The Raven's Wing

by Frances Watts

  ‘I understood what you meant,’ I assured her, ‘and I think we’ll get along very well too.’ Whether I would get along well with her mother was another question.

  ‘I’ll see to your tea.’

  She seemed keen to make amends so I said, ‘That would be lovely.’ If I hadn’t thought I needed it before, I could definitely do with some calming now.

  Sabine gestured to the slave girl. ‘You — come to my room. I need you to take some leaves to the kitchen for me, to make tea.’

  The girl looked at her uncomprehendingly.

  ‘To the kitchen. Tea.’ Sabine smiled at me apologetically. ‘She’s only new. But she’s learning.’ She beckoned again to the girl, who, biting her lip as she glanced back at my half-emptied trunk, reluctantly got up and followed.

  But as it turned out I didn’t need a special tea to soothe me; worn out from long days of clattering wheels and creaking wood, I was already yawning as I took off my dress and dropped it on the floor. I pulled the shutter closed so that the room was dim, then sank onto the bed. The mattress must have been filled with feathers, and the cover I pulled over myself was of a wool so light it could have been spun by spiders. I hugged my aunt’s cushion to my chest, breathing in roses, and was quickly asleep.

  I woke to see a cup of tea on the small table near the bed along with a posy of flowers. When I reached out a hand to touch the cup it was cold.

  There was a flutter of gauze at the doorway and the slave girl entered, skinny as a cypress, her hair the colour of straw. She was carrying a bowl of steaming water scented with geranium.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  She didn’t reply, just set the bowl down and handed me a cloth so I could finally cleanse the bear from my skin. When I had dried myself, she indicated that I should sit on the stool by the dressing table and held up a silver comb. With a pang I recognised the birthday gift Aunt Quinta and Uncle Marius had given me that awful night, along with a matching silver hand mirror. My brass jewellery box was on the table too.

  The girl must have familiarised herself with the contents of my trunk already, for she took my finest linen tunic from a recess in the wall fitted with shelves.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked, but she shook her head. Perhaps she was mute?

  ‘Claudia,’ I said, putting a hand to my chest. Then I pointed at her.

  ‘Aballa,’ she responded softly, gesturing to herself, then ducked her head.

  ‘Aballa,’ I repeated. It wasn’t a name I had heard before; it didn’t sound Roman or Greek. Egyptian, maybe? No, she was too fair for that.

  When I was dressed, and Aballa had redone my hair, I found my way back to the atrium, where Prisca and her daughters were gathered. Prisca was scolding Sabine for the dirt under her fingernails and the girl’s pale head was bent.

  As I reached them, my stepmother left off scolding her daughter and instead began to interrogate me. ‘How were you educated, Claudia? Did your aunt and uncle have a tutor?’

  Lowering myself onto a stool at the foot of Aurelia’s couch, I said, ‘I shared a tutor with some friends of the family.’

  ‘I see. And you are fluent in both languages, Latin and Greek?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What have you read?’

  I listed several writers whose work I liked, including the epics of Homer and the dramas of Sophocles.

  ‘Good. What about philosophy? You have read Plato and Aristotle?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, deciding not to mention that I found philosophy insufferably tedious.

  ‘Arithmetic?’

  I nodded, because I had studied arithmetic (though I wasn’t very good at it).

  ‘You play an instrument?’

  ‘The cithara.’

  I had learned the cithara for years and my tutor had told Aunt Quinta that I showed real promise. So whenever my aunt had asked me to do something boring, like anything to do with running a household, I just told her that I needed to practise the cithara and she let me be. I had a feeling Prisca wouldn’t be so lenient.

  ‘I presume your aunt has been instructing you in the running of a household?’ Prisca went on.

  Uh-oh …

  Fortunately, Aurelia interrupted.

  ‘Do you race chariots, Claudia?’ she asked. ‘Have you fought a lion in the arena?’

  ‘Aurelia!’ her mother said, but to my relief the questions ceased.

