by AM Kirkby
***
The storm had broken later that evening, and since then the weather had changed; sheeting rain, so hard it made your eyes sting, or sleet, or freezing fogs that seemed innocuous, but seeped through your clothes and stung the skin. It was unseasonable, far too early in the year; half the harvests would have been flattened, and Tarquinius was busy buying in wheat, against the possibility of a shortage. His decision, a few years before, to erect public granaries on the Palatine had turned out to be far-sighted, though people had laughed at it at the time; "cake-maker extraordinary," they'd called him, and "Tarquin the baker," but he'd have the last laugh.
The atrium was sodden. It was crowded; there were the people who arrived early, shuffling round the braziers to get warm and dried out before they met whoever they had come to meet, or waiting out a shower before they left. The door always seemed to be sheltering some furtive loiterer, who would put his head or an upturned palm out into the rain before pulling back again like a frightened tortoise. The smell of damp clothes pervaded the house. Everyone was in a filthy temper; Tarquinius restless, Manius despondent, Faustus even more acerbic than usual. And the rain continued. Two, three weeks of rain and sleet, of streets running with mud. It was impossible to get anything properly dry.
The braziers blazed; the room was full of smoke. Tarquinius blinked; Tanaquil's eyes stung. Faustus was there, Manius, and Servius, and two messengers Tarquinius had hauled in; there was news from Velx. The storm had broken there with a vengeance; blood in the streets, some said, though no one knew quite what had happened. That was what Tarquinius hoped to find out.
"They say everyone's equal in Velx now." The messenger was diffident. Too young for his job perhaps; overawed by the sheer power in the room, as if the massed rank of his interlocutors was weighing on him, about to shove him out.
"Even the slaves?" Servius was eager.
"They still keep slaves," the other messenger said – a man with a old scar on his temple and a slight back-country accent. "That's not changed."
"But only foreign slaves. They've freed all the debt-slaves," the younger man added.
"So Vibenna has fallen?" Tarquinius; thoughtful, his voice pitched low, with the kind of quiet resonance that can silence a crowd.
"No," the young messenger answered, and Tarquinius frowned.
"That's the surprising thing," the older one said quickly. "Vibenna seems to have led the revolution himself."
Faustus snorted; Tarquinius frowned. That was strange news indeed. There were more questions; Velx's military strength, alliances, any auguries or prophecies that might have pushed Vipienas into action. Only Tarquinius asked the right question; what of the harvest? It had been bad; worse than at Rome, whole fields flattened by hail. There were shortages already; the traders had been hoarding, and were pushing prices up; there were days that two or three bodies were found in the temple, people who had starved too long before claiming the exiguous charity of Turan.
The hush that had met the messengers' first announcment had decayed into dispersed mutterings. Tanaquil took careful note of who was talking to whom; useful to know, even though she couldn't tell what they were saying. The name of Robur was mentioned; she heard that clearly, just as she'd hear her own name even in a room full of conversation, her ears attuned to it.
Tarquinius stood. "Servius," he called, and the room was quiet again. "You know Velx. What do you think?"
Servius looked down for a moment. He picked dirt out from under one of his fingernails. The silence was awkward.
"It's a while since I've been there," he said. "I didn't leave under the best... well..."
He finished seeing to his fingernails, brushed his palms together to rid them of the dirt. He still didn't look at Tarquinius.
"I think, first, he has taken his choice before he was forced into it. He doesn't want the mob breaking down the warehouses, lynching the cornmerchants and the rich farmers. Secondly; he's freed the debt slaves; not the others. It's the smallest action he could take, and still get them to believe that everything has changed."
Then Servius turned to the messengers. "Have you reported everything?"
They looked surprised; the older man flushed darkly, and a muscle in his cheek twitched.
"I do remember, once, Avle was talking to me about Rome. I think he admired it."
No one could see where this was going.
"He admired the city's openness. 'The dregs of Italy,' he said."
