Ovid (Marcus Corvinus Book 1)

by David Wishart

  'Come on, lady! That's not what I mean and you know it.'

  'Or possibly the right things to the wrong people? Or the wrong things to the right people? Or...'

  I grinned despite myself and carried on walking. 'Yeah, okay. Point taken. Maybe I should've put it different.'

  'You don't think he might actually believe that they are the right things and the right people?'

  She was definitely beginning to bug me, and I didn't want to quarrel. Not today of all days. 'Look,’ I said. ‘Can we drop this, please? It's the Floralia, it's too nice a day to discuss my father, and I shouldn't have mentioned the bastard in the first place. Okay?'

  'Very well.' We walked on in silence and turned the corner of the box hedge. 'Oh, look at the narcissi! Aren't they beautiful?'

  Ahead of us the grass was a mass of white and yellow. It was, I had to admit, pretty impressive, although the flowers were way past their best.

  'You were right. It was a good idea to come.' Perilla had left the path and was walking over the grass away from me towards the blanket of petals. For an instant the vivid green of the grass, the yellow-and-white flowers and the sky-blue of her cloak combined in a single picture which could have come straight from a mural painter's sample book: Flora, golden-haired goddess of spring and blossom, walking in the meadows of the clean fresh-minted world, her head half-turned over her shoulder to look behind her, one hand holding a flower to her cheek, the other reaching behind for whoever was following...

  'Come on, Corvinus!'

  The picture dissolved. I don't get these poetic fancies often, but then maybe I'm missing something. I caught her up and took the outstretched hand.

  How it happened, neither of us knew. Maybe Flora had something to do with it. Certainly she would've approved. We'd lost the Gauls, or they'd lost us, either through tact or monumental stupidity (No prizes for guessing which. These guys couldn't've mustered an ounce of tact among them if they'd sweated over it for a month). We'd left the path, of course, and plunged into what a certain breed of poets would call a sylvan grot, which has always sounded pretty disgusting to me. You know the sort of thing. Carefully-manicured wilderness, purling stream overhung with ferns, rude statue (politely rude) of the Rustic Pan. Nooks and crannies...

  I especially remember the nooks and crannies, or one of them at least. Whether it was a nook or a cranny the real miracle was that it was empty. What I don't remember is if I kissed her first or she kissed me. In any case the question soon became academic. Whoever started it kissing Perilla was like being hit on the head with a triumphal arch then smothered in rose petals. After about a century or two I came up for air. The conversation thereafter was about one percent monosyllabic and ninety-nine percent tactile:

  'Corvinus, I really don't think we should be...'

  'Let me just...'

  'There's a tree root in my back. Do you think you could...?'

  'That better?'

  'Mmmm.' (Long pause). 'Mmmm!' (Longer, more energetic pause on both sides). 'Mmmmm!'

  We were just getting into the swing of things when she sat up.

  'This is not,' she said, 'a good idea.'

  I pushed her down again.

  She sat up. 'I don't mind so much being seduced, but I'm certainly not going to ruin a perfectly good cloak in the process. Now stop it this minute.'

  Easier said than done. Some things you just can't stop. You have to let them run their course...

  She socked me in the jaw. With her fist. Hard.

  When the Sallust Gardens had reassembled themselves from the shower of scintillating flashes they'd suddenly become, I looked up and saw Perilla bending over me. She was, unbelievably, crying.

  'I'm sorry, Marcus,' she said. 'Are you all right?'

  A silly question, under the circumstances. Instead of answering I tried moving my lower jaw around. She hadn't broken it, luckily, and I couldn't see any teeth lying around. Mind you, my eyes still weren't functioning too well and I could've missed one or two.

  Perilla kissed me; a gentle, brushing kiss, her eyelashes wet against my face. Then she stood up.

  'We'd best get back.'

  'Separate litters?'

  She smiled, lowered her eyes and shook her head.

  19.

  We didn't have dinner. We made love instead. She cried out when I entered her, and I was so surprised that I drew back; but she pulled me closer and we finished it. It was only afterwards when our hearts slowed and we talked before the next time that I realised that it had been a cry of pain and that Perilla had been a virgin.

