Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  The sun set gaudy over Rome, a welter of pinks and purples diffused on to the gradually darkening blue of sky. A gash of molten gold tore sky and earth apart at the horizon. Servius felt the chill begin in the air. Time for what he'd put off all day, then; time to visit Tanaquil.

  She hadn't been expecting him, he thought, since she wore only a short tunic, and no jewellery, but the red on her mouth was stark and greasy against her pale skin. In the sunset light she seemed almost transparent; he could see the sharp edges of her collarbones, the bones twisting in her wrists. She'd always been lean, but now she seemed hungry, her flesh eaten up by her desire for power.

  "I thought you would have come earlier."

  "I had something to do," he said, but didn't say what; why was he feeling so defensive about it?

  "We need to settle what you're going to do about Robur."

  ("What you're going to do," he noticed, as if she took no responsibility at all for the decision, though really she had everything to do with it.)

  "I'm not going to do anything," he said.

  "Oh for the gods' sake. Not that again."

  "Why should I?"

  "He's a danger to Rome. A danger to you."

  "He would have been dangerous, if he'd done something back when it made a difference, in Tarquinius' early days."

  "He still is."

  "No, he's not. He's spent how many years drifting? From city to city, from friend to friend. Everything he has is borrowed; borrowed houses, borrowed horses, borrowed men. He's become a permanent exile; after all that time, there's no coming back."

  "You'd know," she said, unsmiling. He bit back the angry reply that suggested itself.

  "I'll only make enemies if I kill the Marcians."

  "They're your enemies anyway. Enemies are like snakes; better dead. Better dead quickly."

  "No," he said.

  "What's your alternative?"

  "War on Veii."

  He saw he'd surprised her, by the way her eyes seemed to lengthen, and her face harden, for a moment; and then she said, very quietly, "You'd better explain."

  "An early victory for a new king is never a bad thing; and there will be plunder to buy new friends. A rich Rome is a quiet Rome."

  "But why Veii?"

  "They're weak. Exposed. They played the wrong alliances."

  "That will change if you make war on them."

  "Will it?"

  "Of course. Tarchna is beginning to suspect what you're up to. So is Velzna, I think."

  "Velzna. With which we still have an alliance."

  "Alliances change."

  "It takes time to change them. Time Veii doesn't have."

  "If your army's ready."

  "It will be."

  She seemed not to have noticed the future tense that betrayed his insecurity. Or perhaps she gave him credit for being able to shape his men up in short order; though after this morning's obfuscation and equivocation, he wondered just how far he was from having an army ready to march.

  "Well. If you're sure. Yes. I can see how it works. You have a victory, Rome has the spoils, and the Marcians..."

  "Have what they always had; a distant claim and a grudge, and nothing more."

  She was looking at him, and then she wasn't; her eyes seemed sightless, for a moment, and vacant as a blind man's, or a dead man's (and he'd seen more of the latter, to be honest), and then she shook her head angrily, and blinked till the tears started at the corner of her eyes.

  "A prophecy?"

  She didn't answer, only sucked her lower lip into her mouth and bit down on it, still confused.

  "What did you see?"

  "Nothing."

  "I know you saw something. I know the signs."

  "No..."

  "One of your prophecies."

  "Not really. Just the sunset lighting your hair. For a moment..." she paused. She looked miserable as he'd never seen her before. "For a moment, I thought you were burning up in it."

  "Meaning?"

  "Meaning nothing. My eyes are getting bad these days. They film over if I weave too long."

  "But you saw..."

  "I saw nothing. Nothing."

  "You saw me burn. Do I die that way?"

  "No," she said.

  "You've seen my death?"

  "That's not what it means."

  "Tell me, then."

  She shook her head. The last glare of sun flared up in his eyes. He grabbed her hands, feeling the bones move as he crushed them.

  "Tell me."

  She was stubborn, and he didn't know why, and suddenly he felt pure rage; rage at the way his life had changed, rage at her obstinacy, rage at her secrets, rage at the secrets women always held over men. Fire in his heart, fire in his blood; she'd seen flames, now let her burn in them. He pulled her hands, pushed at her body with his, saw her flinch from him. So much mastery, so much prophecy, and at the end of it all she was just dry shreds and bare bone kept together by a slim spark of life, just a woman, like any other.

  He saw how her tunic stuck to her in the heavy air. He smelt the undertone of sweat to her perfume, the sourness of fear – they said dogs could always sniff it out. Her breasts swung as she stepped back, the fabric stretched over her nipples, but when he pushed her back again it was the angles of her hip bones that he noticed, and the hardness of her ribs.

  He pushed her against the wall and felt as much as heard the dull sound as her head snapped back against it. His own head was tight and heavy with lust and rage; he ripped up her tunic, grabbing at her with one hand. She was wet, damn it, that gave the lie to this game she was playing. Playing with fire, Tanaquil, he thought, you'll get burned, and drove into her.

  It was only afterwards, as he turned away, that he saw the threads of dark blood on her thighs.

  There was blood on him, too, smeared on his skin, clotted in his clothes. Too much blood, too dark; then he realised. He'd thought she was old enough for it to have stopped.

  The light had almost gone; that surprised him. How long … He twisted his tebenna round himself.

  Tanaquil made a sound that might have been a sob or a cough. He looked back; her face was almost grey in the gathering shadows, like a ghost. For a moment he felt almost afraid; they shared too much, the two of them. She was Vanth who opened the doors to the underworld, and closed them again, and he was her hammer-wielding Phersu, who had bashed in Tarquinius' head, who had bound himself to her in secrets and in blood.

  "Is that what you do with Tarquinia?" Her voice was hoarse, like a whisper of dry grass. He remembered his hands round her neck. Such a slender neck.

  "With your daughter?" He laughed.

  Tanaquil looked at him steadily. One hand crept up to her throat, but otherwise she was still; she made no attempt to smooth down her clothes, to pull back her torn braids. Then she spoke again, a single word.

  "Why?"

  He didn't even know. The blood was drying on his thighs, sticking the hairs to his skin, so that he itched. There has been blood, he thought, and there will be more. The ghosts are hungry.