The Last King of Rome

by Laura Dowers

  ‘That’s not how Lucius sees it,’ Lolly said, a little tartly. ‘Lucius is very fond of my father and hates to see him struggling.’

  ‘Does the Queen not help?’ Narcissa asked.

  ‘Oh,’ Lolly waved her hand as if to suggest it was a foolish question, ‘my mother has no interest in Rome.’

  ‘But if she worries that the King is unduly burdened, then surely she would want to be of use to your father?’ Narcissa persisted.

  Lolly laughed, making her eyes go wide in innocence. ‘Oh, no, I’ve never known Mother to worry about Father and his work.’

  ‘Perhaps because she knows your father has your husband to lean on?’

  ‘Yes, I expect so.’

  Narcissa nodded enthusiastically and Lolly slid a sideways glance at Lucius as if to say, It’s as easy as that, my love.

  She had heard what they were up to and she was determined to stop it.

  Tarquinia had spent the morning at her friend’s house, chatting pleasantly about this and that, until Restita had pointed a finger and said there was Lucius coming out of Cossus’s house across the street. Tarquinia was not particularly interested in Lucius’s whereabouts and had continued examining Restita’s latest purchase of hair combs, until Restita said it was such a shame that work was taking its toll on Servius and how fortunate he was to have Lucius.

  Tarquinia had looked up then from the ivory combs and asked Restita what she was talking about. Restita had given a little embarrassed laugh and shrugged. It was common knowledge, she said, that Servius’s faculties were starting to fail him and that Lucius had taken over a lot of his work. She realised she had spoken out of turn, as she called it, because she hastened to add that she knew Servius was still up to the job, just that he needed someone to take some of the burden from his shoulders. Tarquinia demanded to know who was spreading these lies and Restita had swallowed nervously and jerked her head at Cossus’s house. So, Tarquinia thought, Cossus has become Lucius’s mouthpiece in the city and no doubt, in the senate, working hard to make out Servius is struggling.

  Making her excuses to Restita, Tarquinia hurried back to the domus, waving away the litter bearers who would not move fast enough for her liking. She rushed through the house, shouting for Lolly and found her in the garden.

  ‘Just what are you two up to?’ Tarquinia demanded, grabbing hold of Lolly’s arm and dragging her around to face her.

  ‘Let go of me.’ Lolly tugged her arm out of her mother’s grasp. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mother.’

  ‘Don’t play the innocent with me. Do you think I haven’t heard what is being said about Servius in the city? You think I can’t work out who’s spreading these rumours?’

  ‘What rumours?’

  ‘That your father is failing.’

  ‘Well, that’s true. Father isn’t as sharp as he used to be.’

  ‘Your father is as clear about his duties and his ability to carry them out as ever he was.’

  ‘That’s your opinion, Mother,’ Lolly said defiantly, ‘it’s not the opinion of many people.’

  ‘Oh, many people. By that I suppose you mean you and that wretched husband of yours.’

  ‘Lucius has said nothing unreasonable. If he has intimated that Father is finding kingship difficult these days, then he is merely expressing an opinion out of concern for him.’

  Tarquinia shook her head. ‘Just who do you think you are fooling with all this… this nonsense? You forget, Lolly, I know you, I know what you are, what you’re capable of and I won’t have you or Lucius trying to undermine Servius. I won’t have it.’

  Lolly snorted a laugh. ‘Oh, you won’t have it? Oh, Mother, do stop before you make a complete fool of yourself. Lucius is his own man. He is at perfect liberty to say what he pleases about whoever he pleases.’

  ‘He is a subject, Lolly, and he owes obedience and loyalty to Servius.’

  ‘He owes Father nothing,’ Lolly spat, ‘least of all loyalty. What has Father ever done for him?’

  ‘What has he done for him? He’s looked after Lucius since he was a child, given him a home, given him both his daughters—’

  ‘Father has made my husband little better than his servant.’

  ‘Lucius owes your father everything.’

  ‘And that’s what we hate,’ Lolly shouted, her breast heaving.

  Tarquinia drew in a deep breath. ‘So, now we get to the truth, don’t we? You’re both frustrated and dissatisfied with your lot in life. You think Servius has held you back, you think you deserve more.’