There was a rumble of insulted pride at that, but Servius went on.
"The dregs of Italy. All and any welcome. Rapists, thieves, murderers, the useless and the mad. Yet, he said, Rome was the future. The open city. Anyone could come, and it changed them. Made princes of shepherd boys, and kings of half-castes. You're born in Etruria, he said, but you become in Rome."
Tarquinius broke in: "What's your point?"
"Simply this; has Vipienas opened the gates of Velx?"
"He has," said the older messenger, frowning; "but I didn't see what it meant."
Tarquinius sent the messengers and most of his retainers out not long after; the news was disturbing. For once, Rome had been outflanked.
"We've always had enemies," he said; "we've never had competition. I don't like this. I don't like it at all."
"If Ancus Marcius' boys have any sense, they'll be heading to Velx right now," Faustus put in.
"It'll scare the other Etruscan cities," Tanaquil said. "That might play for us, or against us. For us, if they get scared that Velx will make a power play within the League. Velzna has been trying to pull them together, but this will make it more difficult; we might pick off a few alliances."
"I don't like all this equality stuff, either. It's dangerous."
"You used to like it well enough," Tanaquil reminded him.
"I didn't say it's not right; but it's dangerous. Vipienas is more secure as a king with only five noble families to dipute the post; let the peasants and footsoldiers think they could wear the laurels and he's looking far less secure."
Servius frowned; he hadn't that long ago been one of the footsoldiers. "I think you're making a mistake," he said.
"In what way?"
"You don't want piecemeal alliances with other Etruscan cities. You want an alliance with Velx. Look: the Vipienas brothers share your values. I believe they're trying to make Velx like Rome. Work with them. I could bring you together. It could be like Collatia; another free city in the Roman league."
"A free city? Our equal?"
"Like Collatia."
But Collatia had been conquered; it was only free because it had been re-founded, the old city and its institutions completely erased. It was part of the family; which Velx wasn't, and never would be, as long as the Vipienas stayed in charge. It was a daring suggestion, but unlikely to be taken up; certainly not by Tanaquil, though Manius and Tarquinius could see the advantages of it, particularly if the northern cities also joined in league with Rome and Vlex. The most that was agreed, eventually, was that Tarquinius would send envoys to Velx as well as to the other cities, inviting delegations to Rome to discuss trade, and under cover of which, other discussions might also be held; but Servius had a suspicion that Velx was still likely to be sidelined, or even to become an enemy.
Master
Ramtha was still as elegant as she had ever been; her braids hung down her back, and two, precisely straight, hanging in front of her ears and framing her face, each hair oiled into place; the sound of her gold hair bindings tinkling against each other followed her as closely as the scent of incense with which her clothes were perfumed. (And that slight taste in the air that prickled at the nose like an incipient sneeze was more expensive than the beaten gold, Master thought; brought from the phoenix-guarded trees of southern Arabia, the tiny hard pearls that were, you might say, the congealed tears of tree-nymphs - he'd heard that from Egerius - or, more cynically, dead sap. Whatever you called it, it cost.)
He knew there would be a delegation from Ve
lx, and it didn't surprise him that Vipienas was keen to deal; Tarchna and Clevsin were making common cause against him, and their diplomacy was likely to split the whole Etruscan confederation down the middle. The new power of Rome might hold the balance. But he was surprised Vipienas had sent his wife, and not come himself. Didn't he know how Romans thought about women? Or did he think if he was dealing with a half- Etruscan king, he could get away with it? Then again, perhaps he had decided to send her to show that Etruria would hold fast to its own customs, as a deliberate affront; or was there a secret double game that Tanaquil was playing, a conspiracy between the Etruscan women that, perhaps, Tarquinius knew nothing about?
But all this speculation went out of his head when he saw Ramtha in the Palatine audience room, her chin arrogantly raised as she bent one knee before the king of Rome. His blood raged for a moment; he grabbed the hilt of his sword, not for defence but to feel its roughness against his palm, to steady himself. His eyes met hers across the room, and he flinched at the intimacy of it; but her eyes slid away, her face studiedly distant.
