Tom just makes it to the bathroom before he heaves again.
He runs the cold tap, pools water in his hands and splashes his face until eventually he feels the coldness.
He looks up into the mirror over the sink.
The face of a killer, Tom. Look at yourself. See how you've changed. Don't pretend you can't see it. You're a murderer. Double murderer, to be precise.
How did it feel, Father Tom? Come on, be honest now.
It was exciting, wasn't it?
Admit it.
Tom looks away. Grabs a towel and walks back to the bedroom.
On the floor near the foot of the bed is an old postcard. One that Rosanna kept pinned to her wall. One that she'd asked for when he'd prayed with her last night. She'd kissed it and given it to him as a token of thanks. 'Per lei.' For you.
He picks it up. Notices that it's brittle with age, the edges torn and dirty. A rusty ring of white shows where a cheap drawing pin had been. Tom looks closely at it for the first time. It's lost whatever colour it once had but it's probably a reproduction of some famous Italian painting. Maybe a Canaletto. Through the sepia fog he can make out the shadowy outline of a church dome and long dark smudges that look like seahorses but are probably gondolas. A scene thousands of miles away, from a painting made hundreds of years ago.
Tom smiles for the first time that day.
Rosanna Romano's home city of Venice is offering him a glimmer of hope.
CAPITOLO I
666 BC
Atmanta, Northern Etruria Foaming Adriatic waves fizzle on a pale peach shoreline. Beyond the ragged north-eastern coast a solemn service of divination comes to a close. Worried villagers file from one of the curtes, the sacred groves nestled between plateaus of olives and vines. The experience has not been an uplifting one.
Their seer has let them down.
Teucer – a once-gifted priest – has yet again failed to discern any good fortune for them.
The young netsvis is distraught. Bemused as to why the gods have temporarily forsaken him. He'd fasted three days before making today's sacrifice, worn clean clothes, stayed sober and done everything decreed by the divine books.
But still the deities offered nothing joyous.
The villagers are muttering loudly. He can hear them complaining. Suggesting he be replaced.
It's now been two full moons – maybe longer – since the augur last brought any good news to the people of Atmanta, and Teucer knows their patience is wearing thin.
Soon they will forget that it was his powers of divination that helped them settle on the metal-rich north-eastern hills. It was his blessing of a copper plough blade that fashioned the first sods of earth and fixed the sacred boundaries of the city. They are so ungrateful. He has come to the curte straight from the death of an elder. An old slave – in the servile settlement beside the drainage pits. She'd died of infestation – demons roaring and cackling inside her ribs, chewing at her lungs, making her spit thick cuds of blood and flesh.
He thinks of her now as he stands alone in the centre of the sacred circle. He'd drawn it with his lituus, a long, finely sharpened cypress stick with a slightly crooked end. It was fashioned by Tetia, his soul mate, the woman he's pledged to spend eternity with.
He looks around. They've all gone. It is time for him to go too.
But where?
Not home. Not yet.
The shame of failure is too great to take to his wife's bed.
He removes his conical hat, the ceremonial headpiece of the netsvis, and resolves to find somewhere to meditate.
A tranquil place where he can beseech Menrva, the goddess of wisdom, to help him through his doubts.
Teucer collects his sacred vessels and walks around the remnants of today's offering, the remains of a fresh egg his acolytes had given him to crack and divine.
The yolk had been rancid.
Stained red with the blood of the unborn. A sign of impending death. But whose?
Teucer walks from the curte to the adjacent land. It is here that the community's temple is being built. But it is taking forever to finish.
Unbaked bricks and wood make up its walls. The grand facade is dominated by a triangular fronton. The wide and low double sloping roof will soon be tiled in terracotta.
When it's finished, Teucer will consecrate the altars and the gods will be pleased.
Everything will be good again.
But he's unsure when that will be. All the workers have been redeployed to the local mine to dig for silver. Worship is now secondary to commerce.
He walks to the rear of the temple and the three areas dedicated to the main deities: Tinia, Uni and Menrva. Once his wife has completed the bronze statues of the holy pantheon, he will bless them in their respective chambers.
This final thought brings him peace and comfort, but not enough self-respect to go home.
Still melancholic, he meanders through the long, overgrown grass and wanders into a thick copse of limes and oaks.
He hears them long before he sees them. Young commoners from a neighbouring settlement. Running. Chasing. Shouting. Three of them, up to some kind of horseplay.
As he draws closer, he's less sure of their innocence.
The sun is in his eyes but it seems they have a boy on the ground.
One of the youths has the boy's head locked between his knees – like a sheep trapped for shearing. The other two have pulled up his tunic. He is naked from the waist down and is being raped by the biggest member of the group.
Teucer stays back. He's tall and wiry, but knows he is no match for savages like these.
Cloud flickers across the sun and fleetingly he gets a clearer view.
The slight figure is not a boy. It's Tetia.
Now he doesn't hesitate. The field flies beneath his feet. As he runs he pulls out the knife he uses for sacred sacrifices, the blade he uses to gut animals.
He plunges it into the back of the rapist.
The brute screams and knocks Tetia over as he falls. Teucer sweeps the blade at the face of the beast who'd been holding her, slashing him across the face.
Now there are arms around his neck. The third one is on him. Choking him. Pulling him over.
They crash to the ground. Teucer feels dizzy. He's banged his head and everything's going black.
But before he passes out, he feels one thing. The knife.
It is being taken from his slackening grasp.
CAPITOLO II
'Teucer!'
The seer thinks he's dreaming.
'Teucer! Wake up!'
He opens his eyes. They hurt. Tetia's staring down at him but he can't see her face properly because the sun is burning so brightly behind her.
It must all have been a dream.
But the look on her face says it isn't.
The blood on her hands says it isn't.
He turns on his side and slowly pulls himself upright. He looks around. Sees nothing. He gets to his feet and puts out his shaking hands to her. 'Are you all right?'
There's a look of terror on her face. She is staring behind him.
Teucer turns.
He can't believe what he sees.
It was real. All very real.
The body of the rapist is still there. Laid out in the dirt. His face and body have been cut to bits. The man whose face he cut has fled, along with his accomplice.
Teucer looks at his wife. She's soaked in blood.
He doesn't have to ask what happened; it's obvious. When he passed out, she must have taken the knife and stabbed her attacker to death. Stabbed and stabbed and stabbed until she was absolutely sure he was dead.