Roma - Saylor Steven. Страница 46

What was said in that tent? What promises or threats were made, what memories or dreams rekindled? None would ever know but Coriolanus and his mother.

Veturia was the first to emerge from the tent. Volumnia and Claudia—who still had never met Titus’s eyes—quickly stepped forward to assist her. Without a word, the three returned to where the Vestals waited. Veturia spoke to the virgins in a low voice, and they in turn made gestures to the women behind them to turn around and return to the city. As the vast procession retreated, the multitude of women neither wept nor were jubilant, but maintained an eerie silence.

Gnaeus remained alone in the tent for a very long time. When he finally emerged, he wore upon his face a look of determination such as Titus had never seen before.

Gnaeus mounted his steed, then summoned his Roman vanguard. The mounted warriors assembled before him. Titus was among them, dreading what he was about to hear.

“There will be no attack on Roma,” said Gnaeus.

The men were dumbfounded.

“When we left Roma, we set out to meet our destiny. Destiny has led us very nearly in a circle. We have come this close to Roma—but we will come no closer. Over the mountains, across the seas, there is a vast world beyond the lands of the Romans and the Volsci. Out there, perhaps, is where our destiny now lies.”

The men looked at one another anxiously, but such was their degree of discipline that not one of them spoke a word of protest.

“We shall now ride back through the Volscian ranks. When we reach the rear of the army, we shall simply keep riding.”

“And the Volsci?” said Titus.

“If they wish to attack Roma, let them.”

“They’ll never do it! You’re their talisman. Only Coriolanus can lead them to victory.”

“Then I suppose they’ll turn back, as well.” Gnaeus snapped his reins and rode forward. The Roman vanguard followed. Titus caught up and rode beside Gnaeus. The Volscian foot soldiers stepped back to make way, gazing up at them in wonder and confusion.

“It’s that woman’s doing!” shouted one of them. “She’s turned her son against us!”

“Coriolanus is deserting us!”

“Impossible!”

“Look for yourself!”

“But why did he lead us here?”

“It’s a trap! Coriolanus lured us to this place, and now the Romans must have a terrible trick in store!”

Consternation spread through the ranks. It seemed to Titus that they rode above a sea of angry faces. The roar of that sea grew louder and louder. Its currents surged this way and that with ever greater violence.

“Turn back, Coriolanus!” cried the Volsci. “Turn back! Lead us! Or else—”

A stone struck Titus’s helmet. The noise reverberated though his skull. Again, he was reminded of the day the cudgel had struck him on the Tarpeian Rock, and Gnaeus had saved his life. More and more, the world around him seemed strange and dreamlike, muted and distant.

More stones pelted his armor. Titus hardly felt them. The Volsci began with stones, but soon enough they drew their swords. The Romans on horseback did likewise. To Titus’s ears, the clash of iron was oddly muffled. A blur of motion followed. It was with some surprise that he saw blood upon his own sword, then felt a burning pain in his side. The world spun about and turned upside down. Titus vaguely knew that he must be tumbling from his horse, but never felt himself hit the ground.

In the days that followed, the Senate of Roma decreed that the day of the city’s salvation from Coriolanus should be a day of thanksgiving, and that special honors should be given to the courageous women of Roma, who had achieved what neither force of arms nor diplomacy could have achieved.

Those decisions were easy. Harder decisions followed.

Considerable acrimony attended the debate regarding the Ara Maxima. Since the dawn of time, the Altar of Hercules had been kept by the families of the Pinarii and the Potitii, the hereditary priests who jointly celebrated the Feast of Hercules. In light of the dishonor brought upon his family by Titus Potitius, should that family be allowed to continue as keepers of the altar, or should they be stripped of their role, and should it be given to another family, or to priests appointed by the state?

Appius Claudius was among those who argued that the state had no right to interfere in a religious arrangement that predated the state itself. Hercules himself had chosen the two families to keep his shrine. No act of the state could undo what a god had willed in a time before memory. This was his public stance. Privately, Claudius told his colleagues that the shame brought upon him by his son-in-law was a torment hardly to be borne; he disowned his daughter and grandchild, and declared that so long as he or any descendent bearing his name held any influence in the state, no man with the name Potitius would ever be elected to high office.

Claudius’s argument carried the Senate. The keeping of the Ara Maxima would remain in family hands, unchanged. But the newly elected consul, Publius Pinarius, protested that his family would no longer carry out its traditional duties alongside the disgraced Potitii. “After too many generations to count, we relinquish our place in the keeping of the altar. Let the Potitii do it all by themselves!”

There was much talk among the elite of Roma regarding these two ancient patrician families, and the curious twists of fate which had brought Publius Pinarius to the consulship, the pinnacle of his family’s fortunes, even as the Potitii reached their nadir with the disgrace of Titus Potitius.

Years later, a ragged drifter happened to find himself a few miles south of Roma. He was a man with no city or tribe, doomed to perpetually wander, surviving by his wits, which were often befuddled, and dependent on the mercy of strangers; a broken man, without hopes or dreams. He had not passed this way in many years.

He only vaguely realized where he was, but he knew that the small temple beside the road had not been there before. It was of simple design, but handsomely executed and beautifully decorated. A young shepherd was resting on the steps.

“Tell me, boy,” said the vagrant, “what is this temple? To what god is it dedicated?”

The boy looked at the drifter warily at first, then saw that the grizzled stranger was harmless. “Not a god, but a goddess—Fortuna, the first daughter of Jupiter. She decides the ups and downs of life.”

“I seem to recall that there are many temples to Fortuna in Roma,” remarked the drifter, his voice dreamy.

“Yes, but this one is different. They call it the Temple of Fortuna Muliebris, Fortuna of the Women.”

“Why is that?”

“Because the women of Roma paid to build it, if you can believe that. This is the very spot, you see, where the villain Coriolanus was turned back.”

“Is it?” said the drifter, with a quaver in his voice.

“Indeed it is. And afterward, the women thought there should be a temple here, to mark the spot. The Senate and the priests approved, and the women themselves raised the money to build it. It’s a beautiful building, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” The drifter gazed admiringly at the structure. “I used to be a builder myself.”

“You?” The shepherd looked at him dubiously, then slapped his thigh and laughed. “And I used to be a senator! But look at me now, herding these dirty sheep!”

So this was the very spot. Titus’s mind was flooded by memories long suppressed. Dimly he remembered witnessing Gnaeus’s gory end; even the greatest warrior in Italy could not take on the whole of an army he himself had trained for combat. At least Gnaeus had died fighting. Dimly—thank the gods, only dimly!—Titus recalled the tortures to which the Volsci had subjected him before they let him go.

It all seemed very distant, like a dream almost forgotten. All the days of his life seemed like that, even yesterday, even today.