Sour Grapes

by Marilyn Todd

  Boy. The word made Rosenna sick. Holy Nox, Hadrian was twenty-five years old and at an age when most men of his class had been married for ten years and raised kids, having served two years in the army then either continued with a military career or taken up a post in the Administration. What had this Hadrian done? Become a leech on his father and society, that’s what. A hanger-on without backbone or conscience, yet Rex still called him a boy. Rosenna pulled her long red hair loose as a gesture of mourning and sprinkled ashes over her head. Dammit, the cover-up made Rex as big a bastard as his murderous son, but nits grow into lice, she supposed. And both were equally easily exterminated.

  After a while, the funeral pyre ceased to crackle and the flames no longer leapt higher than herself. The townspeople had dispersed. The choir, the acolyte, even the priest, had slipped away until it was just Rosenna and a pile of smouldering bones on a field surrounded by cypress and poplars.

  Rosenna did not believe in clinging to the old ways. She understood why folk’d want to bury their dead in the City of Shades out in the country, but as far as she was concerned, times change and life moves with it. And how can they call themselves traditionalists, when the necropolises themselves had changed so drastically over the years? Once upon a time, tombs were tiny replica houses, to which the family brought food and other gifts that would nourish the deceased’s spirit in its new residence. Then, through the flight patterns of birds and the clouds in the skies, the gods divulged more about the afterlife and tombs were excavated deep in the rock that the dead might be closer to Aita the Unseen, who ruled over the Underworld. Such sepulchres were a complex arrangement of chambers and corridors, passageways, columns and courtyards, but even that changed when the City of Shades was laid out in a pattern of properly recreated streets and plazas, so that the dead might feel more at home.

  Except the dead were not at home, Rosenna thought bitterly, and better their ashes were buried in an urn close to the living, where flowers could be laid at regular intervals, than leave their souls to flit like bats in the void. Untended. Unloved. Ultimately forgotten…

  A kite mewed high above and, down the long straight road that led to the Burning Field, a set of hooves echoed. The horse snickered as the rider pulled up and dismounted. His head was veiled, as men are obliged when paying respects at a funeral, so his face was deep in shadow, and the loose way he draped his cloak betrayed little about his build. After standing in swirling wood smoke for several hours, many of which had been spent sobbing, Rosenna’s smarting eyes couldn’t tell whether the rider was young or old, thin or stocky, Roman or Etruscan, though for the life of her she couldn’t understand why a stranger should stand some distance from her brother’s funeral and just stare. No words of comfort were offered to the bereaved. No token thrown upon the flames. Just a stranger. Staring from across the other side of the field. Without acknowledgement, the rider picked up the reins of his horse, flung himself into the saddle and galloped off, his mount’s hooves kicking up clouds of dust on the road.

  It was only once he’d ridden off that Rosenna noticed the couple.

  Standing close together in the shade of an ancient cypress, their skin was an identical shade of olive, their hair an identical length, their noses identical in profile. The man wore a green tunic that mirrored the cypress, the girl’s was a deep brooding blue, both embroidered with patterns that Rosenna had seen only once before, and then on a Palestinian merchant. No words passed between the pair, yet they were communicating, Rosenna was sure of it. And as the sun slowly set and the last of the energy drained from Lichas’s pyre, she was reminded of vultures standing over a body, waiting for the victim to die.

  Shivering, she turned back to the fire, rubbing the goose pimples flat on her arms. When she looked back again, the couple were gone.

  Standing in middle of the Burning Field as dusk settled over the landscape while she waited for the priest to return and sanctify her brother’s remains before they were washed then locked away in their urn, Rosenna had never felt so alone.

  Twelve

  ‘Claudia! Darling!’ Eunice embraced her as though she was family. ‘So glad you joined me for dinner.’

  She swept her into the atrium of one of the exclusive villas that Claudia had noticed when standing on the top of Mount Mercury beside Darius earlier. But, though of fine quality, the stone inside was porphyry rather than marble, and the trimmings were fashioned from ivory rather than gold. As the widow of a rich merchant, this would represent quite a climb down for Eunice. Whereas for a masseur from the hot springs, it must be luxury beyond his wildest dreams…

  ‘I do so detest my own company, it’s unspeakably dull, and with Lars off at another of his dreary Etruscan dos and Larentia still mooning over that man of hers, I was in danger of collapsing from acute isolation.’

