*
On the principle that no matter what goes wrong, it can always be made to look right, Claudia rapped on Lavinia’s door. To think she considered her own room luxurious! The old woman’s son had really done his mother proud, and again she wondered how an impoverished smallholder could afford such a treat. Ivory and tortoiseshell, maple-wood inlaid with silver, couches, chairs and tables, silver salvers bursting with hot hams and sausages, bowls piled high with fruit and a basket of steaming, crusty rolls. Maybe his hare-brained ventures weren’t so irresponsible after all? Maybe Lavinia, being a simple country woman, didn’t really understand the wheelings and dealings of commerce? Or perhaps she’d just bred a son with the instinct of an Arab horsetrader! On a table by the window, blue and red counters were set out in a half-finished game of Twelve Lines and Lalo, despite his coarse linen tunic, looked bigger and more handsome as he flapped an ostrich fan dyed green. Ruth, on the other hand, appeared to be moulded into a niche on the wall in an unsuccessful attempt to render herself invisible and the reason, Claudia suspected, were the two harridans breathing over the couch.
‘You’ve got to drink it.’
‘Got to.’
‘How on earth will you get better otherwise?’
‘Never get better.’
When they saw Claudia one of the women straightened up, a signal for the other to copy, as surely she had done all her life. They had to be sisters. There was an age difference, six, maybe five years, but the similarities were not confined to mere dress or hairstyles. Both sported matching double chins and piggy eyes and flesh that knew better than dare wobble, but never had the incongruity of their simple, rustic lives clashed more violently with the luxury of Atlantis. Cheap cottons stood out against slinky damasks, natural fibres screamed beside rich, expensive dyes.
‘Fabella and Sabella,’ Lavinia said coldly. ‘Fabella is married to my son.’
Claudia felt a sudden rush of sympathy for the son.
‘It’s this medicine,’ Fabella said. ‘She won’t drink it.’
‘Won’t,’ echoed Sabella, with a sad shake of her head. ‘And she’s hardly touched her breakfast.’
‘Heaven knows what my hubby’ll say, when he finds out his money’s been wasted.’
Try not mentioning it.
‘And we’re due for our massage any minute.’
Claudia beckoned the sisters towards her. ‘It’s this pampering,’ she whispered. ‘Gone to Lavinia’s head.’ She clucked her tongue sympathetically. ‘Won’t touch a thing unless it’s served off gold.’
‘Never!’ they chorused, tutting their joint disapproval.
‘Look, why don’t you two trot off to your massage and I’ll arrange the necessary plates and goblet?’
Not so much trot off, she thought, more off on their trotters.
Behind her, Lavinia let out a sigh of relief. ‘I don’t know what you said to them,’ she cackled, ‘but I’m indebted. Frightful pair.’
Claudia drew up a chair and by the time she’d turned round, Lavinia’s elegant coiffure had turned into a fluffy white fleece. ‘You old phoney.’
‘We’re all frauds here, dear.’ As though it was a cat, the old woman stroked the wig in her lap. ‘Every single one of us.’ She cast a knowing glance at her visitor, who found that for once in her life she couldn’t stare someone out.
Instead, Claudia reached for a pomegranate with a studied show of nonchalance. ‘I don’t suppose you heard any strange sounds in the night? Screaming, for instance?’
Lalo and Ruth exchanged glances. ‘Nothing,’ they said.
‘Liars, the pair of you,’ Lavinia snapped back. ‘Where were you two, eh? Out with it, because neither of you was in Atlantis last night.’
‘I-’ Lalo began to fidget with the handle of the fan, and Claudia noted that his knuckles were bruised and swollen again. ‘I spent the night in Spesium.
‘More fool me, I went looking for him,’ Ruth flashed back. ‘Never found him, either.’
‘We’ll talk about this later,’ Lavinia said, dismissing them with a curt nod. ‘So, then.’ The wizened face broke into a smile. ‘What can I do for you this fine, sunny morn?’
