by AM Kirkby
***
Morning; review the strength of the army. The army was the nation's strength. He'd told his men that often enough that they echoed it back to him now. The thing Tarquin would never understand, though, it wasn't a matter of spit and polish and military parades; it was the deeply boring question of logistics, provisions, calculations of how long a smith would take to make a hundred spears, a hundred swords.
"There's a report from Velathri, sir, that the mines are running out."
"Running out?"
There was an uncomfortable moment. The speaker looked at his feet, everyone else looked anywhere but at Servius. They must have talked about it before he got there.
"Well, sir, they say the mines they are using are yielding less and less metal."
"How long has that been going on?"
No answer.
"We knew nothing about it?"
Again, no answer. He forced himself to exhale slowly; he'd been holding his breath.
"And I don't suppose any of you know whether that's true, or just something Velathri's saying to get better terms from us?"
"We're not mining experts, sir."
"Then let's send someone who is. Better, let's send two; one we send as an official envoy, the other one can scout about on his own. See to it, would you, Secundus?"
He spent hours trying to get the right information, sensing so often that the men were closing ranks against him, trying to cover their arses rather than give him the facts he needed. It took five of them to find out why the third century was spending twice as much as it should have been on provisions, and that turned out to be a simple accounting mistake. So difficult just to get the basics right, to get facts about his own army and his own city; it had never been so difficult in Velx, but then he'd been a military commander, not a king. Tanaquil was always telling him Tarquinius had let things slip badly in his last few years, and this was the proof of it; but it was taking too long to get the system working properly again. And how he was to get accurate reports on what the Marcians or the Northern League were doing, when he couldn't even find out what a century spent on bread and cheese, he had no idea...
He ate a cursory meal of dark bread, crumbled cheese and black olives, with a single cup of well watered wine, almost as if he was on a patrol; kingship demanded too many formal meals for his taste, so that this solitary, sparing repast was a sort of luxury for him now.
Another luxury was visiting the Capitoline temple, still a building site though very nearly finished. It was work, he reminded himself guiltily; finishing off the great temple that was Tarquinius' legacy to Rome. Still, it was a task he preferred to the endless jaw, jaw of limp secretaries and the interminable meetings that so rarely seemed to decide anything.
He only took two attendants. He knew he should have more. Kings always did; the pomp of state demanded it; hedged off from the people by their lictors, by their inner circle, by the appointed magistrates and priests, they moved in a shimmer of awe, inspiring the same kind of fear as the numinous grove of Diana or the ancient cave of the Wolves. Or at least, in his childhood it had always seemed so; and Tarquinius – though he'd heard the king had once worked, stripped to the waist and slipping in mud, at the great works of Ostia – had adopted more ceremony by the time Servius came to Rome. But he wasn't going to be that kind of king, he thought; things were changing – the Vipienas had been right; the day of the king-priest was gone.
The Sacred Way zigzagged up towards the Capitol, folded up on itself to traverse the steep slope; a small stone rolled under Servius' foot, and skittered down the face of the hill, trailing a spurt of dust. Across the Forum, the Palatine, which seemed so high from the Tiber plain, seemed to flatten into a low hump. He felt his heart begin to beat faster, and his throat seemed to tighten as the breath came harder, about half way up; and above, the temple loomed, its columns poised above the void. It seemed to tread the edge, daring ruin; it was the danger that made it beautiful.
Mamarke was striding easily; a young Etruscan, who looked like one of Tarquin's set with his fine clothes, and the kind of very thin braids that took hours to plait and oil, and showed conspicuously the amount of time and effort he'd spent on his appearance. But that appearance was deceptive; he was smarter and more hard-working than he looked, and when he spoke, he spoke sense. He was clever with numbers, and good at asking the right questions, and getting the right answers - perhaps because he didn't talk over everyone else as so many clever people did; or perhaps because of a certain guileless quality to his face. And the Roman – because he needed to show he wasn't just an Etruscan tyrant, he had to be careful to have a Latin for every Etruscan, to portion out the appointments – Gnaeus, a square-jawed soldier who seemed to have been born at forty and never been young, marched stiffly, slightly behind. If Servius hadn't known that Romans never sulked, he would have said Gnaeus was sulking at the refusal of his request for assignment to one of the border patrols ("Ceremonial duties" were words Gnaeus had invested with all the venom of a curse).
The wind was strong up here; raptors wheeled lazily, and torn fragments of clouds streaked the blue.
He looked up again at the temple. The sight unbalanced him; he felt he was falling into the sky, past the great pediment. The pediment still blank, the roof ridge still uncrowned; this was the day the great figures would be mounted on the roof.
