The Wedding Shroud - A Tale of Ancient Rome (40 page)

Next came Ulthes and other dignitaries arrayed in vivid finery even though their mood was sombre. Priests and merchants followed, and then Larthia’s artisans, hands cracked from sculpting clay all day into rough bucchero or fine red-and-black vases. Mastarna’s tenants and slaves were there, too, faces scrubbed and clothes freshly washed.

All attending a majestic funeral of a woman, mother of the richest man in Veii, matriarch of the House of Mastarna. All bringing offerings both humble and grand.

The funeral procession halted in front of the altar. Beside it, a canopy had been rigged over a monumental bed covered with costly cloth of gold. Larthia’s fragile body looked almost childlike as it sank into the deep mattress. For a moment Caecilia thought she heard Ati sigh at finally being allowed to rest. How like the Rasenna to provide such comfort to the deceased. How like them to remind the grieving that all life revolved around a simple rectangle, where marriage was consummated, pleasure sought, children conceived, sleep gained, dreams welcomed and death awaited.

Compared to the horror of Tata’s pyre, the peaceful fate of Larthia reassured her that she was right to follow Artile, that she must be doubly resolute to attain divinity for her parents and herself.

*

When his mother died, Artile shed no tears. He, like his brother, kept his reserve. After ministering to his mother in her last days on earth with such tenderness and care, Caecilia thought he would be desolate. While Mastarna’s composure thinly veiled his grief, the priest’s peculiar calmness made him seem as though he was heartless, until, with the snow forming a mantle on his hat and sheepskin shawl, he commenced the funeral ceremony—and faltered.

Artile, who never erred, trembled so that wine spilled from the patera offering dish and prayers stumbled from his mouth. Over and over again he fumbled with hymns and stammered the litany so that, over and over again, the rites had to be recommenced. Not even when the oboe and drum played louder to drown out the mistakes could the crowd ignore how Artile, knuckles white, clenched the patera, desperate to right imperfection and salvage pride.

However, when it came time to sacrifice the first bull, the Chief Haruspex regained his calm. The consecration of the victim steadied him. He would make no mistakes when the salvation of his mother was at stake. As life bled from the beast, its soul escaped, trapped by a net woven with strands of Larthia’s piety.

The Roman thought there would be some sign to herald that the gods had accepted Ati, but there was nothing. Only the shifting of the people in the cold, the ribbon of the paean’s melody entwining them while the other bull moaned, straining against its halter, steam rising from its body into the chillness, knowing that it was next to be offered for Larthia’s Mastarna, oblivious of the honour of being a gift for the Lord of Acheron.

*

Passing down between the crouching stone leopards that flanked the entrance to the tomb, Caecilia clutched nine black beans, food for ghosts. Her short nails dug into their firm skin with brief resistance. Aurelia had schooled her well to fear spectres. And what better place for a ghoul to attack her than when inching her way, head stooped, down the steep wooden ramp to Larthia’s tomb. She surreptitiously dropped a trail of the beans, hoping the spirits weren’t greedy enough to ask for more. In truth she should have chewed and spat them out and, standing barefoot, brought pots and pans to clang and drive the evil ones away, but she did not think her husband would look kindly on Roman superstition.

Edging her way along the low-roofed hallway of the tomb she found herself labouring for breath, the dankness filling her nostrils, thick within her throat. In front of her Mastarna blocked what little light was provided by the torch. Pressing close upon his heels, she noticed there was still some unmelted snow upon his shoulders. Tarchon inched his way behind her. Artile had already gone before them to prepare the grave.

The corridor widened. Cockroaches scuttled from dark corners. When Mastarna dislodged a large vase, slaters slithered away to escape the light. Caecilia found herself walking between waist-high biers with crumbling skeletons tucked upon them as though a cook had stacked olives and fruits within a larder. She wondered if Tuchulcha had sucked the life force from them and spat out the bones to moulder in the darkness.

