In truth, Ector gave very little, for the land was full of brambles and weeds, and would take a great deal of effort to set to rights. On the other hand, he would gain much from the match. His steward was now bound to Villa Poppinidii by the bonds of his coming marriage, and the villa had gained another Roman chatelaine.
Once again, the wily and affable Celt could not lose.
‘But what of Gallia? Perhaps she will not wish to marry me?’ Artorex suggested.
‘Gallia is of Roman lineage and she’ll marry whomever her paterfamilias chooses,’ Gallinus stated abruptly. ‘I know that Father indulged her but I don’t have time for such luxuries.’
Now that his mind was set on a course of action, Gallinus was sweeping aside all opposition to his plans, as if they were chaff before the storm winds.
‘I am, of course, forced to continue with the mourning period that is still left to me at my own home, so it is probably best that your marriage take place here at the Villa Poppinidii. I am certain that Gallia and Julanna will be cheered at the prospect of planning a wedding celebration. Ladies love such distractions.’
Artorex wasn’t so confident. Gallia was no blushing maiden, having proved that her small body hid a very large heart. And Julanna had learned through tragedy that duty ruled a woman’s life, not entertainment.
In the event, Gallia cried a great deal when Gallinus informed her of his decision. She didn’t know precisely why she wept, whether out of joy or terror, but she knew that Artorex was a man of honour and her children would stand tall in their world. She understood, too, deep in her inner self, that Artorex was destined for a noble future.
And so the tangled fates of Artorex and Gallia were sealed with the
sponsalia
, the formal betrothal. Although the
confarrato
, or sacred marriage, was not the norm in these far lands, the offspring of Gallicus ate barley cakes at their wedding feasts to show that they were wed for life. Joy might come for Artorex and Gallia, and strength, but a dark legacy had been born with the passing of the pestilence and now it waited for time to call it forth.
CHAPTER IX
THE IDYLL
In the last weeks of winter, Artorex wed Gallia of the House of Gallus with all the pomp and splendour that Ector could muster as a provincial lord. The time wasn’t propitious, for all good citizens of Roman blood married during the warm and fecund month of June when Juno, the goddess who guarded all girls, was at her strongest. But circumstances called for haste, a decision that suited none of the women of the villa, who bemoaned the absence of flowers in this inauspicious time. Snow had come to the lands around Aquae Sulis in unaccustomed flurries and the fires in the hypocaust had to be kept stoked so that the floors and walls could warm their guests.
Grunn, the cook, at the head of an army of kitchen maids, cooked and basted, boiled and candied, fried and roasted, until the villa was one long succession of succulent smells. Even Caius, mindful of his debt to Artorex, and now thoroughly nervous of his foster-brother, ordered wood cut for great iron braziers to warm the rooms. Old Frith was bursting with pride, and in her strange, barbarian fashion, went out into the forest where the ice on the trees cracked and growled as if the wood itself was in pain.
When she had dragged home her booty of fallen boughs, she decorated the lintels of the rooms with holly, festooned cheerfully with its red berries. She found old, long-dried logs from fragrant trees, and ordered the manservants to drag them home to sweeten the wood that burned in the braziers.
On one of her travels, she found one curiously shaped knob of wood that she polished with oil until the small thing glowed in the reflected light, and then she pierced the timber with an awl so a narrow silken cord could pass through it.
On the night before the wedding feast, she visited the bride.
‘My lady?’ Frith called softly, as she scratched at Gallia’s door. ‘My lady, have you a moment for old Frith?’
‘Come in, Frith, and welcome,’ Gallia cried, and sat up in her warm bed.
Her hair was still very short, but Frith could see that the tumbled curls suited the young woman far better than the tortured coifs of great ladies.
‘You would ease old Frith’s heart if you would wear this talisman when you are wed,’ Frith said, and pressed the little piece of wood into Gallia’s hands.
‘It looks like a small pregnant woman,’ Gallia marvelled. ‘It is so smooth and warm in my hand. What wood is this?’
‘It’s made from a knot of hazel tree, little one. The Druids forbid us, on pain of death, to cut the hazel for it is a holy tree. But I found this fragment on the earth, so it is a bride gift to you from the tree itself. It’ll keep you safe and make your children strong.’
