CHAPTER ONE.



 GALLIA BELGICA AD77

Lyvia cast a long critical gaze over the bride.  In a soft pale blue tunic, her hair parted and bound in knots of red muslin and her flammeum veiling her head, the girl was at least presentable.  After all, she needed no status or breeding to fill the niche history would set for her.  She would do well enough.

Maia rubbed at imagined stains on her palms.  She had eaten little over the last few days and slept even less.  Now her quaking knees woke tremors and aftershocks that rippled through her, prickling rashes of sweat and jostling her empty stomach. 

But it was not fear; she had no fear of a union with Cilo.  She loved him dearly; as she had from the first day they met, as she had when they grew up together.  As fearful reputation as he had as a soldier, she had known only his love, his protection and his ready laugh.

Neither was it from joy.  As much as she loved him, it was as she had always known him.  She loved him as her brother.

“Why are you just standing there, child?”  Her stepmother’s words were, as always, like grinding ice: crisp, distinct, frigid.

Hesitant tears ran across her lower lashes and she blinked away their indecision.  She wanted to say, ‘My mother should be here’, but this now passed for a mother’s love and warmth.  These cold, vulturine features and this iceberg crack and sibilance were all the comfort she could call.  “Has Cilo dressed?” she asked quietly.

“Of course.  He and the lads are still celebrating the new vintage.  If you aren’t soon ready there will be none left for the feast.”

That was unlikely.  Lyvia had planned this day too well.  Even its inauspicious coincidence with the festival of Vinalia Rustica had been slated well before the shocking news was broken to the bride.

Maia slipped on her russet sandals and tried again to straighten the knot at her waist.  She needed to wash her hands again, but now there would be no more time.  She gently lifted her hand wrought circlet of wild dianthus and amaranthus, setting it carefully so it held the veil in place over the massed intricacies of her hair.  “Go on out, then,” she said.  “I’m ready.”

Lyvia needed no second prompt.  She swept from the room leaving small breezes to giggle in her perfumed wake.

Feeling carefully at her breast, Maia drew out a tiny leather pouch and held in her palm a small silver coin.  Her mother had placed this same coin in her own shoe on the day she married Bassus.  Maia had no clear recall of the custom or its meaning, she was too long away from her homeland, but it was a tie, a tiny gesture that brought her mother closer on this day of all days.

Lifting the long, narrow tunic out of the way, she slipped the little coin into her sandal under her heel and gathered herself to walk through the door into her wedding.

Cilo might have dressed formally at some time that morning, but the day’s celebrations left him more than moderately dishevelled.

There was never any chance he would tame the wild mass of jet curls that bunched around his ears and tumbled down the leather muscles of his ornamental cuirass. Dressed in uniform, although technically he was no longer a soldier, his beauty was breathtaking.

He stood as he saw his bride enter the hall.  His full lips, for which he had long ago been named Cilo, parted as he smiled tight reassurance at her and teeth as white as new chalk shone against his sun-brown skin.  Unsought maturity shone from serious green eyes, and his forehead bunched under the weight of concerns too heavy for his years.

Maia froze on the spot in the doorway.  Nothing would move.  She felt fragile, her bones brittle, as if her dread had robbed her of some essential fluency.  Her feet seemed changed into the hard baked clay of the tiles.  Then her trembling knees.  Her hips.

All eyes came to her as an expectant hush drowned the room.  She could see the faces; hard, earth-brown men in battle dress.  Lyvia and Bassus too: he with a broad smile over many proud chins; her with the sharp efficiency of flesh that showed her meanness of spirit as clearly as his volume showed the generosity of his.

The rush of blood in her ears was deafening; her chest was tight as if her ribs were iron bands, cold and constricting. Her cheeks burned.  A whimper escaped and she forced her sticky palms down her thigh, smoothing the soft flannel of her tunic.

Tiberia stood across the room at the low tableau, her broad smile pleading, willing Maia to step forward and take her place for the ceremony.  A servant as pronuba, another of Lyvia’s slights, but not one Maia could take too much too heart.  The old domestic was kind and warm, as matronly as anyone Maia had known.

Cilo stepped forward with his hand extended, as if his touch could compensate for her deficiencies.  Listing slightly to the left, he steadied himself on the edge of a table and walked to where she stood.

