It took a lot longer to find an agent than to write a novel, pretty literally four times as long. I'm ever-grateful for Kimberley Cameron's representation and support, but, before I found her, I had time to build quite a backlog of writing. The first novel I wrote was one I'd been thinking about for decades, scribbling various notes over those years, and even taking a trip to look over the ground where I wanted to set it. It's the story of a young man whose parents wish him to take over the family farm. He would much prefer to go to the big city, maybe become a lawyer or get into politics, or perhaps wangle an officer's commission from his mother's cousin, a noted soldier whom he has never met. This all sounds kind of familiar, I suppose. It seems like something maybe set in Iowa in 1948 or something. In fact, that family farm is outside Ravenna, Italy and it's set in 56-54 BC. More than anything I've written, I look back over this one and feel I got exactly what I wanted. We're now starting the early process of trying to find a publisher. I'm trying not to get too excited, but I'd love to see this in print.
For those of you who are curious, I'll paste the first chapter below. Just for fun, I'll add a cover that a friend designed after reading an early draft. This is a working title, so feel free to comment below if you have an idea.
PART ONE
Family Masks
"If I can guide you in the ways
Trod by the worthy folk of earlier days,
And, while you need direction, keep your name and life unstained,
I've attained my aim.” - Horace
"It is due to our own moral failures and not to any accident of chance that, while retaining the name, we have lost the reality of a republic.” - Cicero
Chapter One
The masks began to speak.
Lying on a dining couch in his parents’ villa, Marcus, sluggish with wine, blinked at the littered table before him. Flickering oil lamps lighted a shabby scene of dirty plates and overtipped cups.
He looked around the dim and shadowed room. Where had his friends gone?
“Ah, right,” he muttered woozily. They had left more than an hour ago. They’d be halfway back to Ravenna by now.
Marcus half-rose from the couch. The room began to spin alarmingly and he nearly fell onto the floor. Must tell the servants to clean up this room—order them to say nothing to his father about the mess he and his friends had made, the drunkenness.
Weighted with dinner and drink, he fell back onto the couch.
Later, he couldn't say how much time passed before he heard the first murmur of voices, barely piercing the curtain of his slumber. The voices seemed to come from the entry hall where the terra cotta masks of his ancestors hung.
A vision of the masks, hanging from their hooks, passed through his mind. He knew their faces as well as he knew his own, perhaps better. Over the last few years—he was nineteen now—his had changed rapidly. His features had lost their boyish roundness, the fair hair turned darker, the nose and jaw stronger.
His ancestors, though, were unchangeable—the stern faces of the grandfathers he had never known and the grandmothers but barely, the faces of their parents before them and theirs in turn, generations so deep into the past as to slip from memory into myth. Each mask bore the individual features of its subject, the vivid colors of flesh and hair and eyes so eerily real they had frightened him as a boy.
Whatever their differences, each mask shared the relentless strength of character and firmness of purpose that had first won and then maintained the family’s position in this most distant part of Italy. His mother's ancestors, the Julians, a storied Roman family, hung on one side. On the other side were his father's, the Scaevolas, Romans too, but long ago come north, almost beyond the writ of the Senate and the shield of the legionnaire, to found this estate in the Po Valley when barbarians still raided its rich plain.
Still wondering at the sound of the voices, Marcus, unable to keep his eyes open, curled up on the couch.
While he dozed, only half-asleep, the unhappy murmuring increased in strength, the voices drawing nearer. With a great effort he opened his eyes—and felt his heart stop in horror.
Before him, as if conjured by his thoughts, the masks of the ancestors were gliding above the atrium floor, winging toward him like angry ravens.
He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs that clouded his thoughts. But he could not banish the vision of the masks before him. Like unhappy spirits fleeing their tombs, they hovered in the air, floating in ragged ranks across the room.
With a shiver of horror, he realized the voices he heard came from their throatless mouths. Though unable to catch the sense of their words, Marcus heard them calling his name, their voices murderously angry.
He tried to rise and shout for the servants to send these masks back to their places. But neither his voice nor limbs obeyed his will.
As he struggled to cry out, the masks began to take on a macabre transformation. Beneath their shadowy features, living flesh started to materialize. Simulated colors took on the warm hues of life. Terra cotta mouths began to move, brows to furrow in anger.
Anger at what? Marcus searched his conscience for some heedless act of impiety that might have so offended the ancestors that they would leave their places in the shadow world and return to their earthly home to judge him.
Like swirling smoke congealing in place, the ghastly forms took shape, dressed in men's togas and matron's gowns, their owners shouting, some with upraised fists, all speaking in the veiled language of the dead.
The spirits crept closer, gathering around the couch on which Marcus lay. For the length of a deep breath, the encircling shades looked down on the young nobleman with their fathomless eyes. Then they knelt, took up his couch, slowly raised it onto their shoulders, and began to bear him away. As they did, the sense of their words grew clearer: betrayal. Betrayal of the genius, the guiding spirit, of his family and of its gods. Betrayal of a promise made long ago but left unfulfilled.
