Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  He had forgotten the need to eat, he had forgotten the time, the sun which bucketed crazily fast across the sky, or so it seemed to him, he had forgotten everything except Tullia, Tullia, Tullia and the insanity of his love. When they rode back towards the city the land was already greyed over with the coming of night, and the air chilled them as they rode. He felt his stomach tight and empty, and recognised the slight nausea that comes with too much fasting.

  Tullia, Tullia. Her name in his mind like the sound of the thundering hooves in a chariot race. The smell of her, the feel of her, the taste of Tullia; she filled his senses, so that the landscape passed without his noticing. He wrapped himself in the thought of her, in the thought of what they could do together, so that it was almost a shock when she spoke.

  "What are you thinking of?"

  "Only you," he said.

  "Well, I'm here." She jerked her chin up. Her voice was a little hard. "You might look at me. You won't get the chance when we're back in the city."

  He reached across and pulled her towards him, so that she nearly fell between the two horses.

  "It's not looking I want to do," he said, and wondered at the thickness of his voice and the difficulty of speaking, and kissed her hard to avoid having to say any more.

  It was full dark by the time they reached the city; at least, in the blackness, no one would see them, or guess how they'd passed the day. Her lateness might be noticed; he let her ride back to the Palatine alone, and went on to Aglaia's. He'd be able to get something to eat there, and if Aglaia guessed that his relationship with Tullia had changed, at least he could trust her not to report to his mother, or to Servius.

  He left his horse to graze in the orchard beside the house. If Servius was here, he'd be telling him to rub it down, walk it gently till it was cool. Servius wasn't here. The horse would do well enough for one night; he needed his food. Still, slightly guilty, he made sure the trough was full of water before he went over to the house.

  He heard the noise before he got to the door; not shouting, but loud and angry talking, and Aglaia's voice high and strained above it. Strephon was there, and Thesanthei, and Sethre, and it was Sethre who was making the most noise.

  "It's wrong," he was saying, "I don't care what he says, it's just..."

  He fell silent when he saw Tarquin. He seemed ashamed; it was the same kind of silence that falls when a visitor innocently mentions a relative who, unknown to him, died a week ago.

  "Well?" Tarquin asked. "What is it?" He looked round the room, but no one would meet his eyes, and in the end it was Aglaia who spoke.

  "Servius," she said. "Servius has broken up the horse."

  "He has what?"

  "He's broken up the entire army," Sethe said. "Everything's changed. All the old centuries disbanded, and new ones formed. Mix it all up, he said; like a good stew, the more you mix it, the better it gets."

  "So that's the end of your horse," Strephon said. "Too exclusive. Can't have that, can we, nobles fighting a noble war? No, put some farmer on a horse, slap it on the arse and send him into battle."

  That's what the census had been all about, he thought; not a way of counting the forces, or levying new ones, but a mechanism for spreading the nobility thinly across a commoner army. Strephon, charming, superficial Strephon, could only see the insult; but what Tarquin could see, very clearly, was that if Servius continued with this plan, his friends, his supporters, his trained horsemen, would all be separated, and he'd be left on his own, facing all the power of Servius's machine state.

  He'd been dreaming the wrong dream. He'd been daydreaming of life without his wife; but what he really needed was to get rid of his father-in-law. He wondered what Tullia would make of that.

  Tanaquil

  She stood on the edge every day. Here on the Tarpeian Rock she stood, watching for eagles in the gulf below, or silhouetted against the wide sky; watching for eagles, watching for lightning, watching for omens.

  She liked the high places, the ridges and the edges. Down in the thick of things, where the sky was walled off by the tall stone houses that had transformed the city since she first came here, her mind was swamped by the press of things and people. The longer she lived, the more she felt the oppression of life; it wore her down. Things demanded to be looked at, to be thought about; there were so many things, a welter of things, standing between her and the bright simplicities she craved. From here, Rome was simplified; the white glare of plastered houses, the shimmer of the Forum pavement, the further hills like long fingers reaching into the plain, and the great snaking curves of the Tiber shining silver against the dull land.

  Rome was always changing. The Phoenician trader she'd used when she first came here with Tarquin had moved back to Carthage long ago; she'd forgotten his name, even, all except the clicking, clipped sound of it, Melkart or Melek or Malik, or something like that, and his small house near the Sacra Via had been demolished to make way for an expansion of the forum, so there was nothing left of the past at all. There was a garden she used to pass on her way out of the city, an orchard once, and later, a lush shaded garden between two houses; last time she'd ridden out on the Salt Road, the trees had been cut down, and the ground levelled. There would be walls going up, and in a month's time, or two, there would be no sign that a garden had ever been there. There were new houses, and new temples – not just the great temples sponsored by Servius; the Greek merchants had put up a shrine to Herkle a while back, and tiny shrines sprung up in the streets, and sometimes disappeared – and new roads, and sometimes a road would disappear, blocked by a new building or diverted to make it straighter and iron out a kink or a bend in the road. Nothing stayed the same, everything changed, and now, whether it was age or just her attachment to the city of possibilities that Rome had been when she first saw it, she regretted every change as if she were mourning a dead friend, as if something had been taken away from her life that could never be replaced.

  But when she looked down from this height, she no longer saw the vanished pasts of the city; they receded into the bright gleam of distance. If she half-closed her eyes, rays of sun caught in her eyelashes, and the whole world seemed encrusted in gold, warm and bright. It was a magic that always worked from the high places, like looking down from a pass to the plains ahead, the new country that spread out in front like a promise, even though no country ever had lived up to, or could live up to, the promise of that moment.

