INCEPTIO (Roma Nova)

by Alison Morton

  Conrad stood by the window, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. ‘Before you say anything, will you please let me explain?’

  ‘Silvia and I were guaranteed to meet,’ I interrupted. I couldn’t keep my hurt in. ‘How could you let me find out like that?’

  ‘It was finished months before I came to New York. It was a families’ arrangement. She needed children, heirs. Her husband was infertile from the cancer. He’d died a couple of years before and she couldn’t face another marriage.’ He shrugged. ‘Lots of families make arrangements like that. It’s normal for us. Despite Caius Tellus’s treachery, the imperatrix trusted the Tellus family.’ His voice dropped. ‘I thought it would be so foreign to you.’ He paused, his face drained. ‘I thought you would be repelled.’

  ‘How stupid was that?’ I glared at him. ‘Don’t you think somebody would have told me or casually mentioned it? How in Hades did you think you could keep it from me? Why did you even try?’

  ‘I don’t know what to say to convince you how desperately sorry I am.’ His voice cracked. ‘I was scared of losing you.’

  ‘You coward.’

  He flinched and looked away.

  ‘How can I be sure you’re not going to pull any further surprises on me?’ I said. ‘I can accept the fact that you had a child, even the weird way that happened, but how could you not tell me you had three? One child could be an aberration. An occupational hazard for people who screw around like you used to. Or do you still?’

  He took a step toward me, putting his hand out.

  ‘Don’t come any nearer – I can’t bear for you to touch me.’ I couldn’t even say his name to his face.

  ‘I am so sorry,’ he whispered.

  ‘You’d better go – I can’t take any more. I have other things to think about now. You can’t deliver on your promise never to let Renschman get near me again. I need to do something about it myself.’

  He flushed and his eyes glinted. His whole face tightened and he took a half-step toward me. ‘You know I’d do anything to protect you, but I can’t be everywhere. Jogging alone was the height of stupidity. Why didn’t you call me? I’d have come with you.’

  ‘And who are you to say I can’t go out without a nursemaid? Jeez, I jogged by myself regularly in the park in New York. I patrolled by myself when I worked there as a volunteer and never had a problem in four years; well, until Junior Hartenwyck.’

  We glowered at each other like a couple of circling cats, radiating hostility and fury. He broke first. He went over to the bureau and picked up a silver-framed photo. Helena had taken it of us jumping into the lake, laughing, hand in hand at Castra Lucilla, Nonna’s summer home in the country. He stared at it, replaced it carefully, looked at me and left.

  XXXVIII

  I didn’t take in much of my first Saturnalia, pleading the need to recover from my ordeal in the park. I didn’t want to chit-chat with people I scarcely knew. Luckily, I didn’t suffer any long-term physical effects, but breaking up with Conrad had left a hole in my mind as well as my heart. Worse was that I couldn’t stop being a victim. In a weird way, every time I thought about one of these, the other crept into my head.

  I started training, driving myself like a demon. It was true what they said – you did get a high from the adrenalin rush. I enrolled in a self-defence class and practised tai chi with a load of others in the park. I made myself go back there as soon as I recovered; it had been a tense experience. But surrounded each morning by friendly, supportive people intent on control and fitness was reassuring.

  I ran into Conrad when our family met his. His uncle, Quintus, and Nonna bantered together, a glass of white in their hands, neutral faces on, like the politicians they were. Conrad was polite, formal, but like a coiled-up spring. As families stood around the altar at Octavia Quirinia’s wedding in the first week of January and she bent to sign the contract, I caught him gazing at me from the other side. Only the flicker and heat of the open torches brought me back. I swallowed hard. I had a sore hurt in my chest that wouldn’t heal. I loved him still, but found it impossible to say anything after our fight. Once Octavia and her new husband had completed the formal exchange of fire and water, I wrenched myself away from his stare, turned and went to talk to somebody else. I couldn’t remember who.