  ‘If anything, Eunice, you’re more likely to collapse with a cute eye doctor,’ Claudia laughed.

  ‘Darling, you know me so well.’

  Her throaty chuckle mingled with the lavender and pinks wafting their fragrance into the warm evening air, along with wallflowers, chamomile and aromatic crimson rock rose. Eunice was a sensual woman in every respect, Claudia reflected. Yet she was no more likely to be swayed by flattery or the slow touch of a man’s hand than the forthright, no-nonsense Larentia.

  ‘Now, tell me honestly. What do you think of the décor?’

  Well, there was one thing about this atrium, Claudia thought. She wasn’t likely to forget it in a hurry! Lars talked about Etruscan culture being assimilated by Rome, but in this house they met in a fist fight. On the outside, the villa was Roman from the tip of its roof tiles to the gleaming bronze knocker via the lion’s-head rainwater spouts. On the inside, although the architecture was still very much Roman, with its pillars and pools, the red-painted walls were covered in Etruscan-style frescoes in which joyous families danced and dined, priests blessed painted fields and augurs divined the will of the gods from the skies and the behaviour of beasts.

  ‘Honestly?’ she asked, examining the four shrines that dominated the atrium. East was garlanded with laurel, the herb of prophesy, South with white-petalled, yellow-bearded Etruscan irises, while a small flame burned on North’s shrine and verbascum was on West’s as defence against sorcery. She studied the frescoes of Lars’s gods and goddesses, in which some wore helmets and carried spears, others went naked and winged, while at least half had assumed animal features in one form or another. Vultures’ heads, horses’ ears, cloven hoofs, feathers… Right through the room, though, light mingled with dark, death with rebirth, air with water, healing with joy to create an effect that was sinister, exhilarating, uplifting and strange. ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ she whispered to Eunice, ‘but I like it.’

  ‘Not too pagan?’

  ‘I think it’s safe to say your husband isn’t letting go of his heritage, certainly. Who’s this?’ She pointed to a child rising out of a ploughed field with two snakes for legs. Beside him, priests seemed to be scribbling down the boy’s every word.

  ‘The son of Genius, who first decreed that all things on earth must be in accordance with the cosmos, and let it be known to mortals that their every action is controlled by the gods.’

  ‘I see. Genius tells us that we’re nothing more than mindless puppets and so, being mindless puppets, we accept it.’

  Eunice laughed. ‘Either you’ve just pinpointed the reason why we Romans prefer our own system of worship or I haven’t explained myself very clearly, but perhaps you start to see why the Etruscans place so much faith in the power of amulets, touchstones and rites.’

  ‘Is that what this is?’ Claudia nodded towards a giant phallus in the corner. ‘A touchstone?’

  ‘Please don’t get me started on what that stands for, or I’ll need a bucket of cold water thrown over me! The thing is, darling, fertility lies at the very heart of Lars’s religion, which is why you see so many paintings of trees dripping with fruit and fields bent with ripe waving corn, and why hal
f our own walls are covered with olive trees whose branches sweep the ground from the weight of the harvest and goblets overflowing with… Good gracious, where are my manners?’ Eunice passed across a glass filled with wine and the two women chinked rims. ‘To health, happiness and… Great heavens, darling! Are you all right?’

  ‘This wine…’ Claudia gasped for breath ‘…is very…strong.’

  The glint in Eunice’s eye danced, as she clapped her guest on the back. ‘Another local custom I’ve thoroughly enjoyed taking to. Not watering Mercury’s milk!’ She summoned a slave and called for water, then blinked when Claudia tipped it straight into her goblet. ‘And here’s me thinking it might cure your cough,’ she laughed.

  ‘Water’s perfect when taken in the right spirit, and this was the right spirit. The proof is that my cough has completely disappeared.’ Claudia paused. ‘Which is more than Darius’s has.’

  ‘Indeed, the poor man.’

  Eunice ushered her into a cosy dining chamber laid out with platters of roast venison and pork alongside steaming spiced mushrooms, prawns, peppered parsnips and succulent new season asparagus.

