by AM Kirkby
***
There were no dogs to disturb the still surface of the pool today, but the sun was as warm as it had been all those years ago. Today, he watched the droplets of water slowly shrinking on Tullia's skin as the sun dried them both. Later they lay on their backs on the rock, looking up at the infinite depth of sky, and felt the warmth of the sun and the slight chill of a passing breeze that ruffled the pond.
"A pity I can't divorce my wife," he said. "Servius would never let me."
"You're right," she said. "He won't." Her frankness surprised him. Most women would have whined, or sulked, or found reasons for hope.
"I'd do it, I'd have done it already, if I could."
Tullia laid a finger on his lips, pressing his bottom lip, trailing it down to the cleft of his chin, to the soft hollows of his neck. He looked up; she'd turned towards him, but her eyes were distant, full of sky.
"You could do anything," she said softly. "Whatever you want."
I have already, he thought; I've done exactly what I wanted with you... but then he realised exactly what she was saying, and a whisper of wind lifted the hair at the back of his neck.
The future was as infinite as the sky, in that moment, his life full of possibility. With his Tullia, the Tullia who had always been meant to be his, what could he not do? He felt, then, Servius, and dough-faced Tullia he'd married, like a quicksand sucking him down, and vowed he'd be free of them.
"The first rule," she said, stroking the inward curve of his collarbone, "is to achieve everything that you have in you. And you have so much, Tarquin, so much."
"If only I could."
"But you can," she said, suddenly tightening her fingers on his shoulder, till it almost hurt.
Then she laughed, sudden and high, and rolled to her feet, and jumped back into the water, clumsily enough to splash him. The water was shockingly cold.
This is the first rule, he thought, that I live my life, not just suffer it to happen. And laughing, he jumped after her.