It wasn't till the third day after that she finally sent for him, by way of a sweet Greek lad who lisped out the invitation (and who might or might not have been intended for his enjoyment; you could never quite tell, with Ramtha). He'd thought she'd trust him, after he'd rescued her husband; but perhaps after all he was too much identified with Rome. She'd wanted to negotiate on her own terms, or those the Volscians had given her. And now, he thought, it was getting sticky, and she needed his help. The thought was flattering. Not so much the thought that he held the power, or at least the influence that dictated how power would move, in Rome; that he'd known for some time, now, and he prided himself that he'd surpassed his teacher. (The general could analyse a position acutely, showing where the power lay, what influences were at work, what personal factors might interfere; but for himself he eschewed its exercise, preferring to limit his life to that of the mere soldier, the executant of other men's policies.) What flattered him was that even in Velx, they knew that he was the power in Rome; that even proud Ramtha would come to him for assistance when her plans met an impasse.
He didn't go at once. She'd made him wait; so let her wait. He restrained his natural desire to put on the ceremonial tebenna, to plait his hair and oil himself sleek; she'd have to take him as he came, fresh from the exercise field, his feet dusty and his hair damp. He had his pride; that was something she might forget.
She'd made her headquarters on the Aventine, among the Etruscan settlers in the high air of the southernmost hill; it seemed to grow cooler as he climbed the stepped alleyway that led from the Tiber up its flank. At the top he turned, looking across the valley; the white flash of marble on the Capitol caught his eye. Rome spread like a stain in the river plain below. Typical of Ramtha to establish her superiority in this quite literal way; he felt one corner of his mouth twitch upwards, tried to repress the smile, couldn't quite. A servant passed him, five dead chickens hanging limply from one hand; he must have wondered what that lopsided grin was about. Or perhaps not; Master knew he was sometimes too self-conscious. Perhaps all the servant had seen was a rather grimy soldier catching his breath after the climb.
He felt tired suddenly, but squared his shoulders and went on, the route levelling out as it reached the shoulder of the hill. He'd not retained the Greek boy to show him the way, but there was no missing the house; a huge gorgon had been painted on the wall in violent red and black, and two terracotta chimeras flanked the entrance under the grinning Gorgon heads of the acroteria. A young man in finely pleated linen greeted Master - his nostrils very slightly flared in distaste, though you might not have noticed that unless you'd been looking for it - and showed him through to the atrium where Ramtha lay on a red-covered couch.
In all the time he'd known her, he'd never seen her without her cosmetics; without clothes, certainly, but never without her face painted and her hair neatly braided and secured with golden clips. But today she was bare-faced, her hair caught up in a single leather tie. Oh, she was playing the same game that he was, pretending not to care.
She extended a lazy hand towards him, and as he came to take it, turned her palm over and waved him to a chair beside the couch. The insult rankled. He moved the chair a pace closer to Ramtha before he sat, redressing the balance. Two can play at that game.
"You managed to get one of the best houses in Rome, up here."
"Servants have their uses."
"A fine view of Rome. I was admiring it on my way up."
"As if I really wanted to see Rome."
"And a good neighbourhood." Still buttering her up, even if she wanted to play hard to get.
"Ah, yes. Civilised neighbours."
They both knew what they meant, and both were too polite to say it; an Etruscan neighbourhood. No Romans.
"I'm sorry I couldn't come earlier. I had a troop exercise."
"That would account for the smell of sweat. And horse."
"I seem to remember you liked it that way."
She smiled for the first time. "Sometimes."
"It's good to see you again." (Advance.)
"I'm glad you think so." (Retreat.)
"So how are things in Velx? The general?"
"Well. But he seems to have retired from public life, this last year."
"He's an old man."
"And your husband?"
"At work. As always."
