Marilyn Todd - Sour Grapes

'Maybe that's one of the benefits of retirement?' Darius suggested, suppressing a soft cough. 'No longer bound to the great imperial clock.'

'And he does have to ride over from the far side of Mercurium,' Lars pointed out in his soft Etruscan brogue. 'His horse might have thrown a shoe.'

'His loss,' Larentia snapped, and Claudia was glad to see the dragon's spleen was still working. 'The opportunity to commune with lost loved ones doesn't knock every day and he won't be butting in after we've started. Once Candace has summoned the spirits, that's it.'

Claudia glanced at the sorceress, reaching for a wine cake with long, elegant fingers. Tonight, she had crooned earlier in the peristyle. Tonight husband and wife will be reunited, you have my promise on that, the velvety tone of her voice suggesting a close and intimate encounter pledged on the spur of the moment. Huh! Tonight's 'walking on winds' had been planned long in advance, with half of Tuscany participating! But so long as the spider lures its fly, the end no doubt justified the means, and Claudia could only admire the spider's skill.

'Perhaps Rex is tied up with repairs to his estate?' Thalia suggested. She turned to Claudia. 'We had a terrible storm at the weekend-'

'You've already told her that,' Terrence said.

'Have I? Sorry.'

'That was the night Tages the shepherd boy went missing, wasn't it?' Claudia asked, ignoring him. 'Has he turned up yet?'

'No,' Thalia said, 'and his poor grandmother's out of her mind with worry. Of course, when I say out of her mind, I don't mean possessed like the goldbeater's uncle they have to keep chained-'

'Good god, woman, you sound like a fishwife,' Terrence hissed under his breath. 'For heaven's sake, can't you find an interesting subject to discuss, instead of dredging up gossip?'

'Talking of repairs,' Eunice breezed, 'did you hear? The wind tore the roof clean off the Temple of Juno in the night.'

'There was no wind,' Larentia pointed out.

Eunice shrugged. 'Be that as it may, darling, the whole inner sanctum was stripped bare, leaving poor Juno gazing up at the stars. Can you imagine! You know how bitterly she resents Hercules being up there!'

'No woman likes to see a bastard son take preference over her own offspring,' Terrence pointed out. 'Especially when he's rewarded with his own constellation-'

'Sorry I'm late, everyone,' a military voice boomed from the atrium. 'Brought you a few cheeses, Larentia. Trust that compensates.'

'More than, thank you,' Larentia called back, explaining to the rest of the company that the sheep on Rex's pastures produced the finest pecorino in Tuscany. 'He claims it's the herbs that grow wild in his meadows. I believe it's because he personally drills his lambs from the moment they're born, and I swear they never go baa, only yessir.'

Larentia cracking jokes? Dear Diana, whatever next!

'Got caught up in that wretched kerfuffle in Mercurium,' Rex explained, bustling in. Bull-necked, beetle-browed and jowly, he was every inch the retired soldier. 'Scandalous, what. Absolute bloody disgrace.'

'What is?' Darius asked, squeezing up to make room on his couch for the general.

Rex kicked off his sandals and joined him. 'Jupiter's bollocks, I thought everyone'd heard by now; it's all over town.' He paused to take a long draught of wine. 'When the tiler went up to start on repairs at the temple, he discovered that Juno's statue had been daubed red like a bloody Etruscan.' He tipped his head toward Lars. 'No offence, old man.'

'None taken,' Lars said.

'Only kids mucking about, I know, but the sooner Rome sorts out this ridiculous Fufluns business, the better — again, no offence, Lars. Which reminds me, Larentia. Hope you don't mind, but I've invited my young nephew along later. Been staying with me for a few days. Asked if he might tag along.'

'Whofluns?' Claudia asked, but Rex had galloped off on a different tack, something to do with skinning hooligans alive, she believed, and nailing their scalps to the basilica walls. It was left to Lars to explain.

'Fufluns,' he said, in his soft rolling brogue. 'Since the might of the Etruscan military was superseded — and isn't it amazing how few folk remember that we once controlled Rome, not the other way round? Aye, well. So much of our heritage has been absorbed, bastardized or copied by Rome that it's not surprising our history disappears in the process.'

'Except for Fufluns?'

When he leaned towards her, she caught a faint whiff of his musky unguent. 'You take our Menvra, put her in a grand hall of marble and call her Minerva. You take our god of purification and name your month of February after him. And you just kidnap Fortuna and Vesta without even pretending to go through the motions.' He clucked his tongue. 'Make no mistake, though. We Etruscans aren't welded to temples of wood that rot in the winter, and we're not obsessed with the blowing of trumpets when we're used to hearing the drums. Between you and me, there's many things we're very happy to let slide.' Without thinking, his fingers went to the amulet that hung from a thong round his neck. 'But when we lift our eyes to our hillsides and see them covered with the vineyards laid out by our ancestors, we draw a line.'

Ah. 'Fufluns is your god of wine.'

'Wine features strongly in his divinity, aye,' Lars said, refilling her goblet. 'Except Fufluns represents much, much more. He's one of the earth gods who make their abode in the south, and as such Fufluns embodies vitality, fertility, merriment, joy and all the other earthly pleasures that can be obtained from the careful nurturing of the vine.'

Claudia raised her glass. 'I'm all for keeping happiness sacred.'

'So are the folk of Mercurium, which makes the sacrilege at the Temple of Juno doubly distressing, since we're approaching the full moon, when the Brides of Fufluns dance in front of their idol.'

All credit to Rex, Claudia thought, in sticking up for local principles, though surely he had the whole thing back to front? 'If this was hooligans on the rampage, wouldn't they have desecrated your god's statue rather than one of their own?'

'Absolutely.' Lars nodded emphatically. 'The defacement of Juno was made to look like an act of wanton vandalism to hasten the integration of Fufluns into mainstream Roman religion.' He sighed. 'No doubt we'll be calling him Bacchus before long, and gone'11 be the goatskins and horns that he wears now, but until that day dawns, I'm afraid nothing's going to stop us daubing ourselves with red cochineal and paying the most robust homage we can muster to our fine liquid heritage, and in that respect, we have Terrence to thank.'

'How so?'

'Tell her, Terrence,' he called over. 'Tell her how the temple of Fufluns sits on your land, and how ye could have pushed for Romanization any time that you liked and taken the glory among your peers.'

'My family lineage traces back to Romulus and Remus.' Terrence shrugged modestly. 'We have enough glory and, compared to the number of locals who stream over my land to worship a god who embodies all earthly pleasures, one feels a metalled path is in order, rather than change. Or modernization, as Rome likes to call it.'

If there had been humble pie on the table, Claudia would have swallowed it whole. Terrence, she was forced to admit, wouldn't be the first brother who'd found his baby sister irritating and didn't bother to hide it.

'Aye, and we unmodernized types thank you for it. The Bridal Dance is an important part of our calendar,' Lars added. 'Perhaps the most important event hereabouts, given that most of our other temples have gone Roman. Aha.' He nodded towards Candace. 'Curtain up.'

Entranced by this new perspective on the Etruscans as much as her re-assessment of Terrence, Claudia had failed to notice that the tables had been cleared and braziers positioned carefully around the room. It was only when slaves began closing the folding doors that she realized Candace was about to fulfil her promise and bring Gaius Seferius back into his own dining room a full three years after his bones had been cremated.