by Laura Dowers
‘It’s too fresh. Let them reflect. They’ll come to see this as good fortune soon enough.’
They reached the domus and saw there were four lictors guarding the doors. ‘That’s Lolly’s doing, I wager,’ Cossus said, pleased she had given a thought to their security.
‘She has good sense,’ Lucius said.
‘She has more than that,’ Cossus said admiringly. He turned away and spoke to the men, telling them to go around the back and wait in the yard. ‘I wouldn’t want to face her on a battlefield.’
‘Where is she?’ Lucius murmured, pushing open the doors. They had barely entered before Lolly was in his arms. Cossus stood by while they kissed, impatient for them to break apart.
‘King Lucius,’ Lolly said, holding Lucius at arm’s length and looking him up and down.
‘Are you hurt?’ Lucius cried, pointing to her dress and the bloodstains upon the hem. ‘Lolly!’
‘It’s not mine, Lucius,’ she assured him as his hands felt her body. ‘It’s my father’s.’
‘You found him?’
‘Found him. Killed him.’
Cossus stepped forward. ‘You killed him?’
Lolly nodded, a smile playing upon her lips. ‘I found him on the Sacra Via. I ran over him twice and then I took a sword and I...’
‘What, Lolly?’ Lucius pressed, wondering what she was grinning about.
Lolly held out her hand to Lucius. He took it and she pulled him towards the shrine set in the wall of the atrium that held the household gods. She pushed him towards it. ‘Look,’ she whispered in his ear.
Lucius gasped. There was a hand lying in front of the small statues. There was a ring upon the little finger, the intaglio familiar to him.
‘Servius!’ he cried and spun around to Lolly.
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘I cut it from his body.’
Cossus stepped up and looked at the hand. He laughed. ‘Like I said, Lucius, I wouldn’t like to meet your wife on the battlefield.’
‘He is dead, then?’ Lucius asked.
‘Do not doubt me,’ Lolly said. ‘You asked me to find him and I did, and I killed him, for you.’
Lucius cupped her face and kissed her. ‘Thank you, my love. What is that noise?’
Cossus hurried to the doors. He opened them just a crack and looked out. ‘People are coming.’
Lucius joined him. ‘Armed?’
Cossus shook his head. ‘No. It’s a cart.’
‘Who is it?’ Lolly asked.
‘Nobody important. Wait here.’ Cossus opened the door further and stepped outside, pulling the door to behind him.
Lucius put his eye to the crack. He watched as Cossus went to the man pulling the cart and spoke to him. A man at the rear leaned into the back of the cart and lifted a leather tarpaulin to reveal whatever it covered. Cossus looked into the cart and grimaced. He cast a look back at the doors, spoke a few more words to the men and then returned, closing the doors behind him.
‘What is it? What is in the cart?’ Lolly demanded.
Cossus looked at her. ‘Servius. They thought you’d want his body to bury. It’s clear they don’t know you, eh?’ He laughed but neither Lolly nor Lucius joined in with him.
‘Tell them to go. And to take the carcase with them,’ Lucius said, perturbed. ‘They can bury him if they want, but we’ll have nothing to do with him. I’ve had my fill of Servius.’
‘Why not bury him?’ Cossus asked. ‘It’ll cost you nothing and it will look good to the people.’
‘After his own daughter killed him?’ Lolly said. ‘Talk sense, Cossus.’
‘Every man should have a proper funeral,’ Cossus protested.
‘Romulus didn’t,’ Lucius said. ‘Show me the tomb of the founder of Rome and I’ll give a funeral for Servius.’
‘Tell them to throw his body in the Tiber,’ Lolly said. Cossus didn’t move. ‘Lucius, tell your friend to do as I say.’
‘Cossus,’ Lucius said, not meeting his friend’s eye. ‘Do as my wife says.’
‘As you say,’ Cossus said. He went outside again and Lolly and Lucius heard the cart leaving.
‘Was I right, Lolly?’ Lucius asked.
‘Perfectly right,’ Lolly said. ‘You are the King, Lucius. We have no need to honour a dead man.’
Lolly had wanted Lucius to make love to her. The day’s events had excited her, but they had wearied him. He had tried to oblige her, but his anxiety and exhaustion shrunk his member and she could not coax it to swell. She had given a loud, irritated sigh as he climbed off her.