Baffled and frightened, Marcus could not fathom what family obligations could have passed over his parents and waited for him to keep. Yet the spirits insisted he had in some unknown way neglected his duties, betrayed his very Romanness, as if he were of another race, another people.
His mind disordered by terror, Marcus could not at first tell in what direction the spirits were taking him. Then he saw the entrance hall, its bare walls studded with the empty hooks from which the masks had wandered. Beyond it, the villa’s front door opened into the annihilating darkness.
Before him, just beyond the door, stood a formless shadow—Janus, the two-faced god of comings and goings, beginnings and endings. Beyond Janus, obscured by the darkness, appeared another figure. With a shock of horror, Marcus recognized his father, his face lined with anger and grief, reciting a funeral oration.
Marcus struggled to speak, to appeal to this stern man he knew so well and yet had never understood. He tried to cry out but could make no sound.
He saw it clearly now. The ancestors were carrying him out the door of his home, bearing him in the traditional manner of a corpse, feet first, so that his wandering spirit could not find its way back.
In the shadowy realm beyond the courtyard, Marcus caught a glimpse of another figure—no, two figures. A boar snuffled in the distance, as if waiting for him. And a woman, beautiful beyond words, with long black hair and lips red as plums.
With a final effort he struggled to call out, "No! Please! I will keep the promise. Only tell me what it is!" But he could produce nothing more than a strangled cry.
Gasping for breath, Marcus sat bolt upright in his bed, the echo of his shout fading in the dark room, his heart pounding, sweat running down his face.
“Oh, Marcus! You’ll frighten me to death.” In the dim light he saw Pompeiia beside him in the bed, clutching the bedclothes to her neck. She put an arm around his shoulders and let the bedclothes drop. The aromas of her perfume and the warmth of her flesh eased his terror. “You’ve had a bad dream. Here, come closer.” She patted his head as if he were a child, unmanning him. “You’re all right now.”
Still possessed by his nightmare, he could not reply.
Pompeiia smiled. “I know how to make bad dreams go away.” She drew his hand to her breast.
Marcus fought to slow his breath, tell himself that it had only been a bad dream. But in his heart he knew that nothing was more real than a dream.
“Is it morning yet?” he asked.
“It’s almost dawn. But we have time.”
Marcus shook his head. “My father must have come back hours ago. You have to go.” Though his father might wink at his visits to a bordello in the city, such as virtually all young men indulged in, he would not be pleased with its employees coming to his house.
Marcus staggered out of bed and threw a tunic over his head.
She let out a huff of exasperation. “How will I get back? It’s miles to town.”
Marcus plucked some coins from his bedside table. “I’ll tell my slave to come up. He’ll take you out through the kitchens. Once you’re on the road someone will be happy to take you into Ravenna for this.”
He tossed the coins beside her on the bed, like tossing corn to a chicken. The young girl’s frowned at the insult. Then, recalling her need to please a good client , she manufactured an injured frown.
“I didn’t make you happy,” she said.
Marcus thought she might cry. “No, Pompeiia, don’t …” He gave her two more coins and kissed her on the forehead. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell Calpurnia that you're wonderful and that I’ll visit her place again when I’m in the city. I’ll ask for you particularly. I promise. But now you have to go.”
She tossed her head sulkily, then picked up the coins.
Marcus dashed downstairs, knowing he was late. His father would already be standing outside, angry, waiting for him.
Still haunted by the vision, he staggered out of the villa. He sensed it had been no mere dream, but a visitation, as real in spirit as it was shadowy in form—its effect terrifying, its purpose wholly obscure.
A small altar stood in the ancient oak grove beyond the villa, only a few paces from the marble tomb in which generations of Scaevola bones were interred. The carvings on the altar's sides had turned green with age and its base lay buried under layers of humus so thick that the pair of hooded figures observing rites at the altar needed to stoop slightly.
The two men turned as Marcus approached, pulling back the folds of their togas with which they covered their heads during religious ceremonies. His father's close-cropped graying hair, his lean, stern face appeared, as always, grave and purposeful as the masks hanging from the wall. Marcus half realized that the dread he felt whenever he passed through the entrance hall under the unblinking gaze of the ancestors reflected the unease he felt in his father’s presence.
Lately, the deep lines that creased his father's face, the sagging flesh under his eyes and the paleness under his tan had carried a message of mortality that Marcus tried not to think of. As much as his father's presence intimidated him, he could not imagine a world without him. For now, though, the anger in his father's blue eyes was proof enough of his vitality.
"You've interrupted the rites, Marcus. The gods no longer attend us. You come here late, dressed in a dirty tunic rather than a toga, your face unwashed.” His father turned away, but his anger drove him back. "It's not for my marriage we're enquiring of the gods, but yours—"
"Father—"
"Be quiet!” With this shout his father's shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again the anger was gone. His voice was calm, almost relieved. "The auspices can't be read now. Go back inside. Put on clean clothes and go see your mother.” His father said to the priest. "I'll see that you're taken back to town."
The old priest bowed his head. "As you wish, Atticus Publius."
