Chapter V

V

My lord, it had to be she, Cornelia, who, two or three nundina after our meeting, happened to send me a slave with a message:

“My sweet friend:

I have not visited you for some days as I had to meet up with  some friends and relatives from abroad at our villa in Cumae .. I would really love that Portia, Marcia and you could join me here. It will certainly do you so good, dear… after having been shuttered up within that Domus Publica for such a long time. I will go and fetch you . Otherwise, you would never come. Furthermore, there will be no risk of dangerous gossiping among your slaves or the vestal girls if it is me who takes you away. True, the kids are lovely but you well know what may be expected of a community of women living together.

Do pack up enough luggage for many days.

Cornelia Sulla”

At that time winter was just beginning, so I decided to choose a varied supply of both woollen and linen tunics and pallae . I did not forget to take a good amount of necklaces, pectorals, bracelets and earrings to match my clothes: turquoise, red and pink coral, amber, amethyst… It was such a rich variety, that of this treasure which I had inherited from my mother that I could even wear a different set of jewels every day.

Why did I have the idea of carrying so much luggage for only a few days? A considerable number of little cases containing jewellery and other ornaments went through the porticus of the Domus Publica  that morning . Cornelia herself had arrived in her litter from Cumae in order to pick us up. As she had warned me in her letter, had she not come to force me to go away, I would have surrender to that old routine which had been gathering  inside myself for years, my only company whereas I managed to survive , sunk in the gloom of my rooms, except for Cornelia, Marcia and Portia, apart from the High Vestal’s  occasional visits – maybe intended to control what  I used to do during your absence. No, there was no way to avoid it.

Moreover, I wondered, how on earth was I going to face the fact of meeting  total strangers? I had not developed my social skills for a long time. Frankly speaking, I had never do that. Since the day when you married me, my lord, I had lived here cloistered, with the presence of Domina Aurelia controlling my existence, without even a child who could allow me to have a little bit of initiative regarding his or her education. I am no more than a guest here, sunk in this mausoleum which might be a home (?) for the vestals but not for me. Perhaps these next days of absence will clear up my mind , driving me to a deeper consideration of my living here .This thought aroused me  so brightly that even Cornelia noticed it.

-My Goodness! Your face is shining! I was right…

Staying away from Rome had left its trace on her. Cornelia’s alabaster-like skin had turned  shinier and tanned, her deep, greyish-blue, almost transparent eyes sparkled between her golden lashes. Though being more or less your age, at that time she still kept that intense beauty which, as it was widely said, she had inherited from her father, whose marble busts only allow you to glimpse a vague shadow of what he must have looked like.

–No, there are not so many guests as to have the need of using all that luggage. Do not worry, I have brought a fine cart to carry it all. I guessed that you were impatient to make yourself pretty and change clothes every day. Who would care about your attire here , at Domus Publica? It would only be a fitting excuse to make your birds gossip around!

Her healthy glittering teeth looked dazzling in her bright face. Portia and Marcia had already sat down inside the litter while our personal female slaves were in another one. Something surprisingly sensitive of Cornelia: anyone else would have destined the servants to the luggage cart. The curtains were drawn and then we set off along Via Sacra , making our way to Cumae

Obviously, it was not a short trip . We even had to stop several times. My body was starting to miss that sedentary peace which I had known for almost a lifetime. I could not even accept that honey –soaked pastry which we were offered  to make our hunger vanish. Of course, neither could I swallow that strong dark wine which, against her custom, she had not flavoured with herbs, spices or honey so that we could appreciate its taste.

–But…. Cornelia!!!

–No, Marcia. A tiny sip will  do no harm to your reputation. We will later mix it with water, as usual.

It was thick, dense… as I could deduce from its colour, body and scent

-Of course it tastes rare! Nothing like what you may have drunk so far. This variety comes from Hispania