“You look beautiful.”  He kissed the back of her fingers, where the iron band of their engagement lay dark against her pale skin, and bowed his head, then brought his eyes up to hers, pleading.  In the instant they held, Maia glimpsed torment as gaunt despair, then they fled under heavy lashes.  Black curls shook away the moment of crisis and Maia drew a deep breath for them both as he led her tenderly toward the dais.

Given her chance at last, Tiberia seized their joined hands.  Joy trembled through all the comfortable excesses of her aging frame and as carefully as her bursting joy permitted, she spoke her solemn words aloud.  “Do you come willingly to your husband?”  Her eyebrows leapt up her forehead and she bobbed her face at Maia in an exaggerated encouragement to speak.

Maia looked up at the man beside her.  In Rome, in Pompeii, they would make mosaics to capture his beauty.  He was glorious, godlike, and he held himself taut, his determined profile offering her neither explanation nor reassurance.

They had both come to this ceremony willingly and yet there was no mistaking the desperation that moved behind his eyes.  If he had been presented other options, if choices were open to him that seemed riper with promise, she had been given no such license. 

He was her only hope.  And the knowledge that her husband came to her bleak and despondent, maybe even resentful, trampled the last embers of her courage into ash.  It lay thick and bitter on her tongue, drying all her promises and her dreams.  Slow breaths dragged into her chest.  She could not have forced herself to run if there had been a sanctuary to find. 

He was her only hope, and she was tethered to him there as surely as if the ring she wore was still the iron shackles of a slave.  He was her rock, her only safe place.  With her hand crushed into his by Tiberia’s eager claw, she spoke, “When and where you are Gaius, then and there I am Gaia.”

The matron of honour could control her delight no longer.  Surging forward she deluged the couple, crushing Maia between the warmth of an old servant’s ample bosom and her husband’s hard leanness.  Where her cheek pressed against his chest, a purple splash of the fine new wine darkened the leather so it seemed his heart was brimming overfull, or broken and bleeding.

Once free of the vice like grip of their pronuba, the couple found their seat before the tableau.  Maia moved under a dry veil of grief.   Her ears were red hot, burning with old shames, and a persistent hum droned the sounds from around her.  Somewhere deep inside, her soul sang ancient keening songs in a language she could not quite recall. Against the quiet strength of her husband’s grip, she felt herself gently rocking. 

The Auspex was an older man; Maia did not recall having seen his face in the days since the garrison had arrived.  He wore the insignia of the XXth and his bearing was slow and deeply serious.  He cleared his throat to hurry Tiberia from her place in the middle of the ceremony, then solemnly mumbled his way through the incantations to Jupiter.  He offered the grain cakes, broke them and presented them to the bride and groom to eat.

From her fingers Cilo ate the offering and she from his, but when she searched his face for empathy, or some kind of vicarious fortitude, she saw only wine addled emotion which could have been pain, or humiliation.

He refused to meet her eyes, fixing his blurred vision on the Auspex as he brought out the Tabilae Nuptiales, and placed it before them to sign.  Then in his beautiful hand, the script of a man destined to be senator, he crafted his name.  Oppius Pompeius Bassus.  Beside his words, she set the stylus, trying to breath calmly enough to settle her nerves and steady her trembling fingers, and wrote: Maia Pompeii.  His wife, sempeternum.

When he brought his face to hers at last, his lovely, haunted eyes were brimming over.  Something deep inside him gave way suddenly and he seemed to sag, then caught himself, smiled and squeezed her hand as he drew her to himself slowly and kissed her lightly on the lips.  So they marked their union in the silent wash of tears. 

He smiled again, not at her but at the crowd.  In an instant he remade himself and pulled her tight against his side.  One strong arm rested on her shoulder; the other thrust high in the air in defiance or salute and raised a cheer that rang against the roof, as the witnesses crowded forward in celebration.

First to sign was not Lyvia or Bassus as she expected, but Gnaeus Julius Agricola, consul of Gallia Aquitania, Pontifex, Commander of Legio XXth Valeria Victrix, now to be Governor of Britannia.  Cilo’s commanding officer.

Lyvia’s feast was as sumptuous as the provincial markets allowed.  Rich meats, peacocks and other game fowl, sucking pigs and the best of the autumn harvest.  Some dignitaries had come down river from Lutetia; and the families of the freemen from around the villa, the farms and villages along the Seine valley; but soldiers far outnumbered the other guests.

