X

You were especially kind to me, my lord, on those days of depression that came next, feeling both my mind and body deeply weakened. Why on earth should that have happened once again? No doubt your calm considerate attitude could only be explained through many reasons, all those that you could well be hiding me and had something to do with those long years campaigning there on the other side of the Cisalpine Gaul. Who knows if you might have forged some offspring within the womb of more than one native from those tribes you passionlessly dealt with in your writings? Why did I ever imagine that she might have been one of those … druids. quite like Blodwynn?. The same ones who, thanks to your doing, were already known as bewitching murderers all through Rome… except for these patrician ladies who, like me, had accepted their services to stimulate their barren bellies and also, as they had made me understand, to enliven their sensuousness and waken that of their partners. Initially I felt some mistrust due to those priestesses’ reputation as lusty sorceresses and harlots at the service of dark deities that you had made up for them. This thought had increased through my jealous insecurity and, besides, that night’s revelation drove me to restlessly yearning for meeting back that evanescent being I had first seen at Cornelia’s… Kornel…how could I…? Anyway I could not break my promise of not revealing your secret. Whatever it might be, anguish rose up inside me…No, my lord, I have always remained faithful to you, even in my thoughts. But I am sure that you will certainly understand my confusion: I was not allowed to reveal you Blodwynn’s doing or how she had managed to get into Domus Publica. and not be discovered by the High Vestal. Anyway, her methods had proved to be useless so I came to understand the reason why I had initially felt that interest in her. Apart from the fact that Cornelia had taken good care of not speaking about her with you around whenever she dropped in to have news about my health.

–Caesar, I suppose that you will approve of this, that your wife may try some quick recovery by drinking this wine, in which I have boiled herbs and invigorating spices. She badly needs to regenerate the blood that she has lot , so that she is ready to beget your heir before you left Rome again.

She well knew that the war against Pompeius would probably keep you away for a long, long time. Would she have inherited from he father, something else apart from her cunning and political cleverness? Might she have guessed that someone, something from the East was still to come? You stood there, watching her hands –long, slender, alabaster-like –while they were leaning that onyx and silver jar over the agate goblet to pour what she had brought from her Cumae wine-cellar.

–Revitalizing …herbs?

Her aquamarine look –not so different from yours –smiled in quite a sort of serpent-like way.

–Greek medicine is not the only one, Caesar… Well, it is just some pepper, clove… rosemary, sage… Don’t look at me so inquisitively… Didn’t you turn to those healing remedies while you were campaigning there?

Being your mother’s old friend and also a former mother-in-law for you, it was not strange that she allowed herself such a self-assurance that I would never have dared.

–They also use healing herbs, don’t they? It is not a secret, Caesar… Three quarters of our Roman population, from patricians to the legionaries’ families know this story… Or might it be that every gesture of yours was noticed by those who fought at your service? What can you expect of a commander who even knows the name of each of his soldiers?

You kept listening to her, looking thoughtful or interested rather than scrutinizing.. That’s strange… Why did I happen to think that you were trying to find something related to your mother about her, though you were both almost the same age? No, not even did her close friendship to Aurelia or being your former wife’s mother entitle her to that. What’s more, her daughter’s memory must always have been such an unbearable ghost for you and your ambitions.

–Caesar, be reasonable… Calpurnia must get over this situation so that your seed may get rooted inside her. She needs it as much as you.

You silently drove her outside. No, you wouldn’t certainly reveal her all that had been confided to me. Was it necessary, anyway? Who knows how much she knew about that … She, who, like me, had also noticed how deep your wrinkles had grown around your eyes and mouth and also that your scarce hair was getting ashier and ashier … and all that weight, notwithstanding your athletic build, you had lost, so that your tanned chiselled cheeks looked like parchment…

“He’s so old for you, girl… Why should you obstinate yourself in keeping him by your side? You know well that he would have repudiated ruthlessly you if…” Yes, I was aware of that silent thought of hers, which could not be openly transmitted to me. Would I have accepted what she seemed to suggest, perhaps nowadays you still be staying at Domus Publica, enjoying months, perhaps years, of peacefulness, cherishing the company of your new wife and, at the same time, having gained an alliance which Pompeius Magnus would have signed if you had married his daughter. No, no longer could I go on daydreaming of that idea which you would have refused on the same grounds as you did not consent on divorcing Cornelia Cinna. No, I am no ancient patrician as she used to be, like you or Cornelia Sulla herself. No, those from gens Calpurnia are just plebeian upstarts who made themselves a place on Palatine Hill thanks to my grandfather’s riches. According to my mother Rutilia, he reluctantly accepted that his son and heir could have chosen to marry someone so… Nobody had been able to give an adequate adjective to my mother, an undoubtedly virtuous Roman matron. My father would even say that there was something uncanny in her look, the way she used to wander around the rooms in our domus. The air seemed to remain suspended whenever she walked through. Unlike other Roman ladies–solid, down-to-earth, accessible–Rutilia had some kind of absent-like bearing and seemed aloof, though she succeeded in running the household and our family. My father himself even told me that the thing about her that would make him most uneasy was that intense unerring intuition, which he also feared. As much as that….vibration? The same which seemed to beat in the air around her, flowing out of the mild brightness of that translucent alabaster-like skin. Cornelia Sulla, who, as you know, had the chance of meeting my mother, said that there was something about her so similar to her own father, except that her hair was black like jet. But they both share that look, intense, blue and grey… Rutilia hardly spoke to me: perhaps her high intuition prevented her from unveiling me the things that might have disturbed me. It would be enough for her to embrace me and let all her tender energy make me feel all that her words didn’t dare telling me. Mother…I can still remember my father announcing me that I had just been engaged to you, my husband. Despite that bright expression in his face, I noticed how he nervously tried to blink back tears.

–My child …your mother once told me so…“I saw pregnant Venus casting her shadow over our Calpurnilla, covering her with a halo of dazzling force… but, at the same, draining, drying her away…” Gaius, you know, is said to descend from Aeneas and, consequently, from Venus.