  I tried to push this melancholic feeling away by concentrating on my businesses. I completed the expansion plans I started before Saturnalia to include an advertising agency, something I knew about. I scratched my head on choosing a fancy codeword name for the companies registration site and eventually came up with pulcheria. In Latin, pulcher means not only beautiful but also excellent, honourable, glorious. Nothing like being aspirational. But it was all like walking through deep, sticky gravel.

  Two weeks later, I was spending an afternoon expanding my less formal vocabulary with one of my original protégées: Dania, the bar owner. The white winter sunlight and the noise of boisterous tourists here for the extended Janus Agonalia new year celebrations invaded my head and I couldn’t focus.

  I remembered my moment of disappointment that the festival was more a way of attracting the tourist solidus than serious religious rite. Helena just laughed cynically at me. Foreigners were intrigued by our culture; the fascination for all things Roman hadn’t died since the old empire had fallen apart fifteen hundred years ago.

  Full of bad taste and good wine, Dania ignored the noisy end of the bar and insisted on telling me the latest gossip. As I lifted the glass to my lips, I burst out laughing at one of her dirty jokes. It flew out like a released bird. That was a jolt.

  I glanced toward Nic, Nonna’s chauffeur, but he was out of earshot, virtuously drinking his orange juice with a friend he’d run into here in the bar. Something about his friend was familiar but I couldn’t place him. I was about to ask Dania for a refill when I remembered. He was one of the house security detail.

  In a rush, a load of pieces fell into their slots. People were always around me, at the house, when I was driven around, when I was at my business meetings, even when I was shopping or going for a walk. I was never alone. I probably had somebody shadowing me when I went jogging. Which member of my tai chi group was watching over me? Why hadn’t I spotted that before?

  Back at the house, I whined at Junia.

  ‘What did you expect after the attack in the park?’

  ‘But I’m doing my self-defence classes and jogging. I would be more ready now.’

  She smiled to herself.

  ‘What?’

  She looked into her cup and then straight at me. ‘You’re only playing at it really. You haven’t developed the ruthlessness or mental attitude you need for such close-quarter fighting.’

  ‘And who are you to know this?’

  ‘I wasn’t always a household steward. I served with your grandmother in the PGSF until I was injured.’

  I heard her. I looked at her. I saw a middle-aged woman, brown hair streaked with a few grey ones. She was ordinary, everyday, a million miles from anybody’s idea of special forces. I played what she said in my mind again. I didn’t find it any easier to absorb a second time.

  I listened to her calm voice telling me how she’d been part of Aurelia Mitela’s assault group that retook the city when Caius Tellus’s rebellion had been put down twenty-three years ago. A serious back injury had incapacitated Junia and she’d had to leave the PGSF; she was only thirty-three. Aurelia knew her through their service together and trusted her. So, when Aurelia’s steward was killed during the rebellion, she brought Junia back to the badly damaged Domus Mitelarum and the two women reconstructed the household between them.

  I watched my seventy year-old grandmother at dinner that evening, trying to visualise her in combat fatigues leading an assault. She would have been forty-seven at the time.

  ‘You’re very quiet tonight, darling. Anything wrong?’

  ‘I…I was talking to Junia this afternoon.’

  ‘So she said. You’ve certainly got a passio
nate champion there. She tactfully pointed out to me that we’d all been at fault in cocooning and confining you.’ She put her hand out. I automatically met it with mine. ‘I’m sorry you’ve found it limiting. I only wanted to protect you.’ She squeezed my hand then let it drop.

  ‘I know you meant it for the best, Nonna, but I can’t live with a load of permanent babysitters trailing after me.’

  She played with her gold signet ring, looking a little uncertain. ‘When you lived in America, did you ever go on an activity holiday or outward bound?’ She didn’t sound very hopeful.

  ‘Sure. I had ten days in Montana one year. We camped out, did woodland skills, hiked, climbed. Tough, but wonderful. And, every weekend, I was outdoors in the park.’

  ‘You said you wanted to learn to protect yourself. I know you’ve made an effort to become fit and follow some basic self-defence classes. But, if you’re serious, you need to go up several levels.’

