Etruscan Blood

  ***

  Rome was growing fast, and Jupiter's was not the only temple being built; there were small shrines going up all over the city, and Tanaquil had funded a temple to Diana on the Aventine with a rich gift of golden jewellery, that drew great admiration from all except the few (ladies of fashion, or goldsmiths) who understood that what she'd donated was all out of fashion, and much of it more suitable for a man, so probably Tarquinius', not her own, and only worth its scrap value. Still, it was a munificent gift. The temple benefited, too, from her sure taste; the fine proportions, elegant but not overdone decoration, the small carved figures of deer and greyhounds that chased each other along the frieze.

  She should have got such great pleasure from it, and yet Rome had a way of spoiling things; the great Capitoline temple's dedication the month before, and the way Servius had taken over patronage of this temple too, claiming it as the common sanctuary of the Latin people. It was strange, how often something she'd looked forward to had turned out to be so disappointing in reality; and the best moments of her life had been stolen from necessity. Swimming naked one afternoon with Tarquinius under a cornflower-blue sky on the way from Tarchna. (What made her think of that now?)

  And here she was, resplendent in white and gold and leading the procession with Servius as she so often did these days, a queen in all but name now that Tarquinia never left the Palatine (some said she was dead, others that she was mad, though the truth if Tanaquil knew her daughter was more likely that she was both stubborn, and drunk most of the time). Queen of Rome; another spoiled thing, to be a rapist's queen. The shame snuggled closely to her heart. Life spoiled as easily as milk left out.

  "What's that thing there?" she asked.

  "What thing?" As if he didn't know. She pointed. A garish bronze stele blocked the steps up to the temple.

  "Oh, that," he said.

  "Yes, that."

  "It's the pact between the Latin cities."

  "You mean it shows the conditions Rome exacted in exchange for not flattening them?"

  "If you like."

  "And it's there..."

  "Because it never goes amiss to remind your allies what they've agreed to. In writing. Indelible writing."

  "Bronze melts," she said. "You might have carved it on stone."

  Sunlight flashed from the bronze, dazzling. How typical of Servius to put it just off centre, where it clashed with the temple's elegant symmetry.

  They were at the bottom of the steps to the temple when Tanaquil saw him; a countryman with a floppy wide-brimmed hat, leading a huge white cow, soft and perfect as young things always are before the years scar and harden them. Instantly she had that sense, as if the world had slid sideways, as if it swung about the axis of her aching eyes.

  "That cow," she said, but Servius's mouth twitched.

  "We've got an ox ready," he said, one hand on her back pushing her forward.

  When she turned to face him, he must have seen something of the power that swelled like migraine behind her eyes; she simply looked at him, and he stopped, and bowed his head silently, and then hailed the peasant.

  "You've come a long way to Rome," he said, his voice kind.

  "I have that." A slight edge to the vowels; Sabine, probably. "Because of the dream."

  "What dream was this?"

  "Steady, Tanaquil; let him tell his own story."

  "This cow," he said. "I never had a cow like her in twenty years, for size, or for colour. Twenty two years, to be exact, I've been a farmer up in the hills, and never seen anything like."

  He pulled his hat off, and wiped his sweaty forehead with his forearm.

  "I breed them for whiteness, but every white cow I've ever had has a patch of brown somewhere on her, just a few hairs, a couple of dark flecks behind the ears or on the tail. But she was born pure white, and she's never darkened. That together with the size of her; she's special."

  "And the dream?"

  "I don't dream often. Farming life is hard; I sleep deeply. No energy for dreams. But seven nights ago I dreamt I was in a temple, a great temple as high as the sky, and the god spoke to me."

  "Which god was this?" Tanaquil asked.

  "I don't know. It was far in the darkness. But the god spoke, and told me to take the white cow to Rome, and that I'd find a temple there, and if I sacrificed her there, I would become king of the world."

  "And you really believe that?"

  The Sabine looked down, jamming his hat back on his head, and then said, quietly; "Even so, if it was a true dream, the god must have meant something."

  "True enough," Tanaquil said, "the gods don't always say clearly what they mean." And then she looked again at the man, and said, "Well, you could sacrifice here. But gods! You're filthy."

  So he was, grimy with dust from the road, and sweat, and his cheeks stippled with unshaven bristle.

