Roma.The novel of ancient Rome - Saylor Steven - Страница 49

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Verginius laughed heartily and rose from his dining couch to give his daughter a kiss. She turned her face to offer her cheek. By doing so, she also hid her expression from everyone in the room.

“Another toast, then!” said Icilius.

“Another?” Verginius fell back on his couch and pretended to groan.

“Yes! A toast to love.”

“To love, indeed!” said Verginius. “To Venus, the goddess of love, who has clearly blessed this union with the spark of mutual desire. What could be better than a genuine love match of which both fathers approve?”

The men drank more wine, then burst out laughing. The mothers laughed as well, caught up in the men’s exuberance. Even dark Icilia ceased frowning, threw back her head, and laughed.

Only Verginia failed to laugh. From the moment her father had mentioned Appius Claudius the Decemvir, and the man’s thwarted desire to marry her, an uneasy look had settled on her face.

The next day, Icilia and Verginia went shopping together in the market, chaperoned by their mothers.

The two girls had been raised in different circles, and had few acquaintances in common; yet, since they were soon to be sisters-in-law, everyone expected them to begin acting as if they were already old friends. Their recent outings together, since the announcement of Verginia’s betrothal to Lucius, felt forced and artificial to both of them; their mothers, endlessly preoccupied with wedding details, had more to talk about than they did. To complicate matters, each of the girls had a problem that weighed upon her, but as yet felt unready to share her secret with the other. They moved though the market side by side, sporadically making conversation, each wrapped up in her own private thoughts.

“What do you think of this, Verginia?” Icilia ran her fingers over a bolt of finely woven yellow linen.

The merchant grinned. “From Syracuse, on the island of Sicily. All the best things come from Syracuse, and I offer them at the best prices!”

Syracuse had originally been founded by colonists from Corinth, and was nearly as old as Roma. It was one of many Greek colonies, not only on Sicily but across the southern part of Italy, a region so heavily settled by Greeks that the Romans called it Magna Graecia, “Great Greece.” Romans had traded with these cities for generations, and had so far avoided becoming embroiled in the endless wars they fought against one another. In recent years, Syracuse had emerged as the most brilliant, the most free, and the most prosperous city in all of the western Mediterranean. The Syracusan fleet dominated the Tyrrhenian Sea. Syracusan merchants built warehouses in Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, to house the goods they traded with Roma and her neighbors. Syracusan grain more than once had saved Roma from famine. Syracusan scholars taught in the best Roman households; Icilius’s tutor, Xenon, came from Syracuse.

“It’s alright, I suppose,” said Verginia, hardly looking at the fabric. Her thoughts were clearly elsewhere.

“Perhaps the young ladies would be more interested in pottery and earthenware,” suggested the merchant. “The young ladies may as yet have no households of their own, but soon enough two such pretty girls will find themselves married, and will be requiring cups and pitchers for entertaining.” The merchant could see by their simple, long-sleeved tunicae that the girls were still unmarried; they had not yet graduated to the more complicated stolas worn by their mothers. He held up a black pitcher. “This pattern is particularly beautiful. The red border is an unusual variation on a traditional Greek key design-”

Icilia, who had frowned and turned aside as soon as the man mentioned marriage, suddenly saw a familiar face across the crowded market. Her heart leapt into her throat. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that their mothers, deep in conversation, had strolled on ahead. Impulsively, Icilia gripped Verginia’s arm, pulled her away from the nattering merchant, and whispered in her ear.

“Verginia, you must do me a favor!”

“What is it, Icilia?”

“Please, I beg of you-”

“Icilia, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing is the matter. But I must leave you for a moment-only a moment, I promise! If our mothers come back and miss me, say…say that I had to step into the women’s lavatory above the Cloaca Maxima.”

“And if they ask why I didn’t go with you, or if they decide to go looking for you?”

“Then say…oh, I don’t know what!”

Verginia smiled. She was not sure what Icilia was up to, but from various small signs, she had come to suspect that Lucius’s sister must have a secret suitor; perhaps this had something to do with him. If Icilia was still not ready to tell her the details, here was an opportunity for Verginia to earn her trust, and for the two girls to become closer. Was that not exactly what their mothers desired?

“Of course I’ll help you, Icilia. Do what you must-but don’t be too long! I don’t have much experience at telling falsehoods to my mother.”

“Fortuna bless you, Verginia! I shall be very quick, I promise.” Casting a final glance at their mothers, who had ambled further ahead, she vanished into the crowd.

He had glimpsed her at the same instant she glimpsed him. He was waiting for her just around the corner from where she had seen him, with an anxious grin on his face.

“Icilia!”

“Titus! Oh, Titus!” It was all she could do not to kiss him, right there; but although they were away from the heavy traffic of the market, they were still visible. Eagerly, he took her arm and led her around another corner, into a narrow space between two buildings that was shielded from view by the foliage of a cypress tree.

He held her body against his and kissed her for a long time. Icilia was not shy; the very impossibility of their relationship encouraged her to abandon all restraint during the rare, fleeting moments she was with him. She ran her hands over his strong shoulders, inside the neck of his tunic and onto his chest, which was covered by fine blond hair. Her fingers encountered the talisman he wore. “Fascinus,” he called the curious pendant, saying it was a god that had protected his family for centuries.

Icilia could not help thinking that Fascinus had fallen down on the job in recent generations. It was hard to believe that the Potitii had once been wealthy; even Titus’s best tunics were threadbare. The first time Icilia had seen him, he was wearing the one garment he owned that was not covered with patches, the priestly robe he wore at the Ara Maxima. Watching him officiate at the altar with his father, she had been swept away by his good looks. Afterward, it had taken considerable ingenuity on her part to make his acquaintance. The passion that had stirred between them was so immediate and so overwhelming it must have been the hand of Venus that guided them to one another. Yet, when Icilia mentioned Titus Potitius in a very roundabout way to her father, he had reacted with a vehemence that startled her.

Icilia at first assumed it was Titus’s poverty, or simply his patrician status, that offended her father, and hoped these barriers might be overcome. It was her brother Lucius who had explained to her the reason for the declining fortunes of the Potitii-the fact that Titus’s grandfather had fought alongside Coriolanus. No wonder her father had reacted so violently! The name of Coriolanus was accursed in their house, and so would be the name of any traitor who had been his ally. Never would her father agree to let her marry a Potitius; nor would Titus’s father approve such a match, for it had been an Icilius who engineered the exile of Coriolanus and, by extension, the ruin of Titus’s grandfather.

The situation was impossible. These brief, stolen moments were all she would ever have with Titus, yet her craving for these encounters was almost more than she could bear, and in the days between them she thought of little else. When Titus began to lift the hem of his tunic as well as her own, and to press his hardness between her legs, she offered no resistance. Instead, she clutched him as hard as she could, praying that the gods would stop time and make this moment last forever.

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