Brides of Rome

by Debra May Macleod

  Still, the sight of Quintus’s strong hands gripping the bull’s rope lingered in Pomponia’s thoughts. She heard his whisper, deep and masculine, in her ear. Step up, Priestess.

  Pushing the memory from her mind, she stepped out of the carriage after Tuccia. Medousa followed on her heels.

  Even before they entered the stadium, their eardrums throbbed from the sounds of the races. The thunderous sound of hooves pounding the sand. The loud roar of wooden chariot wheels shaking and straining under high-speed pressure. The slap of the charioteers’ whips on the backs of the sweating horses. The constant, deafening din of the crowd as over one hundred thousand spectators cheered for their favorites and jeered at their foes.

  Vendors lined the entrance to the Circus Maximus, selling wine and fresh sausage, and the smell made Pomponia’s stomach rumble. She tried not to think about food as the guards escorted her, Tuccia, and Medousa to Caesar’s private seats. Normally, they would sit in the area reserved for Vestals; however, with most of the priestesses busy at the temple, Octavian had invited them to watch from Caesar’s private balcony.

  “Ah, Priestess Pomponia,” said Octavian, rising to greet her. “Welcome. And welcome to you, Priestess Tuccia.”

  “Thank you, Caesar,” said Pomponia. “I hope we haven’t missed the final race. Tuccia has a small fortune riding on it.”

  Octavian grinned at Tuccia. “As do I, Priestess. Greens or Blues?”

  “The Blues,” said Tuccia. “And I am certain that Caesar would never bet against a Vestal.”

  Octavian put his hand on his chest. “Numquam! ” Never! “I would never cross Vesta Felix. Ladies, please sit.” Graciously, he seated Pomponia and Tuccia on either side of his sister Octavia. She wore a white stola, not unlike a Vestal, although it was decorated with deep purple embroidery that complemented the purple border on her brother’s toga.

  Octavian returned to sit next to his general Agrippa and his adviser Maecenas as a line of well-armed soldiers stood behind them all, keeping vigilant watch over their master while their crested helmets and gleaming armor advertised Caesar’s power to the citizens of Rome.

  The massive oval of the Circus Maximus, the oldest and largest racetrack in Rome, spread out in the long valley below Pomponia. Waving, shouting fans lined its mile-long circumference as four teams of four-horse chariots thundered down the track, shaking the ground and taking the turn around the spina at breakneck speed.

  “Priestess Pomponia,” said Octavia, “forget the chariot races. Let’s bet on which one of us most wishes she were home right now sitting in a hot bath.”

  Pomponia laughed. She had always liked Octavia. Despite Octavian’s obvious efforts to nourish a friendship between the two women—such an alliance could only benefit his position—their friendship needed no encouragement from him. It had deepened on its own over the past couple of years. Pomponia’s friendship with Octavian had similarly grown. He had kept the promise he had made to her years earlier, when she had first met him at the Carcer.

  “How is your son Marcellus?” asked Pomponia.

  “He is happy,” replied Octavia. “Such is the blessing of childhood. His father died only months ago, but all he cares about is his wooden toy horse and honey cakes.”

  “I was saddened to hear of Gaius’s passing. He was a good husband to you.”

  Octavia leaned closer to her. “It hasn’t been officially announced yet,” she whispered to the Vestal, “but it looks as though I am to be married again.”

  “So soon? To whom?” asked Pomponia.

  “To Marc Antony. It is no secret that he and my brother have had strained relations. Caesar believes such a marriage will strengthen their political alliance.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “You don’t approve, Priestess?”

  “It’s not that . . .”

  “You’re thinking of the rumors about him and Cleopatra,” said Octavia. “Don’t worry. I’ve also heard them.”

  “Are they only rumors?”

  Octavia looked sideways at Pomponia. “Of course not. Everyone knows they’ve been having an affair since the moment he landed in Alexandria last year. Although I cannot blame Antony. He’s only a man, and you remember what Cleopatra was like. Every man in Rome was fascinated by her.”