This had been my mother’s dream. Quite similar to that one you once had, in which you found yourself fecundating your own mother. Your boldness had made me blush but you tried not to make so much of my embarrassment by explaining it had only been a symbolic vision. Gods and Goddesses…Aurelia, always and forever. At least she achieved to live long enough to see you transformed in an grown-up man on the verge of reaching all that she had not even dreamt of, to make you get further than Marius himself. She had not passed away so untimely as Rutilia had, in such a sudden way, without any funeral speech or ceremony like that which was held to mourn your daughter Julia. I had always tried to scare away the idea of imagining her devoured by fire, tried to think that she might have fled into a place beyond any tangible world, hidden in some occult, unattainable place… from which it came out, that subterranean mute lament which got hold of my disembodied self that night. No, no, no… I know I shouldn’t pay attention to all this. Otherwise my mind would get even more disturbed, after this torture inflicted by this wicked barren womb. I know that in a few days you will be going away, I don’t remember whether to Hispania or the East….To fight Magnus and the “fair men”, the boni. My poor friends… will it be wise to go on meeting them here, so publicly? It does not matter. What’s left to me then, knowing that when you walk out of this atrium you may not return until some years have gone by? What will be the use of this dry, fruitless barren sterility? What will Calpurnia be but one more step in your stairway to glory? Why should I constantly see you amidst my thoughts, closely embraced to a subtle female force, gifted with a strange wisdom, some knowledge beyond our time, still beating in Eastern lands, coming from some long-lost continent…. Is she some kind of Blodwynn? No, this is a sort of inner force, a ravishing blast that brandishes virulent, event malign power… Could it be devouring you? Waxing like a full moon, crammed with fertility, like a long fertilizing river… No, my lord, no…. why should you go to the East?

                             CALPURNIA CAESARIS

Chapter IX

All my anxiety, my lord, suddenly vanished.... Unexpectedly, I felt some feeble footsteps within the gloom of that small room in which I used to spend my time when there were no visits. Though only a good number of nundina had gone by, my thoughts and pulse still kept me awaiting like that evening among that mist of incense, myrrh, ritually-burnt leaves and that emerald, sapphire purple-like glow .It was not just gem twinkling but some kind of weird energy which could change according to each colour shade.

I knew -I could not tell how – that there was some energizing force which was making different kinds of life flow throughout my solid body. Some kind of fluid, mild, ravishing force melting with that other, acquamarine-hued, rich, coming from that abyss-like widely stretching look which surged up from the golden--woven braided tide....Which made me blush and grow pale at the same time when the vision of your harmonious imposing presence let itself in within the dark. I do not know if there were any words... Your thin hair sprang up among my startled fingers while your full lips and aquiline nose were getting hold of my belly and chest.... Later on, I still felt that force pervading all over my wet, fulfilled wide-opened body. I was quite aware of those pines which had been carefully laid under the mattress, noticing your deep but restless breathing between my breasts. Might you have also felt it, that immense look like some kind of bright blue-grey fog which had gone through myself while your solid virility was mercilessly devouring my belly, fecundating it? You had probably noticed how my heartbeat sped up....

-My lord ….

Why did I feel hurried to ask you?

– You once told me that.... Long ago you travelled to a sanctuary on the Western end of the Roman Sea… didn’t you?

In the gloom your transparent eyes – why on earth should they remind me of those I remembered having seen only a few days before?- watched me as they used to in front of any of your subordinated ones. Then some shade of perplexity pervaded them among those wrinkles which had turned deeper. You smiled.

–....Yes, my little Calpurnia, yes... Just arrived in Hispania….

Yes, I remembered that you had just lost Cornelia, your long-missed wife

–.. I made an offering to divine Alexandros...

I watched you in amazement: despite your position – first as “Flamen Dialis” then as a Pontifex – I knew well that, privately, you did not worship anything beyond your ambition or self–confidence

– ....my deepest, most tearing teardrops, the same I shed when my former wife died without leaving any heir for Gens Iulia as I had been despoiled of the first tenderness any man could feel for a woman or my mother who, also deprived of a partner a long time before, had accepted the loss of her right to love her son tenderly in order to take on the role which would have corresponded to a paterfamilias

Even in the dark I could perceive that the sparkle in your eyes was shivering. You kissed the hand that had touched that wet parchment-like cheek. I could feel you swallow and then your slow, heavy breath. For the first time after that non-confarreatio wedding, I felt driven to cradle you into comfort, caress that scarce ashy hair on your head, kiss those tracks on your beautiful wide forehead… My lord, the hero, the god who had paraded in cheering roaring along Via Sacra …A vulnerable man, grown tender, searching for being consoled within my body. Yes, though neither Marcia nor Portia nor Cornelia had told me openly, I well knew that all those nights before returning to Domus Publica you had slept in another house on Palatine Hill, something of which even the small vestals had been aware. Despite all that, the deep humiliation which I had sometimes experienced for not being able to keep you loyal to my bed by means of a higher capacity of seduction or a son who would perpetuate your family, I could still feel that caress through my womb, possessed by all your being….

–I offered him my pride, Calpurnia. Can you understand it? No, you didn’t know me as a young man… This Gaius you’ve got in front, ageing and humanized, is so distant from that one Cornelia Cinna saw, Aurelia bred up and faced Lucio Cornelio Sulla himself… Sulla…. Thanks to him and his supposed ….clemency?

I saw some twinkling irony in your smile

–He was there, in the temple which had been first devoted to Carthaginian Solar God and later on to Herakles, trying to vent my hopelessness for not being able to match this idea that I had of myself with the meaning of that divinized young Macedonian, perhaps of the same age as I was at that time of my arrival there. …. Sulla…. After all, I had to… Who knows if I still have to owe him all that I have achieved so far. A great Roman, whether we may like it or not. He didn’t have an Aurelia who could have shaped him as a man since childhood. Only his shattered dignitas, that of a patrician who was deprived of his heritage, thanks to a sick, mentally-ill ferocious father who, rumour has it, was abandoned by his wife and a child, a bit younger than Lucius Cornelius, though, according to the official version, she died. Notwithstanding all, I envy his cunning, military cleverness, that hidden sensitivity few know about. Yes, I have come to know all that through my mother, you can imagine. …. ……

