Sour Grapes

Eleven

When Augustus triumphed over Cleopatra and Mark Anthony, he united the Empire and promised his people an end to the carnage of war, but his peace came with a price tag. In return for safe highways, better living standards and grain in your granaries, he told the vanquished nations, you pay tax to Rome and abide by Roman law. It's all right, you can keep your customs, your clothes, your obscure religions, we don't mind. In fact, your culture enriches ours. But cross me, he warned, and your soil will be stained red with blood for a decade. Which path do you choose?

Too many lives had already been sacrificed, too much lost, for the tribes to challenge the might of the Romans. He knew full well that they'd bow to the inevitable, then try to squeeze as much as they could out of the deal — which was all very fine, but left Augustus with something of a dilemma. Given the peace that had settled over the Empire, what was he going to do with seventy legions, now that most of them had nothing to do?

Augustus was nothing if not shrewd. Rumours had abounded for years about how he'd offered himself as Julius Caesar's catamite to advance his own cause, and whether those rumours were founded or not, it was the nineteen-year-old Augustus who inherited the Divine Julius's crown. No one else! So the administering of territories stretching from the eastern shores of the Black Sea to the Oceans of Atlantis was nothing short of child's play for the Emperor. By replacing amateur conscripted farmers with a force of hardcore professional volunteers, the army's efficiency multiplied. Within two years he'd reduced seventy legions to fewer than thirty, allotting the redundant veterans generous pensions as well as parcels of fertile land in the conquered territories to those that wanted them, while opportunities naturally flourished within his elite and restructured army.

The father of Publius Peregrinus Macedo might well have bought his son's original commission, but there was no disguising the lad's military genius. Nicknamed Rex on account of his imposing stature, he was the youngest legate to march into Gaul and the first to fully appreciate the importance of civilian support on campaign, the so-called 'Second Army' of carpenters, engineers, musicians and blacksmiths, orderlies, veterinarians and scribes.

Waiting in the general's office, Orbilio scanned the gleaming collection of weapons, armour and other trophies of war that obliterated most of Rex's walls and was flooded with memories of his own tribuneship. Hardly the happiest time of his life. The marriage he'd been contracted into prior to his first posting hadn't got off to the finest of starts, and being absent from home for the best part of two years did nothing to bolster the relationship. Add on his refusal to follow the proud ancestral tradition and take up law once his stint was up, opting for what his family considered to be some grubby, poorly paid post in a demeaning little backwater of the Administration, and it was no great surprise that his wife ran off with a sea captain from Lusitania, causing a scandal that still clung to him like a wet shirt. He peered at the battle-scarred helmets, the rows of pierced shields, an Egyptian corselet still stained with blood. No matter how hard or how often he tried to explain, not so much as one distant third cousin had grasped the fact that enforcing the law was infinitely more important that practising it, especially since the object of defence was to get the accused off and never mind that the bastard was guilty!

Testing the point of a Scythian arrowhead, Marcus prided himself on his work within the Security Police. The satisfaction of knowing that this assassination attempt had been foiled, that conspiracy had been thwarted, those rapists and murderers thrown to the lions. He might only be a small cog in the wheel, but that was the wheel that kept Rome safe and the Empire thriving, and no one could take that sense of fulfilment away. He saw, in time, taking a seat in the Senate, like his father before him, and voting on issues that would change not just the law, but the whole structure of society. Make it better and stronger for generations to come. There was a sense of achievement in that, too.

But… He ran his finger over the red horsehair crest of an antique Spartan helmet. But at the same time there was something missing in his life, and that something was a woman. A wife. And that something also had a name.

Watching the tumble of curls bursting out of their ivory hairpins this morning, Marcus felt the same wrench in his gut that he always felt when he was with her. It wasn't love, of course, because love wouldn't keep a chap tossing and turning all through the night, then leave him aching and empty in the morning. Love was about holding hands in the moonlight and whispering sweet nothings in one another's ears, not chasing round the countryside risking your career on a girl who took life's corners on two wheels. Nevertheless… He examined his teeth in the shine of an ancient Mycenean breastplate. The Governor of Aquitania was pressuring him to set an example of Roman propriety by remarrying, while Claudia's estate was under threat if Darius married Larentia.

Expediency, that's all it was. She knew him enough to trust his word that she could continue to manage her own affairs without his interference. He'd have the appendage of respectability that the State required. Expediency. Yes, that's what it was. Expediency, pure and simple.

'Ah, Marcus!' Rex strode into the room with his customary briskness, and for all that he was clad in civilian clothes, he might just as well have been wearing his red legate's tunic, with his red woollen cloak swinging jauntily over his shoulder. 'Been admiring my collection, have you? That — ' he jabbed a stubby finger at a leather belt hanging empty in pride of place behind his desk '- was Agamemnon's own baldric. By your right shoulder hangs the girdle of Hippolyte the Amazon queen, and this,' he said proudly, 'this is the very sword with which Achilles despatched Hector beneath the walls of Troy!'

Orbilio was reminded of charlatans in Rome selling dead snakes cut from Medusa's head or feathers shed from Pegasus's wings.

