by AM Kirkby
***
"It's where the augur said to put it," the foreman said.
"But it's still in the wrong place."
"I just do what the augur says."
Servius turned his back on the foreman, looking along to where the land had been marked out with stakes and rope. He shook his head. Augur or no augur, it was wrong. The land outside sloped downwards to the gate, and there was a huge blind area just over the shoulder of the hill, where an enemy could gather unseen. He'd come out to see the work on the new walls - everyone was building walls now, Perusna and Tarchna and Curtun and Velathri; he'd come with Tanaquil, and Mamarke, and Tullia (for once amenable, which he put down to Tanaquil's good influence) and a couple of dozen other attendants.
"Does it matter so much?" Mamarke asked.
Servius sketched the land out with his hands, showed Mamarke the problem. "Don't you see?" he asked.
"I do. But..."
"It's important. Get this wrong, we might as well not build a wall at all."
There were problems, of course. The augur protested. There had to be a certain number of gates. They had to be in the right places. Not the right places as Servius saw it, but one facing each direction of the heavens, equidistant, one for each of the gods, gods of life and death and boundaries; sixteen gates.
"Sixteen is too many," Servius objected. "We can't defend sixteen. Sixteen weaknesses. Not enough men."
"None the less, sixteen have to be built."
This was a nonsense. "At least build them narrower," he said.
"You can't argue with an augur."
That was Tanaquil, and she should know.
"I can. And I need to."
"The gods..."
"Bugger the gods. It's not the gods we have to fear. It's Tarchna."
"Leave Tarchna alone."
"Don't worry," he said; "I've no plans in that direction. But whether they'll leave us alone is more of a question."
So sixteen gates there were, and one of them in the worst possible place to have a gate; but some of them were no wider than a man's shoulders.
The walls might not have been what Tanaquil wanted, not strong, regularly coursed stone, topped with many towers; but they'd be effective - deep ditches, and high earth banks that would slow any army, and stop most. Only at a few points, and at the gates, were huge soft tufa blocks used to build a true wall.
They walked along the line that had been laid out; in one place the banks had already been thrown up to their full height, the soil a raw scar on the landscape, but for most of its length only a low mound ran alongside the beginnings of the ditch, and towards the little spur of the Viminal hill and the long sloping table of the Esquiline there was only a line of rope slung from roughly hammered-in stakes.
There were men working further along, slicing the turf up where the ditch was to be dug. Mud had already spattered their legs and they worked slowly, without enthusiasm. Two leant on their spades and chatted, till they saw Servius' group approaching, and bent their backs to the work again.
Tanaquil had told him how Tarquinius once stripped to work with his men; once, he would have, too - would have worked with them, drunk with them, told them tales, listened to theirs. The way he'd been with Vulca, man to man. But the way they started work as he approached showed him as nothing else did how they saw him, like birds frightened of a scarecrow.
"You're getting along with it?" he asked genially, and they said they were, and he asked a few questions about the lie of the land, and where they would join up with the next section, and they gave him answers, and one of them put a mattock in his hand and asked him to turn over a turf or two. But that wasn't work; it was a symbol of work, a pretence, and he felt false and ill at ease.
"How many days' work have you got left?" he asked one of them.
"Too damn many."
""Was supposed to be one day a week," another volunteered, "but we've been told it's two now."
"Rome's at war," Servius said. "Or might be. We need those walls."
"No doubt. And I need to get my fields ploughed."
"Now?" Servius raised an eyebrow. "Bit late for ploughing."
"In a manner of speaking. There's always work on a farm."
"It's not ploughing, and it's not harvest. You'll survive."
The man scowled at him, but he knew he had the right of it. Every able bodied man was working two days a week on the walls, apart from officers and the lictors.
"There's those that don't work," the first man said. "If you know someone, they say, you can get off."
"Do you know anyone who has?" Servius asked.
"No."
"Well, there you are."
"I don't know that kind of people. If I did, I wouldn't be working here, would I?"
There was nothing could be said to that argument, so Servius changed the subject, encouraging the men to imagine how the walls would look to an approaching enemy, how the northern Celts for instance, or the southern Greeks, might have cast envious eyes on the growing wealth of the city, but this would deter them; but he knew, all the time, the men had only half a mind on what he was saying, but were still thinking about their farms, their businesses, the way Rome had stolen their time and given them only mud and backache to show for it.