  She looked into the distance and said nothing for a few minutes.

  ‘Junia thinks you have the aptitude and the motivation for the hard training required. I suggest you try a fitness boot camp for a few months and see how you get on.’

  XXXIX

  Two weeks later, I stepped off the train and walked the three kilometres as set out in my joining instructions. The ground along my route sloped upward from the station and was divided into small fields, glistening with droplets ready to change into frost in a few hours. Early green shoots sprouted in some, but most were dull with winter vegetables, bare vines and fruit trees. It was a chilly February afternoon and I was glad of my hat and gloves.

  At the crest, I paused under a tree to drink now-lukewarm coffee from my flask. Below me lay a collection of red-tiled, mostly single-storey buildings, square to each other around a central courtyard. At the end of the track, a gate in the wall led to an open area in front of the two-storey main villa. Behind lay some barns and granaries, and further back what looked like square fishponds, an orchard, vegetable gardens and a small lake. I couldn’t identify a round area which disappeared partly under the trees. Maybe something for training horses?

  I reached the access door in the wooden gate, unlatched it and went in. A brown-haired woman in a navy sweats spotted me, identified herself as Tonia and told me to follow her into the main villa to check in.

  I had been unwilling to enter Mitela as my nomen when I registered online at the place Nonna suggested. If I fouled up, I would be embarrassed for her. I remembered Helena had presented me as ‘Cara’ to the others at the riverside bar. That would be fine for a first name. Startled when the voice prompted me again, I started tapping in ‘Br’ for Brown. Horrified at my mistake, I panicked and added ‘una’. How lame was that – Bruna the bear? Well, I was stuck with it now.

  Tonia took me upstairs to a large sleeping area, partitioned off into cubicles. Plain grey, they were pretty generous in size, but the stud walls only went up about two metres, leaving the top open.

  ‘Why don’t you take a shower and get changed?’ She pointed to an identical set of navy sweats on the bed. ‘I’ll come and get you just before six for the evening meal.’

  At supper, there was plenty of food, simply cooked, but only water to drink. People moved purposefully, talking quietly as they took food or piled up their dirty dishes afterward. So far, it was no worse than a well-behaved adult version of summer camp. I learned later that many of them were cops, military or worked in the security industry. Afterward, Tonia took me to find Felix who would supervise my time there. Tall and chunky, around late forties, even sitting he had that superior assurance that athletes project, but he gave me a friendly enough welcome.

  Unsurprisingly, I slept well, only waking when I heard movement around me.

  ‘Coming for the run?’ A dark head appeared in the doorway of my cubicle.

  In the corridor, I found half a dozen others of various ages. The dark-haired man nodded as I joined them, and we set off. I considered myself pretty fit, but I found it a challenging course. No nice regular track or paths, more like trail running. As I went for my shower afterward, I was relieved I hadn’t died out there.

  Felix collected me after breakfast and took me to a room like a regular office, but minimalist with bare wood and metal furnishings. He was just as minimalist: no greeting. He handed me two sheets of paper.

  ‘This is your schedule for this week – a fairly relaxed introduction.’

  I skimmed it. The lists and tables reminded me of high school. I looked up and saw him smiling at me, but with an air of tolerating a child’s simple mistake.

  ‘Look at it properly, and tell me what you see.’

  What type of lame question was that? It was two sheets of paper. ‘I can see six parts to it,’ I said, pushing my impatience down. ‘Three group physical training, three other stuff. Run first thing, indoor exercises midday, yoga, mind-body and visualisation training in the evening.’ I looked up at him. ‘These sections marked in yellow, in the mornings, called “Personal programme” – what happens there?’

  ‘You’ll find it taxing, but that’s where you learn to push yourself beyond the point you think possible.’

  I stayed for three months. I made the stupid mistake of trying to be smart and impress during the first-day fitness assessment. Felix set that as the starting-off point. As I sweated my way through the interval training, the infinite push-ups and squat thrusts, I was determined to show I didn’t care about his opinion. If only he didn’t make that irritating little half-smile at me. I pushed and strained until I ached in every muscle, tumbling into bed each night almost comatose with exhaustion.