Gallia lifted an elegant, golden amulet that hung round her neck. ‘My mother placed this
bulla
round my neck when I was born, to protect me from evil until I was a woman grown. Mother has been dead since I was ten, so she can no longer remove this amulet on the night before my wedding, as is custom. You’d honour me, Frith, if you would remove the
bulla
of my mother and replace it with your amulet.’
Frith’s old head dropped, and a few tears snaked down her weathered cheeks.
‘Aye, mistress. I’d be honoured to stand in place of your mother.
Bend your head, sweet Gallia.’
As Gallia obeyed, Frith tied the simple cord round her neck and the amulet fell into the warm cleft between Gallia’s breasts.
‘I thank you, Frith. This is a gift fit for a queen, and I promise to keep it always.’
Frith would have left Gallia to her rest, but the girl asked her to stay for she was too excited to sleep.
‘Where are you from, Frith? Your eyes and hair are different from the colouring of the Celts, and there is something about you . . . something . . .’ Gallia struggled for words.
‘Alien, my lady?’ Frith smiled, with only a touch of irony.
‘Yes, although that word is very harsh for one as devoted to the Poppinidii family as you are.’
‘My lady!’ Frith exclaimed. ‘The Villa Poppinidii owns me, body and soul. Didn’t you know?’
Gallia was quite shocked. In many ways, Frith was more of a domestic despot than Ector.
‘Yes, mistress. My sweet Livinia’s father, Livius, purchased me when I was a child. They say I was found as an infant in the floating shell of a boat after a great storm off the Isle of Vectis in the south. Where I lived, or where my family came from, was a mystery, for I was alone in a battered, barbarian ship. Had I grown with dark hair, perhaps I would not have ended up on the slave block, but my hair was white, little different from what it is now.’
Frith paused, before continuing.
‘When I was about three years of age, I was sold to the Villa Poppinidii by traders from the north, when Livius was still a young man. I raised his only child, Livinia, and I buried her too. But I am still a barbarian, Mistress Gallia, and at times my ways are strange, for all that I was a babe when I was found.’
‘Did you ever marry, Frith? Did you have children?’
‘Of course, mistress,’ Frith boasted. ‘I wed a good Celt from the village - for all that I would not leave the villa to live with him. I bore seven living children for him.’
‘Did they become slaves too?’ Gallia asked with unintentional rudeness.
Fortunately, Frith was not offended.
‘Mistress Livinia set me free years ago, with scrolls of manumission and all that the law requires. But I told her then, as I tell you now, that we should always master our own fate, and I chose to remain a slave at Villa Poppinidii. I bear no slave collar because Livinia wouldn’t permit me to wear it again, but I remain a slave because I chose to burn my manumission. The villa has owned me for as long as I can remember. Everything I love is here; everyone I have ever cared for lies in this soil or works this land. I belong to the Villa Poppinidii. But Master Ector is also a slave, if you look closely at him. And so is my dear Artorex. And so, in time, will sweet Gallia also be a slave to our house.’
She smiled across at the young girl.
‘Now, goodnight, my lady. For tomorrow you become wife to my beautiful Artorex.’
Gallia was wed in a white gown edged with golden thread that she had stitched herself during the years of her maidenhood. A wreath of wheat heads encircled her brow and matched the sheaf of grain that she carried as a plea to the gods for fecundity.
Under her wreath, Gallia’s hair shone with cleanliness while, around her waist, Julanna had tied a complex belt called the Knot of Hercules. When Artorex untied this belt, Gallia would be his.
The bride had taken care with every detail of her appearance. The wedding might have been arranged in haste, but Gallia would be as radiant as her happiness - and her mother’s cosmetics casket - could make her. Wisely, she had used only a touch of stibium to define her brows and eyes, but she had chosen to paint her lids with malachite, knowing that the rich emerald would enliven her face. A little staining of her lips with cinnabar, coupled with a hint of perfume of jasmine and henna on her palms, the soles of her feet and her nails completed her toilette.
Bemused and ignorant, Artorex watched his bride as she floated towards him, her beauty incandescent in the light of the braziers.