  'I wouldn't let him touch me,' she whispered, and her eyes were wet against the hollow of my shoulder. 'Not even on the first night. Not knowing what I knew, why he wanted me.' I kissed the tears, saying nothing, and my lips tasted salt. 'So you see, Marcus, in the end he got nothing at all, apart from hatred.'

  'Why didn't he divorce you?'

  'Pride, maybe. Maybe hope. Greed certainly. With mother dead or declared insane the estate would come to me, and he was my husband. He had certain rights.'

  Something tickled at the back of my mind. I reached for it but it was gone.

  'Can't you divorce him?'

  'I might. Now.' I felt her smile against my skin, her lips pluck against me. 'Do you want me to?'

  I swallowed. 'Yes.'

  'All right. Then I will. There was no reason before, and he's a friend of the emperor.'

  'Not of the emperor. He's Germanicus's friend, not Tiberius's.'

  'Germanicus is the emperor's son.'

  'Adopted, not natural. There's a difference.' The mental itch was back. There was something... I was close, so close! As if I were looking down at a ruined section of mosaic flooring and held all the missing pieces in my hands. It was only a matter of where each piece fitted...

  'Marcus?'

  'Hmmm?'

  'What are you thinking about?'

  'Nothing. Nothing important.'

  She moved under me. We were still locked together. I felt myself stiffen as she guided me back into the wet warmth between her thighs. We took it more slowly the second time around, as if each of us were already matching our rhythms to suit the other person. Her sharp little teeth nipped my shoulder once, and then her head was moving from side to side and she was making faint mewing noises like a blind kitten. This time she came first, in a sudden, shuddering spasm, straightening her whole upper body, gripping me hard with her arms twined round my back and the inside of her thighs clenched about my hips.

  We lay quiet when I'd finished. Then I rolled to one side and lifted her head into the hollow of my shoulder. Her hair had the scent of wildflower honey as I buried my face in it.

  'You learn pretty quickly for a beginner,' I said.

  'I'll improve with practice.'

  I kissed her. 'Good.'

  She smiled and snuggled closer. I lay still for a long time, staring at the inlaid panelling above the bed.

  'Will you do something for me?' she said at last.

  'Yes.'

  'No ifs or buts?'

  'No ifs or buts. Only if you want a repeat performance you'll have to wait.'

  This time she didn't smile.

  'Okay. So what is it? A first edition of Homer? Cleopatra's best necklace? One of the Wart's boils set in rock crystal? Just ask me and you've got it.'

  'Make your peace with your father.'

  Whatever I'd been expecting it wasn't that. I raised myself on one elbow and stared down at her. She was looking at me very seriously.

  'I don't mean like him,' she said. 'Let alone be like him. You couldn't do that even if you wanted to. But admit he's a person too, with as much right to his opinions as you have. You're different people but that doesn't mean you have to be enemies.'

  I remembered the conversation I'd had with my father a few days before. Different people...

  'It isn't as easy as that,' I said.

  'Why not? What's so very difficult?'

  'It's...what he did. To my mothe
r.'

  She waited: no questions, no comments. I was having difficulty breathing. I'd never told this to anyone and the words didn't come easily.

  'It happened three years ago. My mother was pregnant – a late pregnancy. No one expected it, no one even thought the child would come to term. My parents had been talking about a separation before that, before my mother knew; but the pregnancy didn't make a blind bit of difference. Dad wanted the divorce, and he got it.'

  'Why?'

  'It was a political marriage, of course. Not like yours, not for money. Our kind don't marry for money, it's not considered proper.' The word felt sour on my tongue. 'Family connections now, that's different. That's respectable. My mother was fourteen at the time and her daddy was Agrippa's nephew. Marrying her gave father an in with the new ruling families, or so he thought, with Agrippa being Augustus's right-hand man. But then it all went wrong. A year after the wedding Agrippa died, Augustus forced Tiberius to divorce the old man's daughter and Dad realised his own marriage was a blind alley. Then, twenty-seven years further down the line – twenty-seven years, Perilla! – when Tiberius became emperor he finally cut his losses, divorced her and took a new wife. One more "politically relevant". End of marriage, end of story.'

