The unrest in Rome grew quiet over the next four years, and with it grew Quintus's boredom and frustration. The agitation and uncertainty that always accompanied a grapple for power in the capital was no longer there to thrill him. The previous twelve months had brought a new emperor to the throne – Lucius Septimus Severus – and with his ruthless regime, the advent of something like stability in the troubled Empire.
The former second-in-command to General Maximus and head of Commodus's Praetorian Guard feared that this tranquillity would soon drive him insane. He craved intrigue…and the chance to claim back some of the status he had lost. His ambition was quiet – yet forever increasing.
The only recent instance of drama had been with the
assassination of the bungling Pertinax – as predicted three years before by
powerful Roman cynics. Quintus could not deny, even to himself, how much he
relished the idea of seeking revenge, as the new ruler had done, for another's
death. Occupying his family's rural estate, inhabited now only by himself,
afforded much spare time for dreaming – of a time when he might regain some
authority.
He had so far received no opportunity to follow up
on the rumour of the orphaned daughter of the Lady Lucilla. The notion of it
had lain dormant in the back of his mind, awaiting the proper moment when he
should act on it. The fantastical nature of the tale of the fallen princess's
absconding to Greece, giving birth and then dying a legend, had lost a great
deal of its gloss and credibility with the passage of time. Above all, Quintus
had feared the loss of his reputation should he attempt to retrieve this child,
then discover that she had never even existed.
Now his interest was reviving, as he sought a new
scheme to wile away uneventful days and resume his decelerating career.
Desperately needing another human being with which
to share his clandestine plots for social climbing, he began lecturing his
manservant Didius on many subjects of varying importance. Among them, his pride
at having led armies into battle alongside the formidable General Maximus (for
whom, against his own nature, he grieved for greatly), his experience serving
the odious Emperor Commodus, and his yearnings, once more, for another taste of
power.
The one thing he had not shared with Didius was his
'knowledge' of Lucilla's progeny. This he now shared for his sporadic meetings
with a few old friends, whom he hoped he could manipulate into paving his way
back into the hierarchy. He suspected that his information could be most
valuable to them indeed.
* * *
The
sweet scent of wheat and grass, carried swiftly up by a gust of cool wind,
filled Diana's nostrils. Sighing with pleasure and gratitude, she stared out at
the vast field, unlike any she had ever seen in her short, sheltered life. The
land, spotted with enormous hills as far as the eye could see, and seemed to
resound beauty in a strange, silent voice. Forests thick with trees, laden
heavily with fruit, could be seen to her right and left. There was not one
human being in the area beside herself, yet she felt like she had never been in
the presence of so much life as she was now.
The moment prolonged itself, leaving Diana standing,
blissfully contented.
Then all of a sudden, she was disconcerted and
mystified as she caught the strong, acrid smell of smoke. Her ears strained
automatically to hear some noise by way of explanation, and were met by the
sound of a horse approaching alarmingly fast from far off in the apparently
immeasurable distance. She felt her heart pounding painfully and her knees
buckling in fear.
At that moment, she was jolted awake
from a potentially disturbing reverie, and found herself immediately trying to
retain the sights and sensations from that dreamlike field.
She gripped the thin, worn fabric of the bedclothes
around her in a puerile attempt to discard the realities of her own life, to
carry on dreaming. The day was hot – she had probably fallen asleep in the
middle of the day, exhausted. Her skin felt moist and warm, and she was so
hungry that the rumbling in her stomach actually hurt, her body begging to be
fed and fuelled in order to face the remainder of her daily duties.
The dream was relocated to the back
of her mind with the rest, her life currently teeming with more pertinent
concerns.
Her eyes tightly closed, she did not
see Julia's small, plump form approaching her on shuffling feet. "Mama?"
Diana reached out a hand lazily,
feeling the child's silken, curling hair. "I'll feed you in a moment, baby. I'm
very tired. Find a piece of bread in the meantime."
Julia snorted with impatience and
ignored her mother's pleas, instead climbing onto the bed and pulling her
sturdy little body up to Diana's, forcing herself into her arms with all a
child's possessiveness. Feeling the little girl's breath on her face, Diana
smiled, inwardly thanking the gods, as she did almost every day, for their
mercy in making her experiences as a parent much less horrific than they might
have been. These recent years had somehow had stretched by like millennia, yet
she knew that had it not been for some benevolent higher power, she would
probably have not survived them at all.
Since infancy, Julia had apparently detected these
prolonged attacks of weariness that haunted Diana's days and all but destroyed
her domestic capabilities – the maladies that often left her in a zombie-like
state for days, able to fulfil her duties as mother and housekeeper only
through pure instinct, and totally without physical strength.
Not that she was ungrateful for Julia's presence in
her life. As a baby and toddler, she had been so constantly demanding that
Diana had feared she would not have the tenacity to see Lucilla's daughter
grow. In other words, that she would fail in carrying out her sworn promise to
the late Princess.
The first year had been unbearable, the former
handmaiden only just enduring thanks to the compassion of others. Her first
time buying commodities at market had been a nightmare, until a kind man on a
crutch had gently taken her basket from her, ordered Julia to be quiet, softly
asked her what it was she required, and selected the things for her
himself.
She would have gladly reciprocated the numerous good
deeds done her over the long months and years – but Rome, even this small
section of the great city, was such a vast and heavily populated place that
most of those sympathetic faces would remain forever anonymous to her. In all
the time she had lived here, she had barely had enough time alone and
unoccupied to think and acknowledge how lonely she had gradually become.
Thankfully, the little lady in her care was an endless source of fascination,
and a vivid and comforting relic of her dear, lost mother.
