by AM Kirkby
***
There were other patrols for young Master that year, and other tasks; running messages for the general, keeping his eyes and ears open, accompanying the general to banquets. He came to know the back entrances to all the aristocratic houses; he carried on a flirtation with the valet of one of the augurs, a young man of delightfully flexible body and even more flexible sexuality; he heard gossip, he heard secrets, he heard what people wanted him to hear, and its shifting counterpoint with the things they hoped he hadn't heard. If Ramtha saw him again, he thought, he'd know more than she did about the latest fashion, and who was setting it.
It was starting to snow next time the general hosted a dinner, and Master was on duty again; that name had stuck, so that if you'd asked one of the younger servants, they would have said they couldn't remember how he'd got the name, or had a hard time remembering it. He knew, this time, that he'd end up sitting next to Ramtha; as soon as she saw him, her nostrils flared and her mouth turned up in a self-satisfied smile.
Outside, the first snow of the winter was drifting down slowly in the still air, making the whole world seem one soft drift of whiteness. In the atrium, the torchlight turned the waters of the pool into dark fire; shattered fragments of ice floated on the surface, like a frosty stain. In the hall, the air was thick with smoke and the smell of lamp oil burning, and the light glared hot and fiery, a defiance to the darkness and the snow outside. It was noisy and close, the sound of voices almost overwhelmingly loud, guests jammed together on the couches; far from the civilised ease and the dainty spaciousness of the summer party. Master felt drunk already as soon as he entered, though he'd touched nothing; he wasn't even holding the oinochoe this time, since he no longer had to serve.
He saw her at once, her hair crowned by a golden diadem, a simple band of tooled gold against her dark curls. As she looked towards him, with that pleased and cat-like smile, he saw the hinged plates of her heavy gold earrings swing with the movement of her head. He remembered the general's hands on him, and flushed, and looked at her hands, long and elegant and beringed with gold and amber, and when he looked up at her he realised his cheeks were burning bright with shame and hope.
She was already chatting to a couple of the older men, the flabby blond one he recognised from the summer, and a bald, skinny man whose head seemed skull-like, his eyes sunk deep, though perhaps that was only a trick of the light or rather the shifting shadows of the lamplit room. It looked as if they'd been discussing something seriously when he arrived, but the conversation quickly lurched off into random shafts and counter-strikes of wit.
“Romans,” said the blond with a sigh of disgust. “Good at shagging sheep.”
“Any good at shagging women? Or are they like the Hellenes?” skull-face asked.
“I wouldn't know.” Ramtha was cool, seemingly unamused. “I don't shag sheep-shaggers.” She shrugged one shoulder.
“Their women are supposed to be good at spinning wool.” That was fatso.
“They do it a lot; I suppose it comes from the fact that they're all sisters-in-law with the sheep.” Skull-face sounded sour, though the blond choked out a small laugh at the joke.
“I don't think I'd want to wear wool,” Ramtha said evenly.
“You what?”
“I don't think I'd like to wear wool.”
“Too rough for you?” fatso asked. “Too scratchy for your skin?”
“Not quite,” she answered. “You never know where it's been.”
That had fatso breathless with laughter, wheezing and spluttering. Even the skeleton cracked a smile at that, showing his even two rows of chiselled teeth. Master grinned into his winecup.
“Seriously though...” fatso was trying to keep a straight face. “Seriously though, I think we should keep an eye on them.”
“In case they fancy your sheep?” Master asked, then realised no one was laughing any more.
“In case they fancy our city,” Ramtha said.
“They seem to fancy themselves, anyway.” That was skull-face, his face grim again. “They've started taking over some of the nearer towns. Always grabbing.”
“They let Alba Longa well alone.” Ramtha was serious now; she'd let Master's hand fall, and was leaning towards skull-face. “So either they're playing a long game there, letting the Albans fight on their side against the other Latins and weaken their army by doing so, for an eventual takeover; or we're wrong about their expansionist policies.”
“I don't think we're wrong. Have you ever spoken to a Roman?”
“Roman?”
“Rrumach, Roman, that's what they call themselves. Ever spoken to one? I have. They don't see the world our way. They came from nowhere, or from everywhere, and they see the whole world as simply a blank, something for them to carve their names on. Everything that isn't Roman is there for them to conquer, and their whole life is made of struggle and conquest.”
“That's only because they're outlaws, because it's a young city. They'll soon find out about the delights of wealth; and when they start eating, and fucking, and hoarding their gold, we'll know they're not a threat any more.”
“I'm not so sure. All their stories are about violence; the sacrifice of the sons, the killing of the fathers. It's wired into them. If they're not fighting, I think, they just die.”
Ramtha frowned. “You've been making rather a study of them, Laris. Thinking of joining them?”
“Tinia's balls, no! Everything for them is effort. Look at them breaking a horse.”
“Breaking?” Master enquired.
“It's what they call training. They try to break the horse's will; so, breaking. Roman wins, horse loses.”
