Marilyn Todd - Virgin Territory

It was a touring company Claudia had never seen before, and they were truly amazing. The way they walked in their thick-soled buskins deliberately exaggerated the points they were making, their cork face masks helped to project their voices so even the poorer people up in the gallery had no need to strain their ears.

The theme of the play was the old, old story of three neighbours-a young soldier, a young girl and an old man. The girl was having a passionate affair with the handsome soldier whilst trying to hook the old man in marriage by pretending to be a virgin, desperately trying to make sure the other didn’t know what she was up to. What made this company unique, however, was their magical and innovative use of music. When the girl was pretending to be a virgin, the flute warbled a few rising, fluttering notes. When she was with the soldier, the earthy horn gave a short, sceptical honk. And whenever there was a punchline, the cymbals would crash together. Needless to say at the finale, when flute, horn and cymbal were all going at once, the audience was doubled up, ensuring everyone was in the right frame of mind for a night of feasting and dancing.

Julius’s impressive residence was a mere two minutes’ walk from the theatre and no one seemed to notice the steady drizzle which had set in. Claudia walked beside Urgulania, who didn’t care one jot that her companion hailed from the equestrian class, rather than a patrician family like her own. She was an interesting woman, as far removed from the likes of Matidia as the moon, discussing the local political situation, the changes and developments her husband had been and was intending to introduce, and Claudia decided that if more women were like Urgulania, she might actually begin to like the species.

Urgulania had really done Julius proud with the banquet, serving so many of Claudia’s favourite dishes that she was in danger of becoming a veritable martyr to indigestion. Figpeckers in pastry, peahens’ eggs, snails (which had been milk-fed, unless she missed her guess), and venison in a pepper and lovage sauce. Was this living, or was this living?

Between courses, a snake of dancers and musicians dressed as woodnymphs and satyrs wound their way between the dining couches and the meal was interspersed with poetry recitals to calm things down or fire-eaters to liven things up. The evening was going well, even at the point where Urgulania said:

‘My husband is hoping to talk Marcus into signing a marriage contract with Mucia, and as one who knows him, I’d really value your opinion.’

Claudia was not offended. Urgulania held no prejudice against equestrians, but so entrenched were the class divides that, without even realizing it, she’d automatically drawn a line of distinction between Claudia and Orbilio. There were some chasms that were simply never bridged.

It explained why Urgulania genuinely felt able to seek independent advice.

And it explained why Claudia had had to forge her own identity in the first place. Gaius Seferius would never have dreamt of offering marriage to a dancer and erstwhile prostitute from the lower orders.

‘My dear Urgulania, Marcus will make Mucia a wonderful husband,’ she gushed. ‘Providing she doesn’t want children, of course.’

Urgulania frowned. ‘Oh? Doesn’t he like them?’

‘Marcus? He loves them, would have a houseful of the little beggars-if only he could.’

‘Well, that’s easily settled. A healthy young girl like Mucia will be pregnant in no time.’

‘Uh-uh,’ Claudia said. ‘I mean…’ She held her hand out horizontally, then let it fall limp. ‘He can’t .’

Urgulania looked puzzled. ‘But surely-’

‘That’s why,’ Claudia cut in quickly, ‘his first wife threw herself in the Tiber.’

‘Are you certain of that? He told us she ran off with a common sea captain.’

Claudia gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Yes, yes, of course she did.’

The older woman’s lips pursed. ‘Do you mean he invented that story to cover up his wife’s suicide?’

‘Urgulania, please. If that’s what Marcus says, I insist you take his word for it.’

‘Mmm. Excuse me a moment, my dear, I’d like a quiet word with my husband.’ Orbilio, as was due a fellow patrician and potential son-in-law, had been given pride of place beside Julius on the top table. When he glanced over at Claudia, she noticed a slight crease in his brow. She smiled and raised her glass to him. It was entertaining the way his frown didn’t go away. It merely deepened-the way a frown would, if it suspected you were up to something behind its back.

Claudia beckoned over the slave with the wine jug.

‘Fill this up,’ she said, holding out her glass. ‘I feel like celebrating.’

*

There seemed no end to the festivities, and what started out as refreshing hedonism quickly descended into profligacy. There were only so many flamingo tongues one could eat, so many oysters one could swallow, and after twenty-four hours, the rattles and the pan pipes and the horns began to grate. At least, that’s how it was for Claudia. The others were revelling like there was no tomorrow.

‘It’s barbaric,’ she told Drusilla, slipping her a morsel of sucking pig. ‘They eat till they’re sick, they drink till they’re sick, and then damn me, they go back and start all over again.’

She and Drusilla were lucky, having a bedroom to themselves with this horde milling round the house, but for some strange reason none of the other women had fancied sharing.

‘I just pity the poor slaves whose job it is to mop up the vomit.’

‘Mrrr.’

These excesses reminded her of Diomedes’s lament about how the wealthy made themselves ill by constant over-indulgence in fatty foods and vintage wine. He’d have made a good living here in Agrigentum, she thought, with his purges and his bloodletting-why take a job at the Villa Collatinus? What did he mean when he said he’d found peace there?

‘And I tell you something else,’ she said to Drusilla, as one of the kittens burrowed under the flounce of her tunic, ‘there’ll be a good influx of babies nine months from now.’

Hardly a slave girl passed unmolested, most of them taken in the shadows of the prefect’s pink marble pillars with the same delicacy his guests showed towards their other physical needs. Claudia pursed her lips. Randy old goats she could understand. Hadn’t she spent her teenage years pandering to their sexual fantasies? They wanted. They paid. Fair enough. But these girls were treated like herd animals, and suddenly Claudia was sick of Sicily.

Sick of its decadence, its over-the-toppery, its fat cats creaming off the goodies in a way Roman citizens, no matter how rich or privileged, would never dream of. She was sick of the brooding superstition which clung to the island, she was sick of the Collatinuses and the callous way they ignored the violence of their kinswoman’s death, almost as though it was a way of life for them.

The kitten began a death-defying climb up the north face of her tunic. Claudia would never know, now, where Sabina had spent the past thirty years. Her original theory, bunking up with a distant relative, was knocked on the head as she remembered the sun-darkened skin, the dirty nails. No relative would expect (or indeed allow!) her to work for her keep. On the other hand, Sabina did not give the appearance of a woman who’d had to graft in order to survive. What happened when she went to Rome all those years ago? Why continue the pretence of being a Vestal Virgin? It didn’t surprise Claudia that none of the family had visited, they were far too absorbed in their own lives, although Matidia mentioned a regular exchange of letters. The most curious point, however, was why Sabina chose to return at the precise time the real senior Vestal was retiring. Why not stay where she was?