  ‘Our damp northern winter really got to his chest, and the cough simply won’t budge. Though I’ve finally convinced him that a trip to the hot springs is just what he needs. If they can’t cure the wretched thing there, nothing will. You’re coming, of course?’ Eunice broke a hot roll into small pieces with dreamlike abstraction. ‘The waterfall’s warmer than a hot bath, there are dozens of bubbly warm pools to wallow in, mud packs that’ll take ten years off you at least, and even the river runs hot.’

  The hot springs. Where Eunice met Lars, where Lichas met Hadrian, where Darius packed Larentia for a few days of pampering, and where Larentia hooked up with Candace.

  ‘I’ll be leaving claw marks in the rock as they drag me away.’

  ‘Splendid, and do bring your young man with you. Young Marcus looks like he could use a spot of relaxation.’

  ‘Orbilio is not my young man,’ Claudia said through gritted teeth.

  ‘No. Of course not. Whatever you say,’ Eunice replied cheerfully. ‘Only remember that dashing young aristocrats don’t stay single for long.’

  ‘I think you’ll find he’s divorced and none too keen to repeat the experience.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Eunice popped a morsel of venison into her mouth. ‘Men hate being alone, and you two—’

  ‘Are from different classes,’ she pointed out evenly. ‘He’s patrician, I’m—’

  ‘There you go again.’ The older woman shook her head. ‘You will keep going on about class, when anyone with half an eye can see that Marcus Cornelius isn’t the type to worry about nonsense like that. Which reminds me—I invited Terrence over to dinner tonight, but it seems he’s tied up with whatever it is that rich landowners get tied up with, meaning Thalia won’t be allowed out either, which is ridiculous. He’s far too over-protective with that girl, when what her nerves need is more social intercourse, not less. Did you know she even told me once that she’d killed her husband?’

  Claudia reached for a pastry containing a thin strip of chicken marinated in wine, then coated with a paste of walnuts, honey and mushrooms before being rolled in its melt-in-the-mouth blanket. ‘Maybe that’s why Terrence keeps her on such a tight leash.’

  ‘Stuff and nonsense.’ Eunice dismissed the notion of with a wave of her hand. ‘I agree, it was an absolutely ghastly marriage. Hubby was a banker, much older than her, and they were constantly at each other’s throats, with Thalia never able to remember what the quarrel was about, while he could never forget.’

  The concept of Thalia at anybody’s throat seemed decidedly at odds with the nervy, harassed creature Claudia had met, but if the girl had enough backbone to stick it out while Candace walked the winds above the Isles of the Blessed, there was obviously more to Terrence’s sister than met the eye. But then, couldn’t the same be said of everybody?

  ‘But Hubby is dead,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Yes, but it was his heart, darling. Gave out at the hot springs while I was there, and like I said, he was old. Perfectly straightforward business.’

  The hot springs again. Everything happens at those hot springs…

  ‘Yet Thalia sat through the opening of the Gateway,’ Claudia said, ‘and even asked to speak to her husband.’

  ‘I have to confess last night’s experience shook me.’ Eunice shuddered. ‘Watching Candace slice her arm open, watching the blood drain into a bowl, then seeing her skin smooth and unscarred afterwards. I’ll be honest, that’s the real reason I didn’t want to be alone this evening, but dear me, I’m a big girl, I’ll get over it. How is Candace, that’s what I want to know?’

  ‘Spent the day recovering in bed, apparently.’

  I target every ounce of energy on Larentia, who knows only too well how walking with the spirits drains me.

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ Eunice speared one of the parsnips. ‘Have you any idea what angered them?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The spirits. I mean, everything was going swimmingly—well, if you can call talking to the dead a good thing—then crash! The whole room exploded and, I don’t mind admitting, I’ve never been so frightened in my entire life.’

  Could this be an act she was putting on for Claudia’s benefit? Right now, everything pointed to Eunice being a victim of a money-grabbing gigolo, but this affair had more twists than the serpents in Medusa’s hair.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about that goats’ wool merchant who came courting me before I married Lars? What a horror! Never saw the wretched man sober, but I’m sure you know the type. Never went to bed with an ugly woman, but certainly woke up with a lot.’

  Claudia laughed. ‘Eunice, you are an incorrigible gossip.’

