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The Northern Frontier

The Town of Sirmium,

Eight Days before the Ides of March, AD238

Iunia Fadilla kissed her nurse for the last time. She closed the eyes of the dear old woman, and said her name. ‘Eunomia.’

Rain spattered on the window. Through the glass the world was dark and distorted. The rain had come down across the Danube the day before, melting the ice on the eaves and turning the snow in the streets to slush. It had come too late for Eunomia. The cold of the North had killed her. It gave Iunia Fadilla another reason to hate her husband.

Eunomia’s decline had been sudden, but there had been time to summon those who prepared the dead from their quarters outside the town. Now, the Pollinctores stepped forward in their colourful and sinister caps. They lifted Eunomia from the bed and placed her on the bare floor. They said the ritual words.

The end is to the beginning as the beginning is to the end.

Eunomia had been with Iunia Fadilla since the beginning. A happy childhood, peripatetic yet peaceful; the big house on the Caelian in Rome, the villa in Sicily overlooking the Bay of Naxos, the retreat in the hills of Apulia. Iunia Fadilla’s mother had been the granddaughter of Marcus Aurelius. Her father also was rich, and had had the good sense to keep out of politics. Eunomia had gone with her when she married old Nummius. If her nurse had been shocked by the couple’s life in their luxurious home on the Esquiline, she had voiced no disapproval. Eumonia had liked Iunia Fadilla’s lover Gordian. Sometimes, when she had taken a drink, she had said what woman would not be happy taking an agreeable husband and a vigorous younger man to her bed, separately or together.

If Gordian had proposed when Nummius died, things might have been different. Iunia Fadilla had thought he would, but he had claimed it was against his Epicurean principles, and by then he was more often abroad, in Syria then Achaea. As far as she knew he had not returned to Rome once in the three years since he went to Africa.

Widowed at eighteen, she had enjoyed her independence. Nummius had left her well provided for. She had the house on the Esquiline, and her tutor, her cousin Fadillus, was not the type of man to go against her wishes. In the round of parties and recitals, of visits to the baths and harmless flirtations, of quiet nights reading, she had grown close to Eunomia again.

Everything, except Eunomia, had changed when Vitalianus had come to the house. The deputy Praetorian Prefect had announced that she was to marry Maximus the son of Maximinus. Refusal was not an option when the man seeking your hand was the son of the Emperor. On the long journey north, Eunomia had consoled her with reports of her betrothed. The Caesar was tall, good looking. He was cultured, wrote poetry that rivalled Catullus. Rumour had it he was an attentive lover of women and girls; no danger he would be one of those husbands who preferred page boys, or was held back by stern Stoic principles. When he saw her beauty, he would not desert her bed for concubines or the wives of other men.

There was no denying the beauty of Maximus. At their wedding, he smelt of cinnamon and roses as he leant close to whisper. They say you have sucked off half the men in Rome; at least you should be good at it. He had first beaten her that night. She had fought, but he was stronger. If I have to marry a whore, I will treat her like one. Since then, he slapped and punched her thighs, her buttocks and her breasts. This new year she had had to wear a veil at the ceremony renewing the oath of loyalty. The night before he had claimed he could smell wine on her breath. When a woman drinks without her husband, she closes the door on all virtues, and opens her legs for all-comers.

Iunia Fadilla would have given anything for her husband to desert her bed. And now Maximus was coming back. Laurelled letters had arrived. The Emperor had won another great victory. The Sarmatian Iazyges were routed. The army had recrossed the Danube, and would be in Sirmium tomorrow. Doubtless, Maximus would demand his conjugal rights. No tender kiss of greeting, but a flurry of blows as he took her. No words of endearment, but insults. Bitch! What man could kiss a mouth which had sucked so many pricks. Bitch!

The Pollinctores were busy with cloths and bowls of warm water, washing the body. Was Gordian right? Did everything return to peace and sleep, just atoms swirling back into the cosmos, without consciousness? Or were the poets right; the ferry across the river to Hades, murky and sunless? Eunomia had been devout. On the journey north, she had poured a libation at every wayside shrine, added a stone to each of Mercury’s cairns. If the dead were judged, there was no question of torments. Yet it was hard to imagine her old nurse disporting herself with the heroes and the virtuous in the Elysian Fields or the Isles of the Blessed. Perhaps she would wander like a shadow among the dark meadows overgrown with asphodel, until she drank the waters of oblivion. At least she was free of pain, her back unbent, her joints no longer stiff, her hand no longer trembling.

Iunia Fadilla was passed the shears. She hacked off a clump of her hair. She took a pinch of dust from a bowl. I am what five fingers might gather and carry. She sprinkled the dirt over her head.

When the corpse was anointed and dressed, it would be carried to the atrium. There, feet towards the door, it would be displayed. A fitting welcome for Maximus: the mournful music of flutes, and the women, filthy in dishevelled black, wailing, beating their breasts, tearing their cheeks.

Eunomia had known her herbs and remedies. She had taught Iunia Fadilla. Seventeen months of marriage, seventeen months of unwelcome and painful visits to her bed, and still no children. And there would be none. Iunia Fadilla would mix the old olive oil with the honey, cedar resin and white lead, and push the mixture inside herself.

Eunomia had served her well, but she had died leaving one service undone. The imperial household was closely watched, spies everywhere. It had been impossible to obtain the necessary poisons. There was no hope in the world. No Sarmatian arrow had found Maximus. No revolt threatened the rule of his father. Every plot had been uncovered and crushed. There was nothing else for it – Iunia Fadilla would have to kill her husband herself.

Everything was ready. Iunia Fadilla put a coin in Eunomia’s mouth. The handlers of the dead bound her nurse’s jaws shut.