everything possible. Lara had been devoted. Please gods, Paulina and Felix would be too.
‘And she loved you too,’ commented Vinius. She thought I was after you. She reckoned I was trouble… ‘How old was Lara, would you say?’
‘She was thirty-six this year.’
She looked forty, Vinius thought; forty at least. ‘Thirty-six; and a mother how many times?’
‘Oh about ten,’ groaned Lucilla unhappily. ‘Some died. She still looked so young, to me, because of her happy nature, but she was worn out. And don’t say, “Never let that happen to you, Lucilla”, because she told me herself often enough.’
‘I bet she did!’ Vinius was still pursuing some mysterious line of thought. ‘When you were born, Lara would have been how old?’
‘Fifteen. She was fifteen years older than me.’
‘When did she marry Junius? He’s a horror, by the way.’
‘When I was a baby, I think. Very young — too young. She married and she moved away. So I never really knew Lara during my childhood.’
‘While you were being brought up by her mother, Lachne.’
‘ My mother! How do you remember her name?’
‘You told me, at the station house. The day the big fire started. Most vigiles remember that day all too well… When did Flavia Lachne become a freedwoman?’
‘Soon after I was born. She must have been thirty; those are the rules. Flavia Domitilla granted her freedom — or perhaps Mother had to pay for her manumission; she never said. One thing she was very proud of, Lara told me, was that she managed to save enough of a nest-egg to buy freedom for Lara and me.’
‘But at the time when you must have been conceived, both Lachne and Lara were still slaves?’
‘I suppose so.’ Lucilla was too intrigued to object to these questions, though she felt uneasy.
‘Let me guess — Lara was sunny in temperament, pretty, a very appealing young girl?’
‘Yes. You met her. You just saw her daughters. Our mother was good-looking too. Lara must always have been beautiful. Vinius, what is your point?’
‘Think, Lucilla.’
Consciously or subconsciously, Lucilla resisted what he wanted her to see.
Vinius left the suggestion, temporarily. He picked up her beaker and shared out between them what remained in the wine flask. He tilted his cup, saluting her, and waited. Vigiles interrogations had made him a patient man. ‘Sweetheart, it happens.’
‘What happens?’
‘Slavegirls are seduced when very young.’
‘You are beginning to offend me.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ His motives were good, in his opinion, so Vinius pressed on. ‘Lara meant so much to you and she obviously cared very dearly for you — even a stranger could see that. I just wondered if you ever thought of the possibility that Lara, and not Lachne, might have been your real mother?’
Lucilla had never imagined this.
Once before, at the vigiles station house, Gaius Vinius had said something that disturbed her family ties. Now he was doing it again. He knew life. He knew people. He picked up clues from nowhere and analysed them forensically; he shook out the truth like moths from an old cloak. As soon as he made the suggestion, Lucilla felt it was probable. Many things became clear. Lachne’s occasional air of resentment; Lara being kept out of sight during Lucilla’s childhood; Lara’s tender reception of Lucilla after Lachne died…
It must have been agreed that Lachne would bring up Lucilla so Lara could marry and have a life — if marriage to seedy Junius, with its endless pregnancies, could be called life. It was respectable, and less precarious than Lachne’s own existence relying on a series of lovers, but had Lachne later regretted what happened to her elder daughter? Lucilla remembered Lachne speaking sourly of Lara’s family arrangements.
‘Don’t be upset,’ Vinius soothed her. ‘I only wish I had thought of saying something when Lara was alive, so you could have asked her.. This would not be unique, you know. Mothers do step in to help very young daughters in that predicament.’
‘Oh history had repeated itself,’ agreed Lucilla in a dull voice. ‘Lachne bore Lara at an even younger age. The same, presumably: a slavegirl seduced, whether she wanted it or not.’
Lara’s and Lucilla’s father could even be the same man, Vinius thought; he was too considerate to say so. ‘Forgive me for speaking?’
‘I suppose so.’
Vinius let a little lightness into his voice and did, finally, tease her: ‘After all, I am your guardian.’
Lucilla gave him the dirty look he wanted, burying her nose in her wine beaker. Vinius smiled slightly.
After a moment, Lucilla let herself smile too.
This was dangerous. Assuming responsibility for a woman in trouble was something Gaius Vinius had never done. His own wives, except his first and youngest, barely needed him for emotional support. What they wanted was his money and the social status of marriage, especially marriage to a Praetorian. He was pretty sure that Verania required him to be faithful yet herself strayed. She had never sought his advice, offered advice to him, nor wanted consolation of any sort. Keeping their distance suited both of them.
A quiet voice in his head warned him to watch out.
Then again, he rather enjoyed the warm feeling he experienced when this vulnerable soul looked to him for help. A vulnerable soul with melting brown eyes and — he let himself notice as she reclined in dappled sunshine — an inviting body.
I don’t suppose if I stayed here tonight, you would sleep with me?
Get lost, Vinius!
When she seemed composed, Vinius left Lucilla to herself. Though she bore no grudge for his raising the subject, he saw she wanted to think about her mother and sister in solitude. Her family connections were so very few, and now they all needed to be reconsidered.
He had intended to visit his wife that evening. But Verania was like a jealous dog or cat; she would smell other people on him and their aura would make her sulk. Their relationship was sketchy, yet any hint that he had other interests inflamed her. Even the touch of melancholia that crept over him when he left Plum Street was liable to drizzle into Verania’s mind and affect her as if he had committed some act of blistering disloyalty. When in fact (Vinius convinced himself) all he had done was a kindness to someone.
As he neared the Market of Livia, within reach of their apartment, he changed his mind abruptly. An insistent voice urged him to return to Plum Street. But Vinius turned his steps up along the ancient Servian Walls and returned via the Viminal Gate to the Praetorian Camp.
13
In Sarmizegetusa the balance of power shifted.
In where?
Sarmizegetusa Regia, the royal citadel of the Dacians, lay four thousand feet up in the Carpathian Mountains, the hub of a string of powerful fortresses from which Dacia would wage war upon the Romans and their emperors for the next thirty years. The very fact that the name of their citadel was a tongue-twisting hexasyllable indicated the Dacians’ attitude to the outside world. They were a warrior people. They did not give a toss.
Sarmizegetusa had a military purpose but was also a political and religious centre of greater sophistication than enemies might suppose. Its people, who mined for gold, silver, iron and salt, had long been wealthy and had a very high standard of living. On a daunting approach road, which climbed steeply through leaf-littered woods where exquisitely cold mountain streams rattled over pebbles, no milestones signed the citadel. Sarmizegetusa was too long to carve on a stone. If you had a right to go there, you would know where it was. If not, then keep out.
The heartland of Dacia was a remote area that would one day be called Transylvania, almost entirely surrounded by the crescent of the forbidding Carpathians. This heart-stirring enclave was a mix of striking crags, rolling meadows, delightful forests, fast rivers and scenic plains. There were alluring volcanic lakes, wild bogs and