‘Oh,’ Claudia breezed, ‘I just dropped in to ask whether you plan to attend the Agonalia in town.’ The spring festival of lambs was a highlight on most rural calendars, particularly in a month devoid of celebrations.
Lavinia put aside the wig and scratched the side of her nose. ‘I think you know the answer to that,’ she said pointedly. ‘So why don’t you dispense with the formalities and tell me the real reason why you came?’
Claudia grinned and curled her legs up in the chair. ‘I want to know how you managed to avoid compulsory remarriage when you were widowed at the tender age of thirty-two.’
Lavinia’s sigh was like water trickling through a sluice gate. ‘So that’s how the land lies.’ She nodded slowly several times as though wrestling with a decision, then finally cleared her throat. ‘My husband was an old man, but do you know, in seventeen years of marriage he never showed Lavinia a single scrap of kindness. Who’d have thought that, in dying, the old sod would do so well by her?’
A gnarled finger beckoned Claudia closer. ‘My sweat went into that land and I tell you straight, I wasn’t prepared to let the grove pass to another slave-driving bastard. So,’ she lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘Lavinia surrounds herself with busts of the dear departed, commissions several portraits of the old goat, says prayers for him several times a day…’
‘In public, of course.’
Lavinia wetted her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘It’s a hard man who would force a grieving widow into his bed and even the Prefect-’ one sparkling blue eye closed in a wink ‘-even the Prefect of Luca agreed that, under such harrowing circumstances, the rules ought to be waived.’
She paused to let the impact of her words sink in, then added airily, ‘I hear there’s an excellent portrait painter staying in Atlantis at the moment. Now run along, there’s a good girl, Lavinia’s getting tired.’
The hell she was.
‘But be sure to tell me everything that happens in the town,’ the old woman called after her. ‘Lavinia likes to keep abreast of what goes on.’
XIV
The origins of the Agonalia, like so many rustic festivals, had become blurred with the passage of time. Undoubtedly its roots were entrenched in some ancient thanksgiving ceremony for flocks which had not only survived, but procreated to boot, therefore what better time to display newly shorn wool and for priests to bless lambs-but quite why a ram, the bringer of said good fortune, should fall to the sacrificial knife, no one was sure. Indeed, until recently, the festival had been confined to private rituals conducted by smallholders clubbing together to propitiate their local deity…in the old days, before that arch revivalist Augustus stepped in.
He had conquered Rome’s enemies without and within, the dark days of war and civil war were now over for good. He had disbanded his part-time peasant army in favour of hand-picked professionals and since that meant the land was no longer abandoned for months on end, agriculture prospered with a vengeance, inspiring Augustus to resurrect firstly the old celebration of May Day and then raise the profile of the Agonalia, thus doubling the number of jollies in an otherwise dull and unlucky month. Romans throughout the Empire embraced the addition of two more state holidays, and Spesium was right at the fore. Flowers decorated walls, balconies, statues and columns, they were woven into chaplets and garlands and wreaths. Tumblers in gem-bright tunics entertained swelling crowds to a backdrop of flutes and castanets, rope walkers drew gasps, beggars drew alms, artists drew scenes on the pavements-of shipwrecks they had seen off the coast of Achaea, of a three-legged dwarf in Damascus.
Claudia’s audience with Lavinia meant that although she missed the sacrifice itself, her arrival coincided with the point where the haruspex was examining the ram’s vital organs in order to pronounce good or bad auspices. Because the area around Lake Plasimene had been deserted for two hundred years, there were no obvious indications as to who should receive this noble offering, so the obvious candidate was Spes, Goddess of Hope, after whom the town was named. And as befitted her status, Spes had a temple approached by fifteen marble steps, two rows of Corinthian columns at the front, and a storehouse of gold and silverware inside. As Claudia inched her way into the crowd, a hush had descended and even the dancers and acrobats broke off their shows to await the announcement.