  "Go and wash," she said. "You can't sacrifice till you're clean. Go down to the river and wash."

  "That's a way to go," he said, "for a tired man."

  "You have to wash. Leave the cow here; and quickly, quickly, go and wash."

  "I will," he said, and handed the lead rope to one of the attendants; but before he left, Tanaquil made sure one of Servius' retinue gave him a fresh white tebenna to put on after he'd bathed, to make him acceptable in the eyes of the goddess. Then he was off, down the narrow road to the Tiber banks.

  "Get the priest," Tanaquil ordered.

  Servius seemed not to understand why the haste. "Now," she said, "this very minute."

  "But we need to prepare. The prayers."

  "We don't have long."

  She looked down. The Sabine was half way to the river. She should have told him he needed a really thorough wash; should have told him he had to dip his head nine times, or stay under water as long as he could hold his breath, or some nonsense to give them time. Whoever sacrificed this cow, she was convinced, would rule the world; the gods had not spoken wrongly in that dream. If she brought it with Servius to the altar, Rome could not fail...

  "And the cow," she said.

  "We have an ox."

  "Shut up! Get the cow. And hurry."

  The cow was docile, and allowed herself to be led up the steps, to the altar on the forecourt, where she stood, chewing.

  Tanaquil lit the fires herself. She got Mamarke to take the garlands off the originally intended sacrifice, a young ox, and put them on to the cow, which, attracted by the bright flowers, attempted to chew the garlands and was only dissuaded from eating them by a tap on the nose. She threw the blanket over the cow.

  Good; the priest had arrived, already veiled as the rite demanded. He moved quickly into the opening words. "Be silent!"

  Someone must have impressed on him the need for haste; he was speaking as fast as he could, without gabbling.

  He scattered the wheat and the water on the cow's forehead. Its huge tongue licked at the liquid that dribbled down its muzzle. Quickly, the priest tugged a lock of hair from its forelock, and threw it into the fire. There was a sizzle; Tanaquil smelt the burning hair, the sweetness of the cow's grass-fermenting breath. She pulled the blanket away, ready for the priest to pass his knife down its back, caressing the spine with steel, the last necessary action.

  "Get on with it," she hissed.

  "It has to be correct. You know this." He was whispering, afraid perhaps of Servius, perhaps of the goddess, perhaps simply wanting to maintain decorum in front of so many observers. He was right, of course.

  "Miss out the hymn, anyway," she said. "You don't need it. It's not required."

  She could tell that this departure from the rite had shocked a few of the bystanders, even more than when she had lit the fires; but they had so little time. Now the priest was addressing the goddess, enumerating her titles; lady of the moon, goddess of the hunt, mistress of the hounds, virgin, lady of the woods and the deer. Each title in order. Not a word wrong. Carefully. Too slowly, too slowly, but there was nothing she could do now. To di
stract him could ruin everything; if he got a word wrong he'd have to repeat the whole rite from the beginning.

  She held the cow's leading rope with Servius, one standing each side. Their hands touched; she flinched at the contact, looked at him. Good. He hadn't noticed. The cow looked trustfully up at her. Tanaquil covered her head.

  And now the prayer was finished, and the sacrificer had stepped forwards. Come on, come on, she muttered under her breath, but she knew the priest had to wait for the animal's consent; it must bow its head, and till it did so, the sacrifice could not proceed.

  The cow looked up at her again, twisting its head round.

  They waited.

  Oh damn this, she thought, and yanked the halter.

  "There, it's bowed," she said. "Do it. Do it now."

  "Do it," the priest said, and the mallet fell.

  Suddenly everything happened. The cow was on her knees, slumping like a slow landslide, stunned. The ox was panicking, bellowing, its hoofs clattering on the pavement, and there was the sound of shit splattering the marble and the stink of half-fermented grass.

  Tanaquil was holding the patera as the sacrificer drew his knife across the cow's throat, catching the blood that sheeted out in five, six great pulses before its flow slackened. And the Sabine, who'd come just in time to see his cow felled, was kicking up a fuss.

  "You stole her! You stole my cow!"

  "Nonsense," Servius was saying. "You brought her to the temple, and she's been sacrificed. All completely in order."