  “Men are always fascinated by novelty,” said Pomponia. “Roman men are accustomed to Roman women. Cleopatra was something different. She wasn’t ruled by a man. She ruled over men. At every party, while Roman women gossiped with each other in the garden, she was in the triclinium drawing magistrates into debate. I never once saw her wear a proper stola or palla. Her gowns clung to her breasts more tightly than a senator clings to his purse. I don’t know how the fabric held.” Pomponia shrugged. “Like you said, they’re only men.”

  Octavia grinned. “Well, Antony will have to make do with a wife who wears looser-fitting clothing, I’m afraid. My brother believes that women should be virtuous in all things, including dress. He’d have me outfitted as a Vestal priestess if custom allowed it.”

  “This Caesar, even more than the one before, is a great friend to the Vestal order,” said Pomponia. She smiled warmly at her friend. “Antony is a Roman man, Octavia. When it comes down to it, he will prefer your virtue. And I am certain the affection that he and Caesar have for you will become a bond between them, especially when a child comes. It will strengthen their alliance and maintain the peace. All of Rome will have you to thank for that.” She tugged at Octavia’s stola. “Loose-fitting clothing and all.”

  The crowd erupted into a sudden roar, and Pomponia and Octavia stood up, along with tens of thousands of other spectators, just in time to catch a glimpse of a green-and-silver chariot as it bounced into the air, flipped over, and landed hard on the track, flying apart into wooden splinters.

  “Where’s the charioteer?” asked Pomponia.

  “There he is,” said Octavia, pointing at a pair of legs, one of them bent at an impossible angle, lying under the pile of large wooden fragments. “Oh, and there’s the rest of him.” The charioteer’s head and torso lay on the sand a few meters away. His body had been severed in half from the force of the impact and from the reins that he had wrapped tightly around his waist.

  The crowd erupted into an even louder roar as another chariot approached the wreck at full speed. It was too late to maneuver, and the driver had no choice but to trample the body of his competitor, mashing what was left of him into the sand.

  “Normally I prefer the races to the games,” said Octavia, “but not today.”

  “I remember watching an elephant hunt once when I was a child, and Senator Cicero said—” Pomponia bit her lip. What a stupid thing to say.

  “I am sorry, Priestess,” said Octavia. “My brother deeply regrets the loss of Cicero. He was a shrewd politician and a true Roman, and would have been a valuable adviser to Caesar.” She folded her hands in her lap and spoke more privately. “Octavian bartered tirelessly for Cicero’s life. He even offered Antony a large sum of money. But Antony was immovable. He wanted Cicero dead. It threatened to undermine their alliance and their hunt for the assassins, so Octavian finally conceded.”

  “Let’s hope a softer voice can temper Antony’s nature,” said Pomponia.

  Octavia nodded. “Yes, let’s hope.” She parted her lips to say something else, thought twice, and smiled pleasantly instead. “Bad luck for that driver,” she said airily. “I don’t know if you follow the races, but he’s driven as a slave for ten years and was just about to be manumitted.”

  “Tuccia is the race fanatic,” said Pomponia. “I cheer for whomever she’s cheering for. I’ve found she’s easier to live with that way.”

  A female slave with a platter bowed before Octavia and the Vestals. “Mint water, Dominae?”

  They all took a glass. Pomponia had to stop herself from draining the cool, refreshing liquid in o
ne swallow. To her delight, the slave returned moments later with a selection of pears, oysters, and cold meats. Gold cups filled with good wine followed.

  Pomponia’s stomach had just settled, when a familiar deep voice made it flip. Quintus. When had he arrived?

  “. . . Yes, it took longer than expected, Caesar. The haruspices think the more time it takes them to study the entrails, the more impressed we are at their divinations. They mistake our relief at the end of their study for awe.”

  “Do you know the old haruspex Longinus?” Agrippa asked Quintus, and then without waiting for an answer, “May the gods either help you or slay you if you put a pig liver in front of that man! He’ll poke it and interpret for hours and then say the signs are unclear and start over with a different pig. And all just to hear his own shrill voice prophesize. He could talk the ears off a donkey, and the donkey would be grateful for the silence.”

  “Thank merciful Fortuna he retired last year, General,” said Quintus. “But there’s always another. Semper idem. It’s always the same thing with haruspices.”

