Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ****

 

  "It's not going well?"

  Tanaquil always seemed to know when there was something on his mind.

  "It's going very well," Manius said, before Tarquinius could answer.

  "Not badly," he said, "at any rate."

  She had one of her greyhounds with her, leaning its head against her leg; though it looked up at the two men coming in, and its tongue crept half way out, it neither barked nor stood up, just breathed somewhat more heavily.

  "Not badly," she repeated.

  "The surveying is pretty much done. It will work."

  "So there's a problem with the digging?"

  "Not at all," he said, wishing she would steer away from this line of questioning, at least while Manius was there. "Everything is in hand."

  "Fine," she said, in the bright voice that meant; it's not. "Well; will you have a cup of wine, Manius?"

  Manius had been looking increasingly confused; Tarquinius' incipient depression was invisible to him, he couldn't read those small signs of a tension around the corners of the eyes, a slightly deeper line across the forehead, that Tanaquil knew so well how to decipher. He stayed for a single cup of warm wine, and when Tanaquil's dog came to sniff him, he fondled its soft ears; but he excused himself from a second cup, and went, quickly enough for Tarquinius to see that he was fleeing a fight he didn't understand.

  As soon as Manius had gone, Tanaquil's questions recommenced.

  "What is it, then? If it's not the great marsh drain?"

  "It took me back to the saltings," he said.

  "Is that such a bad thing?"

  "I feel old, Tanaquil. Those boys at the diggings; they're all Romans, not an Etruscan among them, and not one that I knew."

  "You had Manius. We could draft a couple of Arruns' friends on to the team, if it's young Etruscans you want."

  He shrugged. He doubted any of Arruns' friends would be interested. The Etruscans who'd come to Rome with him had made their money; their children weren't interested in the hard work of surveying or construction, or trade, or drilling their troops. They studied poetry or music, not as a noble accomplishment but full time; they thought they were above work, above history. She'd missed the point, anyway.

  "Where did all the years go?" he asked.

  Her eyes looked suddenly hard. Then came that cruel smile.

  "Is that it?" she whispered, and stepped closer to him, running her hands down his flanks to his hips. "The years, the flying years." She put a hand up to his neck, and wound it in the braids of his hair. " You think I don't see them? The wrinkles at the corner of my eyes, the grey hairs among the black? Years gone, and you may well ask, where did they go, like a wind that dies, or snow melting away."

  Was it sympathy, he wondered, or was she twisting the knife? His nose was prickling the way it always did when he was close to tears; there was a tiny pinprick of headache above one eye. He felt her breath on his neck.

  "I felt old," he said, and put his hands over hers.

  Later, though, he looked out from the palace, to the Capitol, to the other hills; smoke drifted up from the houses that clustered on the slopes of the Viminal and Esquiline. He remembered all the times he'd done this, over the years; tried to see Rome again as he'd first seen it, before the Tiber bridge was made, before the houses straggled down from the hills towards the valley bottom, when the city was half the size it was now. They'd achieved something with all those years, then, he thought; but the sense of achievement he'd expected was missing. He could no longer see where their first house had been; and no doubt it had been knocked down long ago, replaced by a newer, larger building.

  "How did you like our new diplomats?"

  He turned away from the window, to the dim splendour of the chamber. "Well enough."

  She pulled a wry face. "My dear husband isn't talking, then? I'm not one of those Roman women, you know, bred for breeding and nothing else."

  She never tired of that little dig. It annoyed him and amused him in roughly equal measure.

  "Besides," she said, "my perceptions may be useful. Admit it."

  "True enough." He would choose which battles he was going to fight, and that wasn't one of them. "Well, it's Sethre we have to deal with, I think. It's quite clear that he's the leader of the delegation."

  "The official leader, anyway," she qualified.

  "The official leader. Now as for Pure, she's blunt, undiplomatic, even crude. But that's a useful game for him; she tries to draw other people out into indiscretions."

  "That business with the dancer?"

  "I think she was seeing just how far she could go. I stopped the dance; she's worked out the conflict with the Old Roman faction."

  "She knows just how far you can go."

  "Hm."

  "We should keep an eye on her."

  "Agreed. Now what about the other two? Teitu's only there because of Thresu."

  "You might be right."

  "You're not convinced?"

  "He's young."

  "That's what attracts Thresu, I suppose."

  "That's not what I meant. He's young for a delegation; but he's learning. I think he's been sent to watch the others, to learn how the game is played. He'll be a power, in a few years."

  "And Thresu? Why in the hidden gods' names has he been sent here?"

  "Well, it was an interesting test of our Etruscan culture, sending the two of them."

  "But he's an old fool. Jokes, nothing but jokes. Stupid enough to mention Nomentum."

  "You think that was stupidity?"

  "A secret I'd kept from everyone on our side, and he blurts it out with Faustus there."

  "He knew it was a secret?"

  "Of course he did! Everyone knew. Strictest secrecy. Destroy the message."

  "So he's forced our hand."

  "Why? Why, for Vanth's sake?"

  "You didn't deny it."

  "I couldn't."

  "So you've lost the chance to pick your next target. It has to be Nomentum. And you'll have to move fast, now, before word gets out and the city has time to prepare itself for a siege."