  "You stole her. I should have sacrificed her. That was in the dream. I had to do it myself. And now she's dead, and you stole her, you thieving..."

  It took a long while and a good deal of money to pacify him, and in the meantime he'd delivered his opinion of Servius and the Chicken Incident, which as everyone knew, he said, was blatant expropriation of private property (though he didn't put it in exactly those words), but what could you expect from a thieving low class stable boy even if you did make him a king, and it was going to get worse, if he knew anything. The way he saw it, it would be chickens now, and then before the next Ides they'd be coming for the pigs and the sheep and the cows too. As for Tanaquil, she was worse, and it was no surprise a woman like her would worship a goddess like Diana, who hunted men, who turned them to animals and hunted them down.

  It was a mishmash of truth and fiction and sticks grabbed at the wrong end, but Tanaquil worried ever after about The Chicken Incident. As for Servius, for weeks after he dreamt that he had horns, and was being pursued through the forest – though by what exactly, he never knew – and he woke, gasping for breath, tired as if he'd been running all night.

  Superbus

  Though fingers of ice still streaked the paths outside, Aglaia's rooms were warm; braziers burned in the corners, so that the air smelt a little of charcoal and of smoke, and the floor and walls were covered with bright hangings and rugs that kept the cold out. Tarquin was leaning against the back of his couch, twisting Aglaia's hair in his fingers; his own long hair was loose for once from its braids, still crinkled and kinked.

  The winter had passed, and the new year had already started, but though March had started the trees budding, hard and sticky leaf spikes at the end of every twig, it hadn't yet touched the city with green, and a late hard frost had coated the ground with rime so that the grass crunched underfoot.

  This was Tarquin's coterie; Strephon, and Sethre of Velzna, and Thesanthei the northerner, and Mamarke who Tarquin didn't quite trust, yet, and the Greek Kalisthenes, older than the rest and fussily dressed, with the corners of his himation neatly pressed into ruffles, and his hair curled in the artful way that tried to look artless, and sometimes (but not today) succeeded. And Aglaia, of course; Aglaia, who alone knew how to manage Tarquin's temper and his fiery pride. Tarquin the Proud, Mamarke had called him, and the name had stuck; and proud he certainly was, even to the extent of priding himself on his own pride.

  Strephon was the golden boy; a born actor, who could imitate anyone, and pretty much any thing. (Tarquin had once, nastily, told him to act the part of the statue of Tinia in the Capitoline temple, it was as wooden as him; and it was only much later, after almost everyone had gone, that Aglaia and Sethre had noticed him still standing in the darkness, immobile and scowling.) He'd already told them the new version of the Chicken Incident, in which he played first the opportunistic slinger, then a pompous and greedy Servius, dreaming of sinking his teeth into fried chicken legs, and finally, an uproariously funny chicken which came back to life, perched on the end of the couch and started to crow.

  Then he started some tale about a young Etruscan noble who had crept into a woman's bedroom and fucked her while, all the time, her husband was asleep on the other side of the bed.

  "Rather like someone we know," Sethre said, and Tarquin smirked, and tugged Aglaia's hair.

  "But the gods punish the adulterer," Strephon said sententiously, with a hint of Kalisthenes' accent – that didn't go unnoticed, at least by its target. "So let us imagine, things having come to their usual conclusion, that the young Etruscan is basking in the warmth of the bed and the enjoyable reminiscence of his recent enjoyment. But Tinia in his heaven can see this immoral, albeit delectable, scene, and – though himself not noted for a lack of concupiscence..."

  "What's that in decent Latin?" Sethre asked.

  "Ability to keep his cock under control. Can I continue without you interrupting? Good. Tinia, observing this scene, fingered his thunderbolt... and you can stop smirking, Mamarke – fingered his thunderbolt lazily, but then bethought himself of a better method of retribution.

  "You know of course that Tinia sends dreams that deceive, and dreams that are true. To the young Etruscan he sent drowsiness, and an insidious dream of fair women, and inexplicably rapidly renewed sexual prowess."

  "Nothing inexplicable about it," Tarquin said.

  "To the husband," Strephon continued, "he sent a stern dream of alarm, that the enemy was at the gate, and he should wake, wake instantly, to defend his home with whatever weapon lay ready and to hand... Mamarke, I've told you about smirking. You have a filthy mind.

