Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  "Don't be fooled."

  "But if it's north-west, it's got to be good. That's what you said." The girl pouted, her eyes sulky under her thick black fringe.

  "The north-west is usually a good direction. But look - the sky is clouding over. The wind is getting up. You have to read what's happening; what might be. You can't rely on what's happening now."

  "I thought the whole idea was you looked at what's happening now and it tells you what's going to happen."

  "The gods don't ever tell anyone anything. You have to find it out."

  "You just make it up."

  "No. If it was that easy, anyone could do it." The child was making things difficult for her. She wondered if she was wasting her time. "It's not easy to explain, either." Her mind clouded like the sky; she'd lost the limpid openness that let her divine.

  "When can I do sacrifices?"

  "When you've learned the sky signs."

  The girl kicked a spot on the ground with the point of her slipper, scuffing the dust.

  "I've told you this before. Sky first, sacrifice afterwards. The sacrifice is a symbol of the sky; the omens work the same way. We'll stop now, anyway." She was getting a headache. Her temper wasn't improved by Tarquinia's look of delight at the ending of the lesson.

  "Still trying to teach her augury?" That was Tarquinius; he must have been standing by the door for some time, but she hadn't seen him.

  "Just finishing." She put a hand to her neck, rubbing it where the tension was greatest, but she could feel the metallic heaviness above her eyes and knew she could do nothing to prevent the migraine now. Her mouth tasted of thunder, ozone bright.

  "You're sure it's wise teaching a girl augury?"

  "If the Romans are going to learn augury, then they will have to adopt our other Etruscan customs."

  "Like women as augurs."

  His voice was sour. She wondered if he was partly driven by jealousy; he'd never had the gift. She'd never believed that the talent was restricted to pure blood Etruscans, as some of the nobles in Tarchna had said, but that saying scratched away at her composure, and it might at Tarquinius'.

  "Like women in the streets. Women at the banquet. Women who don't spend their entire time spinning. Women whose minds aren't only full of wool."

  "I'm beginning to agree with the Romans about women who speak their minds," he said, but there was no malice in his voice.

  "And where would you be without me?"

  He grinned. "In Tachna, I suppose."

  "These Romans have women priests already, you know that?"

  He didn't.

  "Mind you, they have to be virgins. Typical of the Romans, really, to give power with one hand and take it away with the other."

  "Let them be chaste. What of it?"

  "You know a woman's power is never full unless she knows the power of own body. Those priests aren't women, they're girls, unblooded, unbedded."

  "Still, they have women priests, if not augurs."

  "Priestesses, they call them, as if they're different from priests. Not as good."

  "Well, it's a start."

  "That it is."

  "And Tarquinia? Still showing no talent?"

  "She has plenty of talent, when it comes to bitching and manipulation."

  "She doesn't take after you a bit, then."

  She ignored his provocation. "No talent for augury at all. Definitely takes after her father, I'd say."

  "And have you taken the omens recently?"

  "Of course."

  "Well?"

  She sighed, not so much out of exasperation with her husband as out of a desire to let him think that he had exasperated her. You could never let a man think he had you under his thumb; make him feel you were doing him a favour, and you'd always be able to reel that favour back in, some time, when it would do you the most good.

  "The signs are good. Etruria is on the rise, and Rome ascendant. Not one or the other, but both, will rise together. But whether that means an Etruscan king for Rome, that I can't say. The auguries are never that direct."

  "But you feel..."

  "I feel in my blood it will be that way. But I could be wrong. The hidden gods slant their truths. Shapes in the mist, that's all they show us."

  They had shown her blood, too; Rome, Etruria, the laurels, blood. Well, there would be blood, one way or another; a sacrifice, a prisoner, a king. Or maybe her own blood, the blood of an augur, that seemed to beat in rhythm to the hidden gods' involuted dance. There were too many meanings to that vision, and she wouldn't risk telling it to Tarquinius; men always used that sort of telling to justify the shedding of blood, and she could guess whose it might be. Besides, she had her own plans for Faustus, which too early a declaration of intent would frustrate; and killing him would set Tarquinius irrevocably against the Old Romans, might even lose him the dignity he so desired. So she bit her tongue, and tasted the blood in her mouth, and thought; so this part of the vision has come true already, the blood, my blood, and may it be the only blood...

  "And we could marry her to Robur, perhaps."

  She was startled; she hadn't realised she had drifted into the dreamlike space of augury. It was dangerous, if you got too used to it; she thrust it from her.

  "Who?"

  "Tarquinia. If she's useless as an augur, at least she can marry."

  "That pig?"

  "You know it would make good political sense."

  "Political. Your Greek words. Gods, I hate Greek. It's slippery. Devious. Politics. That's rape, in Etruscan."

  "But it would make sense."

  "Yes, it would. Sure. Find yourself a rrumach woman while you're at it."

  "What?" She'd surprised him with that. She'd surprised herself, come to think of it; things must be falling apart for her to consider life without him. But he wasn't her Lauchme now; Rome had got into his blood, twisting him. She looked at him and saw a Roman, as if all his Etruscan qualities had been bled out or sucked up; a man who thought things bent to your will, instead of insinuating yourself into the flow of things, weaving potentials together like threads of mist. A man who might have understood augury once, but never would now. A man who was standing, staring at her, his eyes huge and wide and hurt like a child whose father has cuffed him round the head.

  "You wouldn't..." he whispered, unsure how seriously she meant the threat; unsure whether she would, as she might.

  She smiled, and raised her chin an inch, imperious, looking beneath her lashes at him as if he were beneath her; which, she thought, he was.

  "I desire to be Queen of Rome; not a slave of the royal household. And my daughters shall be queens, too, and not playthings for destructive children."

  She could see the relief in his eyes. If he thought it was only the prospect of ruling that bound her to him, so much the better.

  "Only one voice opposed my candidacy. Only one voice in the whole Curiate assembly."

  "Faustus," she said. He nodded.

  "Others think the same as he does," she mused. "But they won't speak. They're too cautious. They'll let him make the running... he can draw the lightning, while they hide, and wait their time." She turned on her heel, about to go, but then half turned back, to look at him. "Robur was there?"

  Tarquinius nodded.

  "And he said nothing?"

  Slowly, Tarquinius nodded again.

  Tanaquil said nothing, but she allowed one eyebrow to rise very slightly. Her smile suddenly looked not more secure, but more cruel; she knew, now, that Tarquinius would reign, and through him, she would rule.