  Pomponia willed herself to make small talk with Octavia, doing her best to ignore the sound of Quintus’s voice and the looming presence of his body standing next to her. But it wasn’t to be.

  “Ah, Priestess Pomponia, your colleague Quintus has joined us,” said Octavian. “What good fortune to have both of you here today. With Vesta and Mars on the side of Caesar, what need have we of haruspices? The signs can only be good.”

  Pomponia offered Quintus an obligatory formal smile. Her blood quickened in anger as he turned back to Caesar without so much as acknowledging her presence.

  “Caesar, rumor has it that you are ready to be Pontifex Maximus. Has Lepidus tired of ceremony so soon?”

  “Lepidus tires of anything that requires work,” said Octavian. “But no, I am going to let him keep his office for now. He is a better priest than soldier. I look forward to the appointment, though. My divine father performed his solemn duty as chief pontiff, and I desire to do the same.”

  A clamor rose from the track, and Pomponia blinked to see fresh chariots charge out of the starting gate. She had been so distracted by Quintus’s arrival that she hadn’t even noticed that one race had ended and another begun.

  As the horses charged down the track, their hooves kicking sand into the air, the chattering ceased, and everyone took their seats to watch. Pomponia’s chest tightened as Quintus sat in the empty seat next to her.

  She turned her head to busy herself by talking to Octavia, but Caesar’s sister was now turned in her seat and in deep conversation with Terentia, the young wife of Maecenas, who sat behind her.

  Pomponia watched Quintus out of the corner of her eye, careful to appear captivated by the race below. He sat rigidly in his chair, setting his hands on his lap and then awkwardly placing them on the armrests. He cleared his throat.

  “There’s a lot of money riding on the heads of these drivers,” he said, making a clumsy attempt at small talk. “Which man do you favor, Priestess?”

  “I favor no man in particular.” The words had a more bitter edge than she had intended.

  He said nothing. Then softly, intimately, “Pomponia . . .” But he caught himself and stopped.

  The unexpected softness of his voice struck Pomponia harder than she could have imagined. She hadn’t heard a man say her name plainly, without an honorific before it, since she was a small child. She felt a flutter deep in her stomach, and her throat tightened as if tears would follow.

  Quintus had exposed himself simply by the way he had uttered her name. And in that one moment, he had shattered years of pretense between them.

  Chapter VII

  The Altar of Juno

  rome, 40 bce

  Later the same year

  “The augurs are good for a wedding. Too bad the groom is already drunk as Bacchus on the Liberalia.”

  The Vestalis Maxima Fabiana laughed at her own joke with only slightly less discretion than she would have in days gone by. Pomponia smiled at her. It was a gift from the goddess to see the high priestess feeling well enough to leave her bed and return to public life. It was an even greater blessing to see glimmers of her usual audaciousness shine through the sickness that had plagued her for months.

  The wedding of General Marc Antony, newly returned from Egypt, and Caesar’s sister Octavia was a political match through and through. Everyone knew the marriage had been Caesar’s idea. It was his way of building a bridge over the rough waters of his and Antony’s alliance.

  Yet Antony had not refused. He had left Alexandria and Queen Cleopatra for Rome the day after Caesar had proposed the union. That was a good sign.

  The assembly of wedding guests reflected the political nature of the marriage: senators, army generals, high-ranking priests, Rome’s wealthiest and noblest families, a few foreign dignitaries, and of course, the Vestal priestesses. The men were dressed in their ivory-colored togas, the women in their brilliantly colored stolas and jewels. Even Fabiana and Pomponia had accentuated their white stolas and veils with their best jewelry to mark the occasion.

  Marc Antony and Octavia Minor stood under a sky-blue canopy before the Altar of Juno, goddess of marriage, as a robed and hooded priest said incantations to Jupiter.

  Upon the altar was a bronze firebowl that burned with Vesta’s fire. Pomponia had started it herself with a flame from the sacred hearth. Beside the bowl were a gold cup of wine, the wedding cake, and the marriage contract. Wedding torches burned on either side of the altar.

