Page 45 of Do Not Awaken Love (The Moroccan Empire #3)
PROLOGUE
H er whole world was orange.
Shifting her head to one side, feeling the weight of the veil, hearing it rustle, her eyes strained to focus through the fine weave.
Orange. The vegetable smell of the dye had been faint when she’d first donned the wedding veil, but now its scent filled her nostrils and mouth, the cloth pressing against her face as she walked to where the guests were waiting.
The atrium was crowded. So many people. Shaking, legs unsteady, Caecilia found she needed to lean against her Aunt Aurelia. Through the haze of the veil she could barely make out the faces of the ten official witnesses or that of the most honored guest, the chief pontiff of Rome.
And she could not see Drusus. Perhaps he could not bear to witness her surrender.
“Stand straight, you’re too heavy,” hissed her aunt, pinching the girl’s arm.
Biting her lip, Caecilia was led forward. The groom stood before the wedding altar, ready to make the nuptial offering. Her Uncle Aemilius smiled broadly beside him.
Aunt Aurelia, acting as presiding matron, deposited her charge with a flourish, then fussed with the bride’s tunic. She was reveling in the attention and smiled vacuously at her guests, but the girl was aware that, for so crowded a room, silence dominated.
Drawing back her veil, Caecilia gazed upon the stranger who was to become her husband.
To her surprise, his black hair was close-cropped and he was beardless.
She was used to the long tresses of the men of Rome—and their odor.
This man smelled differently; the scent of bathwater mixed with sandalwood clung to his body.
Head bowed, she tried in vain to blot out his existence no more than a handbreadth from her side, but she need not have bothered. He made no attempt to study either her face or form.
“The auspices were taken at sunrise,” declared Aemilius. “The gods confirm the marriage will be blessed.”
Bride and groom sat upon chairs covered with sheepskin and waited while the pontiff offered spelt cake to Jupiter.
There was a pause as they stood and circled the altar, then the priest signaled Aurelia to join the couple’s hands.
Caecilia wished she could stop shaking. She had to be brave. She had to be dignified. But her body would not obey her. She was still quaking when Aurelia seized her right hand roughly and thrust it into the groom’s.
The warmth and strength of his grip surprised her.
Her palm was clammy and it occurred to her that her hand would slip from his grasp.
Slowly, she turned to face him. He was old; lines of age plowed his forehead and creased his eyes.
He must be nearly two score years. What was he like, this man? Her husband?
Aware that she should be making her vows to him in silence, she instead prayed fervently that the gods would take pity and not make her suffer too long or too hard in his keeping.
His hand still encompassed hers. Before releasing her fingers, he squeezed them slightly, the pressure barely perceptible. She held her breath momentarily, amazed that the only mark of comfort she had received all day had been bestowed upon her by a foe.
She scanned his face. His eyes were dark and almond-shaped, like the hard black olives from her aunt’s pantry. His skin was dark, too, sun dark. A jagged scar ran down one side of his nose to his mouth.
He was far from handsome.
His toga and tunic were of a rich dark blue, making all stare at him for a difference other than his race.
Yet his shoulders were held in a martial pose, no less a man for his gaudiness, it seemed, than the Roman patricians around him in their simple purple-striped robes.
And the bridal wreath upon his head could have been a circlet of laurel leaves, a decoration for bravery, not nuptials.
A golden bulla hung around his neck, astounding her.
For a man did not wear such amulets once he’d stepped over the threshold to manhood.
Only children wore such charms in Rome. He wore many rings, too, but one in particular was striking.
Heavy gold set with onyx. No Roman would garland himself with so much jewelry.
There was one other thing that was intriguing, making her wonder if his people found it hard to bid farewell childhood. His arms and his legs seemed hairless, as if they had been shaven completely.
Perfumed, short-cropped hair, no beard. Caecilia truly beheld a savage.
Once again she steeled herself, repeating silently: “I am Aemilia Caeciliana. Today I am Rome. I must endure.”
ONE
A ll Romans feed on ambition. Like Romulus and Remus nuzzling greedily at the dugs of the she wolf. Lucius Caecilius was no different. Tugging on one teat for personal profit while gorging on another for public gain.