  ‘We do deserve more,’ Lolly said, trying to calm herself.

  ‘And you think this is how you’re going to get it? I know what you’re up to, I see your plan now. You think you can discredit your father and put your husband on the throne, don’t you? I know it’s your idea. Lucius doesn’t have the brains to think of this.’

  ‘How dare you speak so of Lucius.’ Lolly’s eyes burned with indignation.

  ‘I’ll speak how I like of that fiend,’ Tarquinia retorted. She didn’t see Lolly’s hand come up and slash across her face. She just felt the keen sting it left behind.

  Lolly was breathing fast, her face almost as red as her mother’s inflamed cheek. ‘You say that about Lucius again and I promise you, Mother, you’ll get worse. I’ll take a whip to you, I swear I will.’

  Tarquinia held her hand to her face. ‘You are no daughter of mine. I curse you, you and your husband.’

  Lolly threw back her head and laughed. ‘Oh, curse away, Mother. This family has nothing but curses against it. No god will listen to you and your whining. You have no power and you can’t harm me or Lucius. You’re old. You’ll be dead soon and then Father will be all on his own. And so much easier to deal with.’

  Tarquinia angled her face to the light, her bloodshot eyes on Servius.

  ‘It’s a little swollen,’ Servius said and stepped away. ‘Lolly did that?’

  ‘You think I’m lying?’

  Servius frowned. ‘No, of course not, but why would she do that? What did you say to her?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I said to her,’ Tarquinia said, staring at him in amazement. ‘I’m her mother and she struck me.’

  Servius returned to his desk, his eyes raking despondently over the scrolls that littered it. ‘Well, yes, but what do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘I want you to punish her. She’s your daughter.’

  ‘She’s not a little girl, Tarquinia. I can’t lock her in her room and refuse to feed her until she apologises.’

  ‘You can have her whipped. That’s what she threatened to do to me.’

  Servius stared up at her. ‘I don’t believe you. She wouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, you never believe she can do anything bad, can you? She’s always your good little girl. Lolly is bad through and through, she always has been. How far does she have to go before you realise she is evil? I would have thought that after what she did to Arruns and Tullia—’

  ‘Oh no, don’t start that again,’ Servius held up his hands to stop her. ‘You never had any proof she had anything to do with their dying.’

  ‘You and your proof,’ Tarquinia scoffed. ‘I know what she is. And I know him.’

  ‘You’ve never liked Lucius.’

  ‘With good reason, Servius. Why, why won’t you see that pair for what they are?’

  ‘Because I have too much else to do,’ Servius shouted, suddenly angry. ‘I have a country to run.’

  ‘Listen to me, Servius, please,’ Tarquinia pleaded, leaning over his desk and putting her face close to his. ‘If you don’t do something about those two, you won’t have a country to run. They are acting against you. In the city, in the senate, Lucius is openly criticising you, your decisions, your acts. He is trying to turn people against you.’

  Servius stared at his wife as she spoke, worried by the frenzy on her face. Tarquinia was becoming hysterical again and her tantrums, her paranoia, were always against Lucius and
Lolly. He was sick of it. ‘My dear,’ he said quietly, not wanting to provoke her further, ‘why don’t you go and have a lie down? I think you’re tired, overwrought.’

  To his relief, Tarquinia didn’t shout back. Her shoulders slumped and she straightened. ‘Go to bed,’ she repeated, raising an eyebrow. ‘Is that all you can say? Go to bed, Tarquinia, and everything will be better in the morning.’

  ‘It will be, my love,’ he promised, leading her to the door. ‘You will see.’

  She went out without argument and he had closed the door on her before she had reached the end of the corridor.

  Lucius had arrived home looking forward to a big dinner — he was hungry and he had been promised pork in honey — and a reading by his favourite Greek poet. What he got when he arrived was Lolly looking thunderous and the news she had cancelled both the dinner and the poet.

  ‘We have to do something about Mother,’ Lolly gave as an explanation and told him of her encounter in the garden that afternoon with Tarquinia.