'Hoping to add Hercules's olive-wood club very soon. Depends on whether my source can negotiate a fair price-'

'About Hadrian, sir.'

'Hadrian?' The old war horse filled two goblets to the brim with wine. 'Waste of time, m'boy. Appreciate you coming up here and all that, and happy to put you and your scribe up for as long as you want, but no need, no need. Local army chappies are quite capable of handling the investigation.'

'There are rumbles of a cover-up.'

'That'll be the sister's doing. Take no notice.' Rex indicated for Orbilio to take a seat on a high-backed upholstered chair with carved lion armrests. 'Keeps stirring the wrong pot, that's Rosenna's trouble. Won't face the truth.'

Orbilio placed his glass on the desk untouched. 'And what is the truth?'

'The truth, m'boy, is that Lichas was a nasty little shit, who deserved everything he got.'

The general downed his wine in one swallow and Marcus wondered idly whether anyone ever deserved to be stabbed and thrown into the river alive.

'Which makes it doubly unfortunate for Hadrian that he was the last person to see Lichas alive and has admitted quarrelling with him under the yew,' he said evenly.

'That admission was made in this room, dammit, when there were only the three of us present, and if you take that outside, both my son and I'll deny it and never mind I sat next to your father on a bench in the Senate, I'll have you denounced as a liar, understood?'

'No, sir, I don't understand.' Orbilio laced his fingers. 'Your son is this close to being arrested for Lichas's murder, and right now the only thing that's preventing him from being marched off in chains is the fact that you've leaned on the local judiciary. Rosenna knows it, the townspeople know it, and if I've any hope of clearing Hadrian's name, you have to let me interview him again-'

'Categorically not!' Rex pounded the desk with his fist. 'The boy's said too much as it is.'

'Are you worried he'll say more?'

Colour suffused the general's face, turning it a deep shade of purple. 'If I was still a legate, I'd have had you flogged for that remark.'

'If you'd still been a legate, I'd have been a tribune, and you could not have had a tribune flogged for any reason. Sir. Now let's not forget we're on the same side here-'

'What we shouldn't forget, sonny, is that I didn't invite you here and I didn't ask you to meddle in affairs that don't bloody concern you.' The old soldier regrouped. 'See here, m'boy. You came to Tuscany for all the right reasons, I realize that, and I appreciate the sacrifice you've made, too. Building a reputation for yourself in Aquitania and all that. But best get back while you've still got a job, eh?'

'Is that a threat?'

Rex's lips tightened and for several minutes the only sound in the office was that of him tapping his finger on his satin-wood desk. Orbilio let his gaze range across the various antiquaries. What was Rex hiding, he wondered?

'Sorry if I appear to be breaking your balls, but you see how it is, don't you?' The general harrumphed around in his chair. 'Just… just not right, this sort of thing.'

'Murder?'

Rex wasn't listening. 'Have fun, by all means. At his age, we all did. Sow your wild oats and if that includes hopping over the fence for a bit of a change, then so be it. But to make a vocation of it, dammit! Just ain't natural, and I'll cure that boy of his ridiculous notions if it's the last thing I do. Think I'll have a word with the Emperor, what. Ask for Hadrian to be put in charge of a cohort out on the Rhine. That'll make a man of him right enough, because there'll be none of this namby-pamby nancy-boy stuff, not on my watch, even if I have to beat it out of the lad myself.'

'I'm sure that'll do the trick.'

'Are you being funny?'

'No, sir.'

'That Lichas, he was one of 'em, y'know, and we all know how far they'll go to protect one of their own.'

'With all due respect, you can't lump homosexuals in a box and-'

'Not talking about bloody poofs! Commoners, Marcus. Riff-raff. You served abroad. You know what it's like, living among vanquished tribes. Can't trust 'em, can't turn your back on 'em, and forget this talk about the Etruscans being conquered so far back in time that they're fully integrated. Bollocks. It's them and us, always was, always will be, and it don't matter a damn what we've done for the ungrateful buggers, they still resent us.'

'One can see their point, though.'

The general pushed his jowly face towards his. 'I'll not have my son's reputation smeared through these preposterous allegations. If Hadrian says he didn't kill that snide little queer, that's the end of it, so you leave it, Marcus. Leave it alone or so help me you'll be pushing a quill for the rest of your sordid little career.'

Watching her brother's pyre burn, Rosenna experienced an unexpected sense of release. At last, she thought, Lichas was free of the indignity of lying there with his corpse ravaged by murder, by water, by savage wee teeth. At last, Lichas was free.

As the choir of four (it was all she could afford) sent him on his last journey with hymns, an acolyte sprinkled sacred water on the pyre as the priest raised his arms in supplication that the gates of the Fields of the Blessed would open and the newcomer find peace among his ancestors. There was no question of hiring wailing women or professional mourners for Lichas, but the modest funeral had not deterred the townspeople from paying their respects. The toy-maker had been a nice enough lad and his skills would be missed, but wasn't it wicked the way that patrician boy cut him down in his prime and was gonna get away with the murder? Discontent rumbled through the crowds like distant thunder and Rosenna's heart found comfort in the sound.