‘You’re thinking again,’ she said scornfully. ‘Must you?’
‘I can’t help it,’ he protested, knowing she was angry at him for his impotence.
‘What can’t you help, Lucius? Thinking? Or acting like a eunuch?’
‘It’s only this once. Must you taunt me, today of all days?’
‘I think I shall find a man who can perform,’ she mused. ‘Synistor will do. I doubt he ever has any complaints.’
‘I shall have him killed if he lays a finger on you,’ Lucius said heatedly.
‘So? I will have had him, wouldn’t I? You can do what you like with him after.’
Lucius grabbed her throat. ‘I will have your horses pull you apart if you so much as look at another man.’
Her smile was victorious. ‘You do still love me then?’
‘How can I not, you witch?’
‘Then why would I even want another man?’
He released her. ‘You taunt me.’
‘I tease,’ she corrected, ‘to make a man of you.’
‘Does my manhood lie only in my prick?’
‘It’s the only part of your manhood I can grab hold of,’ she said and reached beneath the sheets.
He laughed as her fingers stroked his thighs and he fell back onto the bed. ‘Oh, Lolly, what would I do without you?’
‘Nothing. You would lie in bed all day and drink. But not anymore. No life of indolence for you, my King. There is much to do.’
‘Is there?’
‘Oh, Lucius, you’ve won today but we cannot pretend all of the senators are on our side. There will be those who will speak out against us in the senate.’
He hadn’t considered that there would be opposition now Servius was dead. The knowledge troubled him. ‘We can’t prevent them from speaking against me.’
‘Oh my sweet, of course we can. We stop their mouths before they can open them. Now, lay down and go to sleep if you’re not going to make love to me.’
‘You expect me to sleep now you’ve told me of this?’
‘The senators who oppose us will keep until tomorrow.’
But Lucius could not lay down his head and rest. He threw off the sheet and climbed out of bed. Ignoring Lolly’s protests, he made his way to the cubiculum at the end of the corridor which Lucius had given to Cossus for the night. He burst in without knocking, causing the woman lying beside Cossus to yelp in surprise.
‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ Cossus asked, sitting up.
‘Get rid of her,’ Lucius said and waited while the woman climbed naked from the bed, gathering up her clothes from the floor and exiting. ‘The senators who will oppose me. Do you know who they are?’
‘I know them,’ Cossus said, thinking of the list he had drawn up of those men who had never spoken well of Lucius in debates or accepted the bribes that Cossus had offered.
‘They must be silenced.’
‘What, now?’ Cossus cried.
Lucius nodded. ‘Now.’
Aulus Flavonius watched the smoke rise into the night sky. The funeral pyre had been hastily constructed and had threatened to spill over and tip the half-burnt body to the ground. But it had been propped up and now burned fiercely, heating the faces of those who watched and leaving their backs to freeze.
What a day it had been! Violent, bloody, and no doubt a sign of things to come. Whether he liked it or not, Lucius was king now but Lucius’s reign had begun in blood an
d Aulus firmly believed it would continue the same way. Lucius was not a man of peace.
‘Is Servius in Elysium now or in the Underworld, do you think?’ Acacius Arco said, tightening his cloak around himself.
‘If ever a man deserved to be in Elysium, it was Servius,’ Aulus said.
‘I never thought to live to see such a day, Aulus.’
‘It bodes ill, Acacius.’
‘Ay, it does.’
‘Tomorrow, we must speak against Lucius.’ Aulus waited. ‘You say nothing.’
‘Lucius has taken the throne, Aulus,’ Acacius said resignedly.
‘Exactly, he has taken it. We did not elect him. I know why you say nothing, my friend. You’re frightened, and no wonder, when Lucius has that she-wolf by his side.’
‘They are a fearsome prospect, Aulus.’
‘Are we women, Acacius?’ Aulus demanded fiercely. ‘We have fought in wars, we know what it is to run a man through with our swords. Lucius will die as easily as any other man, I promise you.’
‘I’m too old to go to war, Aulus,’ Acacius said. ‘I want to die in my bed, not on some battlefield, or even in the senate.’