"Sending you to negotiate his treaties here."
"Not quite. I told him I would come."
"Rome holds bad memories for him."
"Perhaps. And this treaty needs deft handling."
He nodded, anticipating her request for assistance. Let her ask, though. Best not to be too forward, with this or with anything else.
"It's not easy. Tarquinius has always been our enemy and I have to make him our friend."
"It's not as simple as that."
"No. He sees too clearly."
"He used to see clearly. Less so these days."
"Even so. He knows that backing us puts his alliances with the other cities into question. And he's not certain Rome can afford to do that."
"Not yet."
She seemed surprised by his assessment. "My assessment was that you could have done it a year ago. But then, you'd know the cavalry numbers more accurately than I would."
That was as close as she'd come to an appeal for help, he thought. Time to advance.
"I might..."
"No."
"I could help."
She smiled. He would have thought it a merciless smile, if he hadn't seen that sly creasing of her eyes that always meant she was hiding amusement.
"I don't think so."
"I could, at least, as you point out, give you information. Accurate, up to date, information."
"No." She lay back, yawning; as she put her head back, and stretched, her breasts pushed up through the thin dress she was wearing. He caught his breath. Had she meant to do that? Of course she had; the yawn might be real, but the choreography was intended.
"So you're not interested in our troop dispositions?"
"Maybe... later," she said, and whipped herself upright, reaching over to grab his grimy tunic and pull him to her.
It was enjoyable, of course; it always was, with her. But a distraction from serious business, none the less. And even so, he couldn't help feeling a certain pride at his attraction for her; a pride he needed to put away, to keep a clear head in dealing with her. He lay for a minute or two feeling the sweat dry on his skin, feeling her skin cooling against his, before pulling away and sitting up on the edge of the couch.
"So. Troop dispositions and numbers," he said, thinking; what do I bargain this information for? What does Velx have that I need?
"You can tell me, of course." She seemed off-hand, half asleep almost, but he thought to himself; it's a pose, she's playing games again.
"There might be a recompense involved."
"I think not."
/>
"You don't want to know?"
"Not enough."
That stumped him. He had no bargaining counters left; he couldn't, after all, claim to be able to force Tarquinius' hand, he could only give her information. If she didn't want the information, he had nothing to offer. But he still couldn't help feeling that she needed it, she wanted it, she was only saying 'no' to play hard to get; that he needed to find the way to offer it without her asking. He was about to rephrase his offer when she reached for his hand, covering it with hers.
"It's not necessary."
"What isn't?"
"I don't need the information. Not any more, though it might have been nice to have it."
"You have it from someone else, then."
"No."
"So you don't have it."
"No."
"And you don't need it."
"No."
He tried to smooth the frown out of his features, but she must have noticed it.
"Oh come on," she said, and she sounded impatient; as if she were speaking to a small child who wasn't trying hard enough, or a rather clumsy servant. "It's unlike you to be so slow."
But his thoughts were going nowhere; every thread of thought he followed seemed to end short of an explanation, or wound back into the inchoate coils of his brain. He shook his head. She had him beaten, and she knew it already.
"It's all resolved." He looked at her uncomprehending. "He's agreed the treaty, already. It was done yesterday."
"Yesterday evening."
"No; in the morning. We poured the libations together at midday to seal it."
So she'd known about the pact before she'd sent for him. That was a blow. He wasn't the trusted adviser he'd wanted to be, but a sexual plaything; he wasn't the main business, but the relaxation afterwards. And he'd thought Tarquinius would play with them, and in the end maintain his links with Tarchna; so Tarquinius, too, had caught him off balance. Tarquinius was getting rather fond of doing that, these days; if he hadn't known better he might have thought the old king was getting senile, forgetting from day to day which alliances he meant to make, which to cancel, but he was as wily as a cat. Something was up; and then the cat would pounce... He managed to control himself, but he still wondered if she'd noticed that twitch of his mouth.