The Warrior's Dance: Seven Kings of Rome Novels

The Warrior’s Dance

Seven Kings of Rome Novels

Sherrie Seibert Goff

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Bloomington

The Warrior’s Dance

Seven Kings of Rome Novels

Copyright © 2008 by Sherrie Seibert Goff

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This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Soft: 978-0-595-48611-3

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Contents

Part One

A Patriot’s Tale

Part Two

The Temperer’s Role

Part Three

Baebia’s Perfidy

Part Four

Voice of the God

Part One

–––— ψ –––—

The Troy Game

A Patriot’s Tale

1

The stifling humid air sank down into the marsh valley. Sweltering, closely pressed Romans dripped with sweat, competed for shade, and tried to fan away the unmoving dead air filled with their rank smells. I knelt on Timius’ pallet and held him up to rest against my chest to watch King Numa’s appeal to the gods. My friend struggled to sit up and slurped gratefully from the small cup of water his sister held to his cracked lips. His eyes glowed with fever or maybe happiness. Sweat dampened his dark hair against his forehead and ran in rivulets down his temples.

Roma’s burnished golden sunshine glowed off the slope above the regia and lit up the bright oranges and yellows in the short capes worn by the four Tyrrhenian dancers. These strange priests, shod in ankle-high boots with up-curled toes, sported colorful mantles over their rich tunics and put on a mimetic show, accompanied by the trill of a large flute played passionately by another stranger who stood in front of old King Numa’s regia. The musician wore a mouth band tied around his head to hold his flute of two pipes, one fingered in either hand. His eyes were closed, and his plaintive music floated up, calling to the gods and stirring our hearts and wrenching our souls. As the music swelled, he was joined by assistants shaking shimmering tambourines and rhythmically thumping small drums.

The holy dancers’ exaggerated movements were made beautiful by their elegant hand gestures. These men placed great emphasis on their hands, cocked their elbows, and bent their fingers far back, gesturing with graceful agility. Their painted faces seemed like masks representing the strange gods of Etruria. Soon they were leaping high, knees bent, both feet off the ground, in a dance of joy. Their steps were rhythmical and vigorously alive, but with a peculiar soulful restraint that is truly Etruscan.

That summer, the swamp fever was raging so virulently through Roma that our doddering King Numa had decided to appeal to Etruria for help. He and his holy advisors had paid the Etruscan priesthood a goodly number of grain-loaded wagons to make loan of their augurs and priestly mime dancers to aid us in our entreaty with the gods. Many of us considered it a dreadful waste of Roma’s emergency stores. When these Etrusci arrived in Roma, the old king sent criers through the town blowing large ox horns and pounding a huge drum to summon citizens down to the comitium to witness the performance for the foreign gods.

Our neighbor, Titus Horatius, was immediately keen on dragging his son Timius down for the king’s blessing. When the marsh fever first hit his family, killing two slaves and spreading to his son, he had pitifully bemoaned the waning luck of the Horatii and thus of all Roma. The oppressive heat and dust made for a miserable outing, and we longed for cool shadows of house and garden. The celebrants would not allow wagons into the comitium that day, so Timius’ father had lifted Timius down and carried him through the suffocating press of people. The boy’s grandmother and sister had followed with a camp pallet and water bag and stood behind their charge to give him shade from the hot sun and humid air.

At last, when I thought we could stand it no longer, good King Numa, dim-witted and shaky with age, shambled out of his regia on the arm of an Etruscan celebrant who wore a high conical hat and a fringed mantle fastened by a gold fibula. The king’s little grandson walked behind them carrying a camp stool and the king’s lituus, a crook-shaped augur’s staff similar to the one carried by the Etruscan priest. They paused close by, deep in conversation, gesticulating up and down the valley and sighting the horizon with their curved wands. I could not understand all of their words, for Roma’s king spoke in Etruscan.

My older half brother, Linius Hostilius, crowded up beside us with his curly-haired daughter Mulvia, who, being about my own age of 16, seemed more like a sister to me than a niece. Mulvia was a happy, smiley child, seemingly wise beyond her years. Her intelligent, thoughtful manner made her the precious darling in her father’s eyes, while I, Tullus Hostilius, was often in trouble, scorned and punished by elders and instructors alike.