There came a big silence: those acquamarine-coloured pupils were burning

–Very near the location of Herakles’ temple, in Gades, a short time later I heard a strange story, told by an elderly man who was a relative of that other Lucius Cornelius, our good old friend Balbus, and had lived in Rome for many years. He revealed me that Sulla and his dictatorship were thought to have been turned to ashes a long , long time before. At least that was what Aurelia told me. And I am entrusting this to you as you have proved yourself to be a faithful virtuous wife and I know that I may have begotten a child inside you tonight. I can see it in your swollen breasts, full of fertility…. That good old man told me about it while we were sailing along the big sea channel between both islands: on one of them Balbus is having his Neapolis built, the new city with which all these long-time rich, Romanized Carthaginians want to compete with Romans. All those beautiful domi , built with that variety of local stone: porous, plucked away from the sea, shell-decked… That golden-reddish ochre, sunbathed by that dazzling light, purely white and bluish, surpasses any comparison to our Palatinus. It’s something beyond tangible real things. I’d really love to take you there , my Calpurnia… Even any insula like the one where I used to live and grew up here in Subura looks like transfigured, as if it did not shelter the sordidness their Roman sisters contain. Something that, in fact, is a real thing. There are neither insulae nor vici like ours, overcrowded and insecure. All the new city enjoys such cleanness, security and prosperity that Rome itself would envy them. Although, frankly speaking, I missed that deep pine perfume which seems to merge within sea breeze from Ostia, so different from Gades’ piercing salty air, melted with dazzling sunlight…Ah, excuse me, Calpurnia, for this digression…. Are you sleeping?

I sat up, watching you with curiosity. Nevertheless, my eyes are dark, so they don’ t sparkle like yours in the dark.

–…. As I was telling you, on the opposite side of the channel there’s the island where Phoenician Gadeira used to stand, nowadays full of rundown buildings, brimming with mould and flocks of seagulls flying for vermin carcasses among the ruins … There are also huge vineyards with which it is said that many locals trade and even exchange varieties with vine-growers from Campania or any other Italic or even Greek region. It’s a heavy wine, they say. As you can imagine, I have never tasted it. On the shore of this island you can find the temples which, initially devoted to Phoenician deities, were later conveniently Romanized, being dedicated to gods who could remind us of those who preceded them. For instance, that one which first was consecrated to Baal and then to Kronos and … here is the point I wanted to reach: there was another one which had been erected to worship Great Mother Goddess Astarte or only Ishtar, goddess of the moon, sexuality and fertility. Nowadays it is devoted to Venus Marina. I still have it before my eyes, standing on the shore, a twin image of any great temple here in Rome, except for the stone with which it was built, that bright ochre rock. That good old man whispered in my ears. It seems that I can still be watching him now, growing pale through his intensely sun-browned skin…. In Rome he had had the chance of getting contacts who even introduced him into the exclusive circle of the Caecili Metelli, something that made it easy for him to have an outgoing relationship with Sulla which led to a long-lasting friendship. Something startling, you may think, for someone like our Sulla. That rapport continued when this gentleman went back to Gades and, as far as I know, even succeeded in having some fruitful vine trading with Lucius Cornelius, related to the vines which surrounded his villa in Cumae….Something that his own daughter seems to have continued with incredible cleverness. Well, this good old man told me that, about fifteen years before, Lucius Cornelius himself, after getting away from Rome, had begged this good man that he could lodge him in his Gades house. He was alone except for a slave who kept the moustache and hair in the arvernus fashion- long, thick, whitened….and whose face was abnormally flushed – perhaps due to some kind of skin disease or drinking habits. In it you could make out his eyes, as pale and exceptional as his master’s. Obviously, Sulla had left his family in a safe place away from Rome but had considered it more secure to stay away from them. What startled his friend was that his hospitality wouldn’t last long as Lucius Cornelius ‘ plan was to be led to Venus Marina temple a few days later and remain there for a long time, perhaps the rest of his life. No wonder. She was the goddess to whom he had dedicated Pompeii.

Why should silence and darkness be so heavy around us?

–You can imagine this man’s reaction. And also mine. Sulla, devoted to Venus’ priesthood, serfdom or whatever name you may call that! He had not even been initiated to perform that task, cloistered there inside for a lifetime. The Sulla we know so well emerged back, menacing, demanding him to keep silent: if anyone should wish any more information about his identity, his host would restrict himself to inform that this stranger was just a common Roman, this man who, days later, would get across the channel without any intention of returning to civilized Roman world so as to devote his life to living on fish, vines, and those bread loaves that are baked by the priests who live there, besides the fruits of the orchards around the temples. Anyway, nobody would recognize him before leaving the new town. That huge straw hat hid his golden crimson hair and pale, burning-iced eyes which made him outstand alongside with his whitest skin, concealed by the toga or mantle ....Calpurnia! You’re trembling!

I feared that fever might get hold of me, like that day, driving me to unveil certain things which I would have never brought out into light. I covered myself with the furs that you had just brought from Gaul. They felt hairy, mellow, smooth....

–No, my lord.... Just go on....

–You are burning, my child.... Maybe I should have left you alone tonight…. But I want you that much, my wife....

A fugacious desire-tinged outburst of pride triggered my heartbeat. I hungered for driving your beautiful wide hand to my hardened breasts and riding you among wailing and yelling pants, shamelessly.... However, I knew that I wanted to go on listening, so I restrained myself, feeling my muscles loosened.

–Go on. Perhaps tomorrow you may have no time. It is so scarce, the time which we can share this way, together....

However, your silence still remained. I was alarmed. No, I had no reason to feel uneasy.

–Calpurnia.... Even if it’s you...it puzzles me, to reveal this to you here... You know I trust you. You understand the importance of this issue. If Sulla had decided to shut himself there forever... why should he have returned to Rome later? As no doubt it was Sulla who saved my life. Nevertheless, my mother was shocked when he saw him again. The only thing that still remained about him was the look in his eyes... and his pride. As for the rest, he had nothing in common with those Apollo-like busts that you may have seen at Cornelia’s .

That stealing manly beauty whose portraits I had seen at Cumae sprung within my thoughts.