Among them, Cilo seemed to rise above his sadness as the hours passed.  At some critical point he had remained steadfast.  He had chosen an obscure duty.  He had chosen obedience and compliance.  There would be other choices and consequences to deal with as this future traced its delicate omens on the air.   

This future with sweet, shy, dutiful, beautiful Maia as his wife. 

This future starting now, surrounded by those he loved, carousing loudly, feasting and singing as if each bird, each goblet, each song might be his last. 

As the wedding reception progressed, Maia sat quietly alone, seeing little and caring less.  Her ears and eyes turned inward on vague sinuous melodies.  An eloquent lament threaded back through her memories, weaving the fabric of consciousness into something she could almost recall.  The song she heard resembled pipes, soft, hollow, but as she traced its mournful harmonies, she recognized a woman’s haunting strains.  It was the song of her mother’s fathomless grieving, and her own.

Her body made no real demands upon her attention and the irritation of the little silver coin was barely noticeable unless she stood.  She drained her silver chalice of new vintage and refilled it, taking a seat at the side of the hall.  On an empty stomach the reflective fog of the wine seemed to fuel the part of her mind that went questing after threadbare memories.  It was comfortable, forgetful, soothing away hunger and easing stresses from her neck and shoulders.  It helped her float toward the song, carried her back to another world, another life.

She could see her mother’s face on the day she married Bassus, speaking important truths about fate and happiness.  About courage.  She remembered standing between her stepbrothers, Appius and Oppius, feeling small and so exposed, but clutching tightly to hands that promised her protection. 

So much was gone, but not her Cilo.  Not the big brother who loved her, and sheltered her through losses too painful to bear.  Not Cilo, surely he could never be ashamed of her.

Painfully, she forced her eyes to focus on the room around her, sought his lovely face.  Even among so many men he stood apart.  Rapt in the excess of celebration, he could not hide the elemental feline grace of his movement, his lean muscularity.  And more, Maia knew his heart and his courage.

It took courage to find joy in the rooms fate built around you.   As much as it took courage for warriors to choose to tear walls down.  She had courage enough to accept her only choice.  If Cilo had other options, but he had chosen her, then he too would find joy in their union.  She needed now to find the strength to stand beside him.

The night drew on and the time to form the Pompa, their procession to the marriage bed, came and went.  Tiberia had been ordered back to the kitchens, and was clearing and serving still, so she had no matron to stand with her.  That which should have been a mother was conspicuously elsewhere, intent on presenting Maia with her humiliation, while she herself accomplished a masterpiece in colonial entertainment.

Alone then, she approached her husband.  “Cilo, we have to go now.  Some of the guests have already had to leave.”

“It’s Ok,” he pulled her against him, under his arm, as if she belonged there with his comrades, a miniature, or mascot for the troops.  “There is plenty of time, angel.  Here, have some wine.”

“No, no more wine.”  She took the goblet he pushed into her hand.  “Your commander has gone to the barracks, did you notice?  That’s bad protocol, Cilo.  If he goes, shouldn’t all these men go back to the barracks too?”

“He’s a good man.  A fine man.  And fair.  He would never stop a wedding celebration.  And I’m his tribune, he trusts my judgment.”

“But we have to go, don’t you see?  Even if every other part of this celebration has been a mess, this we have to do.  We have to light the white torches and make the procession.  You know that.”

“A mess?  This has been the best celebration, ever.  Ever in the history of Rome.  Our dearest stepmother has seen to that.  Look at her over there, slithering around the guests.”

“Cilo, stop it!  Not so loud, she’ll hear you.”

“Yes, she’ll hear me, and call up the Furies.  Oh, too late.  There’s one now.”

“Cilo!”  Maia warned, uselessly.

“Serpent hair and eyes of blood, looks like her to me.  What do you think?”

“Stop it.  You’ll make trouble for us.”

“Trouble?  My angel, you can’t guess at the trouble we are already in, you and I.  Here, drink up.  Toast our glorious future.”  He wiped a finger down her cheek and the smile slid away from his lips.  “You have no idea the price the fates demand.  And that’s as it should be.  Here, drink up.”  He turned and laughed again with the men who crowded around him.