Timius’ father welcomed Linius with an irreverent expression. How good is your Etruscan, man?

My niece knelt down beside Timius’ sister Horatia and poked Timius affectionately. Timius asked what in the world the king was saying.

I told him, They’re just jawing some hocus-pocus gibberish the old man ferreted out of some dusty foreign scroll or more likely got from the latest popular Tyrrhenian trickster who blew through town.

Timius gaped at me in surprise. Horatia and my niece Mulvia gave me stern looks. In my youth I loved to shock. Thank the gods, later maturity would teach me that flippant remarks make one’s words less credible.

Timius waved his skinny arm to attract the attention of his two brothers, Publius and Sergius, who were on the far side of the comitium threading their way through the crowd, flirting with Roma’s unwed daughters. When the speeches were done and the sacred play resumed, his eyes left the dance only to watch Publius and Sergius across the way. The unruly rambunctious boys were copying the stylized histrionics of the mimes. With the two outer fingers of each hand folded down, held by their thumbs, and their first two fingers poised aloft like horns of a goat, they threw their heads back in ecstasy and reached their arms to the sky, prancing and dancing to the holy music of the Etruscans.

Timius cracked a smile, but soon sank wearily back into my lap and closed his eyes for awhile. Timius grew quiet and distant. His face looked so deathly pale next to my tanned thighs, I felt a pang of sorrow that we could easily lose this good little fellow. His sister Horatia looked me in the eye and bit her lip.

When the holy dance ended, the priests bestowed blessings upon the gathered people and upon our beleaguered town, gesturing and crying out to eight directions of the horizon, each of which was supposedly inhabited by one of their Etruscan gods. Filled with religious zeal, one of the celebrants approached our side of the compound and fervently cried out three times the name of Tinia, the head Etruscan god.

I laughed when my friend Timius roused up in answer, thinking he’d heard his own name being called. Timius looked about wildly, his face contorted with anxiety, or perhaps piety, his voice oddly loud. Who calls me?

The startled priest faltered in his steps and stared at Timius with a look of utter surprise. His chant fell silent, and he did not move on. The illustrious fellow stretched one upturned hand out to Timius and placed the other back over the top of his own head as if to protect himself. The priest’s face was painted comically with black whorls that exaggerated his wide-eyed visage, and he reeked of rich unguents. I suppressed my urge to giggle and glared back at the stranger, challenging him to sway the gods on behalf of my ailing friend and all Romans who suffered the marsh fever.

But some arcane concern had seized the man’s mind. King Numa and the other Etruscans were advancing on us as well, having noted the holy man’s look of dilemma. At sight of all the high-ranking, prominent men accosting him, Timius stiffened in my arms and suffered an awful bout of rigors, which frightened me no end.

I left Timius to Horatia and Mulvia and leaped up to push everyone away from his pallet. The priest raised his lituus as though to strike me, and I jerked it from his cursed hand and shoved him back. Unfortunately, the man stumbled and landed on his rear. Although I had sought only to stop the Etruscans from scaring Timius further, King Numa let out a roar of anger, and his own guards dashed in to drag me aside. I suppose at that point I let fly a few scornful and sarcastic remarks.

Earlier the king had noted Publius and Sergius making fun of the sacred play, and he now suspected me and Timius of contributing to the brothers’ impiety. Furious at the rudeness of Roma’s youth towards older and wiser men, not to mention guests of our city, the old man accused us of ruining his commune with the gods. King Numa Pompilius had always been overly strict on what he deemed sacrilege, and that day he harangued his cavalry centurion, my faultless half brother and guardian, in front of all Roma. Then he castigated Titus Horatius, Timius’ father, that today’s youth were not being taught proper piety.

I have no understanding of what really happened on that miraculous day. I only know that that wacky, trouble-causing event somehow marked a halt in Timius’ decline, as though the god Tinia indeed had entered Timius’ frail and mortal body to suffuse it with divine strength. In days to follow, Timius felt well enough some mornings to sit in his father’s garden and to join his brothers in the afternoon bath.

