The Lion and the Lark (5 page)

     “I’m sure the reinforcements brought garum with them,” Lucia said soothingly, referring to the fermented fish sauce which served as the garnish to every meal in Rome.

     “And what is woad, may I ask?” Drucilla went on, as if her daughter hadn’t spoken.  “It is the foulest smelling vegetable I have ever encountered, and even the corn here looks strange.  It has an odd color, have you noticed that?”

     “I think it’s maize,” Lucia said.

     Her mother looked at her.

     “It’s more like wheat or oats than cereal corn.  That’s why it’s so pale and chewy.”

     “How do you know?”

     “Maeve in the kitchen told me.”

     “You’d do well to stay away from that old crone, I think she has the evil eye.”

     “Mother, please.”

     “Haven’t you noticed that she squints?”

     “She has a rheumy eye.  She’s past seventy, Mother, I’m amazed she can see at all.”

     Drucilla harrumphed.  “I want you to avoid the locals, I’ve told you this before, Lucia.  Just remember that not too long ago these people displayed the severed heads of their defeated enemies in niches over their doorways.  Who knows what that old biddy might be plotting?”

     “Maeve is harmless, she’s just full of stories.  It can’t hurt me to talk to her while she cooks.”

     “I don’t understand your fascination with the Celts, Lucia,” Drucilla said, shaking her head.  “You always were a strange child.  I won’t be satisfied until you’re back in Rome and safely married.  And by the way, I’m inviting Leonatus and his aide-de-camp to the house for dinner tonight, to welcome the tribune to this forsaken place.  Please find something suitable to wear.”  She swept out of the hallway and into the
tablinum
, leaving the scent of her face cream, Jerusalem aloes blended with rosemary and jasmine, to trail in her wake.

     Lucia had surprised herself with her interest in Britain.  She didn’t want to come in the first place, had pleaded to stay behind in Rome, but her father was taking no chances on bringing a virgin to her marriage bed.  He wanted to keep her under the family’s watchful eye, so she had made the journey, seasick all the way and cursing her fate.

     But once she arrived, a gradual change took place.  The weather was cool and invigorating, the countryside lush, the people bewitching.  She was charmed by their bravery, their horsemanship, their mysticism, their long limbed, fair skinned beauty.  She suddenly remembered the boy she’d seen in the torchlight outside the fort: unlike most of the Celtic men, he’d been clean shaven, and his pale hair had shone like a silver coin.

     She shook her had, as if to clear it, and then went inside to select a gown for the evening’s meal.

     Claudius looked around his quarters and directed the bearers to place his storage chest under the single window in the bare room.  He was on the opposite side of the building from the soldiers’ barracks, next to Scipio’s quaestor, or chief of staff.  Tullius Munius Cato was a fussy, officious little man, the type Claudius thought of as a military clerk, but he had to admit that Cato was good at his job.  In Scipio’s absence he had apparently run the garrison with the efficiency of a Sicilian wine merchant.  As Claudius took off his cloak and dropped it on the bed, a straw pallet covered with muslin sheeting and supported on a wooden frame, Cato tapped smartly on his half open door.

     “We have had a message from the Scipiana,” Cato said.  “She asks that you join her at her house for cena this evening.”

     Claudius nodded.  It was the official welcome from the commander’s wife.  “I’ll be bringing my aide along,” he replied.

     Cato’s lips thinned; this had not been part of his plan.  He had probably expected to go himself.  Claudius ignored his reaction and added, “Ask the bearers to remove the amphora of incense in the hold of the lead ship and bring it to me here.  It’s a gift for the general’s wife.  And I do not wish to be disturbed for the rest of the afternoon.”

     Cato disappeared from the doorway and Claudius turned to the desk facing the bed.  The desk was covered with scrolls enclosed in leather pouches, letters to himself and to Scipio which had arrived during the general’s absence. 

     He sat down to read.