Still numb from the winter’s chill outside, her fingers blue from cold, Caecilia stepped into the warmth of a chamber of such dazzling splendour she soon found breath enough to gasp despite air heavy with clouds of incense. It was as though she stood in a small replica of Mastarna’s house with its familiar wooden lintels and doorframes, tables and couches—even clothes hanging from hooks on the wall. All an illusion perfectly painted upon stone. But there was real enough treasure as well: plates and utensils and food, with a host of slave statuettes to serve Ati’s spirit. Other presents, too: vases and pitchers, jewellery and coins.

Here there was no need for a family tree upon an atrium wall or the waxen heads of great men within a cupboard. True to their beliefs, the Rasenna had set up house for eternity—luxury and comfort and riches all around them, and nourishing food to eat and wine to drink, all there in the hope that this would give them succour after Vanth met them at the gate and welcomed them inside.

*

Larthia’s face had hardened into stone.

The sunken ravaged mouth and stumps of teeth had vanished along with thinning hair and brittle bones. Her lips were parted in desire, contoured and sensual, softened by youth.

She lay naked in effigy upon her coffin, fixed forever in her nuptial bed. Lying on her side, she faced her husband, their arms encircling each other, swathed in their transparent wedding shroud and unconcerned that their bare feet were uncovered in abandon.

Caecilia gasped at the flagrant display of affection chiselled for eternity within the bedchamber that was their tomb. Thought also of the orange veil she’d wished she’d worn for Drusus, and of the wedding mantle she had shared with Mastarna and his memories.

The poignancy of Larthia finally sharing the afterlife with her husband was also a barb. Caecilia knew that even if she had married Drusus she would be alone in death, her ashes steeped in wine and honey within an urn, relegated to a niche within her husband’s tomb. In Veii there would be little hope of joining Mastarna either upon or within a casket while competing with Seianta.

On the side of the coffin was another surprise revealing how Rasennan women were valued. Carved into the stone beside her husband’s name were the words ‘I am Larthia’. Listed below were both her parent’s names, proof that she was more than a possession of her father, proof that she was considered part of two bloodlines, a privilege Aemilia Caeciliana had only received through her uncle’s reluctant adoption.

Caecilia watched as Tarchon and Mastarna carefully laid Ati within the coffin. The movement stirred the dust within. When it settled, husband and wife finally lay together, the bridal mantle now their shroud, whispering their vows beneath it—again.

In the cramped confines of the inner chamber, Caecilia noticed Mastarna was intent on studying a sarcophagus other than that of his parents. It lay in a dark corner. Another husband and wife reclined upon it. Next to it was a small funerary urn decorated with a pattern of dancing children. Mastarna’s children—jars brimming with a mother’s loss.

Caecilia’s terracotta enemy smiled at her from the gloom. Erene was right. Seianta was not beautiful, but there was a smooth, round contentment to her as she sat upon a dining couch with her husband, head resting against his shoulder as he embraced her. Their happiness revealed by the curve of their lips and the ease of their touch, the tenuousness of Seianta’s claim upon him as concrete as it was fragile as she willed him to join her in the grave.

Immediately, Caecilia felt as though fingers were stroking the nape of her neck. As she shivered, Seianta bumped her, squeezing in beside her husband. Determined not to give in to the ghost’s pushiness, Caecilia leaned against Mastarna, wanting him to put his arm around her, to show the sloe-eyed girl with the elegantly plaited hair that he was hers now, that flesh and blood not kiln-hardened arms could embrace him.

Yet what did it matter if Mastarna cared for her in life? It was clear that when he died he wished his ashes to sit next to Seianta’s. And then where would Caecilia lie? Would her urn, as in Rome, lie forgotten in the dimness of the tomb? Would anyone in Veii sacrifice a bull to gain her salvation? And if Marcus was dead, would anyone pick roses or violets to remember her in Rome?

She felt like she was nothing. Less than nothing. Displaced among the living; unwanted amid the dead.

The incense and smoke from the lamps was making her dizzy. She thought she’d never take another breath that was not filled with the expirations of the Shades. In an effort not to fall, she clutched at Mastarna. He looked down at her in concern, encircling her shoulders as she had wished. It was a pity he did so only from compassion; she wanted him to show Seianta that she truly had a rival.