At least Servius had had the foresight to bring cakes and cheese and some thin dry sausages, which were shared out, and a paunchy wineskin did the rounds and came back much shrunk; despite the undercurrent of grumpiness, he bought a few smiles and confidences with his provisions, and rather more when he told the foreman to let the men off early for the day.
After that refreshment, the way should have been easier, even though it lay over rough ground now, too rough for a chariot to take though easy enough to walk; but they all felt tired, after the wine, and the long uphill slog took the breath out of them.
"They don't like it," Tanaquil said.
"No."
"Rome was the place they came to get away from this kind of thing. Forced labour, excessive privilege..."
"What privilege?"
"Look at who's working there. Farmers, butchers, smallholders. Is Tarquin doing forced labour? Mamarke? Gaius? Any of the nobles? Who do you know from our families who's working on the walls?"
"They all have things to do."
"Tarquin? Really?"
He looked away. Here it comes, he thought, she'll expect me to do something about her son.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "Tarquin doesn't matter. And I know Gaius has his troops to drill. But you've built your kingdom on the plebs, and now the plebs arent happy. I'm just telling you how it looks to them."
"I know how it looks to them. But walls must be built."
Walls indeed had to be built. The land had been too permeable, out here, in the land that wasn't quite city, nor country neither. There were streets that tapered off into rural tracks, or ended in gates on to fields, or simply gave out altogether in a dusty circle of ruts where the carts turned to go back. Rows of stone-built houses stopped suddenly; in one place a single house stood unfinished, as if waiting for the city to catch it up. This was a nowhere land, without definition, without boundaries. Without laws or reason; roads and tracks wandered, turned odd angles to avoid a shack or a field corner, came to dead ends. Someone had put a shack up overnight in the plain centre of the street, and now, years later, rebuilt in stone and with a second storey added, it had become The House In The Middle Of The Road, as if it was a monument to be celebrated, not a nuisance.
This was not Rome, exactly, but it wasn't not Rome, either. Not one thing nor the other. The wall would cut the land between two houses, leaving one in, one out of the city; would cut one field from another, would chop an orchard in half between the rows of the trees. Everything this side would be Roman; everything the other side would be cast out.
At last the long climb was over; they could look back along the line of the rope, where the wall would stand. Its ambition was impressive, carving a huge curve out of the
land. From here they could see the city's hills; the lumpen Palatine, craggy Capitol, and beyond the silver ribbon of the Tiber, the long slope of the Janiculum, dark with trees.
Servius felt some satisfaction at the sight, even if the wall was still largely a matter of rope and stakes and hope. Tanaquil was less enthusiastic; judging from what she'd seen that morning, she thought it would take two years, perhaps more, to finish the wall.
"We just have to hope nobody decides to attack while your wall isn't finished." Damn the woman, she could spoil the best of days with an acid aside.
"You think they will?" Mamarke asked.
"If I was in charge of Tarchna, I would," she answered; "because if I waited, it would be too late."
"Fortunately the current rulers of Tarchna aren't as clever as Tanaquil," Servius said. "Or as bloodthirsty."
It was a good point. He wondered if he'd be in time to take the Etruscan cities before they, too, organised their defences; the longer he played this game, the harder it got. He knew, too, he was up against his own people; he could push them only so far before the indulgence he'd won with his victory over Veii ran out, and they started to complain, and to remember how things were better, once, under Tarquinius, or Ancus Marcius, and from there it was a quick step to plotting and revolt.
"I wonder," Mamarke was saying, but his voice tailed off, as if he was afraid of the thought. "I wonder... Are the walls to keep the monsters out, or in?"
Tarquin
"He's gone too far this time," Tarquin was saying. "And after I saved his sorry arse at Veii."
"Regular orders," Kallisthenes said. "What's unusual about putting men in the same armour? Saves money, at least."
"It's not the way things used to be done."
"So, things change. Aren't you usually the one who wants them to?"
It was a morning of bad temper. One of Aglaia's girls had just reported she was pregnant, and it was too late, Aglaia thought after a cursory examination, to do anything about it, so up went the costs of her establishment (and she'd nearly hit Kallisthenes when he suggested there was nothing wrong with the time-honoured custom of infanticide by exposure); Kallisthenes had heard that a distant cousin he particularly disliked had taken advantage of his prolonged absence in Rome to take over his father's estate; and then Tarquin had heard about Servius' latest edict on the army, and that seemed the third and worst stroke of bad fortune on what was anyway an unlucky day in the calendar.