  ‘And for this I have to forgo my pork and poetry?’ he said sulkily, throwing off his toga and flumping down on the couch.

  ‘You should have heard her, Lucius.’ Lolly leant over the back of the couch and ran her fingers through his hair. ‘She called you a fiend.’

  ‘So? I’ve been called worse.’

  Lolly smacked him. ‘Will you take this seriously?’

  ‘Why must I take her seriously, Lolly? She’s a mad old woman. Let’s ignore her, like we always do.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of her viciousness towards me and you. She went to Father and told him I hit her.’

  ‘And what did he do?’

  ‘Told her to go to bed.’

  Lucius laughed. ‘See, even he’s not paying her any attention. You’re worrying about nothing.’

  ‘She can hurt us, Lucius. She has friends who will talk to their husbands. And then their husbands will talk to their fellow senators. Any word she says against us will undo everything you’ve achieved in the senate so far.’

  ‘Which isn’t much,’ Lucius mumbled.

  Lolly tutted in annoyance at his words. She knew Lucius was dispirited by how slowly they were progressing. Cossus was doing his part well, speaking for Lucius against Servius in the senate, but there was only so much he could say before he became just a noise buzzing in the ears of the senators. When Cossus spoke, it was just gossip, opinions that couldn’t be corroborated. When Lucius spoke, there was the idea that he had proof of Servius’s failings behind his words. But she also knew how difficult and irksome Lucius found it to have to mingle with the senators, to pretend to like them and listen to their complaints.

  ‘It’s working,’ she insisted, ‘and we can’t let Mother damage us.’

  ‘What do you want to do then?’ Lucius asked, resigned to act if it was what Lolly wanted. Lolly looked down at him and met his eyes. He understood her at once. ‘Really?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Lucius nibbled on his lip for a moment. ‘It would solve our problem. And make our home life easier.’

  ‘Just what I was thinking, my love.’

  ‘But not poison this time.’

  ‘No,’ Lolly agreed, ‘poison would raise eyebrows. What then?’

  ‘An accident,’ Lucius said after a moment. ‘A terrible misfortune.’

  ‘Difficult to arrange, surely?’

  ‘Not really,’ Lucius grinned and lunged at Lolly. He grabbed her, pulling her over the back of the couch so she landed on top of him. She was laughing and trying, feebly, to fight him off. ‘You leave it to me, my little tigress.’

  The litter bearers kept stumbling on the road out of Rome. Tarquinia hated this part of a holiday, the travelling to get to wherever she was going. With every lurch, she had to remind herself why she was going. She was going because she wanted to get as far away as she could from Lucius and Lolly.

  Servius hadn’t believed her when she said they were making life unbearable, that Lucius and Lolly were doing all they could to upset her. It hadn’t been in ways that Tarquinia could point to and say to Servius, ‘Yes, they did this or that’. No, they were more subtle than that. They would make demeaning remarks to her friends that they knew would get back to her, such as how much food she was eating or how her dresses seemed to fit so much more snugly of late, how she had never contributed anything of interest or value to conversations, how the servants, even the slaves, had no respect for her. Seemingly little things that over time mounted up to upset her a very great deal. She hated Lucius and Lolly, hated them with an intensity she would never have thought herself capable of. And when Servius suggested that as she was looking a little worn, she should take a holiday by the seaside, she had said yes without hesitation.

  Tarquinia felt her heart lightening as the walls of Rome grew smaller behind her. She was even glad to not have Servius with her. She felt free for the first time since… well, she couldn’t remember when. She would enjoy her month by the sea. She would breathe the sea air, fill her lungs with its freshness, eat fish caught only moments earlier and drink all the wine she wanted without fear of censure from her husband. Oh, the bliss. Tarquinia closed her eyes and sunk into the cushions, not even minding anymore the relentless jolting of the litter.

  She was woken by her head hitting the side of the litter. She cried out and pressed her fingers to her temple. As the pain receded, she realised the litter had stopped. Stretching out a plump arm, she parted the hangings. She looked out onto fields and trees, hedges and ditches. Rome was long gone. She must have been asleep for a while.

  ‘What’s going on? Why have we stopped?’ she called.