Leading Caecilia to one of the shelves carved into the wall, Mastarna directed her to rest. She perched uncomfortably beside a skeleton covered with the armour of some long-ago warrior. ‘Sit for a time,’ he said. ‘It’s stuffy in here. We should not need to stay much longer.’

A sharp pain in her bowels made her flinch and she could feel herself perspiring. It had been many weeks since she had emptied her bowels without a purgative and the discomfort nagged at her. She had lost interest in eating, the treats of the Saturnalia alone tempting her, and only Zeri easing the pain. She glanced over to Artile, cursing him for not letting her have more, resenting him for always making it a little harder to receive it. Mastarna had said this would happen, that her craving for any potion would become stronger than the draught could satisfy.

To distract her from her discomfort, Caecilia looked at the murals that lined the chamber of the sepulchre. One was of a man and woman walking in a forest of subtle greens and dappled light. Padding beside them were beasts both fearsome and tame: panther and bear, cat and hound dancing among a tangle of ivy in Fuflun’s world. At the far end of the chamber was a door. A painted entrance. The door to the Beyond. On either side of it towered demons guarding the portal to Acheron as fiercely as the stone cats protected the entrance to the tomb.

Artile stood with a patera full of wine and blood, ready to offer the family’s final vows and thanks.

Mastarna covered his head with his cloak and knelt in prayer. As master of the house, Caecilia had watched him give offerings at the family hearth, but this was the first time she’d seen him in a truly reverential pose, a supplicant, obeisant. Gone was the frantic railing against the gods or the manic celebration of Nortia
.
Lighting three candles wreathed with ivy, he laid a golden thyrsus staff upon the casket, the pine cone tip fashioned from amber—a sign to show Fufluns that his mother was worthy of his attention.

Tarchon offered a golden mirror and Artile presented a linen book containing holy text. When Caecilia’s turn came, her hands shook slightly as she offered a delicate alabastron of lapis lazuli, glad that Larthia, finally freed from pain, would carry perfume alone to the afterlife. Zeri would no longer be needed.

Mastarna gestured to Artile to begin his liturgy, then stood back against the narrow opening into the room. Although her husband did not believe in the Calu Cult he would not deny his mother final prayers. After all, her journey to the Beyond had already started. Even as her family prayed within her tomb, she could be facing Vanth.

Artile gestured for Tarchon to kneel. And then to Caecilia.

Sweat streamed down her face knowing that Mastarna would be confronted by her worship. She wiped it away with the edge of her robe, but it still trickled across her scalp. It had not occurred to her that she would be called upon to undertake the sacraments of Aita today, thinking the burnt offering of the bulls would be devotion enough.

Artile nodded reassuringly. ‘Kneel, sister.’

As she knelt she heard Mastarna grunt and shift his weight. Then she felt his fingers touch her shoulder as he crouched beside her.

‘Do you truly wish to do this?’ he asked quietly.

The pain in Caecilia’s belly sharpened. The priest was offering solace after death. To disobey him would also deprive her of what she needed most. She was burning within, her skin itchy, her throat, the back of her hands, her face.

‘Your wife is a believer,’ said Artile, holding the offering bowl in both hands. ‘How does that make you feel, brother? When a Roman can understand the desires of the gods better than you?’

Mastarna gently pulled Caecilia to standing while Tarchon scrambled to his feet beside Artile, drawing up the lines of conflict. Mastarna spoke to Caecilia only. ‘You should not take heed of his cant.’

He stepped towards his parents’ coffin and traced the lines of their carved faces. ‘After all these years they lie together but, if Artile is correct, my father has been tormented by demons and my mother must struggle to be saved from the same fate.’

‘Both feast in Acheron together now,’ blurted Tarchon, his voice breaking in fury as only the voices of children and youths can. ‘Ati made sacrifice enough to make grandfather one of the Blessed, too. You are wrong to act the heretic. You are wrong.’