“That's insane! How can you trust a horse you've beaten?”
“Maybe insane. That's the way they think, even so. Win-lose, conquer-die.”
“It's rather stark, isn't it?” Ramtha asked.
“Stark. Yes. And remember, one of the things they need to conquer is us. A bit scary, isn't it?” Skull-face's attempt at a deprecatory smile was not reassuring.
Fatso decided to start a long reminiscence then about a Faliscan he'd known who told him how the Romans had got started, some story about a virgin who'd had twins; no wonder the Romans were confused about sex, he said, if they thought a virgin could have children, shagging sheep was an obvious next step. And now Fatso had lightened up the conversation, Laris and Ramtha started joking, too, and that momentary discomfort - the shiver down the back, the darkness between the pools of lamplight - had been negotiated successfully. Besides, now the food was coming round, a fine warming stew of dried fruits and slowly cooked meat, and the room was getting more raucous; wild laughter came from a couch in the corner, and from time to time Master heard what was obviously a punchline, and wondered what the joke had been.
It was only later, after some of the guests had already left - early, but pleading the snow as an excuse; it was drifting high now against the courtyard walls, and in the streets it must be thigh-deep, Master thought - that the talk turned serious again. The lucumo had taken on a new adviser; that in itself wasn't startling, but what was odd was the fact that this new man wasn't from one of the noble families, but a trader, son of a woman from Spina and a local farmer.
“Not a drop of noble blood in him,” fatso said. (And Master had found, having named him 'fatso' to himself, that this was in fact the name everyone used for him; though once, Ramtha called him Tulumnes.)
“Suspicious,” Ramtha said.
“Unusual, certainly,” Laris said, “but not suspicious in itself. Still, the lucumo does seem to be taking rather an interest in the lower classes.”
“As long as he's not shagging sheep.” They all laughed at fatso's joke, but the laughter was uneasy.
“I can see the point of it to some extent.” That was Laris, reasonable as ever. “This new man has particular knowledge that is useful.”
“If knowing about marshes and frogs is useful.”
“He knows about trade.”<
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“Yes, exactly. What does he know about policy or war?” Ramtha was pressing hard.
“Policy and war aren't the only things that matter.”
“He's common. You just have to look at his clothes. He can't even tell a joke properly. And he has that thick northern accent.” Ramtha closed her nose between finger and thumb, mimicking the marshland dialect of Spina. Master winced; her beauty was spoiled, somehow.
“He's got a good mind.” Laris wasn't letting go of his topic. His insistence made his skull-face implacable; there was something uncompromising about him. Seeing she was making no headway with her mockery, Ramtha became serious again.
“Look, these rrumach, you've already told me how they see the world differently from us. Do you think the lower classes are any different? They have no heroes; they aren't individuals, the way we are. There'd be no poetry if they ran the cities. No charioteers, no single combat.”
“It was outlaws from the Rasenna cities who founded Rome,” fatso added. “Perhaps they're all like that, without the values that make us what we are. Look at the Romans; dull grey people, not a single character anywhere. No sense of greatness. No valour. No bravery.”
“I don't know about that,” said Laris. “One of my men saved my life at Clevsin, and he was only a herder of goats.”
Fatso was silent then, thinking, but Ramtha continued to goad her opponent.
“Would I know his name?” she asked. “Did he become a great warrior, then? Why have I never heard of him?”
“He died.”
That faced her for a moment. Then Fatso changed the subject again, talking about the wine; a nice warmed wine, with a little added honey, that he'd obviously had too much of already.
Master was abashed. He detested Ramtha's ideas. Hadn't she been interested in the hoplite phalanx? Didn't she realise that it depended on those low class men, the men she didn't even think were real Etruscans? And he wondered, with a pang, whether that was how she saw him, whether that was the sting behind her naming of him; the master of horse who could never be a master, not even a real man.
Master was careful with his drink that evening, but Ramtha was flying now, drinking the honeyed punch as if it were water. Master looked over to the general; what to do, he wondered; was his job to keep Ramtha sober, or ensure she was satisfyingly pissed by the end of the evening? As Ramtha lifted her winecup again, the general looked straight at him, and nodded; drunk it was, then, and from then on Ramtha's cup was filled before she asked for it, even before it was quite emptied.
“A toast!” She stood up, looked towards the general. “To all valiant men!” She threw the wine down her throat. “May they never want for wine!”
The general stood, extending his winecup to be filled by one of the servants. “To all beautiful ladies! May they never want for men!”
That witticism got a shout of approval from his table. He'd thrown down the gauntlet to Ramtha now, and they matched each other toast for toast, from the witty to the bawdy to the merely silly as they got drunker and the room got rowdier. It was only when Ramtha staggered while proposing her last toast, and her legs buckled once she'd finished it, that Laris leant over to Master, and said softly in his ear, “I'll take her home, if you think it would be best.” And Master, having had no instruction to the opposite from the general, nodded his assent.