Timius’ grandmother had a quaint custom of marking each day as good or bad by dropping a white or black stone in an urn. Each night the elegant matron lingered at her household shrine to select a pebble of the right hue, white being the symbol of happiness and black that of misfortune or trouble. At the turning of the seasons or on family anniversaries, Grandma Fannia could dump out her cache of burnished pebbles and reflect back upon her life.

Thinking to confirm that the balance had tipped in young Timius’ prospects for survival, I tiptoed across my neighbor’s deserted hall and stole a peek inside that red, white, and black goddess urn. Its innards gleamed ominously dark. The scent of fragrant wood and resins hovered about the shrine. Startled by a soft noise, I clanked down the lid and spun around to find Timius’ sister Horatia leaning against the door post and regarding me with a wry grin.

I had intended to slip in for a word with Timius before joining his brothers on the cavalry grounds, not come calling on the house. Now here I was, a wellborn lad, spotted wearing some sweat stained, faded brown tunic that reeked of the stables, along with dusty worn boots and a strip of ragged wool tied around my patrician head.

Flustered and annoyed at the girl’s catching me peeking in someone’s private jar, I decided to tweak her a little. What say you we switch around your old gran’s rocks and make her think she’s had a good time this month?

For a heartbeat her dark eyes twinkled, then she scowled at my rude proposal. I felt a twinge of guilt and flashed her my best smile, for I knew that Grandma Fannia was all the mother Horatia had ever known, and she and her brothers loved that old matron fiercely. Everyone has heard the tale of Horatia and her tiny brothers, Publius, Sergius and Timius, motherless and sickly one and all, being coaxed back from death’s door and nurtured in the arms of their paternal grandmother and a flock of devoted wet nurses.

Horatia’s poor mother, childless for many years and widowed by age 35, had been pressed into a second marriage with Titus Horatius, a man seven years her younger, solely to achieve an alliance of property that would benefit the clan of the Horatii and satisfy old debts. The couple’s conception of Horatia had been a surprise to all. But even more astounding, when the little girl was barely 2, her pawned mother died giving birth to triplet sons.

Titus Horatius, who had married into his position, wasted little time mourning his departed wife. She had brought him her family’s cattle and a fine house on the Velia. Not least, she had given her very life endowing him with a reputation of virility − sire of triplets − and everyone soon forgot that the man had inherited by right of his wife. In Roma, any natural appearance of a trinity is deemed lucky, and the family of Titus Horatius became renowned far and wide for its triplets alone. That strange day, when Grandma Fannia balked at moving Timius down to the comitium, the man had jagged off on some rant about the sacred trinity of earth, air and water, and was trying to fit his sons into some esoteric plan of the gods.

Oh, ox balls! his old mother had blurted, making us all laugh. She scolded, "For that matter, a trinity of trinities − nine − is even better. I suppose you and the rest of the merciless men in this world would glory in some sad woman bearing you a litter of nine."

Smiling at the memory, I leaned my uncombed head past Horatia and looked to the back of her house. Where is Publius?

He and Sergius are out at the cavalry grounds, riding about in circles with their friends. Why aren’t you there?

I already know how to ride, I boasted, flexing my strong shoulders.

She rolled her lovely dark eyes. Horatia looked as soft as a young colt with her smooth hair and flawless skin.

I laughed. Actually, I’m just on my way. Thought I’d dash by here to see if Timius is perking up.

The friendly warmth seemed to fade from her being. He had a bit of a setback last night.

I clucked my tongue and sighed. I should send him a gift then.

Reluctantly, I started to leave, but she touched my arm and insisted that her little brother would be sad that he had missed me. So I trailed Horatia down their narrow corridor to Grandma Fannia’s sitting room, where the old lady kept her grandson on a makeshift daybed beside her loom, spindles and piles of carded wool.