It was the same old company, Tarquin's set, Sethre and Thesanthei and Aglaia and Tullia and Mamarke, and Kallisthenes keeping up his act of wise old cynic. It was getting on for midday and Thesanthei was already half drunk, or hadn't quite sobered up from last night. Strephon was here too, though he was supposed to have left Rome.
("You should have ridden out," Sethre had said.
"Nonsense," said Tarquin; "Servius' anger won't last, someone must have got to him, I'll sort it out," but he'd not mentioned the matter to Servius - somehow Servius was always in a bad temper when Tarquin saw him, so he judged it better to let the matter lie - and meanwhile, Aglaia kept Strephon well hidden.
Still, Sethre had pressed, it would have done no harm if Strephon had put himself out of harm's way, somewhere in Campania or the Alban hills; Tarquin could probably have arranged for his friend to borrow his mother's villa, and since that was only a day's ride from Rome, Strephon wouldn't be cut off from his friends. He'd be back soon enough. Or if Strephon didn't mind slumming it, Sethre would be pleased to offer him the hospitality of his house in Velzna, or rather, his mother's house...
But Strephon said damn no, he wasn't scared, and he wasn't running: and that, for the moment, was the end of it, though Strephon was in a sombre mood, and there was no play-acting today, and few jokes.)
"It's not just change. It's mean mindedness. We saved his arse at Veii; the infantry was falling apart. And as our reward we get what? Strephon proscribed, and then he tells us we look too flashy. No red tebennas, he says, no gold plated armour, no this, no that, and gives us dull harness with no shine to it and helmets that look like pisspots. How are we supposed to get any respect..."
"Our horses are still better than anyone else's," Sethre said.
"My horses, you mean."
"Well, yes."
"He'll be taking those next." Tarquin flung himself down on a couch; the cat which had been lurking underneath it jumped out, and ran towards the door, and under the low table, body low to the floor.
"There is a point to what Servius is doing," Tullia said.
"To make us look small. He's already given the plebs the taste of blood with Robur."
"Surprising he didn't have him executed publicly," Kallisthenes said. "Is that a Roman thing?"
No one bothered to answer. Tarquin didn't understand why Servius hadn't made Robur's execution the focal point of his triumph, but he didn't much care.
"It's true the outfits Servius proposes lack style," Kallisthenes went on. "A good goldsmith could improve the infantry shields, for instance, and I'll miss the plumes you wore in the cavalry - it was a brave sight, the feathers in a battle, waving softly, like a cloud. Oh! The poetry of it! And the red..."
"Oh, shut up," Tullia said. Her voice was as sharp as her little teeth. "The point is..."
"You're going to be boring," Tarquin said. "Boring or disagreeable."
"Maybe I am. But the point is, he looks at the sky. And where your father saw an eagle, Servius sees starlings."
Thesanthei roared with laughter at that, and the rest smiled, but Tullia went on; "Starlings are hardly noble birds, but look at the way they wheel in a single movement. Look at the density of their flocks."
"Always looking for food."
"And they get it. Look, you want a land of eagles; he wants a black cloud of starlings, that will eat up all the cities of Italy and shit them out."
"Not much there room for bravery and elegance."
"No one said Servius was civilised. But he's efficient."
"Well, if all you want to do is win..."
"You don't?"
"Not at that cost."
Everyone else had fallen silent, almost as if they were embarrassed to witness the two quarrelling.
"You really don't want to win?" She sounded disappointed. "Because I do."
"And you don't care how you do it?"
"Of course I care! But I want to win. That above all. And I can see what Servius is driving at. And he's right, at least partly."
"Only partly."
She tossed her head; her nostrils were flared, like a horse's when it has run a race, and her earrings clashed as she turned.
"You don't get it, Tarquin, you just don't. Whatever he does, he's building a city for you to take. He'll misstep, in time. It's inevitable. We just need to wait for it."
"And what do I do I the meantime?" he asked, holding on to his sour mood though her own flash of anger reminded him what he loved in her, the fire and suddenness of her.
"Oh, you just look... beneficent, and brave, and magnificent. Though admittedly, maybe without the red cloak or the flashy helm."
"And you?"
"What I do is wait."
That was food for thought, and needed chewing on; but Thesanthei and Sethre had got bored listening to the argument, and had laid out a game of robbers - from the look of it, black was winning already, and Aglaia was leaning over to whisper something to Sethre, who had the white pieces. Kallisthenes, meanwhile, was pouring wine for himself and Mamarke - the two seemed to have become close recently, perhaps because both found themselves slightly out of sympathy with the rest of Tarquin's clique, one too old and the other still too tightly bound to Servius and his projects. That left Strephon sitting alone; he was feeding the cat, which had crept out again from under the table, with leftovers of cheese from their breakfast.
