Etruscan Blood Page 3

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  There was no reason Lauchme should have seen much of Tanaquil; he'd never really involved himself in politics, though he had an educated interest (how could he not have, given his father's background?), and he was, after all, only half-Etruscan, and somewhat out of the mainstream of Tarquinian society because of it. But that summer, when he should have been concentrating on planting out the new vineyards his father had acquired, he'd drifted into an acquaintance with a number of younger men who had ideas about developing more trade with the north - through Spina in the northern marshes, and even through Massilia and up the Rhone - and Tanaquil always seemed to be meeting one or another of them, so that he inevitably ended up talking to her.

  It wasn't as if they'd ever have met, otherwise; she was only fifteen, hardly half his twenty-nine years, even if she was mature for her age. He'd been trained at Velzna for a couple of years, though his Greek blood debarred him from any position of power in Tarchna or the confederacy; he'd acquired every skill a young Rasenna man needed, from poetic composition to accounting, and he was reckoned one of the smarter traders in the city and at the port of Gravisca. He was good-looking, too, and while he'd never equalled his father's athletic record, he'd competed with some success as a runner; his lanky, rather indolent body might not look so powerful, but he had real stamina over the longer distances. Yet Tanaquil had that way of making him feel clumsy and unpolished, as if he were fifteen again, growing too fast to know what to do with his long legs and unwieldy body.

  “Lauchme,” she said to him one afternoon; “it's an interesting name...”

  “I'm Loukios to my father, of course,” he said.

  “Lauchme...” she caressed the name in her mouth, and it was soft, not brilliant and sharp like his Greek name. “Meaning king, or ruler, or priest. But who will you rule?”

  For a moment he flirted with the idea of saying “You, if you'll allow me”, but the dizzying perspectives of that fantasy passed, and he said bitterly, “Ironic, isn't it? My mother called me the one thing I could never be.”

  “Not in Tarchna, anyway.”

  “Is there anywhere else?”

  She smiled, raising a finger to her lips in a little gesture she had. Then she opened her palm towards him, almost as if she were blowing a kiss. “I'm surprised you look to Massilia and Spina, when Rome is the city of opportunity.”

  He looked down, abashed. He'd never thought of Rome, other than as a rough town of renegades and refugees. Men who kidnapped other peoples' women, men you wouldn't trust your daughters with, men with no culture and little to bring them together other than their status as outlaws. And Tanaquil lumped him in with those barbarians. He frowned, not sure whether to be furious or miserable, or both.

  “I've upset you,” she said, and her voice was warm and sad. Perhaps after all she'd not meant to do it. He couldn't answer; he squinted up at her, his brow still darkened by hard thought. He put his hands to his eyes, and massaged them, feeling how tense he'd suddenly become.

  “Stay here, and you can make pots like your father.” A little asperity had entered her voice, he thought. “In Rome, you could be a king.”

  A king of goatherds and rapists, he thought; but he didn't stop her talking. And by the end of the afternoon, he'd had to concede she had a point; in a town of refugees and outlaws, it didn't matter who your father was.