     Darkness fell, a page came in and lit a tallow lamp on his desk and the torches on the walls, and he was still at work.  There was no scribe at the fort so he made notes himself, using the poor quality quills and the ink that Cato had supplied.  It was made from the sea animal the Greeks called
oktopei
  and far inferior to the ink made from eastern dyes commonly used in Rome.

     Claudius knew that he was definitely not at home any more.

     He looked up at the end of one missive, suddenly aware of the passage of time, and saw by the calibrated candle melting away before him that it was time to dress for dinner.  He had just risen from his chair when Ardus knocked and then entered, glancing around the room at the spartan bed and the rough wooden furniture.  The amphora Claudius had requested was in his hands.

     “Not exactly the Leonatus estate, is it?” Ardus said dryly.

     “We’ve both seen worse,” Claudius replied, pulling his tunic over his head and removing a fresh one from his chest.  It smelled of the amber it had been packed with and the fine wool had been folded so carefully that it was almost unwrinkled.

     “At least we’re not sleeping under canvas in some Gallic barnyard,” Ardus said.

     Claudius nodded.  “How’s the barracks?”

     “Like this.  We have a few more chairs.”

     Claudius laughed.

     “What’s in this thing?” Ardus asked curiously, indicating the jar he held.

     “Sandalwood and ambergris balm from eastern Thrace.  Lady Scipio likes cosmetics.”  He donned his leather breastplate and skirtguard and picked up his cloak, leaving his weapons on the bed.

     “Better to wear those,” Ardus said.

     Claudius looked at him.  “To a dinner party?”

     “I’ve been talking to some of the old hands here, and they tell me that after dark these Celts come over the wall with knives between their teeth and attack any officer they see.”

     Claudius sighed and buckled on his scabbard. “I hope Lady Scipio will understand,” he said.

     “If she’s been here for six months, she will.”

     Claudius fastened his cloak over his shoulder and blew out the clock candle as well as the lamp on his desk.  The torches he left burning; they would last until morning.

     The night was chilly once they left the headquarters building, but Claudius found the brisk air a tonic after the sometimes oppressive heat of Rome.  He smiled as they approached the Scipio house, with its concrete facade and rectangular, two storied design.

     “I see that Drucilla has tried to recreate the Via Sacra in the wilds of Britain,” Claudius said to Ardus.

     “Good luck to her,” Ardus replied.  “It will take more than building an Appian style house.”

     Drucilla met them at the door, waving away the servant who had answered it.

     “Welcome to Britain, Claudius Leonatus,” she said, offering him her hand.  “It’s so wonderful to see a friendly face from home.”  She nodded at Ardus, who inclined his head.  

     Claudius kissed Drucilla on both of her cheeks and presented his gift, watching indulgently as she lifted the lid of the jar and sniffed the contents appreciatively.

     “Sandalwood,” she said.  “The scent of Venus.  Thank you so much, Claudius.”

     Lady Scipio led them through the hall, past the cabinets containing wax masks of the Scipio ancestors, and into the
tablinum
, an open parlor flanked by shrines to the household gods.  The house was far less elaborate than the Scipio home in Rome, which Claudius had also visited.  But Drucilla had managed to bring along enough heirlooms and precious objects to convince even the casual visitor that its inhabitants were wealthy and important people.          

     Lucia was waiting in the parlor with a tray of wine goblets and a platter of sliced fruit and salted sea bass.  As Drucilla and Ardus made small talk, Claudius compared the two women.