‘We would all like to have quiet lives, Acacius,’ Aulus said, putting a hand on his friend’s arm. ‘But Bellona seems to rule in Rome, not Pax.’
‘If the goddess Bellona favours Lucius Tarquinius…’
‘Then the answer is simple. We must offer her more than he,’ Aulus said. ‘We will make a sacrifice tomorrow to Bellona and to Pax, Acacius, you and I, and all our fellow senators who honour Servius here with us.’ He gestured at the men who stood by the pyre as it burned. ‘We will pray to them to be reconciled. And they will hear us.’
‘I hear you,’ a voice behind them, ‘and I’m not liking what I hear.’
Aulus and Acacius spun around. Cossus was grinning at them. Acacius gave a strangled cry of fright and tried to run, but he ran straight into one of Cossus’s hired men, who held him, laughing.
‘Lucius has sent you,’ Aulus said, watching and understanding as the other mourners were taken by Cossus’s men as Acacius had been.
‘Oh, you are clever, aren’t you?’ Cossus said. ‘I see now why you’re a senator and I’m not.’
‘I’m a senator because I’m not available for hire, unlike you,’ Aulus sneered. ‘If you are the kind of men King Lucius will have about him, I pity Rome.’
‘That’s all right. You won’t have to pity Rome for long,’ Cossus promised and thrust forward with his sword.
Aulus felt the blade pierce his skin, felt the keenest pain in his heart, and saw only Cossus’s ugly, grinning face before he fell.
19
For no ordinary woman, the Sibyl arrived ordinarily enough.
She entered the city on foot, a shabby woollen cloak covering her head and body, a leather bag slung over her shoulder. She had no need for finery, nor for escort, for she was protected by the gods. Should anyone be fool enough to trespass within a foot of her person, they would see the wrath of Jupiter and Mars and Bellona in her eyes and quickly retreat, making the sign against evil behind their backs so she would not see and curse them all the same.
Her eyes were bright though they were black. They shone out of their pure white surround and stood stark against the dirt ingrained into her face. Her body was thin, scrawny, and it made her seem older than her twenty-four years.
She made her way along the Sacra Via to reach the Esquiline Hill and the home of King Lucius. Arriving at the doors, she told the guards she wanted to see the King, and they looked at one another, something telling them this person was no mere petitioner nor woman looking for work in the household. Though she was shabby, there was something in her bearing that made them open the doors and escort her into the atrium. Summoning a lictor, the guard told him what the visitor wanted. The lictor, having greater responsibility and daily access to a king and queen, was not so easily overwhelmed and demanded to know who she thought she was that she could command an audience with the King.
‘Tell King Lucius the Sibyl of Cumae has come to make him an offer,’ she said quietly.
Abashed, the lictor nodded, almost bowed, and hurried off to find Lucius. The guard left alone with the Sibyl stood uneasily to one side as if at any moment she might turn and deliver a prophecy about him that he would not wish to hear. Just when the guard was wondering whether he should offer her a seat or a drink, the lictor returned and asked the Sibyl to follow him.
Lolly laid the gold necklace she had been examining carefully on its protective linen wrap. ‘Is she really the Sibyl?’
‘I suppose we’ll find out,’ Lucius said, flicking his fingers at her to help him put on his toga.
She rose and slapped his hands away, setting right the heavy cloth. ‘But why has she come here?’
‘Will you stop asking questions you know I don’t have the answer to?’ Lucius snapped. ‘Just be quiet.’
Lolly sighed and resumed her seat, irritated by Lucius’s anxiety over the woman who had come to see him. He was ridiculously superstitious. So, she had a fearsome reputation, Lolly thought, what of it? Any woman could claim to hear the voice of a god or goddess and speak for them. Who was to say she was telling the truth and not just spouting any old nonsense that came into her head? And these women would have such reverence paid to them!
‘Well, this better not be a waste of your time,’ she said, breaking off as the lictor entered with a woman following slowly behind.
She was not much to look at, Lolly mused, taking in the woman’s drab appearance, but she had to admit there was an aura about her. She understood why the lictor had spoken in hushed tones of her arrival.
‘You claim to be the Sibyl of Cumae,’ Lucius said, doing the woman the honour of standing in her presence.
