by AM Kirkby
***
An owl hooted, a sound as soft as its silent feathers in flight.
"There. That owl again."
"Never heard it," Tanaquil said quickly. "Owls? What owls?"
Tarquinius scowled. "You know what owls."
She shook her head gently; her filigree earrings swayed, with a tiny thin bright sound of metal jostling metal. She looked at Servius, raised her eyebrows, as if to say; "Tarquinius, you know Tarquinius..." She picked an olive out of the dish before her, holding it in two fingers as she gnawed the flesh off it gently, throwing the stone effortlessly into the pool at the centre of the atrium.
"I'd better go," Servius said, rising from his couch. "Tarquinia will be waiting."
"She's always waiting," Tanaquil said. "Let her wait some more."
"Oh, Servius is getting quite uxorious in his old age." Tarquinius reached for an olive, thought better of it, and drew his hand back. "Comes to us all."
"I hadn't noticed," Tanaquil said.
"The uxoriousness or the old age?"
She threw an olive at him.
She waited till Servius had gone before she asked him why he was invading Velzna.
"Is that what you've heard?"
She didn't bother to answer, just looked at him levelly.
"Well, that's one idea, I suppose... but who said we were invading? We need a defence, that's all. Just in case things get boisterous."
"Well, I was told it was an invasion."
I was told; not 'Manius said,' or 'Servius said', she was too smart for that. A pity. But at least now he knew; as he'd thought, he had a traitor in the camp. He'd have to speak to Gaius; the only man he could trust.
Tanaquil
Tarquin stopped his horse in a skitter of loose gravel, pulling it back hard, flashy testimony to his expertise. Full gallop to a standstill, almost instantly. He'd won the race; what was the point of a lap of honour?
The frost still lay on the grass on the Aventine slopes of the valley, where the sun had not fallen. Here on the flat land between the hills, the grass was still wet, but the sun was shining on the slopes of the Palatine; the sky was that glorious blue that comes with a hard frost and makes the flesh tingle just to look at it. Tanaquil shaded her eyes to look along the level racecourse towards the Tiber end; the distant sparkle of the far turning post, the close-turfed surface of the track.
Here at the near turn a trophy had been set up on the turning post, a scarecrow warrior, bronze helmet and gorgeously gilded breastplate. Beneath it were slung the shields that were the victors' prizes, decorated with hideously grinning Gorgon's heads. (As if a Gorgon could turn away a sword thrust.)
"Did I do well?"
She squinted up at Tarquin, silhouetted against the sun. His horse was throwing its head about impatiently; he kicked it in the ribs, and pulled the reins in to keep its head low. How typical of the boy that unlike Arruns, he would not dismount to greet his mother.
"You did well," she said. But then, he knew that.
Tarquin smiled. He held his chin slightly up, so that he looked down on the world; his mouth was curved in the cruel smile he inherited from her.
"You pull too hard," Servius said. "You'll knacker your horse's mouth."
"What's it to you? There are enough horses in the world."
"Horses as good as Fulminator? Horses as good as Tonans?"
Tarquin scowled. He'd ridden Tonans in the races two years ago and foundered the horse on the hard ground. They'd put it out to pasture on the edge of the marshes near Ostia, but though its hooves had recovered, its temper had soured; it was a nasty brute now. Only Tarquin would ride it, and its temper was too unpredictable for a race; it might stop, suddenly, or savage one of the the other horses. So he rode Fulminator today; a full brother of Tonans, not as quick but not yet spoiled.
"He's as good a rider as his mother," Tarquinius said. For once there was no double meaning in his words. "You'd hardly think I was his father, would you? Sometimes I wonder..."
Tarquinius laughed, a deep rumbling laugh he seemed to have adopted with his kingship, the sort of laugh that warns everyone else to laugh along with it, on pain of some undecided penalty. He never used to laugh like that, back when he was Lauchme and she was Thanchvil and they were young as the day, every day, before they had to weigh every word and every action and see the consequences branching out like the channels of a delta from whatever they did or said. He used to laugh from sheer joy, a light, high laugh she'd not heard for too long; when last? she wondered, and realised that was another of the unanswerable questions that seemed to cluster round you with age.
They'd been good years, the last few; Arruns growing into a serious young man, Tarquin a splendid prince; Servius masterminding the conquests – small towns, sometimes Latin, sometimes Etruscan, towns no one would miss or care about until it was too late; towns that wouldn't, taken one by one, upset the great cities and set them against Rome. Good years, she thought, as a Greek history would tell the story; but years that had hardened and coarsened her husband, that had wearied her and woven grey hairs into her temples.
"Sometimes I wonder..."
Tarquinius laughed again, and Servius laughed uneasily.
"No, you don't," Tarquin said, cutting short the hilarity. His father looked at him. A cold look, dangerous, but Tarquin, all fire, ignored it. "A pity really; I might have been an Etruscan whole-blood, if it hadn't been for you."
"Fuck you," Tarquinius said. Suddenly the air prickled with danger.
"At least I have my mother's blood."
"You're the grandson of Demaratus. And he ruled Corinth."
"He was thrown out of Corinth."
"He was a ruler."
"He was a tyrant. They're two a penny in Greece."
Tanaquil thought; things have gone too far. Words will come to blows. Or worse; Tarquin exiled, outlawed, executed. She was the only one he would listen to; his only friend among this company.
"Tarquin!"
He looked down his nose at her, but he was listening.
"This is not how nobles behave."
Suddenly his face was a mask. He'd learned that diplomatic cool from her; but he used it too obviously – he'd let himself kindle, flare up, burn. Then it was too late; the falsity of the calm face was obvious. Was Tarquin fit to be a king? But he was young; he'd learn. He might fly far and loose, but he'd come back to the lure in the end, her little eagle.
The horse edged away, upset by the shouting match; it was on its toes, forcing Tarquin to pull its head closer, almost turning it in a circle.
"He'll come round," she said to her husband. "Just ignore him. He's won a race; he thinks he's a god. Let him think it for ten minutes."
"He'll still ruin that horse. Servius is right."
Servius was not to be forgiven, though. Tarquin should have listened to him; Servius was a past victor, was renowned as the best judge of a horse in Rome, had bred and trained his own winners. But Servius had spoiled Tarquin's victory, and Tarquin would never forget it.
"He's nothing better than a slave," he said later to Tanaquil. "I don't even understand why you let him hang around the palace."
"Because he's useful."
"Like a slave."
"When are you going to learn?"
"I'm not."
Tarquin sulked, like a scolded cat. It made Tanaquil wonder what she had done wrong; how had he turned out to be so wilful? Tarquin invested so much importance in his royal heritage, in the aristocracy of blood, he couldn't see the true aristocracy of the heart; couldn't even see the usefulness of those whose heads were clearer, because less full of myth. He dreamed of Tarchna as a place untroubled by politics, by the striving and struggle of ambitious men with forebears unimportant or unknown. He'd never seen it with her eyes, or his father's; the way it turned inwards, the cramping of all ambition. The smallness of small town politics, with nothing to conquer, nothing to achieve but keep the city the way it had always been. A new temple from time
to time, another statue or altar; even increasing the city's wealth was only more of the same, and in the end it resulted in no more than boredom. But Tarquin dreamt of the city she'd left as a place of golden prospects and purple robes, and as long as he had those dreams, he was blind to what Rome had meant to her, and to Lauchme. They'd had dreams, too, once.
Now? Sometimes she felt the prisoner of this city she'd helped to create.