***
"Disgusting," Faustus was saying, and it was clear what he was referring to. Thresu glanced over, his face tight and suspicious; Teitu, his partner, was too well schooled to show that he had heard.
Tanaquil stepped forward, as if to cover Faustus' faux pas with an oleaginous paste of bonhomie and politesse; she murmured a welcome to the Etruscan pair, passed them to greet the other couple, Sethre and his wife Pure Ancarui, and bring them forward to meet Tarquinius.
Sethre was looking at the place with a dealer's eye; working out the value of the furnishings, Tarquinius thought. It was a long time since he'd been in Tarchna, and he didn't know what the current taste was; but gold was gold, whatever the style. Sethre should be impressed. Though was Sethre looking for a clue to the wealth and power of Rome, in which case he would be impressed; or was he, rather, looking to see which way Rome leant culturally - towards Etruria or Greece, towards aristocracy or the rule of the rough bandits who'd had Rome before?
If they'd been in Etruria, there would have been more ceremony to go through; but Rome still took a certain touchy pride in its brusqueness. Once Tarquinius had grasped the ambassadors' arms in greeting, they were done. That was it, though the Etruscans seemed to expect more, from the way they were standing, expectant, ready, not yet relaxed. He almost felt sorry for them, till Tanaquil had explained the custom to them; and still, Pure looked disapproving, and Thresu puzzled.
Tanaquil was, as always, the competent hostess. She'd quickly managed to put herself between Teitu and Thresu, flirting with both of them; Tarquinius thought sourly that if she was going to sleep with either of them it wouldn't be Teitu, with his sharp black beard and lively face, but Thresu, a little older and running to fat already. Like me, he thought, and didn't know whether to be complimented or simply annoyed at her perversity. And anyway, she wouldn't sleep with either of them; not with the Romans watching her every move. She might no longer love him the way she had, but she cared enough for their joint project not to sink it stupidly.
He left her to flirt, and made his way past her to rejoin Sethre and Pure; another odd couple, Sethre lean, with a great scar down his left shoulder and arm that seemed to have healed jagged, and his stocky, heavy-browed wife. Yet somehow you could see at once they were both pure-blooded Etruscans; there was a rangy ease to them, a certain tip of the head, a flaring of the nostrils, and the same cruel, amused smile he'd seen so much on Tanaquil's face recently.
"A wonderful palace," Sethre was saying. "You must be proud of what you've achieved here..."
It almost seemed as if he'd said the word 'though', it was so clearly implied in the way his voice modulated, fell, fell silent.
"I couldn't have done it without the foundations laid by Ancus Marcius." He knew Faustus was listening; give the Romans some cheap credit, let them feel that their culture wasn't threatened, keep them quiet. Turan's tits, he needed a piss already, and even if Rome didn't go overboard on ceremony, he'd have to stagger through another half an hour of this...
"Your wife", Pure was saying, "is in mourning?"
"'No." He couldn't help the surprise in his voice.
"I merely wondered... she is so plainly dressed..." Pure's voice fell; she realised she was on the verge of becoming impolite.
"Oh, it's a Roman thing," Tanaquil said evenly, turning to address the other woman. "Women are only supposed to wear what they can weave themselves. Homespun. Rough and ready."
"But I'd heard..." Pure stifled the rest of the sentence.
"I was the best weaver in Tarchna in my day? Of course." She lowered her voice a little. "But Roman women are altogether simpler in their tastes. It wouldn't do to outrank them too obviously."
She gestured at Pure's tebenna, a chequerboard of bright colour woven so finely it floated up whenever the woman moved. Pure grinned. Neither woman needed to say anything.
Tarquinius was amazed that Tanaquil could speak so coolly about the matter. He'd told her to wear the thick undyed wool, so that she would not outshine the Roman women - those that their husbands allowed to come; she'd thrown her chair at him, turned over the table, and screamed, so that her dogs ran, and one upset the tripod, splashing wine over the floor. Yet now... well, that was Tanaquil; neither fire nor ice, but when she saw the need for it.
Dinner was less formal than the reception; only those were invited who were part of Tarquinius' inner circle, like Manius, and those he really couldn't avoid inviting, like Faustus, together with the family - young Arruns taking a couch for the first time - and the Etruscan guests. Thresu and Teitu had clearly been schooled not to make their relationship too obvious, so they didn't share a couch, as they would have done in Tarchna; but though they could keep their hands off each other, they couldn't keep their eyes off each other. Tarquinius wondered how long they'd been together; their relationship had the shine of newness, before you find out your partner has sour breath in the morning, while you still find their little habits charming, before they start to irritate with stale repetition. That was one of the things his spies hadn't bothered to tell him.
The conversation was determinedly trivial. Pure started them off talking about chariot racing, for some reason; she'd run a couple of horses herself, a while back. Tanaquil hung back, remembering the presence of Romans in the room, but Arruns was keen to know more; Manius turned out to know the latest odds on the big races out on the plain past the Palatine. Only Faustus wasn't drawn into the talk; he sat silent, solid, and Tarquinius couldn't help thinking, disapproving.
"I used to drive," Thresu said, unexpectedly. "Not any more." He patted his stomach, slightly puffy though not fat. "Too old, too fat."
"You are not!" Tanaquil said, the polite sociable lie that was needed.
Thresu smiled, the polite social smile that acknowledged her politeness, though he must have wished the negation had been more genuine. "I thought it was better to retire while I was still winning."