‘I do not claim to be,’ the Sibyl said with a hint of amusement. ‘I am.’
‘And you travel alone?’ Lolly asked, surprised, for the lictor had said the woman had arrived without any companion, a brave choice for any woman.
‘I am never alone,’ the Sibyl replied smoothly. ‘The gods are always with me. They protect me from harm.’
Lucius gestured to the couch and the Sibyl sat. Lucius sat next to Lolly and she sensed his nervousness.
‘You said something about an offer,’ Lucius said.
The Sibyl allowed the strap of her leather bag to slide off her shoulder, catching the bag before it fell to the ground. She opened the flap and held the bag towards them. Lolly and Lucius craned their necks to see the contents. The bag was stuffed with scrolls, some of the wooden finials poking out the top of the opening.
‘Books?’ Lucius asked.
‘Prophecies pronounced by my predecessor,’ the Sibyl said. ‘Nine books about the future of Rome. And of your future, King Lucius Tarquinius. I offer them to you.’
‘Oh, well, I thank you—,’ Lucius began.
‘For the right price, of course,’ the Sibyl smiled sweetly, her black eyes glinting in the light of the oil lamps that burned around her.
‘And what is the right price?’ Lolly asked after a moment, her voice arch, cold. The Sibyl was just another person with their hand out, then. How these people did come out of the woodwork.
‘Five hundred aes,’ the Sibyl said.
‘Five hundred,’ spluttered Lucius. ‘Are you insane?’
The smile vanished from the Sibyl’s face and Lolly placed a restraining hand upon Lucius’s arm. He looked to her and her eyes told him to be quiet.
‘That is a very great price,’ Lolly said carefully. It was never wise to insult and offend a person of such reputation as the Sibyl, nor a woman who claimed she could call on the gods for protection, even if that reputation was dubious. ‘How do we know your prophecies are worth such a sum?’
‘You don’t,’ the Sibyl said. ‘You will find out what they are worth when you buy them from me.’
‘What will you do with five hundred aes?’ Lucius asked, content to be silent no longer. ‘Wha
t does a prophetess need with such riches?’
‘Your contempt does you no favours, King Lucius,’ the Sibyl said, fixing her gaze upon him. ‘A prophetess must needs eat, clothe herself, keep temples to the gods in good repair. If a king needs riches, why not a prophetess?’
‘I may need riches,’ Lucius said, his temper rising, ‘but I don’t need books telling me about my future. I already know it.’
‘Are you sure you know all?’ the Sibyl asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘I’m sure,’ Lucius said, waving Lolly to be quiet. He rose. ‘You can leave now.’ He clicked his fingers at the lictor who stepped forward, his face still bearing an expression of awe.
The Sibyl closed her bag and returned the strap to her shoulder. She smiled, unperturbed, and followed the lictor from the room.
The Sibyl walked out of the domus without another word, the guards holding their breath as she passed. She made her way to the forum, the hood of her cloak up, obscuring her face. She might have been any other Roman woman, and yet her presence was such that people made way for her, whispering behind their hands as she passed.
In the forum, she looked for a fire and spotting a brazier by the Temple of Vesta, walked towards it, opening the bag as she went. She took out three of the scrolls and placed them one by one in the brazier, standing back and watching while the parchment caught and burned.
The lictor hurried into the garden where the family were enjoying a puppet show. A Greek soldier was being hacked down by a Roman when he blurted, ‘The Sibyl has returned and demands to see you, my lord.’
‘Who’s the Sibyl?’ Sextus asked, knocking his feet against the legs of his brother’s stool.
‘She has the effrontery to return?’ Lucius said to Lolly.
Lolly didn’t answer. Her brow furrowed, she told the lictor to bring the Sibyl to the garden and the children to go to the nursery. Titus protested, but Lolly was adamant and the nurse shooed her charges away. A slave was told to remove the puppeteer and Lolly and Lucius were alone. Lucius’s face bore an angry expression that Lolly tried to avoid, but the Sibyl’s persistence worried her. What was in those bloody books that made the Sibyl so sure of herself? The sum the woman wanted was great, but Lolly was now thinking it was a sum worth paying to find out.