His weight was growing uncomfortable on her neck and reasoning with him was hopeless.  She took a gulp of wine against the burning in her throat and kissed his chest.  Then turning, slipped from under him, and trudged sadly to where a small group of guests was preparing to leave.

At last, servants began to clear away some of the chaos, and Bassus hugged her gently.  “My darling, why aren’t you smiling?  What a feast!  Word of tonight will be heard in Rome.”  He laughed, delighted.  “These boys will sing songs about tonight for years to come.”  He looked at her kindly, turning her face up to his with thick sausage fingers.  “Are you so sad?  What a wedding.  Such a husband, my son, yes?  Of course, I’m biased.  And such a bride.  Look at you, my beautiful stepdaughter.  How could the day have been better?”

Maia tried a smile but it twitched uncertainly under Lyvia’s predatory sneer.  How many ways could she mention?  “Oh Papa.  I might have come with a dowry.  Anything I could have called my own.”

“Oh!”  Bassus was obviously struck.  “I never thought,” he began.

Lyvia cut him off.  “Nonsense, girl. Surely you bring all your mother left you.”

“Yes,” the old man exclaimed.  “When I married your dear mother, all I own became hers, and through her, yours.  You take whatever you like.  Anything you want.”  Happy with this thought, he turned to find his son, to share his blessings as he retired.

Lyvia stayed long enough to spit, “I was thinking much smaller, more intimate.  What was it your mother brought with her to the slave stalls?  Apart from you.”  Her small eyes narrowed, watching to see her words hit their mark.

Maia swallowed the burn.  She refused to blink dry eyes and forced her bottom lip to be still.  Only her nostrils flared slightly as she hissed an answer.  “Courage.”

Her stepmother stood, wary, her face expressionless as she studied the girl before her.  Narrow serpentine eyes searched every feature, every shade in Maia’s golden eyes, hunted through the fatigue and emotional wreckage of the night, probed for any hint of threat.  Then she laughed.  Flicking long fingers dismissively in Maia’s face, she threw her head back and laughed.  Turned her back and walked out into the night.  Laughing.

Maia rubbed determinedly at her hands, forcing one palm against the other in an attempt to grind away the stains.  Tiny muscles near her eyes and in her chin ticked and tugged until her face fell into an uncertain frown.

Her mother had been a warrior; had fought beside her father and seen him fall.  She had kept her small daughter alive through the filth of the slave stalls; through miles of snow; across vast plains where she’d begged for stream water.  To a new land, a new life.  A new name.

All Maia had of her mother was a rough silver coin and that was burying itself deeper into her heel as she stood.

“Did you toast the Goddess?”  The unfamiliar voice was quiet, only slightly slurred by wine.  When she refused to raise her eyes, a silver goblet bleeding red wine passed under her face and into view.  “I’m to be your escort.  In domum mariti.”

“I’ve got only one escort then, not three?  And no matron either?”

“No, there are three of us.  But I’m not sure how much help those two will be.”  The wineglass drew her eyes across, pointing to where two soldiers propped each other up through loudly forgotten words.  Wine roughened their throats and the room shook with the roar of their song.  Then the wine returned to within her reach and with it a sun-browned arm covered with fine fair hair.

“You’re foreign.”  She looked up into gray eyes.  Deep, intense eyes.

He smiled, “Foreign to where?  I’m not local, no.  And I’m not Roman.  Not from Gallia Aquitania either, but we’ve been stationed there for three years.”

“You’re British.”

“Aye.  But more exotic yet.  Caledonian.  Or my father was.  Is.  Lucius,” he offered a hand.  “Luc.”

“Maia,” she responded.

“Yes I know,” he said.  “I feel like I know you.  Cilo has spoken about you often enough.”

She looked up, surprised by Cilo’s sudden appearance at the young man’s shoulder.

“He eats babies,” her husband slurred, laughing, clapping the soldier on the shoulder as much for support as camaraderie. 

Maia stepped forward, slipping herself under her groom’s free arm.  “Come on, we really have to go, Cilo.  Can you walk?”

“No!”  He pushed her back, less than gently.  “Sorry, sorry.  Gotta get, and go with….” he waved a disoriented arm around vaguely toward the contingent who should march him to his wedding bungalow ahead of his bride.