  Here she was open, as she never was in the city these days, to the sudden spark that could light her mind and kindle prophecy. She could see, if she turned, the statue of Menrva on the Capitol, staring out, ruthless as all gods were, down the Tiber to the unknowable sea; her goddess, goddess of the weaver and the hunter and the seer. That was something Servius would never understand now, the splendidness of certainty that came from the gods; she'd had her own certainty, once, absolute conviction and confidence, but now that she doubted herself, second-guessed her own strategems, the only certitude she could hang on to was that of prophecy, so seldom vouchsafed, so tenuous, so rare.

  "What is it that keeps you coming here?"

  She turned. Tarquin stood just behind her shoulder; she hadn't heard him come up. If he'd raised a hand he could have pushed her off the cliff, to twist in air till her body broke on the rocks below.

  "Just thinking," she said.

  "You can't do that at home?"

  "What do you want, anyway?" He'd deny it of course, but he always wanted something; that was the price of motherhood, always to be loved by your children for what you could do for them, or what you could give them.

  "Nothing," he said, and kicked at a tussock.

  "Nonsense." She looked back across the city; there was a shower across the valley, slanted rays of dark and light where the sun caught the falling rain.

  "You've heard what Servius has done?"

  She hadn't, but she knew Tarquin would want something done about it; and that pulled her back to the city below,
away from her gods and the open sky and the freedom of the air all around her. She felt the energy that had sung in her blood a moment ago drain away, like a sigh.

  He told her. At least he didn't tell her at length, he didn't allow his anger to show, didn't sound like a sulky boy with a grievance. And he'd learned something from her, she thought, because he went right to the heart of the matter.

  "He's dispersed my support," he said; "and he's put his own spies everywhere. I could stand it while his immigrant paupers were restricted to the slingers; but now, wherever we are, they'll be. And he'll know just what's going on."

  "And what will be going on?" she asked, and saw from a twitch in his cheek that there was, as she'd suspected, something.

  But what she could do was very limited. She might be able to save Tarquin's command; but as for the reform as a whole, that would go ahead – it was, as Tarquin had said, obvious that it had been planned as far back as the census, and Servius would never turn back. Besides, he'd be putting the army to use soon. The Etruscan cities were running scared now.

  "When I came here with your father," she said, "they didn't want Rome; there was nothing here for them but sheep, pigs, and mud. But now Rome's got rich, and it's got an army."

  "Which makes us dangerous."

  "Which makes us a target. But I don't think Servius is planning on letting the League do any target practice. He'll march first."

  "Where?"

  "As if I know."

  "You must have an idea."

  "He's said nothing. But it'll be Veii, I think."

  "There's something worries me about going into action. I don't trust Servius. He has some scheme going on; he'll put me into danger, and then he'll cut the rope."

  "Send you off to battle and make sure you don't come back? Like Arruns?"

  "Worse."

  "Worse than death?" Nothing, she thought, nothing would be worse than losing her son; a thought that surprised her with its sudden ferocity, a surge of feeling that brought sweat to the creases of her palms.

  "He wants me shamed. He'll hold the cavalry up; find some way he can blame us, or keep us out of battle."

  "That's tricky. He could do it, but he has to do it without risking a defeat."

  "A defeat he could blame on me."

  "He wouldn't lose. He's devious, but he's a soldier; he won't lose. But even so..."

  "Why do you think he's been drilling the hoplites all week, and the slingers, and we've been stood down?"

  "Because you're ready."

  Tarquin shook his head. "The horses have to be kept fit, the men's reactions kept sharp. A continual state of readiness... you can't just stand a fighting unit down. He's doing it to weaken us, I'm sure."

  She wondered. How much would Servius risk to free himself from Tarquin's opposition? He had no son of his own, nor any appointed successor; that was another risk, that without Tarquin, the way would be open to any adventurer to make himself king. The way Servius had. The way Tarquinius had... Would Servius take that risk, the risk of Rome unravelling after his death? Perhaps he would; he was, when all was said and done, only a hired fighter, a warlord made good.

  "Watch your back, Tarquin," she said.

  "I will. I do. Look at the men I have around me. Mamarke..."

  "Servius' man."

  "Don't be too sure of that. He's been telling me a few interesting things recently. Strephon."

  "That idiot!"

  "I thought you of all people would realise there's more to him than the song and dance act. He's well informed.."

  "He's a clown!"

  "He's smart enough to be clownish. People let their guard down. He hears a lot. Like Thesanthei."

  "Ah, your silent Northerner."

  "No one ever remembers he's there. They don't think he's listening. But he is. They don't think he understands. But he does."

  "And this is why you chose them as companions?"

  He looked down at that, at the toe of his right foot. He'd always done that when he was caught out; fruit-stealing, swigging his father's wine when no-one was looking, fighting with Arruns; and then later when she asked him whether he'd got one of her girls pregnant.

  "Of course not," she said. "You chose them because they drank, because they amused you, because you feel superior to them." She saw from his face that it was true, and also that he was surprised by that last deduction; but it was obvious, at least to her. "None the less, you've worked out how they can be of use." That's smart, she thought, but she wouldn't say it; he was proud enough of himself already for her not to risk making him cocky.

  He was smiling. Time to spoil that self-congratulation. "Are you sure of them?" she asked.

  "Is anything ever sure?"

  He was beginning to understand the game. Life was a series of risks, a series of uncertainties; even if you had the gods and prophecy on your side, there were vast dark wastes of doubt and danger. But you died in the end, whatever you did, and went to the dry land of whispering hinthials; however carefully you spun out the twisting thin threads of life, you died in the end, so you might as well gamble on greatness.