  There was a sound of voices from the entryway and then Theodotus and another man walked towards us. The second man was taller than the steward, with a fringe of dark grey hair around a bald head. His forehead was furrowed, and deep grooves were etched from his nose to the corners of his lips. It wasn’t until I noticed that his toga had the broad purple stripe of the senator that I realised this severe-looking stranger must be my father.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said, taking in our small group. His eyes came to rest on me with a slightly puzzled expression.

  Prisca said, ‘Hello, Gaius. This is Claudia, your daughter, arrived this afternoon from Arretium to live with us.’

  It was like she was reminding him of who I was and what I was doing there, I thought, irritated. But maybe he needed reminding, because he frowned a moment, as if trying to recall, then said, ‘Ah yes, that’s why Theodotus was gone. More than a week he was away.’ He still hadn’t acknowledged me.

  ‘It’s a long way to Arretium,’ Prisca said mildly. She gave me a gentle push and I rose and moved to stand in front of him.

  ‘Hello, Father,’ I said, my voice faint.

  He looked me up and down for several long seconds, unsmiling. His gaze was assessing, seeming to take in the quality of my gown (which I had to admit looked poor alongside the dresses of Prisca and her daughters) and perhaps even some of the expected lack of refinement in my manners, though I had only uttered two words. At last he said, ‘You resemble your mother.’ His tone was completely devoid of sentiment.

  As disappointment washed over me, I admitted to myself that I had been hoping to discover some romantic reason why he had never invited me to Rome before, nor ever visited me in Arretium. I’d imagined that he had loved my mother so much that my resemblance to her was too painful for him to bear. But there was no catch in his voice as he referred to her, no glimmer of tears as he beheld his long-lost daughter. He seemed completely indifferent.

  And if I had been hoping he would reveal why he had summoned me to Rome so unexpectedly, I was disappointed again, for without another word to me he turned to Prisca and started to relate in great detail what had gone on in the Senate that day, some debate of new laws and what Publius Marcellinus had said.

  ‘Publius Cornelius Lentulus Marcellinus has been elected consul this year,’ Aurelia whispered to me. She seemed to be following the discussion with interest — perhaps she had heard a lot of such talk when she had been married to a senator. Or perhaps she was used to appearing interested when she wasn’t; was that part of the refinement I would have to learn? Sabine was staring into the distance with a slightly glazed expression on her face. I saw Prisca glance at her, lips tight.

  A slave announced dinner, and I followed the others into a sumptuous dining room. But I was too focused on my misery to take in the decorations; my father had still not spoken to me or looked at me since his initial greeting — which had not been much of a welcome. I could have been a piece of unremarkable furniture, for all the interest he had shown in me. So why had he insisted I leave my home and come here? Why not just leave me in peace?

  I thought that perhaps over the meal he would ask me about Arretium, or at least enquire after Marius and Quinta, but from the moment the slaves carried out the first dish (I almost groaned aloud when I saw it was asparagus) the conversation was all about the price of grain and the difficulties of importing it from Egypt. Much of what was said went over my head, but Prisca was very knowledgeable and my father listened intently, eyes narrowed, when she spoke. I tried to imagine Quinta lecturing my uncle on the best place to source clay for his w
orkshops, but couldn’t.

  ‘You know,’ Father said, helping himself to fish from a platter borne by a slave, ‘I’ve heard that Julia and Agrippa might be expecting again.’

  Julia … Agrippa — he was talking about Caesar Augustus’s daughter and her husband the great general, I realised.

  ‘By Jupiter, I hope Agrippa is blessed with another son,’ he continued. ‘Then, if he were to lose one, he would not be left without an heir. He had only daughters by his first two marriages, you know.’ He shook his head as if to say, Only daughters. What a catastrophe!

  ‘It’s the question of Caesar’s heirs that I worry about,’ said Prisca. ‘Augustus has only Julia, no son of his own to carry on the family line. Really, Augustus would do well to adopt a likely young man.’

  My father shrugged as if the subject didn’t interest him — which was odd, considering that he’d been the one to raise the issue of heirs in the first place. ‘This is a nice piece of fish we’re eating,’ he said. ‘Where’s it from?’

  ‘It’s mullet,’ said Prisca, ‘brought down from Cosa.’ She gave him a sharp look, as if to challenge him on the change of subject, but he began to discourse on the fishery of Cosa as if nothing could be more fascinating.