In the absence of a priest, Ector officiated over the brief ceremony.
‘
Quando tu Gaius, ego Gaia
,’ Gallia whispered in the ancient promise to follow whenever, and wherever, her husband travelled. Although the vow was a formality, Artorex found it vastly moving, as if he now possessed something of great rarity that had chosen to belong to him.
The barley cake was eaten, and the feasting began.
Flushed with wine, Artorex had little time to consider his lot. Did he truly want a wife? He knew that he wanted to possess Gallia, but was that lustful desire the same thing as love? The questions went round and round in his brain until his wits were muddled and he surrendered to the pleasure of the moment.
Bemused, he stared fixedly at his new wife who lay beside him on the eating couch.
Yes, she was fair. Her hair was a black aureole around her small head. Her lips were ripe and full and even that long, narrow, Roman nose was delicate, with nostrils that even now seemed to flare a little. Artorex felt his body stir.
Her eyes stared back at him. He saw them as deep amber pools that showed every thought that swam like fish within their depths. While the poets extolled pale eyes as windows to the soul, Artorex knew to his own satisfaction that it was the darker eyes that had the power to entrap a man within their warm depths.
Against all custom and decency, and because he could not help himself, Artorex bent over and kissed Gallia’s full lips. He was lost in something that is akin to love.
Ector thumped the laden table with his fist.
‘The groom is eager to depart, my friends. He searches for food other than this feast we have laid before him.’
The guests laughed, even Caius, but with good nature.
‘You break with tradition, my boy, but I remember what it was like to be young. I would be anxious to depart myself if I was newly wed to your beautiful bride.’
The guests laughed again, and both Gallia and Artorex blushed.
Gallia took Ector at his word. Rising to her feet, she led Artorex away to her chamber that had recently been prepared by Frith, so that dried rose petals perfumed every corner of the room and scented oils burned in the lamps. Artorex was almost carried away from all self-control by the heady cloud of perfume and the wines that he had consumed during the feasting.
Gallia giggled like a little girl as Artorex stripped off his tunic and then struggled to untie her belt. In the lamplight, his body was beautiful as he stood clothed only in his loincloth, and his skin shone with a deep amber glow. She reached up and unplaited his hair, which tumbled into long brass-coloured curls under her fingers. His body quivered under this simple, gentle touch and he would have reached for her had she not motioned for him to lie on her perfumed bed.
Bemused, and aroused, Artorex obeyed.
Gallia eased off her wedding raiment with studied slowness. Her body was revealed for him alone. For the first time he saw her heavy white breasts, with pink nipples that seemed to beg for his mouth, and her tiny waist that flared into womanly hips bisected by a bush of curling black hair.
‘Gallia!’ Artorex called. ‘Come to bed - immediately!’
‘No, my lord.’
‘No?’ Artorex was startled.
‘I must fulfil my wifely duties.’
‘Uh!’
Artorex knew he sounded foolish, but such was his state of arousal that her teasing was making him inarticulate and mindless.
From a small glass container, Gallia poured oil into one palm and then began to caress her husband’s body. Under her delicate touch, all his nerve endings screamed, so that he believed, at last, that if this period of pleasure was the penultimate before marriage was consummated, then he was fortunate indeed. His shoulders, chest, belly and thighs, even the tender places between his toes, all received his wife’s ministrations, until his will crumbled completely, and he pulled Gallia down on to her back and entered her without further ceremony.
Her face grimaced in pain, but Artorex was beyond thought. He luxuriated in her body, in the garden of her breasts and the flowers in her hair. He tasted her mouth, until her body also warmed under his hands and lips, and neither husband nor wife felt the sleet at the shutters, nor heard the wind wailing in the roof of the stables. Lost in the mysteries of Aphrodite, Artorex rode his wife until their marriage was sealed in mutual pleasure.
For Artorex, his new wife was a never-ending mystery and a marvel. Virginal she had been, but Gallia was as sensual as her Roman ancestors and was an intelligent lover who gloried in physical sensation. As a handsome young man, Artorex had known many women, but sex had been fast and unencumbered by any accompanying commitment, so it had seemed as trivial as a sneeze, or like eating when he was hungry.