The Mark of Rome

xiii / matriarch

"Let me see here then. They call her goddess blessed. I don't see how one woman could turn a house upon its head without being so. But oh, the trouble it's caused me..." The old woman was the closest thing to a matriarch this family had. In her ornate and well decorated room, Marius and I stood as guests. The mother of the emperor Marcus Aurelius was well into her final years, but she still had a bite like a rabid dog. She had her own home, her own servants, her own palace of relics that her son and nephews ensured for her.

Domitia Lucilla practically raised my husband. She loved him like a son and now she eyed me like a mother bear protecting her cub.

"Come on now. My days are numbered, girl," she complained. Her wrinkled skin pinched with the strain of appraising me and her grey hair curled in neat pleats down her back.

I came out from behind Marius, pushing myself forward with some steel in my veins. I was afraid of her. I didn't know what I was to do if she disapproved of me. She could just as easily deny my marriage as she could fortify it.  There was always divorce.

She was a strong woman that raised the empire's strongest men. I had heard enough about her temper to know I might have something in common with her after all.

I crept closer to her raised chair. She had made a throne in the middle of her living space and I approached her calmly with a proud inclination to my head. The closer I came the more I recognized her features as the same ones I saw in my husband. Her green-brown eyes were narrowed and the frown lines around her mouth were deeply grooved. Lucilla was famed throughout the empire for her fight to install her family in seats of power.

She fought many and she won. She both intimidated me and gave me someone to admire greatly.

She glowered at me, motioning for me to turn about in a humiliating circle. "You do realize her pretty face is temporary, Marius? Especially with that baby on the way, you can expect her face and figure won't ever be the same."

My heart pulled at the mention of the baby. If she knew, how could others not?

More than that, she spoke about me like I wasn't there and it bothered me. Marius didn't deign to answer. He knew this was my fight and not his.

"Marius married me to help him stake his claim. My face and figure are irrelevant to my duty," I commented blandly, a slight edge rising in my voice.

She guffawed, rising to meet my challenge. "But it sure does help! I heard you made quite the impression on the young suffect consul. He was quite taken with you, enough to endorse your husband's efforts. You know well enough a woman can be stoned for her adultery."

"Why should I know well enough?" I retorted. "I made my husband an ally. It was nothing more than that."

"Why did you marry Marius? My people tell me you had a lover you were to marry. There were several attempts on his life since you've been wed. How am I to know it wasn't you?" Her gaze was piercing and her words were clear. There was perfect clarity in what she thought of me.

Marius grumbled from the back, "That'll be enough, amita-"

It wasn't anger that filled me, but a motivation to prove myself. Determination made my palms curl into knuckles and my cheeks red with frustration. "You must tell your people to look harder, because the boy who I suspected I might have married has long since passed. And the threats have not just been on your nephew's life, but mine. The scheme of your brother's wife started with the attempt on my life, but I will not be deterred from defending the birth rite promised to my children. I will not be bullied by a woman who thinks I am worth nothing more than a pretty vessel for her family's heirs."