The path became steeper as it made one last turn, and then they were on the steps of the temple, the great drop down to the Forum behind them; Servius could feel emptiness at his back, ready to overwhelm him if he stumbled or stopped moving forwards, and upwards, towards the great columns that supported the roof.
There was still scaffolding attached to one side of the temple; great logs jammed into holes in the masonry, and long thin peeled branches lashed up against them. Part of the area by the temple had been paved, but the dip between the temple and the second summit of the hill was pocked with pits, and overgrown where weeds had taken sudden root in the disturbed earth, leggy and rambling as shallow-rooted plants always are. The ground was littered with offcuts; a single huge amphora lay on its side, its belly split open. A cat was prowling across the waste; it stopped, opened its eyes wide at them, then crept away, its belly close to the ground, till it was out of sight behind a clump of tall grasses.
Servius grabbed the bottom of the ladder.
"Right," he said; "up we go."
Mamarke looked horrified. "We do?"
"You're not serious," Gnaeus said. "It's much too dangerous."
"As dangerous as leading a cavalry charge? As dangerous as breaking into the underground prisons of Velzna?"
"You weren't a king then."
"Well, I am now. And as I understand, a king can do what he bloody well likes."
He pulled himself up; the rungs were too far apart , and it was a stretch, and when he looked between the rungs he could imagine how, if his foot slipped for a moment, his whole body could slip through the ladder and fall, all the way to the ground, if he didn't hit one of the putlogs first. Better not slip, then, he thought, pushing the imagined fatality firmly away from his mind. Better keep going. But he could understand Mamarke's fear; he almost wished he hadn't insisted the lad accompany him.
As he approached the top, he heard people talking somewhere above; five or six of them, to judge from what he could hear, when the wind wasn't blowing the sound of their voices away. It was a nasty pull up over the edge of the roof, past the overhang and on to the unstable slope of the roof tiles, where he lay, hands grabbing at the tiles and his legs trailing limp and hurting, for a moment, before he turned over, and sat up to look out, past the smoky air of Rome to the distant hills of Latium and the shimmer of distance like glorious dreams.
Mamarke flopped on the tiles beside Servius, and Gnaeus grunted up, and stood, facing out, with the attitude of a conqueror regarding his most recently taken territory. It seemed like some strange picnic, the three of them here, in the fitful sun and chill wind.
Up at the gable end an empty plinth awaited a god. And there was the god, too; a huge terracotta figure, suspended from a wooden gallows by ropes and leather slings, twisting gently in the wind. He was gaudy with paint, his robes white and trimmed with purple, the lightning bolts in his hands shimmering with gilt; striding forwards, frowning, looking down. He was stern, but not angry; purposive, not hasty.
Yet now this impressive god was imprisoned in his harness, swinging, not striding. A man with a club-foot was rushing from one side of the empty plinth to the other, shouting, as the god was slowly lowered.
Servius made towards him, expecting, at any moment, he would stop, recognise him, welcome him, as people always did, whether cringing or with simple respect. But instead, the cripple turned, frowned at the interruption, and said tersely "Wait. This is important," before turning back to his work.
"Does he know...."
"Who I am? Who cares, Gnaeus?"
Servius looked more closely at the figure of the god; made in a single piece, he'd been told, and indeed he couldn't see a join. The arms rounded smoothly into the shoulders; there was no tell-tale crack between head and neck. Between the striding legs, folds of drapery supported the statue, but the arms were held out, unsupported. That must take incredible expertise, making a hollow form of that size, without cracking; and luck, too, in the firing, he thought.
The god was being pushed very slightly to one side. The foreman moved his head so he could sight along one side, letting the idol twist a little in its sling till he judged the position precisely right. The other men leant against the pull of the ropes, keeping the base of the sculpture still a couple of thumbs' widths above the plinth.
"Down a bit more. - No, stop. Hold this, will you? Careful!"
Surprised, even a little amused, Servius did as he was told, stepping forward to take the flat base in his hands, steadying it.
"Good." The word was dragged out in a sonorous, satisfied way; "Go-o-o-d. Keep it still. Now..."
Clubfoot hobbled to the other side of the sculpture, and further, standing almost on the edge of the roof, turning to look up at Tinia's face, then down again, his eyes flicking from side to side, intent, judging.
From here, Servius no longer saw the god entire; only the folds of the tebenna over his shoulder, loose folded zig-zags patterned like the letters of an unreadable message, and the moulded muscles of his calves, almost concentric ridges turning just below the knees into the rounded, elongated shapes of his stretch. A patterning almost formal in its geometry, and yet still the god seemed impelled, impulsive, moving forward.