He really should have gone. His uncle Rufinius had gone to stay with his wife's family in Cisra; people said though he'd taken nothing in his saddlebag, his wife had walked o
ut of the house in enough jewellery to buy them half a city anywhere they wanted to go, or so people said. He could have joined them there; he could have waited at Tanaquil's villa; he could have gone to Tarchna, and Tanaquil's name would have got him a welcome in Velzna, too; or he could simply have gone up country and disappeared for a few weeks, tickling trout or hunting, which he enjoyed as well as a true countryman for all his city sophistication. And here he was, not acting, not enjoying a poetry reading or a mime, but sitting in luxurious imprisonment playing with a cat.
"Bugger! That's my bloody king!"
Sudden reversals happen more often in the game of robbers than they do in life, and perhaps Aglaia's whispered advice had something to do with it; from a winning position, Thesanthei's black pieces had been routed, the sharp little king-piece isolated, surrounded by whites. He swept his remaining pieces off the board, rolled them over in the palm of his hand a couple of times, and then started putting them back on the starting line of the board, carefully ensuring an exact placement, each one centred on its square, so that the line was quite straight, unlike Sethre's rough straggle of pieces.
"I'll kill you this time," he said, "for sure," and made to move his first piece; but his hand was still in the air, indecisive between the two moves he could have made with it, when there was knocking at the door.
"Not open," Aglaia yelled, and said, to no one in particular, "Aphrodite's arse, the poor girls have to get some sleep some time." But the knocking carried on, and in the end she had to go to see what was happening.
"I'll give them a piece of my mind," she said, but she never had a chance; as soon as she opened the door a crack, it was shoved roughly back, and armed men were pushing into the room, spreading out, looking around.
"Where is he?" asked one of the men, but another had already seen Strephon, who had got up, but uselessly, too late to run. The cat had already disappeared, probably out into the street, and never came back, though no one could ever, later, remember seeing it go.
It was over stupidly quickly, while Thesanthei was still holding on to his tiny King, before the cup Kallisthenes had dropped hit the ground; one man crossed the room, three steps, four, and rammed his sword into Strephon's body, once, hard and quick.
The rest was clearing up; the other men spreading out across the room, the killer pulling out his sword and wiping it, once each side, on the couch before thrusting it back in the scabbard. Strephon stood, for a moment, his eyes puzzled, and a dribble of blood came from the corner of his mouth; and then he fell.
Then Aglaia began to scream, and Tarquin started shouting that Servius really, really, really had gone too far this time; and it was only Mamarke who saw the lictor standing at the door nod to him, and depart.
Servius
He had got it all wrong. He expected to feel many things after Robur's death. Relief, for instance; indeed he did feel relief, that the decision was made, at last. But he hadn't expected that savage joy. He hadn't, either, expected sadness.
He'd never been sad before, and not before or during the deed itself, but it was if having felt a man's life fading away, he understood his own mortality more clearly; or as if having given in to the people's desire for blood, he had transgressed some boundary of his own making. He'd killed before in war, in a brawl once, to save himself; he'd never been an executioner, never killed a defenceless man. (Once, in a fight, storming a small town's walls, he'd disarmed his opponent, and could hardly bring himself to make the final thrust; he still remembered the man's face, the shock in his eyes as he saw his sword flying out of his grasp, and realised how fast death would stick its claws in him.) He wasn't the Servius he knew, any more; kingship, or Tanaquil, or Rome, had twisted him, or perhaps he had always been twisted and had only just found it out.
Sadness. It was like wet autumn weather, a greyness that never let up.
Preparations were under way for a move on one of the Latin cities; but this time the planning hardly interested him, drilling his army became a chore. He felt distant from things; it was like that feeling he'd had once or twice when he'd slept awkwardly, and woke to feel one arm numb, as if it didn't quite belong to him. He had to force himself to focus, and it hurt, shocking himself into wakefulness like treading down on a numb foot and feeling the prickles of pain burst into his flesh.