  ‘Baloney. Secrets are merely things to be passed on to one person at a time. Now tell me honestly, darling.’ Eunice sighed, as a plate of wine cakes and honeycombs was laid out for dessert. ‘Isn’t this a simply heavenly end to a simply heavenly day?’

  Claudia could not in all conscience disagree.

  *

  Vorda stared at the deep pool in the river and watched the reflection of the waxing moon in its stillness. According to her mother, the pool was created when Nethuns, the river god, fought with Fraon, the snake-headed, blue-feathered demon who wanted this stream for his own. During the course of the battle, which lasted two hundred years, a huge bowl was gouged out of the riverbed, and whilst the sky gods didn’t mind, the gods who lived in the earth couldn’t sleep for the noise. So they intervened in the battle and partitioned the territory themselves.

  The clear, flowing waters that burst through rocks high in the hills then slowed to feed the lush pasturelands would be the realm of the river god. Fraon the demon had to be content with the deep bowl that filled up with water once the skirmish was over.

  It was said that those who fell into Fraon’s domain were sucked straight down to the Abode of the Dead, instead of passing through the Hall of Purification, where their souls could be cleansed and the heaviness of their hearts lifted. And because the bodies of those who fell in were not seen again, the Guardians of the Graves would have no place to stand, so their souls would be denied immortal protection.

  Vorda’s mother felt very strongly about such matters. Vorda’s mother would have none of those wicked Roman ideas. There was only the One True Religion, and unless man obeyed the will of the gods, disease would visit the sinner, their limbs would become weakened, their spine twisted, they would go blind and lose the use of their tongue. Vorda’s mother knew this for a fact, because when she was a young girl, she’d witnessed the gods’ wrath descending on the poulterer’s wife, who lived next door.

  ‘Right as rain when she went to bed, but when she woke up the following morning, why, the whole of her left side had shrivelled up and died in the night.’

  According to Vorda’s mother, the poor woman dribbled and babbled from that moment on.

  ‘
Spoon fed like a bairn till the day she expired, and let that be a warning to you.’

  So as Vorda stood beside the pool, watching the reflection of the scudding clouds in its waters, she had no illusions when it came to divine retribution. When the augurs read the entrails and inspected the livers, she knew the sages to be right. Even though she was only thirteen summers old, she understood what it meant when magpies flew in a circle, why clouds in the north-west were bad omens, why she should swallow beans when a cow with a crooked horn stumbled in front of her.

  ‘Human deeds must be consonant with the will of the gods,’ the priests insisted. ‘If we stray from the Code, lightning will strike and flatten our cities, the seas will rise and cast a flood over the land, and the earth will be shaken by whirlwinds.’

  Vorda didn’t want to be responsible for the destruction of the universe.

  Whenever a half moon rose with a pale-blue halo, she’d place white stones round her bed for Zirna to shine down on and stop Vorda from riding the night mare. When an owl hooted thrice two times in succession, she’d pour a libation to Fana, to ensure the morning’s bread would still rise. Every week without fail she’d leave offerings of grain beneath the alder for the smiling Goddess of Plenty.

  But after … after … what happened earlier…

  ‘The Dance of the Brides is a holy ritual,’ her mother had told her, giving her cheek an affectionate pinch. ‘You’re privileged to be taking part, that you are, lass. You’ll be doing the family proud on the red-headed moon.’

  Proud? How could she possibly feel pride in what happened?

  Listening to the grate of the crickets and the rasping of toads, Vorda strained for a sign from the gods. She strained and she waited, but no omens appeared. The sky held no portents, the earth offered no comfort, and why would they? Vorda had sinned.

  No tears dribbled down her bloodless cheeks. She was too exhausted, too drained, for that.

  Her mother would insist that what happened was the will of the gods. The priests would agree this was the will of the gods. Even the gods, speaking through the entrails of sacrifices and the clouds in the sky, would confirm this had been their divine will. But in her heart, Vorda knew she had sinned. She knew because she felt dirty and cold, and no amount of scrubbing could make her feel clean. She had tried. Heaven knows she had tried, and her skin was rubbed raw from the scouring, but the sense of pollution would not go away. She felt dirty and sullied, and whether this was her own transgression or the will of the gods, she wanted no part of it.