Doctor Who_ Byzantium! - Keith Topping [83]
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rust Never Sleeps
And she went and told them that had been with him, as they mourned and wept.
Mark 16:10
The triclinium dining room of Marcus and Agrinella's villa home was an opulent homage to all of the riches that Marcus's life had brought them. A statue of Ceres, the Goddess of the harvest, in finest Athenian marble (imported at great expense), rested within a tiny fountain in the room's centre. It was surrounded by oil lamps and candles that reflected the trickling flow of water across the arched ceiling in mutated shards like moving pictures.
Agrinella entered the room, hitched up the hem of her palla dress and reclined, lazily, on the couch, drinking her wine as she kicked off her sandals and watched with a drunken amusement as they fell to the floor with a hard slap.
She inclined her head to one side, observing the richly coloured painting that decorated the far wall of the triclinium from such an angle as she had never seen before. It was a spectacular (and only mildly pornographic) depiction of a Dionysian scene, a baroque representation of the Villa I tem outside Pompeii. A mostly naked woman was kneeling at the feet of the emperor, her head resting in his lap whilst the demonic figure of Dike, the personification of pleasure and pain, stood behind her. And, all the while, other women (wearing masks to hide their shamed faces) and mythical satyrs and maenads danced in joyous and total abandon, cymbals crashing, scarves whirling aimlessly. 'Glad someone is having a good time,' pouted Agrinella as she fell from the couch into a crumpled heap, spilling the wine over her palla.
As she struggled to stand and banged noisily on the floor for a slave to come and help her, Marcus entered the room.
When he saw Agrinella sprawling on the floor, drunk, a look of disgust and contempt crossed his face.
`My sweet,' Agrinella stammered, 'I have been waiting here for you.'
'Get up,’ Marcus snapped. 'You are drunk, madam. And, therefore of no use to man nor beast of the field.'
Agrinella began to cry, hot and shameful tears. 'But you were so long...' she wailed.
`Get up, you drunken mare,’ Marcus repeated as he picked Agrinella's fallen cup from the floor, took aim and threw it at her as he would a pilum lance at a staked-out prisoner. Agrinella flung up her hands to deflect the impact, but the goblet still caught her a glancing blow on the side of the head and then skittered away across the floor.
The tribune's wife raised her head, her face tear-stained and a thin trickle of blood seeping from her temple where the cup had broken the skin. P rolapsus ab alvo. Bastard son of a whore,' she screamed, suddenly finding the ability to stand that had been denied to her seconds earlier. ‘Limp and tiny man of great infamy,' she continued as she advanced on Marcus who was rooted to the spot, unblinking. 'How dare you treat me like some chattel, some thing from the gutters of Rome? My father will have you tied to a horse and dragged through the streets for what you do to me...’
Her voice trailed away and she fell to her knees, weeping, her fists bunched tightly in front of her face to hold in her wracked sobs.
Marcus put a hand on her shoulder. 'Woman, arise,' he said, with a gentle softness that belied the situation. Ìs this any way for the daughter of a legate to behave?' he asked.
Agrinella stared at him and did not reply. 'Whimpering and crawling like a whelped babe. Your father would have you dragged through the streets before me for such a show of weakness and self-pity.’
Still Agrinella said nothing. She wiped her eyes without taking them from Marcus’s calm and handsome face.
‘Is that any way for the wife of a future praefectus to behave? For the wife of a future senator?’
‘For the wife of a future emperor?’ she asked at last.
‘All things in the world are possible,’ said Marcus, taking a handful of his wife’s golden hair between his fingers and using it to dry a tear on her cheek. ‘Without you, I am but nothing.’
‘And I, you, my wonderful soldier.’
Marcus swept Agrinella off