The Last King of Rome

by Laura Dowers

  Camilia licked her lips, then cast a quick glance at Axia, who gave the smallest of nods for her to continue. ‘Hostus Venturius. We had him round to dinner recently and he said the most dreadful things about Servius, I mean the King. We thought perhaps he had had a little too much wine and thought no more of it, but now my husband thinks maybe Hostus meant what he said.’

  Hostus Venturius again, Tanaquil thought. ‘And what did Hostus say exactly?’

  ‘He said the King’s mother had been a slave in the kitchens and that the late King…,’ Camilia trailed off, unwilling to continue.

  ‘Sired a bastard on her and that Servius is in fact the illegitimate son of my husband?’ Tanaquil finished for her equably.

  Camilia nodded, her bottom lip curling into her mouth.

  ‘Let me tell you, my dear,’ Tanaquil’s voice was deceptively charming, ‘that rumour is completely unfounded. My husband never forgot himself in that way. He was entirely faithful to me.’

  Tanaquil was lying. Lucomo had not been faithful to her, nor had she ever expected him to be. She knew every woman Lucomo had slept with since their marriage; she had even chosen a few of them for him, mostly when she was recovering from childbirth and she really could not face having him inside her. He had been grateful to her for her solicitousness, and when she asked if Servius was his natural son after she had witnessed the flaming portent, he had not hesitated and promised her he was not. She had trusted him and believed him, and indeed, she had never seen any resemblance in Servius to Lucomo.

  ‘Oh no, of course not, I’ve never believed it for a moment,’ Camilia blustered. ‘I’m merely repeating what I’ve heard others say.’

  ‘Of course you are,’ Tanaquil said. ‘But this Hostus is spreading this malicious rumour, from what you say.’

  ‘I’ve heard him say it with my own ears,’ Axia confirmed, eager to prove herself a friend, ‘and he said it to my husband too.’

  ‘So, it was this Hostus who attacked my son-in-law and daughter the other day?’ Tanaquil asked, selecting an olive from the dish before her and popping it into her mouth.

  ‘I don’t know whether he actually did it himself,’ Axia said, ‘or whether he got one of his men to do it. I do know it was him who shouted out the King was the son of a whore.’

  ‘Indeed? Well, my dears, I must thank you for sharing this information with me. It is a relief to know most of the people do love the King, and that you do too.’

  ‘Oh, we do,’ both women agreed vehemently.

  Tanaquil smiled at them both and bade them try another dish.

  Hostus was feeling good.

  He had just completed the purchase of a plot of land in the east of the city and was planning to build an insulae that would bring in a lot of money in a year or so. He had got the land at a good price, too. All he had to do was clear it of rubbish and the foundations could be dug.

  Hostus was heading for his favourite brothel. He’d received a message from his friend Aulus Quintilla at breakfast that morning that if he was free around noon, Aulus would be pleased to meet him at the brothel, enjoy a girl or two, and then while away the afternoon playing dice. Hostus should really have been going over his estate accounts but it was too good an invitation to turn down. He had a fancy for a Cretan woman today and knew the brothel had at least three to choose from. Or I can have all three, he laughed to himself, if I can manage it.

  He arrived at the brothel door, drawing the ragged curtain aside to enter. The brothel-keeper, an old fat woman who looked like she’d been dipped in grease, was sitting at a small table, counting the bronze ingots earned so far that day.

  ‘Good day, sir,’ she greeted Hostus with a gummy smile. ‘What can we do for you today?’

  ‘A Cretan, Metella,’ he said. ‘Any available?’

  ‘I’ve got one just finishing. She’ll clean herself up and I’ll send her in to you. Number three’s empty.’ She gestured towards the corridor to her right where small cubicles were curtained off and from where grunts came in rhythmic intervals.

  ‘Is Aulus Quintilla here yet? I’m supposed to be meeting him.’

  ‘Not seen him yet, sir,’ Metella said.