  By this time Perilla was sitting up. Her hair spilled across her breasts like liquid gold.

  'What happened to the child?' she said.

  'He was born dead a month later. The only brother I ever had. Am ever likely to have.'

  'And your mother?'

  'She survived, but the birth nearly killed her. She married again last year. A senator called Priscus. He's okay. His first wife died of a stroke.'

  'Is she happy?'

  'Yeah, I think so. I don't see her very often, but yes, I think she's happy.'

  'Then it was all for the best in the end, wasn't it? Despite the mess.'

  When I didn't answer she kissed me gently and laid her head on my chest.

  'Is there all that much difference between your parents and us, Marcus?' she asked quietly. 'I have a husband, too, remember. We don't get on either. How can divorce be wrong for your mother yet right for me? Or do you think adultery's more "proper"?'

  'You were a virgin. You don't have a husband, not really. Let alone children.'

  She raised her head.

  'Don't play with words! You know what I mean!'

  'I'm not playing with words. You don't just dislike Rufus, you hate his guts and always have done. You said so yourself.'

  'And does that make your role any more respectable?'

  The question had come back sharp as a bee-sting. We were heading for our first quarrel. I knew that, but there wasn't anything I could do about it because despite my anger I could see that she was right. For a moment I was tempted to get out of bed, get dressed and walk out of her life forever. Only for a moment. That was something I knew I could never do, whatever she said, however angry I was. I'm not that much of an egotist, and I'm not that kind of bastard either. Besides, Perilla was part of me. I could no more walk out on her than cut my own arm off.

  I took a deep breath and held it. 'I'm sorry. Yeah, okay, maybe there isn't all that much of a difference.'

  'You'll try to understand your father, then? To make it up with him? Please, Marcus!'

  I was silent for a long time. I thought of my father, of his pompous way of speaking, his political hypocrisy and the cold way he'd put my mother aside. Then I thought back to earlier years, when we'd been much closer. Little things. How he'd taught me to swim when I was six years old. Summer at our villa in the Alban Hills. His attempts even when we hardly spoke to each other any more to smooth out a career for me. Sure, maybe he'd done it partly for the sake of the family name, but the fact remained that he'd tried his best according to his lights. As Perilla said if my mother was happy enough with the situation then what did it matter? And wasn't I just as much of a hypocrite as my father? Not politically, but where Perilla was concerned?

  Maybe we weren't such different people after all. Or at least in ways that were really important.

  'Okay,' I said. 'Okay. I'll try. It won't be easy but I'll try.'

  She kissed my cheek and snuggled down against me; and when we made love again later I felt strangely peaceful.

  20.

  I knew from the start that it was useless trying to stop Perilla from coming with me to meet Davus, but I had to do my best anyway.

  'Look, do you know what the Velabrum's like?' I couldn't even sit down I was so uptight. I paced back and forwards across the marble floored atrium while she sat by the pool filing her nails with a slip of pumice.

  'Of course, Marcus,' she said calmly. 'Not very pleasant, I do realise that, but it can't be as bad as the Subura surely.'

  Jupiter! This from the woman who hadn't even been to the Gardens of bloody Sallust!

  'Don't you bet on it,’ I said. ‘The Velabrum's got its moments. I wouldn't fancy a female cat's chances of getting in and out of there intact, let alone a hot little stunner like you.'

  Yeah, sure, I was exaggerating. The Velabrum's Rome's docklands area, the centre of the wholesale trade occupying the low ground between the Palatine and the Tiber. Although it's nothing compared to the Subura, the part I'd have to go through to get where I was going was pretty rough, and you're just as likely to find a pearl in a privy as a well-born lady in that part of town. So I didn't want Perilla tagging along. I'd got enough things to worry about without playing the macho protector.

  Perilla was smiling.

  'I appreciate your concern, Corvinus,' she said, 'but I'm sure you can provide any security that's necessary.'

  Shit! Didn't the woman ever listen? I could feel the steam leaking out of my ears. 'I'd need a bloody company of Praetorians to do that!’ I said. ‘And even then we'd have fifty per cent casualties!'