Lady Fannia looked on anxiously at the balding, portly physician who stood by the light of the garden window, examining the contents of her grandson’s night jar. I nodded to the physician when he glanced up and recognized me. Horatia’s father had nearly beggared himself to hire this famous wise man, whom he’d seen attending my own father who died of a painful cancer. Sweet Horatia unwittingly copied the physician’s worried frown and moved softly to her grandmother’s side. Timius appeared to be asleep. Sweat slicked his forehead and narrow chest. The boy’s raven hair hung lank, plastered to his head, and he moaned and whimpered. His sister touched his bony shoulder, and I could almost see her heart break.

The physician washed his hands in a bowl on Grandma Fannia’s worktable. Then he began pressing his fingers all around Timius’ abdomen. The boy’s spleen is swollen and hard, Domina.

Grandma Fannia sat down on her weaver’s bench and moaned softly. Timius was last-born. He fit in the palm of my hand and struggled for life with every breath. His brothers were small and sickly too, but they never knew one moment outside someone’s loving arms. Times when little Tim grew weary and stopped breathing, he received my life’s breath.

The physician shook his head in wonder. His survival is a marvel, mistress. I have noticed that twinning crops up often in older women, but your grandsons’ birth was some rare phenomenon sent by the gods. It still astounds me, Domina. Never in my long life and travels have I seen more than two babes born at once to a woman and known them to survive.

I thought sourly that Timius’ mother had not survived, but bit my tongue, loath that Timius or Horatia would hear me say such a thing.

Lady Fannia whispered, While his brothers slowly gained strength and size, Timius’ clout still hung limp around reed-like legs. She looked up at the healer. But there came that god-sent day when our listless, sickly fellow pulled himself up and climbed right off the bed to play with his brothers. Timius is a strong-willed boy, and we encourage that by not spoiling him. Oh, on rare days when he’s not well, he has the best loving care his family can give, but the rest of the time he’s expected to pull his weight. That has made him strong.

As is meet, the physician murmured. Rightly done.

At the man’s trenchant prodding, Timius woke and tried to sit up. The wise man gently pushed him down and covered him up again. Timius’ reddened eyes grew wild and desperate, and the physician, sensing he was going to throw up, grabbed a water jar and helped him roll to the bedside. The foul smell of vomit and urine-soiled bedding made me want to gag as well. When Timius’ retching eased, the portly physician took a fresh water bowl the old woman brought and gently washed the boy’s face and encouraged him to rinse his mouth. It seemed odd to witness gentleness in hands that looked like clubs.

The boy shivered though the day was warm. When Timius’ eyes focused on me, he grinned through his fever pain. Just something I ate last night, he assured me. I grinned back, but my heart ached along with his sister’s.

The portly physician waddled to the table and pulled a folded grape leaf out of his rucksack. Crush these herbs and infuse them in hot water. The herbal tea will settle his stomach and help him sleep. He moved to the door and told Fannia, I’ll return this evening. You might see if he can hold down a little vegetable broth when he wakes again. Keep plenty of water for him at all times.

I searched the physician’s face and pleaded with my eyes that he would do something to save my friend from this recurring scourge. But I had done the same, to no avail, when my own father lay dying in mortal agony.

Later that afternoon, Publius, Sergius, and I returned from cavalry practice eager to bathe and dine. We entered the house of Horatius, laughing, talking and bragging. Timius must have heard us coming home, for he sent his sister to fetch us. Sergius tramped into the sitting room ahead of me and called, Hail, brother. You must get yourself well and up soon.

Sweat darkened our tunics, and Publius blew his breath out through nearly closed lips and fanned his armpits. We’ve had a real workout today. Went great, once Serg learned to steer clear of that nasty-tempered charger I got last time. Timius sniffed deeply and commented wryly on the refreshing odor of horse, leather, dust and sweat that pervaded the room as we fellows crowded in beside Grandma Fannia’s loom.

Sergius pushed past his brother and beamed at Timius. If you’re feeling a little better tomorrow, we’ll haul you down to the track in Gran’s wagon. You’ll need to listen to all the trainer’s words and understand our every move, if you hope to catch up in time for the Troy Game.

Publius agreed. We’ll not leave you behind, Brother. You and Sis can watch from the king’s platform. I’m sure Numa won’t care.

I snorted at the thought of the empty viewing platform. Our aging king had lost all interest in anything military, if indeed he ever had any. For sure, the royal stand would be free to use, but privately I was doubting that Timius could ever catch up with his brothers.

