating ochre-caked cheeks.

The raider yowled and clutched at his face. She scrambled away and saw Arruns behind him. He slid his arm around the bandit’s neck and, almost in an embrace, shoved his sword deftly through the boy so that she could see its point slide out through his belly. Then, mercilessly, mercifully, as the bandit slumped to the ground, Arruns stabbed him through the heart.

As the bodyguard took her arm she flinched, unsure if she was any safer in his hands, but if Arruns noticed he did not care. He pushed her behind him and gruffly ordered her to follow. Again she did not have to know his language to understand, the dialect of action transcending words.

He was silent, though, as he bent down and pulled the sword from the brigand, the blade resisting slightly as it retracted through flesh and muscle.

The boy looked as hesitant in death as in life, his limbs askew as though unsure how best to lie at rest. Blood spilled from him and pooled upon the loam of the river bank. But, oddly, what struck her most was that the soles of his feet were blackened, his toes chafed, bound only by rope and rags. He must have walked miles to meet his death. How eager he must have been to swap tattered bindings for stolen boots.

Examining him she felt neither pity nor hate. She was numb, as though she were a stranger noticing how Caecilia’s heart was pounding and Caecilia’s body was quaking.

Arruns growled at her impatiently and she stumbled after him as he strode towards the others. She could hear fighting and cries and shouts, but this suddenly died away as they pushed through the bushes to arrive at the road.

There were more bodies. Two brigands sprawled at Mastarna’s feet. Apercu was wiping his weapon clean while Vipinas revealed that, although he looked bloodless, he was prepared to pierce the veins of another. Pesna stood to the side, his arm slashed. The caravan’s guards had finished off the other bandits. It struck her that she had thought these perfumed aristocrats effete, but they were warriors after all.

‘Are you hurt?’ There was relief and concern in Mastarna’s voice. He glanced at Arruns to gain confirmation of her answer.

Fresh blood streaked Mastarna’s face and clothes. As he wiped his face with his hand, it left a smeary mess. Dark patches were showing under the arms of his tunic and across his back. He reeked of the men he had killed, and as he stepped over the bodies to take her forearm, his palm was hot and his eyes, which before had been reserved, were intense.

She could almost hear his heartbeat.

Her own heart was racing, too, but the fire within her was ebbing. When he touched her she pulled away. She did not want him near her, blaming him for this day, for plunging her into danger.

‘You were brave, Caecilia, warning us like that. It gave us time enough to meet them.’

She did not look at him, could not stop staring at the slain. One bandit lay with his mouth open in a wide exclamation of surprise or pain, as though frozen at the exact moment when his spirit fled—when his gods, if he had gods, forsook him. There were fine cracks in the clay upon his face as though he had grown wrinkled and old in the space of a swordfight. Yet beneath the lines he looked no more than twenty. The last time she had seen him he was leering at her as does a man starved of his daily meal.

She had seen dead bodies before. Apart from her parents, there had been villagers who’d died of plague or accident or exhaustion. She had even passed, with ghoulish interest, the putrid heads of criminals displayed on spikes at the crossroads, flies tickling their blackened skin, their buzzing a paean to death. Each time she had told herself not to look but was drawn nevertheless to do so.

This was different. She had seen a man killed today. She had viewed crumpled and hacked bodies that only a short time before had a pulse beating within them and who had grappled with needs and wants.

How many times had she watched men go to war? Seen those who returned maimed or bloodied? Mourned others who would not return? But never had she seen the scenes in between. How far blood could splatter, how a weapon was hefted, how empty were sightless eyes.

She found herself crouching, shivering violently, uncontrollably, so that her teeth chattered, her brief surge of courage expelled in a messy porridge of sick. Mastarna bundled his cloak around her, waiting patiently for her to finish. This time she did not fend him off. It was scant comfort upon this awful day.

‘I want nothing other than to be far away,’ she said, wiping her mouth. ‘Please take me home.’

Mastarna put his hands upon her shoulders. ‘Don’t disappoint me, Caecilia. Your nerve didn’t fail you against the brigand. Be brave enough to finish the journey to Veii.’

She was on the brink of tears. Rome had surrendered her to this savagery. But would it welcome her back on the same day she had farewelled it? ‘Then let us go,’ she said. ‘Quickly.’

From the corner of her eye she glimpsed the ox herders unloading canvas from the wagons. Tents for the night.

‘We shall camp here,’ said Mastarna. ‘It will be twilight soon and too dangerous to travel.’

‘I just want to lie down,’ she said. ‘And never get up.’

‘Then you may do one, but not the other,’ he said, smiling briefly, and he led her to her tent.

*

Strangely she had not cried. Had not crumbled when facing death. And Mastarna’s words had stirred her. No one had ever called her brave. The possibility of a reservoir of courage was absorbing, as was the thought that perhaps the warrior blood of Tata and Mamercus Aemilius flowed within her after all.

In the end she peeled off her stola with its dirt and smell and splatters of blood—his blood, the boy’s blood—and took a knife to it, ripping it to pieces, wanting to rid herself of his residue upon her. And then it was anger which fuelled her tears: at Aemilius for his betrayal; at her father for dying; and most of all at Drusus for not being there.

It was hard to keep quiet as she wept, to stifle self-pity and hide her weakness. To pretend she was stalwart and stoic as a Roman woman should be. And this failure deepened her misery, as she pressed her face into her palla cloak to muffle her tears, because she knew that they could hear her, that they must be thinking she was no different to any other woman. No different at all.

After her throat had become sore and her weeping painful, she would have fallen into an exhausted sleep but for the clumsy entry of the servant who brought her a basin of warm water and fresh clothes.

Unthreading her six wedding plaits, Caecilia cursed as she roughly tugged at the knots of dust and sweat, but when she began combing her crinkled hair she grew calm, thinking of how Drusus would have been proud of her today.

‘You must be hungry.’ Mastarna had entered the tent without her noticing. She could tell his glance took in the pile of shredded clothes upon the floor, the puffiness of her face and the redness of her eyes, yet he said nothing.

‘I don’t want to eat.’

He shook his head. ‘Hunger feeds fretting. You must forget your fears and eat with me beside the fire.’

Caecilia scanned his face for mockery but there was only good humour. His shoulders were relaxed, his expression no longer world-weary. How could he speak of food as though nothing had happened that day? As though it was nothing to have killed two men and then forgotten them by washing his hands and changing his clothes? She hoped that killing men was not all that could lighten her husband’s mood.

‘But that would not be seemly. There are only men. And besides, my hair is undressed.’

Taking a tress, Mastarna rubbed it between thumb and forefinger. ‘Ah, much preferable to those Gorgon locks. I like a woman’s hair untied. Especially when it is thick and soft like yours.’

Blushing, she eased his fingers away, sweeping her hair around her neck to hide her mark. She was unused to flattery, uncertain if he was being sarcastic, pondering, too, as to how many women he had seen with their hair flowing loosely.

‘Come,’ he continued, ‘as my wife you are safe to sit beside me.’

Her stomach was grumbling but his invitation stirred an altogether different appetite, one that still prevailed after all that had happened that day. He was asking her to sit beside him with his peers. He was treating her as though she were an equal.

*

The stars were very bright. Brighter it seemed than those owned by Rome. The fire burned brightly, too, heat and illumination ridding the darkness of ghosts. Arruns had set up a spit and was cooking hare. The aroma teased her hunger after all and she eyed the roasting dinner expectantly.

Yet at every sound that came from beyond the circle of firelight, her heart quavered, nervous at the thought that more strangers could erupt from the quietness of the evening and kill them. And yet everyone around her was unperturbed.