  Octavia was a beautiful, perfect bride. She looked fresh and duteous, the living image of Roman tradition. That was her purpose, after all: to represent her family, specifically her powerful brother Caesar, as the embodiment of traditional Roman values. That, and to produce children. Preferably male children.

  She wore a pretty white dress tied at the waist with the nodus Herculaneus, the knot of Hercules, a symbol of her fidelity to her husband. The knot was believed to be so strong that only the demigod Hercules or a loving husband could unfasten it to enjoy the pleasures it protected. A vivid orange veil covered her face, and upon her head was a wreath of flowers and fragrant herbs.

  Her hair was arranged in the seni crines and, as was customary, her hair had been parted with the tip of a spear. Not only was the spear sacred to Juno, it honored the earliest marriages in Rome, when the first generation of Roman men abducted—at the point of their spears—women from the neighboring Sabine tribe.

  The groom looked resigned. He wore a white toga with a red stripe. The wide gold cuffs around his forearms looked like manacles. He was blinking just a little too slowly, obviously feeling the effects of his premarital reveling.

  Pomponia cringed. It’s like watching Europa and the bull. May Juno protect her, she thought.

  The priest said a final prayer to Juno as Octavia stood regally and Antony rocked on his heels. Octavian stood behind his sister with his palms up to the gods. He watched, like an all-powerful overseer, as the priest poured wine over the wedding cake on the altar as a libation to the gods and then placed the right hands of the bride and groom together.

  The hooded priest wound a white band of cloth around the forearms of Antony and Octavia, binding them together as husband and wife. Stepping forward, Octavian lifted the corolla of flowers and herbs from Octavia’s head and raised the veil off her face so that she and Antony could exchange the traditional Roman wedding vows.

  “Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia,” said Octavia. As you are Gaius, I am Gaia.

  “Ubi tu Gaia, ego Gaius,” said Antony. As you are Gaia, I am Gaius.

  Two people becoming one person.

  Or at least that’s the idea, thought Pomponia. There’s no way in Hades that Antony really loves her. But then again, marriage is business, not pleasure.

  Antony took Octavia’s left hand and slipped a gold ring onto the th
ird finger, around the vena amoris—the vein of love—that traveled from the third finger directly to the heart. She tried to do the same, but the general’s thick, battle-scarred fingers seemed to resist the shackle. He shoved the ring on.

  Next, the priest held out his arm to Octavian, indicating it was time for him as the pater familias, the male head of the household, to give his sister to her husband’s care. Bending over the altar, Octavian pressed the red wax seal of Caesar onto the marriage contract.

  The priest uncovered his head to show that the ceremony was complete, and the wedding guests erupted into applause. If this marriage lasted, so too would the alliance between Caesar and Antony. And as long as that alliance lasted, Rome would be at peace. Many stood and threw grain onto the new couple to promote their fertility.

  “If the grain sprouts, it will only be a burden to her,” Fabiana whispered to Pomponia. “Take me to my lectica, my dear. I will rest on the way to Caesar’s house, and we will offer our sympathies”—she winked playfully—“I mean our congratulations, there.”

  “It warms my heart to see you well,” said Pomponia. She linked her arm through Fabiana’s and escorted her toward the waiting Vestal lectica, noticing just how frail the chief Vestal had become in recent months.

  A sudden crash made them both spin around just in time to see Antony clutching the side of a table to regain his balance as two slaves hurriedly mopped up the shattered amphora of wine at his feet. Octavia was apologizing to those whose togas and gowns were splattered with wine.

  Blessed Juno, thought Pomponia. She hasn’t been married long enough to boil an egg, and she’s already making excuses for her husband.

  As she helped Fabiana into the lectica and stepped in after her, Pomponia thanked the goddess for making her a priestess and freeing her from the obligation to marry. As a Vestal, she would step down from the order, if she so wished, with wealth, property, and privilege.

  As a Vestal, even a retired one, she would never be forced to marry a man she didn’t want to, nor would she ever be subordinate to a husband’s will or whims. She would never be forced to bear children for him, again and again, until her body wore out in the quest to give him the perfect son he could parade around as his legacy.