  No one answered. She leant out of the litter and looked around. There was no one there. Her heart began to beat faster. She scrambled backwards into the litter, letting the hangings fall together. What had happened? Why was she alone? She knew there were bandits outside Rome, desperate men ready to rob travellers and leave their bodies to be torn apart by wolves, and she wondered if she should make a dash for Rome if her litter bearers had been attacked. But she had no idea how far away Rome was.

  Tarquinia heard a noise. It sounded like footsteps. She held her breath and waited. The footsteps came nearer. They stopped outside the litter. And then all she could hear was her blood pounding in her ears. She fixed her eyes on the gap in the hangings.

  The hangings moved, slowly, an inch at a time. She saw legs, thick, hairy, and the end of a sword, dripping blood. Tarquinia opened her mouth to scream but then a head appeared. And she knew who it belonged to!

  ‘Salve, my lady,’ Cossus grinned.

  ‘You’re… you’re Lucius’s friend,’ she stammered, her mind trying to make sense of what was happening.

  ‘That’s right, my lady.’

  ‘What’s happened? Have my litter bearers been attacked by bandits?’

  ‘You could say that.’ Cossus squatted, filling the aperture.

  She pointed a shaken finger at his bloodied sword. ‘Have you killed the bandits?’

  ‘No, lady. There were no bandits to kill. I killed your litter bearers.’

  ‘But– I–’

  ‘And now I’m going to kill you.’

  Tarquinia did scream then, but for only the briefest of moments.

  Someone had put a large jug of wine on his desk, some thoughtful servant who knew he would need solace. The wine was strong, it hadn’t been watered, and it felt good as it slid down his throat and warmed his chest.

  Dead, in the blink of an eye, Tarquinia was dead. He hadn’t even said goodbye to her properly when she left. His mind had been on a deputation due to arrive that afternoon from Cumae and he had kissed her cheek and wished her a safe journey before disappearing back to his office. He hadn’t even bothered to wave.

  Servius hoped Tarquinia hadn’t suffered. The litter bearers’ bodies had been found with their hands hacked off and their insides falling out, typical of the bandits that plagued the countryside, but Tarquinia had had only one wound
to her heart. The doctor who examined her body assured him her death would have been quick.

  It hurt him now that she had been so unhappy these last few months and that he had done nothing to make things better. He knew Lolly had been unkind to her mother, had seen it and done nothing, all because he didn’t want to get involved in a row between his daughter and his wife. He had been tired of the discord, it had been going on for so long. The curse, he said to himself, it was the curse working. Discord and strife, that was what the woman had wanted and that was what he had been punished with.

  He wondered if Lolly was feeling as guilty as he did now. Was she wishing she hadn’t been so cruel to her mother, hadn’t made all those unkind jibes, hadn’t struck her? He didn’t know, even though Lolly had made all the right noises when Tarquinia’s body was brought back to the domus. She had cried in the street, seeming not to care she was being stared at. That was odd really, now he thought about it. Lolly was normally so conscious of her dignity. Lucius had been stiff-lipped as Tarquinia was taken into the domus, he remembered, but then Tarquinia and he had never got on. What did he expect?

  Servius poured himself another cup of wine and carried it to the bed, his bones cracking as he bent his body to the mattress.

  Lucomo, Tanaquil, Tullia, Arruns and now Tarquinia, all gone. Lucomo and Tanaquil he could understand. Though Lucomo’s end had been premature, he would have died sooner or later and it had been the same with Tanaquil. But the others, Tullia and Arruns especially, should still be alive, they should be breathing and walking around the domus, filling the rooms with their voices and their laughter.

  He hardly ever heard laughter any more, tucked away in his corner of the domus. The grandchildren would laugh and play, of course, and it pleased him when he did hear their noise, but they could have been the children of the servants for all the affinity he felt with them. Though they had his blood in their veins, Lolly’s children felt as alien to him as any stranger in Rome. He was alone, though constantly surrounded by people in the domus.

  Servius drained the cup, grateful for the soporific effect the wine was having on him. He wished Tarquinia was with him, wished she were lying by his side so he could hold her hand and feel the warmth of her soft skin. But he’d never feel her touch again.