“Yes, Cilo, go.  You’ve got to go with them.  Please.”

He traced his finger down an approximation of her cheek.  “You’re beautiful,” he slurred again, as Lucius stepped forward, successfully turning the groom. 

“Right my friend, you’re away.  Come on then, boys,” he raised his voice.  “Let’s go.”

The swaggering, staggering throng launched itself toward the doors, still singing.  No one lit the white torches, and that may have been a blessing.  With them the whole villa might have been reduced to ash and despair.

In the time it took for darkness to cover the line; as Maia looked around at the litter of bodies bleeding wine and vomit; she moved from sadness into quiet resignation.  When Lucius returned, she managed a small smile.  “No, not three escorts after all?  Just you?”

“Seems so.”  They alone were conscious.

“Not one auspicious omen.  Not one.  It’s not even my day is it, it’s the harvest festival.  Will Venus forgive me for using her day, do you think?” She looked up bleakly.

He looked at his feet, away from the quiet destitution of this beautiful girl.  She looked fragile; his best friend’s wife, his sister.  “I don’t know I’m just a poor heathen from the outer extremes of empire.  I’ve not much time for gods and goddesses.  Seems they’ve never made much time for me.”

“Hush,” she stamped a foot.  “Do you want to make it worse?”

“It could get worse than this?” he asked seriously.

She laughed and the sound moved his expression through confusion and relief.

He cocked an eyebrow and looked away, but a smile played over his lips. 

She tried to catch the rush of giggles, dam it up, but her spirit was as exhausted as her flesh.  Giggles shook her, her face crumbling from slack emotionless despondence into an aching confusion of hilarious misery.  Frustration moved gleefully toward hysteria.

He laughed too, caught in the contagion but embarrassed, as she doubled over in spasms of hysterical release, leaning on his forearm, helpless to control it or even to breathe.  Great sobs of laughter sucked the air from her lungs and rocked her until her face screamed in cramping pain and her eyes streamed tears.

She staggered and he steadied her.  “Come on.  You have to stop this.  You’ve taken the only dignified path through this whole debacle. You can’t lose it now.”

Somehow his words found a foothold in the turmoil of her mind.  It was nearly over.  “Oh dear.” She rubbed at her face, smearing away tears she longed to shed.  “Ok.  I’m alright.”  Bracing her hands on her thighs, she tried some steadier breaths.  Some still kicked as they refilled the emptiness inside her, but slowly control returned and she straightened.  Slipping an arm through his so all the heat of her emotion pressed against him, she said, “Ok, I’m alright now.  Lead on.”

 “This way, then.”  They took a single step, “Oh, look, I brought some walnuts to throw.”  From the pouch on his hip he showed a handful of brown nuts.

Maia tried to smile, but the expression drew her one step nearer tears, as she asked, “Should they still be in their shells?”

“I don’t know.  Here.  For luck, then, hey?”  He pressed a woody lump into her hand.

“For luck,” she echoed and they walked out into the dark courtyard.

At the door of the bungalow, the sounds of the ongoing celebrations carried clearly from within.  Luc said, “I am so sorry.  I’ll go hunt them out.  Wait here.”

Maia could do nothing more than wait, now.  The moon had long set; Pliades was just visible at the horizon.  The bright star that shared her name winked its ancient amusement at her.  Her mother’s namesake shone there too, but was not so much amused.  Fixing her eyes on the blinking goddess, she let the bustle of seedy drunks file by, slower now, more subdued than they had been.

Yet again she stood with Luc as her only witness.

From beside the door, she took the prepared bowl of lard scented with lavender oil and smeared it around her doorway.  Then as steadily as she could, she lifted the torch from its sconce beside the path and stood before her marital dwelling.  “When and where you are Gaius, then and there I am Gaia.”  She spoke clearly, forcing her mouth around the heartbreaking words of her oath.  But she could not make herself move forward through the door.

She stamped her foot again and her mother’s courage bit deeper into her heel.  “Ow,” she whimpered, her lip beginning to tremble.  “I will not,” she hissed defiantly before despair cracked her voice, “walk over this threshold!”

“No.”  Lucius cast about himself for a moment.  In the dark silence, as predawn breezes brushed her cheeks, catching her perfume and teasing it over his taut nerves, he hesitated.  There were no rules for this; he had no idea how best to approach. 

