Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  She was magnificent again, her black hair braided with gold, and no one could tell where the still sparse silver hairs had been blackened with dye. Her ears were heavy with golden growling lions and the tinkling of filigree bells, and a triumph was vermilion painted on her smile.

  "I told Tarquinius you'd always been working for us. Told him you'd been waiting till you could strike a decisive blow."

  "He believed it?"

  She tossed her head, and the bells tinkled. "I suppose so."

  He looked out from the villa across the lawns, to the far side of the valley; lush, closely cropped grass, and trimmed low herb hedges, betrayed the luxury of her establishment. She must have four, five gardeners; and gardeners who were invisible, inaudible, when she wanted them to be, as she did now. Two hounds curled at her feet; lean, nervous creatures, which shivered as they looked up at him. Two chairs, a table with a krater, a jug and two wine cups, and a bowl with olives macerated in herbs and oil; nothing out of the ordinary for an Etruscan villa, but when he looked more closely, he saw the krater was by Sophilos, or one of his followers – the freedom with which the figures leapt, ran, ducked, black against the light ochre of the clay, witnessed its quality, and its price.

  "In retirement, they said. You'd given up politics."

  "So I had."

  "What were you going to do with your life? Make blackberry jam in autumn, and weave all winter?"

  She smiled bleakly. Looked down at the dogs. "I enjoy hunting."

  Master rotated his wine cup in his hand, watching the wine swirl, wondering if he'd been too harsh, where this conversation was going, where it ought to go; wondering if Tanaquil was wondering the same thing. Embarrassment filled the short silence.

  "Why?"

  She shrugged. "I missed you, I suppose."

  "It's unlike you to be sentimental."

  "I'm not. I missed your advice. It's good, most of the time. Though they tell me you slipped up badly after your last battle."

  "Given up politics, and still want my advice?"

  "I might have tried to give up politics, but politics doesn't want to give up me."

  "Meaning?"

  "Too many Romans want me dead."

  "Tarquinius?"

  "I don't think so. No, it's the tale-bearers; she's done this, she's done that, did you know she was involved with so-and-so, with this or that. They want me out of the way."

  "You are out of the way."

  "Not far enough."

  "Come to Velx."

  "You think Velx is far enough?"

  She hadn't really answered his question. He didn't need to answer hers.

  Anyway, Velx was dead and gone now. He couldn't imagine even Ramtha could make anything of the situation; the city was like a rotten tree stump, dead inside, and all Rome had to do was push the crumbling wet wood and watch it collapse.

  "You planned it all?"

  She nodded.

  "Just to get me back?"

  She shrugged.

  "And other things."

  "What other things?"

  "Look," she said; "Let me be honest with you."

  That was a warning sign, in his experience, that there were lies coming up.

  "I tried to talk to the Vipienas. I could have delivered them Rome. I could have given them Tarchna. But they wanted clean hands. They wanted some kind of purity I couldn't give them. And as things stood, they were just another centrifugal force."

  "Centrifugal?"

  "Pulling Etruria apart. Just the way Tarquinius wanted. Dividing so he could rule. That's why they had to go."

  "But now Rome gets Velx."

  "And Etruria gets Rome."

  He looked at her sharply.

  "You think Tarquinius wants to take over Etruria. Well, so he does. But what you've forgotten is that Rome is an Etruscan city."

  "Full of Romans."

  She shrugged. "Look at the city. Tinia, Uni, Mnrva guarding it from the Capitol; the deep dark pit of the mundus in the centre of the forum. Our gods, our city."

  "It's changing."

  "We can change it back."

  "We?"

  "Someone has to lead the Etruscans. The Vipienas had the right idea about that, anyway."

  One of the dogs stood up and stretched, the fur on its back standing rigid. Tanaquil put a hand down to pat its head; it yawned. The soft skin round its mouth was mottled pink and black, and wet.

  There was something wrong with all this, something that had worried him ever since Postumus had said "She wants you"; something that had been working away at the back of his mind, corroding any trust that remained between him and Tanaquil.

  "Can I ask a question?"

  She raised an eyebrow. "You just did."

  He scowled.

  "If it wasn't … delicate, you'd never have asked if you could ask it. So I see there's something on your mind that's not Roman politics, or the war in Etruria, or how I occupy my time here, though you can be sure that the answer to the latter is not picking blackberries."

