by AM Kirkby
***
There was one bright day in that first grey year, the day she went to pay her respects to Menrva. Not everyone had a devotion to a god; but she'd dreamt of Menrva the first time she'd been to the god's sanctuary, when she was five, and her parents had agreed with the priest that hers was a real devotion. Menrva had not spoken to her, but she'd dreamt the young goddess bent down to touch her face while she was sleeping, and had laid her slim fingers on Tanaquil's lips, letting her taste the lightning that flickered around them.
There was a shrine to Menrva up in the hills, half a day's travel from Rome. Lauchme drove with her out of the city, and once they were clear, handed the reins to her; it was the first time she'd driven since they arrived. Suddenly furious, she whipped up the horses, jolting the light cart over the rough ground. To feel the wind hard on her cheeks, the blood coming to her face; that was living, that was what she'd missed in Rome. She looked across to Lauchme; she hadn't scared him, but she slowed anyway, after a few minutes, to a brisk trot. The horses came easily to the tightened rein, without impatience or a fight. She was pleased with her own skill, with the way the horses she'd trained trotted in step with each other. She might not have the chance to train another pair, now.
They reached the shrine in mid afternoon. It was a simple place, with a spring and a tall altar in the open, and the house of the priests near by. Lauchme stayed to rub the horses down; she went on ahead. She'd brought her offerings with her; wine, and spelt cakes, and a garland. One of the priests came out to talk to her; to her surprise, she seemed to recognise the woman, though she didn't recollect the name, Thanusa.
She made her offerings; Lauchme had raised an eyebrow at the omission of a sheep, but she'd simply smiled and said she had her reasons. The sun glinted from the waters of the spring, filling her eyes with slivers of gold; she felt the sun's warmth on her face. Many people, she reflected, would feel they had been touched by the god; but she was simply grateful for a day's good weather, for the stillness of the country after the noise of Rome, and for the company of another Etruscan woman. She breathed the air in deeply.
But company would have to wait till tomorrow. She had things to do first.
“I came for guidance,” she said, bluntly. “We live in Rome. It's a city of opportunity. It's also a city that imprisons its women.”
“And you want to know...” the priest's voice was low, the question hardly stated.
“Whether we should stay or go.”
“How long have you been in Rome?”
“A year,” Tanaquil said. The other woman frowned.
“And you ask the god this now?”
“I have my reasons,” she said, as she'd said to Lauchme about the sacrifice. And while many women might have said this flirtatiously, or in jest, she said it with natural authority, and it could not be questioned.
So she spent that night in vigil, sitting by the waters of the spring, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket that she had taken from the cart, while Lauchme stayed in the priest's house.
She watched the sun go down. It seemed to hang forever just above the horizon, swimming with melted purple; the water of the pool glowed orange, as if there were a fire burning in its depths. From somewhere behind her she heard a bird singing, a lonely voice in the stillness. She felt an itch behind one knee; she ignored it, concentrating on her breath as she had been taught to do. One eyebrow itched, and that too she ignored. She felt the air cooling around her.
A chill breeze below over the water towards her; she saw the water ripple, then still itself again. She thought of Rome, and what she'd set out to achieve there, and how far she was from it. She thought of Lauchme, and the way his dark hair curled at the nape of his neck; and then she had to listen to her breathing again, stilling her mind, calming her body.
Then she looked at the sun. It had hardly moved; just the bottom edge was beginning to bleed into the horizon, like a ball of molten solder beginning to flow.
The sun took a long time to set. Probably, she thought, no longer than normal, but when you actually looked at it, when you could see nothing else, you understood just how long it really took. She saw the landscape was losing its definition, the far hills blurring into a single smudge of purple-tinged dark, and wondered when it had begun to dim. Perhaps if you looked long enough, often enough, it might be possible to find out; but there was no going back, to see how much lighter it might have been when the sun was just so much higher, so there was no comparison. There never would be; it would always be a mystery, like so many other things. She felt on the edge of some great understanding, and then it went, and she realised the sun was now only half above the horizon, and the first stars had begun to show, very palely, in the sky above.
Then once the last glowing droplet of sun had slipped below the horizon, the glow of sunset slowly began to die away. It was surprising how much could still be seen; the distant shapes of hills black against the lurid sky, the sinister glimmer of the water.
“My flute playing has improved markedly,” she remembered - that woman with the tight mouth who'd told her to stay out of politics - the stuffed quails lined up on a dish, their trussed legs in the air - the twittering women of an Etruscan party in Rome. Images flickered through her mind, none staying more than a second, and at the same time she felt her legs becoming numb with long sitting, and the tip of her nose and her earlobes growing cold.
At last even the line of the hills against the sky disappeared, the whole countryside sunk into the same darkness as the heavens. A few scattered stars pricked the velvet dark; she was falling half asleep, her mind slowing now as tiredness blunted her perceptions. It was like a heavy weight pulling her down, and she let it pull her, closing her eyes and feeling her face slacken and her head fall forward.
She must have dozed for a time then, and afterwards she never knew quite whether she had been waking or dreaming, whether this had been a true dream or some fantasy of her own. She thought, in the dream, she had woken, and the moon was shining on her, and in front of her the pool had turned to dark blood; she could smell the blood sharp on the air - she could almost taste it in her mouth. As she watched, the surface of the pool began to shimmer, and in it she saw Rome, its hills and marshy plain, spread out as if seen from a height. She seemed to fly over it, like an eagle. Then the hills of Rome began to heave, swelling up, and gradually spreading, like a blot of blood, over the whole landscape. She soared higher and higher, seeing below her the lights of Etruria flickering out, and the dark stain of Rome spreading ever further across the land - even over the dark seas, to lands unknown to her.
Then she was falling forward, spiralling down into the heart of the darkness, as flames seemed to reach up towards her; and suddenly awake again, in the slight greying of a false dawn.
She was numb with sitting there too long, and frozen; her nipples were sore with cold where her blanket had fallen open. She pulled the heavy wool back over herself, burying her head inside it, and feeling her breath slowly warming the air inside. Had she really sat here all night? She flexed her legs, feeling the prickling pain as sensation returned to them. Her hands were stiff, too; she suddenly felt, with awful foreboding, that this was what it must be like to be old.
The dream, if it was a dream, puzzled her. There was no god in it, no unambiguous omen; Rome had spread to the whole Etruscan world, yet she had no idea of her own place in this, whether Rome was to be resisted or enjoyed. She had flown, with a sense of freedom incomparable, and yet at the end she'd fallen into flames. She couldn't shake the images from her mind; they seemed to flicker obsessively behind her eyes, even when her eyes were open. It was not the guidance she had looked for.
She had begun to wonder whether Rome was the place of freedom she'd hoped it would be; for her, it was a prison, though perhaps it would be the place where Lauchme could find his future and his true self. Rome was no place to bring up a daughter, she thought; no daughter of hers would fear to go out in the street, to drive a chariot o
r take what lover she pleased. No daughter of hers would go unnamed.
And yet... if Rome were going to conquer the world, then it was in Rome that the future lay. Lauchme could never rule Tarchna; but if he could rule Rome, and Rome would conquer Tarchna, then she would have brought him the city as a dowry - the birthright of the Spurinna.
She still couldn't shake off the fear; there was blood in her vision, too much blood. But if the god had wanted her to go back to Tarchna, she could have told her; and in that moment, Tanaquil took the decision she would stand by all her life, to stay in Rome, and fight to rule it with her husband.