  The meal dragged on, and my father didn’t spare me so much as a glance the whole evening. By the time I went to bed, I was feeling more puzzled and distressed than ever. It made no sense. Why would he summon me back to Rome so urgently, and yet show hardly any interest in me? What was I doing here? I hugged my aunt’s cushion to my chest and tried not to bawl like a baby.

  It took me some time to dress the next morning, as I hesitated over what to wear. I had worn my best gown the evening before, and it was barely good enough. I didn’t want to wear one less good now, but if I wore my best dress today what would I wear in the evening?

  While Anthusa might have had some ideas or advice, Aballa merely stood passively by as I pulled one dress after another from the shelf above the chest, and rejected them in turn. I was starting to despair when a voice from the door said, ‘The domina has asked me to give you this.’

  I turned to see a slave in the doorway — sent by Prisca, I surmised, since she had spoken of her mistress as the lady of the house. She held a folded gown in her arms. ‘It is one of the domina’s own,’ she said, proffering it to Aballa.

  When she had left, Aballa helped me to pull it over my head. The cloth was so fine it skimmed my body like a breeze. It was too long, but once I’d bloused it over the top of the belt you could hardly tell. I wasn’t sure whether to feel grateful or offended that Prisca had guessed my own wardrobe wasn’t good enough for this house.

  I passed through the tablinum on my way to the atrium and saw my father there, sitting on an ornate folding stool before a group of men. Behind him stood a slave who I guessed was Father’s secretary.

  Aurelia was already in the atrium, reclining on the same couch I had first seen her on the afternoon before. This morning she was in a gown of emerald green that matched her eyes.

  ‘I like your dress,’ she commented, seemingly unaware that it was her mother’s. She extended her hand towards a plate of dates and I saw that her upper arm was encircled by a gold armlet in the shape of a snake, the serpent gripping the tip of its own tail in its mouth. ‘Does the cloth come from Arretium?’

  Before I could confess that the gown wasn’t actually mine, I heard Prisca’s voice ordering, ‘Show me!’ She was striding across the atrium from a door at the far end, stately in a red gown, her hair arranged in the same plain but formidable style as the day before.

  I held out my arms so she could see the dress, then realised she was looking over my shoulder. Turning, I saw that Sabine had entered the atrium behind me.

  ‘Show me,’ Prisca repeated as she reached us, and Sabine held out her fingernails for inspection. Her mother nodded once. ‘Better.’

  She glanced at my gown — her gown — but didn’t say anything. Attending to the deficiencies of my wardrobe was clearly a matter of importance, though, for she said straight away, ‘Today we must choose cloth for some new dresses for you, Claudia. I’ll send for Mereruka.’

  ‘Mother, no!’ Abandoning her languorous pose, Aurelia sat up. ‘Let’s go shopping for the cloth ourselves.’

  ‘Why would you need to look at cloth?’ Prisca said. ‘Your wardrobe is quite adequate.’ I remembered what Calpurnia had said about her being old-fashioned. She probably considered fashion frivolous. What a shame … I was dying to ask Aurelia where she had got her snake bangle.

  ‘Oh, Mother, adequate is a poor-sounding word, you must admit. Let me have a few more gowns and we can say my wardrobe is abundant.’

  Prisca shook her head but her expression seemed less stern. It seemed her older daughter amused her, and for a minute I liked her better.

  I was finding my stepmother hard to read. She always seemed to be scolding. Yet she had lent me a dress from her own wardrobe without making a fuss about it (for my sake, or so that I was not an embarrassment when we went out in public?) and her dry manner with Aurelia suggested that she did in fact have a sense of humour, though I’d yet to see her actually smile. Maybe looking less stern was her version of laughing aloud.

  ‘Anyway, you forget,’ said Aurelia. ‘I’m not just your daughter but a widow; I have enough money of my own to buy all the clothes I want.’

  ‘A respectable widow barely out of mourning shouldn’t be wearing fancy clothes.’

  Aurelia rolled her eyes. ‘And how am I to catch another husband without fancy clothes? Or do you propose that I become an old maid?’

  ‘I’ll find a husband for you when the time is right,’ Prisca told her.