  That was as close to a rebuke as she ever came, he thought; if you crossed her more seriously, you'd feel the knife in your back before she'd say anything. He'd upset her already; he had to be careful. More careful than he'd been after the battle...

  "Postumus was your man, of course."

  "Of course," she said, and there was the hint of a further criticism in her voice; how could he be so stupid, she seemed to be saying; wasn't that sufficiently obvious to be left unsaid?

  "He was there to kill the Vipienas. And to rescue me."

  Tanaquil had started tapping her fingers on the arm of her chair. "So?"

  "The top command were all killed. That's the only reason he was there. I would have thought you'd want to have been certain he was in a position to act. Unlike you, leaving things to chance."

  "But I didn't."

  She wasn't smiling, but the tapping had stopped.

  "Postumus had his instructions. Of course, if Rome had ever looked like winning, or if he'd heard definitely that the Vipienas had been killed, they would have been superseded. But if Rome was losing, he had to get himself into the Etruscan camp. One way or another."

  "One way..."

  He thought of the commanders leading out their army, condemned to certain death. Enemies in front, enemies behind, and if they escaped that death, a fatal secret enemy in their own ranks. He shuddered, feeling a blade at his own neck. He wondered just how Postumus had come by that fresh scar on his face; whether that had been an Etruscan blade, or a Roman.

  "You know it would never have worked," she said, and the kindness in her voice set his teeth on edge like bad cider. "You didn't have Velathri, you didn't have the south, you didn't have Tarchna. You were too weak."

  "Even so..."

  "You came close. True."

  She reached forward and poured herself another cup of honeyed wine. (That was typically direct; Ramtha would have looked at her empty cup and sidelong at him, waiting till he understood that he needed to replenish it.) He looked at the krater again and wondered how many good men had had to die for Tanaquil. He'd never get to know Lars now, leader of Felsina's second wing; and his grief for that unfulfilled desire cut him more deeply than the loss of the Vipienas.

  "Anyway, I need you here. Tarquinius..."

  "He's forgiven me?"

  "He's seen your uses. No, what I was going to say; he's unreliable. And young Tarquin's worse."

  "I thought he was doing quite well."

  "He's too young. Too full of himself. I'm trying to teach him; but the question is, does he want to learn?"

  "Does he?"

  Her face twisted. "Sometimes."

  Master managed not to smile. So she needs me, he thought; not as an adviser, but as a new king. Given up politics, my arse.

  "So I need you. And the only way to bring you back is to give you credit for the Vipienas' deaths."

  "But I broke them out of Velzna in the first place."

&n
bsp; "Because you thought Velzna would betray us."

  "I did? … That story has too many loose ends. And Velzna never came over. Though Caile had started talking to them..."

  "I'm trying to help you, Servius."

  Oh yes, he thought; I'm Servius again, a slave and not a master. But we'll see who is the master now, Tanaquil; because you've actually said the words, you need me, and it's necessity that makes slaves.

  "Do you know what owls mean?"

  "Sorry?" She's gone barking mad now, he thought. That was the trouble with prophecy; you got round to believing it, if you weren't careful. What owls mean? Had she started talking to them, as she did sometimes to her dogs?

  "Owls?" she was impatient again. Retirement didn't suit her, he thought. How her servants put up with her he didn't know; then again, he hadn't seen any since he'd been brought in by a timid serving girl, so perhaps they coped with Tanaquil simply by keeping out of her way. "Well?"

  "Well... the general always thought they were a bad omen before a battle."

  "Have I taught you nothing?"

  That was one of those questions that only women and general asked, and that he knew better than to answer.

  "The owls of Vanth. The owls of Charun. Death. Slow or fast, death. Silent, unblinking eyes of doom."

  "Why are you thinking of owls?"

  "I'm not. Tarquinius is. He keeps hearing them."

  "Easy enough."

  "There are no owls on the Palatine. And no one else hears them."

  He understood. He was afraid he understood.

  A change of regime

  That damned hooting again. Tarquinius sat up, hissed between his teeth, rubbed his eyes. He felt as if he'd been wakened from deep sleep, his body lethargic and unresponsive, but he wondered if he'd slept at all; he remembered lying restless, every whisper and scratch and dog bark in the dark rousing him again to wakefulness. Hours of wakefulness. Now this, and nothing between. Not sleep; nothing. That was how it felt.