"Down. Down. Right down... fuck! Stop it. Stop it now!"
Something was wrong. Clubfoot limped back to the plinth; one of Tinia's outstretched arms had nearly touched the wooden support of the crane. However well made the sculpture, it would break if it swung any further against the beam. Carefully, he pushed the statue at the shoulder, righting it, and then pushed the leather sling a little way down the chest, so that it supported the sculpture lower down, raising the other shoulder up. Now the arm easily cleared the beam, but otherwise the statue seemed hardly to have moved; just enough to stop it from swinging back. He regained his position on the very edge of the roof; it was dangerous to look at something from there, Servius thought – he was looking up, always something that imperilled the balance, and then, it would be so easy to want to see that little bit better and step back without even thinking, into clear air.
Yet his face was intent. Considering. And he stepped forwards again; a mere touch on one side to line it up.
"Down. Down. Wait; the back's not level. Straighten it! Straighten it!"
His voice was low; the instructions precise and clear. That was impressive; no temper, no fear, just concentration, cold and clear as diamond. Servius held the sculpture's base level; it took such little strength, the whole massive weight so poised, suspended. Now, at last, it was settling, with impressive slowness, the darkness between the base of the sculpture and the plinth growing thinner, till at last it was an infinitesimal crack, and at last it was not there at all.
The clubfooted man shut his eyes, and sighed, one great, long exhalation. Then, almost as if he was waking, he opened his eyes and blinked a couple of times and smiled, and said: "Thanks. Time for a drink, I think. -You'll come?"
This was to Servius, who was amused; and also, a little, grateful, to find a man not deterred by kingship, who treated him like any other man. Or, perhaps, who hadn't recognised him.
"I don't usually see workmen take such care," Servius said.
"Well, I'm rather proud of this one."
"Oh, you're..."
"Vulca, yes."
Servius hadn't recognised him; and Vulca knew it.
"You weren't expecting a cripple, I suppose."
Servius was wrongfooted. This man kept surprising him. (So few people ever surprised him these days; that was one of the problems of kingship, that you were sheltered from anything that you might not have expected, by men (it was mostly men, in Rome) who feared how you'd react if everything was not predictable and safe. That made life bloody boring. And now... Vulca. Interesting.)
"No one ever is. But if I'd not been crippled, I would have been out in the fields, not playing with clay. So I suppose it's a blessing, really. Anyway... that's Tinia settled. Come along" – he said this over his shoulder, as he made his lopsided way towards the scaffolding, on the other side of the temple from where Servius and his party had climbed up. Servius looked at Mamarke, smiling, and Gnaeus, scowling.
"Better do as he says." He led the way.
Vulca was already swinging down the scaffolding. Mamarke looked at him, shivered, and then grinned at Servius.
"I can't believe it," he said; "first balancing right on the edge, now this."
"But you don't like heights."
"If the gods had meant me to climb things, I'd have four legs and horns."
Looking at the view, Servius could understand Mamarke's fear; the hill fell away, over the Tarpeian rock's bare angles, and from here the world seemed small, distant, imminently vanquishable. He felt almost able to fly, to launch himself into air like an eagle; there was an excitement to the view that made him grin, as if he'd just won a race. But fearless as he was, as any charioteer would be, he wasn't as fast down the scaffolding as Vulca, and by the time he got to the bottom, the sculptor had disappeared.
By the bottom of the ladder a small lean-to had been set up, tall enough to accommodate a statue of Mnrva more than twice life size. The goddess' face was shadowed by the rafters; her hands gripped a golden bow. For a moment Servius caught his breath; if such a goddess should come after him... he remembered the stories; those who'd boasted of wealth, happiness, skill, and who'd been hunted down and slaughtered by the gods. Her smile was vengeful, the blank eyes threatening.
"Well?"
Vulca emerged from the shadows, holding a black jug that had lost its handle. Just for a moment, the fire he'd been lighting flared up and lit his face from below, casting his eyes into shadow like the empty holes of a skull; then as he stepped forward and the fire died down he was Vulca again, a man whose lean face was creased and tanned as if he'd been fired in his own kiln.
"What d'you reckon? Haven't finished the painting yet, of course."
"Honestly?"
"Honestly."
"She gives me the shivers," Servius said.
Vulca laughed. "She's meant to," he said, and waved the jug happily at Servius. "Grab a cup." He jerked his chin at a pile of winecups; like the jug, black and thick, the lowest quality of bucchero. If you looked carefully at them you'd see the thumbprints, the little unevennesses of the rim, Servius thought. Odd for a ceramicist to have such bad pots.
