After the Fall(4)

She had never experienced a time when she’d been so hungry, for so long. She glanced at her son and drew a deep breath. He looked thin and unhappy. She decided to visit the baker first, for the man was always happy when she flirted with him, and he let them sample his specialties before she bought anything. It was a good way to alleviate their hunger.

Serena quickened her step. “Hurry, keep up, children.”

“Mother!”

“Hush, Thermantia,” Serena scolded. “Your accent gives you away. Can’t you remember a thing I — ”

Serena saw the flash of sunlight on metal and instinctively threw up her arms, saw the arching, terrible swiftness with which the blade tore through the air, saw the edge embed itself and then slice across the neck of her beloved … her sweet babe … Eucherius!

Oh, dear God in Heaven! The murderer darted away, carrying something round and dripping in his hand. No! Oh Lord, no! No!

She started to run in the opposite direction, terrified she would be next, crashing through the people who stood and stared.

A wail rose up, a high-pitched keening. Serena halted in her tracks, listening to the horrible cries, then turned back, fearing the certainty of what she would see.

There, kneeling, Thermantia rocked, screaming and weeping, holding Eucherius's gaping, headless body against her own.

• • •

Thermantia watched as her mother lay curled on the floor of their squalid tenement.

“Oh, my dearest,” Serena cried. “Please, hold me. I cannot bear any more grief.”

It was the second day since her little brother’s murder, and her mother had done nothing but bewail her misfortunes. Serena’s eyes were puffy slits, her face blotchy and red, her hair undone and in a shambles. She was a disgrace to her family and dishonored Eucherius’s memory by this endless display of self-pity. Where was the evidence of nobility to which she was born? Where was her pride?

Thermantia had stood alone, dignified, stoic, and brave when they’d buried her brother’s headless corpse. Alone she had represented the family as her mother writhed on the floor at home, alone she had endured the pain of saying goodbye. And now her mother wanted comfort from her?

Enough is enough!

Serena checked her sobbing for an instant and looked up with a startled expression.

Did I say that aloud? Thermantia wondered.

“Sweet girl, please don’t be angry,” her mother sank back onto the floor and started in again. “Hold me. I have lost everything. Hold me, please.”

In a fury, Thermantia crouched and grasped her mother by the hair, snatching her head off the floor.

Pitiful, disgusting, covered with snot and tears, Serena raised her arms, pleading, “Don’t strike me, please, my dearest.”

“You bitch, how dare you whine and wail and ask me for comfort!” Thermantia thundered. “You have done nothing but use us, use everyone you ever knew, for power, for prestige, for standing. You married off my dear sister Maria to Honorius, to be shamed and brutalized unto death, but that was not enough, oh no! Then you handed me over for the same, and the same he gave me. But I survived, because you could not wait to hand over one more, your own husband, and he was slaughtered! That makes two … two dead because of you. And now you have seen your son butchered before your cowardly eyes because of your words, your plotting, your plans, and then … you ran away! That makes three! Three within your own family whose blood is on your hands, yours and yours alone! May God curse you for the wretched human being you are!”

Her mother stared back at her, unmoving, silent for the first time in days.

Something in her mother’s eyes, something deep inside her own mind, told Thermantia she had gone too far, much, much too far. Don’t say another word, she told herself. Don’t do this, don’t give in to the hatred or … or you will become what she is, and you mustn’t, no, you must never let that happen. You must never become like her!

“I’m sorry, Mother,” Thermantia whispered, releasing and smoothing her hair. “Forgive my harsh words, it was the grief speaking, only my grief.”

Weeping, Thermantia knelt beside her mother and gathered her into her arms, cradling her, soothing her, rocking her. “We shall get through this together, Mother. Worry not. Shhhh, now, Mama. It will be all right, you’ll see.”

• • •

Placidia wrote the last few words on her waxen tablet, put the stylus down, and smiled at her steward. “That should do it, Leontius. Please see the funds are quietly gotten to poor Thermantia. She has endured much because of her mother’s endless machinations, and now her brother’s murder, and I shall do my utmost to see to her needs. Honorius would treat his former empress as a leper, but he has no feelings for anyone but himself, does he? Tell Thermantia the old royal villa at Capreae will be made available for her use, and arrange for an escort.”