Free The Golden Dice - A Tale of Ancient Rome by Elisabeth Storrs Page B

the ground hard for plowing,” she continued. “Seeds may wither before taking root. There was once peace for twenty years when Rome was preoccupied with feeding itself instead of fighting. Perhaps that will happen again.”
    “ Perhaps.” He leaned against a beam, unconcerned that a coating of ash marked his cloak. Caecilia stood with her back resting against him, drawing his arms around her waist. “Veii is impregnable, isn’t it? With its high citadel, walls and encircling rivers?”
    “ True,” he murmured, wrapping his tebenna around them both. “We are heavily fortified. None have succeeded in taking the city before.”
    “ So maybe this spring, the Romans will accept it is fruitless to prolong this war.”
    “ Perhaps. We should never give up hope.”
    Her teeth were chattering, her feet freezing within her fine ankle boots. She rubbed her hands together, aware that the comfort in his voice was familiar. It was the one with which she soothed Tas to sleep after a nightmare, reassuring him that the monsters will have disappeared when he closed his eyes.
    Glossary
    Cast

THE WINTER CAMPAIGN
     

EIGHT
     
Rome, Winter, 399 BC
     
    Pinna was a night moth. A tomb whore surviving outside the city wall of Rome. Hiding in the darkness. Drawn to the light but knowing it brought danger. Destined to live a life that was sorrowful and brief.
    For her, winter brought a special cruelty. The wind was bitter and the cold seeped from the earth to chill the marrow. Her clothes were sodden: fingers icy and painful from chilblains, lips blue and ringed with sores.
    She worked as a hired mourner also. She could not afford to shun the chance to earn money at the funerals of patricians in the daylight or well-off plebeians in the night. She did not care whether it was noble or common ash that landed upon her skin, as long as she could support herself and Fusca, her poor sad mother. Although neither job ever paid enough to quell the hunger pangs for long or allow her to escape to a world where her skin was not tinged gray or her clothes dyed darkly.
    Tonight she welcomed the chance to lament the death of a wealthy plebeian. She did not mind caking her hair in ashes or wearing sackcloth when it meant that, for a few hours, she could warm herself beside the flames of a burning bier. Hovering close to the fire, she tried to ignore how it roasted the pale anointed body, the unguents a macabre seasoning to dead flesh. Yet when the flames seized a pocket of fat or worried at sinew she winced at how it popped and sizzled. Covering her nose and mouth could not block the stench or taste of cooking viscera saturating the smoke.
    And it was with bitterness that she watched the women of the family douse the embers, knowing that cold would soon creep into her bones again just as heat had cracked and charred the corpse’s. Resentful that honey and oil would be used to steep the ashes rather than feed a shivering girl. Aggrieved also that the sacrificial sow would only be consumed amongst the family once the deceased’s portion was burned upon the pyre.
    Wintertime was always busy for a hired mourner. All those dead soldiers. Dead heroes. Yet, although she might be paid to mourn for a fallen warrior, the men she serviced were not rich enough to ever wield weapons. Poor men, slaves and bondsmen spent their paltry wages to use her. The low life of Rome could not afford to be choosy. The lee of a doorway of a rich man’s tomb was cover enough for her to give a hand to a needy man or kneel before him.
    After the family of the dead man departed to inter the remains, Pinna steeled herself, knowing she had yet to earn enough that night. Holding aloft a feeble lantern to attract customers, she formed a tiny shrine with pebbles and a stub of candle, leaving a paltry offering to Mater Matuta, the goddess of dawn. She renewed her contract daily with the deity, promising she would revere her if she raised her to a brothel whore so she could enjoy shelter