"They do the job," Vulca said, as if he'd guessed Servius' thought. "They get smashed all the time. The good stuff's at home... not the good wine, obviously, that's here all right. No rot-gut here. You work up a thirst in this job."
Servius pushed his cup forwards to
be filled, but Vulca had moved back to the fire, settling a small pot on to the logs, pouring the wine from the jug into it. "How much honey do you take?"
"Some."
Vulca busied himself. That was one of things Servius missed, and had never thought he would; cooking up his own wine. Lighting his own fire, too. He missed the easy companionship of things, the sense of a physical world that fitted his hands.
Vulca was turning one of the rough little wine cups in his hands. There was something caressing in the way he held it, rotating it in his thick fingers, and Servius felt a sudden rage. He was jealous of this man; this man who had a talent for pots the way Servius had had for horses. (And how long since he'd taken a chariot out, or trained a colt to the bit? Too long, and and his days were getting shorter, and the work to fill them was always growing.)
There were two sawn-off remnants of the great beams of the roof left lying, useless now, unless someone took them to carve into thrones or made them into butcher's blocks; Servius dragged one a little closer to the brazier and sat himself down. His knees almost hit his chin; it was lower than he'd thought. He gestured at Mamarke and Gnaeus, hovering uncertainly near the door. They got the gist, and made themselves scarce. That was the difference between half good and really good servants, he thought; the really good ones knew when to disappear.
Vulca's absorption in the task of heating the wine gave Servius the opportunity to look around the hut. He'd seen the great Mnrva already, but not noticed the winged horses that stood under the lower part of the roof, their manes already picked out in yellow and the pinions crimson. Intrigued, he looked closely at the harness; buckles, bits, even the little leaping horse ornaments of the cheekpieces, were exact. Vulca knew his stuff.
Another surprise; the wine, when it came, really was a good one. He looked up at Vulca, thought of a compliment, then just nodded brusquely, and took another mouthful.
"Why did you come?"
"Why?" Servius repeated, bemused. People didn't ask him why any more. He did what he did, and no one asked questions.
Because I was bored with being a king, he wanted to say. The honest work of setting that sculpture in its place had given him joy, the same joy he'd had camping out, or in his first chariot races, or currying a horse. The simplicity of a task that could be perfectly executed, that was complete in itself.
Then again, he knew what he should say, what was expected; it was an important day for Rome, the dedication of the temple, the topping-out, a day for omens, a day to be recognised.
"Why not?" he said, and wished he'd been more honest.
Vulca was silent for a while, as if he'd been thrown by the answer; as if he'd hoped for something more, and been disappointed. When he spoke again, it was softly, almost as if he was talking to himself.
"I destroyed the first one," he said. "She was too severe. But it saddens me. I feel as if I'd killed someone."
"I've killed," Servius said. "It never saddened me."
But then he thought of where all the men had gone that he'd trusted; so many had died, others had gone on the run from Velx and never turned up here, whether that meant they'd found a home somewhere else, or met their ends on the road, or were still voyaging, on the back roads of Italy, or on the dark sea, or far into the misty lands of the north.
"What did you do with the pieces?" he asked, as if he cared, and found that he did.
"She was fired," Vulca said. "Nothing to be done but break her into the ground."
"You couldn't have just kept her? Made another one for here, and kept the first one?"
"Wouldn't have been honest. My idea was this." Vulca looked up at the statue. "Not whatever the other one was."
"Your Tinia," Servius said, and hesitated. Vulca raised his eyebrows, smiled, encouraging. Servius felt angry again; he shouldn't need encouragement. The King of Rome felt like a boy in front of Vulca's absolute self-possession, and hated himself for it. "I was impressed by its liveliness; the way the god seemed impelled forwards. The rhythm of the patterned robes."
Vulca looked at him. That wasn't right, he thought, stop trying to make regal conversation.
"That pattern. It catches the eye."
"Yes," said Vulca.
"It's not... when I look at you, at anyone, their clothes don't do that."
"No," Vulca said.
"But you..."
"I'm just trying to make some sense of the way things are. To make the way things are into sense, I should say. I'm not explaining myself very well."
"No. You are. It's me who..."
"Trying to get things into some kind of order."
Servius nodded.
"It's no use just putting an image of a man up there," Vulca said. "A god is more than a man. A god organises space and time; he sets bounds, divides, patterns."
"And so do you."
"In my way."
"It's a god-like attempt."