Reluctantly, he stepped close and pulled the hand that held her torch around his shoulder.  Then he bent and lifted her, stepped carefully through the door and into the open bedchamber where Cilo lay, spread-eagled and unaware.

Setting her carefully on her feet, he took the torch from her hand and laid it into the waiting grate of kindling.  Squatting silently there in the darkness, he waited until the fire caught enough to light the room around them, then returned with the torch to where Maia stood, her face blank and still.

“He is a good man.” He whispered soberly.  “The best.  There is no where I wouldn’t stand bedside him, or in his place, even to death.”  In the moving shadows of the torchlight, she seemed no more than a child.  Huge golden eyes filled with tears that caught the flame and threw it back like starlight. 

“There will be better days for you.”  He took the small hand that clutched her lumpy cluster of walnuts, wanting to assure her, to make it true for her.

“You seem sure,” she whispered, looking past him at the man snoring softly on the low bed before them.

“I am sure.  A man who has no time for gods knows for sure you can make your own luck.”  Turning so shadows dressed the tight frown growing across his face, he straightened arms that ached to comfort her.  There was a slight shake of his head as he turned to leave.  “You’ve no matron to help you with,” he paused self-consciously.  “But I don’t think you’ll need her help tonight.”

“No.”

“I’ll take this out, will I?” he held out the torch. 

No excited crowd waited for her to throw it to them, so she nodded silently.

Lucius pulled the door closed behind him as he crossed the dark courtyard with Maia’s hearthfire to light his way.

“Cilo?”  Maia sat gently onto her wedding couch.  She slipped a finger into her sandal and eased it from her foot, then the second, and she doubled over to better reach the blister under her heel.  It wasn’t serious, just a little tender.  She drew her knees up sideways, the narrow tube of her floor-length tunic making any movement awkward.  “Cilo?”  She tried gently shaking his shoulder.

Drawing up onto her knees, Maia lifted her wildflower wreath, now limp and gray, from her head, freeing the flammeum so she could lift it and fold it over her arms.  “Cilo, wake up!”  Still no response.

Without a mirror it was no easy task untangling the twists and fastenings of her tutulus.  Six separate locks of hair had been knotted and woven together into a high cone, and the discipline required to slowly undo it all forced her body to calm and her mind to clear.  With the last strands freed she scratched at the itches on her scalp then used her fingers to comb the long tresses back over her shoulders.

“Cilo, it’s our wedding night.  You have to wake up.”  Leaning closer over his face, she held his chin in her hand.  There was no sign he even heard her.  “Ok.  Maybe you should sleep a while.”

Rolling sideways she struggled to her feet.  The day had been long and she needed to wash and to sleep

Standing in the firelight she tried to undress.

A shank of unspun wool, her Knot of Hercules, held the narrow tunic in at her slim waist.  All day it had hung oddly and she had often tugged and twisted at it.  Now the fibres of her Bride’s knot had become matted and tangled, and she had no husband to untie it.

Dropping back to sit on the low couch, Maia let her tears come.  She was mute, her face still, as sorrow gathered, swelled and bled down her cheeks in unbroken golden veins.  She closed her eyes and let her hair fall forward, while the separate courses ran together and dropped silently from her chin.

Hours drained away and with them the darkness.  As the room around her grayed and paled, the hearth fire died to intermittent ashed-over coals.

At last, one deep trembling breath drew some form of resolution into her breast, and Maia scraped her hair back to survey the room.  Dutifully she stood, piled some wood and kindling onto the fire.  Then she bit a nick in the neckline of her wedding dress, gripped each side, and tore it in two down its front.

Shrugging, she freed her shoulders, then dragged it under the knotted chord at her waist.  Moving neither slowly nor with any unnecessary speed, she dipped a rough linen cloth into it her wash bowl and polished her hands and the skin of her face until it was tingling.

As the dawn’s first light ventured more confidently into the bungalow, she climbed into her wedding bed. 

Stretching out beside Cilo, she arched uncomfortably, feeling for a lump under her hip and pulled out a walnut.  She was nineteen years old, there had to be better days for her.  Clutching her woody lump of luck, close up beside her husband, she fell into exhausted sleep.

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