Yes, no doubt it was different. My friends’ eyes showed some kind of unknown dazzle, a playful, somehow accomplice-like shine. My mistrusting eyes watched the flask containing the….potion? perhaps sent by a rich friend who might have been sent to that province. I suddenly smiled at this thought. Why not? Cornelia was a rich widow, of ancient lineage. Cornelia…. Cornelia…. My sight almost merged with those inquisitive eyes , which seemed to be exploring the effects of that wine in us. Why should I have been forced to this, to spend so many long hours in this claustrophobic litter where the four of us pushed one another to find enough room? Fortunately that day there was not the usual Roman damp heat in the air. Why would this wine not make me sink into a dense sleep till we get our destination? Anyway, there would only be a few days away from home… Upset by this powerlessness to combat my exhaustion and inner anxiety, I could finally see that we were arriving in Cumae . See….? In fact, I guessed it through the deep salty air that was entangled within the flapping of the curtains and that pine scent around the lower town, where there stood the villae of those Romans who had chosen Cumae as their second home, just in the same way as some others had theirs in the rest of the Campanian colonies. Now I can remember Portia and her father’s villa, which, at that time, was not far from Cornelia’s. She would certainly miss it in the years after its expropriation and being put to auction. Poor Portia… what a joy she experienced when Brutus bought it for her. Poor noble Portia….Why…? Why…???

Cornelia’s villa had a breath-taking location. From its magnificent huge peristylium you could have a good view of the old upper town on the cliff that linked it to the harbour. As it is usual in Southern villae, the peristylium was not the open-topped column-surrounded space that we have in our Roman houses but a wide garden where rose bushes, hollyhock, mirth, honeysuckle and vines grew vigorously among pines, Tuscan cypresses and Eastern banana trees, sheltering a large pond with a fountain shaped like Venus Felix , the same figure as that one which, made of tessellae, gave its blessing to the cryptoporticus . She wore a purple cloak and held a steer in her right hand and a laurel bough in her left one. No wonder that Marcia and Portia looked at it all ecstatically. – You surely remember that Cato’s villa looked so small, severe, dark….

That tessella-built Venus Felix was also present in the compluvium of the atrium, around which there were the slaves’ cubicula. The noble rooms looked out into the immense peristylium, surrounded by porphyry columns which were crowned by acanthus leaves, those who Sulla himself had introduced in Rome, guarding an open semicircular gallery, from which you could watch that landscape presided by the promontory.

“Why should all this seem strange to you….? You know that all those proscriptions meant an outrageous number of confiscated lands and riches”

I can read these words within that smile of yours, ironic and dazzling…

The floor looked like flowing marble patterns which would have been woven in different shades: red, amber, purple, rosy, dark blue…. The frescoes in the triclinium screened the views that we had just seen outside : the old acropolis among the walls, watched through those solid porphyry columns. Obviously, the  three of us were cautious enough as not to make comments about Cornelia’s father’s expenses, perhaps because he had not been the one who had made an economic contribution to keeping that villa.

–Keeping this house is costly. Anyway, it is the only thing that has remained to me after….my father’s death.

Just for a moment the memory of some marble bust merged with those ivory-like features, golden-red curls and the light of her light eyes…Pater? … Was it possible that Cornelia had come to worship him the way she had never done it when he was alive, according to your mother’s words?

– Fortunately –She seemed to get out of that trance – I could save the vines and make some profit through the years

She had never told us about it. We knew that Sulla was a lover of good wine , like any Roman with a bit of taste, but all that business matter was utterly unknown to us .

–Many patricians do it. We have achieved a fine wine blending of ours  and a variety of Falernian wine which I was given a long time ago. In Rome it is gaining a more than acceptable reputation –Why had she never mentioned it before? – Even my friends from other provinces like Hispania really appreciate it. It is for them that I have made up a new variety.

How on earth had Aurelia not learnt about it? IT is true that Cornelia would always avoid this subject in her presence. I was beginning to understand why… No, but she does not know you so well, my lord. You are too human, even merciful, to let yourself be blinded by your ambition. Might she have feared that you would make her pay an excessive tax for her wine affairs?

In the triclinium a woman sat up off a lectus which was covered with a cloth of crimson linen, matching  those threads which, entangled with golden hair, made up that mass of thin braids that came out of that sort of palla , dyed in a deep shade of blue, as bright as Pompeian sea at dusk. It hid a woollen tunic, as purely white as the toga candida. Her intense, transparent blue-grey eyes cast a look which could be either friendly or  capable of piercing through the deepest layer of someone’s inner being , behind those dark lashes which stood out in that  translucent face, where  it was impossible to find the slightest  blush. Not even the High Vestal could have ever looked so… priestly

–Calpurnia Pisonis Caesonina, wife to your noble lord, I greet you.