  Hostus dipped his hand into his purse, withdrew a bronze ingot and threw it on the table before Metella. She added it to her pile and Hostus went along the corridor to the third cubicle. The stone bed was covered with a straw mattress which he noted ruefully had taken some pounding. He squeezed it and considered for a moment whether it would do. His knees were bony and he knew he would feel the hard stone through the straw if he went on top. He decided he would stand and penetrate the whore from behind to save his knees. He didn’t want to waste energy complaining to Metella about the bedding.

  He undressed and lay down on the mattress, eyes closed, hand idly caressing his cock. A few minutes later, the curtain was drawn back and the girl he ordered came into the cubicle. He sat up and looked her up and down. She was wearing a thin, threadbare dress that fell to the middle of her thighs and which emphasised the almost skeletal nature of her body. Metella didn’t feed her girls well, Hostus knew. This girl’s too thin, he thought, it’ll be like humping a bag of bones. But he had already undressed and didn’t feel like going back out to Metella and demanding a fatter bitch.

  ‘Come on, then,’ he said testily, ‘get that off.’

  The girl understood his gesture rather than his speech, for she had not learnt the Roman tongue. There was no point; what men wanted from her could be expressed in a universal language. She pulled the dress over her head and started towards the bed.

  Hostus pushed her in front of him and applied pressure to her back to make her bend over. She did so readily and made no noise when he pushed into her. At least she’s tight, he thought, and he grabbed her hips and pulled her back roughly with every thrust. By the gods, it felt good to fuck like this. His wife made such a fuss if he used her in this way. She would keep whimpering all the time he was in her and then sulk afterwards for hours, so that to enjoy her from behind for a quarter of an hour was hardly worth the trouble. No, he decided, a man needed a whore to hump like this.

  Hostus closed his eyes and tilted his head back as his pleasure grew. He was close to climaxing when a cloth was clamped over his mouth. He tried to move, to look around at what was happening to him, but an arm, strong and unyielding, enclosed his chest and tugged. The girl gave the smallest of screams as the assailant dragged Hostus, his cock rapidly shrinking, from the cubicle. She curled into the corner of the bed and watched as her client disappeared from sight.

  Tarquinia bent her head and kissed the small, furrowed forehead. The soft mouth pursed and relaxed, pursed and relaxed, then the pink, fluffy head fell to the side. Arruns was asleep and Tarquinia knew she had to hand him back to the nurse who was waiting to lay him in his cot. But he felt so wonderful in her arms, she wanted to keep hold of him, to feel his warmth and warm him with her own body. She would have liked to press his little mouth to her nipple and have him suck but her breasts were not filled with milk, nor had they ever been. She smiled wanly at the nurse, who was old enough not to find babies enchanting any longer, and handed the little body over to her more experienced hands.

  What was wrong with her? Tarquinia wondered. Why had she not conceived a child? Other women she knew, her friends, even servants, found themselves pregnant all the time, often when they had no wish to be so. Yet she, who wanted a child so badly, bled unfailingly every month. She wanted to blame it on the curse the shepherd’s wife made, for she remembered that unhappy woman had cursed Servius’s loins, but her mind knew this could not be the only reason. She had not once been pregnant. She had never conceived, let alone miscarried or given birth to a dead child. Her womb had never been seeded. She had to admit to herself there was something wrong with her.

  And Servius was so good. He never complained of having a barren wife, never upbraided her for not being able to conceive. He just said it would happen one day when the gods wanted to bless them. Un
til that happy day, Tarquinia would have to content herself with visiting the children of her dead brother.

  Her eldest brother, Lucius, had been killed in an attack Rome carried out on Rutuli, his battered body brought back to Rome for burial. His wife, though she had not known it, had been pregnant with little Arruns, and the news of her husband’s death sent her into a despair. She put on little weight and took no care of herself, so that when Arruns was born, two months early, she had not the energy to recover and her life simply drained away. Arruns was left to the care of a woman who had lost her baby only a week before and whose milk had not yet dried up. The three children, Lucilla, Lucius and Arruns were left motherless and fatherless. It wasn’t fair.

