The Golden Dice - A Tale of Ancient Rome (17 page)

As the girl watched the royal entourage withdraw she remembered Lady Caecilia bidding her husband to be careful. Now she understood such a warning. For here was a Veientane general, married to a Roman, who had chosen to flout a king.

Glossary

Cast

There was a savagery to the celebration. As full-moon madness waxed and battle fever waned, some women realized too late that coupling could go beyond the cusp of lust into rape. Others, though, were undaunted that the soldiers took them roughly.

Wine encouraged the tipping of emotions: from tuneless singing and laughter to quarrels and brawling. Children scooped armfuls of leaves to throw on the fire, laughing as they watched them curl and spark, drifting in hot updrafts. The sound of their delight was at odds with the debauchery around them.

Semni cowered away from the commotion, beside a timber-clad trench, the heat from its glow giving no respite from fearful shivering. She was desperate to return to the city but was too scared of getting lost in the dark. Nor did she want to cross a river flowing with blood. She prayed, too, that no one would seize her, perversely wishing for the first time that no man would find her tempting.

A warmth flowed down her legs. For a moment she was ashamed that she had wet herself, but as she checked between her thighs her fingers came away slick with womb water. Panicked, she realized that if she could not reach safety there would be new life born amid the dead, a fresh soul to compete with phantoms.

She managed to stand and stagger a few steps before a pang overwhelmed her. Panting, she sank to her knees, hoping there was a midwife among the drunken women. She prayed to Uni, the goddess of children, to give her succor, but all she really wanted was her mother to be there to hold her.

Above the noise, she heard a footfall crunching through the leaves. A fiend from the Afterworld loomed from the smoke: face half blue, half red, half lit, half shadow. Two lances in its hands, a shield slung over its shoulder. It reeked of sweat and death.

Semni sobbed more than screamed. “Get away! Get away!”

The demon crouched beside her, placing a hand upon her arm. She thought her skin would burn, but its touch did not harm her.

“
Semni, stop crying. It’s me, Arruns.”

Gulping, she stared at the dried blood upon the Phoenician’s face, his reddened tunic, gore spattering his chest. Finding the vision was human made her no less terrified. She shied away.

“
You should not be here,” he said. “You should go home.”

She shook her head, hiccuping. “I can’t. The baby is coming.”

In the moonlight, she could see his confusion; how he was confident with taking life but not so certain of delivering it. He stood and scouted around him. “I’ll find a woman to help you.”

Pain squeezed through her womb again. She clutched his leg, no longer fearing him. “Please don’t leave me!”

Again Arruns hesitated. She raised her arms to him. “Help me,” she gasped. “I need you to hold me up.”

He grimaced at her moans, stabbing his spears into the ground and propping his shield against them. Then, behind the lee of this meager shelter, he pulled her to stand, placing her arms around his neck. When another spasm wracked her, she groaned and sagged against him, not caring that he stank. The pain momentarily eased as he bore her weight.

After a time she rested her forehead against him, the coarse cloth of his tunic scratchy against her brow. Another surge came, the intervals between the pains growing shorter, her breathing labored. “I’m scared,” she whispered, her throat hoarse from crying, laying her cheek upon his shoulder.

“
So am I,” he said, resting his hands on her hips in a strange and tentative embrace.

Her labor was short, her son born at moonset just before the dawn.

As she squatted the babe slid from her, slippery with blood and birth fluid. Yet there was no first wail, only a choking sound.

She shrieked when she saw him, realizing she had convinced the gods to curse him. For the child was a demon, his face and body dark green. Semni rocked, filled with anguish. “No, no, no.”

Arruns held the infant, smuts of ash floating around them. Taking care, he hooked one blunt finger to scoop green muck, sticky as tar, from the tiny mouth and nostrils. Gasping in air, the babe let out a frail cry that grew louder as though furious he’d been forced from his warm underwater world.

And then a sound that Semni had never heard before. Arruns was laughing as he wiped the child’s body clean with his dirty cloak, revealing plump flesh, pink and healthy.

Semni stared at the man and baby covered in black smudges and blood and reached out to them. She was surprised at how powerful her happiness was; relieved that after her labor and fright her son was whole.

“
Give him to me.” She tugged at Arruns’ tunic.

The Phoenician cradled the boy as though reluctant to surrender him.

“
Please.”

The infant flung his arms out in fright as the guard lowered him into Semni’s hold. At first she thought she would drop him as his slippery limbs squirmed against her, but then she grew confident as she cuddled him. Opening her tunic, she pressed him to her. His nose and lips nuzzled her breast, searching for her nipple. She smiled at Arruns, proud now. “Thank you.”

To her surprise he crouched beside her and stroked her sodden hair. “You were brave. Braver than I expected.”

She nodded, pleased with the praise, wanting him to put his arm around her and build upon the bond they’d shared during the birthing. The three of them together. “You would make a fine father, Arruns,” she said softly.

He grew serious again, his hooded eyes veiled, saying nothing, the serpent tattoo not the only thing masking his expression. Then, pulling his dagger from its wooden scabbard, he grasped the blue sinuous cord and severed it from the birth sac with one sure stroke, freeing Semni’s son into war.