  He cracked his knuckles; his fingers felt clumsy and numb. He heard the joints click, and gritted his teeth against the pain of reawakening. He had cramp in one leg.

  Suddenly a cold wind brushed his face; he ducked as something immense, soft, nearly silent passed over his head, and felt what he thought was the touch of the edge of a feather. He remembered an eagle swooping at his head long ago, cold blue air and fear and a sense of awe. Not in here, gods, not in here; how had they let the owls get into the palace? And where were his guards?

  Things were quiet; too quiet. So many nights he'd lay nearly but not quite dozing, and one of the guards outside his door would cough, or shuffle his feet, or (sometimes, and he needed to do something about that) snore, and the noise would startle him back to wakefulness; and tonight, when he needed someone within reach, someone to bring a lamp and look in the room and tell him there was only some damned pigeon that had got in here, when he needed wine and needed it badly, and now, everything was silent.

  He got up. His left leg was still numb, and he nearly fell as he overestimated the distance to the ground, and rammed his foot painfully on to the floor; he was sure he'd cried out, but there was no answering call, no sound of anyone coming to the door as he'd normally expect.

  Somewhere in the darkness, he heard an owl asking who, who, who.

  He felt for the door. It was somewhere in front of him, he was sure, and he slowed his pace, not wanting to hit it; feeling out into emptiness, feeling vulnerable and stupid. Had the servant left the tripod in here? He couldn't see; the warmed wine would be cold anyway, if there was any left. Call for more, he thought. The side of the room was much further away than he'd expected, and when his fingers touched something it was the rough plaster of the wall, and not the door; he'd gone wrong somewhere, set off in the wrong direction.

  He worked his way along the wall; past the corner (that was unexpected; he'd gone further astray than he thought), finally feeling the crack at the door's edge under his fingertips. Still there was no sound. When he opened the door, he could see; not light, exactly, but a lesser dark. And there was no one there. No guard; no serving boy or girl sleeping on the floor in front of the door, in case he called for wine or medicine. No one.

  Maybe they've just gone for a piss, he thought.

  But wouldn't he have heard something? However quiet servants tried to be, you could always hear them. He always heard them, anyway.

  Nothing to do but wait. It was cold out here; his mind was clearing, the chill chasing the clouds and fugginess out of his mind. The nightmare bird receded, shrank, no longer disturbed him; he'd dreamt it, or there had been a draught, and in the confusion of waking he'd panicked, imposing his own fears on the moment.

  He'd walked back into the room and closed the door behind him when he heard a breath, a single breath.

  Someone there? He didn't dare say the words aloud.

  Nothing.

  That was bad. That was worse than something. If he'd heard the breathing continue, he would have known there was someone there. To hear nothing meant one of two things; either he'd imagined the noise in the first place, and was sliding ever closer to insanity, driven mad by lack of sleep and the loneliness of kingship; or there was someone there, and it was someone who wanted not to be detected.

  This is the way it ends, he thought. Maybe he had heard the owl after all. If Vanth had sent it for him, as Tinia had sent the eagle. This is the end.

  A cough. Almost respectful.

  "Well?" This he could handle. The guard, perhaps, fearful of punishment. (But then why had he crept into the room? And how was it Tarquinius hadn't heard him, hadn't felt him pass by?)

  "It's Manius."

  "Ah, good. You're back from Tarchna, then?"

  "Yes."

  "Seen the guard?"

  Manius didn't answer.

  "Any luck with the trade talks? Are we going to be using Graviscae or Pyrgi for our imports next year? I suppose you got a discount from them in the end. They were sticking out for far too much. Must have relied on the fact Tanaquil's one of theirs. Not that that would help them..."

  He realised he was talking too much. Oh Tarquinius, what have you come to, gabbling to fill the silence, wanting to be important, to be loved.

  "You didn't see the guard?"

  "No."

  "I sent them away," a voice said, lightly. He caught the scent of musk and citrus, heavy and acid at the same time; Tanaquil, on silent feet.

  "You..."

  "I sent them away. You won't be needing them."

  Suddenly something hit the back of his knees, and he fell backwards on to the bed; and before he could say anything – before he even realised he needed to shout, to bring someone running – he could feel hands holding down his shoulders, and a soft, warm weight over his face, like drowning in feathers.