'There'll be no funeral meats,' she explained.

They understood. Lichas was young, he hadn't had time to establish his business. Rosenna couldn't afford a funeral as well as a feast.

'You are bearing up well, child,' the priest murmured. 'Lichas would be proud of you.'

She smiled thinly, knowing he interpreted her pursed lips and fists clenched white as grief. This was undoubtedly true. But they were pursed and clenched in vengeance, as well.

Flames crackled and coils of incense spiralled upwards on the warm breeze. Rosenna hadn't actually lied about her financial situation. All she'd said was there'd be no funeral meats and left people to draw their own conclusions, whereas Lichas's toys had sold for a tidy profit. That was a lot of money she'd found in his chest. But not so much, unfortunately, that she could afford a funeral, a feast and bribing a slave in that bastard's household.

The choir continued to carry Lichas on his final voyage, calming the River Styx with their voices and steadying the Ferryman's oars.

The spy's news was bad. The worst possible, as it happened, as he'd listened in on the conversation between Rex and that high-flying crony of his from Rome. It was, as Rosenna had feared, a full-scale cover-up. Having admitted to quarrelling with Lichas at the spot where he was killed, Hadrian was one step away from confessing to the murder, something Rex had no intention of allowing him to do. According to the spy, the investigator from Rome was more than happy to drop the case, whilst Rex had personally spoken to the Emperor, who was arranging for Hadrian to be despatched to the Rhine, where the rumours about his precious boy wouldn't have surfaced.

Boy. The word made Rosenna sick. Holy Nox, Hadrian was twenty-five years old and at an age when most men of his class had been married for ten years and raised kids, having served two years in the army then either continued with a military career or taken up a post in the Administration. What had this Hadrian done? Become a leech on his father and society, that's what. A hanger-on without backbone or conscience, yet Rex still called him a boy. Rosenna pulled her long red hair loose as a gesture of mourning and sprinkled ashes over her head. Dammit, the cover-up made Rex as big a bastard as his murderous son, but nits grow into lice, she supposed. And both were equally easily exterminated.

After a while, the funeral pyre ceased to crackle and the flames no longer leapt higher than herself. The townspeople had dispersed; the choir, the acolyte, and even the priest had slipped away until it was just Rosenna and a pile of smouldering bones on a field surrounded by cypress and poplars.

Rosenna did not believe in clinging to the old ways. She understood why folk'd want to bury their dead in the City of Shades out in the country, but as far as she was concerned, times change and life moves with it. And how can they call themselves traditionalists, when the necropolises themselves had changed so drastically over the years? Once upon a time, tombs were tiny replica houses, to which the family brought food and other gifts that would nourish the deceased's spirit in its new residence. Then, through the flight patterns of birds and the clouds in the skies, the gods divulged more about the afterlife and tombs were excavated deep in the rock that the dead might be closer to Aita the Unseen, who ruled over the Underworld. Such sepulchres were a complex arrangement of chambers and corridors, passageways, columns and courtyards, but even that changed when the City of Shades was laid out in a pattern of properly recreated streets and plazas, so that the dead might feel more at home.

Except the dead were not at home, Rosenna thought bitterly, and better their ashes were buried in an urn close to the living, where flowers could be laid at regular intervals, than leave their souls to flit like bats in the void. Untended. Unloved. Ultimately forgotten …

A kite mewed high above and, down the long straight road that led to the Burning Field, a set of hooves echoed. The horse snickered as the rider pulled up and dismounted. His head was veiled, as men are obliged when paying respects at a funeral, so his face was deep in shadow, and the loose way he draped his cloak betrayed little about his build. After standing in swirling wood smoke for several hours, many of which had been spent sobbing, Rosenna's smarting eyes couldn't tell whether the rider was young or old, thin or stocky, Roman or Etruscan, though for the life of her she couldn't understand why a stranger should stand some distance from her brother's funeral and just stare. No words of comfort were offered to the bereaved. No token thrown upon the flames. Just a stranger. Staring from across the other side of the field. Without acknowledgement, the rider picked up the reins of his horse, flung himself into the saddle and galloped off, his mount's hooves kicking up clouds of dust on the road.

It was only once he'd ridden off that Rosenna noticed the couple.

Standing close together in the shade of an ancient cypress, their skin was an identical shade of olive, their hair an identical length, their noses identical in profile. The man wore a green tunic that mirrored the cypress, the girl's was a deep brooding blue, both embroidered with patterns that Rosenna had seen only once before and then on a Palestinian merchant. No words passed between the pair, yet they were communicating, Rosenna was sure of it. And as the sun slowly set and the last of the energy drained from Lichas's pyre, she was reminded of vultures standing over a body, waiting for the victim to die.

Shivering, she turned back to the fire, rubbing the goose pimples flat on her arms. When she looked back again, the couple were gone.

Standing in middle of the Burning Field as dusk settled over the landscape while she waited for the priest to return and sanctify her brother's remains before they were washed then locked away in their urn, Rosenna had never felt so alone.