  "So the husband woke, and in that dreamy instant when his eyes were half open and his mind still full of mist and shadows, found the young man's back turned towards him, and his attractive backside under his hand was rounded and sleek, and without more ado, he took advantage of the opportunity thus proffered. Whether he thought, half-awake, that he was ploughing his wife's field or whether he realised he'd hit quite another furrow entirely.

  "And thus," Strephon concluded, triumphantly thrusting his hips forwards in time to his peroration, "Tinia punished the adulterer by having him roundly fucked up the arse."

  "And we all know how much he would have enjoyed it," said Sethre.

  "True, is it?" Thesanthei muttered.

  Tarquin shrugged.

  "Mind you," said Sethre, "He'll only start on the men once he's had all the women in Rome."

  "That should give us all a few weeks, then," Kalisthenes said, dourly.

  "Though one thing amazes me," Sethre continued. "Why Roman girls? They're prettier in Tarchna. And they have proper Etruscan morals."

  "Meaning a lack of them."

  "Meaning they're good at it. Not like the Roman lumps."

  "Oh come on," Tarquin said, and yawned, and stretched lazily, before he added: "The resistance is half the fun."

  "A pity there are no girls here," said Sethre. "You never get these men-only parties in a proper Etruscan household."

  Aglaia coughed meaningfully. Strephon looked at her, and almost without missing a beat picked up from Sethre. "You've always got as many women as men at an Etruscan party. And women with interesting opinions, too, and that adds something to the entertainment. Though perhaps not as much as women with – what was it you said, Sethre? - proper Etruscan morals. Poor Aglaia has to do it all on her own."

  "The opinions, or the morals?" Kalisthenes put in cattily, raising
a laugh from everyone except Aglaia.

  "My mother is a true Etruscan, then," Tarquin said. "She has some very interesting opinions, and she makes them pretty widely known. I'm not at all sure about her morals."

  "Sure enough of her morals twenty years ago that you still reckon you're a prince?"

  "Strephon, one day you're going to have to learn; there's funny, and there's stupid. You're just lucky that I think your stupidity is quite amusing; but I could always change my mind."

  Strephon raised one eyebrow languidly, then poked his tongue out of one side of his mouth and winked. "You couldn't live without me," he said, "and you know it."

  "I might try," Tarquin said, and threw a cushion at him.

  But Strephon was off already on a new impersonation, marching about delivering Servius' latest speech. "The good of Rome is the good of us all, and the good of us all is the good of the army. The army is the nation, the nation is the army, the army is the army is the nation is the army and I want your gold earrings for the good of the nation the army and Rome and my goodness, is that a chicken I see before me," and he went on until Sethre, who never minded making a fool of himself (because he did that often enough without wanting to, so he could certainly do it deliberately), launched himself at Strephon, grabbed him round the middle and pulled him down on the floor, where he continued to spout about the nation and the army and the good of us all till Sethre rammed the cushion Tarquin had thrown at him in his mouth and he was finally silenced, or at least muffled.

  "He's right, you know," Tarquin said, looking thoughtful.

  "About the army and the nation?" Kalisthenes asked.

  "No. About my not being able to do without him."

  "As for Servius?"

  "He's bought his throne with gifts to the plebs. Murderers, scavengers, pimps, muckspreaders, slaughtermen. He doesn't care who he takes on, anyone's good enough for his army. He has no class himself, and he doesn't recognise it in anyone else."

  Thesanthei looked for once as if he was going to say something, but he was still getting his thoughts together when Sethre butted in. "He trains his men well enough," Sethre said, "even if they're rough to start with."

  "Oh yes, training. Marching up and down for hours. One two three, one two three, everything counted and regular, it's like a bloody children's dance class. That's not daring, that's not courage, that's not war."

  "It works, though," Sethre said.

  "Yes, it works. You don't think I'd tolerate it otherwise?"

  "You might not have a choice," Kallisthenes muttered; he was lucky that Tarquin didn't hear him.

  "I wish we still did things the old way. One man against another. Like Hektor and Achle. I'd have him."

  "You damn well wouldn't."

  "I damn well would, Sethre."