Tarquin was difficult. The incident with Strephon; that had been badly handled. He'd been so sure that Strephon would run, like his uncle, that he'd not thought to tell the lictors not to pursue him, to soften the iron laws with temporary leniency. His gamble on Tarquin at Veii had succeeded, but would it again? He was minded to give Tarquin's command of the cavalry to one of his own men - but they were all footsoldiers; the charioteers he'd known were all too old, now, and there were few good drivers or riders among the Etruscans of Rome who weren't, in one way or another, bound to Tarquin, as friends or debtors or members of his own troop of horse. Brave and magnificent as he was, Tarquin was difficult.
He sounded out Mamarke, laying out his reasons; that he couldn't trust Tarquin, that the trouble over Strephon had pulled the link between them so thin it was fraying, or perhaps even broken; that Tarquin couldn't be allowed to be the only officer in the entire army not to accept the new rules on equipment. And Mamarke, even-handed as always, reported back what Servius needed to know.
"He understands his men. There are no floggings for petty infractions in his troop."
"No discipline, you mean."
"There's enough."
"He only refrains from flogging his men because he knows Gnaeus flogs his. And you flog yours."
"It makes him look good? Yes, I suppose. But I don't think that's how he sees it."
"More fool him. It makes his men look shoddy."
"It makes you look harsh."
"They call me a tyrant, do they?"
Mamarke, for once, didn't answer. He coughed gently.
"That was a joke."
Mamarke ventured a small smile, which was less reassuring than none at all.
"We can't allow individuals to unsettle the state. Tarquin unbalances things."
"Only in small ways."
"Rome has a greater destiny than any of us. Greater than Tarquin. Greater than me. The freedom of the many demands the sacrifice of the few."
"That's almost a quotation," Mamarke said. Servius was congratulating himself on having created a statement of lapidary concision and sure memorability, before he realised Mamarke might not have meant that as a compliment.
"You can't sack him," Mamarke said, flatly. (No "with respect," Servius noted, and that was unusual, at least for Mamarke.)
"I can't?"
"In charge of his horsemen he's no harm. I think the men like to see one man get away with that little difference. It makes them well disposed to army life, that the army tolerates it. If you take his command... they won't like it."
"His men won't like it."
"The others won't, either. You'll have trouble; more than you'd have if you kept him."
"I want him gone, though. At least for a time."
Mamarke nodded, and kept his head bowed for a short time, and then nodded again, as if he'd reached some kind of conclusion.
"I can only think of one place that might tear him away from Rome."
"Tarchna?"
"No." Mamarke smiled. "I can see why you'd think that. But Tarquin's dreams are bigger than Tarchna can hold. He dreams of the League, a great Etruscan kingdom; the whole of Italy brought together. Tarchna is only one of the Twelve; Velzna is the only place they all come together."
"I see. So you'd suggest I send him as an ambassador?"
"Gods, no!"
Servius glared at Mamarke, who coloured a little, but went on.
"You don't want him to see your hand in this, at all."
"Well how..."
"Tell him you would be unhappy if he went."
"I don't see... oh, I do."
"You wouldn't, you couldn't forbid it, but it would be best if he
didn't."
"And then, of course, he will."
So that was done, he hoped, heading Tarquin off the same way you corralled a restive young bull.
But he had started having bad dreams; climbing that narrow passage up between the cliffs at Veii, but when he arrived at the top, it was Robur's head, and Caile's, and Avle's, which looked down at him from the gate, and when he got inside the city, it was a maze of streets without exits, and houses without doors, in which he was soon lost, and the streets became narrower the longer he wandered, till they seemed to be closing in on him.
He thought of the story the general had told him once, of the Minotaur in his maze, his head too heavy with the weight of his horns. He'd forgotten the name of the hero who killed him, there was some girl involved, who had helped, but he remembered the pitiful beast, doomed and solitary.
That was the year he heard Rasce had died. At the funeral he wanted to weep, to show the world that even a king could have a true friend; but his eyes, even stung by the smoke, were dry.
Tanaquil
Every winter now Tanaquil thought might be her last. There was no reason for that thought, really; her health was good, she was not so very old, and yet every autumn as the days shortened and the trees became bare, and the sun became pale, the light grey, she wondered if she had seen her last summer, and felt she might not reach another spring. When she sat in her chambers she always felt cold; though she saw the fire flickering, she hardly seemed to feel it. The cold had crept into her bones.