  'Nonsense. You go walking in the Subura quite happily, or so you tell me. Why should a trip to the Velabrum be any more dangerous?'

  I counted to ten. Then to twenty. 'You haven't listened to a word I've been saying, have you, lady? Sure I go walking in the Subura. And I can walk pretty safely anywhere I like in the Velabrum, too. But I don't happen to be built like a souped-up Praxiteles Venus with mammaries that'd knock an eighty-year-old Chief Priest's eyes out at forty yards.'

  The slip of pumice didn't even pause. 'Even Chief Priests can't see through the sides of a closed litter. And as you are very well aware my breasts are no bigger than average. Smaller if anything.'

  'Okay, strike the Venus. But you can forget the closed litter idea as well. Take one of these things through the Velabrum and you might as well carry a big sign with “Come and Get your Rich Smartass Here” painted on the side. You'd draw every wide-boy for miles.'

  She frowned.

  'All right,' she said. 'No litter. But I can still go disguised.'

  I stopped pacing. I didn't believe this. It was straight out of a third rate Alexandrian bodice-ripper. 'What as, for God's sake? A Numidian all-in wrestler? A performing elephant?'

  'Don't be silly. Just wearing a thick cloak and hood should be quite sufficient.'

  Jupiter who guides and guards the fortunes of the Roman state, I prayed, strike me dead or give me patience!

  'Look,' I said. 'Just listen to me, okay? These guys may not be up to reading Plato in the original but they're not stupid. You go down to the River wrapped up like something out of a Greek melodrama and you won't get five yards before someone starts wondering what's beneath the wrappings. And he'll probably have a dozen pals with him to help open the parcel. You understand?'

  She laid the pumice stone aside and stood up.

  'Marcus, this is pointless,’ she said. ‘I'm coming with you and that's the end of it. Asking Harpale was my idea, not yours. And besides I gave her my word I'd personally see that no harm came to her friend.'

  I felt the way Pyrrhus must've done when he did a head count of his troops after the battle of Beneventum and decided if this was victory he'd be better o
ff at home. I made one last try.

  'Okay. So get her to tell Davus we've changed the venue. Make it somewhere respectable. Or get him to come here, or round to my place.'

  She sighed. 'Davus is a runaway slave, Marcus. He can't go anywhere near the Palatine or any other high-class district on his own. He'd stick out like a sore thumb. You know that.'

  'So let me meet him by myself. I gave Harpale my word too, remember.'

  'Now we're arguing in circles.' She came over and kissed me. 'Harpale was my find, Davus is her friend, and as such he's my responsibility. Besides, you're doing this for me and I want to be involved, not sit at home like a prim little matron. So I'm coming with you and that's that. All right?'

  'No one could accuse you of being a prim little matron. Believe me.'

  'Don't change the subject.'

  I knew when I was beaten.

  'Fair enough,' I said. 'If you want to come you can, only no closed litters and no mysterious strangers, right? So how are you going to play it?'

  If I'd hoped that putting the onus on her might make her change her mind I was onto a loser from the start. She had it all worked out already.

  'Easy,' she said. 'I'll go dressed as a boy.'

  I stared at her. 'Perilla, you're crazy!'

  'Why not? I think it's a marvellous idea.'

  'Have you looked at yourself recently? Since puberty, I mean?'

  'I don't see why it shouldn't be possible.' She lifted up her beautiful hair. 'If I tie this in a bun and wear a cap people will never notice.'

  'Come off it! You'd stick out a mile.' We were really into Alexandrian bodice-ripper territory now. 'And I mean that quite literally.'

  'There are such things as bras, Corvinus. An over-tight one will be rather uncomfortable, but that won't matter for a couple of hours. And I can wear a looseish tunic and a cloak.'

  'It'll never work.'

  'Yes it will.'

  'No it won't. If the local knife gangs weren't bad enough you'll have every pederast in the city trailing us.'

  'Nonsense.'

  'Believe it, lady!'

  She drew herself up for what I suspected might be a major no-holds-barred frontal assault. I backed off hastily.