Her voice was human, sweet….A thoroughly trained instrument that could adapt itself to give prophetic judgement, to make public appeal to the Gods so as to move their will. Hanging over her breasts, waist and belly, several kinds of gems shone: pomegranate on the lowest part of her body, orange-coloured carnelian over her belly, topaz and amber beads twinkled around her waist , jade and malachite invaded her breasts, some kind  of translucent  blue egg-shaped thing hung around her neck whereas around  her pale forehead  there was a wreath of tiny indigo beryl which hid her dark eyebrow , being held by the bright blue palla-like cloak. The lady’s head was crowned by a girdle of amethyst on which there stood a slightly shiny pale crescent (I would later learn that it was a gem called adularia).

– Blodwynn is my brother Kornel’s daughter. She has been brought up among the Britons.

–And I am a priestess of the Triple Goddess. I do not mind saying openly, aunt. That is what belongs to me. And where I belong …. Though being barefooted, lady Calpurnia, little do I have to do with the description which ….the Great Roman has made of the Gallic priestesses with grey entangled hair and cursing, thundering voice. As you can clearly see, no skulls but healing gems hang off my waist and neck in order to encourage good forces, in the same way as you ,Romans, make use of charms….

 She seemed to be trying to calm down the stern mistrusting look in Portia’s grey eyes. Portia…. Oh, my Gods…Portia. However ,I really trusted her loyalty as a friend and I could not imagine she would ever dare to betray me to her father, something that he would certainly use as a means to defend the optimates’ interests against yours… and mine. Might you ever have met her during your stay in Britannia? May she have come here in an attempt to flee from Roman invasion? The gems tickled when she sat back on the lectus.  Blodwynn. Yes, that was the name whose origin she would tell me a long time later, a most beautiful story, that of the flower woman, created by a god for the divine king of the sea and who happened to betray marital loyalty, ending up in the shape of an owl. The wise owl…. Minerva!

–My  love for the history of Roman Gods has never died. My….grandfather… your father, Cornelia…made my grandmother swear that she would force her children to respect Rome.

She had softened her voice. A flash quivered between her shaking eyelashes. A somehow funny memory came to my mind, the same as any Roman has of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, the man who had destroyed so many Roman families, both plebeians and patricians, reducing all of them to utter poverty. The multicoloured marble and porphyry columns in this villa returned to my thoughts. Then I reacted. At that point of the conversation I could not remember if I had been told of the existence of the Gallic family  which Sulla had made outside his status as a Roman patrician.

 –My grandfather met….his second wife…when he was working as a spy . At that time he was as beautiful as Cornelia , according to what Mother told me. In fact, she did not know who he really was until I was properly informed in its due time. This happened

when I was sent to Britannia in order to be trained as a healer, working with different kinds of herbs that had to be virtually cut in certain times of the year with our consecrated sickle-knives and also to be taught to foresee with watching mirrors and sacred ponds in order to increase that deep knowledge that is within our beings and also channel the Divine Lady’s force and will through her triple face of Virgin, Mother and Wise Old Woman. I mean, the flowering earth which has not been fertilized yet, the earth which is already fertile and fruitful and that which remains bare after the harvest, apparently dead but really asleep, waiting for the beginning of the Bright Season. It is not so different from the ancient Rome which worshipped Fertile Mother Earth, is it? In fact, what is the difference between all of these three faces and Diana, Juno, Venus, Minerva….?

I discreetly tried to exchange subtlest glances with Marcia and Portia. The long speech that  Cornelia had inflicted on us nundina before came back to my mind. Was it all part of a plan that Sulla’s daughter had designed and whose purpose I could not see clearly yet? I decided not to pay attention to my fears and, consequently, keep an eye on how events would be going on.

Then…hadn’t she  learnt anything  about her grandfather’s real identity till she arrived in Britannia....?.

–I love this strange sauce… hot…. Garum…. Do you call it like that? And all this large variety of fish! Thanks a lot, aunt, for not serving game for dinner. We have been forbidden to eat any meat since childhood, particularly venison. Some British tribes think stags are totemic, sacred….