  "No," said Kallisthenes, "you wouldn't. Certainly not on foot. And even on a horse, good as you are, he'd probably match you. Don't forget what a horseman he was."

  "Was."

  "Even so."

  "And still," said Tarquin, scowling, "I'd dare to call him out. And you wouldn't. And that's the difference."

  And that, they all knew, was true.

  Things quietened down after that, as if Tarquin's barely contained temper had frightened them, or as if they realised they'd skirted the fringes of treason and needed to step back from it. Tarquin was kneading the knuckles of one hand with the fingers of the other, the tangles of Aglaia's hair forgotten. Then Mamarke spoke for the first time, softly.

  "You know," he said, and paused, and sucked in his lower lip and bit it, and looked up again and continued, even more softly, "when you're around Servius you sulk, just like a boy."

  "I do not."

  "Happen that's true, though."

  "Oh, hark!" put in Strephon. "The northerner can talk, just like anyone else. Well, not just like anyone else, obviously."

  "Still true, though," Thesanthei said.

  "Well, what else does he let me do but sulk?"

  "He don't interfere with your horse troop. You run that."

  "Toy boys on toy horses. When did you last see us in action?"

  "At the Circus Maximus," Sethre said.

  "I mean real action, you dolt. Not a bloodybid kid's horse race."

  "Not enough real action in Rome for you?" Strephon asked archly. "Despite all those Roman girls?"

  "No need to be vulgar."

  "True, horse races aren't nothing much," Thesanthei said, making Kallisthenes wince at the double negative; "but he ain't got started yet, not really. Once he moves, you'll be in the thick of it all right."

  "Father gave Arruns a real command."

  "Yes, and look what happened to him."

  "Are you implying..." Strephon started, but Thesanthei talked through him.

  "You wait." He said. "You'll get your chance."

  Tarquin looked hard at Thesanthei. It was hard to tell sometimes whether his apparent shrewdness was real, or just northern peasant bluff; but unlike many northerners, he so rarely ventured an opinion that when he did, Tarquin was inclined to take him seriously.

  But he was still brooding when Kalisthenes changed the subject, going back to Strephon's assertion about Etruscan women's morals, and talking about how the Latins kept their women in subjection.

  "Look who's talking," Strephon retorted. "Yours wear veils. You don't even let them out of the house."

  Kalisthenes ignored him. "It's not as if they can have any doubts about their virtue. They're so ugly, those Roman girls – ugh; hands rough and greasy with spinning raw wool, hard skin under scratchy tunics. And they don't shave."

  "How would you know?"

  "Now, you come home to a Greek girl, she's all firm warm soft flesh under silk. That's a bit more like it."

  "Which is why, no doubt, you spend so much time with Roman ones."

  "Availability has its charms. As long as I don't have to take one as a wife. Even the king of Rome doesn't have to marry one."

  Kallisthenes had expected a laugh to greet his witticism. Instead, the room went silent, as if someone had mentioned the name of a man only yesterday dead. Even Strephon had nothing to say, and seemed to have withdrawn into himself. Mamarke was looking at Tarquin, and Tarquin was glaring at Kallisthenes, and Kallisthenes was looking all around him, now, trying to work out what it was he'd said wrong.

  "You know he's divorced my sister?"

  Kallisthenes looked away. Clearly he'd been the one person in Rome not to have heard the news.

  "What did she have to say about it?" Sethre asked.

  "Not much. But then she never does have much to say about anything."

  "She's being married off," Mamarke said.

  "A bit fast," Tarquin muttered.

  "Who to?" Strephon asked.

  "Some Brutus. Apparently."

  "A Roman? Well, that'll keep the Romans sweet. One of us marrying one of them."

  Tarquin laughed, but it grated, and ended in a sort of throat-clearing sound that was more embarrassment than humour. "As well one man as another."

  "That's a bit much, don't you think?"

  Tarquin turned, at the sound of Aglaia's voice, disconcertingly girlish.

  "It's a great risk for any woman," she said, "putting her life in the hands of another. I know you don't love her, but at least don't mock her, not about this."

  "I wasn't mocking her."

  "As well one man as another?"

  "That's what she said when she married Servius."

  "Poor girl. They're hard men, that family."

  No one could tell whether she meant the old husband or the new.