  ‘Is that a promise or a threat?’

  ‘Mama …?’ Sabine’s voice was timid. ‘We could show Rome to Claudia.’

  Prisca looked at me. ‘Have you seen Rome before, Claudia?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Would you like to see it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, excitement stirring. ‘Very much.’

  Calling to a slave, Prisca ordered two litters to be brought round to the front door while another slave was sent to fetch our cloaks.

  I travelled with Prisca. I was dying to pull back the curtain and see the streets, but as Prisca left her curtain drawn I did the same. The gods forbid I should do anything ill bred. The comments I had overheard and the one Sabine had let slip the afternoon before still smarted; I was determined not to behave in any way that would mark me out as less refined than the others.

  ‘In the mornings your father sees his clients before going to the Senate,’ my stepmother told me. ‘And there’s always something going on with one of the properties. He has farms and estates all over Italy, and several apartment buildings here in Rome too.’

  She turned her head to look at me directly. ‘It would please Gaius if you were to keep up your study of Greek and practise the cithara. Perhaps you will play for him this evening.’

  She seemed so certain of what my father wanted. Had he really mentioned Greek and music? After yesterday evening, I could only think that my suspicion back in Arretium had been the truth: he did not remember he had a daughter. Well, I reminded myself, he had remembered long enough to send for me. Perhaps Prisca was subtly telling me that he was occupied with his work, and that I shouldn’t expect too much from him.

  The litter stopped and a slave held back the curtain on one side so we could step out.

  My first impression was of a city of marble. We were standing in the huge busy square I had passed through the day before, crowded with temples that gleamed white like ice.

  ‘I thought we’d show you the Forum,’ said Prisca, ‘since this is really the centre of Rome. There, on the east side, that’s the Temple of Caesar, which Augustus dedicated to his father. Next to it, that round building, is the Temple of Vesta.’

  I barely had time to take in the forest of columns before she had moved on.

  ‘Just behind is the pal
ace where the Vestal Virgins live — that hill above is the Palatine. And see the arch at the end with the three passageways, between the Temple of Caesar and the Temple of Castor and Pollux? That’s the Arch of Augustus, built to commemorate the Battle of Actium. You know the Battle of Actium?’

  Oh goody, another test.

  ‘That’s when Augustus defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra,’ I said promptly, thankful she’d asked me a question I could actually answer.

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘Enough history lessons, Mother,’ said Aurelia. ‘Let’s go to Via Sacra.’ To me she said, ‘That’s the street with all the best shops.’

  Prisca gave a nod and several of the slaves who had carried the litters moved forwards to accompany us.

  Aurelia was right. Up and down the street were shops selling gold and silver, cloth, pearls, flowers and fruits, ivory and spices. But it was the shops that specialised that were the most fascinating.

  ‘I’ll be Claudia’s guide here,’ Aurelia announced. She showed me a shop that sold only silver drinking cups, and another that had only amber from the Baltic region to the far north, sold in strings of beads, teething necklaces and amulets. We saw ivory from Africa fashioned into combs and hairpins, boxes and perfume bottles, and a shop that sold objects made of blown glass.

  Finally we reached the shop where we were to buy cloth.

  With Aunt Quinta I had gone to the bazaar and we had chosen from among the bolts of cloth. Here we went inside and sat on a couch, and Prisca declared, ‘My stepdaughter is in need of some new gowns.’

  The shopkeeper looked at me and smiled, showing a row of pointed teeth. ‘For the young lady? I have many beautiful cloths.’

  It was obvious from my plain white dress and the fact that I wasn’t wearing a stola that I was unmarried, so he brought only samples of white cloth for our inspection. But I’d never known how many variations on white there could be.

  He first showed us a wool so fine it seemed to ripple through my fingers like water, and followed this with a cotton as light as air. The cloths became increasingly embellished. One had delicate patterns embroidered in off-white thread; another was made of a lustrous fabric so sheer as to be almost transparent (this was immediately rejected by Prisca). Without bothering to consult my taste, she set about selecting fabrics, muttering to herself about weights and seasons, comparing this one with that. I didn’t mind not having a say; they were all so beautiful I would have been happy with the plainest of them.