  One day, I couldn’t get up; I was so tired. Tonia came and fetched me and made me attend each session but sit on the ground watching. I was so embarrassed and fed up with the catcalls from the others I never made that mistake again.

  Then I caught on: Felix had set me up to challenge myself. How stupid had I been not to see that? I discovered how competitive I could be during the obstacle courses and long treks. Once I’d got through the endurance barrier, I made sure I always came in the first group of trail runners. So, he gave me two others to look after. Sure, it slowed me up, but I couldn’t deny the pleasure of seeing them work their way up from the back to respectable middle place on most things. We even achieved third place in one group exercise. Shivering in the cold, covered in mud and with hair plastered to our heads, we raised our faces to the sleet stinging our skin and laughed, celebrating our success.

  I became fascinated by the whole process. I joined in the daily tai chi practice; my muscle coordination advanced beyond any expectation I had. Four weeks later, I was pretty pleased with myself, until Felix told me it was only preparation. Now I had to learn to give it back. At first, I was thrown on the floor over and over, but I learned to flow with an incoming attack, sticking to the force the opponent was projecting, finding the centre of that force. Then we started on the smart stuff, with palm pushes and acupressure points, graduating to using every part of my body to strike the opponent. Normally, it took years to train properly, but he ground as much into me as possible in the months I was there. And he was pitiless.

  In the evenings, he led the group on mind-body discipline: persuading and influencing skills to enhance physical competency, and self-induced deep rest techniques to promote the body’s natural recovery processes when injured. Physically drained after training all day, we struggled, especially at first. But he said that was when we needed it most.

  The last four weeks, he developed a course for me which at first I thought was a mistake, but I followed his instructions and reported to an outdoor supervisor whom I discovered was a gladiator trainer. With attitude. The first day, I stopped counting the bruises and scratches as I lay smarting in my cubicle that evening. I couldn’t drag together the energy to join the mind-body group. After some hard knocks, I got into the way of it and adapted my tai chi skills. My absolute favourite was the linked chain short sword fighting. My left wrist w
as bound by a leather cuff, attached to a chain approximately two metres long, at the end of which was a similar cuff around the wrist of my opponent. The discipline of the link was intense; physical strength was not enough. You had to be alert, light on your feet and fast thinking as you wielded your sword. Training with a sharp, double-edged, fifty-centimetre, carbon steel blade tended to concentrate the mind as well as honing reaction skills. It was the ultimate in mental agility and physical ferocity. I always had an adrenalin high from these fights, especially if I won. But, to my chagrin, I never managed to defeat the trainer.

  At the end of the third month, the day I left, Felix took me out to the garden where we sat in a sheltered spot by a stone wall. His fingers traced patterns in the dirt while he looked at the distant mountains. He drew his gaze back to the nearer hills and eventually to me.

  ‘I’m sorry to see you go, Cara Bruna. You’ve transformed yourself from an amateur with promise into a disciplined, competent fighter. More than that, you’ve found inner confidence. Don’t waste it.’

  ‘C’mon, Felix, I enjoy the challenge, the coordination, but I’m not the military type.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course. I really—’ I stopped myself when I saw his sceptical look. I took a deep breath. My head whirred and thoughts fell into my mind like a meteor shower. Suddenly, I got it. It all clipped together like a kid’s plastic toy, never able to be taken apart again. I shivered, but in a good way. Somehow, I had become the person I was meant to be. When I came to this camp, all I’d wanted was to learn how to protect myself against being a victim. I figured I could defeat Renschman now. And more.

  But the idea of being a female soldier…

  Nah.

  Part III: Metamorphosis

  XL

  I slid silently into the atrium and waited unmoving by the back wall. I watched my grandmother bending over the planting in the centre, picking at the leaves, tutting at the same time. It made me smile; I had missed her. Sensing the presence of another, she looked up, caution in her eyes as she scanned the room.