Her only 'mama' now was Diana, yet she did not seem
to suffer for it, even as Diana's shortcomings as a parent were anything but
lost on either of them. Just as Julia sensed and responded thoughtfully to her
guardian's attacks of fatigue, she seemed to recognise Diana's anxiousness to
please and adequately fulfil her role. The little girl dutifully ate every meal
placed in front of her, however unappetising. She went to bed when told, even
if she did not sleep for hours. Instead she would lie awake, plaiting the hair
of the few rag dolls she had to play with, and listening to her mother tossing
and turning at the other end of the room.
Sometimes she would curl up beside Diana, as she did
now, knowing that her closeness always seemed to calm her down. The room smelt
of the bread they had eaten for breakfast with fresh milk bought that morning.
That, and the sweat making Diana's skin stick to the bed, as heat poured over
them through the one window supplying light and ventilation to the small
apartment.
Julia had heard her mother murmuring in her sleep
again, and though it troubled her, she did not ask her about it. Whenever she
had bad dreams, Diana always told her not to worry, as they were harmless
figments of her imagination, and nothing to worry about. These dreams, however,
seemed to be worrying her mama a great deal.
"Baby," Diana muttered, beginning to wake up fully,
"fetch me a rag, from that bowl of water in the corner, will you?"
Not saying a word, Julia clambered down from the
bed, pulling her thick, lengthening hair from around her neck as her tiny feet
touched the bare floor. She fetched the cloth quickly, hurrying back to Diana
and climbing back onto the bed beside her. Diana took the cloth from the girl's
hands and began rubbing it over her face. The water, kept cool in the one shady
corner of the room, revived her considerably. Never forgetting her duties, she
began thinking about making Julia's favourite broth for her lunch.
"No, Mama, let me do it," the child piped up as she
watched her bathe her face, and took the cloth back. Gently Julia started
sponging away the perspiration from Diana's skin, as if knowing the areas that
were causing her the most discomfort.
Whispering a 'thank you', Diana felt some emotion,
some memory, triggered somewhere deep in her mind and her gut. For a moment,
she scoured her most precious recollections to see which one matched this
moment of contact with Lucilla's daughter. Then a lump sprang spontaneously up
in her throat as she remembered the dying lady, the island, and the terrible
months preceding Julia's birth.
Poring
over market stalls, listless and longing to be back in her bed, Diana was
oblivious to the blatant attempts of a local man to catch her eye. Had she
known that he was staring, she would have believed that he was looking past her
or at someone else; someone much more desirable than she. Her tunica had been worn
a thousand times, and her uncombed hair was merely scraped back with a wooden
pin.
Most of her money, earned by assisting her kindly
neighbours in her spare time, was spent either on food or on clothes, toys and
other luxuries for Julia. She seldom bought anything for herself, and was
certainly not out to impress any gentlemen traders this afternoon.
The air was cooling as the sun
receded for the evening, yet Diana had become so desensitised by lack of rest
that she only noticed when Julia removed her linen hood, letting her abundance
of curling golden hair down her back. She hated the sun, although her skin was
faintly olive, in contrast with her overall fairness, and more than capable of
coping with even harsh light.
Walking beside Diana, she silently refused to hold
her mother's hand, but despite her surprising pride, remained clinging onto a
handful of Diana's skirt. Her back poker straight as she stood tall in the
crowded marketplace, the child seemed, eerily, almost aware of the royal
bloodline which had produced her.
Somewhat mechanically collecting an
assortment of vegetables from a stall, Diana stole a lingering glance at Julia
as the small girl smiled at the vendor serving them, politely playing up to his
teasing salutations. As he handed her a segment of fresh orange to eat, she
handled it in a ladylike manner definitely too precocious for a child her age,
raising it to her lips while being careful not to spill juice on her clothes.
Noticing her mother's stare, she raised enormous green-gold eyes to Diana's and
smiled.
"I think my mama would like some
too," she quipped to the vendor.
"Oh, no thank you, sir," Diana told
the gentleman as he promptly offered her a piece. "Say thank you to the kind
man, Julia."
"I did, Mama. I know I should never
be rude."
Diana watched her as she ambled
slowly towards the next stall they visited every day, confident despite the
throngs of people more than twice her size all around her. Already, her heart
fell at seeing Julia's palpable heritage manifesting itself as she grew into a
luminously beautiful, endlessly engaging, prodigiously intelligent and
strangely compassionate young girl. Her movements and deportment were clearly
written in the cells handed down from mother to daughter, yet Diana's curiosity
did not end with the child's cherished maternity.
Moving swiftly after Julia, she
watched intently as Lucilla's living bequest to her made her own way through
the area. Both with their eyes on something – Julia her orange, Diana her
responsibility – neither noticed at first a fight which had broken out seconds
ago between two young local men in the street ahead of them. While some
illusive quarrel drove them to attack one another viciously, other townspeople
began gathering to witness the scene.
Frightened, Diana hurried through
the horde to where Julia had ended up, very near to the fracas. Before she
began leading her away, however, Diana noticed how still Julia was standing,
fascinated by the display of violence before her. The remains of the fruit she
had been eating had fallen from her hands, and juice stained her chin where
before she had not allowed it to. Her mouth hung open, as she stood frozen.
Taking her arm, mildly disgusted,
Diana pulled Julia away as a small smile had formed upon the child's lips.
"You should not be seeing such
things at your age," Diana muttered. "Nay, you should never witness such
things. I really should stop bringing you out here. So many things a little
girl could see which she must not. Terrible."
Diana never noticed how old she
sounded; chastising Julia for allowing her innocent four-year-old eyes to
wander. But the look in those eyes as she had seen the boys fight had scared
her. Casting it from her mind quickly, she led the docile girl back home.
From his stall, which mother and
child had passed moments before, Antoninus watched closely the intriguing and
pretty young woman on her stumbling way, and smiled.