  Tarquinia left the nursery. She always felt depressed after visiting and cursed that she had put herself through it again. She sighed. She knew she should be looking over the household stores, making sure the servants weren’t eating more than they were allowed or selling on the food, but she didn’t want to go into the kitchen and have to be that woman. She wanted Servius. She wanted to find him and nestle against his chest, feel his arms around her and have him tell her everything was fine.

  She asked one of the lictors where her husband was and he told her the King had gone down to the cellar with Tanaquil. Perplexed as to what Servius and her mother were doing down there, Tarquinia made her way to the cellar stairs. It was a dark, narrow space and she went carefully. As she descended the stairs, she heard a strange noise coming from behind the door. Reaching for the latch, she opened it as quietly as she could.

  Her eyes had to adjust to the gloom for only a single lamp burned in that dark space. She made out the figure of a man, naked, his wrists and ankles tied with ropes to hang between two wooden poles. His back was a mess of ragged flesh and blood and the yellow lamplight illuminated slivers of white that Tarquinia realised was the man’s exposed ribs and backbone.

  What in Jupiter’s name was happening? She dragged her eyes away from the bloody, slumping figure to the man before him who held a whip in his right hand. Tarquinia thought she recognised him as one of her mother’s litter bearers. He paused only long enough to allow the tortured man to recover a little before making the whip scorch across his back once again. She had to turn away. A voice called out, ‘Again,’ and Tarquinia recognised it as her mother’s. She looked up and saw Tanaquil sitting on a stool, her face impassive as she watched the whip fly. And alongside her, leaning against the wall with his arms folded over his chest, was Servius, his forehead corrugated as he concentrated on the scene before him.

  The whip struck again and sliced a strip of flesh from the man’s back; it peeled away to hang along the crack of his backside. The cry that came from the man had been terrible and Tarquinia couldn’t bear to watch any longer. Vomit rising in her throat, she pulled the door shut as quietly as she had opened it and hurried back up the stairs.

  Back in the cellar, Hostus Venturius slumped between the two wooden poles. The last strike of the whip had robbed him of his life and paid him back in full.

  6

  Sisenna Victor tugged the leather tarpaulin over his wagon and tied it securely to the wooden frame.

  He’d had a very successful trip. He’d sold all his timber, not at quite the price he had hoped but not far beneath it, and he’d loaded his wagon with cloth he already had a buyer for back in Rome. But perhaps even better than his successful trading was the information he had learnt.

  Sisenna climbed up onto the wagon and flicked the leather reins against his ox’s flanks, the cart jerking forward uncomfortably as the animal moved off. As he trundled out of Veii, he played the scene over in his mind. His buyer, Venza Cae Rusina, was a talker and as he examined the timber in Sisenna’s cart, he’d asked for the latest news from Rome. Sisenna told him about the executions of the shepherds and their families and Venza asked if it was true they’d been paid by the sons of Ancus Marcius to kill the King. Sisenna confirmed it was and then Venza had asked Sisenna if he’d heard about the assembly meeting.

  ‘What assembly meeting?’

  ‘The one all the rich folk called yesterday,’ Venza said, counting out bronze ingots. ‘The one where they agreed the treaty we have with Rome is as dead as your king. You didn’t know? Caused a right to-do, it did. Two of the younger men, Vilia and Mute, said that with the King dead, the treaty he made all those years ago should be torn up. They said you Romans have been taking advantage of us for years.’ He grinned, showing the gaps in his teeth. ‘Well, I know that’s true, don’t I?’

  Sisenna rolled his eyes and waved him to continue.

  ‘Well, the old men in the assembly didn’t want to hear talk like that, said they were too old to go to war again and walked out. But that didn’t stop the others. They all voted with Mute and Vilia. So this, my friend, may be the last bit of business we have for a while.’

  ‘Veii voted to go to war with Rome?’ Sisenna asked, wanting to be sure he had heard correctly.

  ‘So we’re told. Men are already being called up. And a friend of mine, Marmarce, he’s a blacksmith. He’s been instructed that the only work he’s to do from now on is the mending and making of weapons. So, that seems to settle it, don’t you think?’

  Sisenna said it certainly did and expressed his sorrow that business was going to be next to impossible with Venza, for a while at least, and that he hoped things would settle down soon.