His daughter did not know this.
To Caecilia, her Tata was a champion of the people. One of ten tribunes empowered to veto unjust laws. The highest office a commoner could hold.
In a world riven by a bitter class war, he had succeeded in marrying a patrician. His bride did not welcome the marriage, though, forever after hating her brother, Aemilius, for brokering the union.
Living on her husband’s estate, away from the city of Rome, Aemilia bore the shame of her marriage in seclusion by refusing to greet other matrons who sought to visit.
Caecilia’s memories of her mother were distant, for the patrician woman cloistered herself within the rambling country house, and when confronted with her child looked disappointed, almost perturbed, that the proof of Aemilius’s betrayal still lived and breathed and had taken form as a little girl.
Humiliation formed a canker both within and upon Aemilia’s breast, and she lay in a darkened chamber brimming with stuttering coughs, rasping breaths, and resentment.
The air was heavy with the bittersweet scent of the hypericum oil she rubbed upon her sores that left a bright-red stain as if to declare she could never be cured.
To Caecilia, even the slightest hint of such an odor would forever more return her to that fetid room, assaulting all her senses.
All except for one. All except for touch.
One day, though, Aemilia pressed a fascinum into her daughter’s hand, a tiny phallus crafted from bone and tipped in iron. “To keep away the evil eye,” she whispered. “You, most of all, will need it.”
Such a gesture of concern caused confusion in the child as to whether her mother wished to protect her or thought she was already cursed.
While Aemilia lived, Lucius resided in the city, visiting rarely, always anxious to escape his wife’s chilly reserve.
And so, knowing nothing else than her mother’s disdain and her father’s diffidence, the young Caecilia learned to hide in shadowy corners away from the servants.
For she soon understood from listening to their gossip that they saw her neither as a patrician nor even a plebeian but only as a brat.
Lonely and silent, she became invisible, only finding happiness when she could slip from dimness into sunlight to trace on foot the limits of her father’s land, tying woolen puppets to the boundary stones to remind the spirits to remember and protect her.
***
When Aemilia died there was relief. An observation of duty. Nothing more. No tears. Tata hired mourners for that. Ashes caking their faces and hair. Keening.
Freed of the gloom of that oppressive household, the little girl ran wild, dressed in dark-blue mourning clothes but not grieving, using only oil and the scrape of iron strigil to keep clean, hair uncombed, chores left unattended, and wondering now and then whether she should weep.
Seeing Tata’s reaction to his wife’s death did not help her uncertainty. On the day her mother died, Lucius hesitated before placing his lips over Aemilia’s, as though uncomfortable that he should inhale her dying soul with such a kiss.
***
Not long after the funeral, Caecilia ran into Tata’s study to escape the rain leaking from under the atrium roof covers.
Discovering in her father’s domain a feast long denied her, the ten-year-old raided its secrets as hungrily as she plundered his beehives for honey, intrigued by scrolls that slithered and curled into rolls when she played with them, or wax tablets upon which words or numbers could be etched.
Summoned by his steward, Lucius was startled to find his wayward daughter guiltily handling his books as though she were a thief caught in his wine cellar.
To her surprise he did not chide her. Instead, father and daughter came to an understanding.
Lucius’s fingers were crippled by an affliction that made his joints gnarled and his flesh frozen with pain.
It had become hard for him to hold a stylus without splattering ink or digging unwanted strokes onto a fresh page.
And so he taught Caecilia to read and write, telling her the laws of their people and reciting unwritten customs in long, worn sentences.
And in time she wrote his letters and read aloud to him when eyesight and candlelight were both failing.
Amid the tablets and scrolls, bills and invoices, inventories and manuals, Caecilia gained an education that would have been reserved for a son: religion and law, arithmetic, and history.
She gained his love as well.
Each night, after she’d ground a salve of calendula by mortar and pestle, she’d massage his gnarled and tortured knuckles, smoothing the pungent ointment into his skin.
And always, while she did so, he’d lace his crippled fingers between hers and murmur: “My honey-eyed child, what would I do without you?”
***
Tata was wealthy. Being plebeian did not preclude riches. Riches built upon salt.