– Except for his cleverness and ruthlessness. It is easy to imagine that I had no intention to disclose anything, not even to my nearest collaborators. You know that I have no close friends and this is an advantage in this point. As for my cousin, I thought that the best thing for him was to continue believing in what all of us had traditionally held as a truth....

–What about Cornelia? Do you think that…?

–-Who knows! Anyway, she didn’t have a close tender rapport to her father as to share such a secret. Maybe she does not even know anything about it. However, I am well informed about her trade affairs in Gades, when she gets sprouts and wines from the vineyards growing in the old island in exchange for those sent from Cumae. What on earth might Cornelia’s wines have? She is said to have made an immense sum of money. I’m deeply pleased for her: her father wasn’t generous to her at least in the early times. But… how would someone like Sulla bear living secluded there, within that cave hidden by Venus temple?…Yes, old Astarte temple was subterranean, according to ancient patterns. You should consider that non-Roman peoples thought that goddesses of fertility ought to be worshipped within the womb of the earth, which they used to symbolize.

–Don’t you think that it might be an initial measure of caution so that he could later secretly flee and meet his troops far from Rome, as he certainly did?

–True, that was what my good friend from Gades thought when, a long time later, he knew that Sulla had arrived in Italy in order to join Pompeius and help him fight Marius. After his amazement, there came his painful disappointment at Sulla’s subsequent proscriptions and all that bloodshed during his dictatorship and, later on, his perplexity at the fact that Lucius Cornelius himself would decide to give up power and be a privatus again. His friend form Gades was one of those who were shocked by the way Sulla ended his life in Cumae at such an early age. It is obvious that he never happened to find out how much the Dictator’s physical appearance had changed. But all his previous ideas were reversed a few days before I arrived from Herakles’ temple. In the atrium of his domus .An upright figure, masked with a large sun-outworn straw hat and a reddish, fair and grey-streaked beard that happened to be shoulder-length, like his long braided hair… and those pale piercing eyes which were no longer cold or pitiless. He told him that he knew of my stay there and agreed that his amicus gaditanus should share that long-kept secret with me as I was “the heir to the one who has most deeply touched my heart, more than any of my wives….” Deeply influenced by retirement, loneliness, meditation and all that makes these men different from those who lead a social life, he did not react at his friend’s exultant happiness after his initial puzzled, even paralysing panic…. In spite of his friend’s attempt to embrace him warmly and offer his hospitality, he silently left the domus, perhaps in order to return to the other island, alien to civilization… Calpurnia…. Calpurnia!!! Why should I have consented on telling you all this? No, this can’t have been fitting for my seed to root inside you…You badly need serenity. … No appalling stories….

This time you did really frighten me. I felt icy within my bones in spite of that thick fur cover… Your arms had held me closely, cradling me onto your chest… No, never before had I had you this way: it was a brand new man, this which you were offering me, my lord. So far from that one who once married the daughter of Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, a well-off man, in order to strengthen your alliance to one of the most influential men in Rome. This that I had in front was just a tender husband. Sincere, his wife’s confidante…. Like so many other couples in which initial love had counted as much as other reasons to sign a marriage deal .I then even thought that all those ladies who had enjoyed your manhood were no more than fictitious blurred shadows begotten by envy and my own lack of self-confidence. Even Servilia herself….

–Was he as misshaped as when you first met him?

–That was what I wondered, seeing him covered with his hat and beard. However , he looked as straight as usual and the skin which could be seen though his braids and beard still remained extremely white. His hair was still vigorous though his natural reddish-golden was growing grey-streaked. Who knows… maybe he … whoever might be…still alive. But , as you can imagine, incredibly elderly. Nevertheless, I never had the idea of venturing into the old town to meet him. When he decided to go and visit his friend , it was due to the fact that he was really sure that I would keep his secret and never make any attempt to contact him. And, should he be still alive, I would not betray his trust. He was…or is…a patrician, like us, you know…. Calpurnia… In the name of all the Gods!!! …. What’s this…???

Some sticky, hot thick flux was running down my thighs, invading your hand whereas I felt myself falling into some kind of fainting, too weak to get scared of that unexpected violent menses, triggered by my sexual excitement and by what had just been disclosed by you, aborting that which had been carefully arranged for months, rendering me to that initial state of abashment, frustration, sterility and self-hatred. Those who I had thought to be generated by slander and psychical unbalance again looked like clear-cut realities hovering above me. Yet we still did not know anything about that female ruler from the East…

VIII

-Calpurnia, my Calpurnilla….Do not worry . I hope that you have not told anything to any of the girl. Not to mention the High Vestal.

The main priestess had come to visit me, as Cornelia had been informed by Blodwynn, who….

–…. has had to go back to Cumae but told me to take care of you. It is something to be expected, as this is quite a….dramatic treatment, call it like this if you like. What does... Kornel….have to do with all this? –I saw that Cornelia Sulla kept her wide-open, steady acquamarine –coloured look on my face, waiting for the right moment. –All right, I imagine that, given your social position and what it means regarding your safety, you will be absolute discreet. Kornel (who is not my brother, though sharing my name)…..you must have realized it when you first saw him fugaciously in Cumae: he is a wise man, of a kind that we do not have here in Rome. He is not exactly an aruspex or flamen. In a certain way, he is not so different from Gallic priests and priestesses, like Blodwynn, his….kinswoman. Remember that she was brought up in a Britannia bangor and had to sail away, fleeing from….your lord’s serious likely plans of conquering the island. Once in the peninsula, Kornel and she met again and I must say she has learnt quite a lot from him, despite all that she was taught as a young girl. Mainly therapies for heal barrenness. In this aspect, I can say that Blodwynn has been an efficacious collaborator for him. I will confide you something that I want you to know right now, before you may get informed distortedly. Perhaps you ignore that Kornel himself has assisted several patrician ladies, even those of most ancient stock, aided by Blodwynn in most cases. Of course their husbands do not know anything about it, that is plain to see. As for its immediate results, I can assure you that those who used to be virtuous matronly ladies have become much more sensuous and full of life . It is easy to guess how this may stimulate fertility inside their wombs…. –She dropped some kind of intentionally lengthened silence, waiting for my answer. – By no means can I tell you who they are. It is a sealed secret, as you can imagine . Anyway, the effect is almost tangible, evident at first sight…

However, I was not able to ask her the question that I had in mind. Cornelia herself had told me that her stepmother Caecilia had given birth to a couple of twins.  But they had not reached adulthood. Besides, they were younger than my friend. On the other hand, it was not known that Lucius Cornelius Sulla had had another son who was more or less the same age as this hypothetic sister, whose eyes started to show tiredness and lose that magnetism, which could have been permanent in the merciless dictator’s. I remembered what she had made remarks about, his Gallic wife … Yes, but, why wouldn’t she have spoken straightaway about Kornel as Blodwynn’s father and her own brother? Thus my doubts would have been cleared away. When news about Sulla’s death reached far beyond Roman limes, Kornel would have estimated the convenience of contacting this sister about whom his father had undoubtedly spoken to him. What obstacle might have impeded them from keeping some occasional clandestine contact?