Despite the austerity regarding food which she had been taught, Blodwynn anxiously eyed everything that she could carefully eat in small portions: those newly-discovered lusty olives and golden oil, the sunny greenish clusters of grapes on the silvery trays...  Her eyes were displaying that unusual exploring avidity before that culinary scenery which was alien to her real life as a servant of the British goddess inside the sacred oak groves. Neither did she taste the wine that Cornelia had got heated with clove and cinnamon and mixed with that kind of water which happened to be thicker and more calcareous than Rome’s. She would only drink that unique water from a lake near the bangor –That was the name she gave it –where she had lived and that she had insisted on bringing here, inside a good number of containers. I guessed they had had to choose the long journey through the sea so that they might arrive here safely. How on earth could she have managed to survive? However, her translucent skin was not even tanned. Had she then contented herself to remain cloistered within a tiny cubiculum for so many days? Moreover, why should they be so technically developed that they might have succeeded in building such well-equipped ships, able to bear longest journeys? How on earth had they managed not to be intercepted by a Roman vessel? Many questions wandered through my thoughts while those intense grey-blue eyes merged into some kind of inner light, were watching us slowly , taking their time.... Perhaps trying to grasp something new, ignored to all of them overseas....

—A bangor... Yes , a collegium of druids like those in the Gaul. I do not know if your husband has described them as they really are : priestly associations where future priests and priestesses are trained. No, we are no druidesses but only devoted to healing, prophecy and praying the Great Supreme Mother, a face of the female principle out of which life springs out. ... You know, druids deal with everything related to our consuetudinary law and offering sacrifices of a certain importance – Her eyes slid downwards – in  order to pray for protection against our invaders. Druids keep most of our knowledge within their minds, having treasured it during  twenty years’ training period  at bangors.

–But you are also allowed to know about the secrets of music.... and play those strings instruments about which old Roman legionaries spoke . Those huge ones that ancient druids would put on top of the hills so that violent blasts of wind could produce spectre-like sound which seemed to whip horses, causing them to flee away in terror. Didn’ t you know that story?

Yes, some blurred  memory sprang in my mind . Perhaps it had been my  father who had told me about it. They must have certainly become useless in front of roaring catapults and assault towers.

–What are you insinuating , Cornelia? I should have proposed that myself, though not being the hostess here. –Her closed lips gave us a silent smiley that was kept for some time. –Well, my ladies.... 

She and her twinkling jewellery rose up and went to a cupboard out of which she produced some kind of big unvarnished wooden lyre. It was a dull sort of wood that is different from the one which is used for carving here in Rome. On its surface you could find geometrical patterns which may have been made by her . Both wood and cords smelt of a scent in which I alternatively recognized mint, clove, verbena, rosemary and other flowers and herbs I could not identify at once. They seemed to have been perfumed very recently since the odour was deep , invading our nostrils , merging into that subtle waving voice, maybe so similar to many you may have had the occasion of listening to there in Gaul. Yes, though nobody revealed that it was too obvious for me not to ignore that. Maybe another golden-scarlet mass of hair like this, from which there flowed some kind of brittle vibrating singing , modulated like no other I may ever have heard before . Maybe similar fingers, pale and exquisite, enable to extract  a similar tide of crystal-like notes, dazzling , unique...which would intertwine together  in a rising rhythm driving you out of control... Oh Gods......... Goddesses. Was this perhaps the face of Bona Dea, who was immolated by her own husband? ... Mother Goddess, one of the faces of the Supreme female force? . The one who fertilizes the earth. Which is really a part of Herself .... Mother... Why did I silently call for that one, my true mother ,who lay, bodiless, within the mists that cannot be perceived by our senses? Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, you know him well, refused to inflict a stepmother on me before I could channel my adult life ... Calpurnia... Perhaps the act of being frequently elected as an augur was due to this gift of his, such a personal intuition which enabled him to interpret the position of stars.  Maybe helped by someone who was very close to him, even beloved? I had once overheard that it might be so because a little bit of his blood was alien to common human beings’. This had made me laugh. I remembered you and your ancestry who claimed to have descended from Venus herself . But Gens Calpurnia is not Gens Iulia. Not even Gens Calpurnia,  which, however ancient and illustrious it might be, has never claimed any kind of divine ancestry. Despite all that, I was gradually returning to my memories. No, perhaps it was also a sensation that Marcia and Portia also shared.

–What a beautiful music....

Marcia was looking at something invisible imprecise. Yes no doubt... She, too..

–My beautiful lady, thank you....

The foreign priestess smiled, pleased by our sweet Marcia’s usual tenderness. Absolutely unsweeet Portia, however, watched her friend with sympathy, somehow moved...  Blodwynn set her eyes on me for a long time, as if trying to activate some kind of reaction that I should express through words. I had perceived, beyond my silence, something that the other women had not grasped. The cold twinkle of those transparent pupils –Did I happen to see your eyes in hers? –was slightly whirling me...as if into a light flash . Didn`t the spiced wine really have anything to do with all this?