Call to Juno (Tales of Ancient Rome #3)(13)

She crouched before him, unfurling her palm so the golden dice tumbled into his lap. “You used to defy the goddess all the time, and you did not come to harm.”

“That was when I didn’t care if I lived or died. Now I’ve every reason to live because of you and our children.”

She eased herself onto her knees, grasping his hand and kissing it. “I will make offerings to placate Nortia. And I will say prayers to her in her guise as Roman Fortuna. All these years the goddess of destiny has protected Veii. She has spared us from catastrophe. I don’t think she wants to punish me.”

His shoulders sagged. “I don’t believe you can sway her. Fate is fixed. Beseeching her is fruitless. She’s the blind goddess, Caecilia.”

She was not used to hearing her given name on his lips. She’d always been his Bellatrix. She was used to weathering his ill temper, but his disquiet chilled her. “We’re safe, Vel. The traitor has been punished. The Romans don’t know the meaning to the portent at Lake Albanus. Queen Uni protects this city. And, in winter, Thefarie will come.”

He shook his head. It was as though he hadn’t heard her. “What have you done to us?”

She sat back on her heels, frustrated she couldn’t convince him. She wanted him to have faith that her decision had been right. And with his gloom, doubt seeped through her. “So would you rather I had never returned to you, Vel? Obeyed Fortuna? Returned to Rome? Married Drusus? Lived a life of regrets and misery? Never borne our sons and daughter?”

“Of course not. But how could you keep it from me all these years?”

“At first, I wanted to ignore what I’d done. And I did not want to burden you with it. Then, as time went by and disaster was not visited on the city, my dread dulled, and I became complacent.” She once again sought to clasp his hand. “What purpose would it have served to tell you? Because no matter the result of the dice throw, I always would have chosen you.”

He stood, the tesserae hitting the floor and scattering. “What purpose? What purpose! For ten years I concentrated on only defending this city. I could have urged the League of the Twelve to unite when Veii was still strong and Rome was suffering from pestilence and famine. Instead I merely begged for arms to shore up our defense. Now I’m toothless. Trapped behind tufa and masonry.”

His deep voice blasted her. She scrambled to her feet. She had sought to rally him; instead, all she’d done was expose his powerlessness. She tried to embrace him, but he shrugged her away, raising his arm in the air as though her touch scalded him. He headed to the doorway.

“Please, Vel . . . where are you going?”

“I need time to think—alone.”

She panicked, watching him close down his emotions in a way she’d not seen for years. “Please, Vel, forgive me.”

He paused at the door, his gaze stony. “Gather flowers, Caecilia, raid the cellar for wine to make offerings, and get used to the burning smell of incense. You have a lot of praying to do.”

She stared after him as she sank into the chair, then turned her attention to the tesserae. Her hand was shaking as she reached down to pick them up. She wished she’d never spoken. That she’d listened to her instincts to hoard her secrets.

After a time, she calmed. She knew her husband. She would not lose him over this. Their love had been tested before. And she thought of her children sleeping in the nursery. They were reason enough for her not to surrender to fear. She may have spurned Rome but the warrior blood of the Caecilians and Aemilians flowed in her. She was a bellatrix. There was no going back. She would placate Nortia. And Rome would fall.





SIX



Semni, Veii, Autumn, 397 BC

Semni’s palms were sweaty. She wiped them along the sides of her chiton as she walked past the six lictors stationed in the palace courtyard. Then she nodded to two other guards standing on either side of the door to the throne room’s antechamber as she ventured inside.

There were only a few petitioners left. Edging into a corner, Semni watched the array of supplicants, noticing how the noble courtiers in their rich robes confidently entered into the throne room one by one, then emerged again, either with satisfied smiles or hunched shoulders. In comparison, the commoners were nervous in their plain garb, toque caps scrunched in their hands, bewildered as to royal protocol.

Arruns had told her to wait until the morning audience had concluded. She stood agog in the antechamber. The bronze double doors to the throne room were imposing with their heavy timber lintel and jambs. The walls were decorated with myths and legends in vivid paint.

After six weeks, Semni was starting to be less in awe of the royal residence, but the immensity and artistry of the tableaux astounded her. She, too, had once painted the Divine in the folly of love or the heroics of war. But she’d done so in miniature with a fine brush on vases, not with broad strokes upon a wall. Her eyes traveled to the large ornamental red-figured vases placed on either side of the doorway, wondering if she would ever have the opportunity to fashion such beautiful objects again.

Despite her attempts to be unobtrusive, the men in the room cast surreptitious glances at her. She showed no cleavage today, but she could not hide full breasts and rounded hips, or the curve of firm buttocks beneath her pleated blue chiton. A little over a year ago, she would have responded with a flutter of eyelashes and the moistening of her lips. And offered more if the man was comely enough. Now Arruns was the only one who filled her thoughts.