 –Then , Kornel…. Is he going to continue performing his …. –I did not know whether I should call it priesthood, craft or profession –…. task  here in Cumae? What about if all Rome learns about it?

 –In fact he is not in Cumae any longer. He has returned where he really belongs. No, it is not Gaul. Why on earth should he go there, to a land which is occupied by our legions? Neither would he go to Britannia; he has never been there. It is somewhere beyond our sea, a sacred place for ancient people, where he devotes himself to …. –She strove to find the right words –learning about the wisdom within each tree, the earth itself, the rivers, herbs, the sea, the air…. That force beyond what is purely human, enlivening and nourishing everything. It has a lot in common with the lore of  wise Gallic and British priests and our ancient deities, those in which Rome had steadily believed before the conquest of Greek colonies imposed theirs…which, as you know, have only an official meaning. What is Bona Dea but a reminder of that Wise Mother Goddess who reigned over the ancient peoples living around our sea… or the Great Lady of Gallic people and Britons.?

Frankly speaking, I got really startled by the fact that a clever calculating wine-dealer should also be gifted with that intense spirituality. She seemed to read my mind.

 –Let’s change the subject. You see, in the kitchen I left you an amphora with Falernian wine. It is scented with clove and orange juice so that it will heal your frailty. Are your vestals teetotallers?

With that joking smile and a warm kiss she gracefully went out through the peristylium. No, I would not have been able to go on asking questions. I could not admit it all have been just a simple brewing-infused dream. Never before had I experienced such a detailed vision, such a tangible sensation, in spite of that weightlessness that I remembered having felt. I should speak to other ladies who could have been healed by Kornel and Blodwynn…. Anyway, yes, it might well have been a dream. However, I could still recognise that voice, merged into sea breeze and time, coming from the deep of the cave, whose timbre, like salt over there, remained in my skin pores, taking me back to my childhood, when it used to haunt me:

“Calpurnia, my little Calpurnia”

 

 

VII

My lord, you know this so well at this level of your existence, when you are already beyond so many things,…You should not fear anything regarding my loyalty. However, that warm voice and all that was altered within that wise woman’s soul seemed to have taken hold of my anxiety, that urgency to make my belly fertile in order ot give you a male son who could inherit everything that you had been gathering throughout your military career and, at the same time, strengthen my own certainty of knowing myself unique- something which provided me some kind of enticing pleasure that I had never experienced before. A new yearning to go beyond that poor, homely little Calpurnia, cloistered in the Vestals’ house....No, I could not open up my thoughts to any of those girlish priestesses. Your wife, you know, must be the object of the most exaggerated discretion. I would not be able to bribe them in order to make offerings to Vesta so that my belly should get stimulated at its due time. Something, however, so far and uncertain. You still had to remain for a long time in Gaul: there was so much to conquest, submit...according to what your letters told me. I guess what your own legate, just arrived at your camp, would tell you about me, after being questioned in quite an inquisitive way, “She remains pale, fragile, shut in her room within Domus Publica”. You would not have avoided a slight bright ....relieved smile after being given a portrait which had nothing in common with that of a dazzling-eyed, glowing –cheeked, full-breasted woman. This would certainly have shadowed your look into that shade of violent ashy sea which occasionally –hardly ever, to be true –you showed in order to make your will be obeyed.

It was something fugacious. I still tremble remembering it. Behind my eyes something that made my thoughts quiver seemed to become a real thing. It happened the day after our arrival in Cumae. Those emotional ups-and-downs and the previous days’ prostration had made me sleep until noon. When I entered my triclinium I realized my friends and Cornelia’s guest had briskly cut down a conversation. The look in my eyes –fixed, intense and, at the same time, alien to myself –drove them to resume it despite their clear reluctance to do it.

–We were speaking about that little boy who your husband’s legate, Titus, brought with him last time he came to Rome.  It is obvious that you were not allowed to meet him. How on earth could Titus think of letting you see him right in the Pontifex’s house?

 –.... Calpurnia, you had better know this through us rather than learning about it throughout distorted information. It is said that the child does not take after Titus at all –I fugaciously remembered his dark skin and mop-like black hair –The boy has got Gallic people’s rebellious crimson hair. Also that bright ivory-like skin and those eyes... Greyish-blue, strange, so piercing...Calpurnia!!!

Why should everybody always decide for me? That moment was maybe recreating something bestowed by some of the forces who pull the strings of like or even the gods themselves....A heavy haemorrhage, more serious than those from the previous months.

–My dear Calpurnia....no need to speak openly. I deeply know what your belly and woman’s pride vitally need. Something must be done before your lord arrives.

–How....Cornelia? Titus, as you know, always comes unexpectedly, according to Caesar’s orders.

I knew that she had noticed the tears in my eyes and how I was losing my breath, feeling shrunk

–Yes... I know that; regarding this point, he is quite like my father. My own mother or any of his wives fatefully languished into madness, apart from what was said or known about him. Beyond their own self-pride, they would fatally get melted within that force beyond time that was called Sulla.... no, do not believe that I have mentioned anything that could harm your great man’s dignity. I only insist that you need some kind of.... remedy – call it as you like. Something that definitely takes you away from....

 –Destruction!!