Glossary

Cast

Pinna bent to scratch the tiny bites upon her legs where the fleas had feasted. Her head was itchy too, the henna irritating her scalp. Her hair was no longer coated with ash; instead heavy red dye saturated the light-brown hair that hung to her waist. Instead of grave soil staining a heart-shaped face, albumen whitened her skin, carmine her lips. Her pallid face made her long-lashed eyes, rimmed with kohl, seem like dark holes within paleness, her fine arched eyebrows exaggerating her features as though she wore a mime actor’s mask.

In the dimness of the brothel’s corridor she sat on a stool outside her cell, naked, the nipples of her round full breasts painted. Merchandise on display. The leno liked his girls to smile, although such effort was not enough to hide wretchedness or boredom. He liked them to be sober, too, unless the clients required otherwise. Drunken whores were hard to rouse when their shifts started at the ninth hour of the day.

Inside the lupanaria Pinna easily forgot that the afternoon sun shone outside, except for the shaft of light slicing through the dark entry hall. It was always dismal here. The air was stifling, the dirty oil of the lamps causing acrid smoke to pool under the low ceiling, the vents choked, all surfaces covered with soot. At least the autumn chill did not trouble her. The braziers were always stoked, the heat preventing goose-pimpled flesh for both harlots and customers.

When she had first started there she would dread this time of day. She never knew who might stop at the large wooden phallus in front of the lupanaria to buy her services. Nor what vice they would prefer as they glanced at the price marked on the plaque above her doorway with “Lollia” inscribed upon it. Now she was resigned to whatever happened, and that until the goddess of the dawn appeared, there would be no respite.

Throughout the spring and summer, she had tried to sleep for only a few hours after finishing her shift. Ignoring exhaustion, she would take advantage of the shortened night watches to snatch some waking hours among day dwellers in the marketplace. As seasons cooled and working nights grew longer she was always weary, finding it hard to rise from her bed, downhearted upon waking. Denied the chance to drink wine or numbing elixirs, slumber became her only comfort. At least she was no longer skeletal. Her melancholy did not stop her eating. She remembered enough of hunger not to waste a meal. And her loosening teeth still had bite enough to devour what she was given. She had flesh enough also to add curves to hips and breasts that emphasized a waist that remained tiny. The other she wolves shunned her, scorning her for having been unregistered, although the leno forbade them to gossip about her. She noticed that clients preferred her, stoking further resentment in her sisters. Such favoritism gave her no pleasure. Her cheeks were hollow under high cheekbones, as were her eyes; her life reduced to a narrow bed in a little cell, grieving for Fusca.

*

When she and her mother moved to new lodgings, Pinna learned that her hopes of attracting men there would prove more difficult than expected. On that day in the forum when she’d so admired Camillus, she had no idea that all-year campaigning would lead to a different kind of contest. There was fierce competition among whores for customers: artisans and merchants; tradesmen or landless farmers. Those men who sheltered behind the ramparts of the city wall and weren’t qualified to defend it. Even the serving girls in the bakeries provided extra service in the back rooms to challenge Pinna’s prices.

At first the lack of business did not worry her. It gave her more time to care for Fusca. Besides, she believed that Drusus’ bronze would tide them over for a long, long time. She soon discovered, though, how costly renting accommodations could be. The medicine she bought for her mother proved both expensive and useless.

Yet for the last few weeks of her mother’s life, Pinna wanted her mother to know there was food to fill her belly, clothes to warm her and sturdy walls surrounding her. It disappointed her, though, that Fusca never knew her daughter’s pride at being able to pay for her corpse to be burned upon a pyre rather than left to rot outside the wall of the Esquiline Hill.

Before the funeral Pinna washed the pathetic, blighted body, anointing her mother’s hair and wrapping her in a clean mantle, before calling out Fusca’s name three times and keening without sound. She could not bring herself to put on sackcloth. Not after she had finally felt clean wool against her skin. She did not sprinkle ashes upon her hair, could not bring herself to tread once again in the footsteps of a hired mourner.

On returning from the funeral, Pinna found her rooms ransacked and what remained of the bronze stolen. In that moment, staring at the broken firepot, smashed bowls and strewn clothing, she fully comprehended just how alone she was.

The next day the leno came to her doorway. In one of his hands, blotched with liver spots, he jiggled the weights, declaring his role in the thievery with silent arrogance.

The bawd claimed to be generous. Rumor was that Pinna was no better than a night moth. He would pay her registration when it was next due. She need not fear being whipped or fined by order of the cross-eyed city magistrate, a black mark placed against her name. The leno would pay for her food and clothing. He would offer her shelter in his whorehouse. But such things were expensive. He too had rent to pay. And so in return she would give him her earnings.

Pinna thought of what it would be like to return to being a tomb whore. Remembered, too, how she had once been a warrior’s child. Realized that she would now share the same fate as her father—a life of bondage. Thought how foolish she’d been to ever wish to be a brothel whore.

*

“
Where is my Lollia?”

At the sound of Genucius’ voice, Pinna managed a smile, relieved that he would be her first client. He was her favorite, if she could be bothered to claim such preference. His needs were unusual but harmless.

Calling to the slave boy to fetch a pitcher of warm water, Pinna turned over the wooden plaque to indicate she would be occupied and ushered the customer into her cell.

She drew the curtain closed. In the constricted confines between bed and wall the light from the phallus-shaped lamp barely illuminated the space between them. She ignored the thick pelt of black hair that covered Genucius’ body as he peeled off his tunic.