"No. It's an obsession. Have you never seen a child, about two or three, playing with pebbles, putting them in order, one, two, three, the black one, the white one, the grey one? That child-like intensity. They lose it, when they get a bit older."
But some people never did, Servius thought.
"I remember my Tullia, my little flame-haired Tullia, playing with wheat ears," he said. "I came home from a war, I can't even remember which one, now, and she wouldn't look up to see me, because she was laying out wheat ears, each one spooned inside the curve of another, the smallest inside the next smallest, and she wouldn't notice me till she'd finished. And then she swept the whole lot off the table and leapt into my arms and forgot all about it."
"How old was she?"
"About... three, maybe four. As you say, they lose it later."
There was something in those horses that was nagging him, though. It wasn't the harness; something else was itching in his mind like the irritation of a half-healed scab, and gods knew, he'd had enough of those. What was it?
"Your job must be similar," Vulca was saying. "Isn't a battle like that – trying to see some pattern in the swirl of men and horses, to mould it the way you want it to go?"
"If you can see anything at all. Dust, blood, sweat; it all gets in the way. Sometimes, I suppose. Other times it's just slash and prod and thrust. Every second another seemingly inevitable death – you feel it brush past you like a cat in the night, and then another spear comes at you. I suppose that has a pattern too, come to think of it, but it's not one a man can mould, as you put it. It's one you fit into. If you're lucky."
"If you're unlucky?"
"If I was unlucky, I wouldn't be sitting here talking philosophy with you."
Vulca's mouth lengthened in an edgy smile.
"I'm not used to talking about it. Not this way."
"Some artists don't talk about their art."
"You're not one of them... And when you're actually doing it, there's no time for thinking."
"That's true enough," Vulca said. "Thinking is before, thinking is after. Not when your hands are dirty with clay."
Or blood, Servius thought, and nodded. And then he realised what it was about the horses.
"What?"
Couldn't hide a thing from Vulca. Servius hadn't even realised he'd said, almost under his breath, the words "Of course"; that he'd nodded, an almost imperceptible nod, as something shifted in his mind and settled, like the huge wooden bolt of a temple door slotting into place.
"The horses' front legs."
"Are what?"
"Are wrong. Lifting both front legs at once. They don't do that. Not when they're running."
"Oh." Any other voice would have had an edge in it; not Vulca's, dispassionate. "You know horses?"
"I was a charioteer."
"Oh yes," said Vulca; "I'd forgotten." That was the first time he'd let slip that he knew exactly who he was talking to. "So they don't lift both legs at the same moment? I've watched them, often, and I could never see the sequence clearly."
"Not in running. They might if you s
topped them suddenly, if they reared up, once they'd stopped. Then you'd be in trouble."
"Not quite what I intended."
"And they'd be standing on both back feet, then, rearing on to their haunches. Which they're not, here."
Vulca was looking at his feet. Servius couldn't see his eyes.
"But they do look... fine... the way they are." And he knew as he said it that they didn't, that he was lying; and even if he'd been telling the truth, Vulca did not make art to look fine, but to be right.
"Why don't you come to Mars Field tomorrow? I'll put a horse through its paces for you."
Vulca shrugged. "I told you; I've watched horses before."
"Where?"
"In the meadows."
"Ridden?"
"Sometimes. Mostly without a rider."
"You've probably never seen a controlled canter. Every movement slowed, almost stilled."
"Is that one of your skills?"
Servius nodded.
"Well, I think I might. But it will have to be soon."
"Tomorrow, if you like … why?"
"My job here's nearly done. Just Mnrva and the quadriga to put in place."
"Stay in Rome."
"There's nothing here for me."
"There'll be more temples. More jobs."
"Not like this. You know, I'm not sure my horses aren't right. Even if, as you say, they're not. Look where that quadriga's going; they'll have their hooves poised above the city, in clear air. Hooves that will never fall. And Tinia holding out his thunder over a Rome; a threat, a prophecy, a warning. Everything I wanted it to be."
Servius smiled, and held out a hand to Vulca. "I remember feeling like that when I won my first race. I'll never race again, I said to myself. Nothing can ever be as good as this."
"But you did."
"Yes."
"And was it?"
"Was it what?"
"Was it ever as good as that again?"
"Yes. And no."
Vulca took Servius' hand between both of his, holding them gently, still.
"I'll come tomorrow to watch your horses," he said; "but then I'm leaving Rome."
When he thought back to that moment, Servius understood the stories of kings who'd killed their architects, or blinded them, to prevent them ever building anything as perfect again. He understood how the pain of a rejected lover could make him a murderer. But mostly, he thought of the gentle security of Vulca's hands around his.