  ‘If only the rich folks didn’t want to get richer,’ Venza said, ‘then you and I could do business the same as always. I hate rich folk. They always claim to be doing the best for us poor folk, but really they’re only doing the best for themselves.’

  Sisenna stored Venza’s information away in his mind. The news had unsettled him. If Veii was about to declare war on Rome, was he even safe at this moment? It was just as well, he thought, his business was done and he could be on his way. He bid Venza a hasty farewell.

  When he arrived back in Rome, he put his ox and cart away, made sure his goods were stored correctly and washed himself, knowing he couldn’t appear at the royal domus with the dust of the road on his clothing and the smell of ox shit following him around.

  Servius was dreaming.

  He was standing in a river. It looked like the Tiber but he wasn’t sure. He was naked and the water lapped and rippled around his thighs and caressed his genitals. The water should have been cold yet he did not feel so. He looked down. Tendrils of red in the water were tickling his skin. He raised his hands to his head and ran them through his hair. He held them, palms up, before his face and they were wet, not with river water, but with blood.

  His heart began to beat faster, harder. His hands went again to his head, feeling in vain for a wound that would explain the blood. He looked around for help. There were people on the riverbank but he couldn’t make out their faces. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see them — it was that they had no faces. But somehow, he felt they were watching him, even without eyes. He tried to move, but the water seemed to be holding him fast. He pushed but it would not give and, overbalancing, he fell beneath the water. It rushed over his head and into his mouth. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to push up, to break the surface of the water, to get free of it, to get to the air.

  And then something had grabbed him and it was pulling him, up and up and…

  ‘My lord!’

  His eyelids broke apart; sleep crusted his eyelashes. He heard breathing in the darkness.

  ‘It’s Issa,’ a voice said. ‘My mistress wants you.’

  Tanaquil! ‘Is she ill?’

  ‘No, my lord. But she wants you to come at once.’

  Before Servius could question her further, he heard Issa’s footsteps walking away. He swung his legs to the floor and felt Tarquinia stir behind him.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked, her voice thick with sleep.

  ‘Your mother wants me,’ Servius said, wondering what Tanaquil could want at this time of night.

  Servius found Tanaquil sitting on
a chair in his office with a thick woollen blanket around her shoulders. A man stood before her.

  ‘Tanaquil?’ Servius jerked his head at the stranger.

  ‘You need to hear this, Servius,’ Tanaquil said. ‘Sit down.’

  Servius did as he was told. ‘Who are you?’ he asked the man.

  ‘This is Sisenna Victor,’ Tanaquil answered for him. ‘He has a timber business that takes him to Veii, amongst other places. He keeps me informed.’

  Another of my mother-in-law’s spies, Servius thought with amusement. Just how many does she have?

  ‘Sisenna, tell the King what you told me,’ Tanaquil ordered.

  Sisenna looked at Servius and cleared his throat. ‘I have just come from Veii, my lord. While I was there, a meeting of the Veientes nobles was held at which the death of the King was discussed, as well as your accession.’

  ‘Well, it is news, I suppose, even in Veii,’ Servius said, wondering why he was being bothered with this.

  ‘Just listen,’ Tanaquil said. She nodded to Sisenna to continue.

  ‘They agreed your unelected accession provided them with an opportunity,’ he said. ‘They declared the treaty they had with Rome over and that they are under no obligation to continue peaceful relations with us.’

  Servius looked at Tanaquil. ‘Which means…’

  ‘Which means they are planning to attack Rome,’ Tanaquil nodded.

  ‘They were already making preparations when I left,’ Sisenna said. ‘Men were being called to serve in the army and the blacksmiths were working through the night.’

  ‘Making weapons,’ Servius said ruefully. His dream returned to him. Had it been a portent? He covered in blood while faceless entities looked on?

  ‘You may go, Sisenna,’ Tanaquil said, gesturing to Issa to show him out. Sisenna bowed to both Tanaquil and Servius, knowing he would receive his payment from Issa as she showed him out the back door.

  ‘We can trust his information?’ Servius asked when they were alone.