That was something else his spies hadn't told him, Tarquinius reflected; they'd said Thresu used to compete, but not that he'd ever won. Unless he was lying? But a look at Pure's face disabused him of that notion; she'd surely have known if that was a bluff, and it would have shown. And Teitu was looking at his partner with infatuated pride. No bluff, then.
"Is my brother still competing?" Tanaquil asked.
"I would have thought you'd know," Pure said. "Doesn't he write to you?"
Tanaquil's laugh was silver, light. "Oh, we have better things to talk about."
"He won the last spring games with his skewbalds."
"Holy thunder! Is he still running those ugly things?"
"They may be ugly, but they're fast," said Thresu.
"Like you," said Teitu.
"How like me? The ugly bit, or the fast?" Thresu grinned. That must be a regular joke between the two of them, Tarquinius thought, as he saw Thresu aiming a punch at Teity that his lover caught before it landed.
"Both," said Pure. "Silly old fart." She muttered those last words to her husband, but they were clear enough to Tarquinius; and perhaps to Tanaquil, as she steered the conversation quickly away.
Subjects flickered in and out of focus; music, poetry, the new fashions in jewellery (there was some kind of new filigree work that a goldsmith in Tarchna had invented, or in Cisra, they laid claim to it there too, but then, what Tarchna did today, Cisra always copied tomorrow), the work of the Velx sculptors, poetry again (that Greek girl Egerius had been mad about), the best way to cook hare, the sturgeon Manius' friend Numa had served at the Lupercalia. It was all luxury, the multiple uses of wealth, what you did when you got bored with your riches and your leisure, and he could see Faustus' intense disaste. But what else could they talk about? Tarquinius thought - carding wool? Five different kinds of dry biscuit? Military drills?
"So, Tarquinius, what about the treaty with Tarchna? Are we still on? You still want us to gang up on Nomentum?"
Oh you bugger, he thought. Thresu had to go and mention the one
subject they absolutely needed to avoid tonight. And to go and blurt out the name of his next target like that, in front of the Romans, when he'd kept it secret for weeks. He'd even suggested a march on Sabine Reate, with the idea that he could take his troops out along that road, and turn suddenly to attack Nomentum, catching the city by surprise, taking it without a long drawn out siege, if he was lucky... Faustus was staring at him; he'd not heard the last of it from Faustus, he was sure, and now Faustus knew, it would be all round Rome in hours, and no chance of winning the advantage of surprise.
But he smiled, and laughed, and meanwhile his brain (and, he was sure, Tanaquil's) was working double speed to come up with some indirection.
"Oh, the treaty. Yes, yes of course. You know, with our trade through Ostia and yours through Gravisca, we can tighten the screws on Cisra, too. That's to your advantage."
"Nomentum is a side issue," Tanaquil said.
Sethre was looking at Pure, who nodded. "Yes, we can see that. But of course we have to be careful; the Federation won't stand for overt aggression."
"Oh, any overt aggression will be on our side," Tarquinius said.
Luckily that was the moment that the aulos player began to tune up for the dancing, and the noise stopped any further talk on that subject - or any other; and then the dancers, five young men (and no girls, out of respect for the Romans' sensitivities), stepped out, and the dance began. But the damage had been done, Tarquinius thought.
If this had been Tarchna, they might have ended the evening there, with the dancers joining the guests on their couches; Pure was flirting with one of the youths, but Sethre coughed and slid his eyes in the direction of the flint faced Faustus, and Pure got the point, and shook her head at the dancer, who backtracked, his face studiedly impassive with the same little upturned smile Tanaquil so often used to greet bad news. (Was that why Tanaquil always beat him at the game of stones? And he a Greek, and they'd invented the bloody game...)
Tarquinius rose; and instantly, the dancers drew back, and the conversation died. Time to call it a night, before the Etruscans got out of hand, or the Romans got too shocked. Time to let Faustus go back to whatever scared and colourless woman he kept, time to let Pure make her own discreet arrangements with that dancer, time to let Tanaquil put him to bed. Time to take a piss, too, he thought, and realised he'd drunk too much; his steps were less steady than they might have been, and he hoped the ambassadors would put it down to age, not drunkenness. On his way out, he leaned on Manius' shoulder. Dear Manius, dear untrustworthy Manius...
"Come to me tomorrow. Not too early." He saw Manius' short nod.
Teitu and Thresu preceded him out; that would have been a breach of etiquette in Etruria, he thought, but not here, and he wasn't quite sure whether to interpret it as a deliberate insult just nicely calibrated enough that he couldn't object to it, or simply the fact that he'd stopped for a moment, leaning on Manius, and they'd kept going. Then again, their expressions left him in little doubt that they were both thinking of a warm couch, and perhaps more wine, and the absence of a moral censor like Faustus, who'd sat staring at them like the figure of death on a monument. Thresu was leaning on Teitu, his steps a little unsteady; well, Tarquinius wasn't the only one who'd had too much, then.
He heard Pure suddenly squeal with laughter. He looked over; the dancer she'd been ogling was standing behind her, had grabbed her hand and was trying to push it inside his clothes. Tarquinius had ended the party just in time; he looked out of the corner of his eye at Faustus and Manius, but the two Romans hadn't noticed; they were busy in a conversation of their own, watching Thresu stagger over the threshold.
"At least they'll die out," Faustus said. "One thing to be said for buggery, no chance of getting a bastard."
"They say Thresu has a wife in Tarchna," Manius said lazily. Faustus spat.