I had enjoyed a privileged head start on the Horatian triplets, being three years older and the fortunate ward of one of Roma’s three cavalry prefects, my half brother Linius Hostilius. Such happy birth and circumstances made me already a knight. Since we were youngsters, the Horatian brothers, good friends and neighbors, had followed me faithfully, copying my every pose and affectation, making me feel like the neighborhood patron to be worshiped by younger men.

Thus, every day I helped Publius and Sergius run through the cavalry clash, until they and their fellows, as well as their horses, knew the Troy Game by rote. Their every goal in life centered around being upgraded to cavalrymen. Although Timius had spent his youth hunting, and thus had a good grounding in equitation, the Troy Game’s dangerous and intricate maneuvers would have helped him to develop a firmer seat and the ability to handle a horse under pressure. That summer he had fallen far behind his brothers in experience and practice.

Alerted by the rambunctious, boisterous noise in her sitting room, Grandma Fannia intervened. Now, settle down and clear out, boys. Timius has had a rough day.

Publius and Sergius obeyed her and headed on out of the room jawing about the day’s practice. I turned at the doorway and saw tears of frustration start to my young friend’s eyes. He groaned at the fever ache and squeezed his thighs with thin hands as he eased himself over to face the wall.

2

When I was yet an untried boy, my father died leaving me heir to our family holdings under the temporary guardianship of my grown half brother, Linius Hostilius. My Father quelled my sisters’ outrage and blocked future disputes concerning Linius’ family rights by calling Roma’s priests of Jupiter to his deathbed to witness his acknowledgement of Linius, an illegitimate son by a mistress, as his appointed guardian over the legitimate son, me.

Linius would run the family affairs until I came of responsible age, and he would be heir to a small part of the family farmlands and livestock in his own right. I did not mind, for I loved my only brother and looked up to him as an ideal exemplar. Linius has a way of acting terse and grumpy when given honors, and stoic when feeling joy, but I know how much he was touched by our father’s trust in him.

Linius, being widowed, brought little baggage when he moved into my father’s new home on the Velia to raise me alongside his daughter Mulvia. Ostensibly, the arrangement was to ensure that this bereft orphan might enjoy the best of training and grow up steeped in our family’s tradition of pride and service in Roma’s cavalry. My niece Mulvia often laughed at my notions of military greatness and teased me once that their presence in our comfortable home was really intended to keep my married sisters’ husbands from acquiring control over the Hostilian family wealth.

Such intrigues mattered little to me. As a small boy, I had watched with envy my father’s unbounded pride in his eldest son, when the king and his generals promoted Linius to Praefectus over the Ramnenses, Roma’s century of Latin knights. I wanted to be just like my brother, as this love of the military and horses ran in our family blood. Our shared paternal grandfather, Hostius Hostilius, had organized King Romulus’ army and died a great hero leading the Roman cavalry against the Sabines.

I heard such family legends at the knee of my tutor and grew so arrogant about the martial nature of my bloodline that I bragged to my friends that my family name Hostilius was derived from the word hostis, meaning enemy or foe. We would ride our ponies with great gravitas, brandishing our wooden swords and dreaming of the glorious future when we would be known as powerful equites.

Linius and I had separate mothers − two women who could hardly be more different from each other. Both had died before our father, allowing Linius more access into the Hostilian family and my father’s heart. I remember being very attached to mine and loving her dearly. She was the daughter of a famed mercenary who retired to Roma to die and seek new employ for his footloose warriors. King Numa took them into our Luceres tribe and gave them small allotments of land in exchange for their fealty to Roma. Then he arranged the marriage of the mercenary’s proud daughter to my father, a future Roman senator, to help keep them loyal.

My older sisters love to tell a quaint story that it was my father who impetuously suggested the marriage plan to King Numa, having been struck by Mother’s wild beauty and fierce pride, and having received some rather tempting encouragement from the determined lady herself. My sisters claim that she was beautiful and ambitious, with nothing subtle, reserved, or hidden in her manner. I remember her as tall, large boned, fierce, strong and adamant in her predictions for me. Whenever my unruly wolf nature was inflicted on my playmates or lamented by my elders, they attributed it to my mother’s side of the family.