Portia’s look was merciless. I could not say whose eyes –hers or her father’s – were those which were piercing through my scarce breath. No, that was not in my Portia’s line.

–My dear friend.... If you don’t do anything, then it must be your three friends’ business to stop all this.... –She did not need to say anything else (at least, before returning to Rome) –Don’t worry about the Vestals’ meddling .Cornelia knows how to manage them.

She was right. They all saw it clearly the day after my return to a house of vestals who did not stop making questions about that famous villa that Sulla had got built in Cumae and where he had spent the last days of his earthly life. –Poor creatures, who will not have a day of their own until they turn thirty!

–It is said... –Little Aelia had blushed –.... Is it true that...the dictator’s spectre sometimes appears in the peristylium?

–My girl! – I pretended getting scandalized but feeling amused inside –Be careful not to say it aloud in front of Lady Cornelia.... – Sulla’s daughter’s mouth did not openly answer but her ironic lowered look did. Yes, we all know that Cornelia was aware of what her father had meant for Rome. She kept a softened sprout of his personality deep within herself. 

The way she managed to introduce Blodwynn into the Pontifex Maximus’ is the proof.. . Obviously, none of the girls were aware of her alien priestly status since Cornelia had only told them that she was a friend of hers. Moreover, Blodwynn had been careful to mask herself with a tunic and a palla in some kind of iridescent blue shade which intensified her ivory-like pale skin and the golden crimson of her many braids.  Cornelia had announced that, in her own name, the priestess would perform the ritual offering of a magnificent present to the Goddess. Something that did not sound strange to anybody: all of them knew that Sulla’s daughter enjoyed  a very well-off position….they  did not know  its origin, that wine trading between Rome and other provinces and colonies, mainly dealing with those kinds of spiced wine which nobody could guess how she had managed to get. It did not take me long to find out that it might have been Blodwynn herself who had instructed her on which herbs and spices would be suitable for each situation and illness. All this had generated a widespread clandestine demand for it all over the peninsula and even overseas.

Of course, everybody knew about that unique cellar that Sulla had behind his cryptoporticus, even though few could imagine that during his last years he had devoted himself to growing vineyards, something that, after his death, his daughter and only heiress had encouraged, promoting active overseas trading in order to enrich her property with vines from other colonies, such as Gades’, whose wine she had made us taste in Cumae, enhanced with those herbs which she had heated inside the wine, a small sample of that immense range whose uses she seemed to master, thanks to that woman who , during the first evening  at home, had brought a huge trunk, possibly made of carved  hazel, oak and ash-wood, whose natural scent seemed to the melt with the contents of  many little boxes, made out of almost twenty sorts of wood and various scents which mixed up with the perfume of incense and myrrh .... I shivered at the thought that it could linger through the rooms and get to the peristylium where the girls might be enjoying their spare time. Luckily, as it had happened in another previous occasion, we had warned them that we needed some privacy, something that they were able to understand with no need to argue, and, thanks to their discretion, we were able to perform what had to be carried about.

We had announced that Lady Cornelia and her friend were going to be lodged in my room until the following day. It was quite a likely thing, as I have plenty of room here, both what initially belonged to me and those who were your mother Aurelia’s lodging. Therefore, as soon as the slaves cleared up dinner trays and goblets, Blodwynn started to proceed.

How on earth did I manage to be cunning enough as to avoid that all of it could reach your ears? It was a matter of will... and respect for you. I would never allow it, that you might feel vexed by your own wife ‘s agreeing on having her body handled , precisely on that spot of which your most private treasure had been lord and master, by means of formulae and manoeuvres which you had loathed in your writings, the body of that virtuous wife that had enhanced your prestige all over Rome. Yes, my lord.... I could not stoop to destroy the most excelling pride of the Roman world if I ever disclosed that this son, bound to inherit your legacy, should owe his own existence to the doings of a barbarian witch, as you would consider her, of the same lineage as those who offered their deities massive propitiating human sacrifices. You, who privately despised that old custom of making battles depend on the aruspex’s considerations on animal organs.... and, eventually, fall naïvely into the bewitchment of that heiress of oldest hermetic knowledge that lies overseas. I would not even have allowed myself those experiments years before. However, the influence of that Eternal Mother’s enlivening power was letting itself be felt in my initial anxiety, so I should seek for a desperate way out at the right time. I knew that none of these women would dare telling it to me openly, that the fact of being repudiated by Rome’s Great Man would mean closing my door to any prospective marriage since the news about my sterility would become ruthlessly public. Besides, against what my friends or you might believe, no matter how distant in time and space all this may seem...Believe me, I know you noticed that, the way I vibrated when, unexpectedly, you would noiselessly come into my triclinium. All my being would boil and melt within your fortress-like arms.  On the other hand, my father would consider me a small failure: his allegiance with you would not have succeeded in getting consolidated.

All of that was what drove me to lie down, barely naked, while a Barbarian priestess was reciting formulae in her own language, in an alarmingly deep voice, repeating them three times in a rhythmical, hypnotic way while she was smearing my breasts and vulva with an anointment which had prepared on the premises, within an atmosphere which was drenched in incense, myrrh and other herbs that  were being burnt.

–Calpurnia, relax yourself... Otherwise, this will be useless... –Cornelia whispered in my ears. Considering the dense atmosphere that had been created, I did not answer to her, trying to hide my fear that those intense smelling clouds would spread around the house. However, an enervating stream, both exultant and soothing, got hold of my veins and all my skin, possessing me like a male force, driving me to avoid any ostensible moan....When Blodwynn finished, she made me have a drink in which some sleep-inducing camomile flowers had been brewed. Sleep came along soundly.  The following noon Bilia –you know, my personal female slave – came to wake me up, worried that I had not got up yet. I did not even eat or drink anything until sunset, when I had an appointment like that of the previous day. Blodwynn had been careful to lay her trunk in the room that had been destined to her, sheltered from the slaves and girls’ curiosity. I noticed that she had covered it with a cotton cloth which had been dyed in an amethyst-like shade , something that surprised me a lot. No, I do not think these Northern peoples may have any access to murex .No doubt that it would have been the wisest thing to cover up all that mess of geometric, misshaped animals combined with those entangled knotty design, which could even make us shiver.  I did not dare asking her how she had made the ointment. It might have to do with that comment about how great it was that pine trees would start giving fruits at that time of the year. She even recommended me to have one pine under the mattress especially during.... fecundatio

– Your mattresses are too thick for him to notice that.