     Drucilla had been a great beauty, and she was still, at thirty-eight, a very handsome woman, exquisitely dressed in an ivory sleeveless tunic of Persian silk which flowed gracefully to her sandaled feet.  It was topped by a gold bordered diploidion the color of hibiscus, and she wore around her neck a golden chain which was complemented by earbobs studded with amber and carnelian stones.  By contrast her daughter was very simply dressed in a pale green gown with silver armlets and a matching
zona
, a woven belt impregnated with mercury to make it shine.  Her hair hung loosely about her shoulders, and Claudius remembered that she had never favored the elaborate, piled high hairstyles so popular in Rome, even when she lived there.  He had always liked the little Scipiana, and when her father proposed her for marriage he had considered it.  Briefly.  She was suitable in every way but one: there was no fire between them, and the girl knew it too.  He sensed her relief when the negotiations broke off over the dowry requirements, and now that she was engaged to another he could approach her in a friendly fashion without fear of being misunderstood.

     “Lucia,” he said, as Drucilla showed Ardus an Etruscan vase, “what do you think of Britain?”

     “I don’t equate it with Hades,” the girl replied dryly, and Claudius laughed.

     “It’s too cold for Hades,” he said.

     “Tell that to my mother.”

     “I gather she is not happy here,” he said.

     “She thinks the natives belong in a cage.”

     “That seems to be the prevailing opinion.”

     “Tribune, let me ask you a question,” Lucia said, putting down her drink.  “If our country was taken over by an invading army of strangers from the other side of the sea, strangers who demanded obedience and tribute for no reason other than they were more organized, more numerous and more powerful, how would we behave?”

     Claudius was silent for a long moment, then said, “You sympathize with them, then.”

     “I understand their desire to be free.”

     “And Drucilla does not?”

     “My mother wants to go home.  That’s about all she understands.  She can’t see the natural beauty of this place or its people, she wants to shop in the forum and attend dinner parties and eat Italian food again.  She wants well trained servants and Greek physicians and stalls filled with the finest goods from Carthage and Numidia and the farthest reaches of the shipping lanes.”

     “And she hasn’t even experienced her first winter here yet,” Claudius said archly.

     Lucia rolled her eyes.

     “What are you two talking about?” Drucilla asked, joining them.

     “The British winter,” Claudius replied quickly.

     Drucilla shuddered delicately.  “I hope we don’t all freeze in our beds,” she said.  “My husband said the last one nearly killed him.”

     “I was talking to a sentry who was here last year,” Ardus offered.  “He told me that the best to be said for it is that there are plenty of trees for wood to burn.”

     “I’ve never seen snow,” Lucia observed curiously.

     “You will see much more of it than you want to soon enough,” Ardus said.

     Claudius shot him a warning glance.  This was not a subject he wanted to pursue while Drucilla was within earshot.

     A servant appeared and announced that dinner was ready.

     “Thank Zeus for Antonia,” Drucilla said, referring to the serving woman who had just left.  “She’s the only help I brought with me from Rome and if it weren’t for her I’d go mad.  I can’t talk to the local people and none of them can understand me.”

     “If you made some effort to learn their language I’m sure you could communicate with them better,” Lucia said to her mother, with more sharpness than she had intended.

     “You call that a language!” Drucilla said contemptuously, as she led the way out of the parlor.  “More like a series of barks.  It doesn’t even have a written form, the few that can write have to use Latin or Greek for official documents.”

     “And of course that makes them slugs underfoot,” Lucia said.

     “Your dining room is lovely,” Claudius said to Drucilla as they entered the
triclinium
, to defuse the tension.

     The traditional three couches were laid out with the heads almost meeting in the center, the low serving tables placed so that the people reclining on them had merely to reach out a hand to touch the food.  Three native servants were already in the room, and as the guests sat they moved forward to put out the first course.

     Drucilla apologized for the food throughout the meal, explaining that this fare was the best she could do with the raw materials at hand.  Claudius tried to divert the conversation to politics back in Rome and a number of other subjects, but somehow Drucilla always brought it around again to the horrors of life in Britain.  Claudius began to feel a little sorry for Lucia, adrift in a foreign country with no company but her unhappy, complaining mother.  By the time he and Ardus had said their goodbyes and left for the barracks, with one of Drucilla’s native servant boys walking before them carrying a torch, Claudius was glad he’d spent only a few hours in the Scipio house.