So, how could I grow up to be anything but a warrior? Can a horse forgo running with the wind? A fish refrain from water?

On a day of splendid and noisy procession through Roma’s market and comitium, Linius invited the Horatii and my strong-minded sisters back to our house for dinner. It was harvest season, when grapes yield their plumpness to the press and grains are ripe for storage at the festival of Consus. Ours was one of the newer houses built outside the Mugonia Gate on a small rise called the Velia which connects the Palatine Hill to the beech-covered Esquiline. Strong seasoned timbers and fine plastered walls rested on a massive foundation of stone, and the new house boasted a good water supply and modern amenities that we had foregone living in our cramped ancestral home on the Palatium.

In the breezy garden we waited for my sisters and their husbands to arrive. The triplets’ father, Titus Horatius, and my brother lazed on comfortable old chairs in the shade of the portico, slurping on juicy figs and watered Arician. The two older men talked quietly about affairs of the day, and Grandma Fannia dozed nearby in a well-cushioned chair brought out from the house. A tinge of fall cooled the air, and the fragile lady snuggled under her shawl, her holiday-styled hair slipping a bit and her wizened face turned to the warming sun.

At the far end of the garden Timius and I watched his two brothers huffing and straining in a stand-up grapple where the winner is the one who succeeds in throwing his opponent to the ground. Roma’s young men are forever practicing, running, jumping or wrestling. On the open practice grounds, horse races, mock battles, and even singing contests are the norm, while comrades shout with enthusiasm and utter cries of pride and encouragement. That day, Publius and Sergius were pushing each other with their heads, each applying all his powers to trip or upset the balance of the other or to use his hip to throw his rival. Publius with his powerful build and his strong arms had the advantage, and the tussle was over soon.

Hoping to include Timius in some milder fun, I set Publius and Sergius to pitching arrows into a hummock of dry grass. Timius sat propped by pillows enjoying his brothers’ efforts to aim their little javelins, but his gaunt eyes and sallow skin, added to his bony, underweight body and wildly mussed black hair, made Timius look like a visitor from the underworld. Soon the two older sons of Horatius were boasting and goading me to fetch them a real bow with which to play their game. I retrieved my cavalry bow from the house and sat back down with Timius to enjoy the view across the hazy olives and dark cypresses that line the people’s comitium.

Nearby, Mulvia and Horatia were bemoaning their dead mothers and lack of sisters, when Publius and Sergius began shouting at each other over a broken arrow tip.

Sergius brayed, You stupid ass. You’re not supposed to aim at a rock.

Publius shoved his brother and growled. Don’t call me an ass. Your shots were no better.

Eiu! I hollered at them. You’re both callow recruits. Bring your tails over here and watch this. Being a practiced horse archer, I walked some distance away from the target and demonstrated for my unripe trainees a better way to place their fingers and how to draw and aim. I paused with my bow drawn, hoping the girls would notice and perhaps admire my handsome profile and my muscular, tanned arms shining in the sun. With the slightest move of my skilled fingers, the lethal arrow sped smoothly to the target, imbedding its sharpness firmly in the soft springy heart of the grass clump, to yells and cheers of the others. Those were silly days of preening for younger followers and girls.

Our thoughtless noise disturbed Grandma Fannia. The old matron struggled up from her low chair and hobbled over to Timius. Noisy fellows. I’m tellin’ you, scared the porridge out of everybody, yelling out like that.

Sergius grinned. Woke up our sleepy grandmother, is what you mean.

Grandma raised a wrinkled hand and threatened him. Don’t tell me what I mean, young man. You may help me take your brother back to the house. It’s been a long hard day. He needs a warm bath and untroubled nap in a proper bed.

Timius howled in protest. I’m fine, Grandma. The Tyrrhenian priest healed me, he claimed again, causing his grandmother to sign against evil and mutter testily against unhealthy influences of foreign gods.