I remember how she perused through the garden rosebuds –What would Aurelia have made of it if she had been able to see the avid eyes! – and her interest to know if they were also available anywhere around Rome. Perhaps she succeeded in finding them, who knows if near Cumae, but the truth is that one day, before going to sleep, she gave one fistful of what looked like rose and laurel leaves and insisted on my keeping them under my cushion every night, She made me drink a brewing –which was no camomile –in which I saw some rose or calendula petal floating .They might be blended with the contents of Blodwynn’s tiny trunks. Its taste was rather sour. Therefore, I drank it up quickly.

The absence of camomile for the first time in several days made me unable to sleep more than an hour. Besides, the intense brightness of the full moon was invading my triclinium through the peristylium, transfiguring the cypresses that Aurelia had had planted. I was aware of this and sat up to enjoy the experience. I sank under my cover as autumn was beginning to be felt. No, Quintilis had not started yet but in those days Roman damp heat had suddenly vanished. The smell of pine and cypress, tinged with the salty breeze that came from Ostia, merged with the spectre-like light through my nostrils and skin pores. Would I ever had that sensation again? That scent was Impregnating the sleepy rosebushes, the ivy around the columns, every bush....  melting my consciousness into them. A slight itch made my eyelashes tremble while I was walking among the trees, feeling the chill stab my bone marrow through my double cover and its hairy fur sheath. It must have been a sudden fever attack, that sensation which was blurring my sight, making me faint… No, I did not want to scream and disturb the small vestals’ sleep. I did not want to bother them or give everyone a good reason to gossip the day after. The image of your former wife –Cornelia’s own daughter –stood too clear-cut amidst my fears and I could not disregard the fact of keeping up appearances. I would not have been able to shout, either. My vocal cords seemed to have vanished away, like the whole rest of my fleshy being, already almost immaterial. So light and languid did it feel… Like my feet, treading on something more evanescent than sand. When I could finally open my eyes again, feeling my body weightless, as if it were bloodless,..I saw that some kind of mist, subtly dense and restless, as if woven with moonbeams, had taken hold of the peristylium, making its way gradually…Sea breeze seemed to become unusual, unexpectedly intense… You could even say that the sea was stirring there below, like at Pater’s villa. I could almost perceive all of them behind me: that full-moon-streaked jet mass, making its way through what my mind perceived as two islands. There sprang some unknown anxiety that I managed to control, trying to unchain violence within my pulse and heartbeat, which still seemed suspended, even when that mute overwhelming hysteria seemed to sharpen my sight, making me see domi and insulae on the rock cliffs. They were similar to Roman houses except for the fact that marble had been substituted by some kind of porous dark-golden stone. On the small inlets of one of the islands there stood colonnaded temples like those of our Forum and Campus Martianus. Far behind them, you could make out the ruins of what might have been an old city, powerful and prosperous, though it did not look like having been devastated so long ago –Maybe one hundred years. It seemed to give off some kind of odourless perfume, which was soon transformed in swift scraps of incense as subtle as if coming from the depths, mixed up with other multiple perfumes whose scent  felt like that supply of herbs which Blodwynn skilfully handled... The flower maiden begotten from a huge bunch of different kinds of flowers, unable to beget a child ... Blodwynn... A greyish-blue sea among the eyelashes, which were sheltered by that wave of imperceptible golden-crimson braids.  Was it that mane-concealed look which was watching me amidst that small beach the sentinel of that portium, so similar to that of the temple which you would dedicate to Venus after your return from the Gaul .That spectre-like transparent look, similar to moonbeams getting into the sea. Timeless. Making its way through that grey-streaked, reddish golden hair...Calpurnia, little Calpurnia. Was it his voice, mature, almost deprived of that despotic coldness from the past? Or maybe that voice which had vanished in my childhood might be coming from some lost place there inside. In the deep…. Perhaps from the sea? Mother!. No, I realized that I had lost my tears. What had happened to me? Something wept silently inside me. ....Her impulse –maybe that pale moony though firm hand of that one who was standing  in front –drove me into the courtyard behind the columns  towards the sacred place . On the podium I recognised that maidenly, curvy imposing figure, the amethyst-coloured mantle and the steer in her right hand. Her golden-green eyes merged into the black sea that spread nearby –her own mother, from whose foam she had been born. In the inner cella fire glowed through emerald sparkles. Maybe it was that look which was invading it all. Or perhaps was it that immense full moon which crowned it, cradled on a crescent ...but deprived from the fleshy bursting femaleness of that figure erected on that podium. That grim which she wore instead of a mouth and her flat eyes made me think of an archaic sculpture, maybe from ancient Etruria  which my father used to keep at home That ghastly dark clay skin... Was she one of those old fertility goddesses? A huge tray with dead-like apples at her feet made my thoughts quiver. According to my father, Carthaginians worshipped a goddess of sexuality and fertility whose attribute was a bunch of apples. No, it could not be like this, so touchable....Through the intense spiral-like waves of incense, myrrh, laurel and some other scents were almost tangible among the lucernae that lit the shadowy path to that descending flight of salt-eroded stairs. A moony outburst of merciless light got hold of me and the cluster of apple trees, willows, blackthorn and other unknown trees which guarded that colossal crystal-like female, maybe carved in immense gems, through whose nakedness moonbeams and the murmuring of that caressing sea were fully filtered. Perhaps all that unbraided mass of hair, violently waving around her body, could be made of woven amethyst shine which might be intensified or tamed under the influence of full moon. Maybe that flying expression, that magnetic, cold transparent look – like yours and also like that one which I felt behind –those slightly smiling lips might have been carved in some kind of dusk–like blue beryl  which grew brighter all over those shoulders and throat, made of sapphire and acquamarine  and then became shades of jade and dazzling emerald  in those stout shaped breasts and, below, in that rounded ,fertile topaz-like belly, which was gradually growing deep crimson as it was descending along those long legs . All of it, moon-like, filtering through my own pores, the fibres of my own body, which, weightless, was lying there, almost suspended. “Mother of fruitful maidenhead, lady of virginal sensuousness, of pale, untouched Moon, of that crimson moon, that which rules hungry fertile blood, of hidden wisdom and death…Do make this barren womb wake up into life through that blood-filled strength of your strong thighs and solar belly, with that intense life breath, beyond our nature, coming from your heart. Feed her with that emerald-like life which flows out of your breasts and nourishes sacred trees… Calm her, soothe her with the sea breeze from your breath… Wake up her mind, her hidden nature, that unknown power of hers with this twilight-like glow of your eyes which flows through your hair”