The two men turned their backs on Marcus and walked toward the villa, their breath steaming in the morning air.
Marcus walked over to the altar, puzzled that his father's anger about the interrupted rites had so quickly cooled.
A wisp of smoke rose from the smoldering grain in the center of the altar. Next to the grain lay the body of the sacrificed lamb. With a shiver of horror, Marcus saw that, though the sheep’s flesh was pink and fresh, its shrunken liver was black with disease.
These were the auspices for his marriage to Cornelia, the daughter of his father’s closest friend. By arriving late and unclean he had, to his father’s relief, negated the rites. The lamb and its ominous message meant nothing now.
His hands tucked under his arms against the cold, Marcus trotted back toward the house.
After falling ill in spring, his mother had been moved downstairs to a room behind the atrium. Here a warm flow of air under the floor, fed by fires near the villa's foundations, eased the chill that never left her now. The acrid smell of incense could not disguise the odor of illness that hung in the air.
Marcus looked in on her and thought she was asleep. But, sensing his presence, she opened her eyes. "Ah, Marcus. Come in. Sit with your mother." She nodded at a chair in a corner of the small room.
His mother, Julia, had never been a robust woman. She had nearly died in giving birth to him and never again been able to conceive. His father could have honorably divorced her for this, but his love for her kept him by her side as he saw her through her many illnesses. Throughout these trials, her spirit, her Juno, had always burned fiercely, in defiance of the weak vessel in which it dwelt.
She owed her marriage—and Marcus his existence—to this relentless determination. As a girl, she had needed every bit of it to bend the will of her own stern father, who had opposed her marriage to Atticus Publius Scaevola, who possessed bloodlines nearly as ancient and noble as her own, but lived a rusticated life in the Po Valley, a region barely civilized, only recently secured from Celtic tribes.
Over the years, Atticus had done little to strengthen his ties to the capital. Though an equite, only a step below senatorial rank, he chose to fulfill his obligations to Rome while spending as little time there as possible, and had never taken his son to the great city.
"You look well today, Mother."
Julia scoffed at his lie. "Oh, don't I though? But you don't. You have dark circles under your eyes.” A year earlier the comment would have cut Marcus to the core, but as illness melted away her frame, the imperious tone that had carried all the dignity of her proud family had softened. The flicker of a smile crossed her face. "I'm scolding you, aren't I?”
"I think Father hoped you would."
"I don't need your father's permission to tell you what I can see with my own eyes. As for your father, my … indisposition has been harder on him than on me. Be good to him."
"Be good to him? Why can’t he at least show me—?"
"Listen to me," she interrupted, "You're nineteen. It’s time you took on a man's responsibilities. Your father’s not young anymore. He needs you."
"Mother, I respect my father, but I don't love this as he does.” His vague gesture took in the villa, the estate and all they entailed. "It's time I saw something of the world. If I went to Rome—"
His mother fixed him with a look. "A son never sounds more childish than when he pretends to be wise. Let's speak of a future a little less distant. We’ve been invited to dinner in Ravenna with Sextus Flavius and his family tomorrow night. I think I will feel well enough. Don't make that face. It will be a chance for you to see your Cornelia."
"Mother, I know what she looks like. And 'my Cornelia?’ I—"
"Your father and I did not raise you to remain a child. Her father agreeing, you will marry her in the spring.”
“Don’t you think I’m a little young?”
“You’ll be twenty next year. She'll be sixteen, a perfect age for marriage.”
The sound of hobnailed shoes echoed in the hall. Marcus looked up and found his father standing in the doorway.
"I told him to come see you, not to take up your whole morning,” he said to Julia. Atticus Publius had changed into the tunic and boots he wore when going out to inspect his estate.
“Here, sit beside me on the bed," she said to him.
"You look well this morning, Julia."
She looked from her husband to her son and rolled her eyes. "Nothing makes me feel more feeble and drab than to have everyone telling me how well I look. Look at my hair. Thin and stringy and gone to gray." She tucked a curl more or less back into place. "And look at you.” She tugged at her husband's close-cropped hair. "While I try to hold onto what hair I have left, you've cut yours nearly to the scalp.” She turned to Marcus. "He used to be as fair as you, you know. And with the same blue eyes. I used to call him my little Gaul, my wicked Celt. I told him that's what came from living this far north, at the edge of the world. My family half-believed I’d married a barbarian."
Trying to maintain his dignity in front of his son, Atticus reddened and pulled back. Julia laughed and patted his hand. He ducked his head to hide his smile.
Marcus listened to their banter as if to a new language. He had never seen them talk this way, teasing each other, sharing a joke. In fact he had seldom seen his father smile.
As if reading his son’s thoughts, Atticus frowned. “Have your horse saddled. You’re coming with me into the fields.”
The light in his mother’s eyes faded, and he saw how pale she had become, fatigued by their brief conversation.
For Marcus, though, the image of his father’s smile and of his mother’s quiet laughter lingered as he walked out of the villa to fetch his horse. For the first time he understood that their relationship might contain something apart from their role as his parents. Sometimes you learn things just in time, he thought.
END CHAPTER