My brother sniffed at the air and smiled fondly at the old lady. Are you sure you won’t stay through dinner, Domina Fannia? I smell the tantalizing aroma of roasting doves wafting from our kitchen. I’m sure we can scare up some hearty broth if Timius isn’t up to cook’s richer foods. When she hesitated, Linius touched her elbow and coaxed, Come, Mistress. We crave your company. Our house is warm, dinner nigh.

The girls hopped up and scurried off into the shaded recesses of the house. Linius followed, walking in amiable conversation beside the triplets’ father and grandmother. Young Timius was greatly relieved when Mulvia whisked Horatia and Grandma off to her room to see the gold Tarquinian earrings her father had bought on a recent stock-buying trip intended to breed strength into Roma’s cavalry mounts. Later the womenfolk found us four boys in the dining room competing loudly and hurling bone dice carved with little black swirls. The older men stayed off in my father’s study discussing some affairs of business until the other guests began arriving.

Both of my sisters, Hostilia Major and Hostilia Minor, were a bit dumpy from childbearing, and their husbands, Antius and Carvilius, were unremarkable in looks. As always, they strode past the porter and moved about our fine house in a rather proprietary manner, as though they were at home, as indeed I suppose they were. My sisters deposited their children with nursery women in the back of the house and returned to join their husbands who chatted stiffly with Linius and our neighbor. Both of my sisters still resented our half brother as an interloper, but could do nothing overt without alienating themselves from the family wealth and status.

When I was knighted as an eques into the Ramnenses, my interfering sisters at once pronounced me of marriageable age and pleaded with me to take back the running of our family’s farmlands, cattle herds and noble household from that spawn of our father’s mistress. At my rebellious age, I felt far from ready to assume a lot of tedious chores. My dreams were of adventure and war, conquests and brave deeds. Roma’s esteemed cavalry prefect, Linius Hostilius, whom I worshiped, served well as nominal paterfamilias of our venerable house, and I was content to leave it so.

That day, cook and his helpers fed us fat olives and goat cheese with spitted doves raised for the table, served on fresh greens flawlessly seasoned. We stuffed ourselves further with fig and bread pudding, all washed down with excellent wine. Our conversation centered around Timius for awhile, after someone commented on how much better he looked. Everyone thanked the household gods for his recovery and wished him well.

Publius, the eldest Horatian triplet, elbowed one of my brothers-in-law. Were you there to see that old faker’s face when our divine Tim rose up to answer his call?

Sergius and I giggled irreverently at the memory. I leaned forward. "The poor Etruscus thought his god Tinia had answered him. The foreigner made a real fool out of himself. Then he tried to blame me for it."

Linius scowled, no doubt remembering the lecture he and the triplets’ father had gotten from an angry king that day. The priest was startled, he said. One can never be too careful in addressing the gods.

The triplets’ father, who preferred to think that the gods were on his side said, Took us all aback for a heartbeat. Then he pressed my brother for a valued opinion of the real worth and efficacy of King Numa’s sacred dance.

Linius wiped the juices off his chin. My good friend, you’d do better than to ask me. I know nothing about auguring and incantations. And certainly don’t bother to ask my hot-headed little brother here, because he is bitterly opposed to anything the king tries to do for the good of Roma.

I shot my brother a defiant look. "The old man said we had ruined it! His call to the gods was spoiled beyond help, if you were to believe him."

It wasn’t long before an argument took to the air in full swing over the king’s religious excesses. My view, as everyone knew by then, ran that Numa Pompilius was an elderly man so far past his usefulness to Roma that we suffered as a result. I said, Numa is so old he is deaf to insults from our neighbors. He does nothing to curb the chronic cattle rustling plaguing our outlying farms, while our cavalry sits idle in sore need of some action to keep from falling asleep or into total decay.

Publius agreed and made his face one of contempt and scorn. We flounder and grow as stale and sterile as the old Sabine who rules us!

My sisters’ husbands, Antius and Carvilius, sided with us by complaining of Sabine influences in general, although I knew they did so merely to show a subtle stand against Linius, the interloper in the family.

Linius had been quiet for some time. People don’t understand that the king’s strict formalities are intentional. Keeps things from changing much. Keeps us all pious before the gods. My half brother was a