It could not be heard but felt, vibrating under my skin, as if a rhythmical male voice , long ago accustomed to persuading in an imposing manner, were sailing through my legs, hip contour, the depth of my belly and breasts up to my throat, getting hold of my voice and consciousness , making me flow, pour, pour away…. Some icy brightness came unexpectedly, driving me to blink anxiously and arousing shivers inside a body which was returning to its usual solid weight. Budding dawn was starting to overcome full moonlight, rendering earthliness to the cypresses and rose bushes in the peristylium. Confused and startled , I tried to crawl back to my lectus, where I cuddled in, feeling the shiver not only within my bone marrow but inside my thoughts, still aloof, floating somewhere I did not belong any longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VI

Blodwynn... why? Flower-woman.. Eerie, seductive, female. Dark, ominous...shadow? The maid who was not born from the pleasure shared by man and woman but only in order to provide it to the one who had the same non-human nature as she. .Flora...Blodwynn... A mild voice of honey and hot, resinous Greek wine was delivering each word .

–Blodwynn ...

It was some kind of warm, rhythmic modulation. Grave, even virile. Between my heavy lashes a face started to take shape, iron-like, totally pale though gifted with the same kind of stranger inner brightness which let itself show through the wrinkles on both sides of his mouth, which could have well the trace of a cruel grin from his younger years. His hair, too long for a Roman, golden, crimson and grey, was braided in the same fashion as Blodwynn’s. That transparent bluish-grey twinkle made my thoughts quiver. Were those eyes yours, my lord? He could be your age, more or less. Or even older, like Cornelia, of whom he reminded me more and more. I tried not to be rude, avoiding sitting up off my lectus in a rush and start vomiting questions about what had just happened to me. I only knew that I had to wait, keeping an eye on whatever thing that I should be told.

–My lady Calpurnia ...

That lost transparent look kept on hovering over my prostration, which was starting to vanish. Among that thin net of wrinkles, I perceived some kind of stream flowing from an existence beyond time, He had noticed my eyes wandering around the folds of his tunic, woven with the same kind of linen, whose colour was that of moss, entwined with  the shade of dried leaves. Nothing to do with that crimson, purple, ochre, blue or jade-like green that you see in everyday’s clothes. His slender marble-like hands, so similar to yours, slightly pressed mine with fatherly tenderness, aware of that frozen shiver within them, of that wet beating that he had discovered in my eyelashes. Why? His intuition led him to drive his hand to my belly for a second.

–Is it your belly that afflicts you, my little Calpurnia? What will you do, my child?

I read it all in that timeless, deep grey look: those months of loneliness inside Domus Publica , that sterile desolation which I had never wanted to speak about since I had never wanted to be aware of it. Not even did Portia or Marcia know about that. Had I told anything to them, I would have felt humiliated. How on earth could I admit that the Great Man’s own wife saw herself so dry, lonely and aloof deep within herself? Yes, true, my father is your close collaborator but he lives devoted to his political career and businesses. He has not even taken a new wife – at least at an official level. My mother... My mother... Why should this character have to make me remember her?

—My lady.... your mother.... My lady Calpurnia...

What did he mean? He did not look self-unconfident or insecure at all and seemed to come from that arcane field of wisdom of which I had occasionally any glimpse throughout my lifetime. Somehow I had come to have the feeling that all the knowledge which had been treasured through history could be kept somewhere beyond our senses. My skin started trembling. Why had this idea struck my mind? That frozen glow within the deep of his timeless grey-blue eyes. …What do you know about my mother, wise man? My frightened look began asking questions to that arcane mask, veiled by those copper-like braids within that ashy-streaked beard. Those braids seemed to have a life of their own, as if drenched with rare living force. Was it the effect of that spiced wine which had made me faint? Eventually, the man seemed to smile, lighting up the mask and looking incredibly younger than the appearance which this timelessness of his would allow him to look, beyond those wrinkles and transparent eyelashes veiling that alabaster-like face which may have been extraordinarily beautiful in his earthly youth. Why was there that Cornelia-like sparkle about him?

—Lady Calpurnia….Let me do it, Don`t worry. I might be some sort of ageing father for you

His slender  alabaster-like hands, covered with ashy-blue and grey streaks lay on my dry, flat twenty-four-year-old belly

-Your mother, my lady, and mine: both of them went away when we were both still children .Both of them merged into that Great Fruit-bearer – you may call her Vesta, Diana or Venus. The Eternal Mother of all of them, either Romans or Gallic people. Britons. People beyond the Roman Sea. The Dark-skinned mother, who makes the Earth vibrate in order to propitiate Fecundity…..You are also part of HER….You are SHE….

That clear blue, almost silvery look, profound, intensely lit up, carrying me into a silvery-blue blast waving like a sunny, calm sea…. Was it that of Cumae ..or maybe Herculaneum? Or perhaps Pompeii? That full female shape, inside an amethyst –like a wave, springing up from the swinging foam on the shore. A sort of Venus Marina…Venus from Pompeii…But, instead of gripping up a steer in her right hand ,she seemed to point at a ship . Those golden emerald-like sparkles in her look that seemed to cover  her in jade and dawn, merging with that pearl-like shining force, fruitful like a crescent which is changing to full moon , merging into a wavy mass of gold crimson hair …. Like those braids. Tiny, numberless, transfigured by time , which now touched my hands, in a silent farewell, alien to all those questions which overflowed my being, anxious to calm that that wet  restlessness within that belly whose uselessness I had never  been willing to accept so far.