Tullia was often with her now. She wondered if Tullia was becoming the daughter Tarquinia had never really been; the daughter she'd wanted, who could hold her own in politics, who understood augury, a woman strong and capable like Tanaquil herself. She listened to Tanaquil talking about the Tarchna of decades ago, and about the recent changes in the Federation's power base, with equal interest, whether it was real or feigned. (And it might well be feigned; Tullia was expert at listening without giving any clue to what she was thinking, her face carefully arranged in a polite counterfeit of interest.) But she'd seen Tullia with young Tarquinius enough to realise, despite any misdirection, what was going on there; and though Tanaquil herself thought the match would have been a good one, there was no way the Master would allow it.
It was a difficult conversation to start. "You want to be careful what you get up to with young Tarquinius," she said, and thought that sounded too moralistic, too grandmotherly. Tullia's face darkened; Tullia angered easily, more easily than Tanaquil.
"I'm an Etruscan woman. I can do as I please."
"I didn't say don't do it. I said be careful."
"Careful?" The sneer was evident.
"You won't be allowed to marry him. He's already married, you know that."
"To that..."
"To your sister. And you know your father won't let him divorce her."
"So?"
"So what you do is your affair, I know. Believe me" – she saw she had only a moment to press her point before Tullia's anger would erupt, and all hope of managing her would be lost – "I'm as proud of my Etruscan heritage as you are, I'm hardly about to give up my freedom of action to any man, I've been fighting for better treatment for women in Rome for years, I'm just telling you to be careful. Please, Tullia."
"And by careful, you mean..."
"I'm not telling you to give him up. I'm not even telling you to be careful who you're seen with. But for Tinia's sake..."
"Tinia!..."
"... don't get yourself with child."
"There are ways," Tullia said sulkily.
"You think I don't know? And it wouldn't hurt if you were to be seen less with him – or not in Rome; or not without an excuse, a hunt, or the games, or a family outing... You know what Romans think about women at banquets. Just find excuses. Or have him visit you, secretly, without those hangers-on of his."
"But why the hell we should all pretend to be goody-goody little Romans, to pander to Roman prejudice, to fit in with Roman ways and Roman wives and Roman brutishness..."
There was something in this rage of Tullia's that Tanaquil never quite understood. They had the same views, they led the same lives, and yet there was a wild edge to Tullia, not quite unhinged, but dangerous.
"We only do it while we have to. Things will change."
"In your lifetime?"
Tanaquil shrugged.
"I didn't think so."
"You know the penalties, too, under Roman law."
"But I'm not Roman." She was stubborn, this Tullia.
"Your father is. And you're his property, under the Roman law."
"Not under the Etruscan laws!"
"And how long do you think Etruscan laws will last, if the Romans turn against the cities?"
That made Tullia think. Good; perhaps she'd come to understand the long game – the slow, almost imperceptible movement of nations and societies, so long that Tanaquil knew she would never live to see all the consequences of what she did here and now, that they would play out in the lives of her son and his successors, long after her death.
"You've never bowed the head." Tullia accused her, obstinate; and Tanaquil realised Tullia would never know the small humiliations of a homespun dress; the small victories of giving her daughter a name. For Tullia lived her entire life among Etruscans; here in the palace, with Tanaquil and her attendants, or with Tarquinius and his noble youth, the wealthy young aristocrats of all the Etruscan cities who flaunted their riches and lived in all ways as they would at home, but with less restraint.
"What I've done is neither here nor there," she said. "But my children are all recognised."
"You mean you've never been caught."
"Exactly what I was telling you. Don't. Get. Caught."
And that, Tanaquil thought, was the whole of the law, at least where the Romans were concerned.
Tullia had controlled her anger, though Tanaquil had seen the look on her face as she turned it away from the older woman; not hatred, but distaste, as if Tullia had seen something tasteless, even, perhaps, laughable. (Were all parents laughable to their children? Tanaquil wondered; or was it more than that?)
Tullia extended the fingers of her right hand elegantly, considered the back of her fingernails, then turned her hand and let it rest in the cupped palm of the other. You would have said it was a studied movement, but it seemed so natural; and if you'd thought it was natural, Tanaquil thought, you'd have been double-bluffed, because it was so long studied that by long practice it had become almost second nature.
She wanted to say more; wanted to excuse herself, to justify herself, to explain why she'd left Tarchna in the first place, to talk about the visions she had sometimes in the swimming golden light of sunset or the hot swirling of a fire. She wanted Tullia to understand; she wanted to understand herself. She wanted love, she wanted confidence. And she knew that she could not say another word; that it was no use, that for all she loved Tullia, they lived in two different worlds.
And now she had to deal with Manius.